C-bear's Nursery

I thought I'd give you a mini tour of Charlie's nursery. It's quite a tiny room, but we've added a few touches so he enjoys his time in there. As he's getting bigger it's evolving away from a baby's room, to that of a little boy, so I thought I'd capture it as it is today.

(1) Mama print, this is my mother's day card, I love knowing that inside is lots of lovely pencilled scribbles from my boy.
(2) Charlie sign, this is on the door to his room, it was a Christmas present from his Great Auntie Pat. C loves looking at the letters and listing the animals. He also always tries to grab them and doesn't understand that they're just for looking at.
(3) Sir Charlie Stinkysocks artwork. This is a print I was given by a children's publisher through my work about 5 years ago. Although at the time I had no plans for a child, I kept hold of it and when we knew we were having a boy I put it in the frame. The book it's from is called 'Sir Charlie Stinkysocks and the Really Big Adventure' by Kristina Stephenson, so the name's appropriate too! I bought the book for him a couple of months ago but it's a little old with too much story at the moment.
(4) Papa print, this hangs next to the Mama one and is the birthday card Charlie gave to Daddy this year. Again, it has a birthday message to Daddy full of C's drawings.
(5) The shelf. The main reason for the shelf is for somewhere to keep his toiletries (baby powder, oilatum cream, nail clippers etc), but the other half gets to hold nice things that are a little to delicate for C to touch. Currently it has his nursery official photo, 2 egg cups with soldiers, a photo of baby C in a cat frame, an Ireland lorry from Granny and Grandad's Irish holiday last year and a wooden train with his name on from Great Auntie Paula and Great Uncle Bill.
(6) Clock and frieze. The clock was an engagement present from my Auntie Pam and family, but the bright colours made it perfect to fit in the nursery when we moved house (it used to be in the living room of our Battersea flat). The alphabet frieze I got last year for his birthday. I loved it so much I also got ones for some of his baby friends 1st birthdays.
(7) Cot. He's still in a cot (23 months) and is showing no signs of needing to move to a toddler bed. He occasionally tries to climb out, but can't actually scale it yet! Also he still sleeps in a sleep bag, so that's an added hindrance to escape! In the mornings he talks to himself in his cot and is usually sitting up waiting for us. The first thing he always says is "baggie off" and then he stands up with his arms in the air so we can take him out of the sleep bag and set him down on the floor. The toy animals are his sleeping companions, bunny he was given from Nana for his first Christmas (this is a replacement as the original one was lost last year). Cat, Daddy and I bought for him when T's parents got a new kitten, it was a 'practise' cat to teach him how to be gentle, and it worked! Elephant was his Christmas present this year from Nana and Grandad (cousin Max got a monkey in the same set). Very Hungry Caterpillar was a 1st Christmas present from my cousin Helen. Alfie bear, he hasn't played with this for months, but we found it again 2 weeks ago and he's played with it every night. It's a musical bear that has buttons and plays songs. (Monkey toy is missing as he was having a 'bath' in the washing machine at the time).

Fill in the Blanks Friday - 26th April 2012

So I haven't done this for SUCH a long time, mainly because I work full time, we tend to go away for the weekend, and general exhaustion from being a full time working Mama at the end of the week. However I have 5 mins before I start work this morning, Charlie has been taken to nursery by Daddy Bear, so I can fill in some blanks :) Linking up with Lauren (and beautiful baby Fern) @ The Little Things We Do.

1. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is, pee, brush my teeth and pour a cup of milk for my almost 2 year old son Charlie. I then go and get him up and we read a story together before getting ready. (On Mondays and Wednesdays I have to leave at 6am as I work flexi hours which let me leave early to collect C, so then I creep around in the dark, getting ready and trying not to wake my boys).

2. I can hardly wait for 26th May - my brother's wedding in the beautiful Cotswolds!

3. The quickest way to my heart is  a cup of tea   because   there's nothing better then a fresh cup of tea to set things right.At work I've converted my entire team to drinking at least one cup every hour or so, coffee, mint tea and redbush also work! I've even got one of my lovely team trained to have a cup of tea waiting for me on the days I come in a little later after taking C to nursery!

4. A little known fact about me is that  I'm currently addicted to the 2nd series of The Walking Dead - zombie horror is great!

5. The best part about my job is I get to read books before they're published and have met many many amazing authors. I love my job!

6. Something I just couldn't live without is the weekend! I love my family time, since having my boy it's become even more special.

7. Something useful that I wish I knew how to do is   plumbing and electricals. I would love to be able to sort out all the DIY issues that crop up without having to call someone in!

Stickers!

C-bear is addicted to stickers at the moment. He loves sticking them into books and it's great for keeping him occupied during car journeys or in the evening. This is what I found when Daddy and C-bear had been playing with the sticker book without me!

Eating at the table

Last month we got a new dining table and it's really made a massive difference in mealtimes with C-bear. Before we had a long thin table (more like a desk) covered in junk and only used by me when working at home on Fridays. Although a lot bigger then our old one, our London flat is still on the small side, so after much deliberation I opted for this two seater, square birch wood Daisy table from John Lewis. It was the best priced solid wood table I could find and the customer service at John Lewis was really good. An added thrill was this was the first thing I bought/filled in my details for as a married lady!

Charlie used to always eat in his highchair, in front of the TV whilst I ate on my lap on the sofa. Whenever we went to friends and family for meals, eating at the table was such a new experience for him that he'd play up, hardly eat and want to leave halfway through.

Armed with a couple of lovely new easy to wipe-down table cloths and a 'big boy' munchkin booster seat, I've made it my mission over the last couple of weekends to have lunch and tea with Charlie at the table. We turn off the TV and I talk to him about what he's eating, where possible I get him involved in making the meal (kneading pizza dough or just being lifted up to see what's bubbling in saucepan) and make sure his meal is a mini version of mine. He's definitely more interested in food, still incredibly fussy, but hopefully over the next few weeks he'll become less so.

PS - the table is also fantastic for painting and eating ice lollies!

Picasa

I'm really enjoying exploring all the new updates to Picasa, my favourite at the moment is '1960s', which makes all your photos look like they've come from Granny's photo album!

Learning to count

Over the past few weeks we've been talking numbers with C-bear. When he stayed with Nana and Grandad, they taught him to hold up fingers and say "one, two, three" and I've been reading a lot of books with a counting theme, particularly Ten Little Ladybirds, which he loves.

So whilst he was eating his orange for pudding today, he shocked both Daddy bear and me by clearly saying "1,2,3,4,5,6, 6 oranges". It was amazing, I immediately tried to get a film of him saying it, but it seems it was a one time only trick, the first film I took he says "1,2,3,5" and then proceeds to fill his nappy (!) so I tried again later when he was eating an ice lolly. I couldn't get him to say it as clearly or by himself, but a cute counting film anyway!

Blossom and spring in the park

Over the past few weeks C-bear and I have been enjoying the blue skies (in between the rain showers) and indulging in his new favourite thing. 'Snow' is so last winter, right now it's all about 'blossom'. The boy is an addict!

It started with our walks to nursery, I constantly point things out to the little man, buses, planes, flowers, stone lions etc etc, so naturally when the blossom began to appear I talked to him about it. Then I picked some up and let him hold it and then threw some in the air - wheeeee. C-bear loved it, he loved holding it and whenever we went past a tree in bloom he'd cry 'blossom, blossom'.

A few weekend's ago we went to the park and there were windswept piles of blossom everywhere, C-bear loved it when I threw them up in the air, and he ran through the petals like confetti at a wedding! I'm not sure what we'll tell him when all the blossom finishes, hopefully we'll move onto the next seasonal thing.

Here's a bit of a photo dump from other visits to the park:

Things Charlie says

At 23 months C-bear is becoming so talkative and as he learns to string a few words together it's amazing how well he manages to get his thoughts across. At the moment my favourites are:

- Daddy doin? - Whenever Daddy does something silly, usual said mid-giggle
- Bye bye plane - whenever we see a plane (and we live under a flight path so at least 4 on the 10 min walk to nursery)
- Daddy/Mummy/Grandad asleep shhhhhh - as he says this he puts his finger on his nose in a baby shush sign
- See monkey/cat/robot - just this week he's started saying 'see' whenever I say 'what can you see'
- Charlie's - this boy is suddenly very very possessive, whether it's his or not he's going to make a claim for it! I was putting a hair tie in my hair today and he came over and said 'Charlie's', demanding the hair tie from me! (and of course I gave it to him as it's so hard to say no over the little things)

Roma - our honeymoon

Hello, boy have I missed blogging, but don't you just love coming back to Blogger after a week away and being able to catch up with all your favourite blogs! It's great to read 2 or 3 new posts in a row.

Anyway we had a great time away, missed the boy a seriously hard amount, but we survived, he survived (and actually had so much fun with Nana and Grandad).

Here are our Rome highlights:

The Colosseum

- It was the first place we visited and the one I was most excited about. It didn't disappoint. This building is amazing.
- They started building it in 72AD - 1,940 years ago!
- It was the biggest amphitheatre in the whole of the Roman Empire
- It could seat 50k people
- And those 50k could be in their seats within 10 mins because of all the wide corridors

Italian food

OMG the food was sooooo good
- T lived on pizza, really yummy and I got to have a slice each time :)
- I loved the pasta, the carbona was something amazing, I'm going to try and find a recipe to recreate it. I also had some really good spaghetti with a garlic and chili sauce
- Coffee, it took me a while to get this right (coffee Italiano was espresso, Americano was black) but when I did order a Cafe Americano latte, it was delicious
- Gelato, ice cream is a really big thing in Italy. Every street had a gelateria on it. We went all out on trying as many as we could :) My favourite was coconut and pineapple, but the chocolate and crema (they don't do vanilla) was a close 2nd. T loved the strawberry sorbet, and we were both slightly put off by an 11am lemon sorbet which was basically neat alcohol

Fountains, statues and architecture

Everywhere you turned there was something beautiful, intricate and made from marble
- The Forum was amazing, so many ruins sitting on top of each other
- Animals were everywhere, lots of lions, dragons and eagles
- The fountains in every piazza keep the city cool and beautiful
- The Vatican museum was absolutely stunning and had so many statues, along with painted ceilings, maps and (of course) the Sistine Chapel

The little details

Rome was so beautiful, in April the weather was warm but not overly hot and blossom, lemons, oranges and lilacs were everywhere
- The views across the city were spectacular, the one in the bottom right corner is a view from Palatine Hill across the river to the Vatican and St Peter's
- The Trevi fountain was a real favourite with us, we threw coins in to ensure we return to Rome
- The ceilings in the Vatican museum were beautiful

Honeymoon

Tonight Daddy Bear and I are flying to Rome for our Honeymoon! We're so excited, but as we knew there would be, we've got mixed feelings about leaving C-bear behind. We've spent yesterday and today at Nana and Grandad's house and C is loving it, so we know that he'll be in good safe hands. We've only ever left him for one night before, so going up to four nights is going to be hard, but it's part of growing up for him.

He's going to be sooooo spoiled! Nana has bought something new for each day, sticker books, colouring in, teddy bear jelly moulds and trips out to local farms and parks.

Even though the weather forecast is predicting:

Day 1 - cloudy sunshine
Day 2 - light rain
Day 3 - heavy rain
Day 4 - thunder!

We're determined to keep smiling :) We've not been abroad for 4 years, and weather isn't going to ruin our perfect honeymoon. Our hotel looks amazing:

We've lined up the usual touristy things, but most of all we're going to wander around, eating amazing Italian food and not worrying about nap times and meal times and changing nappies!

See you in a week!!

My 22/23 month old

Wow, in (way less than) two months time C-bear will be two and I'm so loving this stage. He's a complete person in miniature, full of fun and mischief with a sprinkling of frustration beginning to show through mini temper tantrums. At the moment he is:

- Addicted to statues - he can't get enough of them, we have a London picture book and all he wants to look at is Nelson's Column and the Lions around the base!

- He can sometime string about 3 words together, "Charlie eat cake", "What Daddy Doin" etc. But mostly it's two words, the one that's killing us with the cute at the moment is 'funny', he says it whenever Daddy Bear or I do something to make him laugh, he giggles and then clarifies with 'funny' or 'Daddy funny'!

- Constantly chattering, yesterday when I pushed him up the hill from nursery he was singing a made up song to himself, and I think he was literally singing 'Danger, Danger, Danger, Danger, Danger!' When I queried this he didn't deny it, he was just so happy to be singing and I can't think what else he could have been saying.

- He loves his friends at nursery, each morning we go through a list of people we're going to see, his 'girlfriend' is at the top of that list, then lots of the boys, then the teachers, then the other girls!

- Really enjoying the March warm weather, it's lovely to pick him up from nursery and all the kids are out in the garden and he can do so much more then last year. He's in and out of the ride on cars, running round the tree, hiding in the wendy house.

- Still a fussy eater, but I'm finding more things to tempt him. Pasta is a firm favourite, I made an Annabel Karmel recipe for tuna and tomato pasta with cheese and mushroom sauce, I didn't think he'd eat the mushroom sauce, but he did, he ate it all! He also loves ketchup, I gave him it originally to get him to eat some fish pie, and now if I want him to eat something a little of the red stuff usually does the trick.

-  Wants to walk everywhere and is getting really good at holding my hand next to the road, though we still put reins on just in case. Also when we're coming home and he's tired/grumpy, the reins help to keep him walking without me constantly telling him to hold my hand or be carried!