Sweetcorn up the nose, oh dear!

I've been off the radar the past week as I had a total melt down and just couldn't cope with anything anymore. Kacie was really getting me down with her constant bad behaviour and lack of sleep and I had enough. We took a trip to our GP last Tuesday and although he couldn't help me with regards to Kacie he could give me something 'to calm you down', great I thought, until I got home. I opened the packet and read the instructions, like I do for all medication being allergic to Penicillin, and on the first line of the leaflet it had 'anti depressant' these words stuck out of the page like a sore thumb, despite being in the same type face as everything else. Was I depressed? I didn't think so, just exhausted! I decided to take them anyway just to see if they made a difference, and who'd have thought it, I feel like a new woman. I feel ashamed to admit this, but I did get angry with Kacie quite quickly, and lost my temper quite often. Now I am calm and collected and my voice has barely been raised since. I can talk to her about things she is doing wrong, and reason. I can honestly say this is now a happy cheery house even with lack of sleep!

So anyway, the title of this blog describes our night last night. Sweetcorn up the nose. I knew it was bound to happen at some point, something getting stuck up Kacie's nose, but didn't think it would be sweetcorn! I started to do the washing up as I was waiting for Kacie to finish eating and all of a sudden there was a moan, not a cry, or a whimper, a moan, something like I'd get if I told her to tidy up. I turned round to find her finger up her nose (no changes there!), I pulled it out and had a look up and wasn't sure if it was a huge boogie but on closer inspection, there it was. I paniced, I don't know why, Kacie didn't seem in any discomfort and carried on eating her sausage and mash. I dashed from one room to the other looking for the phone, mum was bound to know if the local minor injuries unit would be open, being a Sunday, I wasn't sure. It was open, hurray! Off we went (once Kacie had finished eating), we got there and got seen quite quickly which is unusual! The nice lady nurse blew some bubbles and gave her some toys but that didn't stop her getting upset when the nurse went to have a look. We tried to hold her as best we could as the nurse put some tweezers then a hook up her nose, poor little darling! It didn't work anyway and just pushed the sweetcorn further up :-( the nurse rang the ears nose and throat specialist at the hospital and we were advised to go and see her (40 minute drive away, the joys). We held Kacie down once again and with a little bit of suction the doctor managed to get it out, it was the biggest kernal of sweetcorn I think I've ever seen, understatement it is not! I don't think Kacie was fussed either way if it was in or out, she was fine after she got over the ordeal of seeing the doctor with a huge miners light on her head.

The first trip to accident and emergency has occured, let's hope she doesn't follow in my footsteps otherwise we'd be better off buying a bed down there!

Bad day, very bad day.

I have had enough, I had enough a few weeks ago, but today is on a whole new level. When K was still sleeping in her cot she was pretty much the little angel out of our circle of friends, the one that slept in until 10am, was never naughty. That soon changed when the cot-bed transition occurred. She didn't handle it well but after a month she was sleeping reasonably well, then came Christmas time when it all went wrong. Waking up at anywhere between 4:30am and 6am, we are both knackered.

Today the little devil woke up at 4:30am sharp, I had an ok-ish sleep before so the battle to get her back to sleep commenced, I tried everything, her bed, my bed, controlled crying, lying on her bed with her, milk, you name it, I tried it. Would she go back to sleep? No. 6am came and went and I called it a day, we was up for the day from then.

We spent the morning lounging around, and went to my friends for the afternoon. After spending, what seemed, the whole afternoon telling her to leave the dog alone we went to pick up my friends little boy from nursery. They were playing nicely enough, until K followed the 9 month old into the kitchen, cue sudden screams, she bit him, not just any bite, but full blown deep teeth marks, I was mortified. Her hand got tapped and out in the porch she went. We left half an hour later and thankfully the teeth marks had pretty much gone, but I was still feeling so guilty. I just text my friend and she said the bite marks are still there, whether she is saying that to make me feel worse, I don't know, but what I do know is the marks had pretty much gone when we left.

I just don't know what to do anymore, I need a break... a long break. I think her sleep is the thing that's making her so naughty. She can't go even an hour without doing something she isn't supposed to. Everyone just said it was the terrible twos at first, but now it's on a whole different level. We are both sleep deprived and I can't handle it anymore :-( I hate the fact that I get everything, all the tears, tantrums, every minute the devil is awake, so am I. Fair enough it's lovely that I get all the good stuff to myself, but at this moment in time I hate the prick that left me in this situation. I just want help. Serious help. Before things turn even worse.

Sorry for the rant! x

Review - Crayola washable finger paints

Since using these paints in our train making activity yesterday I thought I'd post my review on Crayola Washable Finger Paints.

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I think most children like to get messy with paints, and cleaning up after painting is usually a difficult task with paint all over the child, surfaces and clothes. When I was looking at craft items for my daughter I came across these washable paints from Crayola. They sounded so good, I had to give them a try.

Packaging

Crayola's washable finger paints come in the bright green and yellow typical packaging for all Crayola products. The package is made out of cardboard so it is widely recyclable. There are three tubes of paints in red, blue and yellow. These are the only colours that Crayola do, but as they are the primary colours more colours can be made by mixing the colours.

Paint!

The paint itself, once squeezed out of the tube, has a watery consistency. It isn't much of a problem for us as my daughter just likes getting messy instead of creating a masterpiece, although anything she paints is a masterpiece in my eyes! It does make it hard to create a nice colour if mixing the primary colours to make another as the water based paint just tends to mix the colours to a weak looking shade of the colour you want to achieve. We usually get a horrible purple/brown colour when Kacie is painting!

As the main reason of buying these paints was because they claim to be washable I was looking forward to finishing and seeing if it lived up to its claims. It did, fantastically. I first tried to clean my daughters hands with a wet wipe, and whilst it got the majority of the paint off it didn't get all of it off. But with a little bit of soap it came off easily. To get the paint of the surface of the table I used another wet wipe and it just glided off with ease, no elbow grease was required. Before buying this paint Kacie used to get paint all over her clothes so I bought her an apron, this paint wipes off the apron with ease also.

Another thing I like about these paints is that there is a lot in each tube (147ml) and they have an air tight cap, meaning that the paint can be used again and again without the paint inside the tube drying out between painting activities. The lid is on the bottom of the tube so it's easy to get pretty much all of the paint out with ease.

The paints are recommend for children aged 2+, but with all things these are just guidelines and children younger will be fine with the correct adult supervision. I have been using these paints with my daughter since she was around 10 months old with no problems.

Overall

At around £3.79, I think these are an absolute bargain. Of course you can find basic paint a lot cheaper than this but the washable claims that Crayola make are true, and make cleaning up after messy time a breeze. I would recommend these paints to any young budding artist.

Pros: Do exactly what they say they do! Make clean up time easier.
Cons: Quite pricey compared to some other paints.

5/5 for these paints!



Cardboard car seat box now takes the shape of our very own train!

When my daughter was born she had her first car seat as part of her travel system, then came her forward facing car seat and since I wasn't driving at that point my lovely mum bought a car seat to use in her car for whenever we went out. Now I'm on the road it was time for me to buy mine.

When we got it home this morning K had great delight in playing with the box. She went for her nap and I wondered what we could do this afternoon.A great big white cardboard box, now what can we do with that? It's very almost train like in shape, thats what we will do, make a train!

So when Kacie woke up we got down to work. I'm not the best arty farty kind of mum with craft sessions usually involving a piece of paper and some pencils, crayons or paint, this was starting to look like a challenge!

K hasn't concentrated on anything so hard in her life... other than the TV when In The Night Garden is on! We painted some lights and some steam funnel things and the buffer things and ourselves before it was time to wait for it to dry. It only took a couple of hours which was nice, meaning we could fix it all together before bed time!

And here we have it, the finished article. For a person who isnt the creative type, I think I did quite well coming up with this idea, would even go as far as saying I'm proud! We both had lots of fun making this, and playing with it after, it's a shame no one was here to take pictures of me sitting in a nappy box behind the train while K drove us around ;-)

Money makes the world go round

Money is pretty much the answer to everything. So much so, that I often find myself worrying about money at least once a day, well maybe not worrying, but trying to work out where what money has to go where and for what bill. I can't remember a time when I was actually quite flush and didn't have to think before spending. I think the way I was brought up has a part to play in this. My family were never well off, quite poor in fact. There is one memory that always sticks in my mind and that was going food shopping with my mum and her friend, and a disaster happened at the till...blah de blah, but mums friend ended up paying. I can remember feeling so embarrassed so have vowed never to let things get that bad for me.

That brings me to today, where I budget for each bill, no matter if it's a monthly bill, or quarterly, out of each weeks money that goes into my bank. I passed my driving test and got my first car just before Christmas and need to find a way of saving for car related expenses, tax, MOT, breakdowns and the like. I'm just not sure where the money is going to come from as money is tight as it is! I think that's my cue to definitely give up my energy drink addiction, that would save me almost £50 a month... £50 a month?! I've never actually worked it out before but that is astronomical! I have tried giving up before, many times, but I need the pick me up since my wonderful daughter doesn't sleep, I say she doesn't sleep but of course she does, she just wakes up at stupid o'clock in the morning (4:45am this morning). I am now making another promise, to add to the promise of keeping my blog up to date, I will cut down to 1 (yes, I was drinking multiple a day) energy drink a day until the 10th February. Then... who knows :-)

My friends don't really understand how skint I really am, they often take the children out on days out to different soft play places and various different attractions, they do ask us, but of course, we are skint and wait for money off vouchers in our local paper. I take Kacie on days out even if it isn't with our friends, you don't have to spend money to have a nice day out, unless it's rubbish weather and we stay indoors! The same goes for nights out as well, I've had a grand total of 1 night out on the town since falling pregnant, a far cry from the young single mother stereotype there is. Money, money, money, they just don't understand.

So that brings me to the life I lead today, Zoe the mummy by day, Zoe the moneymaker by night. Survey taker and review writer. I think my friends would think I'm even more old lady like if they knew I did this too!

The first.

Well, after wanting to create a blog for so long, I've finally done it. About time too. I have no idea what I am going to ramble about, but I'm sure I'll find something. I'm not entirely sure why I picked the blog name I did. Young(ish) Single Mother, hardly creative, but it does describe me well. I suppose I better introduce myself.

I'm Zoe, I'm quite young at a mere 23 years old, and I am indeed a single mother, not by my choice but hey, here I am. I'm not a stereotypical young single mum, I didn't get pregnant by a random nobody so I could live off benefits and get my own council flat. That is my situation at the moment though, I wish it wasn't a lot of the time, I'd love to go out and work, but lack of family willing to babysit and the cost of childcare these days, it's not financially beneficial. I'm not 'into' much at the moment, when Kacie isn't keeping me busy I use my time finding ways to make a little extra cash and vouchers to ease the Christmas and birthdays burden and to treat my little princess, I guess you could call that my hobby, I'm sure I'll go into more details at some point.

My daughter, Kacie, is my world. She is 2 years old and although she is definitely going through the (very) terrible two's stage she never fails to make me laugh. I don't get emotional around her, but if I'm feeling down she soon picks me back up again without realising it. She doesn't see her (umm what do I call him?! hardly a daddy!) biological father (yes, that will do), she has never met him. She has never asked about him, but since watching Peppa Pig way too often, I think the whole Daddy Pig is starting to get her mind whizzing. I still haven't figured out what to say when the subject does arise as she is far too young for the truth. But anyway, she isn't missing out on anything, I'm more than enough for her :-)

So yes, that is us, and the first post in my shiny new blog that I've wanted to start since forever. I browny promise to keep it updated ;-)