Birthdays!

My word for this week is Birthdays.

In actual fact this could have been the word for the last couple of months as April & May are full of Birthdays! Up until recently we have celebrated 12 birthdays across those two months. This week however saw the birth of the second daughter of a very good friend of mine. So happy birthday and welcome to the world little baby Eloise! Ooh it’s made me so broody. Good job we already have another little one on the way!

So that makes 13 birthdays across April & May – it is expensive and full of celebrations, but lots of fun! This week I have felt it in particular, largely because of course it has been my lovely little Monkey’s 2nd Birthday! We started the celebrations last Friday with a mini party at the park with two of his friends who also have birthdays this month. One a week before Monkey, and one a week after, although they both turn 3 this month. They are 2 of my very good mummy friends’ kiddies so we decided to have one joint celebration rather than 3 little ones. Sadly due to a very poorly little tot the other mummy in our quartet wasn’t able to make it at the last minute. We really did miss them but we also had a lot of fun at the same time! We had party hats and bubbles and choccy biscuits and a lot of fun in the sun!

Then on Sunday it was Monkey’s Grandpops’ birthday! Nanny and Grandpops have been away on holiday for the last couple of weeks and we’ve really missed them so it was nice to see them for his big 60th!

Monkey very much enjoyed helping Grandpops unwrap his presents!

It was also Monkey’s first ever chinese and he did quite well – mainly prawn toasts and prawn crackers but he did try a few bits so we can’t complain.

He was also just a very good boy as we were in the restaurant a long time, though his uncles and aunties were definitely happy to help keep him entertained. Thank goodness!

My step-sister had made Grandpops a fantastic racing car themed cake – complete with racing cars! Monkey was very lucky, and thrilled, to be allowed to keep the yellow one!

He did do really well but it was quite stressful keeping him busy and he was very much enjoying decorating the restaurant with his stickers, though I think we found them all in the end! (Hope so anyway!) It was a lovely family lunch and a very nice Sunday.

Wednesday was Monkey’s actual birthday so we had pressies first thing in the morning, then he and I spent most of the day at the park with friends, it was a really gorgeous and relaxing day actually and he very much enjoyed himself 🙂

The celebrations are set to continue this weekend with the family all coming round Sunday afternoon for a bit of a buffet and a present-fest! 🙂 So this week has been very much focussed on birthdays 🙂

What word sums up your week?

Fun Outdoors in the Sun

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We have had lots of warm weather lately and it has been really lovely to get outdoors and have some fun in the sun. Monkey, and I’m sure most kids, just love being outdoors, running around, exploring and doing all sorts. The great thing is that there are so many ways for them to play outside without having to spend any money.

This is just a few of the things we have been up to outdoors while the sun has been shining!

Playing in his new playhouse! A good old second hand purchase from ebay, and a slightly early birthday present for Monkey which he loves!! Lots of peepo and playing house. Hours of fun in there at the moment, and a nice shade spot if the sun gets too hot 🙂

Playing in sand and water next door with his friend

Popping out for an ice cream on his trike! As Monkey would say, Um Yum!

Playing in our newly renovated back garden – having fun in the sand pit

And, slightly random, but after giving the buggy a good scrub I left a sponge out there and now Monkey lives giving the floor a clean, hehe 🙂

We also got the paddling pool out at the weekend, and I think the water may have been a teeny bit cold for him as it was a bit of a trauma at times, but he did have fun in there too! (Though I think Daddy got more wet than Monkey did!!)

There’s also just been some general running about with a ball now that we are actually allowed to go on the new grass!

And of course, some fun picnics and playtime at the park!

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

Out & about in his new hat!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Monkey’s favourite colours are Red and Yellow. Wherever we go, whatever we’re playing with – he always makes a beeline for all things red and yellow, it’s very cute though ever so slightly repetitive!

His lovely Granny, on seeing some colourful wool recently, decided she just had to make Monkey a red and yellow hat! He’s never really been one to be persuaded into wearing a hat, unless it is absolutely freezing outside, but she thought it may be worth a go! It’s not really the time of year for a wooly hat, I know, but she thought if all goes well we can try in the winter.

Anyway, she is a genius, because he loves this hat, literally LOVES it. The hater of hats loves wearing this hat. Even in the current warm weather. We went for a walk around the local area last weekend and he insisted on having the hat on pretty much the whole time. He seriously loves this hat!

We had a lovely walk (You’d be excused for thinking it was mid winter but it was just a break between downpours so everywhere was wet and though a little chilly, it was not cold enough for wearing a wooly hat lol!) and Monkey spent some time on the trike..

..some time walking with a big stick he found..

…and we had fun running up and down and around big tree on a slight slope. We walk past this tree all the time but I’ve never really shown him how you can run around it playing peepo, and well, he loved it so we were there for a while!

We had a lovely little walk and the hat is a definite success! I am now on a mission to find him a red and yellow sunhat as clearly the favourite colours override the dislike of hats!!

Helping Daddy Dig!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Now that the landscaping has finished in the garden renovation, we are starting to think about plants! Money is a little tight at the moment though, so as it was my birthday I asked people for plants and garden centre vouchers, and thankfully, a few people obliged, yay! So we popped out last sunday and bought our first few plants!

Unfortunately the the beautiful hydrangeas are actually a birthday present for hubby’s sister in law, lucky thing, it’s only unfortunate, because I am jealous of them lol! We did buy a hydrangea, but ours won’t flower until later in the year.

Anyway, we realised that before we planted them, we needed to dig over the beds. One is really full of clay, and another is a lot drier, which is slightly bizarre as they are all basically the same but hey ho. So Daddy, with a lot of erm “help” from Monkey spent a while out there digging over the beds, to combine the two a little, and then we will add some compost when we actually plant them.

Monkey had a lot of fun though and needed a good bath before nap time that day as he was covered!

Mammasaurus and How Does Your Garden Grow?

Operation Garden Renovation #7 The Landscaping is finished!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Yep this is it, big reveal time! Although the garden is far from finished and we still have a lot of work to do, the landscaping work has now been done.

First of all a reminder at what the garden looked like before. Huge ugly conifers, shed and arbour off to one side and a dodgy uneven patio.

Now though, we have opened it all up! We have a lovely wavy patio out the back doors and round behind the conservatory.

With a tree in the corner this is the only area of the garden that ever gets any shade, which is why we thought we would use it for the patio. We will (eventually) buy a nice new patio table and chairs out there as ours is a hand me down hubby got from a friend before we even met! It’ll do for now though!

The best thing about our lovely new garden is our new huge bit of lawn. We knew that the layout of the old garden made it feel smaller than it is, but in truth we had no idea quite how big the garden would look with everything gone. It’s huge! Yay!

Its still very new so we can’t walk on the turf at the moment, but when we can I know Monkey is going to love playing out there! We’ve deliberately not put any beds on that side of the garden so that he can have a big expanse to play on. I think the garage wall could do with a nice colourful mural at some point too! We will see what we can come up with!

So there we have it, the big work has been done, and thank goodness, Monkey and I have already been out there with his sand table and bubbles, we are going to have so much fun out there this summer, and I am dead excited about it!!

The landscapers have been great and done an amazing job, but there is still a lot more that we want to do to make it ours, Operation Garden Renovation is far from over!

The fences need painting, we have tons of plants to buy, soil to dig over and then the actual planting all of the plants. We want to buy some planters and some outdoor play toys for Monkey. But, well, we can’t afford to everything all in one go, getting the landscaping done has been expensive enough! So the rest of it will be done in bits and bobs, probably over the next few years, though we hope to get some more done this year.

So what do you think?

Enjoying getting out and about again! 22 months old

Posted by Caroline Elliott

With the combination of sunnier weather, and my new pelvis support, Monkey and I have been out and about loads over the last week.

We’ve played in the sand in our neighbour’s garden…

and popped to the park near our friend’s house.

Monkey and my friend’s little girl always play really nicely together, even though she’s just over a year older. Although this week she got cross with him trying to play with her favourite train, then he got a bit nervous of her! Bless ’em! Sure it’ll be fine again next time!

Then Thursday our plans with friends were cancelled last minute due to poorliness 🙁 so we popped to a local country park, which I knew had built a new play area that opened for the easter holidays. What I didn’t realise was that the whole play area was basically a big sand pit!

Monkey had fun, then fell on his knees in a big water play are (thankfully we had spare trousers in the bag!).

The only problem was that with it being the Easter Holidays it was pretty chaotic in there! We were playing on the slide and there were some bigger kids fooling around on there too which made me a little wary. It was quite a wide slide and they were going down in groups and sideways and tumbling all over the place irrelevant of the tiny tots also wanting to go on the slide. I was keeping a close eye as Monkey desperately wanted to go down the slide. He went down a couple of times then got bashed from behind before he had a chance to get off the bottom of the slide (Monkey was fine). I had a calm word with the boy (who I guess was around 7 or 8?) to just be a bit careful around the little one and then less than 30s later the same boy completely knocked monkey over, face first onto the wooden steps.

Cue lots of bawling from Monkey and I have to admit I got a bit cross with the boy in question. I know he didn’t mean it but it seemed so careless. There were cries of “It was so and so’s fault” and I think I said something like “I don’t care whose fault it was, you all need to be less selfish and more careful around the little ones.” He ran off to his grandparents but with Monkey screaming his head off I don’t think they objected to my calm telling off! Hate having to do it but couldn’t pretend it was ok, the play area was for all ages and they just need to be at least aware of what they are doing around little ones and considerate to others. Maybe I expect too much of them?

Anyway after that Monkey was a bit more wary of the play area so we went for a run around with his ball! He is great at kicking it now and is a good dribbler (in more ways than one as he still needs dribble bibs, eye roll!) .

Then we played peepo around some trees.

Before going to watch some kites flying, which he found fascinating, and see the little miniature railway.

Then it was time to go home!

It’s been lovely getting out and about a bit more! What have you been up to with your little ones outdoors lately?

Fun with Grandpops

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Just a short post, but a happy one.

Tuesday while I was at the hospital, Monkey spent some time with his Nanny and Grandpops, and they all had such a lovely time.

I wasn’t there (obv) but my mum sent this gorgeous picture of Monkey having a lot of fun with his Grandpops.

There is so much happiness there I just had to share it 🙂

Family Photo Friday @ Thursday's Child, Friday's Thoughts

Playtime at the Park

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Last Sunday, for Mother’s Day, we were off to my brother in law’s for a big family lunch. It was his birthday the Wednesday before, and my Mother in Law’s birthday the week after so it was kind of a big joint celebration. We were at a bit of a loose end that morning though and Monkey was raring to go as always, so we want for a little family stroll and ended up at a local play area. It’s quite funny really as both hubby and I grew up in this area and this park is attached to the primary school we both went to. And some parts of it are exactly as it was 20 odd years ago! Some things have gone, but others are exactly the same, so it brings back a lot of memories.

Anyway, totally sidetracked there, the point of this post is basically to show you how much fun Monkey had monkeying around with his daddy at the playpark! Just lovely to see the pair of them having so much fun together!

I was obviously there and having fun too but with my current pelvis issues I cannot be running, climbing and messing around quite as much as I would like to be. Which makes it all the more important for Monkey to get this time with daddy!

Monkey found a gap in the fence and took daddy for an adventure in the woods next to the park..

Than it was back for more smiles & fun in the park, crawling through tunnels…

… and walking on his daddy’s feet!

Then Daddy was very impressed to see Monkey sitting on a big boy swing! He is very good at balancing himself and holding on, and he loves it!

All in all it was just a lovely, impromptu morning of fun in the park 🙂

Playing in the Mud – 21 months

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We had another busy weekend in the garden last weekend, finishing off the clearance side of Operation Garden Renovation. More to come on that later in the week but what we were left with was a garden full of mud, glorious mud.

Monkey has been in his element out there, just having a whale of a time with the simplest of pleasures, playing in the mud. I’ll keep it short and sweet as the pictures say it all!

Bearing in mind this was on Sunday, the day after the scary no-breathing incident, he clearly suffered no after-effects! Lovely to see him having so much fun after such an ordeal too!

Creative Play – Nature Hunt & Painting – 21 months

Posted by Caroline Elliott

I saw this idea on A Whole Nine Months and thought that as her little boy is younger than Monkey, and obviously enjoyed it, that we should give it a go…. But, have to be honest, I kept putting it off! I just wasn’t sure how it would go, whether he’d be interested in the nature hunt side, and how much mess we’d make with the painting… But that’s the point of the Creative Challenge, pushing myself to step outside of my comfort zone, and be more creative, with playtime in this case!

So one day we headed out on a little nature hunt and to start with it was mainly me doing the hunting part, while Monkey spent a good few minutes hugging a tree??

Though he did get quite interested in a feather.

But then he got a bit obsessed with a stick, ok, branch and tried for ages to bring it with him.

He was honestly doing this for AGES, I have loads of photos and a couple of videos of it. He’s such a determined little Monkey but eventually I persuaded him it was a bit too big to carry and we did a bit more nature hunting.

Then it was home and time to get the paints out! We also noticed that one of the daffodils in the front garden had been trampled at some point so we picked that up to explore with too.

And, basically, he had a whale of a time, exploring the leaves and twigs in the paint..

and generally just getting really messy 🙂

So all in all, lots and lots of fun and definitely worth a try – and with the two elements this took up quite a large chunk of the day – which is always excellent in my view! 🙂

Have you been on a nature hunt?

Becoming a Stay at Home Mum

Can I really do this?

outdoor play

Birthdays!

Fun Outdoors in the Sun

Out & about in his new hat!

Helping Daddy Dig!

Operation Garden Renovation #7 The Landscaping is finished!

Enjoying getting out and about again! 22 months old

Fun with Grandpops

Playtime at the Park

Playing in the Mud – 21 months

Creative Play – Nature Hunt & Painting – 21 months