Slliding doors

Well, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last. And I had just said I wanted to blog more!

I am working on a photographic post about the children and Carlito as per kind request of Valery, nearly there!

I was hoping to have a post this weekend on some more DIY we are doing to the house. We are replacing the door to the en-suite for a sliding one. Mike is doing it all, following a video on youtube!! That is awesome let me tell you, and it will be perfect I have no doubt. But of course it wasn't done in 3 days, probably it won't be done before we go on holidays on sunday, but we'll be very close to have it finished.

And at the same time we kind of made up our mind we'd like to move...sell the house and buy a fixerupper so to speak, something to put our stamp on like we did with this one, but hopefully with a bit of a garden. I must admit the reason why I am set on moving is our neighbours living on the ground floor...they are lovely people but constantly smoke. We live on a toxic cloud of stale cigarette smoke. I hate it. I know I'm particularly sensitive to it, I think it's disgusting and above all it's disgraceful I cannot enjoy my balcony or have the children play there because every 5 minutes one of them is out smoking. Their place stink just as you walk by it. They are not infringing any rule of course, there'e nothing that can be done. We did last year some works to eliminate the smells coming through the vents, but there's nothing we can do about the air that comes into the apartment from outside!! Anyway, that's it, we had our place evaluated and that gives us an idea of what we can afford. So eyes peeled to the websites hoping to see something suitable at some point.

Project California is well underway, when I come back from the holidays at the end of the month I will start writing a proposal for funding, I have the full support of the College and Mike is enthusiastic too, my parents will likely come with us for a while at least, it should be good!!

Still on work, I have been asked to give an oral presentation at a conference in Belgium in October, I am so happy about this, for one reason or another I mainly presented posters to conferences, so this will work a treat to increase my visibility.

We have some serious regression in the sleeping department with Oliver, I will have another post about this as I have started to lose my temper with him and this is NOT the way I want to parent, so I will share some nice tips that are helping me which I found from reading different articles etc.

I love you all my readers, wherever you are.

Holiday report, tantrums and other tricks

Hello, hello, hello, we are back. Oliver, Martina and me extended our stay in Italy of an extra couple of weeks while Mike came back to Dublin, overall we had a great time. We came back yesterday an my mom came too to help with the plane trip so we have her here till saturday which is fab!
Here are some pics:

Martina (left) and Clarissa (right) asleep with their lovely reusable nappies!

Martina with half a smile

Oliver and Martina

Oliver with my mom cutting the dough for "crescentine"

I hope I'll be able to post more pics of better quality once Mike and my sister will download them from their cameras, we have some lovely shots of the children.

Clarissa was lovely, so much bigger than Martina and only 6 weeks between the two of them, but it was amazing to see how they quickly started to recognise each other and smile to one another! Often we would change them together in a small room which my mom had set up like a professional nursery, there were even two very comfy armchairs for feeding time (by pure coincidence!) and they would touch eachother's heads! So cute!
One thing that happened was that due to the heat my milk supply dipped a bit initially and I had to up the formula for the night bottle, plus the hillside fresh air and excitement had Martina a bit more hungry. Well, my sister had milk to feed the village and so she was happy to nurse Martina in the evening so I didn't have to give her the bottle at all! She said that her sucking was so much gentler than Clarissa and maybe not as stimulating for my supply to increase. So the two cousins now have this extra connection too. It was a lovely thing. I started taking a herbal mix made specifically for breastfeeding with the classic ingredients and eventually we went back to our usual routine and now Martina only takes 90ml (3oz) in the evening to get a bit of longer stretch through the night.
Her sleeping is great and I hope it will last as long as possible. I take her into the bed with me when she stirs around 5am and she goes back to sleep till 6.30 most mornings. It is the sweetest thing to have her in my arms as we both  snuggles in under the sheets! She is the easiest baby I could imagine.

Oliver on the other hand...while he certainly had a fabulous time with nonno and nonna, he was also much more aware that Marina spended a lot of time in my arms...and this was not good. I started noticing that his kisses and hugs to Martina were just a little less gentle and clear signs of jealousy quickly appeared (one night he said to me he wanted Martina's milk...) and my adorable toddler would have outburst of rage to the point of stripping himself down screaming as if he was possessed if I told him he couldn't do something...and it could go on and on and on...There was no talking him down, no cuddles, no gentle approach that would work, and after a while even if you were to give in and let him do what he so badly wanted it wasn't sufficient to snap him out of such a state. I think he was on time out a few times a day at one point. This happened when Mike had gone back and I was on my own to try and discipline him. He would slap, bite, kick...the works. I admit I lost my cool a couple of times with major disapproval of my mother who is strongly against slaps etc. And I never did more than a tap on his bum to try and reground him. It was tough. One evening, in a calm moment, I asked Oliver what could we do to help him when he was feeling so angry (he did say he was angry) and he said I had to bite him (SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK), he even offered me his little arm! What?? I had very limited internet access but I managed to read a bit on how other mamas would deal with this (which I knew was totally normal etc, but this didn't help when I was trying to deal with an uncontrollable toddler who wanted to climb up a ladder while breastfeeding the little one) and one thing I embraced was this mama's tip which was to tell the child "we don't slap/hit/kick we only hug and kiss" and it was a definite turning point. Also I remembered I had the ebook on my phone which was fab when we were dealing with sleeping issues last year so I could read the chapter on "tantrums and other tricks" which was great help. Anyway, while I was a bit more in control, I have to say I was looking forward to being back home so that he would go back to the creche...
Thankfully he slept very well this time and my parents had his travel cot in their room, so I never had to worry when he was getting up at the crack of dawn!

I have a few other news but this post is already very long so I'll leave it till the next time, stay tuned!