Hello lovelies and welcome to week 33 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to you all for continuing to link up every week, and welcome to our lovely new linkers! I love our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general and lovely to see it grow too!
What’s in my changing bag
From time to time I read some great posts from Mums who are quite honestly, far, far more organised than I am, who share their lovely changing bags. They are pristine and organised and kept well stocked. I am a little in awe of these Mums as I doubt they ever manage to go out without nappies (has happened more than once as I haven’t realised I have run out and can’t remember when I last checked) or are ever greeted by this sight when they open their changing bag.
So, no, sadly I am not one of those Mums, and this isn’t going to be one of those posts! I am more likely to randomly chuck in a few nappies and every now and again. Occasionally I decide to brave taking out all the random stuff that is in there and have a good sort out in the hope I will be more organised next time (let’s face it, never gona happen). This is what I did this week, and this is what I found in my changing bag.
Half a rice cake, covered in sand and bizarrely squished into a suncream lid – yummy.
Some pine cones which were a ‘present’ from Monkey.
A piece of elastic we randomly found Monkey playing with and decided to remove from his possession.
Some of LM’s favourite things to play with, including a bit of dried grass (yup, honestly, playing with a blade of grass makes her deliriously happy), a frog castanet, the hose from a duplo fire engine (she LOVES it) and a rattly whistle thing (that actually contains a sweet but shhh our kids haven’t worked that out yet).
Thousands of bits of broken biscuit.
Random items of ‘spare’ clothing completely coated in the above broken biscuits and crumbs.
Ooh, result, a slightly squished but still sealed mini mars bar. Yum!
A few random nappies that have been squished and mangled so badly that at first glance I am not 100% sure if they are used or not.
It was a good job jobbed, and right now my changing bag is much more organised… but I know in my heart that it won’t last very long!!
What’s in your changing bag? I would love to know if you are reading this in horror or completely relate to my lack or organisation!
Siblings August 2015
It’s that time of the month again where I share some cutie pictures of m lovely little brother and sister having fun togther. I originally thought I would use a couple of pics from our recent holiday in Dorset but then I caught a moment of sibling loveliness I have to share. They were moving around so much that my even my lovely shiny new phone (after loving it when I reviewed it recently, I have got myself a Samsung Galaxy S6) couldn’t keep them in focus as I snapped away, but you get the idea.
They were sat on the sofa together a few days ago and I was right there to make sure LM didn’t fall off as she is a fidget pants. She adores her brother and just wants to clamber all over him, and play with whatever he has, but she is not gentle and ends up pulling his hair and squishing and scratching him. Monkey takes it pretty well really but does got annoyed with it too, so I moved her away.
Then immediately he starts shouting “can we do it again? can we do it again?” A little confused I asked what he wanted to do again and he replied with “climbing and pulling my hair.”
A little baffled I confirmed that he wanted his sister to climb over him again and pull his hair again. “yup.” So I left them to it and just loved watching the giggles and chuckles from both of them. Just a real moment of sibling love, one minute getting annoyed with each the next loving having a tonne of fun together.
Love these two loonies 🙂
Swanage Steam Railway & Corfe Castle
Monkey loves trains so when we heard about the Swanage Steam Railway down in Dorset we thought it would be a nice thing to do on our holiday. Add to the fact that you can ride the train to an amazing ruined castle and we were sold! (We love a good castle.) It isn’t the cheapest day out to combine the railway and a trip to the castle but being National Trust members thankfully we only had to think about the cost of the train tickets.
The steam railway runs between Swanage and Norden in Dorset, with a couple of stops along the way, one of which being Corfe Castle. We chose to park in Swanage, and take the train from there to Corfe Castle and back. There is a park and ride at Corfe Castle so you could, in theory take the bus to Swanage and the train back to the castle or something, but there is also quite a nice big car park 5-10 minutes walk from the station in Swanage. (There is no car park right at the station in Swanage, just a co-op with a short stay car park)
We took a little picnic to eat on the train journey and Monkey was just so so happy to be on the train. The staff were great with him and so friendly, and he loved getting his ticket stamped. It’s not a very long journey, about 20 minutes, which is probably about right with little ones and the scenery on the way is very pretty.
Corfe Castle in the village of Corfe, is seriously impressive, perched on top of a hill so you can see it for miles around.
It’s not very suitable for buggies but the National Trust to have some baby carriers available for hire and you can leave your buggy at the gate. We also saw a few people who had taken their buggy up the hill and tried to get it round the site.
As LM is too much of a fidget pants to be happy in a carrier we just carried her about in our arms. As I mentioned, we love a good castle so we very much enjoyed having a good explore of the ruins.
The views from the top of the hill are amazing and I loved seeing the steam train chugging by.
Afterwards we stopped at a little tea room and decided to have some cream tea in the gardens…. unfortunately we got completely swarmed by wasps which wasn’t fun and sacrificed our jam, moving it onto another table hoping the wasps would surround it instead of us. It worked very well thankfully but I have never seen so many wasps all crammed into a small pot of jam!
We tried to get a nice family selfie with corfe castle in the background and, well, it’s not great but not too terrible either. Not easy getting all 4 of us looking n the right direction!
Then it was time to have another fun little journey on the train back to Swanage. A lovely little day trip.
Do your kids love trains, and castles?
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.)
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!
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.
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.
#MaternityMondays week 32
Hello lovelies and welcome to week 32 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to you all for continuing to link up every week, and welcome to our lovely new linkers! I love our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general and lovely to see it grow too!
Durdle Door, Dorset
On our recent holiday to Dorset one of the absolute highlights had to be the gorgeous day we spent visiting Durdle Door, a stunning rock formation on the Jurassic Coast…. but the day wasn’t without it’s challenges! I really didn’t do much research into before we went, and didn’t really take in what I did read, so I will be honest, I was completely unprepared for how tricky it was to get there.
The car journey was fine and uneventful. Access is via the Durdle Door holiday park, where there is a pay and display car park. Some people were parking on the road outside the holiday park but it is worth paying for the car park. It is not too expensive really and it is hard enough getting to the beach and Durdle door itself from the car park let alone adding on another huge journey up/down a hill!
Why so hard? Well, access is only via a very long, very steep, sandy/stony/dusty (so slippy) path down the cliff-side. This gets you to an amazing viewing point. Then there are around 150 steps down to the actual stony beach. Don’t let this put you off as it is stunningly beautiful and well worth going, but please learn from my mistakes and be prepared!
The steps down to the beach
First of all, we took way too much stuff. I had no idea what the route down involved and hadn’t really thought about the fact that the beach was stony. So we went down, very heavily laden with all manner of beach toys which we did not remotely need or use.
Our second mistake was taking the buggy – I had no idea there were so many steps at the end of the journey, it was hard enough getting the buggy up and down the slope and there is NO way you would want to carry a buggy down the steps, as it is very busy and there are no safety rails whatsoever.
So, anyway, we struggled our way down the very steep dusty slope with the buggy and all our bags clutching on tightly to Monkey and keeping him well clear of the edge, wondering how far away we were going to have to go. Then we got to the viewing level, and like I say, stunning… then we saw all the steps and wondered what to do next…. We decided to have our picnic there while we pondered what to do.
Eventually we decided we did want to go down the steps, having come all of that way. The buggy we had with us is a very cheap one we bought a couple of years ago to take abroad, thinking it may not last that holiday. It has still been going strong but we have had good use out of it so we decided to leave it at the top. We tucked it under a trailer being used as a bin and while we hoped it would still be there on our return, we accepted the risk that it may not be. (Thankfully it was there though, hooray!)
The steps were steep and there are no handrails but Monkey did so well and we managed down the steps with all our bits and bobs. We made a bit of a game counting the way with Monkey as he does so love to count! The Durdle door itself was very impressive but it was a very steep slope to the the sea and difficult to get to on the stones. Was nice to have a paddle, although neither Monkey or LM were impressed with the noise of the crashing surf.
We had a lovely time enjoying the sun before it was time to start the difficult journey back up hill. Let’s just say it was definitely a slog! We stopped halfway up for some ice cream as it was so hot, but it really was incredibly hard work. It was well worth a visit, though we were exhausted by the end of it and I wish I had done some research before we went, so here is my advice if you are planning a visit.
- Be prepared for a long walk and wear good shoes – my flip flops weren’t the best choice of footwear for the journey!
- Don’t take everything but the kitchen sink – there isn’t sand, there won’t be sandcastles.
- Go without a buggy if you can, there are stairs at the bottom that you won’t want to carry a buggy down… it’s not much fun pushing the buggy back up the hill either!
- Be prepared to carry a little one if their little legs can’t manage it (see why you shouldn’t take too much down with you!)
- Take plenty of drink, and food.
- Go to the toilet before you head down – unless you fancy a wee in the sea, as there no facilities down there.
- Pay for the parking, it is a long enough walk anyway let alone walking even further to avoid paying.
- Use reins or keep a hand free for your kiddies – there are no safety rails whatsoever!
- Enjoy the view as it is stunning!
Making good progress
My work of the week this week is “progress” as we are making some great progress, on a number of fronts.
I wrote last week that we are starting our new big project, and honestly the builders have worked so hard and only 1 week later, the progress is incredible! They’ve obviously got a way to go yet but the work is well underway!
The old garage is feeling much more like a room, now the stud work is up, it is insulated and has the plasterboard up. The new, larger window has been created and the old garage doors (front and back) are well and truly gone. The foundations have been dug for the new wall on the garage and what will be our utility room, and today these were filled with concrete.
It’s very exciting though my word could also have been chaos as of course it has been noisy and hectic and a bit chaotic having the builders in – and they will be around for a while yet!
We’ve also made some progress getting rid of some of the old stuff from the garage and have sold a few things on ebay, which is brilliant. No point stuff we don’t use going back into the new garage! We’ve given away lots of baby clothes and other bits including a moses basket and nursing chair to friends. We know we aren’t having any more babies but it is lovely to see our bits go to a good home,
We are also making progress in a totally different area, potty training Monkey! I haven’t mentioned it but we also started potty training last week and Monkey has been doing amazingly. We’ve had less than 10 accidents all week and he is getting better and better at telling me he needs to do a wee (rather than just going when I take him). He goes a couple of hours between wees and has even had a few dry nights which we are hugely impressed with! I will write more about how it’s gone in a later post but I am so glad we waited until he was ready.
We tried earlier this year and he wasn’t ready, but now he is and he has just got it straight away. I know we all feel the pressure to do it early and having a 3 year old in nappies certainly what I thought would happen but waiting until he was really ready and following his lead has been absolutely the right thing for us. It has actually been really easy, which is a huge relief, and it is lovely seeing him in pants rather than nappies!! 🙂
In many ways it has been a tough, and certainly busy, week with the builders, LM and I have a cold and Monkey is a bit ratty and not 100% either. But it is good to feel like we have made some great progress and are really getting somewhere!
How has your week been?
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!)
The 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.
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.
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 🙂
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?
#MaternityMondays week 31
Hello you lovely lot and welcome to week 31 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to you all for continuing to link up every week, and welcome to our lovely new linkers! I love our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general and lovely to see it grow too!