Order in the Car

I'm a slight stickler for organisation. (And all who know me will smirk at my use of "slight"). Ok. I'm an organisational nut. Organising is what I do, and what I love to do. No huge surprise that I like order in the car too. This is the way I do it.

I've introduced a toy box to the car. It sits neatly between the car seats (hasn't yet fallen off either), full of books and little toys and clean drawing equipment. I did this when we started talking about putting a DVD player and screens into the front head rests for the kids to use on long drives. I knew, however, that once we did this, it would never just be for long drives. If the tv was there, they would want it on whether it was a two hour drive or a two minute one.

I don't mind them watching tv at home, because I can justify it with a good balance of outings and outdoor stimulation, so I really didn't want tv following us out of the house.

The plan has worked. They're no longer bored in the car, they have long conversations in the back and share toys back and forth. It seems to work.

There are, of course, seat protectors for dusty, sandy feet, and tucked behind them, they each have a blanket in case the AC gets too cold. Emily recently added a pillow for when she wants to nap in her booster seat, although she never uses it and it inevitably ends up on the floor somewhere.

The car bin has been a huge help in keeping the whole place clean. I have a small stash of plastic bags in the middle console as garbage bags so I can empty it easily whenever it gets full.

Not pictured, but in the back of the car there is a also large plastic box that contains random stuff like reflective covers for the car seats, an emergency potty, baby wipes, a towel, bottle of water, spare pair of flip flops for me, a ball, picnic blanket... and bubbles. Priorities.

Literary Advent

Selfishly, I didn't want the children having a daily chocolate throughout Advent. There's enough excitement bubbling over from seeing the tree and decorations every morning, I didn't want to add caffeine to it.

So I bought and wrapped up a whole bunch of Christmas and Winter-related books for them. Threw in a couple of Christmas DVDs too to keep it different. They open one a day and get that book read to them at bedtime - or whenever else they feel like it.

A few of the titles:

Russell's Christmas Magic

How Many Sleeps till Christmas?

The Christmas Show

Father Christmas Needs to Wee

Peppa's Christmas Wish

Jesus' Christmas Party

The Smelly Sprout

Full list of suggested titles here.

Bag of Books

Another tradition we began this year was a Bag of Books under the tree. One of Emily's gifts from us was a bag of books, literally. She loves books but since Adam arrived we haven't found it as easy to read to her as much as we used to, so we wanted to try and rekindle her love for books. We intend for there to be a bag of books under the tree every year, including one for Adam starting next year.

In Emily's bag this year were the following books:

Aliens Love Underpants

Dogs Don't Do Ballet

The Night Pirates

This is my Book 

Zoe and Beans: Where is Binky Boo?

That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown

Sharing a Shell

Lullabyhullaballoo!

Now books can be expensive, especially eight of them in one go, but thanks to Claire Bonello blogging about awesomebooks.com a while back, some of the books in Emily's bag were actually pre-loved! They don't look it and at £2.59 each (delivered), it was more than worth it. 

Emily's favourites are That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown (no huge surprise) and Dogs Don't Do Ballet. We have read and re-read these two almost every night since Christmas. 

And just to throw this in there, if anyone is looking for a really great children's book, have a look at Giraffes Can't Dance. It's my absolute favourite of all Emily's books so far... I never get tired of it. 

Wordless Wednesday: Decisions, Decisions

Toddler-Teenager (The Wonder Weeks)

I'm not big on parenting books. I initially owned a Gina Ford book as well as the Baby Whisperer. Both were donated to the local library pretty early on. My instinct, along with genuine advice from friends who have been there, has never let me down.

However when Emily was four or five months old, someone mentioned The Wonder Weeks to me. This isn't a book about how to bring up a child. It merely outlines the typical mental development of a child (based on 30 years of research) and helps you understand why, at certain times, children are unpredictably clingy, grumpy, and all those other fine qualities mothers dread waking up to.

The book spans the first 20 months of a child's life and Emily is nearing the end of that. We are currently going through the final wonder week. Thus my bloggy silence.

I could sit here and moan (oh boy could I moan) about the nightmare child that Emily has suddenly turned into. Not to mention that our blissful full night's sleep has turned into patchy "catch an hour of sleep if you can" and has both David and myself feeling like homicidal zombies by morning.

Today - day two of Nightmare Emily this time round - it occurred to me that it might be a wonder week, so I checked my book. Sure enough, outlined in almost eery detail, was a description of Emily, and how a child's behaviour will probably change around week 74 of their life.

It didn't make today any easier. I shouted at Emily, I shut my ears to the endless moaning, I may even have turned off the baby monitor for the latter few hours of last night. I'm not proud of any of it, but she wasn't going to come to any harm and you do what you have to to cope.

But reading about the mental development that's ongoing at the moment helps. It helps to look out for new abilities and sometimes even helps patience last a little bit longer. Not much, but it does.

She's just gone to bed, and despite the pretty awful day, it ended with cuddles and - finally - a laugh or two from her. Most beautiful sound I heard all day.

It'll be an early night for me and David tonight!



(This post is not sponsored, but if you'd like to buy a copy of the book it'd be really nice if you used the link I provided *wink*)

Choose a Book...

When Emily was younger, I wondered whether we read to her enough. I needn't have worried. She has become the biggest bookworm I've ever encountered in a child her age. Granted, I haven't encountered a vast amount of children her age, but it's still quite impressive.

Her books are all over the house. A full bookshelf in the living room. Some more books on two small shelves by her new wardrobe. More in a basket in her room. Two hidden away in my dresser for when I desperately need to keep her entertained while I'm dressing up. Two more in her changing bag and one hanging off the side of the buggy. Oh and four bath books in the bathroom.

I'm not sure how many books they all amount to, but it's a large amount. A very large amount. I seem unable to walk into a bookshop or browse Amazon without buying yet another book for her. It's good for her, I argue.

Lately she's worked out that she can specifically ask us to read to her.

"Bk," she'll say and sign book.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

She'll nod, carefully. "Yish."

"Choose a book."

She'll scan her bookshelf (we're usually in the living room, which is where her largest book collection lives), while tapping her fingers on the shelf (I kid you not!), and she'll soon pick out her favourites having recognised their spines.

She'll look over to me or her dad and pat her thigh a few times. "Ca, ca!" (Come)

This is what we do to signal to her that she should come over to us and therefore it has become necessary for her to pat her thigh whenever she wants to come to us.

"Come and sit here," I'll tell her, patting my thigh.

She'll eagerly come and sit down beside me or on my lap. "The-tew!" (Thank you)

And we'll read while she follows attentively and lifts the flaps or feels the touchy-feely bits. Once the book is finished, she'll sign finished and the entire process begins again.





Some days, we can go through the entire bookshelf in a day, sometimes twice. And then we'll read more books in her room before she sleeps. I won't pretend I always have the huge amount of patience necessary. Some days are easier than others but since she's started pointing at pictures in books and saying the correct words, I'll admit I'm finding more patience for the whole thing. Seeing the fruit of my labour makes it much easier to appreciate the good it's doing.

This is her living room bookshelf:



My sister couldn't help herself, apparently, and had to organise it in her OCD way a few weeks ago. It lasted all of three minutes.

Emily's current favourites are:
* Baby Faces (Look Baby Books)
* Big Book of Beautiful Babies Board Book
* Moo, Baa, La La La (Boynton)
* Where Is Baby's Belly Button? (Karen Katz Lift-the-Flap Books)
* My First Gruffalo: Colours
* My First Gruffalo: Touch-and-Feel
* Goodnight Moon (thanks to Maureen of Island Fairy for recommending this one!)
* Dear Zoo
* Where's Spot?

(PS: And if anyone is going to buy any of these books, it would be really really nice if you bought them via the links above as I will get commission. Cheeky? Quite.)

New Rules: How Did We Do?

Back in October, I set myself four rules that I felt were important. A winter later, here's how I did:


No laptop use while Emily is awake.
This was going really well. Enter the ipad, and things fell apart for a while until I gave myself a little metaphorical shaking and put it away. It doesn't mean I don't stop to check my mail a few times or tweet a few more times but I'm not sat there glued to it all day (as I may have been before). I get down on the floor and play with Emily, we build towers, we read, we tickle and get tickled. Sometimes we just cuddle in front of TV. It's all good.


Read more.
Safe to say I failed this one. Miserably. I've still not yet read another book, but I have picked up a few magazines over the last few weeks and have made myself sit down for a few minutes to relax every now and then. I need to learn the meaning of that word "relax" all over again, or so it would seem. I have also added a few books to my Kindle that sound promising (and have even read the first two chapters of one of them), so there is actually some hope.


Establish storytime.
For a while, we read every day after Emily's bath. Until I realised she had no patience for it at that time as all she wanted was to get to sleep. So we moved storytime to before her bath. And that worked nicely. But we read so many books throughout the day, there are always books around somewhere (there are even two little ones that live in my handbag for when we're out), and we read bathbooks too, so in the end "storytime" per se faded away and we still read lots. We just do it whenever.


(She even has a magazine of her own which she loves leafing through)


Get out every day.
We've been good with this. However I've also been good about realising that just because we don't go out one day, just because we stay in and just enjoy Emily's toys and I catch up on some things around the house, or just take it easy, doesn't make the day a failure. We've achieved a good balance. We go out often, we have people over often, we have us time often.


Ultimately, things are going well. Emily and I seem to have reached a point where we know how to work with each other. I am slowly even starting to feel comfortable cooking dinner in the kitchen while she plays in the living room. The fact that she is increasingly mobile helps as when she misses me or needs something, I hear the "clap, clap" of her hands on the wooden floor as she crawls towards the kitchen, or the little plastic wheels of her walker being pushed down the corridor, and she's with me again. I never leave her alone for more than a few minutes at a time. More often than not, she chooses to hang around the kitchen with me, playing with her fridge magnets or a wooden spoon, or "cleaning" the floor with the tea towels - and it wouldn't be the first time I've cooked dinner with her hanging off my leg either. Not a huge amount of fun, but sometimes it just needs to be done!

A Matter of Time

In 8 days, my tiny baby turns one. Tiny baby is not so tiny any longer. She weighs over 20lbs and has hair long enough to pull into a ponytail (I toy with the idea but haven't yet). She has a little collection of words that she uses on a regular basis. She is now mobile and cruises around the living room like she owns it. Her favourite spot, however, is her bookshelf. Early on, I cleared one of the wall unit shelves and filled it with her books. She has recently discovered it and takes pleasure in inspecting her books over and over again until they all end up at her feet. She'll then hang out at the shelf and "read" a book or two of her choice.



I could watch her for hours.


But yesterday saw her first "accident". She slipped and hit her mouth against the corner of the tv unit. There was so much blood. I generally pride myself on keeping calm during situations like that. I'm usually really, really good. (It's needles that scare me, not blood.) But this time... oh I was mostly calm, I did everything right, but there were moments of panic where I struggled to keep it together. My baby was broken. She was bleeding and all I could do, really, was wait to see whether the bleeding would continue.

It didn't. But the afterwards looked pretty scary. My top and her top full of blood splatters, kitchen towels soaked in blood, a cup I'd used to give her water to wash her mouth with also streaked with blood. It wasn't a pretty sight.

She was fine long before I was. I sat her in her highchair and offered her a couple spoonfuls of ice-cream (I figured the cold would help?!). She slept for 3 hours after that and it took almost that long for my heart to return to it's normal rhythm.

It still races just remembering.

New Rules

Some things need to change around here. Therefore I am setting these new rules:

No laptop use while Emily is awake.*
All she ever seems to see me do is use the laptop while she plays. More time will be spent playing with her, therefore also increasing the possibility of her learning that there is more to life than a computer. I am a very computery person, but I had a varied childhood and I really don't want her to be one of those kids who only know how to turn to a computer for entertainment. Children see, children do. For this same reason...

Read more.
I was a total bookworm right up until about the 28th January 2011. Since then, I think I may have read one book (I'm not entirely sure) and skimmed through a few magazines. I need to read more for me, because it focuses me and it calms me, and I need to read more for her, because she needs to see that reading is something that's good to do.

Establish storytime.
Currently our most successful storytime is during bathtime and involves waterproof books. I do not think this is acceptable. I need to find a time when she is awake enough to tolerate it, and bedtime is not an option - I am generally yelled at if I dress her too slowly, let alone pause the entire process to read a story. What can I say, the child loves her sleep! So if anyone has any advice or suggestions as to a little storytime tradition I can set up, please share!

Get out every day.
Even if it's just for a walk around the block. I was really good at keeping to this rule until about a month ago when Emily and I were both unwell and I made an exception for a few days because I had such little energy, and since then I just haven't been able to find my mojo again. Mojo must be located. Emily loves being outdoors, the fresh air is good for us both and God knows I need the exercise.


* This rule can be broken under certain circumstances (eg if I am desperate to place a grocery order) but then use must be quick and to the point. Use of my phone is still allowed because I trust myself to be somewhat balanced with that (and if necessary can be hidden behind a magazine...).

To Kindle or Not To Kindle...

I love my bookshelves. I love seeing them stuffed with books. I love the feel of those books, being able to flick through the pages and smell the paper. I've always been very unforgiving of the idea of an electronic reader, have always shot down the thought without a moment's hesitation. As much as I am a gadget person, that's where I draw a line.

Or do I?

Deep in conversation with a good friend of mine just the other day... she was one of my reading buddies when, aged 13, we smuggled Danielle Steel novels into our English Literature school books and, the rebels we were, read them during lessons. Until we were asked to read aloud in class and that caused all sorts of problems. But that's another story.

I thought she was like me. She'd never betray The Book. And yet, she's just ordered a Kindle. I was horrified and I told her so. How could she turn her back on the beloved book?

Yet within minutes, I was asking questions. What made her decide to do it? How was the reading experience? Was it like reading a book off a computer screen? Didn't it make her feel like a traitor? Like she was partly responsible for the eventual collapse of bookshops?

She was very patient with little old-fashioned me. She mentioned things like the speed and ease of buying a book and having it there ready to read within minutes. She mentioned the weight issue - she can carry around several books in something that's lighter than a single paperback. And apparently, it's not like reading off a computer screen.

I have to admit, I'm curious. And tempted. But I don't know if I could ever go through with it. I'm a traditionalist at heart.

My friend has reassured me that she won't be giving up books entirely and still intends to buy them every now and again. I guess that's some consolation. I still think I'd feel very "Brutus" browsing a bookshop, as I love doing so much, with a Kindle guiltily hidden away in my handbag... Wouldn't you?



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