to dog or not to dog?

my long time love, Max

I love dogs. I have always grown up with dogs, and I feel like my childhood was so enriched for it. There was always somebody to come home to, always somebody to play with. As I got older, I started to plan my little canine family. I always dreamt of having a pug. I love their squashed little faces and alien eyes. I love labradors, and wanted to rescue a couple too. If I had my way I would have about 5 dogs. Austin is a cat person, so when we got together we would bicker about what pets to get. I would Google different dogs and leave the laptop open and see if he could resist the puppy dog eyes, peering out from behind caged bars. He could.

While I was pregnant, my mum found a cat, crying in the halls of her apartment block, and after some investigation, found its owner had moved, and left the kitty behind. Although also a dog person, (and a cat hater I might add) my mum took in the homeless cat, and asked me if I wanted her, as my mum worked full time and couldn't care for her properly, and I had just finished university and had about 12 weeks before Freddie arrived. I said yes. We went to Pets at Home and got everything the cat would need. I brought her home, and had her sat on the windowsill when Austin came home from work. 'Is that a cat! OUR cat? Oh my god you got me a cat?!' He was pretty thrilled. Molly was named and settled in quickly with us. She would lie over my bump, and snuggle up to us. Creep into our bedroom first thing in the morning and fall asleep between us.

she wasn't really one for personal space...

She was a very calm, placid cat, and I wasn't worried about how she would be with Freddie at all. The night we brought him home, Molly sat on the arm of the chair, staring at him in his moses basket. Not making a move, not trying to paw him, or jump in, just staring. It made me very nervous. I never left them alone in a room together, and tried not to pull the cat away from looking at Fred, even though it meant never being able to take my eyes off her. I didn't want her to be afraid of him, or jealous. But, perhaps inevitably, having a newborn baby and taking care of a increasingly high maintenance cat was getting stressful, no matter how much attention we gave to Molly and tried to keep things as they were, she would poo everywhere, (her favourite places were Austin's socks and shoes...) and would leave puddles of wee in secret places that we would only find when we stood in it. She began to scratch us, something she had never done before, and pulled all the wallpaper off the staircase walls.The final straw came when she jumped at Fred's moses basket, while he was in it, clawed at the wicker and jumped in, I almost had a heart attack. Holding a screaming three week old baby in my arms with a crazed cat running around the house at 300 miles an hour, I began to think we might have to find Molly a new home. It wasn't her fault - she was only a kitten herself and couldn't understand why this tiny human intruder was suddenly taking over. That day, my auntie and my cousins, who are 8 and 13 came to visit me and Freddie, and they fell in love with Moll, and were playing with her and chasing her for about an hour, my younger cousin asked if she could take her home. It was such a relief to find Moll a home where we could visit her whenever we wanted, and knowing she had full roam of a bigger house with a very big garden, and attention on demand.

That whole experience put me off pets while Fred was little, it wasn't fair to take on the responsibility of any pet - we had obviously underestimated how difficult it would be to care for a kitten and a baby simultaneously.

Since we moved house though, and got a bigger garden and lots of grass space, Austin has been dropping hints. Dog hints. More specifically, greyhound dog hints. Who would have thought! Austin the cat lover now wants a dog. Although we had both agreed to think about a pet again when Freddie is old enough to understand how to respect a pet, and not to treat their tails like Sophie the Giraffe, we have both been thinking how we grew up with pets, and perhaps wanting Freddie to have that same experience. Greyhounds are known for their gentle nature, and we have been told repeatedly what brilliant pets they are to have around children.

on our recent stay in Coventry, Freddie meet my lovely friend Jane's dog, Fred.

But, after so many terrible tragedies in the news recently involving dogs and children, I am so hesitant of making that leap, and getting a dog. Before Freddie was born, it was me hounding (pun kind of intended) Austin for a dog, and him the sensible one, but being a parent changes everything, Freddie is now our ultimate priority, and we have to decide what is best for him. We would like to get a rescue dog - so many dog homes are full of pets that are unwanted when they are no longer an advantage to their owners, namely ex-racing greyhounds and Staffordshire bull terriers, older dogs and perhaps the less pretty ones. I would love to give a dog ( or two...) a new home and life with people who will love and care for them.

My heart is telling me that having a dog around would be brilliant, Freddie would always have a little friend around, we would go on long Sunday afternoon walks, the four of us. We would snuggle up on the sofa as a family of four. But my head is telling me to wait. That it is better to be safe than sorry.

What do you think? What have your experiences of dogs and children been?

five things that made me happy this week

1)  Freddie had a check up at the eye hospital on Monday (look here if you didn't catch why!) and he is doing amazing! His prescription has come down again, from +12, to +4.5 and now +2, progress the doctors didn't expect him to make until he was at least 4 or 5. He also did very well in his vision exercises, a massive improvement on last time, and doesn't need another appointment for three months. We have come so far since his operation, and he amazes me every single day.

2) On Wednesday, I was meeting my best friend Jasmin for her birthday lunch at SoLita (my absolute favourite hidden gem of a burger place in Manchester, please go if you get the chance! A magical place where you can find deep fried mac and cheese buns instead of bread buns.) I was meeting Jas at 1 o'clock, and dropped Freddie off at my mums at 10:30. This meant I 2 and a half hours free. To myself. Alone. ALONE. I haven't been entirely alone in 7 months. I had brought a book, Cosmopolitan, and went and sat in my favourite corner in Starbucks, with more than one black americano and a bacon sandwich. It was absolute bliss.

3) On Thursday, me and some of my friends had found ourselves with a couple of free days, AT THE SAME TIME. This never happens. So me and Fred, and my friends Amy and Cathy began our road trip to our friends Jane's in Coventry for the night. I was feeling quite anxious about the trip, I don't know if it was being Fred's sole carer for two whole days, or being away from home with him, but I felt quite nervous. I needn't have bothered obviously, as we had a lovely time, Fred's aunties caught up on some good cuddles, and after bed time, we retired to the living room with a bottle of red and LOTS of talking. The next day, we did a bit of shopping, learnt all about Lady Godiva and went for lunch, before heading home. It was lovely to get away from the daily routine for a bit, and catch up with some of my favourite people.

4) I think I inadvertently taught Freddie something! Whenever I have him standing on his lap, I will say 'Fred, give mummy kiss' and kiss him on the mouth. Now, when I say 'Fred, mummy kiss!' He will open his mouth and put it on mine. There is a lot of dribble and not much actual kissing but I almost cried when he first did it!

a totally unrelated image, but have you ever seen somebody look so chuffed to be in a walker?

5)  Last night, after Freddie was in bed, me and Austin cooked a carbonara (um, he cooked it while I drank a bottle of Peroni) watched Anchorman 2 and ate a load of home made lemon buns and leftover Easter egg cornflake cakes. It was lovely to spend some time together doing what we do best. Staying in and eating.

spinning plates

I would like to apologise to (both of...) my readers for this long gap in posting. Even though life has been hectic with things going on, I haven't felt inspired to write about any of it. Sometimes I'll sit down to a lovely meal, or Fred will look extra cute, or we will have gone on a day out and I'll think 'Where is my camera/iPhone?' I should be taking pictures, making notes in my phone. Although I have only been blogging for a couple of months I just didn't have the energy. It is difficult to find the line between just living life, and what I choose to share on This Charming Boy.

It didn't help that the past few weeks have been more difficult than those early, confusing, mysterious newborn weeks. Freddie has been very unlike himself, clingy, whiny, unsettled, not content with anything we do. He didn't want to eat or drink anything, or play with his toys or watch Curious George. I took him to the doctors worried that he had a bug or something, and was told that he was likely teething, or going through a growth spurt, prescribed some Calpol and told to wait it out. Wait it out we did. Falling into bed every night thinking 'This too, shall pass.' Austin would come home every day to a crying baby and a girlfriend with a pounding headache pulling her hair out.

I felt like the world's worst parent. I found myself losing patience and energy and I didn't know what to do. More than one day was spent not getting dressed, not brushing my teeth, not eating. Just lying on the sofa with Fred, stroking his head, it seemed that was all he wanted to do. I felt guilty that these days would leave me so despaired, how would I cope in a couple of years when he was running me ragged, pulling tantrums and screaming at me? If I can't handle a bit of teething and a growth spurt, how will I cope with the next 18 years?

And when I passed Freddie to his dad, or my mum, and he wouldn't make a murmur for them, gurgling and laughing on their knee, it made me want to cry. Did he hate me? Why does he only cry for me? Do I not play with him enough? Is it because I tried to get him to eat that last spoonful of fish pie?

I often feel such pressure to be a perfect mother. One who has a happy boy, spotless clothes, fed and watered and playing with his toys, with a smile for everyone. I should have a full face of make up and perfect hair, the house immaculate, with dinner on the table and a cake in the oven. Do you go to any baby groups? Do you sing to him and sign the words at the same time? Can he swim 100 lengths? Can Freddie speak fluent Thai yet? I should be able to keep up conversation with my friends, the latest television programmes/films/songs/make up/clothes. Who was wearing what and who has been where. Have you been to *insertcoolnewbar* here yet? Are you going on holiday? Any festivals? Have you read this? Can you come here? And finding time for myself, doing the things I like, reading, writing, baking, doing my nails, going for drinks with friends. When will I get to utilise my degree? How many more interviews and job applications before I can do what I have worked for the past 5 years to do? What about my relationship, when it all gets too much, we definitely hurt the ones we love.

Nobody puts this pressure on me. I know that nobody expects this, and when I don't reply to my friends texts because I have been trying to get Freddie to nap/eat, I know they understand. My mum often offers to watch Fred for the day while I have some time to myself, I usually say no. On the days Austin comes home to a clean house, clean and dressed little family, dinner on the table he is stunned. Why did you do all of this? You should have waited for me, we could have done it together.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I made myself a promise this week. To worry less, and play more. To not leave Freddie in front of the telly for 20 minutes while I mint the kitchen, but to play with him instead. To sometimes use nap times to do the things I enjoy and not peeling potatoes or hoovering. Maybe a pizza in the oven for dinner is okay. Sometimes the dishes can stay in the sink while me and Austin pull out the old blanket and watch crap telly.

If spinning plates is an art, I put down my paintbrush.

an unscheduled hiatus

So I haven't posted for a while. It wasn't a planned break, but things have been quite difficult around these parts recently, and it has amazed me how much motivation for blogging depends on having cheerful things to say.

I have loads of ideas for future blog posts though, so please bear with me!

What about the hard days?

I am writing to you from my stairs. The 6th one down. Freddie is in his cot, I think finally beginning to go to sleep after a day of non stop whining, crying, and general being grumpy. There is only so much being shouted at a person can take, even if the person doing the shouting is the cutest, most beautiful, perfect boy on the planet.

It might be his teeth. He might have tummy ache, or even a headache like me. The hardest thing is that I don't know, and all I can do is cuddle him til he feels better, which he won't let me do.

Sometimes my head feels like it is going to explode. I haven't brushed my teeth today and my head aches. My hair is unbrushed in a bobble and I haven't eaten at all.

Sometimes being a mum is so easy, and some days it is the hardest thing in the world.

I need a brew.

hosting afternoon tea

As I mentioned in a previous post, for Mother's Day this year, me and my sisters decided to do something a little bit special for our mum. Obviously she is special EVERY day of the year, but this one felt different. It is her first Mother's Day as a grandma, and mine (as a mum...) and she has done so much for me through the course of my pregnancy and these first few months.

After some deliberation, and eliminating shopping, meal, drinks and spa day from my list, I decided to take her for champagne afternoon tea at the HIilton. Lovely! Only, the Hilton sabotaged my plans by being fully booked on Mother's Day. As did Harvey Nichols, The Midland, Richmond Tea Rooms and every other place I could think of. But, rather than give up, I decided to do it myself.

I have just moved into a new house with a lovely conservatory, (ooooh!) so it was the logical place to hold it. I prayed for a sunny day and began planning.

I'm not a planner. Not a planner of parties anyway. What if nobody came? (Ha ha only joking they had to, they are my sisters.) So I started by googling pictures of afternoon tea researching what a typical afternoon tea consisted of, and the general gist was tea, finger sandwiches, scones, and cake. I could do that!

First, I hit eBay and Amazon for the little touches that would make a lovely afternoon tea. I confess I am somewhat of a tea and cake lover already, so I already had a tea pot, (or 8) antique side plates, and cake forks. I made a list of what I needed.

Tea cups (I ordered and used these last minute, because some mismatched tea cups I had ordered from eBay didn't arrive in time. Now I have plenty of tea cups...)
Champagne flutes (Which I borrowed from my grandparents! I was going to buy some plastic ones but my nans antique ones were much nicer!)
Table cloth (I bought a vintage one from eBay, I had wanted one for ages anyway. But there are loads of pretty table cloths on there!)
Napkins (I just bought a packet of plain pink ones from Tesco, much of the decoration was floral and kitsch and I thought plain napkins and plain teacups prevented it from looking too over the top.)
Cake stand (Which I got from here)
School style milk jugs
Red stripe straws (I got both the jugs and the straws from here which is a lovely website, but you can find them in many places, etsy, eBay, amazon are the first that come to mind.)

I also went to Home Bargains for something un-afternoon tea related, and came across a little vintage party section (who knew?!) and picked up some little sweetie tubs and bunting.

Next was to decide what to serve food wise. After some research I found that some traditional sandwich choices for afternoon tea are ham, salmon,and cucumber, all quite simple. You can jazz them up, we had salmon and cream cheese, ham, and cucumber and cream cheese, on white and brown bread. The sandwiches should be small, only two or three bites each. Cutting the crusts off makes for better presentation but you waste quite a lot of the filling so we just cut them into triangles.

Now for the important part. The cake! Obviously scones are a given. My sister baked some lovely ones using this recipe and they were lovely, served with strawberry jam and clotted cream. She also baked a fruit tea cake which is a traditional afternoon tea cake. I made a carrot cake and a lemon cake, which I will do recipe's for in future posts if anybody is interested! Then, using the sweetie tubs I had bought from Home Bargains, I filled them with my mum's favourite sweets (rhubarbs and custards, foam banana and shrimps and liquorice allsorts) and dotted them along the window ledge.

As this was a champagne afternoon tea, obviously champagne was required! We bought a bottle of De Vallois Champagne which was lovely - I am not a massive fan of champagne but this was quite smooth to drink and not too acidic, a perfect afternoon tea accompaniment! I also bought some pink lemonade to serve in the milk jugs. We were quite boring with the 'tea' aspect of the afternoon tea, as none of us are adventurous tea drinkers! So we stuck to good old Twinings English Breakfast tea, I was planning on using loose leaf tea and had bought strainers, but forgot the actual tea, duh.

Finally, there were a couple of little touches that really finished it off. I bought some brown luggage labels , and used them as place name cards. I wrote our names on them in simple black crayon, and tied them to the bottom of the champagne flutes. I also got some 'eat me' and 'drink me' tags and stuck them in the sandwiches and cake, which gave it a little touch of Alice in Wonderland! The night before I compiled an iTunes playlist of all of my mums favourite songs, all through the dinner she would say 'oh I love this song!' and 'god I love this song!' not realising I had put the list together for her, and thinking it was just a good radio day. I also put Freddie in his Sunday best for grandma's lunch!

 I wanted the day to have a traditional, yet modern and personal feel to it, and I think it did. My mum cried (you know it is a success when somebody cries...) and me, my sisters, my mum and Freddie had a lovely afternoon tea, sat in the warm, sunny conservatory drinking champagne and chatting for hours.

I hope some of you found this post helpful - I think as the weather gets warmer it would be a lovely thing to do for a birthday or special occasion!

five things that made me happy this week

1) On Friday night, me and Austin booked some impulse train tickets to Chester for the next day. It felt like a real family day out and it was lovely - now Freddie is a little bit older and is taking a bit more of an interest in things. We can sit him in a high chair at dinner with us, and as we are doing baby led weaning he could eat with us and it was our first meal out as a three! He also did a considerable amount of napping, so me and Austin were able to go for a walk around the city walls and along the river, visit Chester castle, and do a bit of shopping. We stopped in a little tea shops while we were waiting for our train, and the women in the shop all fell in love with Fred, he is a serious flirt.

2) Although a good sleeper in general, Fred still wakes up in the night, at about 2 o'clock, and then he is up for the day at 6:30 on.the.dot. (How does he know the time?!) I feel like I dealt better with the night feeds in the first few months, I would bounce out of bed to feed him and scroll through Facebook/Twitter as I fed him, but for the past few weeks I have had to DRAG myself out of bed, and have actually fell asleep feeding him a couple of times. (Sorry kid.) So although he isn't going through the night yet, he has started to push back his night feed to about 4 or 5 in the morning and it makes such a difference to get a 5/6 hour block of sleep.

3) Remember last week I mentioned how we had received a £100 Sainsbury's voucher for joining BT broadband? Well this week we received our £100 Tesco gift voucher for joining Sky! Excellent. I spent half of it on a new pair of curtains for our bedroom, some blackout blinds for Freddie's room, and plan on spending the rest on Easter eggs this week. Thank you Sky!

4) Although I love cooking, I don't do it as often as I would like. Austin doesn't get home from work til 6 o'clock, and then we bath Freddie at 6:30 and put him to bed, and I don't get the chance to start cooking til about 7. But this week I have made a bit more of an effort with cooking, and left the chicken dippers in the freezer. I made enchiladas on Tuesday, and pulled pork rolls with sweet potato wedges on Friday night, and we sat down and ate with a couple of bottles of beer. A lovely Friday night and made a nice change from a takeaway which is what we usually opt for!

5) As we haven't long lived in our house, we are still kind of settling in. There are things where they shouldn't be, things with no home, things where I don't want them to be. So I thought that ordering a shelf to find new homes for these homeless things might be a good place to start, and it arrived on Friday. My first thought was 'yay can't wait for Austin to come home and put it together!' Then I kicked myself and realised there is nothing stopping me doing it myself. So I grabbed a screw driver, and a couple of wrong turns and upside down pieces later, I had built it! I felt such a sense of pride when I put it in its place and filled it with DVD's, books and knick knacks.