At the park with Nanny

Wednesdays are normally a day where Monkey spends the day with his Nanny & Pops, but every now and then Pops is at work on a Wednesday. Sometimes those days are just Monkey and Nanny days, but sometimes LM and I join them for a bit of fun, I don’t quite make up for Pops’ absence but it’s nice to spend some time with my Mama too :). Last Wednesday we went to our local country park together for a picnic and playtime, and it was just lovely.

The forecast was for a lovely sunny day, and it certainly started off bright, but then clouded over and turned decidely grey but it didn’t stop us having lots of fun.

park with Nanny

At one point we the only people in one of the play areas so Nanny, who loves a bit of silliness, went on the slide with Monkey, who thought this was brilliant!

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Then I thought LM should have a go on the slide too, purely for her sake you understand 😉

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Just an ordinary day having fun with the littlies and their Nanny who they both adore. It is her 65th Birthday today, so Happy Birthday Nanny/Mum!

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Textured Painting, 35 mths

Monkey loves painting and given a choice it is often a go to activity for him. Most of the time I am happy to let his imagination take the lead but a few weeks ago I thought I would spice some things up and introduce him to the idea of painting with some new textures.

We had fun with bubble wrap..

Bubble wrap painting

cotton wool balls..

cotton wool painting

scrunched up tin foil..

tin foil painting

pipe cleaners..

pipe cleaner painting

and feathers.

feather painting

It was great fun and such a simple activity. Monkey loved seeing the different results for each of the textures and we talked about what they felt like.

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Little Miss at 8 months

LM 8 monthsAnother month has flown by and our little girly really isn’t so little anymore, she is getting bigger by the day and her little personality is really starting to shine too. This has turned out to be quite a long update actually because she is doing more and more all the time!

Our Little Miss is very stable sitting up – when she wants to be. I say that because she quite often dives forward or off to the side to get something (if she sees something, she has to have it, and probably gum it to death) and though she will sometimes right herself, there is sometimes some amusing (naughty mummy) topples and comedy rolls in a fraction of a second. Which do come as a bit of a shock to her, poor thing! She loves standing too and is getting more stable all the time.

She has started moving a little… she was bum shuffling backwards a little bit, especially in the bath and kept moving herself into one of the corners, not sure why? But now she seems to be more focussed on throwing herself forward (thankfully not in the bath)  and spending more time on her tummy. Which is a good thing, who knows, maybe we will have a crawler this time? Though so far if she does move on her tummy she also only moves backwards… or round in circles so far!

LM moving backwards

She loves the mobility she gets in her walker (and it’s always proof to me how much babies are capable of learning) as she goes forward, backwards, sideways and can get herself to any part of the downstairs she wants to, with no input from us anymore. Sometimes she’ll go off down the hall and I think to myself “ooh best go turn her round, just finish this” only to then see her come whizzing back towards me again having performed some multi-point turn at the end of the hall! Genius! She does get frustrated though because she can get to where toys are but can’t pick them up off the floor or wherever and just runs them over… and this makes her grumpy.

In fact we are entering a bit of an age of frustration as she does get quite annoyed with things. For the most part she is very intent with toys and when she is in the right mood she will sit for ages exploring and fiddling with toys and things. But sometimes she gets over excited and really frustrated! Sometimes this manifests itself with loud shouting but a warning sign that she is getting annoyed is a lot of ooh-ing, as she is a real ooh-er which makes me chuckle! Here’s a little video of her chatting and then ooh-ing if you fancy watching some cuteness 🙂

Another thing that has been making her frustrated is her teeth as her 3rd top has now popped through and the 4th is well on it’s way so she now has a little toothy grin with 2 at the bottom and the top 2 starting to show. Very cute but teething seems so cruel on little babies! Far from over yet either :/

We’ve also had more trouble with her reflux this month which is annoying as we had hoped the medicine would be working. Turns out though that we should be giving it 30mins to an hr before food, but neither the Dr or pharmacist told us this, in fact the pharmacist said with meals. Thank goodness for the internet and we are now giving it to her at the right times and have seen a bit of an improvement. Fingers crossed it continues as it’s horrible seeing her in pain!

LM eatingShe loves her food and loves feeding herself so the BLW is going well, but we are still combination feeding as it definitely helps her to get some food in fast while she is exploring and then she doesn’t get quite so frustrated while she figures out how to eat the finger foods!

Moving on from foods, another interesting development this month, is that she has suddenly decided to poo and wee in her nappy. For the first 7 months of life this was not the case as she has always done it when we have changed her but now she is doing it every time in her nappy which is good but has been an adjustment, and we are having to develop our “poo nose” as we don;t always realise when she has pooed yet lol! Sorry if TMI 🙂

In general, when she isn’t in pain or frustrated, she is such a happy and smily little soul and very chatty too which is adorable. She loves people and is a little charmer, grinning and chuckling and reaching for any strangers who happen to be nearby! Love her to bits and hope we settle her reflux down a bit as it’s been affecting her daytime naps a bit too and I could really do with her settling down a little again!

LM collage 8 mths

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My little Fireman

Not a very exciting or deep post this one but I can’t share resisting these cute snaps of my little fireman. He actually started the morning as a pirate, but when we suggested going to the playpark he said he wanted to go as a fireman. He got the costume for his birthday and hadn’t worn it yet, so I thought, why not?

We had great fun at the playpark. We pretended to take water from the round spinney thing up the climbing frame to put out the fire and rescue someone by coming down the slide.

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His trusty squirrel helped him get to the fire quickly of course!

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He is such a sweety in his little costume and I adore his imagination as he grows, he really is a darling.

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Though I am not sure why but whether he is dressed as a pirate of a fireman, he always says “I need to do some digging!” Do firemen dig???

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Shared Bathtime & Silliness, Siblings June 2015

With Little Miss getting older and more fun by the day her relationship with her big brother is really growing. She is now so stable when sitting up which has made a huge amount of difference – especially at bathtime! Sharing bathtime is just one of those childhood experiences isn’t it? Who doesn’t have photos of them with brothers and sisters sharing a bath? It is definitely something we were keen to start with our little siblings now that LM is reaching an age where they can have some fun together.

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Sometimes they play seperately but LM just gazes at her brother in adoration the whole time.

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She also loves splashing like mad (which gets both them and us soaking wet) and then looking to her brother for approval, which is just so cute!

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I am looking forward to lots more bathtime fun with the two of them over the next few years!

There’s lots of other fun times now that LM is more and more engaging and is desperate to interact with her brother. Sometimes they play nicely and he will share his toys “Here you go” but other times he is less happy to share – which I think is pretty inevitable!

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And just for silliness, I love this little sequence of photos. Sat together on the sofa, Monkey is trying to drink his milk but LM decides she wants it… as of course she wants whatever her big brother has. On this occasion he took it in good humour, but I am sure this will cause arguments in the future lol!

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How have your siblings been getting on this month?

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Herby the Hedgehog

Meet Herby the Hedgehog.

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Herby is a real family friend of ours. He was hubs’ toy when he was little (he can’t remember not having him) and he is now firm friends with both Monkey and LM.

When Monkey was little I invented the following little ditty:

My name is Herby and I like to dance,
I like to dance and tickle my friend Monkey,
Dance, dance, dance
and tickle my friend Monkey

I make Herby dance for the dancing bits then of course he goes in for a tickle at the tickle bits. Monkey always loved this and we had so much fun with Herby when he was a baby. Sadly I don’t have many photos of Monkey with Herby, I wasn’t a blogger back then and clearly didn’t document every second of our lives the way I do now 😉 but here is a little snap.

Monkey and Herby

Now it is LM’s turn and the ditty has returned, and has all the fun. I love this little video of some of the fun I have been having with Herby and LM recently. She adores him! (Oh and yes that is Monkey singing the bob the Builder theme tune in the background bless him!)

Obviously any hand puppet would work in the same way but in our house it is all about Herby. I love watching the anticipation,the confusion when he goes away and the glee when he comes back.

I have mentioned (more than once, I know) that I find baby days so hard and that I prefer it when they are older. Sometimes it is hard to put my finger on why but here it is. Watching them learn is so much fun, as everything is a learning experience. You get to see the world through their eyes and enjoy it with them.

We really are entering the fun times with LM now and these little moments amongst the hard work really make me smile, and make it all worthwhile.

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5 fun ways to play with Pom Poms

What small child doesn’t love playing with little fluffy pom pom balls eh? They are widely available, pretty cheap and, I have found, really quite versatile. Here are just a few of the simple fun activities we regularly get up to with the lovely fluffy things.

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When we first started doing this colour sorting game, Monkey was a bit haphazard and certainly couldn’t name all of the colours. Now he knows all of the colours and will sit quite happily organising them into muffin tray holes without any involvement from me :).

 

The downside being that because he finds it quite easy it doesn’t keep him occupied for long… hence the creation of this list of activities!

Make a pom pom rainbow (sort of)

We don’t have all the colours of the rainbow but after sorting them into colours he likes lining them up, to make a ‘rainbow’

pom pom rainbow

Roll them down a tubepom pom tube

 

As a fun way of putting them away I used a kitchen towel tube, otherwise known as “Monkey’s telescope” to roll them back into their container – which of course became a fun game all in itself.

WP_20150407_10_22_17_Pro“Post” them in a tissue box

 

Monkey still wasn’t done with the pom poms though and found that an empty tissue box made a great receptacle for them to be posted through. I am sure he is not alone but this little lad loves to post things!

Play Pom Pom Football

Running out of ideas for things to do with them, I cut the tissue box in half, stuck each side on the tuff spot and created a mini game of pom pom football. I wasn’t sure how effective it would be but Monkey absolutely loved this. His aim was rubbish, poor thing, but he had great fun knocking it about all over the place and I am sure that he will improve over time! The downside of this particular activity is the high probability of pom poms ending up all over the living room… but it could be worse, they are only pom poms after all 🙂

pom pom football

So there we have it, 5 fun ways to play with pom poms. You can of course always get crafty with them. So far the only crafty things we have done with them is stick them to a piece of paper (and they usually fall off) but I have seen some quite clever crafts with them too. But the best thing about the activities above, is that you can do them over and over without having to buy more. We all know how kids love repetition!

Do you have any other fun ways to play with pom poms?

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Monkey turns 3…

My little Monkey turns 3 this week and I can’t quite believe it.

Monkey is 3

Three years since I became a Mummy! I look at him running around and chatting and singing and lolloping like a teenager and I wonder where he came from. Do you ever feel like that? My friends look at me like I am potty when I say that, but sometimes I find it hard to  reconcile him with the baby that was created inside me.

Don’t worry I am not going to get all deep or profound, I just want to make a little record of everything that makes Monkey Monkey, as he turns three. The good and the bad. As he simultaneously amazes and frustrates me on a daily basis!

A lot has happened in the past year and he really has grown up so much, sometimes he seems so mature… but of course he is still a little tot really. Considering the fact that he was barely speaking at all this time last year, his speech is incredible now and improving all the time. We are suddenly realising that a lot of his babyish pronunciations are being replaced by the correct word. For example “cuityet,” became “biscuityet” and is now “Biscuit.”

He now questions everything ‘What you doing?’ ‘Where’s daddy?’ and my most recent favourite ‘What’s it all about guys?’ to hubs and I – not sure where he picked up that one! Like a sponge he is picking up words and phrases all the time and parroting them back, sometimes in the right context but not always! He is really trying to grasp the concept of time too, and sometimes he gets it right ‘we saw Uncle Simon yesterday’ and other times not ‘I went to play group tomorrow’ or ‘we going to the traypark (playpark) yesterday ‘

His imagination is amazing and just growing all of the time. He held up a piece of bread the other day and announced ‘look it’s a whale’ (and it was very whale shaped) then took a bite and said ‘now it’s a boat!’ In the same way that he saw a whale in his slice of bread, he sees letters everywhere too, in shapes that form in his bath bubbles, in the sand pit and in the lentils we play with. He loves letters but has retained his love of numbers too, randomly counting to 40 on a family walk, and reading the side of a measuring jug we are playing with, so he recognises numbers in the hundreds and thousands!

His imagination is helping at playtime too, playing with trains the other day he grabbed some cuddly toys and announced ‘tickets please’ and made them all give him pretend tickets, and he gives all his toys voices too which is just adorable. On another occasion, we had loads of fun playing with his motorbike outside where he wheeled up to my ‘petrol station’ (the swing) and paid me to fill up the tank (using a bubble wand) then I had to give him his keys, hehe. Almost everything has the potential to be a rocket ship too… with crayons, toy screws, cars and all sorts being vooshed around the house until I made him a very basic rocket which he loves!

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He sings all the time and at the moment his favourites are the Postman Pat and Bob the Builder theme tunes, which he knows pretty much word perfectly (even if it does sound a little like ‘Postman Pat is a black and white cat’ sometimes).

He is such a caring little boy for the most part frequently giving us all (including LM) cuddles and saying ‘I love you so much’ which melts my heart everytime. He quite often asks us ‘are you ok?’ and when he is playing with cars now tells me to be careful so I don’t slip… potentially as a result of seeing me slip more than once!

He loves helping (which is great as it is often a good way to persuade him to do something) and particularly loves helping Daddy in the garden.

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He also loves making his sister laugh, which is lovely.

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On the flipside he is going through a fearful phase and seems to have a little separation anxiety. He has been having ‘bad dreams’ and getting scared of things he isn’t usually afraid of, including episodes of Postman Pat that he was watched many many times before.He says he misses us when he goes to playgroup and gets upset about going even though he does have fun when he is there. He is increasingly jealous of LM now and wants our attention when we are looking after her. Again getting upset at times which is hard.

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He had to go in the buggy so he could play with the toys that are there for LM!

 

But then he is so contrary too and sometimes when we give him our attention he doesn’t want to know… but of course when we are busy he desperately wants our attention. He would swear black is white sometimes and if we say no we don’t have something, he will insist we do, which when we really don’t is incredibly frustrating! Though I suspect he is just being a normal three year old so try not to let it irk me too much.

Although we have times where he drives me a bit crazy, for the most part he is such a lovely little boy and I am so proud of him and I can’t quite believe he is my little boy.

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Water Bead Play – 35 mths old

About a year ago I tried some water bead play with Monkey as I had seen so many great examples from other bloggers, but he just wasn’t that interested in it. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when we tried again, and he had a whale of a time playing with them. Just goes to show that just because they aren’t ready or don’t enjoy something once, it is always worth trying again. I set up the Tuff Spot with the water beads and a few other bits and bobs from the kitchen.

So, what did Monkey get up to with them?

He started by scooping them  and pouring them.

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At which point we discovered they bounce! They are funny and plasticky but also wet and slippery feeling which makes it great as sensory play. He had great fun picking them up and dropping them to watch them bounce!

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He then decided a car needed to drive through them (?)

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Before having more fun bouncing them again!

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Then Monkey decided it was great fun to squish them, first with his fingers, then using a rolling pin,

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Then with his fingers again. Check out the glee on his face?!

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I’m not sure how to describe what he did next, he poured the beads back into the muffin tray and started wiggling his fingers around to make the beads bounce around all over the place! Which he really enjoyed 🙂

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Whatever makes you happy Monkey!

As you can see, Monkey absolutely loved our free play session with water beads in the good old Tuff Spot 🙂

Do your kids like playing with water beads?

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Proud of my Monkey

I only wrote an update on what Monkey is up to at the moment last week, but then he went and did two things that made me so darn proud to be his Mummy that I just have to share them.

Standing up for himself

We went on a playdate to one of our fave soft play places last week with good friends. Monkey and his friend were having a lovely time going up the steps and down the slide while us Mums were having a natter and playing with LM. Then to my right I suddenly saw an altercation.

A little boy, younger than Monkey but walking and talking (so difficult to gauge age) hit Monkey. I’m not sure why but Monkey was half climbing the step and had turned back and the little boy was standing on the floor and had hit him. Instead of hitting back, Monkey loudly and clearly said “Stop it!” to the other little boy (I hung back, it is always good to see if things can be sorted between themselves). Unfortunately the other boy then spat in Monkey’s direction and actually slapped him in the face.

Of course I intervened and started to say “Excuse me, that is not nice” but the boy’s daddy ran over and told him off and made him apologise. The point though? My lovely Monkey didn’t hit back, didn’t retaliate, but he did stand up for himself, using words, not violence.

That made me HUGELY proud of him. So proud it brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. His skin is like mine and turns red very easily so he had a bright red cheek for a while and the thought of him being hurt by another child also makes me quite protective!

I was also proud as he didn’t let it bother him. He didn’t get upset by it or stop playing. In the not too distant past an altercation like this would have really rattled Monkey. He would have been scared of the other child and of all other children for a while. This time last year he was terribly afraid of other children after being knocked over. So the fact that he was absolutely fine afterwards is just another sign of how grown up my little Monkey is getting. Definitely a proud mummy moment!

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Naming his drawings

Slightly less dramatic but another proud moment was when Monkey was doing some painting at the weekend. He actually started to tell me what he was drawing. In the past when i have asked him what he is drawing or painting he has sort of looked blankly while he splodged paint around and said “I don’t know.”

This time though I didn’t even ask but he proudly announced that one painting was a plane, “Dusty Crophopper” from the film Planes to be precise, and that the blue splodges were footprints.

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Then, my favourite, he painted a rocket ship with fire coming out of it!

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His imagination is really growing lately and he is coming on leaps and bounds all the time and may be a daft one but again I was just so so proud of him for drawing actual things and telling me what they were.

Oh yes and here he is really proud of his “rainbow finger” too.

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I love being his Mummy 🙂

My word of the week this week is, proud.

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