Heaven on Saturdaymorning

A well made cinnamon coffee with milkfoam and a slice of freshly baked bananabread... (thanks Jen, for the recipe you gave me about 9 years ago; I substituted 1 cup of flour for whole wheat flour, but the rest is still originally yours!)

Our joys this week

It’s nice to have a bit more peace in the house. Everyone is healthy again, not coughs and snotty noses anymore. Things are going much better between Marc, me and the kids, also thanks to better communication. We can enjoy our lives again!
So, what are the things we’ve been enjoying in the past week:
- Mika had his first fruit- and veggie bites. He likes the taste of most things, but gets tired of the spoon. After 10-15 bites he gets cranky about that spoon being pushed into his mouth. Fortunately he still gets his bottles too. He’ll get used to it soon enough.
- Lara is becoming a real artist; we give her big pieces of empty white paper and with her Nijntje/Miffy felt pens she turns it into colourful artworks. So far she’s made art for our sick neighbour, my mother, her friend Lizzy and one for me. This weekend we will visit some friends and we have a birthday party at a neighbour-girlfriend who turns 4; so two more occasions to surprise with some home made art!
- I finally succeeded in making some gooooood muffins. I know now that leaving out the baking soda is NOT an option… 
- Today we will get our new second hand car; a VW station… Oh how lovely it will be to have more space for groceries, strollers and other junk we like to drive around…
- Mika is slowly learning to sleep through the night. He does wake up every now and then, but often gets back to sleep by himself. Way to go, boy!
- Lara is more and more making up songs and dances; so cute to hear her hum and see her move around…
All in all, it’s been a good week for our little family!

Home made

So, I made my first official homemade baby food again. It’s carrots and applesauce for Mika the coming days. I just gave him some of the carrots and it was a hit; he started squirming if I didn’t give him another spoon soon enough…
Everyone is free to do what he wants, but I don’t like this store bought babyfood. It tastes like nothing and costs 10 times as much as home made food. I’m sure it is healthy enough. They say it doesn’t have preservatives in it or any other stuff to make it taste or look better (can anyone tell me then why the carrots from this store bought food make such worse stains on my baby’s clothes?!).
But anyway, I am a home cooking mom. And from today my second child will have a fresh meal every day, made with love and care.
Since I made a whole batch of carrots and applesauce I freeze it in ice cubes. That way I can take the right portion every day and even mix and match if I or my baby want it to. Because cauliflower without applesauce is not an option… 

Peptalk

….and Mika slept through the night! Yahooo! Maybe it’s coincidence, but I like to believe it’s been my peptalk to him last night. I told him that drinking his bottle and sleeping well is helping him grow and making the coughs go away. And that while it’s dark he should sleep. If he’d wake up and it’s still dark he should just close his eyes again and go back to sleep. I told him he shouldn’t be afraid, since he’s never really alone; Jesus is always near and so are his little cuddles (he has two of the thingies from the picture and likes to keep them near to his face). If he’s lost one of his cuddles, he can call for mommy. But otherwise he can just grab his cuddle and go back to sleep. He looked at me with his big eyes, like in the picture I posted recently and obviously he understood and did what I told him. Hopefully this wasn’t a one night thing…

Update

Thank God (literally) things are settling down a bit over here. Marc has better medicines and is already doing much better. He is more interested in our family again and more at ease with Mika. I also talked about this all with my mom; she sees the problem and promised to drop in a bit more often during my work times to help out Marc.

Mika has been quite sick this past weekend, but is doing much better as well. The poor boy had a fever and was coughing his lungs out. He had a hard time drinking enough, because of the coughing. But he’s getting better by the day, so I hope we can start working on his schedule soon. Those broken nights are really getting me down. And most children his age sleep through the night without a feeding; he does not really need it and should be able to get back to sleep by himself if he wakes up during the night. I still don’t have a very good idea about how to get him on a better schedule, so if anyone can give me the perfect tip… You’ll be my hero forever!

Pretty kiddies

Survival mode

I’m in survival mode. Last week Marc and Lara were sick (flu-kinda symptoms), yesterday Mika started to cough and was feverish. Result; this past week I couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours without having to get up to help one of the kids. It’s kind of a miracle that I’m still standing, without fever, coughs and so on.
Besides that Marc told me during one of those sleep-deprived nights that he has a really hard time with Mika’s crying. Mika isn’t crying a lot, but seems to cry more often en more intense when he’s alone with Marc. I guess it has something to do with Marc’s own mental instability; the little kid feels that his daddy isn’t feeling well and reacts on it. His feeding and day/nighttime schedule is a mess too; we have to change that. But Marc doesn’t seem to be up to doing that on his own and I can’t do much since I’m working most of the time.
I was already frustrated with having to work, while I want to be at home. But with my sick babies and a husband showing post partum depression-signs I’m feeling even more negative about the situation.

Anyway, I have lots of thinking to do to figure this out. Just wanted to write it down to make a start at sorting my thoughts…