Monkey’s Mini Milestones at 29 months

I haven’t done a mini milestones post in a while and there are a few lovely Monkey things that are making me dead proud at the moment so I thought it was time I did. It seems that he has grown up and his development has sped up rapidly just in the last couple of weeks since the arrival of his baby sister. It is incredible and he really is very fun to be around at the moment.

This may seem like a slightly braggy post (Look how amazing my toddler is) but it’s mainly to keep a record of what he can do, when, and if I sound a bit braggy it’s because I am actually pretty amazed by his development, and loving every minute of it.
Continue reading

Conker Crafts and Activities for Toddlers

After our lovely walk a couple of weeks ago I said I would let you know what we had got up to with our massive conker haul, and well here it is! We have been conker crazy in our house lately! Some activities have been more successful than others but we’ve had fun trying lots of things.

conker crafts and activities for toddlers

Continue reading

Magic Watercolour painting – 28 months

I always like to look out for new activities with Monkey and a couple of weeks ago I saw a post (I’m really sorry I can’t remember where) of an activity I remember as a kid. Magic Watercolour Painting. The premise is simple you draw a picture on a white piece of paper, using a white wax crayon. When you paint over the picture using the watercolour paints, the wax repels the paint and your picture appears.

I thought this sounded simple and fun for Monkey. I thought I could draw something and I imagined him loving the images revealing themselves underneath. We haven’t really done watercolour painting before, sticking to poster paints generally, so I thought this would be nice to try.

I bought some uber cheap watercolour paints, found a white wax crayon and drew somethings on some paper. I kept it simple, drawing numbers (because he loves them) and I also wrote out a Happy Birthday message to his Great Grandpa, thinking it would be a nice picture to give him.

WP_20140918_18_55_01_Pro WP_20140918_18_56_27_Pro

Sadly we didn’t ever give him that picture, because, well it didn’t exactly work out. It’s not that it was a total disatser, because it wasn’t. Monkey very much enoyed the watercolour painting, although he did for some reason decide everything had to be black (cheerful colour) and sometimes randomly spent some time going from paint to water to paint to water without getting anything on paper, but it was a learning experience and he had fun.

WP_20140919_12_36_13_Pro WP_20140919_12_37_23_Pro

 

What was unfortunate though, is that the ‘magic’ side of the activity didn’t really happen. The images just didn’t really appear. Not in the way I remembered or thought they would. Occasionally you could see a bit of a number or letter, but then they seemed to disappear 🙁

WP_20140919_12_38_16_Pro WP_20140919_12_38_32_Pro

I wondered if maybe the crayon was a washable one or something, so I found a different brand of white crayon (a more basic one) and tried that, by drawing a clock. Not much of an improvement.

WP_20140919_13_03_43_Pro

I then drew some numbers in really thick crayon, going over and over the image so get as much wax on the paper as possible. This gave the best result of the day, in that you can at least see the numbers… but it’s still not really the way I am remembering it!

WP_20140919_13_01_11_Pro

Has anyone got any tips? Am I missing some crucial step? I would love to know where I am going wrong with what I thought would be such a simple and fun activity! Monkey enjoyed himself so I’m not too despondent about it but I was a bit gutted it didn’t go quite the way I had planned!

Mini Creations
Family Friday

Playing with friends – 27 months

Monkey made a really lovely big step last week, and one I am really proud of. All babies and toddlers start off playing pretty independently from other children, sort of sid by side, without interacting with them. Monkey has always been particularly wary of other kids, especially after a knock earlier this year. He has been getting a lot better and there have been signs of improvement over the past few months. For example he stopped launching himself off the side of a climbing frame whenever he saw another child nearby!

Pretty much every week we meet up dor a play date with my friend S and her little girl E, who is almost exactly a year older than Monkey. They get on pretty well for the most part though do bicker and snatch toys from each other at times. E though has been very excited by the development of Monkey’s speech over the past few months, often exclaiming “he can nearly talk as good as I can!!”

There has just been little more signs of interaction between them over the last few weeks and then last week they really actually played together. They were lying on the edge of the ‘baby’ zone in the soft play and after watching E roll of a few times (making Monkey chuckle a lot) they then started counting together and trying to roll off at the same time. Sometimes they managed it, other times they were way out of sync, but they were taking it in turns counting down and really trying to do it together.

WP_20140903_12_23_39_Pro

WP_20140903_12_24_23_Pro

WP_20140903_12_23_08_Pro WP_20140903_12_22_58_Pro WP_20140903_12_25_22_Pro WP_20140903_12_25_03_Pro

WP_20140903_12_23_46_Pro

WP_20140903_12_24_36_ProThey looked so cute playing together S and I really had a moment! E is a really sociable little girl and loves playing with other kiddies whereas Monkey has always been much more reserved. We spend so much time together and S was as proud of Monkey as I was. It may seem small but actually a huge step for him and one fo the many signs recently about how much he is growing up and getting more independent from me. Just so lovely 🙂


“>

Ethans Escapades
Super Busy Mum
#BabyBabble

I walk the line..

Monkey is growing up so much at the moment and really acting more like a little boy than a toddler. He is just playing a lot more, and in so many ways, doing things I remember doing as a child. He has quite a neat and tidy streak and likes things to line up in a row and be neat, and also he does something which I remember doing a lot of as a kid – walking the line.

Be it on the edge of a curb, on a wall, on a line on the pavement, Monkey loves walking on the line and staying on the line. There is a little local shopping centre we go to where this is the most evident. Its quite a run down little centre, there is  Wilkos and a QD, and it also happens to be home to the local library where Monkey goes every Monday for rhyme time with Nanny & Pops. They often have a wander round the shops while they are there too and it is quite nearby so a handy place to pop to, so we go wuite a bit.

In the middle of the open sort of courtyard area there is I guess a drain, but it is a thin silver line which Monkey loves to walk along. He has been doing it for ages, and I am not really sure when it started or who he started doing it with but now if we go there he has to walk the line.

He is so cute and gets massively excited, running off shouting “Walk the Line” which sounds more like ” Walk a Yine, Walk  Yine!” He has to go all the way to the end too.

We popped there in the week and I fianlly managed to (remember to) catch it on camera!

WP_20140904_13_10_02_Pro WP_20140904_13_01_57_Pro

 

I just love that he gets so much pleasure out of something so simple! He does it all the time when we are out on walks, if there is a line to be walked on, he will find it and walk on it!

Do your kids do that?

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall
theordinarymomentsbadge

Playtime at the park & fun with flowers

After Monkey’s little accident this week and an easy day to make sure he didn’t reopen his cuts, he was in desperate need of burning off some energy! Thankfully there are a few parks within walking distance of home and though it was a tad grey I decided to trust the weather forecast and pop out for him to have a run around.

WP_20140829_10_50_04_Pro (2) WP_20140829_10_51_10_ProIt was lovely to see him running about and climbing with such a big smile on his face. The swelling on his face has gone down a lot now so my over-protectiveness has calmed down a little…. though I am a bit more worried than normal about him taking a tumble as I think it wouldn’t take much for his cuts to open up again!

WP_20140829_10_51_26_Pro WP_20140829_10_51_38_Pro WP_20140829_10_54_56_Pro WP_20140829_10_57_17_Pro

Thankfully though there was no trips or stumbles or slips and just lots of fun and giggles. We sat together on a spinny thing (no idea what you would actually call it and no photos of us both on it as I was trying to make sure neither of us fell off it) and just hearing him giggle his heart out and shout wee was lovely for the soul. Somehow Monkey hurting himself so badly really made me remember how precious he is and with my preggo hormones at the moment I am being a properly soppy Mummy and it was just lovely seeing him having so much fun!

this is the spinny thing :)

this is the spinny thing 🙂

Our little Monkey loves flowers. Even before he could say any words he would regularly be found picking daisies and dandelions on our walks. This hasn’t changed and he still loves picking up flowers whenever we go out. For a while he called them “Bowers” but his pronunciation is improving so we are now at “fwowers”. As per usual he spent quite a bit of time with flowers at the park. Carrying them around, taking them down the slide with him, and then a couple of daisies made their way into his pocket for the walk home.WP_20140829_10_55_43_Pro WP_20140829_10_59_23_Pro WP_20140829_10_56_40_Pro

It was a lovely little run around at the park and nice to see him so giggly and happy 🙂

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall
theordinarymomentsbadge

Plum & Blackberry Crumble & a Plum-Picking Adventure!

We have a lovely little ‘pick your own’ farm a really short distance from where we live. I vaguely remember going as a child to pick strawberries and had planned on taking Monkey to pick strawberries, but alas we missed the season this year. My neighbour went though and also went recently and said they had the most delicious plums! Plums aren’t a fruit regularly eaten in our house but my neighbour really wanted Monkey and I to join her and her kiddies on a pick your own expedition, and I thought Monkey would enjoy it so off we went.

Monkey absolutely loved it at the farm, so many open spaces to run about bless him and he just kept running around shouting “Berry, berry, berry!” lol. He was quite helpful with picking the plums, although he also tried picking some very underripe ones, and some less than lovely looking ones off the floor! He did try though!

plums

I didn’t realise they also had blackberry bushes and we love a blackberry crumble in our house so we picked some of those too. I was worried he would hurt himself on the thorns but he managed really well and actually tried to eat some of the blackberries and plums, though he isn’t very good with fresh fruit and pretty much spat it all out.

blackberries

We then had a play on their fabulous play park before we headed home. It was a lovely place and we will definitely go fruit picking there again!

playground

I wasn’t sure what to do with the fruit to start with as neither hubby or Monkey are big fans of fresh fruit, and I don’t really have the energy to make anything complicated. So it didn’t take long for me to decide to make a Plum & Blackberry crumble. I love making crumbles mainly because they are so easy to make, are absolutely yummy and get some fruit inside us (albeit with a lot of sugar involved!)

Here is our recipe for a lovely crumble. My fruit measurements are very vague and can be interchangeable with a lot of fruits. I originally used this recipe to make a rhubarb crumble, though with rhubarb you also need 50ml of water, which I left out in this case as the plums were so juicy in themselves!

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Ingredients

WP_20140816_19_15_38_Pro500g Fruit – in this case Plums & Blackberries – chopped/sliced thinly
100g Caster Sugar
100g Wholemeal Flour (can use plain)
100g Rolled Oats (Porridge oats)
100g Butter (we use unsalted)
125g Demerara Sugar

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Method

Preheat the oven to 180°

Place the chopped into fruit in an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with the Caster Sugar (and water if necessary i.e with rhubarb)

Put the Flour, Oats and Demerara Sugar in a separate bowl. Add the butter and mix in with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. It is ok if there are a few lumpy bits.

Sprinkle crumble mixture over the fruit as evenly as possible, and don’t pat down too much.

Bake for 35- 40 mins or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling around the edges.

Plum & Blackberry Crumble

Serve with custard, or a good dollop of ice cream!

Plum & Blackberry Crumble

Family Friday

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

Link up your recipe of the week

Tasty Tuesdays on HonestMum.com

Encouraging independence

With Great Auntie Maggie

With Great Auntie Maggie

I wrote last week that Monkey’s independence has been growing of late and that he is happier to spend less time with Mummy and Daddy these days, and is happy to be with family and friends. This is still very true and in fact he abandoned Mummy and Daddy at the weekend and took his Great Auntie Maggie off for a walk without us!

What may come (and has indeed come) as a surprise to some, is that we actually love this development, and have been encouraging it for a while. I understand that for many this stage can be bittersweet, as it is a sign that Monkey is growing up. That he needs us less. I completely understand why lots of mummies and daddies feel like this, but honestly, I just don’t. I love it!

I am a very independent person myself, and always have been. Maybe it is a sign of me being selfish but I really like that little added freedom that this step of independence brings. For a start it is still only a very small step and he still needs, and wants Mummy or Daddy a lot of the time, but as someone rightly said, it means for the first time in a long time, I can actually use the toilet in peace. Not every time but more than before!

It also comes at the perfect time as at 7 months pregnant I am less and less able to do all of the things that Monkey wants me to do, so if he is happy for other relatives to step in and do those things with him, then phew, is all I can say! As the next few months go by we are going to need to ask family to help more and more, even if just to take him to the park for half an hour or something so he gets a run around while I rest. The same will be true when the baby comes, especially as it is increasingly likely that I will need a c-section and will have the recovery time that comes with it. The more he is happy to do this of his own free will, the better really as hopefully I will fell less guilty about the things that I just can’t manage to do with him.

It isn’t just my pregnancy that makes us appreciate Monkey’s new found independence though, as we have been encouraging him to play a bit more independently for some time, and I do think this is important. I read an interesting article recently about structured play vs child led lay. The article suggested that many of us parents these days feel the pressure to engage in structured play with our little ones, to help them learn, rather than leave them to their own devices. The result of this according to the article, is actually detrimental to our children.

Simple Colour Matching GameNow with many articles like this I think you have to take them with a pinch of salt and actually I like to think the best approach is a bit of everything. I do want to encourage Monkey to learn, as he is a little sponge at the moment, so we do have structured play. Things like the colour matching game and we also do things like threading pasta on a string or some of our counting games. But we have been encouraging him to play a bit more independently for some time.

 

As he is getting older, it is easier for him to have more independent playtime, where he potters and does things himself. Where he will push postman pat around in his pushchair, or drive a car up and down the arms of the sofa, or play with the plastic food in his mini kitchen and present me with pies and stews. This is my favourite kind of play, as it is all about his imagination and he is also learning at the same time. I guess it is the definition of child-led play. It is great, but, as any parent knows, kids aren’t always so obliging and  get bored easily, so they sometimes need a bit of prompting to fire up their imaginations.

rp_Rainy-Day-Play-400x400.jpgBecause of this a lot of our time involves me setting up an activity and then actually sitting back and seeing where his imagination takes him. He likes me to be involved but I try to encourage him to play on his own as much as possible. So once I have built him a train track, or have drawn a road for him, I then back off and leave him to it a bit. I guess it is independent play within a semi-structured framework?

Messy play and sensory play work on a similar basis, as while it means a bit of structure in that I am giving him the activity and the tools, I actually try and encourage him to use his imagination and see where it takes him. It generally involves a lot of mess but he has fun. And actually many of the craft activities I have tried to structure, with a result in mind, actually wind up being a bit of a disaster so I have learnt to have less of a goal in mind with messy or crafty play!

Maybe we are a bit cruel? Do we expect too much of our little two year old in asking him to be independent? I hope that it is good for him as we are teaching him life skills. In many ways he is incredibly lucky that he has our undivided attention. As a SAHM he has my attention all of the time, and I have worried in the past that that that may be detrimental in itself. Children at a nursery or childminder have to learn to be less dependent on their parents don’t they? If you are working then you cannot be there with them all of the time. Is my being at home with him encouraging him to be more reliant on me? Perhaps that is why I am enjoying the new-found independence so much.

As with many things parenting I am sure you can argue it from all sides and no-one really knows what the best thing is for any child, and I am sure the best thing is in fact different for different children! All we can do is what we think is best, and for us, for now, we will continue to encourage this growing independence and hope that it is the right thing to do!

Ethans Escapades

Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com
#BabyBabble

The Reading Residence

Rainy day play – draw your own road (26 mths)

I have seen versions of this before, and actually tried once before a long time ago, though Monkey was too young to really appreciate it at the time. I had forgotten about it entirely until I read this post by Carie at Space for the Butterflies. Seeing how much her girls enjoyed it made me keen to give it another go.

So, one slightly grey miserable day with nothing else planned and realising we were in need of some rainy day play, I decided to have another try and see if Monkey liked it.

Rainy Day Play

Continue reading

Let Kids be Kids linky 12/08/14

The lovely Karen over at Let Kids be Kids is away on holiday this week down in gorgeous Cornwall, and she has asked me to host this week’s Let Kids be Kids linky! I jumped at the chance as this is one of my favourite linkys to join in with!

There are always so many great posts with fab ideas for good old childhood fun, both indoors and outdoors, I always get so much inspiration from everyone’s posts!

We have been loving this summer and having loads of fun with outdoor play lately, although the cooler weather seems to have set in too this weekend with a lot of rain forcing play indoors! Hopefully we still have some summer fun ahead of us yet though 🙂

Right, on to the linky!

This is a linky all about letting kids be kids, getting back to basics and having great childhood fun. We live in such a fast paced modern world with so much technology and stresses round every corner, we often need to be reminded to just ‘play’ and have fun, it’s healthy for us all (yes, that includes you parents!).

Please join Karen (and I) in spreading the word, for encouraging children to step away from the technology for a while and go out, run around, use their imaginations and just have general basic FUN!

There’s not many rules, just link up your posts (screen free), old or new, about genuine childhood fun (of any age). It may be fun outdoors, jumping in puddles, nature hunts, riding bikes or making mud pies. Or it may be fun indoors with arts and crafts, making dens, cooking, messy play or reading. Or how about visiting a farm or fun at a fete. Or a discussion about children growing up too fast, etc.

Whatever basic fun you have been having or discussing, link up and share your ideas, visit others to get inspiration and comment on as many as you can to give each other encouragement and support, but most importantly, HAVE FUN!

This linky will open every Tuesday for 6 days, so there’s plenty of time to add your posts.

Please spread the word and grab the badge below!

 

If you tweet me your link (@BecomingaSAHM), I will happily retweet.