Book Week Book Review #1 {The Day You Came Into The World}

It's Book Week! Hooray! I miss being in the classroom at this exciting time in Term 3, so I thought I'd share a couple of book reviews this week. This first one, The Day You Came Into The World by Frances Lalor is perfect for young children, toddlers, babies and new parents (it would also make the perfect baby shower or newborn baby arrival gift - I have a friend due in a few months and I'm planning to get her a copy).

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Fat Mum Slim's ADORABLE New App!

Something exciting is happening today!

It's the release day of Fat Mum Slim's new app...

...and it's ADORABLE!

Chantelle has this way of making my day (which she's done more than once!). Like when I got a fun kit in the mail, or when I guest posted for her...or when she asked me to be one of the 50 lucky ones to test out Adorable for her!

Of course I squealed with joy!

You may already have her Little Moments app, and might be wondering what makes Adorable different? Little Moments is ideal for Photo-a-dayers to keep track of the daily prompts. There's a broad range of text and artwork for everyday things designed by a group of contributors. Adorable is specifically for pregnancy, announcements, bellies, babies, birthdays and milestones through the first five years. You can find something beautiful for almost every occasion. Of course there are pretty filters and frames. Even the logo is damn adorable.

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5 SA Biz Ladies you need to LOVE! #shopsmall

Something I'm really passionate about here at Teacher Types is providing a platform for local, small biz ladies to share their stories, products and services with my audience. I only ever share those that I absolutely LOVE myself and would recommend to friends. I think the #shopsmall & #shoplocal movement is really taking off as are market days, Instagram stores and handmade goodies.

So today, please allow me to introduce some special people...
{not sponsored just sharing the love}

Starting off with Renee from Mama & Bump

I was so lucky to have Renee take care of me throughout my pregnancy - when you feel like a whale and struggle to get comfortable, having a massage might be the only chance you get to relax. And it made such a difference to my sleep and how I felt overall. Renee is specially trained in pregnancy massage, but you don't have to be pregnant to see her! Based in Highbury, she has the cutest little shop with gorgeous gifts and goodies for mama's and little ones. Check out my beautiful teething necklace and teething toy for the little man.

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Baby, Toddler and Little Ones | Milestone Photography Inspo

OMG - this little darling is now THREE!

Photography by Jade Kearns Photography

Over Miss Ms' first year, I was lucky enough to have a professional photographer take a pic of her each month, as part of a 'photo a month' package. In the above collage, you can see her grow month by month in a clockwise direction, and the centre photo was for her 1st birthday. Notice the cute little headbands she wore?!? Not a chance she'd wear one these days!

I love the idea of monthly or milestone photography, and that's what today's post is all about. I had a go at taking my own over Miss M's first year (well, hubby usually took them), and I think they turned out beautifully.

In this first collage, I chose my favourite outfit of that month to dress her in, and sat her on the rocking chair in her nursery. Having the same background and position is really important for consistency with monthly photographs to have a nice finished product. And I like reflecting back and remembering the cute little outfits (again - these days everything has to be plain! Nothing fancy for my little fuss pot!).

In the collage below, you'll notice she's wearing the same outfit. I just bought the same white onsie and pink pants in every size (they were nice and cheap from Target and she wore them all the time). She's lying in her cot, again for consistency.

I'm planning to take monthly photos of Little Man as well (have set a permanent reminder in my phone for the 30th of each month!). I'm using these gorgeous milestone blocks {gifted from Finlee and Me}.

I love how versatile they are - you can go by weeks, months, years and/or grade. Just imagine the final product if you took a photo every week/month/year and grade until they finished school! Have a look below at some of our pics...

{Pom Pom rug thanks to Ecoviva Australia - gifted}

Another fabulous product from Finlee and Me are these Monthly Onsies! How cute are they?

Monthly Onsies - from Finlee and Me. Shop here

We got these milestone cards from our Little Lettie Box and they are another great option for your photo-a-month... as well as the toddler milestone cards below to remember those special first achievements.

Turquoise Design - Milestone Cards

Life is Peachy - Toddler Milestone Cards

I was given this gorgeous Baby Book by my Mother & Sister in law and it has month by month pages for baby's first year. What a perfect place for me to include Little Man's monthly photos!

Baby Book from Finlee and Me - Shop here

If you are into apps - Baby Pics App is a great one for monthly and milestone photography.

It's so important to capture and treasure your children growing up - and I hope you've found some useful ideas in this post... I think it's good to just give it ago, try some different things and then at the end of the year go with the ones you like best, because it's hard to visualise the finished product.

People are always saying that it's harder to keep up with all these photos when you have your second child - but I'm trying hard because I've seen the lovely result from Miss M's first year photos :)

Happy snapping!

Lauren

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The launch of Working Mums Collective Magazine!

...and I've been featured!

My friend Sarah from Working Mums Collective has embarked on an exciting new chapter this year combining her blogging passion with her graphic design expertise to produce a quarterly online magazine especially designed and written for working mums. 

 

And do you recognise the lovely face on the cover?!? It's another blogger friend of mine Hayley Pearson from Adelady (who I've also had the pleasure of interviewing here). What a stunner she is!

In my article I wrote about my pregnancy journey, my experience of still working at 36 weeks, plus having 2 year old Miss M to chase after... I compared this pregnancy to last, I shared my difficulties, but also took a moment to reflect on the things I'm grateful for.

Would love you to read it! To get a copy - you can sign up here...

Thanks for the opportunity Sarah! xx

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My pregnancy story & the arrival of our Little Man

Hi everyone! Well I'm here blogging on my phone from my hospital bed - couldn't help myself. So hopefully it turns out ok. I am now a proud mother of two and we have become a family of four. We are so smitten with our newest addition...

I just wanted to share a few dot points of my pregnancy journey and how it all turned out. I'm not one for birth stories, so will keep that part brief :)

- 15th April 2015 = Last drinks! My favourite Rockford Alicante Rose to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

- I was 8 weeks along on my 32nd birthday & Mother's Day

- In June I went to Melbourne for a girls weekend to see The Lion King with my wonderful inlaws.

- We announced our exciting news on the 30th of June at 12 weeks.

- We found out that our baby was a boy at 20 weeks (well 95% sure we were told).

- I was craving anything and everything sweet pretty much the whole pregnancy.

- At 25 weeks I was privileged to be bridesmaid for a dear friends wedding. It was an epic weekend but so much fun!

- We started to get Miss M prepared for the big changes and helped her reach her 'big girl' milestones, no dummy, big girl bed & toilet trained in October school holidays.

- Miss M started making sense of it all and gave me some tips on how to handle 2 kids! 

- As I started to get bigger and the toddler toys all over the floor became increasingly difficult to pick up - enter 'the claw' = best ever pregnancy life hack!

- We got the nursery ready with hot air balloons & clouds. I love it! And Miss M loves playing in there, she puts her toys to bed in the cot and tells us 'sshhh'!

- I had a follow up scan at 32 weeks to check for low lying placenta (which had moved). And at this scan there was no doubt that he was definitely a boy!

- I absolutely loved (and was very lucky to be) a friends 'guinea pig' as she studied pregnancy massage and practised on me.

- I worked up until 36 weeks, made it to the end of the school year. So relieved to have made it.

- Our little man was very wriggly & active on the inside and was measuring quite big like his big sister.

- Arrival date! 30th of December 2015 (38 weeks + 4 days). Elective caeserean (for several reasons). Miss M ended up being a caeserean after a long labour that wasn't progressing, so we decided to schedule one this time around. Same OB as last time and the same hospital. Being taken care of so well.

- His stats... 3.9 kg, 53 cm length and 37 cm head circumference.

- All went very well and smoothly. We had a lovely, calm, relaxed and happy day 1 with him. I soaked up every moment.

- Miss M was amazing with him when she visited, wanted to cuddle him non stop and was so gentle. She gave him a special gift she had chosen, and told him that he would have his own bedroom at our house. My heart melted!

And there you go. I've fallen in love all over again.

Happy new year everyone!! Wherever you may be. I've heard we may even be able to see some fireworks from our hospital room balcony :)

Lauren xx

We choose to keep our children's names private in this blog and ever expanding and overwhelming Internet world. So we'll just call him 'Little Man'.

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Preparing for Baby #2 {What we Plan to do Differently}

I started this blog when Miss M was 9 months old, so I didn't write anything about my pregnancy or her early days, weeks and months... so this time around it's nice to keep a record and share what's going on. I've got 3 "Preparing for Baby #2" post ideas my the good old drafts folder, and in particular I'm writing about what's different this time around.

Most parents are a tad more relaxed when it comes to second and subsequent pregnancies/babies, as we've been through it all before. Still a very exciting time - but different in so many ways. For me this time around, I'm still working at 34 weeks, when with Miss M (simply due to the school year and her due date being early March) I finished work/school at 28 weeks and had 12 weeks of absolutely luxury before she arrived - I watched the ENTIRE series of Greys Anatomy, went swimming regularly, took our dog Archer for daily walks, went shopping all the time and was always getting new baby girl outfits... A friend said to me "enjoy this time because you will never have it again!" and boy was she right.

So this brings me to the point of todays post - what will I (correction - we) will do differently with our second baby compared to Miss M. There's nothing too major, in general we're really happy with the parenting choices we made, I quickly learnt to ignore all the books and conflicting baby advice and followed my mummy intuition and do what we felt best for her and our family. But there's always such a thing as hindsight, so here are some things we think we'll do differently this time around.

Use a Capsule

With a toddler and a newborn a capsule just makes good sense to me (especially if it fits onto your pram). We just used a rear facing car seat with Miss M, and I could never get the car - cot transfer to happen, so quite often I would stay in the car to let her sleep once we got home, or hold her while she completed her nap. Don't think that's easy to achieve with a toddler in tow. The pram we used with Miss M didn't have a capsule either, just the bassinet attachment. So this time we've gone with the Steelcraft Agile + capsule we borrowed from my sister in law. Miss M hasn't liked or used a pram in quite sometime, so we're not going with the double, but thought the little skateboard attachment might be handy!

Choose a Child Care Centre closer to home

This is a tricky one we're deliberating with at the moment. When Miss M started Child Care, it was all a bit last minute due to my mum getting sick, so we just needed to get her in somewhere, and a colleague highly recommended the centre near school (30 mins from home). I've been so so happy with it, the high level or care and professionalism, how the staff take a genuine interest in Miss M and their learning programmes. I just can't spending a total of 2 hours driving there for her to keep going one or two days a week (I should also mention many friends with 2 kids have recommended keeping the older child in Child Care when the younger one comes along - it benefits everyone!). So now we are looking at a different centre closer to home (found one - walking distance, the most beautiful outdoor play area I have ever seen), but this means another change and transition for Miss M. Wish we had of had her in this centre from the beginning...

Embrace Online Shopping

I've tried online shopping before, but think that I'll give it another go when James goes back to work after we have the baby. Just another way to (hopefully) make our lives easier. Don't get me wrong, I still want to be able to get out of the house with the littlies, but I'm sure there are more exciting outings we can do other than the grocery shopping. 

Don't skim/skip the Chapter about Caesareans in the baby books

I made this mistake last time. I think in the back of our minds, first time expecting mother's know that a caesarean may just be how it all turns out in the end, but I didn't really study the books to know what to expect if this was the case (which it was). Thankfully, at the antenatal classes we had to 'act out' the whole caesarean operation - eg which medical people would be there, where they would be standing around you, what they may say to you and what you might hear. This certainly helped! I only wish someone had warned me about the agonising pain when you laugh post op!

Make the most of drive through coffee

The day Maccas announced that their Mc Cafe coffee was coming to drive throughs it made my day. If I can grab my coffee on the go without getting both kids out of the car = winning! And there's so many of these popping up around the place - aside from Maccas and On the Run servos.

Stress Less

Overall I think this is the main one. Second time parents have been through it all before, and even though all babies are different, you at least have some idea of what you're doing and it's not as scary and overwhelming. As I mentioned in my intro, I quickly learnt that the baby books weren't really helping me - and then when I read this article about all the conflicting advice from baby books and parenting experts (which I wish I had read before having her!) it really hit home!

Another awesome article about Baby #1 vs Baby #2 is from my friend Hayley over at Adelady. Good for a laugh and so true!

And in this article I came across - a mum shares why she won't keep a list of things she'll do differently with baby number two. A different take on my post, but still a good read.

So whether you're a first time mum looking for advice, a second time mum getting ready like me I hope you've found this post useful. If you're a mum who's finished having kids and you have any advice about the change from one child to two - I'd love to hear!

Lauren x

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Baby News!

Well you've probably already heard this news if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, but we are excited to announce that we are expecting baby number two in the new year. 

I'm actually 13 weeks, this photo was taken last week. I used the A Beautiful Mess app to add the text overlay (they have a fantastic pregnancy/first year bundle as an extra that you can purchase). I did weekly photos with Miss M but was in my pjs for all of them, so wasn't quite comfortable to share them with the world. This time around though I'll be sure I look presentable!

This time I grew a lot quicker and popped out almost straight away. I think I was only at 8 weeks when already my jeans didn't fit and I was trying to wear baggy cardigans to cover up until the news went public. I've been so fortunate with both pregnancies that I haven't had any morning sickness, just that good old first trimester fatigue where you're sitting on the couch at 8pm and you can barely keep your eyes open. So grateful Miss M is a good sleeper!

She's very exciting about mummy having a baby. For quite a while there she thought that everyone with a bit of a 'belly' had a baby in there, so I'm just trying to delicately explain that one to her. She's convinced that it will be a girl (because mummy is a girl she says, and daddy can have the boy baby). At the moment she's getting right into role play with her teddies and dollies, dressing them up so they're warm, changing their nappies, putting them to bed and rocking them to sleep. It really is lovely, and I think she'll be a good big sister. She'll be nearly 3 when baby number two arrives.

We found out Miss M was a girl at 20 weeks and we will do again this time around. I'm looking forward to sorting out all her baby clothes either to use again or donate. I can't wait to set up another nursery (and I'll be sure to share in here on the blog). Miss M has decided that she'd like to keep her bedroom.

Over the past few months I've come across some fantastic pregnancy and parenting articles, but couldn't share them until now as I didn't want to give anything away!

Sarah from Working Mums Collective wrote a touching and honest article about when a family changes from one child to two. Definitely worth a read if you like me are pregnant with your second. Click here.

Liv (another Adeladian blogger I've recently discovered) from Eenie Meenie Miney Mum wrote about why she didn't find out the gender of her babies. She (like me) sounds like a super organised type, so I found it really interesting to read her point of view.

Jess from The New Mum Blog is also pregnant with her second and wrote about how her first pregnancy is different to her second. I am living this reality right now! It is so different when you have a toddler to look after as well as looking after yourself.

Lauren from Canberra Mummy is another fellow blogger pregnant with her second, and has a fantastic ebook 'OMG I'm Pregnant! Now What?' which I would highly recommend to first time mums.

Wholesome Mummy Life wrote a great post about why it's easier (or in some cases harder) to have two children compared to one. A great read to prepare me for what's to come.

I can't help myself but start thinking about baby names - The Huffinton Post recently shared the top baby names for 2015.

And finally, I had a good laugh while scrolling through this one on Buzzfeed. 23 things no one tells you about having a second kid.

So please follow along with my pregnancy journey as baby grows from a lime to a lemon to an apple to an avocado etc... It's exciting to be sharing it on the blog this time around. I'll be sure to share the gender in a fun way and give you a glimpse into the new nursery. Thank you all for your kind words of congratulations over on FB and insta.

Much love,
Lauren xx

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