10/52

The sun has been shining this week and it has made a big difference. The mornings are now getting lighter and the evenings feel positively glorious despite it still being two weeks until the clocks change. It feels like spring is here and my mood is lifting along with the clouds and rain. 

We spent the first couple of days of the week visiting some friends who left London at the end of last year. I was sad to see them go, particularly as it is fairly rare to find another family where the kids gets on as well as the parents. We had a huge amount of fun.  One of the highlights was definitely blowing bubbles on the deck in their garden.

I just adore the expression on her face here. 

The rest of the week was less good as Birdie has been poorly. It's a non-descript kind of poorly characterised by a cough and large amounts of grumpy and poor behaviour so there isn't much we can do except ride it out. I confess my patience is wearing thin. I'm aiming to get some me time this weekend in the hopes it gives me more energy and compassion for dealing with her.  I'm feeling rather tapped out at the moment. 

But, despite being poorly, we've still managed to get out to the park for a run around in the sunshine most afternoons. I find it is the only cure for the screaming that seems to set in after the post-lunch lull (for all parties). As you can see, the sunshine fixes everything. 

A portrait of my children: one a week, every week, for one year. 

My contribution to the beautiful 52 project, hosted by Jodi at Practising Simplicity. Her photography is infinitely more beautiful than mine and there are many fabulous photographers sharing their moments through this project. Do drop by and check out the linky in all it's glory. 

8/52 and 9/52

Oops, what happened there?  I fell into a bit of a black hole on the blogging front.  Just not enough energy left over at the end of the day string together my thoughts (and yes, I do actually try to make this stuff coherent, despite all appearances to the contrary!).  A couple of weeks slipped by without me even noticing.

So here, very briefly, are weeks 8 and 9 in my 52 project.

Week 8 - a.k.a the week of the big birthday party

 and here is the birthday boy enjoying his cake. That is actually a carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting from the rather lovely Cooking for Baby by Lisa Barnes.  

It's a little tricky to find this book sometimes but well worth it.  There's lots of recipes that translate really well to adult food and Lisa adds more flavour to her dishes than the ubiquitous Annabel Karmel.  Also, being an American book it offers a slightly different range of veg and grains than you might find in other books, encouraging you to branch out a bit more.  The cakes in the final chapter are all delicious and the carrot cupcakes and cranberry and orange scones both make regular appearances in our kitchen. The full birthday party menu will hopefully feature in its own post along with some snaps later in the week.

Birdie meanwhile spent a lot of that week making Splatterflies - more on those later.

Week 9

I don't remember much of what we got up to that week, save that the week culminated with Hubby's birthday.  This involved a Friday night pre-bathtime present wrapping frenzy that saw the boy wrapped up in large amounts of wrapping paper and slightly more sticky tape than is ideal by his very enthusiastic sister, a lengthy search to find where Birdie had hidden Daddy's presents, a lovely meal out with friends, much hilarity on my part, and pain on Hubby's, due to the combination of Hubby's massive birthday hangover and Birdie's massive enthusiasm for it being Daddy's birthday, a very tasty brunch of buttermilk pancakes, bacon and maple syrup that did not really receive the reception it deserved from the rest of Team Collett, a much needed trip to the park for some sunshine and fresh air and a very tasty fish & chip supper at Kerbisher & Malt to round off proceedings.  The birthday boy seemed suitably impressed once his hangover had subsided and declared 36 to be not as bad as he expected.  Here's hoping.

So, pictures wise, we have Birdie showing off her ever-growing climbing prowess in the park.  She's now mastered virtually every piece of equipment in Ealing that she's physically big enough to tackle (and a couple that she probably isn't).   

And not to be outdone on the climbing front, Mr Man go stuck in to climbing the stairs.  He's been able to for a while but has suddenly shown increased enthusiasm for them and shins up at top speed the moment the living room door is opened.   

There is no hope for us.

7/52

There was really only one event last week: Mr Man's birthday!  I'm not quite sure how a year can possibly have passed since he was born but the calendar assures me it has, so I guess I have to accept that my baby is now heading rapidly towards toddlerhood.

Festivities were immense, making it difficult to choose pictures this week. In the end I opted for Birdie proudly displaying the peanut butter cookies that she baked

and the birthday boy trying out the bell on his new trike. 

Happy days.

This is my contribution to the 52 project - do head over to the lovely Practising Simplicity blog written by Jodi, who takes fantastic photographs and will show you how this project really should be done. You can also take a look at all the wonderful links to other bloggers who take beautiful pictures of their kids.

6/52

Six weeks in to the 52 project, and I'm really enjoying it.  It's reminding me to document what we're doing; I'm starting to think more about the pictures I take when I do it (although I don't think that shows yet) and I find looking at all the other wonderful pictures being shared very inspiring. I love looking at the craft in the photographs and also find the activities depicted are often a source of inspiration for what we can do as well.

I don't normally struggle for a pic of the boy - narrowing down the choice is normally the hard part, and there's usually two or three standout pics to choose from (well, standout by my lowly snapper standards, nothing troubling David Bailey, obviously). This week however offered pretty slim pickings.  Mr Man caught a nasty tummy bug in the middle of the week and was poorly for the rest of the week.  He looked actually green on Wednesday night and then looked pale and off-colour, acquiring a strange bluish tinge around the eyes and nose.  Not good.  He also wasn't really doing much other than having cuddles and feeling sorry for himself.  Understandably so, but they didn't really feel like moments i wanted to capture "on film" (you know what I mean, I'm from the dark ages, all photos are "film" to me, even though I haven't used a film camera for almost ten years).

So, when I came to review the pics from last week, there was only one set of pics of Mr Man and only one pic within that set worth sharing. Here he is looking pale but due to the wonderful skin-enhancing effects of smothering your face in yoghurt:

Birdie in the other hand was much easier this week.  I'd got some great shots of her playing at home and out and about, but there was really only one shot to sum up my fearless little warrior last week:

Much to her dad's concern/upset, we spent Friday afternoon in the park learning how to climb down the rope. He is not a fan, particularly of how far away I stand while she's doing it.  I say she needs to learn this stuff and she needs to learn how to do it safely. I'm also hoping that getting to climb all over the place in the park will burn off some energy and reduce her almost obsessive need to climb on all the furniture at home.  Well, I can dream can't I?

5/52

After the previous week was so awful, I made a conscious effort to regroup last week.  I tried hard to be gentler, particularly with Birdie ("I'm not a baby, Mama, I'm a big girl"), but also with myself.  I made an effort to have more fun with the kids, to try to connect with them, and to listen more to what Birdie was saying with her behaviour as well as with her words.

We did a bunch of stuff, mostly at home due to the truly vile weather but we also managed a couple of lovely, mostly sunny, days out in the fresh air which I think helped all of us to feel better.  I won't pretend it was all fun and larks but it was definitely an improvement and it showed when I came to choose snaps for the 52 project. I had loads of each kid and a fair few of the two of them having fun together.  It was pretty hard to choose.

In the end, it had to be Bathtime Baby

and Bouncing Birdie (apologies for the quality of this one, it's really hard to take a clear shot of a small girl on a bouncy castle on an iPhone, but I chose it for the energy in the picture and the happiness on her face rather than the quality of the picture; also, yes, that is a Hallowe'en costume she is wearing at a friend's February birthday party...)

3/52

Here's my contribution to the 52 project this week.  Separate pics of the kids this time.

Mr Man, refusing to go to bed and insisting he is really having far too much fun to sleep.

And Baby Bird where she is happiest, outside running around but most especially, at the top of the slide.

Next week I'm going to try and get the proper camera out (assuming I can find the battery charger...)

2/52

I had great plans of blogging more last week but by the time the kids are in bed and I've attempted to rescue the house I'm shattered.  I'm trying to go to bed a bit earlier, in the hopes that a bit more sleep will compensate for the broken nature of it. Mr Man still hasn't quite got the hang of sleeping through and so there's still a feed somewhere between 1 and 4 and Baby Bird is having, well I'm not sure really. Nightmares? Night terrors?  A fluctuating combination of the two?  Either way, her sleep is broken and consequently is ours.  As she often tells me in the wee small hours of the morning: "sleeping is a little bit tricky, Mama".

So, I'm too tired to write much.  That and the fact that I'm tantalisingly close to finishing the most mammoth blanket for Baby Bird so have been knitting when I do grab some quiet moments.  I'm almost half way round the applied I-cord border - not long to go now.  She has assured me a number of times through the four month making process that she will "definitely stay in her bed all night once she has her pretty blankling [sic]". Luckily for her I won't hold her to it.

Anyway, I'm a bit late with posting this, but I did take the picture at the right time. Here is a portrait of my children this week. Smiley, happy sibling affection for a change, rather than the bigger ones making the littler one cry by being just that little bit too rough...

 A moment to treasure so it's my {this moment} as well as my 52 project contribution again.  Really must stop cheating like this.

1/52

Well, in news that will have surprised noone but me, January 2013, just 6 weeks before I was due to have a baby, was not the best time to start a new blogging project, or a new project of any kind. So I mostly watched the very beautiful 52 Project from the sidelines.  However, I did take a lot of pictures and could, if I could find the time, certainly put together 52 photos of my lovely daughter transforming from tiny toddler into terrifyingly grown-up little girl and 46 photos of my adorable squishy pudding of a baby transforming from a tightly curled newborn into a crawling tornado of laughing destruction.

I still love the idea of this project and had a tremendous amount of fun tracking my friend Julia's highly successful efforts. She is an example to me in many ways, not least in persistence, commitment and cramming more than you think possible into each day.

So, I'm going to have another go.  And here is week 1.  A bit of a cheat probably because it is actually a series, but it turns out bubbles are hard to photograph, particularly with only an iPhone when it is only just getting light outside, and I also felt the series told the story more effectively than any single image.

 The anticipation, the movement, the look of "my sister is the funniest person on the planet". It all made this a perfect moment, occurring a little too early on the only Saturday morning of the year when my husband has to work at the office.  It's the main reason I was taking the pictures - because he misses out on many of these moments and it's nice to share our day when he returns home.

In a bit of shameless recycling, I'm also using this as my {this moment} for the week too. Late as well.  Tsk, tsk.  I know, must try harder.  Let's just focus on the fact that I've actually blogged something!