April has always been a favourite month of mine because the first love of my life, my late grandmother, was born in April. It was always a time to celebrate the woman who LOVED birthdays. My grandmother made every single one of my birthdays truly special when I was growing up even though looking back I don’t actually remember any physical gifts being involved… I just remember the feeling that it was my day and that I was (more) special on that day. And so loving her birthday month felt life a small payment for how she made me feel during my birthday all through my life.

This April came with some big things! My tiny baby, who I feel I just brought from the hospital two days ago, turned SIX months old! He started solids attaching every piece of food with gusto and getting his whole body involved. So far the tip winners has been Greek yogurt with any type of berry, strawberries, broccoli and chicken! We are doing baby lead weaning and watching him learn to feed himself has been the highlight of all my meal times.

The weather has been glorious! I think until you live in Britain and experience the weather here you feel like the British are so dry and boring with constant fixation and discussions about the weather… once you’ve lived here you get it. It’s a BIG deal!

I’ve gotten back to the gym, only twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays when my husband is out walking with the dog and the baby (I still can’t bear to leave him at home) and I have enjoyed it. I’m not really a fitness person, I do enough to ensure that I can take long walks when necessary and that’s what works for me.

Coming up with favourites has been difficult because honestly what I loved in April was all intangible moments I got to spend with my loved ones (yes that includes the dog) but let’s see if we can come up with a decent number of things to justify posting this.

Clothing – Next Barrel Jeans

I am in love. I am in love with this style of jean. I think when you have the sort of straight sized body that clothing manufacturers make clothes for you can take for granted how hard it is to find wardrobes be staples that just FIT. No alterations, just a good fit! I’ve found the most perfect jeans for me and I have bought three colours. I love these jeans so much I have asked my husband to bury me in them!

Bambino Mio Re-usable Nappies

When I was preparing to have my son I knew that I’d want to use re-usable nappies. As someone who tries very hard to be conscious of all the waste I create I have not used any disposable sanitary products since 2017 and I knew that I’d want to try my hand at making reusable nappies work for us as a family.

I prepped as best as I could watching video after video of nappy videos and then finally purchasing some second hand nappies off Vinted (all new unused nappies) and then I had the baby and I just couldn’t get started. Something in my brain told me it would be impossible. With the added laundry of a tiny person and now the additional chore of cleaning after his every meal with baby lead weaning reusable nappies seemed like an outlandish idea.

Until last week when we were running out of disposable nappies and I just worked up the nerve and put one on my baby and I loved it! It felt so good to finally be doing this thing I’d wanted to do and since then I’ve gone back onto Vinted, bought more new-second hand nappies and I am slowly transitioning us to a reusable nappy family!

Knitting

I am a bad knitter! I leave projects half way through, my stitches are crooked and wonky and I can’t follow a pattern to save my life! But I absolutely love knitting. Seeing each stitch and each row become something is so exciting and so appealing to me. However I’ve struggled to make time to knit (or crochet) in the past few months (I cannot stress enough what a time suck babies are). In the past few weeks though my son has a solid bedtime sleep routine and he’s usually out by 20:30 at the latest this gives me time to sit with my partner and knit and chat and I am falling in love with the craft all over again.

As far as media goes there isn’t anything I’d say stood out in April. No music. No podcasts. No television (which I haven’t turned on in months). I read and finished a few books but none of them stood out – in fact one of them felt like a waste of time (I’m looking at you Dream Count). I’m hoping that the books I am currently reading in May will deliver the punches – these include Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen so I have very high hopes!

Overall April was a fantastic month with lots of sunshine and developmental milestones to boot! and I cannot wait for whatever it is May has in store for me… I’m perhaps more time for my creative endeavours? Or maybe a baby who only wakes up once at night??? The possibilities are boundless!

Here’s to hoping and wishing you a happy new month!

See you when I see you!

March flew by in the best and worst ways possible. Worst because every month that passes is a month closer to my maternity leave ending. And best because the weather has been lovely and it’s been so great mothering with some sunshine.

I’ve been thinking about I am going to possibly justify why a quarter of the year is through and I still haven’t managed to commit to the creative goals I’ve had for myself… then this morning while feeding my son with a cup of coffee in my hands I realised that there was no cause for justification. The reason is clear. I’m a mother and I am enjoying being a mother so much that everything else feels unimportant most days.

This role is all encompassing and there’s a reason why mothers all over the internet speak about “losing” oneself in motherhood. Although I can’t relate to this experience as someone who keeps finding herself in motherhood, I can see why it would be scary to fully dive into the role of MOTHER.

With that being said though, I think I owe myself and you a reflection on some things I’ve loved and enjoyed in March.

Books: The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi

I haven’t had the best of luck with books I’ve read recently. I’ve read widely and across genres but no books have managed to cement themselves as five stars in my mind. I have however been very lucky that I’ve read some great children’s books for my son with The Magical Yet being by far my favourite. It’s beautifully illustrated and the punchy words deliver a message that struck a nerve with me at my very BIG age of 35! A tad too grown up for my five month old but definitely one I know I’ll hold onto and he’ll hopefully grow to love as he comprehends the message.

Clothing: The Emile Cardigan by Sezanne

Now here, this… this is where you start to see the cracks in my resolutions and my no-buy ambitions. I have had my eye on this cardigan for about six months. I saw it and instantly fell in love but at this point I had decided that I will not be buying any new clothing especially knitwear because I wanted to focus on my knitting.

However I finally crumbled in late February when my husband told me he can’t listen to me talk about it anymore and I really should just buy it and get on with it. I bought it in February but because it’s only started warming up I’ve only started wearing it I March and I LOOOVE it! Despite the fact that in an attempt to sort of punish myself for not sticking to my no-buy I bought a colour that is outside my norm of colours (this just means I didn’t buy the pink one).

I’ve really loved it. It’s soft and cosy and perfect for the current wear. I can even button it over my carrier when I’m wearing my son and it doesn’t feel like it’s being stretched out and damaged.

Look there are many reasons I could mouth off about this but the truth is I just like it.

Tech: Airpod maxes

My husband very nicely got me purple AirPod maxes for Mother’s day (it’s in March in the U.K).

I’m had very reasonably requested that he give me £5million for the hard work of growing the baby, having the baby, feeding the baby and taking care of him but since he’s not a millionaire I’ve settled for these.

On a serious note, I’ve really loved these. My current AirPods are calling it quits and it’s been nice to replace them with a slightly more obnoxious pair of earphones. Tomorrow I am going back to the gym (I haven’t been in the gym since August 2024) and I look forward to listening to my favourite workout songs with these.

Podcast: If Books Could Kill

This is by far one of my favourite podcasts. I really appreciate Michael Hobbes’ rigour and his ability to research is unmatched and is probably only rivalled by Aubrey Gordon who hosts Maintenance Phase with him (another favourite podcast). The If Books Could Kill podcast is hosted by Mike and Peter Shamshiri who brings a lightness to the podcast that I also love. They have such a great groove. Recently I went back to listen to the podcast about The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt because I’ve been slowly reading the book and wanted a more balanced view (aka I didn’t want to fall into the bias of believing a thing that sounded true because it suited my current under of the world).

The episode is well researched and the two hosts take this topic very seriously whilst very much finding holes in the books main thesis. In the end of course I loved that they come to a similar conclusion to me; that this is a serious topic however their skepticism about whether the author the best person to tackle it.

It was so good to reflect on the past month. I had to go through my pictures and sieve through the ones that weren’t my son because he is my favourite of all the favourites.

He’s teaching me so much about myself and I am rising to the high standard that I think he deserves in a mother (more on this in another post) and it has been incredible.

Thanks so much for reading… I’ll see you soon-ish, I hope.