A Matter of Choice

Three years ago, not long after we moved to Cyprus I started to take Leo to 'Jingle Jangles' a music group for 0-3 year olds, he was 9 months old and although at first he had no real idea what was going on it was good for him and even better for me!    I was sad at our last session as it was one of the things that kept me sane when I first moved here, and the place where I met two people who I now count among my best friends. This month I got to relive some old memories when I took Louka for the final 3 sessions before the summer break. It was quite surreal to sit down again in the familar circle and 'tick tock' with a 9 month old on my lap again. It was a bit odd being there without the others but I knew a couple of them and of course I know 'Miss Claire'.  Singing all the familiar songs it seemed like only yesterday I was there with Leo. The last two weeks I've taken Leo with me as he has finished school for summer.  He said he didn't rememb...

One of the presents Leo got for his birthday was a great little number puzzle, there are two parts to it, the first is very simple and Leo did it with no problems - numbers on one side and pictures on the other. The second is simple maths, for example    3 + 2 = 5  and   9 - 3 = 6  The addition was not too bad but   he was a bit confused by the subtraction as he wanted to count up the pictures and then match the total number and he got quite annoyed when I tried to explain,  so in a fit of inspiration  (as he didn't want to put it away either)   I opened a pack of dolly mixtures and showed him with the sweets..... If you Mummy has 7 sweets and she eats 2, then how many are left? He thought it was hilarious that I ate them and counted what was left, came up with the right answer and matched the puzzle piece.  I got him to do the next one and he ate the sweets this time,  laughing his head off all the while - and getting them...

Although it may seem that I am excelling myself at the moment with interesting things to do with Leo with the recent homemade alphabet book and pirate treasure game  I'm still constantly racking my brains (well, searching the internet!) for more things to do. I never imagined a day with a toddler could be so long, after all I've had enough boring jobs in my life and I thought nothing could top them - I didn't realise that a day with a demanding toddler can be equally as hard but in different ways! Ideally I try to do 'something interesting' as he puts it at least once a day, an 'interesting activity can last anything from 30 minutes to maybe an hour if it's a particularly good one, add that to some cleaning (he's likes to 'help') lunch, some reading, a bit of tv, maybe a trip to the shop or Grandparents and dinner then we make it through the day with minimal damage! This week at a loss for an idea I got the paints out and gritted my tee...

Now I'm back to being at home on my own with Leo each day I'm always trying to come up with new and interesting things to do, not just for Leo but for me too - there are only so many times you can watch 'Thomas' or read the same book over and over before you go mad! After the success of the ' Alphabet book' I came up with another idea, not sure where this one come from either or where I've suddenly got inspiration from but I hope it continues! After saving milk bottle tops along with various containers for a while now (randomly saving them until I thought of a good idea!)  one morning I suddenly decided to make a fun game to play.   Leo and I had recently read a book called 'Pirates Ahoy'  (which I really dislike and am hoping he goes off soon!) and now he keeps talking about pirates and treasure, and goes around the place with an empty toilet roll 'looking for clues' So came the idea of 'The Pirate Treasure Game' With an ...

Although I'm not naturally 'crafty' or imaginative I do like to try and come up with new ideas for fun activities to do with Leo, and ones that are in some way educational at the same time are even better!  I was confused recently when a friend of mine said how impressed she was at all the ideas I had, then I confessed that they are rarely my own and mostly 'borrowed' from other people's blog posts or Pinterest! So I surprised myself the other week when I decided that Leo and I should make an 'Alphabet book'  Unless I saw this online and can't remember I think I might have actually came up with this idea myself! Leo loves to read and knows his letters very well and I'd realised lately that he is starting to recognise words and read them even without a picture next to it. He will also happily spell out words when prompted. So I gathered together a load of cute clip art, one picture for each letter of the alphabet and cut them all up.  Usi...

I'm writing about this, not because I particularly want to remember it but in case someone can help! Each year of his life my poor little man has suffered for a period of time with an unknown rash.  I don't know if it has been the same thing each time but I guess it must be, it never occurred to me to take photos each time (can't have developed the blogger mentality at that point obviously!)  so I can't directly compare.  The first time he got a rash at 7 months old in December we took him to the doctors, they didn't really know what it was but gave us some cream (no idea what it was) and within a couple of days it went.   It came back a couple of times and eventually I realised that each time he got it he'd been wearing polyester.  He was then rash free until June when just after his 1st birthday was ill with a fever, as the fever went the rash appeared and spent ages trying various different creams and potions until it eventua...

Last Sunday we decided to start potty training Leo - well Aaron decided after I'd spent months faffing about it!. After a few attempts we realised the potty was no good and so got his trainer seat for the toilet and went straight for that.  The first few days weren't too bad - a few accidents but to be expected then Wednesday was not so good. I'm not sure if he got bored with our constant asking if he needed to go but he started saying he didn't want to go and unlike the previous days he would not even go and try, only to have an accident a few minutes later.  Any attempts to get him to sit on the toilet resulted in a big tantrum despite the promise of stickers for his chart, and second present after his second line of 10 stickers. Thursday was a slight improvement and he spent the morning down at my parents, so it was a lovely morning for me!  He tends to listen to my Mum so he used the toilet several times and had only one accident.  In the aftern...

A few weeks ago I posted about 'not' potty training  I knew the time was approaching or maybe had approached ages ago and I chose to ignore it but I've been putting it off for ages now. It's not the first time I've put making a change off, last year there was 'the battle of the bottle'    - where I bored everyone silly for months about the struggles of getting Leo to ditch his baby bottles and I did the same with moving him from a cot to a bed . You'd think I'd know better by now and realise that I might as well just get on with it, and it's probably not going to be that bad! On Sunday I had a lovely lie in while Aaron got up with Leo, when I got up we were unexpectedly in full potty training mode. Leo had asked for a new nappy minutes after getting one as he had done a wee, something he had never done before so Aaron asked him if he wanted to wear big boy pants instead and tell us if he wanted one.  He agreed and sat on the potty a couple of t...

A while ago I wrote a post 'They really do say the funniest things'  and although there is a chance that Leo might not appreciate it later on I intended to do it regularly (working on the theory that it's cute and I'm sure he'll realise that eventually!)   As I hadn't got round to blogging but knew I'd forget these hilarious words of wisdom I've been scribbling the odd one down in a notebook so these are now a little bit old but complete gems! Back in the depths of winter (which is surprisingly cold in Cyprus with no heating and marble floors) I was trying to persuade Leo to put his socks on, we had to fight all through the winter to get him to wear more than a t-shirt - I spent most of it wearing three jumpers, thick socks and slipper boots.  It was early in the morning and at the time of the 'sock debate' we were watching 'Barney' which had African dancers in it.   'Why I got to wear socks Mummy' 'Because the floo...

Leo's never been one for getting dirty, once I would have thought that a good thing (and it has some advantages!) but on the whole it's something I've been trying to change.  Last year I made some cornflour goo and that didn't go down very well!   and he would moan about getting paint on himself. We have done hand print paintings before but usually only getting a few prints out of him before he realised he was covered in paint, his favourite part was washing his hands at the sink! This week however I was very surprised... After some hand prints and painting I tried to show him how blue and yellow mixed together would make green, he was not at all interested until he realised that he could paint his hands with both colours and see those turn green!      All of a sudden it just got interesting! Linking up with The Gallery  - this week's prompt is Colour

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 ...

One thing we do see a lot of here at this time of year is rainbows, I think I've seen more in Cyprus than I've seen in my whole life, it might not rain that often but when it does the sun is not usually far behind so it's a quite a common occurrence at this time of year. Leo loves seeing the rainbows, and we often see fantastic ones from our balcony. He doesn't understand that they don't always appear and is disappointed when they don't, I explained that you have to have sunshine and rain, and there was no sun that day, so we made our own. We painted a plate, I'd like to say he did but as ever he did a couple of brush strokes and then wanted to watch me!  I did just about manage to get him to allow me to draw round his hand though for the 'sun's rays' - I think it would have been a bit odd with my hands!   When the plate was dry 'we' stuck the hands around the edge, the sun was going to have a smiley face but Leo informed me ...

Many years ago in our first house on one of our many late night (undoubtedly slightly drunken!) conversations with our housemates and assorted friends, we came to swapping random and probably quite silly jokes  - someone mentioned the 'Wide Mouthed Frog' and although most knew the punchline no-one could remember the joke for the life of them.    I have no idea why but I remember laughing hysterically at Aaron's delivery of the punchline, despite never the fact I had no idea of the original joke. It became a standing joke - just the line 'Ooh, you don't see many of those around do you?'   and still years on we didn't know the rest of it. ( See, this is what happened without Google, in writing this post I searched and found it here ) Moving on to a couple of weeks ago, I saw that Bloomsbury have published the book for children! After all these years, we just HAD to have it! It was a huge hit with Leo, sat enthralled through the ent...

Cyprus - an island in the sun, with 340 days of sunshine a year, or so they told us!  So that means only 15 days of rain right?   I think that might be a little bit of exaggeration creeping into that sales pitch as it seems we've certainly had more than enough of this.... On Wednesday this was the view that greeted me as I opened the curtains,  I suddenly had the feeling this day was going to need a bit of effort to survive it. Leo has been suffering from a bad cough which had seemed to be on its way out but has now turned into a streaming cold.  I am amazed at the amount of snot that can be produced by one child! Because of this, Leo's not feeling his best and therefore is not he's usual happy self. A plan was needed to cheer him up....Let the activity day commence! First up...... Making biscuits, but not just any biscuits, oh no, a day like this calls for the most exciting biscuits you could imagine if you are 2..... train biscuits! Ther...

I know it's often said that kids say the funniest things but I never expected to be rolling about in hysterical laughter as often as I am with a 2 year old. Leo comes out with some absolute classics and often has brilliant (purely coincidental) comic timing. It recently occurred to me that I'm never going to remember later the things he said that I found so funny, until I remembered I had a blog that is.... So I'll apologise now Leo, in advance but try not to look at these as embarrassing in later life, more as cute! Trying to get cough medicine into Leo has been an absolute nightmare, worked ok for a few days until he just refused until promised chocolate coin afterwards. The other morning he had the medicine and his chocolate and then five minutes later asked for more chocolate. Leo: Can I have more chocolate please Mummy? Me: No, you just had some. I told you, you only have one Leo: Oh please Mummy, I want more chocolate Me: No, you can't have more chocola...

I'm slowly getting better at doing more craft activities with Leo. I always imagined I'd be doing all kinds of things but in reality it turned out to be harder than it looked! I've never been known for my patience and this is not helpful when it comes to dealing with toddlers at the best of times, let alone when you add paint, glue and instructions into the mix! I love the ideas over at Emma's Lunch, and the way the crafts are themed to the seasons so I thought I'd try an autumnal themed craft. My inital plan was to take Leo to the park, something we haven't done for a few months due to the heat, to collect some leaves, but I realised the flaw in the plan as soon as I looked out the window... the trees are all green and the few leaves that are around are the wrong type! Not to be outdone I printed some leaves to colour in, I gave Leo just 'autumnal colours' red, brown, yellow and orange, along with a green as he was a bit bemused that trees could...

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...

Let me introduce you to the many faces of Leo... Leo is entering a new and amusing stage in which he is becoming very entertaining to watch.  He's speech amazes me daily, the things he remembers and repeats, and the random funny things he regularly comes out with. His latest thing is to make his 'sad face' and come up really close pointing to his face,  you then have to give him a cuddle as he is sad and you have 'need make Leo happy now'  You give him a really big cuddle and he thinks for a moment and pulls the sad face again... meaning he has to have another cuddle.  The cuddles generally get bigger and more 'squeezy' and eventually he will be trying to do his sad face but is laughing his head off! If you ask him to 'do' different faces he is happy to oblige and he loved his little photo shoot to capture them all. He is loving the Mr Men books at the moment of which he has four, he spends just as long looking at the pictures on the back...

When I was pregnant, I planned to have Leo sleep in a moses basket for some time. We borrowed a gorgeous one from my Mother in law, the one in fact that Aaron had slept in.  Leo however ended up sleeping in it for just a few days, he was a big baby (9lb 9oz making him the biggest of all of my Mother in law's 3 children and 9 grandchildren at birth)  and as he moved the noise of the wicker moving used to wake him up. So at just a few days old he slept in his cot for the first time, he took to it perfectly and slept brilliantly even though it seemed like such a huge place to put such a little man, even though he seemed so much happier. It was lucky it was so warm at the time as from day one he hated being swaddled, covered by a blanket or wearing too many clothes - good job we ended up in Cyprus really! Apart from various nights in a travel cot, a make shift cot / bed on a narrow boat and a suitcase on our first night in Cyprus, Leo has always slept in this same co...