One of Me, Three of You

I've been posting our tuff tray efforts on my Instagram page but thought I would do a round-up of the recent ones here. It's fair to say we haven't found another one as universally successful as the playdough cupcakes (and we ended up going back to that one earlier this week when T had a friend over) but they have all been played with to some extent. A is definitely enjoying being able to reach the tray and get hold of everything. As I have no plans to send him to nursery as I'm not going back to work this time I feel it's good to make a bit more effort with his sensory play! Our 'tuff tray Tuesday' a couple of weeks ago involved making little sailing boats from washing up sponges, skewers and paper sails. This one went down well although I hadn't thought through the felt tip decoration on the sails and it washed off as soon as the boats fell over on the tray! Coloured ice cubes always go down well - pink lego men, red puzzle pieces and blue fis...

A home birth as desired for child number two, not quite to plan with the midwives arriving shortly after my son!  I have a guest writer this week - my husband! He wrote up T's birth story a couple of years ago when I was producing our NCT branch newsletter and it seemed silly not to use it.  As I cycled through Charlton, I checked my watch. I’d left work later than planned and the journey home had been slow due to the wind. It was well past six which meant Laura will have had to do bath time alone – normally not an issue, but as she was now 39 weeks pregnant, the physical aspects made it much harder – not to mention the fact that she’d be tired by the combination of pregnancy and looking after an excitable 18 month old.  As the road bent round past the car boot sale field on the left, I remembered that it was also the first day of my London marathon training plan, and I was due to run 6 miles this evening. Although I’d rather have not gone out, I knew that I co...

Hooray - I finished another project! I found a pattern for rainbow nesting bowls and colour sorting balls earlier in the year here  (thanks to a link on a crafty Facebook group) and decided that I had to make them. I bought the wool at Easter when visiting my family in Devon - the colours aren't quite right to go with our Grimms rainbow things but I was too impatient to wait for wool to be ordered. (I probably could have waited another week or two for the wool as it's taken me six months to complete them!) I'm really pleased with how interested the smaller two boys are. A is starting to throw everything so having him throw some small crochet balls is a lot more acceptable than other toys he could choose. I might need to investigate whether I can do something to stiffen the bowls up though - he does like to screw the bowls up into balls as well!

Third time round, the straightforward home birth that I wanted, with child number 3 arriving in the early hours of the morning before his brothers woke up.  By way of background... - I had two very different births with my first two (that I will get add to the blog) - my eldest was born in theatre with the help of forceps after a very long labour and my middle son was born in our sitting room with my husband acting as midwife.  - Just to add to the normal worry of having a baby and adding another person into your family, we moved house when I was 37 weeks pregnant. - I did Lazy Daisy classes during each pregnancy and found them really valuable. It was good to spend an hour each week focusing on my bump (particularly with numbers two and three) and I found the breathing techniques really helpful during labour. - I gave hypnobirthing a go this round (thanks to a friend who had recently trained as a hypnobirthing instructor) but I don't think I gave it the time ...

1. Permanently filthy - he is still bum shuffling and crawling rather than walking so he is grubby all the time and wearing away the bums of his shorts and trousers. 2. A right blondie, like W was at this age, with his flyaway hair that I have no intention of cutting for at least another year. 3. A menace - T has taken to calling him Dennis as he is into everything and desperate to join in with (and destroy) anything the other two are doing. 4. A human hoover - he spends a lot of time under the kitchen table hoovering up dried cereal from breakfast and any food he's thrown on the floor during the day. 5. Very keen on stairs, both climbing up them and slowly shuffling his bum off the edge of each one to make his way down. 6. An absolute poppet - definitely one of the best ages when he has bags of personality and is still incredibly laid back. I am doing my best to make the most of this stage before he turns as stroppy and shouty as his older brothers.

I've decided to start 'tuff tray Tuesday'. I suspect I'm not the first person to do this but I'm never one to pass up an opportunity for alliteration. So today we had cupcakes, tea cups, candles, playdough and rice. It worked really well, all three of them got stuck in for a good hour after school and many playdough cakes complete with rice sprinkles were produced. A only tried to eat a few grains of uncooked rice and most of the playdough made it back into the tub!

Today's tuff tray set up was trains, diggers and horses. We had a really good time putting it together in some unexpected September sunshine while A slept. T is much more into playing with the toys once things are set up so it lasted a lot longer than yesterday's efforts!

Today we had a first proper go with the new tuff tray - Dinosaur World! The boys spent a good while setting it up with things from the garden - they started in a fairly restrained way but by the end it was definitely a dinosaur jungle! They spent much less time playing with it once everything had been piled on the table - small world play is not their favourite way to play. But they came back to it a few times during the day to rearrange things and took the dinosaurs on a tour of the garden and the trampoline so pretty successful for a first go.

I thought I would share our experience of the August bank holiday in a field in Oxfordshire! We have been going to Towersey Festival since I was a child - I've been with my parents, I volunteered as a steward with my best mate during our uni years and now I'm taking my own children (with extended family and best mate!). At the moment it is up there as one of the boys' favourite weekends of the year, rivalled only by Christmas and any trips to Center Parcs. We have managed to go every year since W was one, including last year when A was only six weeks old. As usual, we had a great weekend. The weather wasn't quite as good as time round - last year I sent Mark home on Saturday morning to pick up more summer clothes for everyone as we were roasting, this year we were very glad we had invested in a posh gazebo that everyone could huddle under, particularly in the pouring rain on Sunday. There are always a few niggly things that go on our feedback form each year but eve...