One of Me, Three of You

We've had a productive day - before getting on to play dough we made a catapult! I've had enough of magazines with rubbish plastic toys so bought the boys a National Geo Junior magazine to try. It is a bit beyond them but W is enjoying carrying it around and it includes instructions for building a catapult, so we gave that a go. It turns out that 5 and 3 is too young to twist rubber bands around sticks so I ended up doing all the building! They then spent a while pinging things across the table with it and exploring what went the furthest (googly eyes did quite well!).

We had our first go at making play dough today. Up until now I couldn't see the point of making my own, but our shop-bought play dough has turned into one hard, murky brown lump and I really don't like the smell of it. The playgroup we've started going to provides its own sparkly play dough so I decided it was worth a shot. Apart from the colour (we put in red food colouring but it is still pastry coloured!), it turned out really well. I think the boys were influenced by the fact we made it in the kitchen and mostly cut it up with pastry cutters or turned it into pretend sausages rolls. A even joined in although, after hitting it a few times with a plastic knife, he spent the rest of the time throwing the play dough accessories on the floor.

One of the many things I would have done differently if I had known what life is like once you have children would have been to go on more holidays and chill out more when I was on them. There is nothing restful about a holiday with three small boys! Our camping trip to Dorset a couple of weeks ago was our first holiday on our own with the three of them - apart from a couple of shorter trips with family we haven’t been away since A was born.  If I’m honest, quite a lot of things are a lot more effort when we’re away, we are definitely creatures of habit and routine at home. We struggled without the reusable nappies and wipes this time - A decided to poo five or six times a day and the disposable wipes and nappies were not up to the job! There’s no regular online food delivery and, as we were camping, no fridge to keep everything cool and provide a ready supply of houmous. And whatever toys I pack I’ve always brought the wrong ones.  I spent a lot of the first couple of days fe

We spent last week camping half way between Corfe Castle and Swanage and this post goes through the places we tried. There is loads to do in the area - we easily filled our five days and made particularly good use of our National Trust membership! 1. Shell Bay - first beach day Glad we got there fairly early (armed with our National Trust cards for free parking) as the car park isn't big and the alternative seemed to be parking up and trudging along the road. The beach was lovely, good shallow waters for the boys and I enjoyed watching the ferry and the traffic in and out of Poole harbour. It was a bit of a challenge to find sand that was wet enough for shapes and sandcastles - most of the beach was too fine and dry above the tide line which suited me just fine but not so good for the boys. 2. Knoll Beach - beach day number two This was the complete opposite of Shell Bay, crazy busy and not the most successful beach trip we've ever had. We went back again later in the

I am really enjoying the summer holidays but hadn't realised just how little I would manage to do in between various demands from the boys. Their appetite for craft and activities has definitely been rekindled and we're working our way through a lot of the ideas I've been stockpiling from Pinterest and Instagram. This week we had a go at a giant rainbow collage from The Imagination Tree. We started with a six colour rainbow like our mini Grimms rainbow then T decided we should have pink as well so added that on in the middle. They used strips of tissue paper for the base, added on some things from the craft box and then went through our pile of magazines to find a few pictures to go on. They aren't very good with the concept of starting something off and then coming back to it over a number of days - we managed to keep it out overnight and stick a few things on the next morning but then W wanted to cut it out and stick it on the wall. I was really impressed with h

We've had the water beads (or Orbies as W keeps calling them) out this week. They don't really fit with my attempts to use less plastic but we had them already and W keeps asking to play with them so we gave them a go. We waited until A had gone down for a nap and the first attempt lasted about 5 minutes, during which time W mostly berated T about not getting them on the grass (obviously hammered that point home a little much when we were setting up!). Later on, we found more things to add into the mix and it held their interest for much longer. They spent ages rolling them down a piece of guttering - W allocated the beads different countries (he's been really interested in countries since the World Cup) and gave a running commentary as they went, T found a tractor that would fit down and scooped some into the bucket on the front. I did spend a large chunk of the afternoon crawling round trying to pick them out the grass while keeping a close eye on A to check he didn&