Tag Archives: family

The Happiness Project – Week 3

Posted in Happiness Project by

I’m going to try and stay in my happy Friday mood and ignore the fact I just lost the draft to this post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway…happy Friday everybody! A definitely had the Friday feeling this morning after another messy breakfast! ( I don’t really enjoy weaning at all!!!):

I'm so happy I made a big mess that mummy has to clean up! Yeahhh!

I’m so happy I made a big mess that mummy has to clean up! Yeahhh!

Yesterday I spent most of the day without A and it was LOVELY! My mum looked after A whilst I went to the office to discuss returning to work. This is what I enjoyed:

  • sitting on the train in peace
  • not having to lift a buggy onto the train
  • going for a coffee with a friend ALONE
  • going to a shop ALONE
  • not having to feed her lunch ( I really don’t like this weaning business much!)

I really wish my mum lived here! Not just so she can babysit of course 🙂

Monday was a very happy day visiting Great Granny, I’m really lucky to still have 3 out of 4 grandparents.

Yesterday A decided to make daddy happy by learning to do squats, they can now go to the gym together:

Other happy moments included my best friend’s baby and A falling asleep at the same time in their buggies in the park so we could have a nice chat, seeing how big the NCT babies have become whilst sitting in high chairs in the pub and seeing my mum.

What has made you happy this week?

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Lunch with Great Granny

Posted in Life, travel by

Yesterday A and I took the train to go and have lunch with my Granny. In the travel buggy she got and we made our way to Waterloo just after rush hour:

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Yes she has a lot of buggy “friends” to keep her occupied! They should really make more toys that you can attach the the buggy that don’t have a short attachment, none of them are really long enough so I created my own buggy proof toys!

We then got on the train to Salisbury, there is always the “where will we put the buggy on the train” stress. I initially sat in the empty wheelchair area, which is ideal but a wheelchair got on, mild panic set in (if I have to fold the buggy then how will she sleep ???!!) but thankfully, I found a good spot (this was about 30 mins later when she was napping):

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Arabella loves the train and finds it all quite fascinating:

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When she was tiny, I was scared to go on the Tube with her, let alone take a 90 mins train ride. The key is to time it well, ideally when they need to nap so you know that for at least half of the journey they will be asleep!

Granny is my dad’s mum and she is where I get a little “poshness” from, she deserves a full post as she is such an amazing lady, how many people’s Grannies are the world authority of fans ??!! (yep even her books are for sale on Amazon here and here for example). I will definitely write more about her in the future.

A and Granny got on like a house on fire, it was lovely to see them interacting, I think “G” (as my husband calls her, I don’t think she would approve!) was surprised at how much A had changed last time : “she can sit up?!”, “she is going to eat real food?!” etc.

Here are some sweet pics, Granny even got a cuddle (after we had move Granny’s second G&T away from A’s reach…)

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We had a lovely lunch, A only screamed once when a waiter she clearly didn’t like got too close! She was so much better behaved than at home at the moment, I guess it was all the noise etc. I am clearly boring or our flat smells, because the minute we got home she started whining again!

It’s amazing to think that one day I might have lunch with A’s children and their children but then I need to make to at least 90 like G has!

Before we left we took Granny’s first selfie:

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Yes A is a poser (I trained her well!). See you soon Granny!

Maman

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As next week is Mother’s Day in the UK and today is my mum’s birthday, I thought I would dedicate this post to ma maman with 20 pretty amazing facts about her.
1. She left home in her teens to go around the world on a boat and follow a much older man she was in love with
2. On said “years abroad”, she caught sharks and wore her bra top as a bikini ( the seventies were not the consumerism years we experience nowadays)
3. She has had 5 children and they all get on and they all love her very much
4. She used to pile us all into her Renaud 5, if the car would not start she had a chant that she would repeat, the car always started
5. She has a talent for drawing and painting
6. Talking of which the best present she ever gave me was a few years ago when she gave me a drawing she had made of me as a baby, even diamonds (and I love diamonds) don’t come close
7. I inherited the “worrying” genes from her but …
8. I also inherited the open minded genes from her
9. Without her help I would not have left France and gone to university, she helped with a complicated student loan situation
10. Before I left for university, she taught me to cook, now that I ( and my husband) am forever grateful for
11. If she was rich, she would have the most beautiful house and clothes
12. She always finds a way, she can make anything out of anything. She even changed a glass window pane once on her own
13. She is not a scared of anything
14. She will win tons of money betting on horses one day 🙂
15. She has at least one kir a night
16. She does not know who the Kardashians are
16. She has lived in the Seychelles and one day I will take her back
17. She has lived in France for over 20 years and still answers the phone with “hello”
18. When I was stuck in NYC during Sandy, she is the only person who wanted to be there with me “for the life experience because it was exciting”
19. She has a passion for horses and used to get up at the crack of dawn when she was young to go riding. One day I will buy her one.
20. She’s always there for all of us and we will always be there for her

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It’s another world out there

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Hello everybody!

what a bad blogger I have been… My only excuse is four days in France at mum mum’s where the internet connection is slow and I tried to switch off. Not only did I switch off but realised a few things…

My mum lives in the middle of nowhere in France, literally you can’t even walk to a shop! I live I’m Islington, where there is a Tesco 30 secs away. There is a bar/restaurant about 10 mins walk from her house but if you want to go anywhere else, you need to drive, get on a bike or put on comfy shows for a long walk!

It was so nice to:

  • Sleep in real darkness and silence (I slept 11 hours one night!)
  • sit but the fire
  • read my book
  • be surrounded by nature
  • see my “freres” that I rarely see
  • go shopping in a supermarche (sorry can’t find the accent on the ipad) they have about a million different yogurts for example
  • Eat a raclette
  • chat with my mum in the kitchen
  • watch French TV
  • relax relax relax

and it made me realise what a crazed commercial expensive life one can lead in London, how nice it would be to be live nearer family and how noisy London is and how much stress that causes.

It was so relaxing, I came back fully refreshed and now want to buy a country house! I am not done with London but definitely getting tired with it, also a sign of getting older I think 🙂
Linking up to #allaboutyou allaboutyou

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