Yum

Well I'm really scraping the barrel for photos now as this one isn't even from today, it's from last night, but I'm determined to stick to this photo a day dealio! Oh my word, did I really just use the (non)word, deal-io? I am only leaving that in this post to serve as a painful reminder not to use it ever again ;)

Anyway, we sadly didn't make it to see Mum due to a cocktail of germs here, germs over there and severe sleep deprivation and a sudden random tummy bug hitting us here this morning. Really sad but definitely the right decision. So, in the absence of the hoped-for Orpington based photo of the day, here's the delicious concoction Mr. V dreamed up for our dinner last night. It was some tasty combination (due to the previous "dealio" mishap I will not use the word "combo" here!) of beef steak, red onions, balsamic vinegar and garlic. Soooo very good :) Try it. There's no recipe, just throw those ingredients together with a pinch of sugar and black pepper. Yum.

Ladies (and babies) that lunch (and shop)

A lovely pattern is beginning to form whereby Noah and I spend Friday afternoons with Clare (Auntie Cookie) and Jude. Apart from a couple of incidences of illness for both Noah and me, we've kept to this little tradition every week since Christmas, visiting a lovely little arts centre cafe one time, just chilling at Clare's another and then mooching around town the other couple of times. It is still a wonderful novelty to me to be *able* to mooch and wander anywhere but especially to be able to do so with my wonderful friend, having spent many years dreaming of such trips out :)

Today was so lovely, a diamond of a day in amongst a pretty challenging week. It was lovely to be able to shop for a couple of new tops for my impending birthday (thanks mummy!), check out some 'interesting' tops in primark NOT to buy (seriously, a line drawing of a dog wearing motorbike goggles. Why would you??) and break some unwritten social rules just like last week. You're wondering what on earth we did aren't you! Keep wondering ;)

We were joined briefly by Mr. V during his lunch break which was fab and he enjoyed catching up with his little mate, Jude :) Tom popped in too, reuniting the 4 of us briefly. All very nice indeed.

Also very nice was that delicious roll I was scoffing, courtesy of Clare - thank you very much Mrs :)

And finally, the boys did very well with the girly few hours they were forced to endure, including waiting around for their mummies in changing rooms. I think they were glad to get on the train home - incidentally, Noah's first ever time on a train. All in all a happy Friday. Fingers crossed for at least some sleep tonight so that tomorrow's photo can come from time with grannymum ;)

Hands-free!

Check me out, I'm hands-free! That's the point of today's photo, in case that isn't obvious. The reason for the "hands-free" declaration is probably less obvious. For the first time ever i am currently sitting downstairs listening to the surprisingly relaxing sound of Noah snoring coming through the baby monitor and into the living room. And this is blogworthy because...? Well, this is the first time I have successfully put Noah down wide awake for a sleep AND the first time I've left him alone asleep upstairs while he sleeps. That may still not really sound worth writing a post about but it's a big deal to me because until now he has only ever fallen asleep being fed or cuddled and could only be put down once we were sure he was in a deep enough sleep. In the daytime, when I'm home alone, this has resulted in very little time in which I have both hands to myself. I almost don't know what to do with myself. It's exciting to have made some progress but also a bit sad to think Noah really is growing up so fast now. I can't believe he's 15 weeks old tomorrow! ....And now he's awake again. Forty five minutes is pretty good going though, I think I'll be trying this again ;)

Pingu

When I was pregnant with Noah, we decided not to find out whether the baby was a boy or a girl, opting instead to refer to "it" as Pingu. Is it weird that we still call him Pingu now, possibly even more often than we call him his actual - in my opinion, lovely - name!?

Calpol and Cuddles

Today is a sad day in our house as Noah had his next round of injections and, as was the case last time, he's not reacting well! Poor little thing is currently whimpering in his sleep on Mr. V's shoulder having literally screamed himself into a sweat and finally exhausted himself completely. He'd been responding quite well for the first few hours but suddenly turned just now, bless him.

Not to over-spiritualise at this point but one of Noah's godmothers highlighted a great yet simple truth to me recently: there are parallels to be drawn between the pain God allows us to experience for our own good and the pain we're allowing Noah to suffer with these many rounds of injections. We, as his parents, know that the short term stinging (and resulting fever etc) are worth it because the immunisations will protect him from much worse illnesses in the long run. God, our loving Father, knows that the struggles we go through will shape our character and potentially the paths we'll take as a result of them. Something tells me it hurts God to see us suffer just as much as it hurt me to watch Noah in pain today; call me crazy but that's comforting to me.

Zzzz

Oh, sleep.... how I dream (daydream that is) about you right now. To clarify, this is not our bed. It would be lovely if it was but this is actually the bed in the beautiful cottage in Llanidloes where we've spent two lovely holidays so far and are about to spend another in just 10 days time.

This post is not about that bed but about what it represents: sleep. Peaceful, unbroken, luxurious sleep! ;) Don't get me wrong, I love Noah with all of my heart and wouldn't change him for the world but just now, he appears not to believe in the necessity of more than 3 hours sleep in a night! So today's blog post is dedicated to the beauty of sleep. You never know, maybe he will read it over my shoulder and be mesmerised enough to decide to do some sleeping of his own tonight. If not however, I will just enjoy the thought of sleep and wait til it next visits us here. In the meantime, I have the cutest little dude to make staying awake more than worthwhile so no complaints here. Thank you and good night....hopefully! ;)

Political Cuddles

For those of you who, like me, are not familiar with every (or indeed *any*) welsh assembly member, the lady cuddling Noah in today's blog photo is the AM for our county and also the Finance Minister in the assembly. A lovely lady and someone who seems to really care about her constituents. We were invited to a Volunteer Appreciation Evening last night for the very little we do on the estate and Jane Hutt, the aforementioned AM, was also there. She gave a brief but very refreshing speech in which she shared her own personal love of our troubled estate and it was encouraging to many of us that her priorities appear to lie where ours do. She actually only stayed a short while at the evening as she said she needed to spend time with her family, who rarely see her lately...but not before we took the opportunity to get a classic "politician cuddling the baby" shot of Noah and his local Assembly Member. Geeky or cute, you decide! ;)

What Saturdays were made for!

I do realise that two days in a row the photo has been of the two men in my life but let's say it like it is: they make up a very large chunk of my life so really it's just proportional representation! The weekend is always a time for Daddy to catch up on the Noah-cuddles he's missed out on during his week at work; saturdays are our special day. This picture captures the "events" (or lack thereof) of the day so far! I kind of hope this is how it will continue. Rest rest rest, how we love you!

Getting techier by the day...

.. Okay so I made up the word "techier" - or at least I think I did. Is it a word?! And when I say I'm getting techier, I just mean I'm trundling on into this century 10 years behind the rest of you because all I'm referring to is the fact that this particular post is a test of blogging via email. I've included a photo, not entirely convinced it will complete the journey through outer cyberspace from email to blog page but hey, maybe I need more faith in technology! So just in case it works, here's today's photo offering: like father like son, in so many ways!!!

Blog CPR!

I've heard of the concept of 365 photos from various sources over the past couple of years and I've decided that it might be just the thing to kick-start my blog's fading life. I take approximately 47 billion photos daily since having Noah (and only marginally fewer even before his arrival) so the photography aspect won't be difficult at all; the challenge will lie in uploading and blogging about one photo each day. I doubt I'll stick to the "365" concept but it will be interesting to look back on 3rd February 2012 and see how many days I did actually manage it! Something tells me that some days there will be plenty more than one photo to share within any one story from the day. Like today...! ;)

So here we go:

The highlight of today was a very lovely, spontaneous lunch date with my lovely hubby and little boy. Noah and I have been stuck indoors all week with him being really poorly but as he was starting to improve today, I thought some fresh air was in order for all three of us. As was meeting up with Daddy and some delicious food in the bay!

Lunch was followed by a quick stroll around the bay (how miraculous for me to be able to say *that* these days! More on that another time, definitely...)

And then it was back across the bridge to escort Daddy back to work before the little man and I headed home for a much-needed nap (him, not me!)

A very nice Thursday indeed!

As predicted...

... the aforementioned Mini Miti is indeed now three months old. Three months and two days to be precise! ;) I was actually kidding when I said it would take that long to finally blog but I guess I know myself well! Anyway, as anyone who reads this blog will already know, our precious little boy, Noah, was born at the end of October and he really has brought us unending joy ever since. We are so blessed and don't take such a gift for granted. We just thank God so much for entrusting such a little sweetie to our care and pray we'll give him the upbringing God wants for him. I'll try and get my act together again now and then to resume blogging but for now, it's "Hello! Introducing Noah... annnnnd bye bye!" ;)

July's Jungle Fun

Back in July, the "dream team" of Amy and Helen came to sunny Barry (which actually did happen to be sunny that weekend!) to transform a simple, dare I say boring, spare room in the Miti household into a nursery fit for a bean! When we asked if they would like to help us decorate the room which will belong to the baby once it's old enough not to sleep in our bedroom, we meant putting up a border and maybe giving the room a fresh coat of magnolia paint. So that was where we started...

It would have looked perfectly fine, nice and colourful had we stuck to just that, but when Amy is involved you can expect the unexpected! She had brought along lots of acrylic paints to do a mural on one of the walls; I thought she would paint one animal and that would be wonderful. Little did I know...! Helen, Vianney and I decided to give her space to start on what would become her masterpiece and left her to it while we went to Tesco for sustenance! What we found on our return was really rather exciting, giving us a taste of the transformation yet to come...

As the weekend went on and Amy's work progressed (with lunch and tea-breaks of course, we're not slave-drivers!!) I started to realise this was going to be a very special room - and one which I would want to sleep in myself if only it had a bed in it! Even now, more than two months later and with the baby not yet here to inhabit the room, I find myself wandering in there just to look at it on at least a daily basis!

As Amy painted, Vianney and Helen got to work with some brilliantly practical things like putting together the changing table and since then, Vianney has put up brightly coloured shelves and other such finishing touches and the room is now 100% ready to welcome its owner :)

So there you have it, Mini Miti's jungle friends await him/her and so do Mini Miti's Mum and Dad! Watchi this space (although judging by my inability to get round to blogging lately, any kind of mention of its arrival will probably come approximately 3 months after the event!)

Safe

Singing this and meaning it is something I'm finding encouraging and challenging in equal measure today but despite circumstances, I believe it's 100% true and it's a truth I'm determined to cling onto come what may :)

Keeping up with the PhJones's!

I realise this is a slightly odd thing to post as a first blog post in more than two months but hopefully something more interesting will appear on here soon! ;)

I have absolutely no idea why but this was the view from my bedroom window all throughout yesterday afternoon! Believe it or not there were two other PhJones vans just out of view, totalling 6 in our tiny little street! Bizarre to say the least....

While I wasn't sleeping...

Hello! I'm back. You may have been completely unaware that I'd gone anywhere. It's an overused phrase - especially by me just lately - but I've been on a whole other planet the past two months! I would estimate that I've spent at least 72% of the time I've been missing-in-blog-action sleeping in a near comatosed state. Maybe 18% of it I've been resident in the bathroom with my head over the toilet (no, not hungover) and the other 10% I've been awake, sometimes holding down some form of conversation and generally pretending to be "normal" - whatever normal is!

In short, I've been working my way through the first trimester of my first pregnancy. Fun times ;)

Most people (if not all) who read this blog will already know that by now so this isn't an announcement, just a brief explanation for my crazy long silence. So what else have I been up to in that 10% time window? Not huge amounts but here are some highlights....

(Unfortunately for some reason the formatting has gone very wrong and when I hit publish, the layout of this post is nothing like it is in the editor. However, I simply can't be bothered to fix it, sorry! Hope it doesn't offend your eyes as much as it does mine!!)

I had a very lovely 26th birthday only a couple of days after my previous blog post. It was a chilled out restful day, starting off with delicious hand-made lemon and raisin (wheat-free!) pancakes and a good strong cuppa tea in bed and topped off with a gorgeous roast dinner and AMAZING birthday cheesecake courtesy of Mr. Reay. The company wasn't half bad too as we spent the afternoon and evening with the Ravishing Reays! ;)

                                                         **********************************

Then there was the fun of playing with Thorntons' Easter Adverts with my oh-so-mature friend, H!

And before you think Amy and Vianney were better behaved and sensible on this occasion, think again......
This little diversion was taken during a gorgeous couple of hours spent one sunday morning in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, following a good friend's 40th birthday party the night before. Lots of silliness and lovely Starbucks coffee before hitting the road for the long drive home again.

                                          **************************************

There have been a handful of very lovely visits to the fabulous Morgans, hanging out with them just a couple of days before the arrival of the newest member of the family (and the day before my birthday, hence the lovely presentation from Zach!) and a couple of days after the aforementioned new arrival, Hope Seren, joined them on 22nd February. She's a beautiful addition to a godly, wonderful family.

**********************************

Another birthday, this time Andrea's and we celebrated it with a Spring picnic at Cosmeston, playing silly card games (which I enjoyed winning, oh yes!) and mocking our husbands for various accent-related reasons! Racists or what!

          ****************************************

And finally (for now!) the most recent highlight was a delightful afternoon and evening spent with the fabulous Pizos. You may know them as Mr. and Mrs. Pippa of "Pippa's Long Stockings" among other enterprises! We had a brilliant BBQ and very much enjoyed their bargainous, brand-new hammock/swingchair thing. So much so that we went right out and purchased one the very next day! I say "we": Vianney went and bagged the very last one left in ASDA while I hung out in my usual spot for the morning. I won't elaborate on that :)

Anyway, the "Pizo highlight" is certainly one we are going to be repeating soon. They put the Joy into Joyce (their surname) and spoilt us rotten with their gift of hospitality as well as their gift of a very talented local butcher!! Here's to a summer of such BBQ's and company. And here's to me managing to write another blog post before two more months pass!