Tuesday 25 December 2012

Best Christmas EVER!

Wow, what a day.
Benjamin has been going since 8am and he only stopped for a 45 minute nap at lunchtime. We have been visited by Santa TWICE. First at our house where he brought Benjamin a kitchen to play with and lots of other toys to play with too!


I cant really remember many Christmas's, but I practically every year I have had the pleasure of being with The Mrs, we have spent Christmas day together with her side of the family. Me, The Mrs, Grandma, Grandad, Aunty C and now of course Benjamin and Samuel. Then on boxing day, with my family.


So after my yearly visit to the crematorium to light a candle for my mum and dad as it's as close as I get to seeing them at Christmas, a few hundred rides on his new ride-a-long Mickey plane and a little nap (Him not me), we made our way to Grandma and Grandads and guess what!!.....
That's Right!, Santa had so many presents for Benjamin, that he couldn't leave them all in one place, so he had left some there too!

Grandma makes an great Christmas dinner, with Turkey, Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings.
We sat down and all ate together and even Benjamin had his first ever Christmas dinner. Last year he was only 5 months old and was still being fed by mummy, so you could argue he had his Christmas dinner the next day! lol

After dinner, we opened yet MORE presents from family and friends and generally sat around regretting eating so much, but hey...we all have to have a tradition right?

So here we are, bedtime on our second Christmas day as parents. I think it's been the best Christmas EVER! Hopefully next year will be even better with 2 little ones running around.
I hope, however you spent your Christmas, it was a great one.





As always, thanks for reading!
FTD







Monday 17 December 2012

Big brother, little brother

Wow.....what a crazy day.

Today, Benjamin is 17 months exactly!! and what better way to celebrate, but to have another baby!

That's right! at 13:00 today, we welcomed our 2nd baby into the world. Allow me to introduce you to Samuel James..

It wasn't the easiest of labour's.
Little Samuel suffered what they call shoulder dystocia. This meant that when he was being delivered, hes arm was in a bad position and caused the delivery to become difficult.


Everything was going as expected. The Mrs was doing great as before, but this time it was different.
She knew that something was wrong and as usual, a mother instinct was right!
The midwife explained that the baby was in some discomfort and they wanted to place a little monitor on his head. They did this and then The Mrs continued to push, still not happy that everything was as it should be.

After a good 30 minutes of pushing, I could see the top of his head and I thought we were on the home stretch. (No pun intended!).
Then before we knew it, the bed was flattened out, an alarm was pushed and the room filled with doctors.
Before I continue and you pounce on me for being so un-sympathetic, I am fully aware that the experience of my wife would have been much worse than my own, but I can only tell you how I felt...

That could have possibly been the worst 30 minutes of my life.

I went from experiencing the magic of childbirth to worrying that 2/3 of my world were in trouble. I tried to focus on The Mrs and tried to focus my energy on her, trying to reassure her and encourage her to push. I felt like I had to push all the fear and emotion down so that The Mrs didn't see me upset as I thought that could make her feel worse. Throughout this, I could hear people talking and at one point a nurse jumped on the bed and started giving hat looked like cpr, to mummies tummy! I later learned this is a technique used to try and push the baby out, but at the time it looked a bit brutal.

At 13:00 exactly, after a nurse basically, put her hand up my wife and pulled his arm out of the way, Samuel James entered the world with a whole lotta fuss and fanfare but was quick to make sure we knew he was there. After a few gargles and coughs, he let out a massive cry and let us both know he was just fine.

Once again, I am unbelievably proud of my wife and how amazingly well she did even in some difficult moments. For the second time, I have had to leave my babies in the hospital and come home as they are being kept for observations.

Tomorrow is another day and we have the great job of introducing Benjamin to his new baby brother...Wish us luck!

As always, thanks for reading
FTD

Meet Samuel....

Please say hi to our new baby boy.
Meet Samuel James Ackroyd. Born 13:00 weighing 8lb 8oz


Tuesday 11 December 2012

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas at FTD HQ!

I have never been a big fan of Christmas.

I can't ever remember as a child any happy Christmas's. I'm sure I must have had them. We didn't have a lot of money but I know my mum would have done everything she could to make it as special as possible.
My parents separated in January 1990 so as you can imagine, Christmas wasn't too great around then. (I was 9). Add that to the mis-pleasure of seeing a grand parent passing away on Christmas Day...in my room...when I was 8....needless to say....Didn't make for a fun Christmas either!

As an adult, I have still not been fussed about Christmas. Always seen it as a time for children and up until I had some, that meant just going with the flow and trying to not to ruin everybody else's Christmas, no matter how Bah-Humbug I felt!

Well, things are changing. We have kids now (Technically number 2 hasn't arrived yet, but he should be here anytime!), so things are starting to get Christmassy!

There have been years in our house where we haven't even bothered putting a tree up!
Now it's different and I am more than happy to get into the Christmas spirit....to an extent lol!

The tree is up and decorated, there's even a little stocking on the fireplace. Benjamin even has an advent calender! Unfortunately this has lead to many tears when we try and explain to him why he cant eat 25 chocolates all at once!

A friend was telling me, that every year, himself, his wife and both their boys make an occasion of putting the tree and decorating it. They put a Christmas movie on the telly and all decorate the tree. I hope we have that one day. (I am NOT letting Benjamin near the tree just yet!)

I really look forward to the day my kids wake up and look to see if Santa has been and what he has brought for them...if they have been good of course! Unfortunately that might not happen for a while because Benjamin wont sit on Santa's knee and tell him what he wants!

Every week, The Mrs takes Benjamin to a play group and this week Santa came to visit. Benjamin wanted nothing to do with the whole thing. After a few tears, we decided Santa can wait for another year. It's all surprising really as you think he would be OK with a jolly* bearded fat man, after all he's just like daddy!
Not a happy bunny!
*Probably not in most peoples opinion!

What traditions do you and your family have at Christmas time?
How old were your little ones before the understood about Santa?

As always, answers on a post card, or more conveniently, in the comments box below.

As always thanks for reading
FTD

Tuesday 4 December 2012

I need a hu(gies)

I read some sad news today.
Nothing life changing. Nothing too terrible, but it will mean a change to the norm, which although I have obviously got better with over the last year or two, is still a change I don't like.

I found out today, that from Spring 2013, us guys in the UK and those of you in Europe, will no longer be able to purchase Huggies nappies!! That's like Pepsi announcing they wont be doing Pepsi max anymore. (In all seriousness, if they did do that, I will be found chained to the factory gates on a hunger strike.....which lets face it may take a while!). The company has decided to concentrate on non-fastening nappies such as pull-ups and will continue to make Huggies-branded wipes and Little Swimmers.
 Since we discovered we were expecting we have always been a Huggies household.
At one point, we counted and we had over 2000 nappies and I reckon 98% of them were Huggies.This has been for three reasons;
Our "small" collection
1 - They are the cheapest, best quality nappies on the market. Yes, you can buy own brand nappies that will be cheaper and some would say just as good quality, but in our opinion, you can't get better than Huggies!
2 - They seemed to be the least leaky. On the odd occasion we have used the well known competitor (Hint: It rhymes with Schmampers), they have also leaked. As a parent, that's just another thing to worry about and have to keep checking.
3 - Huggies have always been generous with vouchers. There are always vouchers for discounted Huggies. Either in magazines, the 'Emma's Diary' bags and anything else family related.

It looks as though number 3 was it's downfall. Due to lack of profits, (Net income came in at $537m (£335m), up 17.2% from the same period last year. Net sales were down 3%, but profits were boosted by $100m of cost savings.) Not only is it a shame that the UK will lose such a well known brand of nappies, but it will also mean a large number of job losses both here in the UK and in Spain.

Well, we will continue to buy Huggies for as long as possible and then who knows? Maybe one of my lovely followers can recommend some good quality poo catchers?

As always, thanks for reading.
FTD

Saturday 1 December 2012

We're (not) ready!

We are NOT ready for baby No2. But we ARE ready!....Confused? Good.

I don't think we are ready for this baby and quite frankly I don't think most parents were really ready for their second, third, forth or (Heaven forbid) fifth child. Baby No 1 is still enough of a handful for us. We manage (The Mrs better than me) while on our own with Benjamin but it's going to be real interesting to see how we handle having 2 kids about.

Benjamin has a love of touching things. I'm not talking about good things, like cushions, his toys or his cot mattress. I'm talking about fireplaces, TVs, DVD players. I know the language barrier is still in full effect, but I think he is under the impression that "Benjamin, please don't touch that" actually means "Benjamin, please go pick that up- and throw it at that other thing mummy told you not to touch...Good Boy" So when baby No 2 is in our arms, we are just going to have to hope he's too distracted by his baby brother to leave his fingerprints on everything.

But, we have to be ready, because this baby wont be cooking for much longer! We are already at 36 weeks. That's a week longer than The Mrs was pregnant with Benjamin and probably as long as she ever wanted to be pregnant!

We have a room.
We have a cot.
We have a moses basket
We have a car seat
We have clothes
We have everything else we could possibly need.

But we're not ready......but we are.

Well I'm glad that cleared that up.

As always, Thanks for reading
FTD