Dear H,

In April we celebrated your third birthday.  Three years ago you made me a mother and those three years have disappeared at light speed. 

You will always be my baby boy although now you are a little boy.  There are few glimpses of that baby left now, even your most scrumptious fat knees have been run away.  You are a laid back guy, a funny, friendly guy and you have lots of friends.  You no longer have a dummy and you sleep in your own single bed all night.  You have a contagious, verging on dirty, laugh and boundless energy.  You love swimming and go every week with Grandpa.  You love reading and go every weke to the library with Grandma.  Your sister Baby G adores you there is no one funnier in her world.

Your favourite things are your scooter at which you are exceptionally good at and scarily fast, you don’t know it yet but you will also be getting a helmet next week!  You love reading stories, “The elephant and the bad baby” and “Dinosaurs love underpants” are your current favourites.  Everything Toy Story has been your favourite for nearly a year now, especially Woody.  To celebrate turning 3 years old we had a Toy Story cake, table cloth, napkin, plates, cups, balloons etc.  You love playing with water and eating pizza, broccoli trees and chocolate. 

Such a lucky 3 year old boy!  Lil H you are now are the proud owner of a garden playhouse, your own garden deckchair, an easel, lots of paint and crafting things, pop up goal posts, a light sabre and an England football kit (that’s what Uncles are for I am told!)  A keyboard, electric drums (these can be turned down and off !) and the Happyland castle.  Your imagination is running riot right now so we bought you lots of dressing up hats so from one minute to the next you can switch from policeman to pirate to knight to fireman to superman and you do for hours on end. 

I love our conversations, when grown up  phrases come from your mouth it has me laughing for hours like when you respond to a question with “of course you can” or when you told Daddy last week “hurry up, you’re killing me!”  I could cry with love when you imprompted you hug your baby sister and say “I like your dress, you look really pretty”.  I love that I have been able to work from home and be with you during your earliest years.  I love us spending time together. 

I made you and you made me back.  I love you always my Lil’ H.

Mummy x

Mr L and I had our first night out, just the two of us, since the chaos that ensued as our family became a family of four.  We headed to a local haunt, Boca Restaurant & Bar in Wilmslow – they do seriously ACE cocktails – fact! 

After our well deserved G&T’s made with Bombay Sapphire, of course!  We enjoyed two bottles of great wine, a really fab meal.  Mr had ribs and I had Argentinian steak which really did melt in the mouth and I can’t recommend the Boca mess dessert highly enough, I have it every time I go.   Then the best bit – 30% off the food – result!  That will afford more than another few G&T’s for me then! 

This isn’t a sponsored post, I went, I liked it, I wanted to share my thumbs up for Boca and the news that there is currently 30% of all food, all week, so babysitters providing we shall be back, hope to see you there! 

Claire x

I mentioned last week that I felt I’d lost my blogging mojo so this post is to explain, draw a line under it and move on.  A quick recap on my time within the blogosphere.  I started my first blog to support my online stationery business Dandelion Lounge back in 2008, I ventured into Twitter in 2009 pregnant with Baby G and really enjoyed the communities and people I met.  The lovely Violet Posy designed this, my Cheshire Mum blog, for me and it was like a lovely new school book and off I went posting about my world as a mum of a toddler and a baby. 

I was joining in meme’s, tagging people and being tagged.  All was good.  Life is tough with two, such a different ball game to life with one child but it is fun and I was sharing my experience and others seemed to be finding my posts helpful and that made me happy.  My blog and time on Twitter has brought me great friendships and support.  I’ve also been able to try and review products and my social networking has brought me three new marketing clients (Manuka Baby, Cosatto & Lets Gabba) helping me in my quest to work as a self employed, work at home mum. 

Then it happened.  What happened made me scared to blog.  So when I say “I lost my mojo” I didn’t really lose it, it was taken away from me.  What happened was my real life and my screen life met.  At first my screen life ventured into my real life and I met up with some of the lovely bloggers I tweet with Amy, Cara and some other buddies and that was lovely.

What was far from lovely was my real life meeting my screen life.  I was stupid.  I unintentially hurt and caused upset with my extended family.  I shall say no more about “tweet-gate” as it now referred to at Lancaster Towers as least said soonest mended.  Suffice to say I very nearly took this blog down and hung up my blogging boots for good.  This is why I have been hiding behind product reviews and meme posts.  I’ve been hiding because I’ve been terribly upset.  I’ve been criticised, told off and made to feel embarrassed for blogging.  It left me feeling supervised, observed, scrutinised, paranoid and upset.  This place here, my place, my little corner of the enormous world wide web I felt had been invaded with people waiting for me to make a mistake. 

I’ve pulled myself together this week and given myself one hour to write this post, publish it and move on.  I think the reality is that the rules, the etiquette of life in the 21st Century are developing, how real life and screen life blend are not yet written.  I think screen worlds can merge in the real world because both sides understand it.  I think folk in the real world who don’t venture into what I call screen worlds are perhaps intimidated by these unknown communities.  We are all new to sharing our lives in this way but one thing  is for sure our online lives are here to stay!   I now have my own blogging rules.  I’d be interested to know if anyone else has the same and did you always have then or did something happen? 

My final thought on the matter is “seek and you shall find”.  So with that put to bed, without further ado, normal blogging service shall resume. 

My name is Claire, I have a toddler and a baby, I write a blog called Cheshire Mum and I love my real life and my screen life!

So here’s my post for Tara’s The Gallery, Week 10 over at Sticky Fingers the theme this week is to a share a secret of the world we live in. 

Whilst Cheshire has some really beautiful and special parts, this isn’t Cheshire!  This is Port Isaac in North Cornwall.  If you watch Doc Martin it may look familar to you as as this is where it is filmed although known in the show as Portwenn – if you visit during filming you may not be aware it isn’t called Portwenn as all the signage is changed!  My family own this cottage down there. 

I love being there.  I love being there with lil’ H and can’t wait to take Baby G in July.  With limited mobile signal and a dial up internet connection I can never be bothered to keep in touch – afterall we’re on holiday and we relax, we really relax. 

When the tide is out the harbour is brilliant rockpooling.  When the tide is in you sometimes get to watch some bankers bonus who didn’t believe the “Cars must be moved by 7 o’clock” sign, float out to sea.  I have seen this happen many, many, many times and with a vino in hand sitting on the harbour wall that is something that will never cease to entertain me!  The example below is a brand new Range Rover Vogue – you’ve have thought Tarquin’s Breitling would have done a better job at helping him tell the time wouldn’t you?!

I have a small acorn of a thought at the moment, a thought that is growing, the thought is to live down here for the whole of next Summer.  My darling boy H will be 4 years old and will start school in the September and Baby G will be 18 months feels like special moment to building some childhood memories.  This thought is haunting me quite a lot at the moment, I’m wondering if with an improved Internet connections I could actually make it happen… I’m off to ponder some more … and check out the rest of this weeks Gallery posts – see you there!  Claire x

My blogging birth club matey Claire over at The Good The Bad and The Ugly has tagged me to with this rather fabulous posting so here’s what I had to do: Pop over to the My Heritage site and create your own celeb collage, post it on your blog and then pop back here to add your addition to the Linky….

I got tagged because my blogging mojo is missing but I’ll come to that in my next post as I’m going to vent how I lost it and get it back! 

So without further ado here for your screen pleasure are my celebrity look-a-likes with my profile pic … there’s some good looking girls in there so I’m pretty chuffed, although I did score 68% with Jack Lemmon which was a worry! 

Now then who to pass this one on to?  Mmmm, I shall tag Young Mummy over at Young & Younger we were tweeting early today and my Vlog about sterilizing in a hotel room that I wobbled about and very nearly didn’t post, I think was helpful so I’m pleased I did post it.  Happy Holidays to her!  Next up, Bec over at Beetroot & Gherkins as she’s the Southern version of me, more than just a bit beautiful and bound to have some fabulous look-a-likeys.  My next choice is Emma at Me The Man & The Baby as we are “tweeting up” at The Baby Show at the NEC in Birmingham later this month & it would be good to know which glamour puss look-a-like I’m looking out for!