Toby is eight months old!

eight months old

I know I say this every month but I can’t believe another month has gone already. I suppose February was a particularly short month but even so it only seems like a couple of weeks since I was writing that Toby was seven months old! But there’s nothing we can do, time is definitely moving forwards and Toby is now eight months old!

I don’t actually know what Toby weighs at the moment as we haven’t been to the clinic since the beginning of last month, but he’s definitely getting bigger. He’s been wearing 9-12 month sleepsuits and vests for a while now (in fact he’s almost grown out of some of them!) and I have just had a wardrobe reshuffle and moved him into all his 9-12 month clothes as well.

We still haven’t got any crawling but Toby can definitely move pretty much wherever he wants to just by rolling, spinning and shuffling backwards! He’s got doing a full 360 spin on his tummy down to a fine art now. He also gets up on his hands and knees on his own but just hasn’t quite figured out how to move his arms and legs so he moves forwards yet. He is much more stable sitting up now too – we’ve set up a little corner of cushions on his play mat so he can sit safely without falling backwards and banging his head (which has happened a couple of times when I’ve left him sitting unsupported – bad mummy!).

The two teeth which were just starting to make an appearance last month are now well and truly here although they haven’t been joined by any more yet. You can definitely see the top teeth and the other bottom ones sitting under the gum waiting to come through now though.

Despite only having two teeth Toby is doing really well on solids now. He has two meals a day with milk in between – usually porridge, toast or yogurt and cereal for breakfast and then for dinner he has whatever we had the night before. So far he’s had meatballs and pasta, chicken curry and rice, mince and tatties, Spanish omelette and last week he had his first pancake too! He eats anything we give him really – I can’t actually think of anything he has refused to eat so far. We are slowly finding our own way of weaning that is best for us – basically we are following the babyled weaning principal of Toby just eating the same food as us, but if he needs help to eat then we help him, whether that is by spoon feeding, or just helping him put things in his mouth. Having said that he is getting much better at picking things up and putting them in his mouth himself now – he surprised me yesterday by being able to pick up single Cheerios and get them in his mouth!

As far as sleep goes Toby is still a little star really! He has two naps a day, usually about an hour and a half to two hours each, and then bedtime is a 6 pm. He always goes to sleep on his own with no bother and most of the time he sleeps through until around 8 am, although maybe once a week he will wake up once for a feed during the night. All in all though his sleeping is great and we don’t have any complaints!

The last thing I want to mention in this month’s update is something I’ve already written about, but this month we took Toby on the swings at the park for the first time! He didn’t seem to enjoy it too much the first time but I think he was just a bit confused by the whole thing and there were lots of other bigger children running around being noisy. Today I took him to another, smaller park at the top of our road and as you can see from the photos I think he had a lot more fun this time! Let’s just hope spring has really sprung and we can get out even more in the lovely sunshine.

eight months old on the swing

Living Arrows 10/52

I can’t believe we are ten weeks into 2014 already! Where on earth is the time going? Toby is getting bigger and more active every day. I snapped this weeks Living Arrows picture whilst trying to take some photos of a new nappy we’re trying out. I put Toby down facing away from me on the rug and within half a second he had spun round on his tummy and was pushing up trying to get his little baby face in the picture! With all the spinning and wriggling he does it’s like he’s break dancing sometimes.

baby face

living arrows

Swing (The Ordinary Moments #17)

We’ve been talking about taking Toby to the park for a go on the swings for a few weeks now but either we haven’t had the time, or the weather has been horrible, but yesterday the sun was shining so we bundled him up and headed to one of our many local parks.

On the swing

I’m not sure Toby was entirely convinced about his first go on the swing – I’m sure he’ll work out soon enough that it’s supposed to be fun!

Daddy swing

We did manage to catch this little smile though…
Smile on the swing

I’m sure that going to the park will soon turn into an ordinary moment for us. I can’t wait until the weather gets a bit better, and Toby gets a bit bigger, so we can enjoy trips to the park. There are loads of little play parks all round the different bits of housing estates round here and we’ve also got a huge park in town that has got a lovely cafe and what looks like an awesome playground (although I haven’t tried it myself!).

And if you fancy a bit of video, here’s Toby in action!

mummy daddy me

Going self-hosted // Why should I do it?

Why should I go self-hosted?

So you’ve started a blog, you’re using WordPress or Blogger and everything seems to be going well. Then you notice other bloggers talking about going self-hosted – sounds like something you should be getting in on. But what exactly does being self-hosted mean, and why would you want to do it?

I’ve recently moved Toby Goes Bananas to be self-hosted and I’ve had quite a few other bloggers asking me what the benefits are and whether they need to do it too. And then there are people who have taken the plunge and gone self-hosted but then have found themselves floundering in an unknown sea of lost followers, confusing WordPress plugins and nothing is quite how it was before. I’m no technical blog-guru but I know enough to find my way around so I thought I would write a few posts about the self-hosting process and hopefully I can help out a few other bloggers along the way.

First up then:

What exactly does being self-hosted mean?

If you have a blog on WordPress or Blogger (or any other blogging platform) you are using a bit of their web space for free. They are hosting your blog for you. When you sign up for either of these you will be given a blog address, a URL, which is your blog name followed by .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. There’s nothing wrong with either of these blogging platforms but you might decide that the URL is a bit long and you want something a bit more personal. You’ve then got two options. Either you can keep using the bit of internet that you’ve already got for free and just get your own domain name (more on that later) or you can pay a hosting company to give you your own bit of webspace, with your own domain name, and your blog will become self-hosted. Being self-hosted basically means you are paying to rent space on the internet for your blog and therefore you have complete control over what you do with it.

Which brings us to:

Why do I want to be self-hosted?

That depends.

Blogger

If you use Blogger and are happy with how it works then you probably don’t need to be self-hosted. There isn’t much that Blogger doesn’t do. You may want to use your own domain name to make the blog more personal. You can buy a domain name from a number of domain registrars. The easiest thing is to do a Google search for ‘buy domain name’ and see what comes up. It costs from a couple of pounds up to about five pounds for a domain name per year depending what you want. One tip is to choose something relatively short and easy to remember. It makes sense to have the same domain name as your blog name, if this isn’t available then try adding ‘blog’ to the end of it. You can then change your .blogspot.com domain name to your own custom one and Blogger doesn’t charge for this.

WordPress

If you have a blog on WordPress.com then there are some things you can’t do. If you don’t want to do any of these things then again, you probably don’t need to move your blog to be self-hosted. A few of the things that you can’t do on WordPress.com are; have any advertising, use javascript (which means you can host giveaways using Rafflecopter or host a linky), you also have very limited options for customising the look of your blog although there are lots of themes available for free or to buy. If you are happy without these features but want your own domain name then again you can do this with WordPress.com but in addition to buying your domain name WordPress also charge $13 a year to use your own domain name. You can also buy upgrades from WordPress which allow you to customise your theme but to be honest, if you are going down that road then it will work out cheaper in the long run to make the move to a self-hosted blog.

The advantages of a self-hosted WordPress blog

If you choose a self-hosted blog then the majority of people choose to use WordPress. When you have set up your hosting package then you can install WordPress on to your new site. If you’ve been using WordPress.com previously you’ll find that initially things look very similar. The main advantages of a self-hosted WordPress blog is that it is entirely customisable. You can still use free themes or buy one and you then have free reign to edit the theme to get the layout and design you want (or pay someone else to do it for you!). The big difference though is the ability to add additional features to your blog using plugins. I’m going to do a blog post devoted to plugins but basically they are add-ons which allow you to do pretty much anything you want from SEO (more on that later too), adding related posts, allowing readers to Pin images directly from your blog to Pinterest and literally hundreds of other things. If you want to boost traffic to your site then going self-hosted and using some of the available plugins can really help.

What does it cost?

This is the big question I suppose, and may ultimately be the deciding factor in whether or not you choose to go self-hosted. If blogging is just a hobby to you and you aren’t really interested in increasing traffic or working with brands then your free Blogger or WordPress blog will probably do you just fine. However, if you want to make your blog a bit more ‘professional’ to make it more appealing to brands and grow your readership then going self-hosted may well be worth it. If you don’t already have your own domain name then you are looking at up to £5 a year to register your domain (and don’t forget to renew it when the time comes or it could be snapped up and used by someone else!) and then anything from £15 to £100 per year for a hosting package. For a standard blog you probably only need a fairly basic package – mine costs £34.99 per year. If you have had your .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com blog address for a while you might also want to pay for readers to be automatically redirected to the new blog, at least for a while. I already had this set up with WordPress – again it costs $13 a year and it means if anyone types my old address or clicks on an old link it will automatically send them to the new blog. You don’t have to do this though – you could just put a post on your old blog (unless you actually delete it, it will still be there on the internet) and let people find their own way to the new one.

 

If you are a blogger considering going self-hosted then hopefully this information will help you make the decision. If you have any other questions that I haven’t covered then please do leave me a comment or tweet me on @tobygoesbananas and I’ll do my best to answer. And if you’ve decided to go ahead and make the move then you can find out more in my other posts on going self hosted:

Going self-hosted – How do I do it?

Going self-hosted – A guide to WordPress plugins for the newly self-hosted

Waiting for Daddy (The Ordinary Moments #16)

Every week day, at quarter past five, I put Toby in the car and we go and pick his dad up from the station. Usually if we’re early we wait in the car for the train to get in, and Toby usually starts getting a bit squirmy if we have to wait for more than a few minutes. So yesterday as the last of the day’s sun was still in the sky, and as a part of my new ‘operation get more fresh air’ we got out of the car, put Toby in the buggy and went down to the platform to wait for the train.

waiting for daddy

Toby was by parts excited and somewhat bemused to be somewhere new, and outside, particularly at the end of the day.

Waiting for daddy

He also seemed to enjoy watching the gulls that were flying overhead. I was happy to get these pictures while we were waiting for daddy. And daddy was happy that we were there on the platform to meet him off the train.

Waiting for Daddy and birdwatching

mummy daddy me

Follow on Bloglovin

Living Arrows 9/52

It’s week nine of the I Heart Snapping Living Arrows project and I’ve not got too much to say about this week’s picture…apart from, just look at him! He’s too cute.

Baby portrait photo

Toby is usually very amenable to having his photo taken – he must be so used to it now, we’ve been doing it almost every day since he was born. I love his expression on this next photo though – it’s just as if he’s saying ‘that’s enough now mum!’. He’s got so much personality these days and I love when I manage to capture it on camera.

Pouting baby photo

living arrows

I AM normal

On Saturday night I wrote a very honest and emotional post. I was amazed and somewhat overwhelmed from the response I got, both from people who took the time to comment on the post and those who tweeted me. It seems that I’m not alone, and that what I’m feeling is entirely normal. So many people said ‘I could have written this myself’. It was wonderful to get messages of support from people I have never met, who only know me through reading this blog (and support from the people who do know me too.)

And do you know what? I feel so much better now. I’m not saying this is some miraculous recovery and I’m suddenly never going to feel sad, or tired, or overwhelmed again. But simply writing about how I was feeling has helped me to feel better about everything. And it helped me to talk to my husband about it all when he got home yesterday afternoon too.

It’s so strange, because when I’m thinking rationally, and feeling OK about things it’s hard to remember why I was crying before. It’s hard even to remember how awful I felt. And when I feel OK, it’s hard to imagine that the tears will come again. I’m sure they will though, at some point, and I’m still planning on going to see my GP to talk about things. But after talking to my husband we have come up with a few other plans to try and improve things too.

We all agree that everything is better when Toby and I get out somewhere every day, so that’s going to be something we try and do from now on. (And today, when the sun was shining, and the first flowers of spring are starting to show, everything feels a lot less desperate somehow!). I’m also going to go back to my amateur dramatics group when they start rehearsing for their new show soon. Dancing and musicals is something I’ve been involved in for years, but haven’t done since I got pregnant. Going back will give me something to do for myself, I’ll get to enjoy time with my friends and forget about being a mum for a couple of hours every week. I’ve got a solo trip to London to look forward to at the end of this month too – a whole night and day away!

So anyway, I just wanted to write a quick update and to say thank you so much to everyone who commented, tweeted, or just read my other post and I hope it’s maybe helped someone else feel a bit about things too.

Am I normal?

Some days are fine. Hell, some weeks are fine. And then there are days like today where I start crying and I don’t know why and I don’t know how to stop.

I love my baby. We wanted him. I wanted him. I still do. But I hate myself because I find looking after him, day after day, so hard. The days when we have things to do, places to go, those days aren’t too bad. But when we’re at home, and it’s just me and him, I count down the minutes until it’s nap time again, or bed time. And Toby isn’t even any trouble. He’s such a good boy. He hardly cries, he goes to sleep on his own whenever I put him in his cot. So why is it so god damn hard?

I’m on my own this weekend, which makes it worse. The weekend is my respite, it’s what gives me the strength to make it through another week. But this weekend my husband has gone to stay with his parents, because soon they are moving away from the town he grew up in, the house he grew up in, the place where his friends still live. And when I broke down in tears again last week he said he wouldn’t go. He said he would stay at home and help me. But I told him to go. I told him we’d be fine. I never want to be the wife whose husband isn’t allowed to go anywhere. Isn’t allowed to go out with his friends and have fun. And he needs a break too. He commutes for three hours a day to a job he doesn’t even like very much so that he can provide for us, and then at the weekends he often looks after our baby so I can have a break.

I’ve tried to talk to my husband about it. About the crying. But he wants me to explain what’s wrong so he can find a way to fix it. What’s wrong? I don’t know what’s wrong. Nothing is wrong. Everything is wrong. I’m tired. I’m sad. I miss me. I miss who I was before. I feel like I’m suffocating, drowning in the sea of responsibility. Knowing that it’s going to be years and years before I have any kind of freedom again.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to feel like this any more. I love my baby. I want to be happy and enjoy the time I spend with him. Maybe it will be better when I go back to work. But then I feel guilty for looking forward to the day when I don’t have to look after my own child all day, every day. That isn’t right. I should want to be with him. I do want to be with him. But I’m not coping. Not now. Not how it is now.

I don’t know if I should publish this. Who will it help? My husband will feel bad that he went away. That he doesn’t know how to help me. And that I’m telling the internet about my problems instead of talking to him. But I hate how he looks at me when I try and talk to him. Like I’m some fragile vase that he’s scared to break. I don’t want to be her. The woman who cries all the time. The woman who can’t look after her baby. I don’t want to be her. I want to be me again. The me I used to be was strong, and capable, and could cope with things. I don’t want to be the woman with post-natal depression.

Is that what this is? It is, isn’t it.