Like mother, like son

Worryingly I think Nathaniel is showing even more traits like me than he was before.

He’s always enjoyed flicking through books and is getting more obsessed.  I’m not sure whether that’s like all toddlers, or whether he’s turning into a bookworm like me?

Firstly, he loves my books.  Whatever I’m reading he’ll find the book, flick through the pages and remove the bookmark.  I’m not sure whether he just likes being annoying, or whether he recognises that it was the one he made for mother’s day at nursery.  It’s probably just the ribbon bits out of the top of the book that’s so tempting.

He does have lots of books, most of them bought from nearly new sales or bargain book shops, and they’re currently in 3 rooms of the house.  A few in his toy buckets in the living room, lots in his bookcase/toy shelves in the dining room (come playroom at the moment) and then a box of them in his bedroom.

I used to keep the box in his bedroom on top of the wardrobe, and would just bring out a few books every so often for bedtime, but then he kept pointing to the box so it’s now on the floor and accessible to him whenever he wants.

All very well, but it means whenever we go upstairs for naps, bed, nappy change etc he roots around in the box and wants to sit on my lap and read them.  And when I say them, I mean them!  He doesn’t do whole stories on the whole, a few pages and that’s it time for the next book.

His current favourites:

Farm – great little picture & word book, with flaps that shows produce, animals, farm machinery and what all these things do/come from

Farm Animals – sparkle book.  He has 3 of this type of book (rhyming verse, or questions about Water Animals, Farm Animals and Animal Opposites), hand-me-downs from a friend but the farm animals one is his favourite.

Stories for One Year Olds – great short stories with animals as part of the stories.  He loves spotting the lion train driver (he roars when he sees it), and the monkey (see below)

Children’s first word & picture book – lots of words and pictures on themed pages.  Of course he likes the animal page the best, and this is how he’s learnt his animal sounds.  The most recent (apart from his lion roar) is the monkey – he now goes “ee ee” and does the underarm action for monkeys.  Very amusing and very cute.  We’re now working on ssss for the snake, and trumpeting with a trunk for the elephant.  I’m a tad concerned that he keeps pointing to the giraffe and panda, as I’m stumped on what sounds if any they make!

I’m really glad he loves books, but it’s now getting a bit drastic.  This evening, he just kept pointing to the book box even once he was in his cot for bed.  So he went to bed with his Red Racing car book.  Hopefully he’ll remember to throw it out the cot sides before actually falling asleep.

Busy reading about farms

Meringue Magic

A bit of a foodie surprise post as I was just so astounded at finding this recipe and how it works.

I’d been reading a Trisha Ashley book and in the back was a recipe relating to one that the heroine cooks for Microwave Meringues.  All very odd, but I’m all for trying out new shortcut recipes in the hope that they’ll be a success.  As it’s really hot weather at the moment, meringues sandwiched with whipped cream always goes down well with Nathaniel and the OH but are a bit of a pain with the having to leave the meringues to cool etc.

The recipe was:

1 large egg white

300g icing sugar

Really simple to make:

1. lightly beat the egg white
2. sift in the icing sugar (I didn’t bother sifting – too much washing up needed!)
3. Stir and it’ll get thick and end up like soft fondant icing.  The recipe said you may need more egg white or icing sugar to get the texture, but I found it just the right amount
4. On microwavable plate, put circle of greaseproof paper and spoon on balls of the mix 2 at a time.  I made the mistake of using too big a spoonful, or too many balls, so do still to only 2 (and I find teaspoon size was fine.
5. Blitz for 1 minute in the microwave, leave to cool and repeat with the rest of the mix.

Then once cool you can do what you want with them.  The microwave magically enlarges them.  You could do one bigger spoon and have a pavlova.

They’re definitely not like proper meringues which are crisper on the outside and gooey on the inside, rather they look more like the pure white shop bought ones.  And they’re really crumbly.

Source: http://tulipskitchen.blogspot.co.uk

I decided the texture wasn’t suitable for sandwiching with cream, so crumbled some up and used in Eton Mess which they were great for.  I even took photos, but forgot to include the pictures on my upload and then deleted them, so no pics!

If you want a quick pudding then I reckon they’re pretty clever (plus kids will probably love watching them expand in the microwave), but I’ll be sticking to the normal meringue making in future.

The Gallery: Picture Postcard

Have finally got round to taking part in another Gallery, and it’s an important one – No. 100!  Congratulations to everyone who’s taken part in all of them.

This week’s theme is picture postcard, and here’s my photo which I think would look great on the front of a postcard.  It’s not quite the traditional beach view but I thought this would be more interesting than one of my bog standard beach photos.

Pebbles on the beach at Beer, Devon

If you fancy seeing what pictures everyone else has linked up, you can check them out here.

Animal sounds

Most children probably start with ducks, dogs or cats, but obviously being a farmer’s son the obvious ones to start recognising would be those he can see out the windows or when we go for a walk down to the yard.

So, sheep?….nope, he looks at me like I’m mad when I start baa-ing.  Although today he was jabbering to himself and there was what sounded like him singing ‘baa baa black sheep’.

Cows?  We’ve now, after a few weeks, got ‘ooo’ which I think relates to cows.

I think we had one attempt at a ‘gobble’ for his Gramps turkeys when I pointed to a picture in his farm book, but I can’t get him to even try ‘cluck’ or ‘cheep’ for the chickens or baby chicks that are currently sitting atop his Gran’s Aga.  He does love the birds a lot – always looks for those in his books.

But the other day we had ‘roar’ like a lion.  I think he just likes the sound especially as when his dad comes into a room to surprise him he always makes a roaring sound (no idea why, but luckily Nathaniel’s not at the stage where he knows roaring animals are likely to be dangerous!)  I just pointed at the lion picture and said ‘roar’ and he started roaring back.  Very funny though, as it sounds more like ‘argghh’!

I wonder what sounds we’ll get next.

At the moment all ‘words’ are still ‘tractor’ or ‘og og’ (dog). Great when he’s pointing at the real life items, but not so great when it’s something else he’s trying to get our attention to.

National Forest Adventure Farm

Seems like ages ago now, but around the Easter holidays we’d been quite busy meeting up with various online mum & baby friends.  The last occasion was a trip to The Forest Adventure Park at Tatenhill, nr Burton.  A friend goes regularly, and it did live up to expectations even though the day was a bit grey, cold and wet.

It was free for the toddlers, and around £8 for the adults, so not bad for a day out, although once you factor in lunch and cakes it can get a bit pricy.  They do have outdoor eating areas, and it would be perfect in the summer with a picnic, but being cold and wet meant it was packed indoors in the restaurant and therefore we had to eat café food.  The menus were quite good – pick and mix sandwich meal for children or normal hot meal options (Nathaniel had a burger, peas and mash which he did pretty well at demolishing, showing off his cutlery skills at the same time), while there were lots of adult options (generally traditional English fare).  One downside was that as it was busy, by mid afternoon when we were ready for cakes there was hardly any choice left.  More cakes available needed on a wet day!

The softplay area was large with lots of bench seating around the toddler area and set areas for parties.  There was giant lego blocks for building in one area, bumpy slides and drop slide for the older kids as well as the normal softplay frames and ball pits etc.  The toddler area was ok – climbing and slide, then a ball pit with the ‘blowy air ball’ machine things which Nathaniel wasn’t keen on (think it was the noise it made).

Outside they have paddocks you can see the animals in as well as a barn with petting type animals which included new chicks, guinea pigs, dexter cattle, donkeys, lambs, rabbits and others.  It’s great for the children to be able to get so close to the animals, and Nathaniel loved them – it was really cute to see which ones he recognised as having already seen on our farm.

Bizarrely, we also came across a pig race in one paddock where the pigs did 2 laps of the pen area with ‘jockey’ teddies tied round their middles.  Very strange, but quite amusing although think the toddlers were a little too young to be interested in it.  Nathaniel was more interested in seeing the duck pond and former battery chickens.

The weather wasn’t great the day we were there, but there’s also outdoor play areas including electric quad kart track, bouncing pillow, volley ball court and other activities.  Plus while you wait for the tractor & trailer rides, there’s a John Deere sit on toy area which of course Nathaniel and his friends loved.

We had a lovely day there, and even though it was packed indoors as the weather wasn’t great, it wasn’t too busy to enjoy it.  Just wish that Nathaniel had been a bit cheerier on the day as he was being a bit sensitive to any of the others getting too close.

Trendy Toddler

I love little clothes (ok so I like shopping, but even if you take that away, little clothes are cute).

Lots of people say that girls clothes are so much more interesting (and I have to say I’ve seen some gorgeous dresses, but let’s face it, how practical are they once they’re crawling, walking and exploring).  Boy clothes can be a bit samey, and when I look at them drying on the clothes horse I’d have to agree that colourwise, there’s a definite blue, brown theme going on in our house!

But they are pretty cute – I love Nathaniel in cords, and little cargo trousers, and his cropped trouser (should be shorts, but he’s got short legs!) are gorgeous.  And you can get some really funky t shirts for them, and gilets, and coats.  Oh let’s face it, they just tend to look cute in them when they’re this age.

So for the first time I’m linking up to the trendy toddler linky which can be found here.

Here’s Nathaniel today (supposedly ill with an ear infection, although after him being extremely hot and clingy yesterday, one dose of antibiotics and he’s bounced right back) in his lovely polo shirt and oversized shorts.  Not sure the hat goes but hey ho, for once he actually deigned to keep it on his head!

Empathy starts here

I’m not sure it’s quite the emergence of empathy yet, but Nathaniel’s starting to take a lot more notice of what other people are saying or doing.

He’s never really been that fussed about trying to copy other people’s actions, preferring to work things out himself.  But the last few days we’ve had manic laughter as soon as someone else starts laughing.  Really, I expect he has no idea what people are laughing at but it’s so funny to see.

This weekend, I had a stall at a baby & children’s market and Grandma was keeping an eye on him, taking him for a walk and playing with him in the soft play area there.  But they also had a magic show for the older children which was next to my stall.  He wasn’t really watching the show at all, but he was enthralled with watching the children in the audience.  Every time they laughed, he joined in.

He has also started being more aware of when other toddlers or babies are crying.  I’m presuming that it’s the start of the learning the emotional side about people, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes next.

Interesting way of playing the harmonica

Listography: top 5 things I love about kids

This is a really interesting listography for me, as I’m not really a fan of children, or at least wasn’t until I had Nathaniel.  Even now I’m not a ‘baby’ person, although obviously I love Nathaniel, the children in our family, and my children’s friends are great too.  The ones I can’t stand are the ones who misbehave and have parents who don’t notice or care how badly behaved they are.

I also don’t have a great deal of experience to draw on so here’s my listography based on having a soon to be 16 month old:

1. Having fun.  Having a child means you can be as silly as possible and play with all those toys, reminiscing on the old days with the toys that are still around.

2. Excitement for development.  When you’re an adult, personal development is often a phrase that strikes fear and boredom when at work – something you have to do as part of working, even though you really don’t have the time for it on the day job, but with children they develop so quickly it’s great to see what they learn and the joy they take in learning.

3. Memories. I love looking back at old photos from when we were children, and Nathaniel’s going to have so many more to look at what with all the photos and firsts journal I keep.  Great excuse to take lots of photos.

4. Laughing…see fun, but also at them.  At this age, they just laugh with you and don’t realise you’re laughing at them when they do ‘stupid’ things.  It won’t last so I’m making th emost of it now.

5. The smiles and hugs.  Let’s face it, there’s not many people that get ‘needy’ arms held out to them everyday, and you’d get sick of it if you had adults doing it to you, but children holding their arms up for a hug, or coming over for a ‘love’ is brilliant.

Go and check out what everyone else taking part in the listography this month thinks here.

Tornado playhouse

I was confused to say the least on Tuesday to arrive home and find there were bits of Little Tikes playhouse roof on the lawn but no house.  Odd?!  Couldn’t work out why it would have been removed but thought maybe it had been taken down the road to go to my sister-in-law’s where Nathaniel goes twice a week for them to play with there.

But then when the OH got home he say he’d found it on the front lawn.  Presumably it was really windy, along with the hale & rain storms there’d been all day, and it had been blown from the back patio, round the side of the house, and onto the front garden.  Now that’s some distance because bear in mind our back garden is all open and basically like a small paddock.  It can be quite windy round by us because it’s all exposed, but things got even stranger when I noticed that the slide and rocker (which previous weeks had seen the wind blow the latter right up against the fence) hadn’t moved an inch from where they’d been on the lawn.

Obviously the playhouse being on the concrete rather than the grass didn’t have friction to keep it where it was.  Grrr, so it’s now a bit destroyed…although I’ve not seen it as the OH put it in the garage out of the way.  Will have to go and investigate and see if it’s salvageable, otherwise I’ll be trawling ebay and local selling boards for some other kind of outdoor toy.  Maybe a climbing frame may work out better being more open sided.  Less chance of freak (although it wasn’t gale force winds this last week) weather moving it!

Luckily Nathaniel’s young enough not to miss it or even notice it’s gone.

‘Fraud’ at the Baby Show

Ok, so I don’t have a baby, I’m not pregnant, but we went to The Baby Show anyway.  Maybe there should be a toddler show?  Or an offshoot hall at the baby show?

My main reason for going was to pick up some stock for a stall I’ve got tomorrow and meet Jenny from Gumigem, who I feel I know pretty well although we’d never met til today.  But then a friend was going in the morning so decided to go after work in the afternoon and catch up with both.

We ended up in a car park seemingly miles away, but actually only took about 8 minutes to walk to the halls (they do seem to send you in a random longwinded route though).  Amusing to find that we were parked along with all the built up guys going to the Body building show!

The show was in a different set of halls than normal, and seemed a little smaller than last year’s, although there seemed to be most of the usual exhibitors there (unfortunately blooming EON trying to sign everyone up to their electricity – go away, you’re nothing to do with the baby show, and you’re very annoying, and Club La Costa the most annoying company for spamming you with tonnes of junk mail and phone calls that are impossible to stop even though you know you ticked the ‘no marketing’ box).

I had a list of a few things I was hoping to find good offers on.  I managed to get:

• a limited edition Trunki – maybe if N has luggage, the OH will get the hint that we need a holiday
• A Morrck towelling robe perfect for post swimming and holidays.  I’ve covetted one of these for a while so was pleased to get an offer on these.
• A Pourty potty.  I was actually after a potty seat/step in one, but didn’t see anything like that so will have to have a nosy online or hope I can find one at a nearly new sale or from a friend.  This one will be handy for going out and about if required anyway, and it was a lot cheaper than they were when they first launched which was good.  Nathaniel’s already unpacked it himself and tried sitting on it (backwards).  I’m not planning on potty training for a while yet so it’s going to go back in the bathroom and maybe if he wants to sit on it while he’s waiting for me during my shower then he can.

Trying out his morrck towelling hoodie

What’s great about the Baby Show apart from the shopping, is that everyone expects babies and little ones to be running around, so there’s no panic (well, muted panic) when they go toddling off somewhere to investigate what’s on a stand.  The Happy Hopperz stand was a big success with both Nathaniel and his friend Elen…maybe he’ll be more excited about his own one we have at home which he’s never been that excited about.

Checking out the Happy Hopperz stand

If I’d needed to have a more in depth look round I’d definitely have put Nathaniel in the creche for an hour.  His friend went in it in the morning and loved it.  Qualified carers in there, lots of immaculate Fisher Price toys, and chance for parents to get some quality shopping time.  It’s definitely hard trying to shop when you’ve got a toddler who can’t decide whether he wants to sit in the buggy or wander round, pushing the buggy into everyone, or trying to go in totally the wrong direction.  All very amusing but probably confuses a lot of pregnant first timers following us who’re having to adjust their walking direction at short notice.

I did get asked by one girl about my buggy (he was in the Baby jogger) as she was thinking about getting one for her baby when it arrived.  Of course I love talking especially about products I like (or dislike) so was happy to share my experience of them.  That’s the second time I’ve been asked about the pushchair I’m using (both the stroller and my Maxi Cosi Mura system), so I’ve obviously got good taste choosing pushchairs that look good/are on short lists!

One long walk back to the car – luckily I’d remembered to take a mental note of which car park and where in it we were (memories of wondering around lost looking for my car years ago at another event at the NEC), and we were done.  Next job, sort through the rubbish and flyers to work out if there’s anything interesting I’ve missed.