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”

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

S’s 2 and a quarter health visitor check: what to expect

S recently had his 2-2.5 year old check from the health visitor.

She was due at 2pm which is usually his nap time, so I put him down for an earlier nap and woke him just as she was parking up. Unfortunately having to wake him meant he was a bit grouchy and not really on form…

The first words he muttered were ‘tv on’… great, thanks S, now she thinks I just plonk you in front of the TV all the time!

What she checked for:

Continue reading “S’s 2 and a quarter health visitor check: what to expect”

S is 2!

Over a month ago (bad mummy blogger alert!) our beautiful blue-eyed baby boy turned 2!

I still can’t believe it, I know everyone says this but seriously, S still looks and is the same size as a baby!

He can still fit in a lot of 12-18 month clothes!

Personality

Anyway what’s our little 2 year old like?!

Wild!! Is this second-child syndrome or just a difference to his bigger brother W I don’t know but S is more fearless and headstrong than W… quite often the ringleader leading older children astray! Loves being the centre of attention! His self-confidence is great…. apart from when you need him to listen to you to stop throwing his food etc!

Toddler with ducks roath Park

Continue reading “S is 2!”

W turns 4!

Nearly a month ago now, our beautiful first-born turned 4… where does the time go?!

His 4th birthday

Poor W didn’t have the best of birthdays, he’d been fighting a virus on and off all week, he went to school as usual in the morning but just had a lazy afternoon at home with his dad and little brother, and opened his presents when I got home from work…. he was very pleased with his Paw Patroller that he’d been hinting heavily at for weeks! Brother S bought him a couple of dinosaur-related toys that cheered him up to!

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Toddler S’s 21 month update

Less than 3 months to go til S turns into the big ‘2’ so thought I was due to write an update 🙂

Vital stats

I feel like not much has changed since his 18 month update. He’s still a tiny chappy, in 12-18 month clothes and size 4 nappies and size 5 shoes. He’s had a few more teeth come through lately but I honestly can’t see in his mouth long enough to know how many teeth he has! Continue reading “Toddler S’s 21 month update”

I’m back… with one ovary removed! Ovarian cyst operation update…

Another two months has flown by (life, work, finishing off the house extension) but now I finally have time to catch up with blogging as I’m recovering from an operation!

I found out about 5 years ago that I had a large (7cm) cyst on my left ovary. It explained why my periods were irregular and that I had spotting. Continue reading “I’m back… with one ovary removed! Ovarian cyst operation update…”