For me silence is mind-numbing.

Wait. That may not be the right word for it.

There is something about silence that makes the day feel like it’s going on forever and while it’s not anxiety-driven, I do find that I’m a lot more fidgety and I need to find something to occupy my mind constantly, which is usually checking social media.

This is something that is nothing new. I used to hate working in class when we had to be silent. My mind would be half on what we were meant to be doing and half on the clock waiting for the bell to ring.

The only time when I find silence is helpful is when I’ve got writer's block or I’m reading. Otherwise, I have to have some form of noise around me.

This whole thing is one of the reasons why I loved and still love being a nanny. Didn’t matter what was happening there was always some kind of noise happening.

7 Inside Activities You Can Play During Lockdown

Lockdown his well and truly on us here in Victoria, which means that we’re all stuck inside for large amounts of time.

When I was working full time, we would have days where rain would keep us inside or it was too hot to go out and we’d have to make do with just being inside. Those days it was really easy to go stir crazy. No matter how many books you read, pictures you draw, board games you play, you’re always going to have those moments where the kids are bouncing off the walls and telling your that they’re bored.

Which is why I always tried to have some easy and fun activities to do to help get through the day. Most of these use items that most houses have all the time or are pretty easy to get your hands on or require nothing extra at all. The great thing is that they can all be done inside the house and may need a small amount of set up before you can get down to playing them.

Before we get into them, just be aware that some of these may require supervision, especially with young kids.

Preparing Our Dogs For Our Baby

As many of you know, Arlo and Daphne are our first and second-born children. For nearly two and a half years these two were our main priority other than ourselves to the point that our parents have started to call them their Grandchildren. They are such a part of our lives that we made sure that they were a part of our pregnancy announcement. 

You will also be aware that Arlo has anxiety and it can be tough. We have days where every little outside noise triggers him and we're constantly trying to get him to stop continuously barking at them. Whenever something new comes into the house it can take anywhere from a week to a month for him to get used to it. A good example was when we got a new fridge. He refused to walk past it for two weeks without one of us being with him and him skirting around it, which made toilet training him a bit difficult. 

So when we knew that AJ was on the way, we also knew that we were going to have to put a lot of early work in to ensure that Arlo was as calm and untriggered as possible. We also wanted to do the same with Daphne because even though she doesn't have anxiety, she still needed time to be able to adapt to the changes that were happening in our lives. 

Mama Be Kind To Yourself

Yesterday I finally broke. 

I have been isolating at home basically since AJ was born in January. We limited the amount of time we had outside to protect her until she had her six week shots and then waited another 2 weeks. By the end of that I was ready to start getting out and doing things like going to the library, play group, etc.

But by then the COVID-19 pandemic had hit Australia's shores and the social distancing started. 

At first it was ok. I was a home body anyway. Staying at home was totally fine by me, especially as it protected myself from catching this illness that had the potential to do a lot of harm to my body as I'm an asthmatic. Then we moved and suddenly I was in a new town and knew no one except for AJ's Dad. 

DIY Sensory Baby Painting

One of the best things about AJ now having a good grip on tummy time is that I can encourage it through a range of activities now. 

Normally the following activity is something that I do with toddlers when its a wet, rainy and day outside to minimise the amount of mess as I've always done painting as an outside activity. However, this is also great for babies. With both toddlers and babies it helps develop their fine motor skills and it's also a sensory activity for them. Plus at the end you get a beautiful artwork that you can hang on your fridge, send to someone they love or use it for other projects. 

AJ's 5 Month Update

We're back here again and I'm a little more on time with this update. AJ is five months and we're seeing so much of her little personality come out!

Family Life

Things have been very hectic this month. T's work has ramped up which means that I'm home by myself with AJ until he gets home and then he tries to get other things done around the house once he's home. Over the past weekend I was feeling the burn out from being AJ's main carer for the past month and he took over the final bottle and bed routine. Made me feel all kinds of new. 

Arlo's anxiety has also been at a high lately, so we've had to go back to basic's with him once more to try and help him get through things. It's impacted things a little bit as it's been happening a lot more and it's sometimes waking AJ. We're getting there with him, it's just taking some time. 

DIY Sensory Mobile for Play Gym

I've been a fan of Play at Home Mummy on Instagram for a little while as I have loved the activities that she was doing with her 13-month-old. As I was going through her highlights I found a couple that centered on when Miss 13 months was 4 months, the same age as Arielle, and fell in love with the mobile she had made for her. 

It made me want to make my own version of it but the problem was that I didn't know how I could rig it in our house, due to the fact that we rent. It took me a little while but I eventually worked out how to so it worked on our play gym that we got from Kmart. 

It ended up being very simple and easy to make and so I documented the process so I could share it on Instagram. Then realised that some people may want an easier to read version and decided to write it down on here as well.

AJ Four Month Update

I've blinked and already a third of AJ's first year has gone. It seems like this year has been going by so fast, even with the social distancing and the two of us staying mostly at home. This month has been so full of new developments in her life that I feel like I haven't been able to touch on all of them, so I apologise if I have missed any! And like usual I'm a little late getting this update up, so we can't really claim I'm not consistent with that.

Musical Mondays

For about 18 months before moving to Sydney and starting my career as a Nanny, I worked in a library and helped out with the programs like Story Time and Baby Bounce. I loved helping to organise everything and helping out with the programs as it was a lot of fun and I saw how much the parents and the kids got out of it.

One of the things that I was looking forward to the most with AJ while I was home was getting out and going to things like Baby Bounce at our local library. When AJ was 6 weeks old everything with COVID-19 started and two weeks later we were all on lockdown. It sucked. I was looking forward to those groups so much, especially as we were moving and it was going to give me a chance to meet other Mums and potentially make new friends. 

For a while I started to get upset what we were missing out on that and I let myself feel that. I knew I wasn't the only Mum who had had a baby early this year going through the same thing, so I wasn't alone. Then I remembered that this wasn't forever. We did very well at containing the virus early on and we're now slowly lowering restrictions. I'd grown up on a farm, I knew that while interacting with others is important this short period of time wasn't going to be too big of an issue. She'd catch up. 

4 Ways to Use your Breastfeeding Pillow

So you've bought a breastfeeding pillow and you're either no longer breastfeeding or you're looking for other ways to use it in order to get your money back. Well I've got 4 ways that the breastfeeding pillow can be used that can be beneficial for your baby or helpful for you.

Before I begin I'd like to put a warning in here that the uses that I have listed are all uses that you're going to need to supervise bub while doing. I know it should go without saying, but it's just something I want to throw in there just to make sure that no one reads this and thinks that it's ok to just leave your baby alone while doing these things. 

AJ Three Month Update

We’ve reached three months. The fourth trimester is over and a quarter of your first year of life has passed. It doesn’t feel that long ago that AJ was still a newborn but you’ve done so many amazing things thing since then that I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Family Life

Well it finally happened, we moved. I have been talking about it for a while but it finally came and we made the move from Sydney to just past the New South Wales and Victorian border. Everything was amazingly smooth. AJ and I headed out to my parents place after spending three days packing up what we needed to before the movers arrived. 

So You're Going Back To Work...

Dear Mama (and Dad if you’re also reading this),

You’ve had a beautiful baby. For the past few weeks and months, you’ve been able to have endless cuddles and be loved on by that tiny human, who knows nothing about what is happening in the world right now. But the time has come to think about the future and whether to go back to work or not.

Some of you have decided that you want to be a stay-at-home Mum for the foreseeable future or are already stay-at-home Mums. Maybe it was because you found child care was going to be too expensive or maybe it was just what you feel is calling for you. Regardless you’ve given your notice and you're ready to spend your days with your baby.

But not everyone is going to find that choice is right for them. Some of you will decide to go back to work. For some it’s financial, for some you love your work, and for some going back to work is just going to be beneficial for your mental health so when you are with your kids you are a better parent. 

With that decision to go back to work comes another one - who is going to take care of them?

The Changeling

Have you ever heard of a Changeling? It's this human-like creature that you normally hear about in folklore. Depending on where the story you're listening to originates, trolls or fairies take a human child and replace it with one of their kind. It was often used as a way to explain diseases and illnesses that were happening during these times as a child, usually, a baby, would start looking very sickly. There are also stories where it's said they show great intelligence or barbed teeth.

The Changeling story is one that is very interesting and it's been brought to my mind recently because for the last three weeks it's like my calm and easy-going baby has been replaced by an unhappy creature that doesn't want to go to sleep.

5 Reasons Why You Should Bake and Cook with Your Child

I wouldn’t call myself a master baker. In fact, if you asked T he would say that some of my cooking was sub-par at best. Despite this, when it comes to kids and the kitchen, I find that getting them involved in making things that they eat is not only a great activity but also helps to foster a lot of learning.

How?

A lot of early childhood education is based on the concept of learning through play or hands on learning, and this is a subject that I'm going to get into at a later date. As more and more research is done into the way children learn, we are discovering that having kids sit at a desk and do work sheet is not a way that all kids learn. Many children grasp concepts such as language and maths through hands on activities and it’s been found that it sticks in their mind a lot better this way. My brother, J, for example was a kid who could sit at a desk and would soak knowledge up like a sponge this way while we had cousins who learnt a lot better by getting out and being hands on.

AJ's Second Month Update

I said this last time but the month has flown by and already AJ is 2 months old!

This past month has been a real test for us because we have spent the majority of it with a very fussy baby, which is not like AJ at all. Most of it could be because of the first mental leap she went through, but we’ve also had a couple of other things happen in this month that could have caused it.

So without further adieu, let's get into this month's updates.

EASY CRAFTS Rocket Off and Sailing Down the Stream

One of the things that I’ve become very aware of over the past decade of being a nanny is that while parents may want to be able to sit down and do a craft with their kids, they may not be artistically inclined.

I know exactly how that feels.

As much as I would love to be able to draw the perfect truck for my nanny boys to colour in or Batman for that matter, I’m just not that good. However, I have been come very good at breaking down objects into basic shapes and creating very easy and very simple papercrafts from them.

Creating simple crafts was something that I have been wanting to create for Le Giggler for a while, but it was put on the back burner with the arrival of AJ. Now that things have settled down a bit, I was able to sit down during her naps and get started on a couple of the ideas I have and now 2 of them are available on my Etsy shop.

Journey to Baby Giggler Journey to Pregnancy

When I look back at the past eleven months, I’m still in disbelief that I currently have AJ. I went into trying to conceive knowing that there was a chance that we were going to have to work extremely hard in order to get a baby. I had known for eighteen months since I was diagnosed with Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), that it would play with my fertility and I may not fall pregnant easily. I had no doubt that T’s side of things was all ok, ADF would have told him if there were any issues with all of that, so any doubts that I had regarding us falling pregnant all had to do with my own body’s ability to conceive.

If you look back in the archives of the blog you will see a few posts where I talked about the things that I was going in order to boost my chances of conceiving. I went to my doctor three months before we started and got a full check-up to make sure everything was ok, I started taking prenatal vitamins, I started to track my ovulation, I started eating better and lost weight as it can impact your fertility as well. I did everything I could in the lead up to us actively starting to try for a baby to increase our chances.

EVERY DAY ITEMS FOR LEARNING UNO CARDS

Most people in their lives have played UNO. It’s a very easy card game and I often have a pack of card in my bag when I’m babysitting, out places with the kids or when I know it’s going to be a rainy day. It’s honestly been a great way to pass the time. UNO is also a great resource that you can use every day to help your kids learn from a young age.

Don’t believe me?

Well here are five ways that you can use the cards to help your child learn.  

What is Motherhood?

I recently wrote an Instagram post that seemed to resonate with some people regarding what motherhood is. It all started with a post by The Southernish Mama; she was writing about what motherhood was to her and then asked the question about what it was to others. The question hit me because recently it was something that I had been thinking about a lot.

A few weeks ago, one of my bosses messaged me to check in and see how everything was going as AJ’s arrival had come earlier than we had all expected. We were chatting back and forth on how I was going and how her and her boys were going when she asked me if things felt any different. It was a hard question to answer as while I felt like it was different it was hard to put into words what it was that was different. Then AJ was admitted to hospital for abnormal breathing and suddenly I realised why being a mother was so different to being a nanny.

You see for over a decade, I was in a job that I loved. Sure, it had its down points but overall, I loved being a nanny. I loved getting out and doing things with the kids like going to the zoo or playing in the park or just going down to the local café for a milkshake after school. I loved helping them get out into the world and discover new things about it and themselves. I loved helping their parents raise these amazing little humans during happy times and supporting them through challenging times. I created bonds with so many of the families that I work with that I still keep in contact with them over Facebook so we can keep up to date with our lives and let me just tell you it is shocking when you see your first nanny kid start high school!

Fostering Reading in Children

I, like many other people, am a fan of Harry Potter. I will forever say that the book series is what got me back into reading at the age of 13 after I had hit a slump after reading all of Roald Dahl's books and finding nothing else that I was particularly interested in. I started with book four, had no idea what was going on to begin with, but found the story so enthralling that I continued to read until I was hooked.

My Aunt thankfully had all the books that were out at the time and I was able to borrow them to read the entire series. That year I think I read all four books four times, in between reading books for school and reading other books I found in the High School library. Mum saw my love for the series and bought a set for my birthday that year, which were all re-read again by Easter. I luckily didn’t have long to wait until book five came out and I saved all my money to be able to buy it before talking my mother into getting up early so I could get to the shop the moment it opened to get my hands on a copy.

BABY ORGANISATION Nappy Change Stations

Being organised when preparing for a baby is something that ensures that you’re as prepared as possible when your new addition arrives home. While being organised once you are home is just as important as it can make times like the witching hours a lot easier when you know exactly where everything is as you go down the list to things that maybe causing your baby to cry.

Even with a decade of child care under my belt, I can at times be extremely unorganised. You can ask T and he will gladly tell you that out of the two of us he is the one that ensures that everything goes back in its place a lot more than I do. That’s not to say I don’t do those things, he’s just the one that ensures that it is done promptly and not three days later. Hearing that, you would probably be surprised to hear that I am actually a planner. When something big is about to happen, I make sure that I am on top of it as much as possible in the lead up to the event. T is also a planner as well, so between the two of us we can usually get things done promptly.

5 Great YouTube Channels for Your Kids

YouTube has become one of the big entertainment centres for people, especially as it allows everyday people to be creative in a way that TV didn’t allow before it. Despite this, there have been a lot of channels and videos pretending to be for children when they’re actually not, making it hard for parents to be sure what is safe for their child to watch.

One of the things I try to make sure that I’m on top of is the current trends in regards to what kids are interested in or not. It makes it a lot easier to make sure that they are viewing things that are appropriate for their age and that they are protected from the dangers of everything being online these days. YouTube is thankfully one of those places that are very easy for me to keep an eye on because it’s just a matter of hearing about a channel or video and sitting down to look through it myself before letting the parents I work for know what is going on.

Believe it or not, that is actually how I found Tik Tok but that is a story for another day.

Since I’m on YouTube a bit for professional and personal reasons, I wanted to share five of my favourite channels that are aimed at children. Some of them focus on developing skills while others are just or fun or to learn something interesting.

Apps for Baby

These days you can get apps for just about anything for your iPhone or Android. On my phone, I have apps for things that range from social media to comic books as my phone is one of the few things that I have on me at all times.

When it comes to caring for children, it makes sense that there are apps that you as a parent or as a child care educator may have on your phone to make it easier to keep track of things or to have reminders easily on hand. With a few of the families that I have worked for, I had access to a tablet that worked as a communication book between me and the parents so they could keep as informed as possible regarding what was happening with their children.

As a new Mum, I had a number of apps in mind that I was planning on downloading to keep on my own phone. Some of them are simple tracking apps while others hold a more educational focus, but they all allow me to ensure that I have the information that I need on hand should I ever need it and there have been times when having it on hand has helped me a lot.

AJ's One Month Update

Time has amazingly flown. It feels as though I have just blinked and suddenly AJ is a month old.

I would like to say that it has been all smooth sailing but it hasn’t. Even with over a decades worth of child care experience, I’ve found myself challenged like never before with this tiny human and while I knew that having my own was not going to be the same, I’ve found myself in this funny middle ground where I know what I’m doing but at the same time everything is new.

This is why I wanted to document this new journey. I wanted to be able to share what life is like and show the journey that we go through as this year is going to be a big one and that’s not just because AJ was due. We’ve got a number of big changes happening in the next couple of months alone.

So buckle in as this is a long one!

A Wet Valentines Day

My first Valentine’s Day as a Mum started off very interestingly. 

If I’m completely honest, I totally forgot that Valentine’s Day was coming up. Since AJ’s birth, my days have all kind of blurred together and I’ve only looked at a calendar when I needed to know a date for some paperwork. So I didn’t know that it was Valentine’s Day until I came downstairs at 8am to feed AJ and was scrolling through Facebook. I didn’t feel bad that I forgot. T and I don’t really do Valentine’s Day. I’m not one for flowers, I prefer to get a plant than cut flowers, and neither of us really feel like going out and doing things.

As I scrolled through Facebook, my sleep-deprived brain forgot about the day before and the vomit filled day we had had. For the past week or so I had been noticing symptoms from AJ that made me suspect that she had a mild form of reflux. Not bad enough to disrupt her sleep but enough that if we didn’t do certain things during her feed it would result in her bringing up part of it. However, if we broke up her bottle and burped her multiple times during it, then kept her upright for 20-30 minutes afterward the vomiting wouldn’t occur. We may have to contend with some spit up but she would look a portion of her meal. 

Goals for 2020

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I'm not a fan of the term "resolution". When I hear people talk about their resolutions, it always seems like something that you can either succeed at doing or fail miserably at.

There is no middle ground.

It's why I prefer to use the term goals.

Goals are something that you can work towards and even if you don't meet that specific goal, the steps that you have taken along the way make it seem like all the work that you have put in was worth it and that you haven't failed.

It's why on the last day of December I stop and write down 5 goals that I would like to work towards over the course of the year. Some of them are always very obvious things, but a couple of them are usually bigger things that I need to put effort into in order to make them come true.

This year's goals are no different and I wanted to share them here to help hold myself accountable in a positive way.