Merry go round moments – week 32.

Family fun: top shot.

With our girly, everything is about this book at the moment! We read it, we watch Michael Rosen perform it on youtube, she does the floor puzzle, we role play the bear and people. I love the way she gets temporary ‘book crushes’.

Memories are made of this.

First ‘mumumumum’ from the little man!  Of course, it just so happens to come during meal time…erm, every time…but hey, I’m going to say it’s ‘mummy’ and not ‘yummy’!  I feel as though it’s a mother’s prerogative to live in happy denial at such times.

 

Laugh out loud.

Our girly, plotting ways to get exactly what she wants.  She’s pretty good on the potty training front now, but she knows that she will still get a lot of praise and bonus points for telling us when she needs to go.  So she’s totally nailed the excuse for getting down from the table midway through dinner, when she’s eaten all the good bits she likes already and doesn’t want to eat the rest.  “Mummy, I just need a little little wee.  No, a poo.  No, a wee.  So I’m just going to get down and go, and then I’ll come straight back.   Okay?”  Yes, and we just saw those pigs fly too!

 

Quick quote.

I love this quote.  It could have been written for our little miss.  She is absolutely her own glorious palette of colours.

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Khaled Hosseini

Music makes me happy.

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird.  Nap time battles seem to be a thing with our two.  Our girly was never one of those babies who slept for hours at a time, anywhere you put her.  And (sadly for me!) neither is the little man.  So, this week I was shocked when I put him down for his morning nap, and he slept for two and a half hours straight.  In the end I actually had to go and wake him, because we needed to go pick up his sister from nursery.  That has never happened before!  I had a Lynyrd Skynyrd album playing on repeat in the background the whole time.  Perhaps I should play it every time if it brings that kind of magic?!

 

Good times.

We bought a bike with stabilisers for our girly this week.  She thinks it is the best thing ever. It has a little basket on the front for her to give rides to catty and baby (they’ve had a lot already!) and a little rack on the back for her to strap her picnic bag to.  It’s so sweet watching her concentrating on making the pedals go round.  At the moment, she is still spending a lot of time spinning them in reverse and going nowhere, but when she does get it right and she actually moves forward a way, her entire face lights up with joy and pride.  It’s beautiful to watch.

 

 

 

The eyes have it.

If you describe (extra)ordinary as meaning ‘mundane and meaningful objects. Beautiful everyday things’, as Cheri Lucas Rowlands does for this week’s WordPress weekly photo challenge, then one thing jumps immediately to mind.  Or it did for me anyway.

Every one of us has the most (extra)ordinary eyes.  The iris gives not only the colour to our eyes, but also their subtle pattern of ridges, folds and flecks.  These markings are totally unique – even more so than our fingerprints.  And breath-takingly beautiful if you take the time to look at them up close. If you’ve ever loved someone, chances are you’ve spent hours studying their face, gazing into their eyes.

These are my daughter’s eyes.  I’ve spent so much time already over her short life, learning her through them.  Bonding with her through our mutual adoring gaze, most especially in the months before she could speak, and her eyes helped her to communicate.

She chatters away now quite confidently, so she is no longer so reliant on her eyes as a means of expression.  But they still provide a beautiful window onto her – when her eyes light up with happiness, widen with surprise, pool with tears of sadness or frustration. Or, as in this case, when they twinkle with joy (as well as a dash of mischief and a generous dusting of glitter!) whilst she plays with a newly made batch of special sparkly play dough.

Happiness is a bunch of balloons.

Yes, I have travel photos that make me ache for a place or time.  Yes, I’ve got arty photos that capture an experience.  But if I were to choose a photo to use as cover art for something I personally would really like to read at this moment in time, it would be this one.

The book would be on the art of simple fun with babies and toddlers.  Not a glamorous coffee table tome, admittedly.  But I bet it would be a well-thumbed favourite with stay at home parents and mums on maternity leave! Even ‘yet-another-rainy-weekend’ parents looking for inspiration would probably be quite grateful for a little peek at it!

The little girl is mine, absolutely beside herself with happy excitement when I surprised her with a big chain of balloons, tied together with string.  We played with it for a whole afternoon over the weekend.  Swooshing it up in the air and watching it fall, running around with it, spinning it round and round her until we felt dizzy.  She squashed it and pulled it and played peek-a-boo from behind it, and generally just had a brilliant time.  All for the cost of a packet of balloons.

 

‘I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things in life which are the real ones after all.’

(Laura Ingalls Wilder)

It can sometimes be hard to resist the pull of the commercialism of childhood.  I am not immune to it.  We absolutely do buy toys, books and games; probably a few more than really necessary.  But we also try to keep things simple and have fun with our imaginations.   Musical instruments made out of old water bottles, each filled with different materials like pasta, rice, toothpicks. Sensory exploration with jelly, blocks of ice made from glittery water, stodgy mashed potato. Hours of fun with a bowl of soapy water, two plastic cups and a whole heap of towels to mop up afterwards!  All cheap and simple to prepare, and so much fun for little people.

I love finding interesting ways to help my little girl learn, grow and have fun.  But I confess that it can be hard thinking of endless things, searching for age appropriate ideas.  Having favourite activities is great – balloons in our house are a guaranteed hit, and are a relatively lost cost, low effort endeavour for me.  But it’s good to ring the changes too and keep things exciting and engaging.

So a book with age specific chapters, crammed full of fun, simple, low-cost ideas to try, adapt and develop into family favourites would be a very welcome addition to my bookshelf.  I’d certainly spend a lot less time on Pinterest!

 

‘Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.’

Oscar Wilde

 

My entry for this week’s WordPress Weekly photo challenge, ‘cover art’.  An inspired theme by guest host, Pete Rosos of 2812 Photography.  Other interesting cover art entries can be found here.