Little Miss at 11 months

Dear Little Miss,

My beautiful baby girl almost a year old already. You have achieved so much this last month to make Mummy and Daddy proud. You have been taken the odd steps for the last six weeks or so but this month you finally worked up the courage to take more precious first steps. I love seeing the excitement on your face when you realised that you have walked a little bit further than before.  You are also babbling more in response to what we are saying. I love having lots of conversations with you. One of your favourite things to do is dance. Every time you hear music  you will bounce along. You even have your own speciality move, a fist pump. You and Little Mr have three songs that you love to dance along too together.

Our feeding journey is still going strong , in fact I am feeding you now as I write. You are a little monkey at bedtime though. You like to wake up every couple of hours to feed at the moment which is a little trickier now I am back at work. However your brother was the same so I know it won't last long and secretly I enjoy all of our extra nighttime snuggles. It's hard to believe a year ago we were preparing for your arrival, it seems like you have always been here.

Lots of love

Mummy and Daddy

xxx

A rainy afternoon

After a busy morning at football club and then a visit to the shops we headed home as the weather was miserable. Now any one who knows Little Mr knows that he is obsessed with planes at the moment. He was a little adamant following the shops the he 'needed' an airport for his planes. But  with Christmas on the Horizon and Little Miss' first Birthday around the corner there was no way I was going to buy him more toys so I suggested we make our own. 

Little Mr loves to get creative so we started by turning a cereal box inside out (much easier than painting the glossier side)and painting it black. I had seen a post on Pinterest many weeks ago where they had used fairy lights along a runway strip. I bought a few packs of battery lights last Christmas for a pound a pack and they were just perfect for the job.

I added the runway albeit very quickly as I had a grumpy baby and a toddler eager to play planes. I quickly pierced 8 holes and inserted the lights. I added a little tape to the back of each one to keep them in place. And voila our cereal box was ready to play with. 

This was such a quick activity and Little Mr thought it was great.  I am planning on using our cereal boxes in some more creative ways over the coming weeks.

Have you made anything with a cereal box?

We are Toyologists

We are very excited to announce that we have been invited to become part of the Toys R Us, Toyologist scheme. We have proudly added our shiny new toyologist badge on the right. Have you spotted it?

We have already received our first product and Little Mr has already set upon testing it out. He is very excited about this opportunity as are we. We can't wait to share with you in the coming weeks.

Dresser Refurb

I have been looking for a dresser for what seems like a life time. The ones I have seen and loved have always cost a small fortune, however recently I stumbled accross a post on facebook of all places advertising an Ercol Welsh Dresser at a fraction of the prices listed on ebay. I jumped at the chance to buy it and within 12 hours it was sitting in our kitchen. In my eagerness to get started I forgot to take a picture before I dabbled at sanding the dresser down but you can get the jist of how it originally looked. The gentleman we bought the dresser from told us it had belonged to his mother and had always been in her living room for as long as he can remember, with many a family party held around it. He wished us many happy years with it which I though was really sweet.

Having recently returned to work I am still adjusting to working 10 plus hour days again so I soon set my hubby onto the job.

We originally used an electrical hand sander but found we prefered the control and finish we achieved through good old fashioned elbow grease so opted to hand sand it.

We then drunk lots of wine and painted the dresser in a fab stone Farrow and Ball colour. After hours of scouring Pinterest for ideas I finally settled on the colour Purbeck Stone.

My favourite part was oiling the top of the dresser which we left sanded. I love how the grain really shows up.

Originally we toyed with the idea of selling it as we dont really have the space but I have fallen in love with it now so it wont be going anywehre.

Here is the nearly finished dresser. It needs another coat really.

Have you ever painted or changed a piece of furniture? I would love to see pictures or posts.

Autumn Days

Little Mr loves being outdoors and a current favourite activity of his is to venture out on a nature walk. It is rare that we all get the opportunity to  go together though and this weekend Little Mr requested a nature walk so we made the extra effort to go. We are lucky where we live as there are lots of different woodland areas within a short (unless accompanied by a toddler) walking distance.

We had great fun collecting sticks, conkers, leaves amongst other things. Little Mr is a typical little boy and loves sticks, wherever we go he has to find a 'new' one to add to the ever growing collection in our back garden.

Today we were our Autumn walk was inspired by Julia Donaldson books with lots of Gruffalo hunting, and broom stick riding. Never would I have thought I would be flying on my broomstick through the woods but its amazing what you do to inspire weary little legs to keep going.

Here are some of my favourite photographs from the afternoon. A perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

 

 

  

Little Miss at 10 Months

               

Dear Little Miss,

You are mow a full 10 months old, creeping ever closer to the mile stone of being one. We just can't believe it. You can now stand on your own and take the odd tentative step. You are super quick and an expert at cruising around our furniture and climbing the stairs. You now have 6 teeth with two more ready to pop at any moment. You are settled into going to bed at 8:30pm which is later than your brother ever did but we are happy with this as it gives Daddy and I some quality time with just you. This month has seen me go back to work and boy do I miss you and your brother. You have loved spending time with your grandparents though and  puppy wolf Bess. You love to chase Bess around and fall about in laughter when she runs circles around you. Your relationship with Little Mr is continually blossoming, we love watching you play together and seeing your bond develop. Where has our little smiley baby gone?!? You are turning into beautiful, happy toddler before our eyes but will always be our baby.

Lots of love

Mummy & Daddy

Pampers Active Fit Nappy Challenge #BritainsDriestNappy

It seems for the last 3 and a bit years all I have done is change nappies. For the duration of this time we have mainly used Pampers Baby Dry, however Little Miss is much more of a wriggler than Little Mr ever was and a heavier wetter, so when I was offered the chance to take the Pampers, Britains driest nappy challenge I jumped.

Now Pampers Active Fit nappies claim to have "an extra absorbent layer that quickly draws wetness away and locks it in so that they stay up to 2. Times drier than other leading nappies."

So the teacher in me was keen to investigate further and see if Pampers Active Fit really do keep the wetness locked in and thus leaving my Little Miss with a lovely dry bottom.

To do this I slowly poured 150ml of water on to the nappy. I then waited 90 seconds for the nappy to absorb the water (feel free to fast forward this part of the video)

Here is a short video of what happened.

I was really surprised how dry the kitchen roll was there was barely any water on it. Great news for keeping your baby super dry.

As mentioned we usually use Pampers Baby Dry and have never had a problem but I will definitely be giving Pampers Active Fit a try in the future.

This post is an entry for #BritainsDriestNappy trial sponsored by Pampers. Learn more at facebook.com/PampersUKIre” and linking to https://www.facebook.com/PampersUKIre 

**Please note that I was given a pack of Pampers Active Fit nappies for the purpose of this challenge but all views and opinions are 100% my own.**

The Grand Depart

Recently we were very lucky to have the Grand Depart in our county, not only that it was practically on our doorstep. Excitement had been building in the weeks running up to the big day, hundreds of yellow bikes had been popping up all around where we live. Little Mr had been spotting them everywhere we had been and even went on a bike hunt with his pre-school.

No non of us would proclaim to be massive cycling fans but we certainly did not want to miss out on such a momentous day in our beautiful city. We wanted to make our way down early so as to grab a good spot and ensure we saw all of the support vehicles that preceded the riders.  Little Mr loved watching the sponsors drive past but particularly enjoyed waving to all of the police bikes.

 

Eventually the riders appeared to huge rounds of applause, but were gone almost as quickly as they came. It was fab to see though.

 

It was fab to walk around the usually car packed streets so beautifully decorated. We soaked up the atmosphere along one of our favourite streets in York, Bishopthorpe Road. They had closed the street for a street party following the race.

Lets Catch Up

Yikes the last few weeks have just flown by. We have been so busy doing lots of exciting things and making the most of the end of my maternity leave that I have not had much time to do any blogging. Although I have taken oodles of pictures so I am sure some of the memories created will make there way on here soon.

Some of my favourite pictures from the last couple of weeks. So adorably cute and completely in love with each other when Little Miss leaves Little Mr's things alone that is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Tropical World

Recently we visited Tropical World. Our trip really captured Little Mr's imagination and he was keen to create somewhere to live for the insects that he bought from the gift shop.

 

 

 

Together we planned what he wanted to include. He thought of most of the ideas himself as he could recall what we had seen the previous day. Though he was adament we had seen cows and pigs, I must have missed those. He was also very keen to have a car, not very tropical but he wanted to be able to drive around his small world scene.

 

We have a large round tray, which we have used for many small world play themes. It is perfect as can be easily moved around. We then began to collect the other items we needed.

 

Little Mr eager as ever to start headed outside to collect some sand to start his Tropical play scene.

 

We have already had lots of play generated from such a small collection of objects. From track making in the sand, to insects hiding an needing to be found. I am sure that we can eek out a few more days of play before changing it over.

Some of the activities we will do with this small world play scene are:

Scientific Knowledge & Understanding - Identifying the names of the toy insects, looking after plants, naming parts of a plant.

Literacy - Role play opportunities & story telling

Numeracy - Counting insects, ordering insects by length, counting legs and simple problem solving.

We have lots of fun making small world play scenes. Have you made any? I would love to find out about yours.

First Pre-School Trip

This week was momentous in such a simple and ordinary way. It was my little Mr's first re-school trip. Now as a teacher I am very much used to the whole school trip routine, but this was very different as each child took their own adult along plus I was far more excited about it (oh and much less stressed, two children is much easier than 30).

Little Mr had been taking about his trip for weeks and was getting excited about his excursion. We woke early, got dressed and had a leisurely breakfast since Daddy was home too. I made up a little pic-nic to take to. We arrived at playgroup amid the hustle and bustle of excitement as we waited for the coach to arrive. I must admit this did make me miss being at work a little. Now it turns out a pre-school trip involves a whole lot of equipment compared to a school one. We had a flurry of car seats, buggy's, toddler bags, mummy bags oh and picnic to descend onto the bus.  Once on we made our way to Tropical world and Roundhay Park. First stop was the play park whilst we waited for our time slot at Tropical world. It was a fab park filled with lots of interesting and exciting equipment but most of the boys were happier running about on the hill with sticks. Boys will be boys hey!

We had a great day, below are some pictures of Little Mr.

Once we escaped the gift shop we headed to the gardens for our pic-nic. After our lovely food Little Mr had an accident, he was happily running around when he stumbled over his own feet. He fell without even putting his hands in front of him an so his head took the full force of his fall leaving him with a cut on is forehead. Now at the time it looked horrendous, especially with all of the blood. So panic followed, along with lots of cuddles, kisses oh and a stolen Calipo to use as an ice pack. Luckily the staff were fab and helped Little Mr out, plus they let me off for pinching the ice lolly. I felt terrible for what had happened and really blamed myself. I wanted to get him checked as it was quite a cut so I wanted to be sure he didn't need it gluing together. So we headed back towards the coach picking up an ice-cream along the way. He is all well now and it certainly didn't put him off, he was asking to return.