One of Me, Three of You

I am loving W's writing at the moment - in the same way that I will be sad when their last baby phrases in their speech disappear, it will be a sad day when they spell most things correctly. W decided to make a calendar the other day, he wasn't at all phased about adding March and April on to the end when he realised he had missed them out. I think 'ortom' is my favourite though!

W had superhero dress up day at school last week, and I think we surpassed ourselves with our homemade efforts! The cape was a Christmas present a couple of years ago, W made his mask and I discovered the benefits of some felt and a glue gun for the top and belt. We had to do a quick last minute fix on the cape so it fastened around his shoulders rather than irritating the eczema on his neck. I think he was the only one in the class not wearing a shop-bought costume but he seemed quite happy with that. He said there was the odd comment about how his belt looked like a pair of pants but he looked a lot cooler than a lot of the kids coming out of school at the end of a surprisingly hot day! When he was little he really wasn't into fancy dress - he would definitely not be found running around a play cafe or soft play wearing a cowboy outfit or a fairy dress. They have got more into dressing up at home in the last year or two but we are still in the realms of handmade costumes for...

Our growing love of rainbows is rubbing off on every member of the family - W made himself a rainbow calendar this week. My photo doesn't really do it justice but each sheet has a day of the week written on it (good practice for last week's spellings from school!) and then been coloured in and stuck together with wool and masking tape. He's been testing his brother on which colour it is every day! 

This is a very belated post to help me remember A's early years. His first word, shortly before Christmas, was 'boo'. And if he doesn't know what else to do with himself then he still resorts to a couple of 'boos' to get a laugh from me and his brothers. He is now saying a couple of other things - 'yes' (in an oddly clear way), 'more', we've just about got 'ball' and a bit of a 'mmm' noise for milk. T is doing his best to teach him to say 'nah' which I am trying to knock on the head as I find it incredibly irritating!

My husband has been hard at work the last couple of weeks and hasn't been making it home in time for bath and bed. I must admit I'm finding it hard going after several weeks of him being around a fair bit. It culminated on Thursday evening in a bit of a set-to at bath time (caused by the bigger two trying to poke each other's bottoms, something I probably have an irrational dislike of). Once everyone was out the bath I took myself off downstairs for a couple of minutes' timeout and left three boys clutching the stair gate and W wailing 'I want my daddy'. Once I returned in a slightly more mature frame of mind, they grudgingly let me read them their stories and tuck them in. There was no mention of their favourite thing of today, something which has become a bit of a tradition in the family and T in particular likes to share every night. The following day Mark was home so I left them to it at bath time and went to have a shower. 15 minutes of separation later a...

I think I may soon be surplus to requirements (except when it comes to providing meals). I hadn't planned anything for after school yesterday but it didn't matter as W organised him and T to make toilet roll penguins and then later on requested plasticine (after trying his luck with clay - my craft supplies aren't quite that good!) to make igloos. He is definitely embracing this half term's Frozen Lands theme!

This little chap has finally started walking, at 15 and a half months! Very slowly and not yet entirely reliably but he is up on his feet. It's only been a week so it's still quite novel for both of us - it makes me smile when I hear little footsteps behind me and I realise it is A wandering into the room. I know this photo doesn't really work as proof but I haven't managed a decent one of him on his feet yet!

W's topic for the first half of term was pirates. He likes to fully embrace what he's learning about and lots of things at home end up following the same theme. One afternoon after school he knocked up this pop up pirate ship card - I was pretty impressed with his handiwork! Some afternoons we get home from school and the boys follow me round the house asking repeatedly if they can watch TV, but some days they get on with things like this and it's much easier to get to tea time!

All three boys helped me make rainbow pasta after school today - lucky me! It was going pretty well until the bag of yellow pasta that W was shaking (whilst sat on the dining room table) came open and yellow pasta and paint went all over the chair and the floor. Luckily our Crayola washable paints lived up to their name and came off very easily!

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...

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!

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.

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.

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...

A combination of the heat wave coming to an end and Mark having to work Friday and Saturday nights means I was very grateful for Pinterest and its ready supply of craft ideas over the weekend. We made some straw rockets (and W made an extra rocket bracelet), insect finger puppets and finished it off with our own tortoises. These were inspired by our unexpected house guest last Monday - we found a tortoise in the garden who stayed the night before we delivered him to the vets on Tuesday.

I finally got around to making my own bubble mixture (thanks to the recipe on Red Ted Art ) and it worked! Most things I try like this don't go quite to plan but after adding a bit more glycerin and leaving it for a couple of days it is producing really good bubbles. I might have to invest in a big litre bottle of glycerin now...