"Mummy! When can we go on a train again?" That's the question I hear more often than anything from Master C. He is train obsessed at the moment and seems to like nothing more than us using the family railcard to go somewhere on the Thameslink line, mainly just so he can look out of the window and be all excited about actually being on a train. One of his favourite trips has to be to go just up the line to Luton, as he knows that once there there is a perfectly positioned Starbucks where he can sit in the window and watch not only the trains, but also the buses in the next door bus station ... read more
Review: Brio Fire Station and Rescue Helicopter
In some ways Master C is such a stereo-typical boy. I never really got the boy / girl difference thing until I had one of each and the first time I found Master C crawling around the kitchen floor pushing a car in a way that I'd never seen Little Miss C play. It was really strange and almost a light bulb moment about the fact that boys and girls do indeed have something different inside their brains which means that they play in different ways. When it comes to emergency vehicles Master C is obsessed. If something goes past us on the walk to school with a siren or flashing lights then ... read more
Surviving a poxy week
I feel like Master C has been dodging chicken pox since before he was born. His sister had them whilst I was pregnant with him and I remember all the mad googling about what the risks of chicken pox were to an unborn baby. It was all fine though as I'd had them myself as a child (still have the scar to remind me) and there was no risk to him at all. But when you're pregnant you do just worry anyway. That was nearly four years ago and ever since then he's managed to be exposed to the pox loads of time and never caught them. Playdates with friends who came down with it the next day. It going ... read more
January – all the things I’d forgotten I’d done
Did I fall asleep or something? Where on earth did January go? It seems like only two minutes since Christmas and New Year, but then at the same time they also feel like a lifetime ago. So, what exactly have I been up to in January. Sitting here now it seems a bit hard to work out exactly what I've been up to for the whole month, but I'm sure I'll work it out. The biggest thing has probably been that January has been the month in which I started running again. Here I am on the 29th of the month and I'm delighted to say that I've clocked up a whole 70km in January (so far!) and am ... read more
Review: Bing Floor Puzzle from Ravensburger
Regular readers will know that Master C is the biggest Bing fan out there right now. Every day he asks to watch it on the BBC iPlayer and he is completely obsessed with Bing, Sula, Pando and their friends and carers. As I mentioned when I blogged about knitting him a Flop toy there haven't been any Bing toys available commercially, but that's all about to change with this Bing Floor Puzzle from Ravensburger that we were sent to review. When I unwrapped the puzzle from the packaging in which it had been sent I think I instantly qualified for Mum of the Year, and that was while Master C just ... read more
The magic of a white Christmas
Here we are on the first day of a new year. Mr C is back to work tomorrow, Master C back to nursery and I think it's therefore time to say that Christmas 2014 is over. The last ten days seem to have vanished in a bit of a whirlwind, but I think it fair to say we had a good Christmas. The emergency dentist appointment for me and both kids being at the GPs on the Monday and Tuesday of Christmas week made me wonder if we were going to be a house full of sick people for the big day itself, but luckily I think we dodged a bullet there. We just had my mum staying with us for Christmas itself and ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 19 – Speech and Language Therapy
I did warn you that our summer got a bit more boring once we were back from Cornwall and day 19 was a fine example of that. Mr C returned to work after a week off and I headed out with the kids to a local drop in Speech and Language Therapy session. Today was the day that I needed to tackle one of the first of the contradictions that came out on the first day of the summer, when I met with Master C's nursery to discuss the problems we're having. They felt that there may be a need for him to have some speech and language therapy, something which really surprised me. Master C's language is, I ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 6 – Birthday party, upcycling and vintage sewing patterns
As I feared, time is starting to run away from me somewhat and I'm already starting to wonder what it was we did a couple of days ago. After the excitement on Luton on Monday, Tuesday was intended as a bit of a quieter day at home, punctuated by a lunchtime birthday party for both children at the kind invitation of one of Little Miss C's school friends. The party was held in a Scout hut in a part of St Albans that I'm not at all familiar with (and hence I discovered a fantastic new playground next door too), and as we were still blessed with gorgeous hot weather here it was particularly ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 5 – Fun in Luton
Yes, you did read that title correctly, and no it's not one that I ever expected to write either. When I started keeping track of what we're getting up to this summer I did realise that we couldn't go out and do an amazing day trip every day, and nor did I want to. Sometimes the simplest of things can be the most rewarding, and sometimes something that might have appeared very mundane actually turns out to be quite exciting. We started today without any real plans and the only things that we had to get done were to get some food shopping in and to buy a birthday present for a little boy ... read more
Summer 2014: Days 3 & 4 – A weekend without Daddy
It's been a bit of a funny old weekend in that most of it didn't feel like a weekend at all. Mr C's been away in the Netherlands at a wedding, and without him about it's kind of made the days merge into last week a bit, and it certainly hasn't given me the break that I so need by the end of a busy week, especially when we're in the school holidays. The first alarm went off at 2.50am on Saturday morning for Mr C to get up for a 6am flight to Amsterdam and combining that with a couple of wake-ups from Master C - who was struggling with the heat - it meant that Saturday started feeling ... read more