REVIEW: Duinrell, Netherlands | Our 2 week summer holidays

As it’s holiday booking season I thought I’d finally share our summer holidays from 2019…. at the start of 2019 we knew we’d take 2 weeks off during the school holidays in August and that we’d try and go on holiday, depending on cost….

Continue reading “REVIEW: Duinrell, Netherlands | Our 2 week summer holidays”

Happy new year! Reflecting on 2019 and hopes for 2020

It’s only the 10th of Jan but Christmas feels like a lifetime ago. We had the most wonderful time,  it was the first year both boys were really excited about it. Wonderful memories were made…. S stealing the show at his first Christmas concert while W behaved impeccably as an elf….. Santa and his elves driving round the village in their sleigh on Christmas Eve…. Christmas day being full of ‘wow’s’ and ‘whoa’ as the presents got opened – W loved all his lego and Harry Potter themed gifts, S loved his wooden ice lollies, ice cream van, tesco van… you get the idea!

Continue reading “Happy new year! Reflecting on 2019 and hopes for 2020”

A weekend in Donostia San Sebastián: 3 nights… child-free!

For Christmas I bought the OH cheap flights to Bilbao so I could whisk him to San Sebastián for our first child-free weekend abroad. Got the boys booked in with the in-laws, booked a nice hotel and a few months later… off we went!

Day 1 – arriving in San Sebastian and checking out Pintxos Continue reading “A weekend in Donostia San Sebastián: 3 nights… child-free!”

S turns 3!

Over a month ago (my bad!) our beautiful, second-born, S, turned 3.

I’m not usually massively emotional about milestones, but S turning 3 is different… around the time of his birthday we had a settling in session at the school he’ll go to in September. It really hit me. Our pre-school era is coming to an end. I’ve spent the last full Friday with S, come September I will have half-Fridays to myself for the first time ever!

Still, the end of one era is the beginning of another. S’s ready and excited to start school.. at the settling in session he loved playing with all the toys and said on the way out ‘I love school’. He’s small in size, and will be one of the youngest in his year but I’m sure he’ll hold his own.

Maybe it comes with being a second-born but this boy has bags of confidence… he’s outgoing, not much phases him. Having said that, he likes things his way and is most definitely not a push-over. I think he’s best described as an entertainer, he doesn’t walk… he skips; he loves singing and dancing… if he’s in his pushchair he’ll often sing the whole way. He loves being the centre of attention, if there’s a singing group at a toddler group, he’s there in the middle.

I’m trying not to compare him to his older brother, W, but I think generally S is a bit wilder, a bit more extreme… a bit less likely to sit still. As we got closer to 3 his behaviour got a lot better as we seemed to get out of the tantrummy-terrible-twos… although trust me, he can still pull a good tantrum if needs be!

Ever since he was about 6 months old, he’s STILL obsessed with ‘Wheels on the bus’ whether it’s singing it, watching it on YouTube or ‘fixing’ wheels on his bus. He’s recently gone through a phase of lining up chairs and saying ‘get on my bus’

Talking of fixing, he’s going through a real ‘Bob the builder’ fixing phase at the moment, trying to hammer screws into everything he shouldn’t be!

Speech, hearing etc

His speech is pretty good for his age – you can hold a good conversation with him and he picks up new words often and copies a lot e.g. ‘it’s disgusting’ or ‘because’. Over the last few months we’ve started seeing him use his memories to relate back stories or ask things like ‘when can we go on holiday again?’

I love his little ways of saying this ‘out with me’ instead of ‘without me’; ‘milt’ instead of ‘milk’

At the start of the year, we were a bit worried about his hearing – although his speech was good, he kept asking us to repeat ourselves and some days seemed to constantly just say ‘eh?’, He got seen by audiology in April who said he had glue ear and that they’d keep an eye on it – by last week, the glue-ear has gone and he has perfect hearing which was great news 🙂

Potty training and other routines

A few months before his birthday we potty trained him and he took to it pretty well – that’s a whole other blog post! On the not so good side, he STILL has a (baby) bottle of milk for bed every night – a bad habit we’re going to end over the next few weeks…promise!

He’s generally a good sleeper but can take a while to settle, and occasionally wakes in the night… all pretty normal…

Being quite small (age 1-2 bottoms!) he’s not a huge eater… he likes chicken, sausages, hummus, corn, beans, fish…. doesn’t really like bread which I always find strange! He has a very sweet tooth

Belated birthday wishes S, we know you enjoyed your birthday gift of a ride-on tractor! The last year has been a big year for year and the next one will be too x

RECIPE: Family-friendly Beef Bolognese #MeatMatters #Ad

I know I share a common struggle with many of you… making healthy meals that are quick and easy to prepare and cook… and that the whole family will actually eat!

One of our family favourites is home-made beef Bolognese. Not very imaginative you might say, but I’ve mastered cooking it in under 30 mins when I get in from work; there’s enough for 2 nights dinner, it’s tasty and healthy and everyone eats it… winner winner beef dinner! Continue reading “RECIPE: Family-friendly Beef Bolognese #MeatMatters #Ad”