Living Arrows: 3/52 – making time for yourself.

You can’t beat a night out with friends and cocktails! The lovely lady in the picture with me has 2 year old twins and is also a twin herself.

Go on, make time for yourself….have a hot bubble bath, paint your nails do something just for you. GUILT FREE!

You deserve it.

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Toddler Wrestling! Is it a boy thing?

Having grown up with a sister, we didn’t “do” wrestling (we just squabbled) so this whole physical “rough house” behaviour is rather alien to me! They stand in front of each other and asked to be shoved, pulled, tripped over and stood on and it’s all good fun until it gets a bit slappy or a wall/door/chair/tv stand gets involved.

We have already visited A&E once with a split head due to a wrestling move gone wrong, but this does not deter them. At 8am this morning they were charging up and down the living room, bumping into each other (and walls) and they think it’s hilarious! The more they fall over the funnier it is. WHHHHY?????!

I am rather disadvantaged as a girl growing up with a girl and going to an all girl’s school. I understand that they have to do it (nature and all that), but I just don’t get it!

Generally my solution to this is to boot them in the garden to burn it off, plus there’s fewer things to bump into out there. I found myself begging nursery to wear them out when I dropped them off this morning…here’s hoping for a less stressful afternoon!

 

A photo a week: 2/52

H, O & L

H taking grandad’s temperature while he attempts to read Thomas books to L & O.

It’s been a lovely family weekend filled with games, football at the park and roast dinners!

A photo a week: 1/52

A friend of mine is taking part in the Living Arrows and has inspired me to join in too. So once a week I will share a photo of the boys on my blog. You can join in and link up by visiting here.

Photo 1/52

H has 4 little kings all wearing their hula hoop crowns!

Our first day at nursery!

I have been looking forward to this day for a long time! The boys are soooo ready for nursery and I am even more ready for a little rest!

They qualified for their free 15 hours a week this week and I have taken advantage of them. I love having them at home, but I’m really looking forward to being able to let nursery occupy them for the morning while I organise afternoon activities.

I didn’t think the first morning would go particularly smoothly, they have been saying all week “I don’t like nursery” – but unless it’s Thomas The Tank Engine or covered in chocolate this is their default opinion on everything at the moment.

Instead of the blissful smiling photos I see all of my friends posting of their little treasures with their backpacks ready to go, these were the best I could get:

They flat refused to wear their new backpacks and began screaming their socks off at home. Oscar however was convinced it was raining at nursery and insisted on taking the umbrella (I didn’t argue).

Upon arrival they announced themselves in a chorus of screams while hanging from my legs. It was quite awful, I had to prise them from my legs and lever them into their room, it was like trying to get a cat into a cat box (x 3!) I left them in the care of their key workers while I snuck away (as advised by good friends) feeling rather guilty.

The nappies are off!

We’ve been muddling our way through this potty training malarkey for a while now and apart from when they would accidentally get wee all over friends carpets with their poor aim (sorry friends!) it’s been fairly painless.

They do tend to threaten me with “I need a Poo NOW!” Just as we’re rushing out of the door for an appointment or just as we’re in the middle of a shopping centre, but I’m getting better at locating the nearest toilet where they will inevitably scream the place down (they don’t like public toilets…I don’t blame them).

Just this week they have decided to stop nappies at bedtime too, we did O first, then H and finally L all within a week of each other. I have a few spare sheets, but not enough for more than one round of accidents between them so unless they wanted to sleep on hay I just had to hope they’d use their potties…

Before going to bed ourselves we lifted each one and put them on the potty then kept our fingers crossed for the rest of the night.

“SUNSHINE UP MUMMY & DADDY!” – referring to their GroClock (quite possibly the most useful thing we own!)

We walk in tentatively to assess the damage, but….SUCCESS!! No wet pyjama bottoms!

I thought night times would be tricky, but they were adamant that they were ready (swinging nappies above heads and stripping off at every opportunity) so you can’t argue with that! Even though they were still waking with wet nappies we knew they were ready to sleep without one as they kept insisting on going to the toilet before bed.

I would like to think that the savings on nappies will be significant, however I fear that maybe my cleaning product bill will compensate for any saving we might have had.

We’ve survived and achieved a big milestone 🙂 I’m quite proud of us all! Now, just to conquer the public toilet fear…

Do you have any potty training tips to share?

Lunch ideas that aren’t sandwiches!

A while ago I found myself stuck in a sandwich rut, but since then I have compiled a list of lunch ideas that we love and all without a sandwich in sight.

1) Eggy pittas – scrambled egg mixed with grated cheese & chopped red pepper/tomato stuffed into a wholemeal pitta bread with cucumber on the side.

2) Mini roast (without the meat) – Yorkshire pudding, stuffed with steamed carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and drizzled with gravy. I make my own yorkies using this recipe.

3) Yummy – cheese & sweetcorn scones – recipe here.

4) Warm sliced wholemeal pitta bread – team with humus cucumber and carrot sticks.

Craft the parcel blogging challenge

I was recently approached to take part in a project called #CraftTheParcel involving two teams of nine crafty bloggers all eager to produce an eclectic mix of twelve inch squares that would join up to form two blankets to be given to charity.

The project is sponsored by InPost, a postal service that allows you to send, receive and return goods using their nationwide automated parcel lockers. The lockers allow you to access your parcel at a time that suits you, even at 3am if you were so inclined! So no more waiting around for that courier or having to trek to your nearest parcel depot during rush hour.

Thomas, whining and nurseries: an update.

It’s been a while since I wrote about what we have been up to so I thought I would post a little update.

Potty training is still going well, they seem to be pretty much dry in the day now. It’s taken much longer than I thought though, especially given that I waited until they were telling me that they didn’t want to wear nappies anymore. We are probably looking at about 5 months just to be completely dry in their awake time (that’s an awful lot of pant and trouser washing!)

Their speech is coming on tremendously and I remember this time last year when we were willing them to speak more….now we cannot keep them quiet unless there’s cake involved!

I hear a constant chorus of “mummy, mummy, mummy” “mummy, I’m hungry/thirsty/tired” “Lucas/Harry/Oscar did it!” Throw in lots of screeching, whining and laugher and I’d say that was a perfect summary of a typical day. On a good day John will find me soaked from head to toe with the boys all in the bath, on a bad day he’ll find me locked in the kitchen while the boys watch Thomas in the living room eating crackers for dinner. Thankfully the bad days are very few and far between but they do exist especially when they went through a seriously whiney/screeching phase. That sound is just unbearable. I tell them that I cannot understand them if they whine so they must “use words” – it seems to be working and Harry told me the either day that “he was not happy at all” (because he couldn’t have marshmallows for tea). It felt like we had reached a massive milestone in communication.

We are going through a Thomas the tank engine phase at the moment, well, I say a phase…It seems to be more of a way of life.

Baking with toddlers – Rock cakes

Today is  a delightful day….if you are a duck. On rainy days I can find it hard to entertain 3 excitable toddlers, but the mere mention of the word “cake” gets them fired up and ready for a baking session. I haven’t had rock cakes in years so I thought I’d give it a whirl, this recipe is so simple and made 8 delicious rock cakes.

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to get messy so deep breathes and remember that you will be able to sit with a cup of tea and a yummy rock cake at the end of it!