A Matter of Choice

You may have noticed that Leo is a bit of a Thomas fanatic, this both amuses and slightly disturbs me but I think it may be catching! A friend of mine said recently that she hated Thomas and I was momentarily lost for words..... how can you hate the little blue engine! Along with a selection of cups, books, clothes, games, DVDs, a Thomas scooter and of course a great set of wooden tracks and engines we have a new 'Thomas' love here in our house... Some time ago I decided to show him the Thomas and Friends website, and it turns out he's just like his Mother when you stick a laptop in front of him, I think if left to decide when to turn it off he would be there for weeks on end!  For a while now we've looked at it occasionally to see the engines, which is about as much as I let him do with my reluctance to let him use the laptop .  He can now name every engine on there and there are more than 60, I'm not sure but I think he can read the names to a certain deg...

This weeks Gallery prompt got me thinking.... 'The Everyday'   What do we do everyday?   We get up everyday usually before 7am for Leo and I,    Aaron works everyday till the end of the summer season,  We eat,   We clean - (oh hang on we're talking EVERY day, so maybe not!)  We watch tv/ use the laptop  We see my Mum and Dad. There are lots of things we do sometimes... Swim, paint, visit friends, bake, go to the beach, go shopping and go to nursery school (but not on the 'end-week' as Leo calls it) But then I realised the thing we do EVERY day.... 'The Everyday' We build a track, often first thing in the morning and hopefully at the moment with help from Daddy, as getting on and off the floor is proving to be quite tricky at the moment!  Removing the element of discomfort from crawling around the floor with a 7 month baby bump I do quite enjoy making the tracks and get quite a worrying sense of achievement ...

There was never any doubt what theme to use for Leo's 3rd birthday party! He's the biggest Thomas fan I think there could be so it just had to be a Thomas the Tank Engine themed party. I love arranging parties so had been planning it a while now, and this year Leo got involved too. A few days before the party he had great fun helping me make decorations, I cut out lots of train shapes from thick white paper and Leo painted them red and blue. We used these to stick up around the balcony and all over the apartment along with red and blue balloons. My Mum gets the credit for the Thomas train in the picture - butter dishes converted into carriages by covering them in coloured paper. I used them for food so having the lids to put on them was very handy! Leo also helped me to make the biscuits, although unfortunately I cannot blame the bad decoration of them on him as I did that myself! Although it was his 3rd birthday I put No.1 on them as I'd iced t...

Back in June last year Jenny and I ran 'Going Potty' - a Potty training blog carnival  something I hoped would assist me in what I thought was imminent potty training. In August I blogged about when I should start as Leo was not at all enthused about the idea.  There were some great comments about how I should wait until he was ready, and when he was it would all click into place. Hmmm, really? Out of his friends (all of which are 6 months older) he is the last to still be in nappies, I've tried to use this to our advantage as he loves his friends and will often get dressed/go to bed/ etc if he thinks the others (especially his 5 yr old friend Jack) are doing the same. It seems this tactic works in every way except when it comes to potty training. Google 'potty training signs' and you are presented with many lists of what to look for... Able to follow simple instructions, - yep, when he feels like it that is! Dislikes the feeling of a dirty nappy ...

Back in the year BC (before child) I wholeheartedly believed many things about parenthood, there were things I planned to do, and not do and it all appeared fairly straight forward to achieve. One of these things was strictly limiting the amount of television my child would watch. Instead I would ensure we always did many 'fun and educational' activities.  I look back on my poor deluded previous self now and wonder what happened! Prior to our move to Cyprus,Leo had seen very little children’s tv, in fact just before we moved we staying at a friends house he watched in wonder at CBeebies for the first time and looked at me amazed that such wonders existed, after all I had been enjoying the days of being able to get away watching ‘This Morning’ and 'Loose Women' in relative peace when he was tiny and spent most of the day sleeping. After a month in Cyprus with no tv, we got satellite, not a dish as big as our house like many have to be able to pick up all the English ch...