Snow!

'I love you Mummy, let me come and give you a sloppy kiss and cuddle'
'Look at that tooth'
'Peekaboo!'

We woke up on Saturday to brilliant sunshine and nearly 2 inches of snow. Tim and I messed around with snowballs while Alex watched us with bemusement. Tim gave Alex a snowball to hold and we watched with amusement while he held onto it for several minutes passing it from on hand to the other before finally dropping it. That, and general playtime with Alex were definitely the highlights of my weekend as I have had to work for a lot of the time on both Saturday and Sunday to try and get this grant under control. Alex is teething and therefore is somewhat fractious from time to time, and who can blame him. At the end of the weekend he had a new tooth on the bottom, and another one about to break through on the top. He is now learning to play and interact with us more and more and the 'peekaboo' game is current favourite. We put a muslin over his head and then pull it off saying 'peekaboo', his version is to lie on his front on the floor and then put his head down into the muslin followed by lifting his head and giving us an enormous grin at which point we are expected to say 'peekaboo'. Great fun!

As you can imagine there has been very little done in the way of crafting this weekend, but I did make a couple of quick but effective trading cards using K&Co backing paper, Simple Expressions and Hero Arts stamps and Angel kiss flowers. I am quite pleased with the effect and may make some more of these. more soon,

Love,

Caro

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Therapeutic giggles

Alex drawing while sat on my desk
Alex giggling while I rattled one of his toys
Trying to crawl and giggle at the same time is hard Mummy'

Work is a nightmare at the moment, I think I am getting somewhere with the grant and then I suffer another major set back. There is so much to do before next Friday that I don't quite see how I am going to get it all done. Sadly I am going to be working this weekend and probably all the evenings next week (after Alex has gone to bed) to get it done on time. I can't wait until it is finished. Thank goodness for Alex and Tim, who keep me from going completely insane. Alex has been so much fun in our evening play times, laughing away like mad at the simplest things and making me laugh as well. He has such an infectious laugh when he gets going and it really lifts my spirits. On the more difficult side he has been a complete pain to feed over the last few days...for some reason he has refused breast milk a number of times and has only wanted to eat yoghurt and fruit puree. Not great really when he used to eat everything really well. I hope it is just a phase he is going through...teething or something.

I am still managing to keep up with my New Years resolution and have managed to do one scrapbook layout this week, entitled Bathtime. The photos are of Alex and his cousin Daniel taken just after Christmas and the little circles are to represent bubbles and splashes as bathtimes were so wet for all involved. The journalling reads 'Alex and Daniel enjoyed sharing baths, although Daniel was a little startled by the amount of splashing Alex did'. Either side of the title are the words 'splish' and 'splash' and the idea is taken from an early sketch on the PencilLines site. Any comments welcome as usual.

Love,

Caro

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Midweek panic

My big grant deadline is looming steadily nearer (8th Feb) and I have to say I have hit panic mode. I hate working at the last minute as that is not normally my style, but somehow with one thing and another this grant is nowhere near as ready as I would normally have it by this stage. The main project proposal is written (although with four other people reading it, there are changes being made almost daily - too many cooks?) it is just everything else I have to do, a short summary that can be understood by a non-scientist, a longer summary for an expert in the field, all the projected costs (hard to work out how much of each reagent, cell etc you are going to need for 5 years worth of research and the costs involved), my CV, other grants and more besides. I know I will get there in the end, but it is tough going at the moment.

All I can say is thank goodness for Alex...playing with him before bed is what is keeping me sane at the moment and means I don't spend all my time thinking about the grant. He has been in a hillarious mood finding everything funny from the loo roll holder banging against the wall of the bathroom, to me typing on the laptop. I try and do a different activity with him each evening alongside regular baths and story time. This evening we were playing with his garage, and yesterday evening we were playing with several balls and his stacking rings. He is starting to try and pull himself up to standing now, succeeding in getting up into a riflemans kneel (one foot on the ground and one knee on the ground). I don't think it will be too long before he learns to stand.

I have done a little crafting over the past few days in the form of another pair of trading cards for the words of wisdom swap. The serious one of this pair reads 'Babies are special people just waiting to go' I love the old fashioned colouring of the central panel so didn't want to use blue or pink as the background, so instead I used a K&Co patterned paper adn then simply added the nappy pin and flower embellishments. The fun one reads 'I keep him at the bottom of the garden for a rainy day and is again placed on K&Co patterned paper (paisley green) and then stamped with HeroArts mini stamps (leaves, flowers and dragonflies) to represent the garden.

I also made two very quick and easy cards this week. The first one is a birthday card for a friend and simply used K&Co background paper, rikrak, card brayered with Adirondack butterscotch and a Crafty Individuals Image. Simple but effective.

The final card used a PB image kindly stamped for me by Christine (Gilligogs, CM&PC forum) which I coloured using watercolour pencils. I have never done this before or used a PB stamp so this was a new experience for me...hoping I will get better at it! The image is then layered over some stripey card from the Nana's kids pack (kindly given to me by Kerry Knowles) and then the stickers added. This is for a friends little girl who is 1 next week. As always I would love to know what you think of these.

Love,

Caro

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Waving

Alex now waves at us when we say goodbye or night night...not all the time but it is really very cute. He especially waves at Tim whenever I take Alex out of the room to put him to sleep or to change him. It has been lovely to spend time with him this weekend as he is so happy and chatty and smiley. However, he is off his food at the moment, and not sleeping much either...we think that it is probably teething, although it is often hard to tell. I have to say that breast feeding may not last much longer as I was bitten by him for the first time yesterday.

We are really very lucky that Alex is such a sociable little boy, he charms everyone when we go shopping (all the ladies in Boots always come across and say hello to him!), and today he was perfectly happy when he went into the creche at church for the first time. My intention was to keep Alex in the main church service with me, which worked well through the first few hymns. However, when we got to the quiet bit where people were talking (the notices!) he decided to shout so I thought taking him into creche would be a kindness to everyone else. I didn't know how he would take it as he has never been to nursery or creche before, but I left him there and when I came back at the end of the service (75mins later) he was perfectly happily playing, and hadn't been upset at all. I got the biggest grin ever when I went in! This was great news as far as we are concerned as it means that he may well cope quite well with nursery if he needs to go.

Crafting wise this weekend I have been making ATCs...I have made one for a competition on the theme of Love, which I wont show here otherwise the people who are voting will know who they are voting for. I have also been making some ATCs for a 'words of wisdom' swap where you have to make them in twos, one serious and one fun, and the words have to be clear on the trading card. All of these use images from Crafty Individuals with K and Co background papers. The serious one of this pair has words reading 'let us embark on this journey and together we can realise all our wildest dreams'. I felt that as the image was slightly old world I would use a steam train as the form of transport and a map as the background. The fun one reads 'Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law'. I particularly liked the panel of the rather pompous looking man, and put an image of my great great grandmother looking rather stern behind him.

The serious one in this pair was again about travelling 'Every Journey begins with a single step', hence the map in the background, and the little footprints. I also thought about people on journeys sending letters home, hence the letter and postage mark also in the background. The fun one said ' Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours', which I felt was a great contrast to the panel of three gentlemen in their hats (saying that they were 3 wise men!). As usual any comments on these are welcome. More soon I hope,

Love,

Caro

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Bumps and bruises

Poor Alex has been in the wars these past few days. He is obviously trying to learn to stand and gets himself onto his hands and feet and then tries to pull himself up on the bars of his stairgate/cot or a table. Yesterday he was up on his knees reaching for something on the coffee table and toppled over and bumped his cheek bone...he has his first bruise. I was devastated. After the initial tears he was absolutely fine and I am sure that, being a very active little boy, this is only the first of many, but I felt horribly guilty. Everyone assures me this is normal though. Alex and I had a great time before bed this evening...he was giggly and chattery and we played both on the floor and in the bath (I am soaked as I type this!) with lots of smiles and laughter before his bed time feed.

I feel like I can't keep up at work at the moment...I have so much to do in the next two weeks...my grant deadline is two weeks today and there is soo much to do on it..not just the project proposal but also all the associated paperwork and one last experiment. I also have a new student starting next week alongside other meetings etc. Needless to say I am feeling a little stressed and in need of a weekend off.

Not a great deal to report on the crafting front, although I did manage to complete this weeks sketch for PencilLines challenge (#68). The sketch called for a really long title so I felt that 'Where did you get that hat?' was appropriate for these photos of Alex dressed up in a Santa hat. The gold jounalling under the photos reads 'Santa's little helper - Alex the imp'. I am really pleased with how this turned out as I don't often use long titles. I hope to get some time for more crafting this weekend, but we will have to wait and see. Have a great weekend everyone.

Love,

Caro

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MaMa!

Yes, after more than a month of saying Dada (albeit with more das on the end and not necessarily associated with Tim) Alex has started saying Mama (mamamama!) which just melts my heart (even though he doesn't yet associate the sounds with me). Monday evening saw us putting up playpens, one in the study (actually his travel cot which is huge!) and one in the sitting room (a big wooden one) so that Tim has somewhere safe to put him during the day. Alex's main play area is still the landing, one of the biggest areas in the house, but it is good for him to have somewhere safe in the study so that we can all be in there together (there are too many little wires, screws, pens, etc and books that he can pull of shelves for him to be safe even when unsupervised for just one second). I am not a fan of playpens, but with Tim's ME I can see the need for them and Alex seems to be adapting OK to them. We now have our Mummy playtime out on the landing where we can roll around the floor, play with his garage, nuzzle, bounce and generally be silly together. I do so love those times in the evening.

The mamama's provided just the boost I needed this week because work has been completely manic so far. I spent a considerable time down at Hallam University which, while being very productive, meant that things were somewhat truncated in the rest of the week for the other projects. I have been asked to write a report of the work that was carried out on a project that finished last October, which meant wading through three badly written lab books to get the information, with a deadline for the report of tomorrow lunchtime. I also gave my first ever lecture to medical students in Sheffield today. The lecture, on designing sucessful research projects, seemed to go OK and I managed to get interaction from at least some of the students which is good. I was also caught up in interviews for most of this morning so today was somewhat stressful. I was very glad and very tired when I got home!

On a more fun note, I have been crafting in the evenings this week and have made a set of 6 ATCs on a similar theme, with the same background (K&Co paper) with a corner of Crafty Individuals paper, edged with green ink and stamped with a green postmark finished off with a dark red Angel kiss flower. Then each of the images (Crafty Individuals) are layered on top to give 6 different ATCs. Simple, but effective. Just the thing for the busy crafter!

I have also finally finished a scrapbook layout that I have been meaning to do for the past few weeks. This one is again based on a PencilLines sketch (# ) and uses some of my photos from Christmas day to give an overview of the day. The journalling in the bottom righthand corner reads 'Alex's first Christmas was the first time all the Staton's had shared Christmas Day since we got married. It was lovely to share this special day together and to watch the cousins interact'. The cardstock used was Bazzil, the stickers were freebies from a magazine and the circles were cut from BoBunny paper. The patterned paper at the bottom of the page was American Traditional Designs. This was quite a fun way of using photos that aren't strong enough for a single page to themselves.

I also received some ATCs in the post which was fun. I just love getting crafty post. The first one is from Emma Ryder, and is a tag which swings out to reveal another tag underneith...great fun. The other two are from Dawn Martindale, another of her lovely waterfall ATCs and a gorgeous shimmery Spirelli which I love. Thank you both very much! More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Visiting and stairgates

Alex and Grandma sharing cuddles and giggles in the library at Rode Hall
Grandpa and Alex having a walk through the house

Saturday saw Alex and I heading over the Penines to Rode Hall in Cheshire to visit distant family (my fifth cousins once removed!). My parents were staying with them for the weekend and we were invited over the spend the day with them. Sadly Tim was too ill to come with us, but we still had a lovely day. Rode Hall as it stands now was completed in 1752 (I think!) although the original house was much older. It was lovely to go back there as I lived with Richard and Anne for the summer of 1996 and I have many fond memories of my time there. Alex was very well behaved and it was great to spend time with my parents and to watch Alex interacting with them. Anne is a fantastic cook and so we were incredibly well fed. We then went out for a lovely (slightly damp) walk round the grounds before we had to return home.

Sitting up in front of the library fire playing with his toys

Out for a walk round the grounds with Grandma and Grandpa
In the front porch of the house with Grandpa
A photo of Rode Hall showing the oldest part of the house and the stable block.

Today has seen us putting up stairgates and making the upstairs safer for Alex. He can now have the run of the landing while we can leave the study door open so that he can interact with us and hear our voices etc. However, I have to confess to not having used it today as I rather like having Alex playing at my feet. We are going to sort out the playpens (one in the study as the room is really not very safe for Alex and a large one in the sitting room with a door so he can go in and out under supervision) in the next few days and then we should be fully kitted out for him. I don't think that it is going to be very long before he is pulling himself up to standing so we need to get the house safe as soon as possible.

Needless to say I haven't had time to do much crafting over this weekend, although I did make a couple of cards based on Alex's work. The first is a thank you card using a photograph from yesterday, Alex's artwork and a photoshopped version of Alex's artwork by Carole Brown. This is our card to say thank you for yesterday.

The second one again uses Alex's artwork, a ribbon, blue card and a photo of Alex taken today. Alex is wearing his blue cardigan which was a gift from my Great Aunt, and so this card is for her.

Yesterday's post brought me a lovely ATC from Joanne Browne called 'To dream'. I lovely the dreamy feel of these different purple hues. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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