Yup we have been doing more Christmas Toddler Crafts! This time involving pinecones and a load of glitter! Monkey loves a good nature walk, collecting all the bits and bobs and bringing them home ( I am regularly having to clear out a load of leaves and twigs from the conservatory!).
A while ago we collected some lovely pinecones with the idea of doing something fun with them around Christmas. Another lovely simple toddler craft… but with the potential of getting a little messy!
Our Christmas crafting has begun! Monkey is hugely excited about Christmas this year, he loves seeing all the decorations in the shops and was running round one shopping centre shouting “Merry Christmas” to anyone and everyone!
I wanted to harness this excitement so we have been making some lovely Snowman Christmas Decorations.
Monkey has always loved his arts and craft activities, and now he is that little bit older, his abilities and what he can achieve (with some help) have come on leaps and bounds. There are so many activities I want to try with him and so many things I want to make with him, but with a newborn who has colic, reflux and a possible allergy, my hands are sadly tied a bit more than I would like them to be and I am struggling to balance both of their needs. Thankfully Daddy loves doing things with Monkey and this weekend he stepped in to have a go at some Monkey & Daddy crafting :).
Friends and family have been very generous since Little Miss’s arrival and she has been given some very lovely presents. One of which was this cute little fairy princess Peppa Pig toy. Monkey helped me open the parcel and he took quite a shine to it himself and particularly liked her crown and magic wand, so I decided maybe we could make a crown and magic wand for Monkey to wear!
This year is flying by and it is really not long til Christmas now, eek! Have you started buying presents yet? I have been quite organised and bought a lot of presents already. In January we started putting a bit of money away every month to budget for it, and it has been lovely this year to have a pot ready to use. No paying it off in January, woohoo!
Anyway I digress, Monkey is really excited about Christmas this year. He is loving all of the decorations in the shops and I know we are going to have so much fun with him! So I am really excited to see his excitement on Christmas day and while I am sure he will be happy with pretty much anything he gets, I think we have come up with some lovely idea for him. So if you are stuck for ideas of what to get a toddler in your life, here are some of the things on Monkey’s Christmas List this year! 🙂
I mentioned in last week’s mini milestones post that Monkey had drawn a smily face for the first time and was really enjoying drawing at the moment.
This has continued and after painting smily faces on leaves he took this a step further. Continue reading
Friday morning, to give me a bit of a break, Daddy took Little Miss to the office with him for a couple of hours in between feeds. At that time of day she is happiest snoozing in the baby carrier so Daddy has become quite the baby wearer! It felt a little weird for her to be away from me for so long but what was really lovely was that I got to have some good quality time one on one with Monkey. Daddy has spent most of his paternity leave focussing on Monkey and they have got even closer lately and while Monkey has seemed ok with me being with the baby most of the time, I have wanted to get back to doing some nice things with him.
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I haven’t done a mini milestones post in a while and there are a few lovely Monkey things that are making me dead proud at the moment so I thought it was time I did. It seems that he has grown up and his development has sped up rapidly just in the last couple of weeks since the arrival of his baby sister. It is incredible and he really is very fun to be around at the moment.
This may seem like a slightly braggy post (Look how amazing my toddler is) but it’s mainly to keep a record of what he can do, when, and if I sound a bit braggy it’s because I am actually pretty amazed by his development, and loving every minute of it.
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It was Daddy’s birthday last week and for a while I had it in my head that it would be nice for Monkey to make him a special picture that he can take into his office. Monkey loves painting and there are lots of pictures around but I wanted to make one a bit special for his Daddy.
Then I saw a post from Iona at Redpeffer who used masking tape to make a masterpiece with paint, and an idea was struck.
I bought some masking tape and then set about taping a message onto a piece of paper with the idea that I could remove the tape after Monkey had had his fun with the paint. ( We tried something similar with wax crayons and watercolour paints a while back which wasn’t particularly successful!)
With the recent arrival of our newest family member, Little Miss, there have been some big changes in Monkey’s world. He is now a big brother!
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