Playparks

When I looked at photos taken over the last week, my word of the week was obvious, playparks. We seem to have spent a lot of time at various playparks this week and it is lovely to look back at so many pictures of smiling children. It is also nice to have a happy word of the week agan last week after feeling everything was so relentless last week.

Last friday we met up with my best Mummy friends and all 8 of our children and it was so so much fun. We had a great time together and the kids had a great time together too. The weather is lovely and warm but not too hot and it was an afternoon full of smiles.

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Saturday I had some time off with a good friend of mine in Cambridge which I so so needed and enjoyed so that was a day without playparks.

Sunday our little loonies needed to get out of the house by 9am so we headed to a nearby playpark as a family to get out of the house and let the kids burn off some steam! We had a lovely time all together and was much nicer to see the kids smiles rather than getting wound up with them bouncing off the walls at home.

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Monkey loved going down the slide with Daddy & LM and tried just aboout every seating combination possible!

playpark 1

Monday I did visit a playpark on my morning walk with my neighbour (again around 9am) but didn’t take any photos.

Tuesday I met up with one of my Mmmy friends again at our local country park for some fun at not 1, but 2 different playparks! Yet more photos of smily happy kids having fun playing together, and mucking about ‘saving’ each other on the field too!

playpark 2

We have needed tog et out of the house quite a lot this week as the builders are back and our new room (which was the garage) is nearly finished, and the utility and new garage are taking shape too! I will share a post more about that another day but oh the dust and the noise this week! We had a few days off from Playpark visits though as the rain set in on Tuesday afternoon and it was very, very wet… Lots of splashing in puddles instead 🙂

splashing in puddles

Then this morning with the sun out again (albeit a bit chillier) it was time for another 9am playpark visit!

playpark 3

How has your week been?

The Reading ResidenceCountry Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall
Life Unexpected

Fun with a cardboard box

It never fails to amaze me that with kids, most of the time, simple things are the best. Last week I got a new toy – a lovely big food processor. This meant Monkey als got a new toy – a lovely big cardboard box. He had so much fun in there and just made me laugh so many times throughout the day.

To start with it was a den – I love his cheeky face poking out

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Then I laughed out loud to see his feet poking out the top when it was a bed

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It was a bus for a while

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Then he had so much fun making it a den again this time with just a blanket over the top and playing peepo.20150819_175559

Especially when the box then fell over with him inside!20150819_175659

Then LM had to get in on the action – she wasn’t quite as sure about being covered with the blanket

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Then it became a climbing frame (it was getting a bit squished by this point)

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And finall a great hiding place (can you see his fingers on the top? The only clue I had to where he was lol!)

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Kids and cardboard boxes eh?

#ToddlerApprovedTuesday

Little Miss at 10 months

LM 10 mths oldOur little lady is 10 months old and boy is her development just whizzing now. She seems to master a new skill every couple of days at the most and is growing up in front of our eyes with her little personality blossoming too.

As always I just think she is so gorge!

So, what is she up to? Well in my last post about her I said how she was starting to crawl, and well now she is seriously crawling! Although she would still prefer to try and walk she will crawl to get where she wants to go. Monkey wasn’t a crawler at all so I do love having a crawly baby – though I do feel like I need to have eyes in the back of my head as she can really go some distance.

I also need to have eyes in the back of my head as she has now well and truly mastered the pulling herself up on, oh, just about anything she can grab. LM pulling up

Combined with the crawling and we find her in some interesting positions. Including trying desperately to grab my laptop (which she adores bashing)…

20150822_071922I have actually just moved my laptop out of reach here as she was already grabbing the side of the screen when I found her and legged it over. I have previously found her fallen forward onto the toy box having half pulled the laptop off the table. I really should find a new home for it I think!!

Another day, after playing with banging some bowls and tins I nipped off and came back to find her climbing on one of the bowls… cheeky madam.20150818_142108

Then Daddy sent me this shot when I was having some time “off” with a friend. He was helping Monkey use the loo and came back to find the madam in the kitchen playing with hoover and brush… start them cleaning young eh? 🙂IMG-20150822-WA0001

So she is everywhere getting into everything now, aaargh! Though I do love it when I find she has pottered off somewhere and is investigating a toy box or examining a book or something. We do have to be very careful about what is within reach though!LM pottering

She is so controlled now at not only getting up but also gently lowering herself back down to the floor…. that is unless she wants to practice her latest skill which is standing unaided. She only started that this week but she is getting so so stable now and honestly she is so proud of herself! She can spend ages pulling herself up, standing with no hands, falling on her bottom and repeating, all with a huge grin on her face. So cute 🙂LM standing

There has been some nasty face-plants though so she had a teeny cut on her lip and a bruise on her forehead poor thing. Feels horrible to not quite catch her in time but I guess she has to learn and she is definitely getting better at falling backwards rather than forwards now!

She now has 7 teeth (love her toothy grin) so we have started the teeth cleaning routine. She hated it at first but after a couple of days she got used to it and is now really good at having her teeth cleaned. We made up a little teeth clean song when Monkey was little which we now sing to both of them which I think does help.

We need to clean her teeth though now as she eats basically what we eat all of the time and I am so pleased to say that at the moment there is very little she doesn’t like, and she adores fruit, unlike her fussy big brother. Her breakfast every morning is strawberries and blueberries and maybe some mini shredded wheats or something similar and she tucks in like mad. Mealtimes are such a messy affair though so I am constantly washing all in one bibs and scrubbing the highchair and floor to get all of the crumbs, rice, bits of fruit, etc. Let me tell you standing barefoot on a half eaten blueberry is not a nice feeling!!

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think her reflux is improving (touch wood, fingers crossed, etc, etc.) We have been giving her ranitidine religously since her last flare up and she has been fine… but as we were running out we thought before getting more from the drs that it was worth seeing how she got on without it for a few days. It has been a few days and so far so good so we will see how she gets on over the next week or so. We do have a little left still if we need it but it would be nice if we don’t need to medicate her really!

Her sleep has been all over the place lately and I think it may just be because of all the development and the fact she just wants to crawl and climb and stand constantly. She is such a fidget pants that I think she really struggles to calm down at nap time. I had about a week of her only napping once a day and was convinced she was dropping a nap… but then we had a terrible terrible night  on Thursday with her screaming constantly, which is very unlike her as she has always slept well at bedtime. It took hubs well over an hour of singing and rocking her to sleep before she would stop fidgeting and waking herself up. Since then she has been a bit more normal with naps, still a bit fussy but she is napping better. So we shall see what happens this week I think!

What else is she up to? She now waves a little and it is so cute though she seems a bit surprised by what her hand is doing! Another little development is that she is really aware of people now. She very much wants Mummy all the time and if someone else is walking her round then she will make a beeline for me. But she also gets upset when other people leave. She balls if we stand and watch Daddy leave in the morning, and when Nanny & Pops took monkey out she did the same! So cute bless her she just wants to be involved with whats going on and clearly doesn’t want to be left behind!

Other firsts this month have been her first ride in the supermarket trolley – which she adores and it does make life easier in the supermarket not having to hold a basket and push a buggy – and her first proper shoes! Now she is standing and walking so much whenever we go anywhere I thought it was time for some proper supportive cruiser shoes rather than just pretty flimsy ones. She has been barefoot most of the summer as she hates wearing shoes and tends to kick them off (we have lots of single shoes now as she manages to kick them off without me noticing and I can never find them again!!) but she is going to have to get used to it and her new ones are at least a little harder to kick off.firsts

She is such a smily, happy little lady in general and is a joy to be around. She adores playing peepo, going on the swing, being tickled and loves watching her brother laugh – just seeing him chuckle is enough to give her the giggles. She melts our hearts every day with her gorgeous smile and the way she beams at us when she is happy. She can of course be hard work but she really is so lovely and I love watching her grow into a little person.

LM 10 mths collage

This year is going very very fast all of a sudden!

MaternityMondaysEthans Escapades

Loving our Garden

I have never been much of a gardener, and in all honesty have been pretty uninterested in becoming a gardener. That is, until we renovated our garden. Suddenly I really enjoy it! I don’t like weeding and I still don’t really know what I am doing but I do enjoy choosing plants and seeing them grow. Luckily hubs knows a bit more about gardening than I do so it is very much a joint effort.

Renovating our back garden was such a good decision as we spend a lot of time out there and it really is looking so lovely out there now. We just bought some beautiful new plants to inject some more colour and texture. We like to try and mix up things that flower at different times of year and are different colours to keep a nice bit of variety. (You can see the before and afters of the renovation here.)

garden aug 2015

Monkey loves the garden and he loves gardening too. He is great at watering the garden, with the hose or a watering can and he just loves to dig. We do have to stop him digging up plants as he can be a bit overenthusisastic sometimes! He loves helping though and is always happy to push bits around in his wheelbarrow too, little love!

Monkey Gardening

I’m also really proud of him as lately he has gotten so inquisitive with bugs and beasties that we find when gardening. He so so loved finding some wiggly worms when we were digging at the weekend.  just love seeing how happy he is to touch and explore them. He has picked up woodlice, ants, ladybirds and all sorts too.Monkey and worm

I’m proud of myself too as I hate all these things and don’t like touching them but I try really hard not to share my fear with him. I really don’t want him to learn to be scared of things because they scare me, if that makes sense.

We really enjoy all of our time outside together and hope we can continue to for many years, and get LM involved too when we are less concerned about her eating mud and worms :).

Do you like gardening with your kids?

My word of the week is gardening.

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays CornwallMy Bored ToddlerThe Reading ResidenceMammasaurus

Paper Plate Lion Face

Monkey is a bit in love with The Lion king at the moment and actually that may be a bit of an understatement. He watched it so many times on holiday (usually on car journeys) that he is now parroting whole scenes at us.

“I stuffed, I ate like a pig – you are a pig” and “Look! Stamede! in the norge!” (Stampede in the gorge) His favourite is Scar (should we be worried?)”oh come on uncle scarf” “oh no no no no” “oh you are a naughty boy” and of course, he likes to roar, a lot! Another really funny phrase he has picked up on is where Timoon says a bug tastes like a pecan. He now randomly tells us his food tastes like “peacorn” lol. Not sure what that is supposed to taste like!

I do love The Lion King and we did encourage him to watch it (who doesn’t like singing along with Hakuna Matata??) but there is a limit to how many times I can watch it. What I did feel we could do instead though was make some Paper Plate Lions. I’ve never made any paper plate animals before and thought this was a good place to start, and capitalise on his current love of lions. (I know from previous loves that they never last long – in fact I think he may already be moving on to Monsters Inc!)

WP_20150713_005The paper plates we were using were pretty shiny, so I mixed some PVA glue in with the paint and thought that would help it stick. Sadly it didn’t and I assume I didn’t get the quantities right? I have never tried to paint on plasticky surfaces before and think I would try it with more glue next time! Anyway because that really wasn’t working I thought we should paint the back of one of the paper plates too – which worked much better.

While the paint was drying a little Monkey helped me cut some strips of orange card out for the main – he adores practising with his scissors and it is good for him to learn how to do it properly. We did have some that ended up being interesting shapes – but I have long ago learned that my perfectionist self has no real place with toddler/pre-school crafts! I then curled the strips of card a little with the scissors (think curling ribbon) which I think worked quite well.

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I did try and stick some strips onto the plasticky plates too but they really refused to stick – but on the papery side it worked much better.

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We had to leave them for a day to dry. I debated cutting out holes for eyes to make it a mask but Monkey said no when I suggested it. I asked if he wanted to draw eyes but he asked to stick some on. As we had run out of googly eyes I said I would draw them – at which point Monkey insisted I draw grumpy eyes and a grumpy face – not a smily face! (I said he likes Scar the best!!). He helped glue those on, made sure I made some ears, and drew on some cheeks (:)) and ouila! One Paper Plate Lion 🙂

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Monkey adores it and loves running around making it roar at everyone! Just great fun 🙂

Do your kids like being lions? Do they come out with any funny phrases from films/tv?

#ToddlerApprovedTuesday
Kidz ActivitiesLittle Hearts, Big Love
Mamavsteacher

Our Dorset Holiday

You may have seen that we have just had a very lovely holiday in Dorset. We have been house sitting for just over a week for some friends of ours who live in a very cute, quaint little country cottage. It is picture postcard pretty but also a little run down with cracks in walls and damp ceilings and TONNES of spiders!

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It is also in the most gorgeous setting, on a farm in the middle of the countryside. The farmer’s (massive) house is nearby along with a few holiday cottages they rent out but otherwise it is just surrounded by fields, trees and rolling hills.

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Being on a farm there are lots of animals around too, cows, horses, sheep, dogs, a”barn cat” who is a mouser that lives in the barn. She’s also about 1010 yrs old, very gentle and so good with the kiddies! The little ones have loved stroking her and even when LM has gotten a little over excited and pulled her fur (eek) she has barely flinched! Lovely pussy cat.

animals

We had the real extremes of weather, from blazing sun to torrential rain and we obviously had some highs and lows. Some highs of the trip include gorgeously sunny days out to the coast and on steam railways to castles (posts about those to follow) and actually a wonderful day at Stonehenge which was in parts disastrous but also lucky and just good fun, despite being a very wet day! More of that to come in another post.

We did have some lows too, including the most disastrous trip to the beach ever. I was on my own with the kids while hubs got his head down to do some work and as the forecast was for sun headed to the beach. It rained a little on the way but hoped we were headed to blue sky. I had researched and found what I thought was a sandy beach not too far away. Then we arrived and saw this mountain of stones at the edge of a completely stony beach.

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Walked around a little and could find no sandy beach so at the lowest point I could find proceeded to make a few trips up and down the hill of stones to get me, 3 bags, buggy, both kids and a wind shield onto the beach. Only to be faced with an evem steeper decline on the other side of the hill towards the sea.

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LM decided she didn’t like the noise of the sea so I didn’t want to get any closer, though it was blimmin windy at the top of the hill! I started to set up the wind shield,and the heavens (which had been darkening but I had been ignoring in my task of just getting up the hill) opened. So we ended up huddled behind the windshield, both LM and Monkey crying because they were cold and wet,trying to eat a picnic. Then the rain stopped, a few more trips back down the hill later, more screaming from the kiddies,and I packed them back in the car. Disaster!! Talk about best laid plans!! My feet hurt so much after all the running up and down the stones barefoot (my flip flops made it even worse so had to go with bare feet) and that was by far the low point of the week.

Some of the best bits though were seeing my kiddies having a whale of a time on the playpark on the farm (which had an awesome boat swing that I want to get for our swing at home) and just in running around the cottage garden.

 

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Oh and watching Monkey jumping in muddy puddles on the very wet days!

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Lots of happy times and though hubs was working a lot of the time we also got a lot of time together as a family which has been very lovely. By the end I both didn’t want to leave and get back to normality, but was also looking forward to getting home and our creature comforts, family and friends.

And then the fun began...

Best of Worst

Dancing Monkey, age 3

Earlier in the year Monkey and his Auntie Ericha went to see a couple of shows at our local theatre, one being the Northern Ballet’s “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” As he enjoyed it so much, for his 3rd birthday Auntie Ericha bought Monkey vouchers for some dancing classes. At the moment Daddy goes with him and it is safe to say that Monkey loves it. He is forever doing “good toes, naughty toes” (good toes being pointed and naughty toes not) which I remember doing at ballet as a little girl! He is also dancing round the hosue a lot more since starting the classes and I thought I would share an example of his amazing dancing with you.

Shot in portrait on my phone but you get the idea… I love how he does different dances according to the tempo of the music! Watch this space, he’ll soon be on the stage 😉

Do your kids love to dance?

Not My Year OffBest of WorstEthans Escapades

Monkey says at age 3

Monkey is at such a cute age at the moment… I think I say that about every age but he really is and is coming out with the cutest phrases! Here are some of our favourite little comments I would like to record for posterity.

Monkey age 3

Walking around our local area he likes to comment on just about everything we see, which thankfully brings smiles from passers by in general. Some examples:

Oh look he’s running
That was a very friendly doggy
I don’t think that doggy will eat me
That was a very friendly man

He also likes to say hello to everyone too which is very sweet, and then tells me “I said hello.”

“I said” is one of my biggest bugbears at the moment actually. I ask him a question or tell him not to do something and am met with “ok, I said OK!” in response, which make sme very cross. I heard you the first time and please do not shout at me! I am not sure where he picks that up from but he is such a sponge at the moment and have to be so careful.

My parents accidentally shouted “oh Bugger” when they went the wrong way in the car recently and of course he repeated it – but I very impressed as they have managed to convince him that they said “bother” and he recently announced “Pops says bother!” so phew to that!

He has also picked up a few things from films that I am not such a fan of. He points and tells us what to do and when we have challenged him on it he says “Woody points” as in Toy Story… hmmm. He also pretends to spit and makes a “ting” noise!! Which we are not exactly keen on and I think that came from Toy Story too….. funny how he manages to pick up bad habits from a seemingly innocent film!

It’s not all bad though, he is a big fan of the Disney Cars film and loves Lightning McQueen & Mater, and comes out with the funniest things, including “I am Focus” which is what Lightning McQueen says. In London a few weeks ago we were trying to get him to go quickly down the stairs to the tube and he shouted “I am focus” making us chuckle a lot bless him!

Our cheeky Monkey would be great at the Yes, No game at the moment as he rarely says yes. We ask him questions and he answers with I did, I have, I don’t, I were, I haven’t etc. Its so funny bless him!

He is getting more and more correct in his pronunciations lately and sounding less and les toddler… But there are still a few which we hope hang around.
“Nockynurs” (Binoculars) and “Serbatry” (Conservatory) for example!

We also adore his version of The Grand Old Duke of York. He is always singing something or other and love hearing his own versions of things!

Oh the grand old dukey north
He had some thousand men
He march them up the top of the hill
And march them down again
And when they up eh up
And when they down they down
And when they up they up they up
And when they down they down

He’s a very loving little boy and always tells us how much he loves us. He has also started saying “I love you soo much” when he is a bit sad or when he wants something. Learning emotional blackmail young! And if he gets told off he does the same. Yes I love you too darling but you must be more careful not to kick your sister in the head!!

I’m probably forgetting a few lovely phrases but that’s enough for now and in the words of Monkey “Goodbye Darlings”

Little Hearts, Big LoveEthans Escapades

Making Music together – 8mths and 3yrs old

I love it when my two siblings play together. Most of the time they don’t, the play alongside each other or Monkey plays while LM watches adoringly or let’s face it, gets in the way! Pulling up train tracks to chew, pulling her big brother’s hair, crashing into him in the walker. Babies and toddlers are rarely on the same page when it comes to playing. But, just occasionally, they are. Usually because Monkey decides he wants in on whatever it is that LM is up to!

That is what happened recently. LM was in a bit of a grump and to give us a moments peace (?? probably not the best word as you will see) I set her up with a good old fashioned activity. Making “music” with cake tins, wooden spoons and some jangly spoons. She loved it, and as soon as Monkey saw/her what she was up to he just had to join in!

makng musicSuch a simple easy activity, that took very little involvement from me, but kept them both happy for ages! Evn if it was seriously noisy!!

#ToddlerApprovedTuesday
My Bored Toddler

Making Egg Box Caterpillars and Butterfly Painting

When I knew that we were soon headed to London to see the Sensational Butterflies exhibition I knew I wanted to do some related crafting with Monkey in preparation. So I googled a few things and got some lovely inspiration from Twitter (thanks guys!) and then gave Monkey the option of making butterflies or caterpillars. He chose caterpillars so I showed him a few pictures online of different ones we could make – finger painting, pom poms etc, but he chose the ones made from egg boxes and tissue paper.

So I duly cut up an egg box (we have the big long 12 egg boxes and I’m not sure they are the best ones for the job as they were slightly one-sided caterpillars but it sufficed anyway) and some tissue paper, dug out some googly eyes from the bottom of the craft draw and we set off doing Monkey’s favourite thing – gluing and sticking!!

caterpillars 1

As mentioned I don’t think our egg boxes are the best ones so we tried making them two different ways – first with a long caterpillar but with holes down one side, and second with a short one as I folded the row in half and then taped it together. I’m not sure which is best or if it makes much difference actually, Monkey loved making both!

caterpillars 2

The first I chose the colours (note The Very Hungry Caterpillar theme) but the second one was Monkey’s choice and it had to be all red (his favourite colour).

egg box caterpillars

Googly eyes were stuck on, and apparently they needed to have a smily face too, and I wasn’t sure what to use so I just grabbed a couple of pipe cleaners, snipped short lengths to be bent into shape and we glued them on, which I don’t think looks too bad really!

We did then go on to do a bit of butterfly craft too, in Nanny’s birthday card. It was the first time we had done the traditional, paint one side and fold together, butterfly painting, but actually he did really well with it! He painted in the lines I told him too and splodged some lovely patterns on the right hand side and it looked lovely after folding toegther. then of course we had to do some more gluing and sticking with sequins and give it a smily face using some glitter glue 🙂

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Mamavsteacher#ToddlerApprovedTuesday