Whenever Little Miss C goes out into the back garden, one of the first things she does is try to get into the shed to get one of her many watering can. Once she's got it she then marches straight over to the water butt where she can be heard chanting "fill it, fill it" until the watering can has been filled with water. After that she goes straight over to the veg plot and makes sure that all the plants get a drink.
Sometimes the water even comes out of the spout of the watering can!
The more I watch Little Miss C play the more amazed I am at the way in which she uses toys in different ways to how the original designers intended. One of her favourite Christmas presents this year was a Bigjigs train set. She loves playing with it and in particular letting the trains run down the far side of the bridge that is part of the set.
Having seen how good it was letting trains go down the "hill" she decided to take things a step further. Her VTech Toot Toot Drivers Garage has a spiral ramp so LMC decided to combine the two - cue trains running up and down a garage ramp! It seems obvious when you see it in action, but it wasn't something I would have imagined.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. The VTech Toot Toot Drivers Garage was received to review from Cuthbert's Toys last year (original review here) and we bought her the Bigjigs Figure of Eight train set from the local Cuthbert's store here in St Albans.
The weather here has been awful since the new year and after all the excitement of Christmas and New Year I've had my work cut out keeping LMC entertained. A bit of pre-planning meant that today I was able to do something with her that in my opinion falls into the "fantastic mummy" category - home made playdough!
I found several recipes online, but a nanny friend told me to look for the ones that involved heating the ingredients as these were the ones that she had found most successful. With that piece of information I decided to try this recipe from the fantastic Instructables site.
The basic recipe is simple enough; 2 cups of plain flour, one cup of salt, just over 200ml of warm water, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and one tablespoon of cream of tartar. All the ingredients go in a pan and are heated gently whilst you mix them. I found that they came together quite easily, but then seemed to turn quite quickly into being too dry. I added a bit more water, mixed it on a low heat until the water was all mixed in, then took it off the heat.
Using a plastic board I then kneaded the dough to make sure it was soft and of an even consistency. Once you've got the dough to this stage you can start about adding colour.
I just used the food colouring colours that I had in the cupboard: yellow, pink, red and blue. The instructions tell you to make a well in the balls of dough and then try to knead in the colour without getting the neat colouring on your hands. Impossible! I now have dark blue splodges on my hands, but so be it!
It takes more colouring than I expected to get a good colouring and when you knead it it takes a little bit for the liquid to be absorbed into the clay and then there is quite a long period when the dough has a "marbled" appearance. Keep going though as you will finally get to the solid colours that you expect.
As making the dough required heating on the hob this wasn't something to do with LMC "helping" but she loved the finished result. As far as I know this is the firsttime she's properly played with playdough and after starting out by giving it some strange looks she soon got into the swing of things.
The benefit of this homemade dough over that bought in shops is that it is somewhat safer if children try to eat it. The high quantity of salt should put them off eating more than the smallest amount, but it doesn't contain any nasty chemicals. You can store the playdough in an air-tight container and it should last a while. If it dries out a few drops of water should refresh it. It will eventually dry out so much that it can't be refreshed any more, but at that stage you can just make some more!
We're just drawing to the end of that slightly strange period between Christmas and New Year that people often don't quite know what to do with. Here we've been simply enjoying time as a family of three. After nearly a week of get-togethers with extended family we're making the most of the simple things for a while.
Amongst playing with the lovely toys hat Father Christmas brought for LMC (more on those later!) there's been plenty of Christmas TV to catch up on, trips to some local (free) attractions and also making the most of the adorable Jemima Puddleduck tabbard in LMC's stocking to enable plenty of messy painting sessions.
We're really enjoying this in-between season and making the most of ever so important family time. It's just a shame that new year is approaching so fast.
And there was me thinking that Little Miss C was a bit young for dressing up. She proved me wrong though when she got hold of Mr C's slippers the other evening...
It seems a while ago now that I wrote about our first foreign holiday with Little Miss C. We learnt so much in those few days about travelling with a little one and I therefore want to share wih you the three things that we took with us that I would encourage anyone travelling with a toddler to take.
I'm afraid I don't have a photo of me using our carrier, but that's mainly because of the times it was useful. We flew with Easyjet from Stansted airport and I have to say that they were really good when it came to carrying baby equipment with us. We were able to take LMC"s pushchar right to the gate with us and then it was put in the hold for the flight itself. That did mean that we still had to climb down all the stairs at the gate to get to the plane with it before handing it over. But then we next saw it again in the baggage reclaim area when we arrived. It was the same on the return jorney. Left it at the aeroplane steps and then saw it in Stansted in beggage reclaim.
What you need to remember though is that from the gate there is still a walk to the plane - and in our case that involved walking up to the plane and climbing the steps up to it. In Madeira the walk thorugh immigration etc wasn't too bad, but when we returned to Stansted there was a long, long walk from our gate to immigration, a huge queue to wait in, and then another trek to baggage reclaim. At 15 months (as she was at the time) LMC is very good at walking for her age, but there is no way that she could have walked all that way without either getting trampled by other passengers, getting tired or going somewhere she shouldn't have done. The Ergo Baby Carrier was so useful at these stages. I could just pop her in it and still have my hands free to carry bags, show passports etc etc. It also packs really small and is lightweight so wasn't a problem to have with us in general.
2. Totseat
I should start by saying that even before we went on holiday I was completely in love with my Totseat. I use it frequently when out and about with LMC and it is so useful.
If you've not come across it before then it is a fabric portable highchair that folds down so small that it fits into my handbag (and comes in a lovely little puch so it can do just that!) It fits in pretty much any chair that you find and means that you no longer have to worry about whether the place you want to eat in has a free highchair or not. It's adjustable and once you've used it a couple of times very simple to put on to a chair and make your child secure in it. Best of all you can also just throw it all in the washing machine when it gets dirty!
When we were away it gave us a level of freedom about where to eat and meant that we always knew that LMC was securely fastened in when we had meals. Some of the restaurants we went to did have highchairs, but some of them were so broken that we chose not to use them. One was a beautiful wooden one (in a posh restaurant we should add) but seemed to have no straps or bars to actually keep the child in. Within second LMC was stood up in it and trying to stand on the tray part! We pulled out the Totseat and used that with the highchair and instantly had a contained child who could eat her dinner without trying to see if she could freefall or not.
Before buying the Totseat I researched it carefull online and whilst I found several similar products this was the only one that was consistently reviewed well. Other seemed to have failings either in how easy they were to use, or on how few chair types that worked with.
When at home I regularly take mine with me when going round friends' houses so that I can give LMC her tea when out.
3. Wax-crayons and colouring book
This is such a simpel one, but without it things could have got quite diffcult at times. Being able to pull out some crayons and a colouring book diffused many tricky situations where LMC was bored of waiting for something, whether it be during the flight or whilst waiting for food in a restaurant. It was only a last minute thing to throw these into my handbag but I am so glad I did.
However, I did discover that even baby wipes will not remove wax crayon from an aeroplane tray table...
All of these products were things that I bought and took with me on holiday. Both the Totseat and Ergo are available from Amazon by following the links above. This is not a sponsored post, but just simply sharing with you what I found useful. I hope it helps!
It's as if Christmas has come a bit early for Little Miss C this year. I came home from town the other day with her buggy weighed down with the Toot Toot Drivers Garage to review from our lovely local toy shop, Cuthberts.
The Toot Toot Drivers range comes from VTech, and as you would expect from them combines bright colours and noises to attract the children, with interactive elements to help them learn through play. The vehicles are a lovely size to fit into small hands, and also talk and sing in response to pressing a button on them whilst the Garage provides a fantastic centre piece to play with. Not only is there a road area to drive the vehicles along, but also a lift to take the vehicles up to the upper level, a spiral ramp for them to come down again, a turn-table area, car wash area, parking space, heliport and filling station area. A couple of small barrier arms help traffic flow around the garage and seem to be one of Little Miss C's favourite parts - I had no idea that lifting a small arm up and down could be so fascinating. There are also some large buttons which can be pressed to hear various other things. There are two modes one of which seems to be a learning mode and the second a music mode, but since LMC hid the instruction book when we unpacked it all Mr C and I are yet to discover exactly what the modes do!
The interactiveness of the range really comes apparent when you combine the cars with the Garage. There is one section at the top of the spiral ramp where if you press the vehicle down the Garage recognises the vehicle type and sings a welcome song to that particular vehicle. (All cleverly done by a small plastic plate on the bottom of the vehicle pressing down on a series of buttons in the garage. The shape of the plate being unique to each vehicle type.) The garage itself comes with a pick up truck vehicle, but all of the vehicles in the range work with it and I can see that new vehicles would make great presents further down the line.
Little Miss C has been playing with this garage for just over a week now and seems to love it. Being only 16 months old she obviously doesn't quite understand all of the things that it can do (but then neither do Mum and Dad!), but she was very quick to work out all of the things that she can push to make it play noises and songs, and pushing the vehicle around it also came quite naturally to her. I know some people may initially think that cars are for boys to play with, but that's not an attitude we adopt in this household and LMC has played more with this than the doll she owns! With all the different areas in the garage there's loads of scope for imaginative play using it and I can see that the way LMC plays with it is likely to change as she develops.
The only complaint I might have is that when you have the garage making all its noise the addition of the vehicle independently making noise and singing can be a bit much. I've started ensuring that either the garage OR the vehicle is turned on at one time. I imagine that with more vehicles you might end up with a bit of a cacophony going on so I'm hoping LMC doesn't discover the on/off switch too quickly.
At the moment the Toot Toot Drivers range just consists of the vehicles and the garage, but looking at the way that it's built I am hoping that VTech will also bring out some road areas, as it looks like there is space for them to click into place. The inclusion of the heliport makes me wonder if the vehicle range will also extend to include a helicopter of some sort. There is no doubt that the garage is a huge hit in this household and I definitely think we'll look to buy Little Miss C a couple of extra vehicles for Christmas. I'm also going to keep a close eye on how VTech look to extend the range.
We were given a Toot Toot Drivers Garage to review by the lovely people at Cuthberts. Cuthberts have fantastic physical toy shops in St Albans and Letchworth, Hertfordshire and also have a full online store available on their website.
If you're local it's also worth ensuring that you check in on foursquare when you visit them as they run some great check in specials as well as fantastic deals for the mayor.
Whilst Little Miss C had her lunchtime nap on Monday I decided that we should make the most of the good weather and so I set up for us to do some painting in the sunshine. Whilst she slept it all looked so beautiful. I'd laid out everything carefully, taped the plastic sheet down so that wind didn't blow it away, put paint in four different containers, taped the paper down and I even had a special pot for the water that she couldn't tip over and spill.
Then the artist woke up...
She was very excited to see what we'd got lined up for the afternoon. She's done some painting at nursery before and I told she really enjoys it and likes to get stuck in. The same was true at home. She instantly grabbed the brush and started putting paint on the paper.
After a while, sitting there calmly just wasn't enough. She wanted to get more stuck in and seemed to have an urge to become one with her artwork (I'm sure all the best artists do this). The colours started being mixed and the brush was no longer sufficient to apply the paint to the paper - her hands could do it more efficiently she thought. Also, why bother putting the paint on the paper - skin can be painted too...
She was enjoying herself so much at this point that I didn't want to stop her. I was also feeling pretty smug about the fact that we were doing this outside rather than risk covering my living room or dining table in paint.
It was nearly an hour before she lost interest and then the real fun began. How do you get a small child, who wants to walk everywhere, upstairs to the bath without getting paint all over your cream coloured stairs carpet?
The answer - very, very carefully!
I should add that we used Crayola Washable Paint
Entertaining an active toddler on a rainy day when you're stuck in the house is not an easy thing. Little Miss C loves nothing more than running about the garden so when it starts raining at breakfast and continues in a monsoon fashion all day it's tricky to know how to keep her occupied.
At 14 months she's not really old enough to do any drawing herself yet but that didn't stop me getting out some paper and wax crayons earlier today. Whilst she had a few problems coordinating holding the crayon and making contact with the paper she was completely fascinated to see me drawing pictures. It's years since I did any drawing and I found I was really enjoying it and she seemed to too.
As is always the case with small children the most fun seemed to come from putting the crayons back in the plastic tub. If it hadn't been for my enjoyment I might not have bothered with the paper next time!
Give a little girl a garden full of things to collect and a bucket in which to put them and you have an hour of fun!
