Age: 9 Months (Wk 42)

After having my laser eye surgery eleven days ago and having to stop my exercise regime, I turned into a binge eating elephant in sixty seconds flat. I ate cakes, biscuits, takeouts, cream eggs, cookies and my regular massive portion sizes despite doing no exercise at all; but boy oh boy wasn’t it a blast! Now that my eyes have healed enough for my surgeon to give me the green flag to start working out again, I am like a woman reborn; I have been super fit this week and am back on track with a bang. I’ve changed my yeasty, greasy and sugar fuelled diet for salad, brown rice and home made soups and I’m back on the Insanity workout of interval training for forty-five minutes to an hour six days per week. My abs hid behind a wall of fat after last weeks indulgence and now I’m gradually coaxing them back and promising to never leave them ever again.

I would have normally weighed myself and shown you a body shot with it being Monday, however as I’m doing the Insanity workout for 60 days I’m bulking up on muscle mass so my weight is changing daily and it’s not an accurate indication of my weight loss so I will continue charting my progress when I finish the course.

Luca tried to devilishly sway me over to the dark side last night, despite all of my hard work and determination to keep fit when he broke open a pack of custard cream biscuits as we snuggled on the sofa to watch a DVD. My mouth was salivating and my jaw began chewing with expectation as I sat on my hands and turned my head to face the wall. Custard creams are obviously the biscuit that dreams are made of and one of my many weaknesses in life. But I found the greatest sense of willpower and determination and despite him dancing the biscuits in front of my face and wafting their sweet custardy smell below my nose I said no and ate a bowl of cabbage and chilli soup I’d made instead. I told him “Luca my body is a temple, keep your 65-calories-per-biscuit to yourself please I’m trying to watch the film.” And THAT’S how it’s done ladies! Next step: saying no to chocolate and world domination.

Millie has finished her half term week off of school and unfortunately I’ve been healing from my laser eye surgery which has been great timing during the holidays so that I could heal and rest; but it hasn’t been so great for us going out and doing nice things. So we got some fairy things to make at home and cupcake books for yummy treats to bake and have been building pretty little things all week.

Millie chose to make a heart shaped wishing wand because she decided that she now likes fairies, casting magical spells and pretty gardens, and it was the best use of a toilet roll tube and a roll of kitchen foil ever! She’s so creative and thoughtful. And in a few days it will be Millie’s sixth month at big school and she’s a well honoured student now; she carries her book bag with pride and lines her shiny black school shoes up in the hall ready for each morning. It’s strange to think that my baby is now a young lady but it’s wonderful to watch at the same time.

Gabriele is getting ever more adventurous as he approaches ten months of age. He has five teeth now – three up top and two at the bottom, he eats Sunday roast dinners with us and loves bread, he jibber jabbers constantly and has started to sleep for longer at night only waking up once or maybe twice for a nappy change or milk since we decided to let him self soothe himself in his cot. It was a hard choice to make at first because no parent likes to see their child crying and in distress, but at the age of nine months he has always woken several times a night every night for no reason at all before crying and then falling asleep five or ten minutes later. His insane sleep routine every night destroyed us and left us like walking zombies which finally forced our decision to allow him to self soothe. The first night we tried it in the week he slept all the way through from 8pm to 9am without waking at all and we were jumping for joy by the morning when we realised he’d cracked it. But the following night he woke twice and the night after just once for a poopie nappy. So as we’re still new to letting him settle himself we’re prepared for a few up and down days but know that this is a sure fire way to enforce a routine on Gabriele considering he never naturally fell into one of his own.

For those that don’t know what self-soothing is, it’s allowing a baby to remain alone at night to put themselves to sleep instead of going to them when they cry and wake up at ridiculous hours. We have a baby camera directly above Gabriele’s cot and have made sure that there are no dangerous toys or cables nearby for him to reach or chew on so that when we put him to bed we can watch him on the camera from downstairs. His sleep times throughout the day are normally quite rigid as he typically naps from 09:30 til around 10:00 in the morning and again from 14:30 til 15:00 in the afternoon. It’s the evening/night time routine that he’s never mastered as sometimes he can fall asleep by 19:00 and only nap meaning that he has bags of energy to stay up all night and other times he’ll sleep for three or four hours and then continue to wake screaming and crying several times throughout the night. So now when he falls asleep we make sure that he is well fed and changed and take him up to his cot in the dark with the camera on and if he wakes within the first three or four hours we watch him on the camera to make sure he’s ok but we don’t go to him. He cries and whines without tears for about ten minutes before realising that we’re not coming and then snuggles up and goes back to sleep. We’ve found if he wakes after midnight and cries it’s normally because his dinner has made him poo his nappy so we change him and give him a few ounces of milk to keep him going until morning as he’s such a big eater, and thankfully he now goes through until morning.

My eyes are healing nicely now that it is eleven days since my laser eye surgery and two weeks since my eyebrows were tattoo’d. I’ve been to four checkups at Optimax for my eyes since I’ve had them done which was mainly to test how my vision had improved and keep track of my eye-drop medication to ensure no infections were caught in the first few days. I still wear my dark glasses when I go outside to protect my eyes from dust, wind and bright sunlight and I apply eye-drop medication every four hours during the day, but that will all stop by the end of this week. In four days time I can finally wear makeup again as the risk of it inflaming my eyes is greatly reduced although I’ll have to avoid mascara for the next month but I never wear it anyway.

I have my second and final semi-permanent eyebrow tattoo appointment in a couple of weeks time and the scabs from them healing are now almost off and the colour has lightened as I was advised it would. I have to confess even though I went in for natural looking eyebrows, during the healing process when they scabbed and went black I did kind of like the vampire-esque look of thick black brows and I may struggle to not request the second colour application to be darker than it is now! But with summer ever approaching I don’t want my eyebrows to look too dark against my hair as everything seems to get lighter and brighter over the hot months so maybe I’ll save my thick black brows for the mystery and fur-lined throws of winter?

I really feel the need to book a beach holiday for August somewhere tropical and gorgeous, but I’ve no idea how baby Gabriele will cope with flying and a hotter climate and it wouldn’t be the same if we went without the children. Perhaps a nice cabin in an activity resort in France would be better? I’ll have to get looking, after I hide my bank card first! Eee!