July 2010: It's about time, that we all went back to rhyme!

[Spirael]

Though mutiny is always an option.

Oh to have a kitchen big enough to have a cake stand on display :(

I have posted all my Christmas cards. Wow, I've never been this organised in my life!

mylife I have also given out all my xmas cards out and wrapped all my presents except D's, knowing i'll be otherwise engaged over xmas has really kick started me, i have also sorted all January birthdays too, feeling super sorted. Have u packed for CP yet?
We have had a lovely morning in the park, D wore his wellies out for the first time and he did really well in them, dogs had a good walk and now D is napping while me and dh chill out! lovely!
Loft when D wakes up!yay! why am i looking forward to so much, i am very sad!!

viks I don't do the housework more time for baking.

cake I just let the buttercream go a bit melty in the summer, our food cupboard is never really warm so on the bottom shelf it seems to last ok but if it's really hot I put it in the garage (door through from the kitchen) cos that's never hot!
Kitchen thing I wouldn't be without? nothing really, I have this one mixing bowl I found over a decade ago in a field in Stoke-on-Trent where Wedgewood dumped all the thirds/fourths that they couldn't sell. It's just plain cream but I love it for what it is. I do love my Kitchenaid but it wouldn't be the first thing I grabbed if the house was burning down.

trudy quite a bit of dark choc has dairy in it but you can find the odd bar that doesn't, vegan choc is fine too. Bourbon creams don't have dairy in I lived off those last christmas!

tsc hope your night was ok and that C isn't too bad today.

mlic very jealous of your santa trip! I've yet to go to CP.

Ok 2 quick questions completely unrelated to each other.

Can your littluns count, if so how far can they go?

Aaaand, do they watch tv and if so how much a day?

My answers are can't count at all but we do counting with him and I think he understands it now. He watches too much tv for my liking but I don't really know what else to do with him at home as we've only really got that one room to use for playing. He does play with his toys alot and won't sit there glued to the set but it's on pretty much all the time we're at home in the background.

Ha, he can barely talk nevermind count!

TV is on whenever I'm in the house. E watches it more than W though, he's not really interested

No counting here either :)

TV, um it varies. It'll be on for 15 mins then they lose interest and move away so I turn it off. Then it will be on again later for a bit, and so on. G doesn't watch much. A has gone through phases of being into certain programmes, she's usually not that fussed if it's on or not. A started telling me the other day how it is that spiders don't get stuck in their own webs - I thought I had some kind of genius on my hands till I realised she'd learnt it off TV .

We had our big busy day yesterday, gymnastics class, Santa parade, school fair, pony ride, drive to town to get dh's car, then drove home and I cleaned my car inside and out (A helped). The dcs were knackered after all that. Today is a bit quieter.

Ok that's made me feel better, I was worried D was watching it too much but he doesn't really sit there and stare at it. He does much the same as yours do, watch it for a bit then move onto something else.

I wasn't expecting babies to be counting just if they knew numbers by sight or otherwise. Basically where you are with numbers.

L can only just get to 10 so I'd be gobsmacked if S could, and she can't recognise numbers but then I'm not too worried about teaching her at this age. She's not interested so I don't force it, same with S.
S can't talk either, seriously we get no words off him except 'no'.

TV isn't on as much now, S isn't interested and will play with his cars even when it's on, unless it's ITNG in which case he's usually fixated.

wss that was a busy day! I'm chuffed if we get two things done in one day :)

if you like dark choc then you should be better off there then here trudy as the choc should be better quality and therefore less likely to be stuffed with milk.

swedish glace icecream is nice and i've seen it in other countries so you might get it there - mind you it might have been sweden i saw it

alpro stuff seems to be everywhere - saw lots in belgium.

dh counting? noooo! nowhere near! F was far quicker at everything he was saying 40 words and some 2 word combos by 16m but even he wasn't counting by then!

F can only count to 20 now (only said to annoy mlic ), he recognises all from 1 to 10 and then some of 11 - 20. like chul i dont really bother to teach him numbers much as he's not shown much interest compared to letters - he started learning letters at 18m and he now knows all the phase 3 combined phonics sounds like ue and oi by sight and sound which kinda shocks me.

he's got an amazing memory for numbers tho - on holiday dh mentioned our 3 digit room number in the lift on the way up, F found the room immediately then and every time from then on even tho it was in a corridor of identical doors.

re TV - 15 mins of Thomas on my Mac most days with F altho she's not that interested and then he watches a film or a feature length Thomas DVD a couple of times a week as a treat but A will mostly play rather than watch. they also watch music videos on the ipad but they'll be dancing and singing along so i don't really see it as watching TV per se.

sorry if it sounds like i was being all competitive and showing off about F then . i didn't mean it like that, i was trying to say that they all do different things in their own time and it means nothing really and also that this is waaay young for counting!

I love how specific cake is. I don't even know what "phase 3 combined phonics sounds" means .

Raining here so our planned trip to park is off for the mo, off to do some building with blocks...

sorry - am i maffisly specific in RL too - it comes across worse in writing tho i think

I hope F is ok, TSC! :( And C too. Sounds like you're having a bit of an awful time at the moment, I'll keep my fingers crossed for things to improve!

No counting here, DH. No talking yet either! Though we might almost be there... We're semi-reliably getting "Gaaah" with pointing at the cats, and there's been a lot of "Dada" while looking around over the last few days, whenever DH leaves the vicinity.

M seems to have abandoned most of her sign language, aside from "More!". We have a wooden advent calendar for her in the living room where each door gives a piece of Santa's Workshop, and a piece of chocolate. Now every time she enters the room she points at the calendar and signs "More!".

For TV, M doesn't get any at nursery as far as I know, but she normally gets about 20-30 minutes in the evening when we get home, while DH and I run round prepping food/bath/bed stuff. At the weekend, it's sometimes just on in the background as we potter about, but she doesn't tend to sit and watch.

Have fun with the block building, WSS! :) M seems to have really embraced building towers here, I keep turning round to find she's stacked things one on top of another. Today it was toilet rolls, the day before was DVD cases...having pulled them all off the shelves.

She managed a tower of 7 blocks last weekend. I was watching her carefully and methodically pile them up. Amusingly the tower was only built with blocks of red, green and yellow. The blue blocks were apparently not good enough for building with, and had all been thrown into the corner.

She's a strange child!

cake stop being sorry, its great to hear what F's up to, he really does sound very bright, bless him.
Well, apart from D being a bit miserable at bed time we have had a most perfact day imo. Got the stuff down out of the loft, its all fine, i'll have a good sort tomorrow but we have plenty of teny tiny clothes out now and the moses basket and the carry cot part of the icandy. Would you all get a new mattress for the moses basket? i know they say not to use the same mattress twice but it does seem ashame as theres nothing wrong with it.
dh re counting we do it a lot with D and its so cute when he puts things in a row and 'counts' but only says two,two,two, hehehe!
As for the TV i also feel we have it on too much and i have been making a consious effort to turn it off and leave it off, so now it only really goes on when he's fed up or very tired.

E counts to 20, with the only error of fifteen being pronounced as five-teen (which I actually think is quite cute ) But he has no grasp of letters. Every time I think he's got it, the following day I ask him to show me where 'a' is, only to be told 'I don't know mammy'. But I honestly don't care, he will pick it up in his own time.

Had friends round for takeaway pizza and drinks tonight. I feel a bit drunk!

I know an 18 month old who can count and a 16 month old who recognises numbers. But sounds like the majority aren't quite at that stage.

D was awful last night so he came in our bed at 11ish and slept til 6 but I couldnt face getting up then so after lots of cuddling he went back to sleep til 7:50!

Morning all,
dh the two babies u know sound mighty advanced! i wouldnt expect D to be able to do either but as we know only too well they are all so different, I heard an interesting take on when babies are born with respect to what i mentioned the other day and July babies being behind at school due to being the youngest, this ladys baby was due in sept and she did everything she could to bring him slightly early so he would be august and the youngest in the class so that he was challanged rather than board, hadnt thought of it like that before.
D slept really well again but woke at 5 and did really settle to well, he went off on and off till 7.40 so cant complain at all, so so much better than it has been!
tsc what were u doing up and on line at that god awfull hour? How is everyone?
Im currently trying to teach D to say grandma or grandad as they are coming down next weekend, its funny, hes a real mimic these days. Hes currently eating breakfast with a small buzz lightyear on his tray as well as some blueberrys and he has just tried to give buzz a blueberry, im sure he would respond well to a doll and a bottle when the baby comes.
Its a horrid morning here, dont know what we will do today, was hoping it might be nice so we could go to the seaside, doesnt look like that now. Whats everyone else doing?

I'm cooking and packing for next week

Have I mentioned I'm going on holiday?

We are seriously starting to look at double buggies, baby jogger city mini is the favourite so far, can anyone with any experience of doubles please share the reasons they chose what the brought and what worked and what didnt. I would be most greatfull.

Mlisc- hope you have a good hol. I've been to Spain and Cornwall this year so have had my fair share. Not going anywhere til July next year when we head back to Spain a week before D's 2nd birthday.

D has been a nutter this morning flinging himself around on our bed and taking all dh's socks out his drawer, he's been hilarious to watch.

He also does this thing where he walks round and round on the spot and makes himself dizzy so he walks like a drunk!

NOt Cornwall sorry, Somerset.

Tmi alert! I've missed 2 pills this week, I had a normal period about 2 weeks ago and now I've got some bleeding, not much and it's more brown than red. Just wondering what I should do...we haven't used any other form of contraception either.

What do you mean, what should you do? It's just breakthrough bleeding due to your missed pills. If you want to be safe then you should use condoms for the 7 days following your last missed pill.

Ah ok I didn't know if I needed to do anything else. I'll be stopping it completely soon