What we did this fortnight

It's been a busy few weeks packed with quite a bit of activity and lovely things. We've taken advantage of sunny days, ebay, friends off work and unexpected extra family time to...

Get crafty; as the holidays loomed the term of Creation Station came to an end so Bubbah and I got crafty at home. We made dinosaur fridge magnets (courtesy of a birthday present) and did our hand prints, which somehow ended up with Bubbah having a massive smudge of paint on his foot!

Socialise; (l-r) playing with cousins during their Easter holiday break, Bubbah stealing my cake during a drinks and cake catch up with a friend who had a rare day off, driving Peppa Pig's car during a morning with nana (which again involved nice drinks and cake)

Chill out at home; (l-r) finally managed to track down a cheap Fireman Sam figure for Bubbah's engine (good old ebay), building a tower with his many, many (over 100) Megabloks, making calls to grandma with "oo ogs" (two dogs)

enjoy daddy being home; (l-r) being amazed by Babe, helping daddy wash grandad's car, Easter eggs, building (and destroying) a den

BUT FIRST...

Let me take a selfie!

Auntie time; pizza making

As per yesterday's post, today I made pizzas with my niece and nephew (and brother). I made up the bases the night before and just brought them over to my mum's house with a load of toppings already prepared. Upon being told what my plans were my niece and nephew immediately started up a chant of "PIZZA, PIZZA, PIZZA!" Here's how they got on...

My nephew also insisted my brother sit with him and make his own pizza as well exactly like his! Unfortunately my brother ate his pizza too quickly to get a picture of it.

Auntie Time

As part of my extended family I'm very lucky to a) have a niece and nephew and b) be able to see them plenty. My brother sees them every other weekend and comes to stay at my mum's house, meaning that I am able to see them at the same time and Bubbah gets to spend time with his cousins, which he adores. They're all within a good age range of each other (Bubbah is two, my nephew is 3 and my niece is 6 next month) which means they can play together nicely and Bubbah loves following them about trying to join in their games. My niece has fallen quite easily into the eldest cousin role of keeping the peace and making sure they play nicely in that tongue in cheek bossy way young children can do so well.





I absolutely love seeing my niece and nephew so much, having been very involved with them and seeing them on a regular basis since they were little. As such we have a close bond and I get greeted with an excited running hug and cry of "AUNTY TASH" every time they see me.




Something I like to keep up is spending proper time with them, taking interest in what they say even if it's putting together every puzzle they own and laying them out on display for the rest of the day (they have a lot of puzzles) and coming up with fun (even if a bit silly) games and activities to do. For their birthday/Christmas presents I tend to get them at least one "craft" thing as they love making stuff (and getting messy) and sometimes said then made/painted item finds it way back to me, proudly presented by a beaming child.


This Easter my brother is taking advantage of them being off school and having them for a few days before all the bank holiday madness. I'll be seeing them in this time and already have a few ideas, my main one being: pizza making! As previously said they love making things and getting messy in the process (mess always make it more fun) so I made up a couple of pizza bases for them, Bubbah and my brother (who wanted to join in too) and tomorrow I'll be lugging them and a load of topping choices over to my mum's house. They have fun, we spend time together and they get dinner out of it; everyone's a winner!

How to boost your toddler's brain function (apparently)

I was browsing Mother and Baby's website the other day and came across this article which reports on a study claiming taking your toddler shopping can help improve their brain function.

The study says that activities such as...

• shopping
• painting
• arts/crafts
• being read to
• being encouraged to tell stories

all increase different areas of brain function (movement, social skills and talking ability) and can even increase children's happiness levels. Passive things such as looking at picture books and watching TV don't.

Professor Paul Anand of the Open University explained that watching the process of mum and dad choosing items and paying for them is ‘particularly significant in relation to child happiness’.

He continued, ‘Children are getting visual stimulation, they’re getting out of the house and into a new environment, they’re bumping into other families where social skills come into play and they may get the chance to do something physical in a shop like run around.’

Prof Anand added, ‘There does seem to be a connection between the kinds of activities that are taking place and the skills that are being developed.

Source

I'm all for stimulating Bubbah's brain but I must admit I never viewed shopping in that way! Recently, he's taken to grabbing random items and dropping them into the trolley. My best example of this is when I'd put a bag of bananas in the trolley, turned around to grab some tins of soup, turned back and found Bubbah had added six bags of bananas into the trolley. So, not quite there with supply and demand as we would never get through seven bags of bananas in a week. That's a lot of banana bread!

So what do you think, does accompanying you food shopping make your toddler smarter?

Crafty times and the Creation Station

Since the beginning of this year Raphael and I have been bit by the craft bug. This has been in part from a course I did just before Christmas where we looked at doing craft with recycled things (card, bottle tops etc) and more recently because of The Creation Station running sessions at my local children's centre. Nicole, the woman who runs these sessions, has been absolutely lovely and so patient with Bubbah when he decides to run off and, say, wash his hands mid-craft!

 As with any most things involving toddlers The Creation Station provides jumpsuits to cover their clothes (which comes in handy, especially when Bubbah decided to potato print his jumpsuit) and incorporates music, interaction and different craft techniques to keep things interesting and fun for them. Previous examples include; ice cube painting, comb painting, potato/veg printing/painting and rolling pin painting.

 Each week we come away with something different, even if it's just a picture Bubbah has scribbled over. My favourite home pieces have been the broccoli monster and stained glass kite below as I would never have thought to make something like that.

These have pushed me at home and after a quick supply gathering (aka stealing paints etc. from Nana's house and eventually buying my own paint) we now have frequent craft/painting sessions which Bubbah loves. We've also bought a craft kit from Nicole and made our very own spoon puppet!

 And generally Bubbah is always please to show off his work (after some cajoling and flashing the camera at him) as seen here with his teddy bear's picnic picture (complete with Paddington gripped in hand).

Mother's Day, 25 things and getting back to "normal"

Since I last posted we've had Mother's Day so I thought I'd do a quick summary of my Mother's Day...

Not particularly exciting, I got woken up at half 6 and continued the normal daily routine (food, clothes, etc) and did our weekly food shop with my mum. We (Bubbah and I) gave my mum her cards and presents and she surprised me with a (giant) card of my own! Post food shop hubby was awake and presented me with my card and present from Bubbah. Having convinced me to open my original present (Catching Fire on DVD) two weeks previously on promise of a different present I received these:

Since having Bubbah I don't really wear much jewellery (my earrings are to intriguing and Bubbah likes to pull things, everything else was too dainty) but I couldn't resist these when making up my list (hubby likes to have choices) for Mother's day. This necklace and bracelet are from ASOS Curve and I'd been somewhat desperate to have a necklace from their collection as I like my chains longer than average. Their length is perfect for me and the bracelet matching was the icing on the cake! I also like that they're made of steel rather than silver plated; no green skin for me!

Elsewhere, things are slowly beginning to settle into some form of normalcy. Hubby has been diagnosed as having sleep apnoea and we're waiting for a special air machine and mask from the hospital to help him out. Once we have the machine hopefully he'll be sleeping better and have less sleeping fits. He's back doing a full week at work now so I've had to get back into my ironiung, breakfast and lunch making routine pretty quickly after a few months off.

To round of this post I decided to join the "25 things" posts I've seen cropping up on some people's blogs. Feel free to add a fact about yourself in the comments or pinch the format and do your own post :)

1. I'm 23
2. I'm a stickler for grammar and spelling
3. I have a diploma in magazine journalism
4. Home cooking and baking are passions of mine
5. I own way too many books (according to hubby anyway)
6. I seem to keep falling back into the dystopia genre (think Uglies, Hunger Games, Divergent to name but a few)
7. When at uni I got really into vintage clothing and accessories
8. I was devastated when my vintage ankle lace up boots died at the toe and couldn't be saved. I've been looking for a decent replacement ever since
9. My two year old brings me more stress and laughter than I ever imagined
10. I can remember weird facts
11. I'm that annoying person who sits in a film-adaptation of a book pointing out everything the film changed/missed out
12. I'm big on romance but don't need big gestures
13. Salted caramel chocolate is my favourite
14. I love the smell of baking bread or freshly cut grass
15. I'm onto my second recipe scrap book
16. I'm prepared to the point of ridiculousness - I will always have at least one pen, some plasters, some tissues, some calpol sachets and antibacterial wipes and/or gel on me
17. I can quote Dear Zoo verbatim 
18. I've been to every Taylor Swift concert she's done in the UK
19. One of my best friends lives in Leeds, which is a bummer!
20. I love making things and have made a sock dinosaur for Bubbah
21. Crafts/painting is always a big hit with myself and Bubbah
22. I always put on different voices when reading children's books (as such "Are the dinosaurs dead dad" is only allowed to be read by me as Bubbah loves my dad voice too much)
23. I love Rod Stewart, Meatload and Bon Jovi's music, it's my dad's influence
24. I've written a novel
25. My favourite flower is the germini flower