Educational TV for Toddlers

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Guidelines recommend that children under 2 watch no TV at all and toddlers watch no more than 2 hours of TV a day, but how realistic is this really? I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with a bit of telly. I’m not about to dump Monkey in front of the TV all day every day, and to be honest he is so full of energy he would get bored with it anyway. We get out and about a lot, read books, do crafts and all sorts of things, but there are times of the day when the TV is very useful as it keeps him entertained while I get on with some other things. This is especially true since Little Miss arrived!

Am I wrong though? Am I neglecting my child or being a bad mum because he watches a few hours of TV spread throughout the day? In an article I read a while ago, Dr Trina Hinckley said TV viewing can be ‘harmful to children’s physical and mental health’ speaking specifically about children under 4. She said that although parents think that TV programmes help children with learning language etc, that this is not true according to research.
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A wintery family walk

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Friday night was a particularly rough night with Little Miss so on Saturday morning both Daddy and I were feeling shattered. But the thing is that when you also have a toddler to look after, life must go on. We still had to be up at a normal time and find ways to entertain Monkey.

Tired Daddy

Tired Daddy

So after a bit of back and forth about what we should do, we decided to wrap up and go for a little walk to deliver some thank you cards locally to some of the people who had generously given gifts on the birth of Little Miss.

Little Miss wasn’t keen on the idea of being in her buggy so after a false start Daddy popped her in the carrier and we headed out. It was seriously cold and wet and misty but we had a lovely walk and it did us the power of good. That’s the thing about getting out of the house sometimes, just a change of scene and some fresh air can really improve your mood. Especially when you have a toddler who is thrilled to be out for a walk and who takes pleasure in the simplest of things.
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Little Miss at 4 weeks old

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WP_20141118_09_38_01_ProLittle Miss is 4 weeks old today. The last 4 weeks seem to have both flown by and lasted forever, isn’t that just the way of it with newborn babies?

Colic has well and truly taken over too unfortunately. After spending a lot of time fretting about whether there was anything I could do to help or prevent the colic, at the weekend we reached a level of acceptance I think. We have to accept that our evenings and a lot of night times are spent trying to soothe a baby in pain. Horrible as it is, it is only for the next couple of months and then we know it gets better. We have been through it once with Monkey and we can get through it again.

Having said that, the last few days have been really tough. She is definitely worse when I have eaten dairy as on Monday night we had a really cheesy dinner. I didn’t even think about it as it was a meal made and frozen before she was born but it is made largely from milk and cheese. And well since then she has been really rough. That night was awful and Tuesday morning she did a weird jelly poo (sorry if TMI) and spent  lot of the day in quite a lot of pain and therefore very unhappy.

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Making a Crown & Magic Wand

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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!

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Monkey’s Christmas List – 2 1/2 yrs old

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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! 🙂

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Siblings, November

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I have seen the Siblings linky for a while and looked forward to being able to join in. It seems like a lovely way to chart the relationships (and ups and downs) between siblings.

I am a little late to the party (and nearly didn’t join in this month at all) as I didn’t really have any new photos of Monkey and Little Miss together since coming home from hospital. He basically stays well away from her a lot of the time!
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Am I causing my baby’s Colic?

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Colic. Oh isn’t it fun? Watching your baby scream in pain while trying desperately to soothe them and calm them down. Depending on where you read it, approx 20-30% of babies have Colic. Yet both of my babies seem to be affected by it. I wrote a post a while back called Coping with Colic, and that is all well and good but when you’re going through it you can’t help but wonder if it is somehow your fault. Is there anything you can do to stop it? Or at least I do anyway.
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Making the most of the baby days

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Little Miss is quite possibly, in fact, most probably the last baby we will have. I will never say never and I am sure many people will say that now is not the time to make the decision about having more children, but I want to be realistic about it. Both hubs and I are the middle of 3 children, so we both carry a certain nostalgia with us about our families, and we are both very close to all of our brothers and couldn’t imagine our families any other way. So I guess it is inevitable that we have been quite undecided about the number of children we would have.
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Autumn Walk and Leaf Painting

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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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