Anxiety

Hey guys,

Hope you have all had a good week. I received quite a few questions from my latest blog post - home sick about whether or not I suffer with anxiety as well so I thought what better way to answer your questions than to write it in a new post.

So the answer to the most asked question, do I suffer with anxiety? Yes I suffer with anxiety. Some days are good days and some are bad.

Do I suffer with panic attacks? Sometimes, I don't always have one whenever im feeling anxious but I have had  some, I normally have one when I am in a situation that I feel fearful in. For example, every single dentist trip I have had for the past 4 years I have without a doubt had a panic attack. Some people don't know what triggers their panic attacks so im glad I know how to deal with mine and when they are going to happen.

What makes me anxious? I am somebody who suffers from very low self confidence so when I am in a situation where I don't know anybody or having to go somewhere new that I don't know and have never been to before, I will start worrying and will start to feel very anxious, very quickly. For example, I booked a trip to Paris for Hayden's 18th birthday present and because I didn't know the area or where i was i became ill with worry and spent most of it in my room until Hayden could convince me that it was safe to go outside and that he had worked out all of our routes.

What helps me with my anxiety? I find that if I research into the place im visiting and can work out how to get home or to where im staying then im okay and to help with my social anxiety it is best for me to be with someone that knows me well enough to know that I have anxiety and will talk me through it all if I start to become to panicked or too anxious. If im alone and having to face a new place or a social situation then I try to take 5 minutes and remember why im doing what im doing.

How long have I had it? To be completely honest, I think I have always had it but just never knew what it was. I've never been a confident person and have a fear of meeting new people and going to new places but I think its probably been worse for me since I was 14. I moved away from everything and everyone I knew.

I hope this post helps some of you know a bit more about me and answered some of your questions.

Take care 

Megan x

Home sick

Hey guys,

Bit of a different post today, I just wanted to touch on a subject that I have always struggled with and am going through at the moment. Feeling homesick.

So as you all know I moved house around 3 weeks ago, we decided to take the plunge and move away from our families. Only about 30 minutes away but we are both very close to our families so it was a big decision for us to make. I've always struggled with being away from home ever since I was younger and I still struggle with it now, even if I am going on a holiday for two weeks by the second week I have to have made contact with my mum. I think its just a home comfort thing.

I'm not the most confident of people which is mainly down to my own anxiety issues and I find it really hard to make new friends and to socialise so I get lonely quite quickly. I haven't actually done much to make friends since i've moved here but I have met the neighbours who are so lovely and I am planning on taking Albie to some local toddler groups where hopefully I can give myself a kick up the butt and say hello to some new people.

With feeling homesick, I tend to start hating where I am very very quickly and that is not a good thing. About 2 weeks after we moved I in I felt so down in the dumps and just couldn't bring myself to go out in the village or anything, but  found it really helpful to talk to Hayden and my mum. Both of them know me better than I know myself and told me I would end up feeling like this and both have helped me feel so much more at ease with moving here. I've been out exploring with Hayden and Albie just so I can learn some places and how to get home, haha and my mum has become a regular visitor which I love!

My advice to any of you who suffer with feeling homesick is always try to talk to someone, don't feel it alone and bottle it up otherwise you just dig yourself a deeper hole and find it harder to get out of. There are so many different solutions to helping you overcome it and to make you feel more at home and if you talk to someone about it, you can work some out together.

I am slowly starting to feel more at home now and I couldn't of done it without support from my family and friends so I am so grateful to them for helping me try to overcome this and to settle in to my new home and area.

Do any of you suffer from homesickness or any other types of anxiety?
Let me know.

Take care
Megan x

How we first met

Hey guys,

So what with it being valentines day this Sunday, I thought I would do an extra little post for you all about how me and Hayden first met.

It all started in January 2010, my mum moved to Crawley, a small town in West Sussex and I decided to move with her. It took me six weeks to be accepted into a new school up here and half way through my exams it felt like forever. I finally started school on March 8th and I met Hayden in our geography class on the 15th March.

Some pictures of us when we first got together

I asked my friend who he was and then added him on Facebook, good old social networking. We started talking over MSN and went on some dates and officially started dating on the 3rd of April. So i had known Hayden just over two weeks and now look at us.

Hayden hasn't changed, he's always been so determined and always works so hard to achieve everything he puts his mind to. He has the funniest sense of humour and he never gets grumpy haha. I'm so grateful to be able to call him my husband and for him to be the father to my child.

I cant believe that almost 6 years on we have moved out, got married and have our beautiful little boy. I genuinely feel so lucky to be where i am and to live the life I do.

Some more recent photos of us

How did you meet your partner/husband/wife?
Let me know in the comments.

Take care
Megan x

Life update

Hey guys,

I'm so sorry I haven't uploaded a new post in a while, i've been so busy. If you couldn't tell from my last post, i've moved house.

What a stressful experience that was! I'm not the most organised person when it comes to writing things down on my calendar and ill only remember that I have a hospital appointment the day I am supposed to be there but with my house I am very organised. Everything has a set place and if its not there I start to freak out. I just like to feel stable and comfortable and living with all my stuff in boxes it takes me right of out my comfort zone.

Anyway, so yes i've moved house. We are nowhere near settled and it was stressful, the house needs so much work to the point, Hayden has been working 5 days a week at his job and then working all weekend decorating the house. We still haven't completely unpacked but its starting to feel a bit more like home now although me and Albie haven't stayed a full weekend here yet as we moved in on a Saturday and last weekend we stayed at my mums so we didn't get in the way of Hayden and his manly tools.

With all of this going on and caring for a child who has most definitely hit terrible twos and working, I have just been so exhausted by the time Albie is in bed that I have literally just been showering and going to bed at near enough the same time as him. But I have been planning some really exciting blog posts for the not so distant future and I cant wait for you guys to read them. I am trying to fully relax now that I feel I am finally getting some of my energy back, I promise there will be a new blog post every week!

Some of the exciting blog posts coming up are, a whole series of blog posts of before and afters of my new house and a special guest will be featuring on here very soon who I cant wait for you all to meet.

Hope this post has answered all your questions as to where i have been, it wont happen again.

Take care,
Megan x

5 tips for moving house

Hey guys,

So if you follow me on twitter, you will know that I am moving house this weekend and how stressed ive been about it. I'm one of those people that hate being disorganised and unsettled so the fact my entire flat is turned completely upside down and that there are boxes everywhere is really start to get to me but i know soon it will all be over and I cant wait. Anyway, enough ranting I thought I would do a post on some tips for moving house and things that have come in really useful for me and helped with my stress levels.

Tip number 1: Labels.

We brought some labels from eBay which you put on the boxes to remember what's in them and what rooms they need to go in so that we don't have random kitchen boxes in our bedroom haha. They have actually come in really handy as they also come with content stickers so you can write a short description of what's in the box. You can find the stickers here, they are quite cheap for how practical they are so I really do recommend them.

Tip number 2: Boxes.

We have so much furniture and to buy the amount of boxes we needed would work out so expensive so we (as in we, I mean Hayden) went into our local supermarkets and shops and asked if we could have any of their boxes. Sounds so cheap but it has saved us so much money and we got so many boxes and its all for free. Moving house is such an expensive time so anyway you can save money always comes in useful.

Tip number 3: Bubble wrap.

I have a love hate relationship with this stuff. It is definitely  needed for the more valuable and expensive things in our home but its just so time consuming and I hate the feel of it. It can work out so expensive too but we managed to get 100 metres for £16.75 which seems quite expensive but i would much rather pay that than have to pay out for a new television or sofa.

Tip number 4: Enlist help.

What has really helped us the most is the help we have received from our family and friends, they have been so supportive and we genuinely couldn't be more grateful. I've got a terrible back at the moment so I cant do to much heavy lifting so it has come in so helpful that we have a lot of help around us. I know not everyone is fortunate enough to have a lot of family and friends around to help them but if you do, try to enlist as many as people you can. It makes the whole thing a lot less stressful.

Tip number 5: Get a babysitter.

Now some of you wont have small children but we do and i love Albie being around but the poor soul has no idea what is going on. All his toys and his comforts and feeling secure and stable have disappeared so our family members have been looking after Albie some evenings so that we can pack without him being under our toes and asking what we are doing or throwing a random toy car or motorbike into the bathroom box (he's tried). Albies auntie is 7 months pregnant so she has kindly offered to babysit Albie for the big move and he will be staying at my mums that night so we can get his room all ready for him for when he comes home so that its not too daunting for him to come to a new house and a new room without any of his stuff unpacked.


Hope this helps some of you when you're moving house, good luck!

Megan x

Joie Gemm car seat review.

Hey everyone,

Albies safety when we are out and about is always my main priority and always has been from the moment we welcomed him into this world. Trying to find the perfect pram and car seat took up a lot of time and a lot of research as i didnt want to just buy anything. I wanted him to feel comfortable, be safe and practical at the same time.

After doing all this research Hayden and i finally decided on the Joie Gemm 0+ car seat which lasts up to 13kg which is around 12-15 months. For practical reasons this car seat ticked all the boxes, it was light weight, it fits onto our pram using adaptors so that if he was to fall asleep in the car we could just pop the car seat out the car and on to the pram without disturbing him. It is compatible with most pushchairs if you use the maxi cosi adaptors (we did) and also fits on to the Joie pushchairs without the need for any adaptors.

The best part about this car seat is its safety features. It comes with a 5 point safety harness which meant Albie would be securely strapped in and has an adjustable strap so you can adjust it with just one pull. Safe and convenient. Top marks. This car seat has side impact technology to give ultimate protection if were to happen. It has also undergone a lot of strict safety testing which really did help us make our decision.

The car seat has a lot of padding but not to much that your child is squashed. It has a newborn cushion which is perfect to stop their little necks from being moved to much. It also has padded harness and buckle which means that they wont cause any rubbing on their neck. Albie was very comfortable in his car seat and i kind of wish they made adult seats that were just as comfy.

All parts of the car seat are machine washable which came in so handy when we had nappy explosions or any vomiting.

Overall, i am so glad we chose this car seat for Albie and strongly recommend it to all our friends and family. You can purchase this car seat from mothercare, kiddicare, joie and other baby retailers.

Thankyou so much for reading.
Speak soon
Megan x

Albies is 2!

Hey guys, sorry ive been so absent. As you can tell from the title its been a certain little mr's birthday this week and the build up has been hectic.

It only feels like yesterday that i was moaning about how 9 months of pregnancy was dragging and how much i hated it and i wanted Albie born and now hes 2? Really? How? It feels like hes been in my life forever but in the same way i cant believe how quick the past two years have gone. Hes gone from being an 8lb 11oz baby to a walking, talking toddler.

So i havent really updated any of you guys for a while on how Albies doing, whats he doing or anything like that so i thought his second birthday would be a great time to do just that.

Routine:
Albie has always had a routine, its forever changing and just when i feel like we have mastered one something changes. His day starts at around 7-8am and then in the morning i like to take him out to soft play or a toddler group or something to try and burn some of his energy. He has his lunch quite early around 11.30-11.45 so that he has finished by 12.15 ready to go down for a 2-3 hour nap. Depending on what time he wakes from his nap sometimes we will go for a walk to feed the ducks or to the park or something before Hayden gets home from work ready for dinner around 5. We then have family time after dinner before bath, milk and bed by 7pm. Albie has always loved his sleep and i am so grateful because i really do too. You know when you have new baby and they say 'make sure you sleep when the baby does' well i still do that haha.

Development:
Albies personality in the past year has really grown. He is talking so much now to the point he will have a full on conversation with us and tell us about his day when we ask him. His favourite word at the moment is 'no'. Everything we ask him is no until he thinks about what we asked him.He has very recently started to get a sense of humour, he has started to do things to make other people laugh and will giggle away at the most silliest of things before telling us how funny it is which makes my heart melt.  He is also now fully potty trained during the day and has been from around 19 months, we have the odd accident every now and then but its bound to happen.

Relationships:
Albie has always had a very strong family unit around him and hes really starting to form bonds with other family members now which is so cute to see. He now knows what all of his aunts and uncles are called and what his grandparents are known by and when we drive past their houses he knows who lives there which truly baffles me as to how he can remember stuff. Lately, hes been really enjoying playing together with other little people his age and we have some he sees weekly and is always asking about when we are going to see them next.

The past two years have completley whizzed by and my baby is now a little boy with a cheeky personality coming along, before i know it he is going to be a stroppy teenager. I love watching him grow and seeing him learn something new daily. Being a parent truly changes your view on life and the things that used to matter before you became a parent dont and the things that didnt matter, do.

Do any of you have children of this age? Id love to hear or read about them, leave a comment in the comments section below and ill be sure to check your blogs out.

Speak soon,
Megan x