Living Arrows 20018 17/53

Welcome back to Living Arrows 2018 week 17!

If you are new to Living Arrows, then this linky is hosted by Donna over at What the Redhead said, It's all about celebrating childhood. It's name came from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth"

So James has been back at school a week now and he is loving being back with all his friends after the school holidays. He was a little bit put out that he wasn't allowed a day off school for mummy's birthday, but then he realised it had been in the school holidays last year! 

Freddie has been back at playgroup and well we had tears again!!  Last Monday on our way to pick up James we bumped into one of the women who works at his playgroup and he was thrilled to see her! He started waving and shouting hi! When James has been in school Freddie has been super glued to mummy's side when we are in the house, he has literally not been letting me out of his sight! We are also in the process of weaning Freddie off green top milk and onto a milk alternative. At the moment we are trying him on Almond milk and even though he is still waking up he is not screaming his head off. 

The weather has been so nice this week that after school on Friday mummy decided to take the boys to the park for a little bit to enjoy the weather, Then on Saturday we got up and headed across to Kingston Park Tesco and bought food for a BBQ!! We then spent most of the afternoon and early evening in our back garden!

 

What was number one five, ten and twenty years ago?

So lately I've been listening to alot of music when Freddie has been in playgroup while I have been working on my laptop. I'm definitely a lover of boy bands and classic rock bands. In fact my favourite band recently got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (post coming on that soon!)

So I decided to have a look on the internet and see what was number one ten years ago and five years ago, basically to see if I could remember the songs!

So five years ago the number one single covering 22nd April was Need U (100 Percent) by Duke Dumont ft Ame. I literally have no idea who this is! I had to actually look you on YouTube who they are!

Ten years ago the number one single covering this time was American Boy by Estelle ft Kanye West. Now this is a song that I do remember and did like at the time. It wasn't the kind of song I would normally listen too, but I did hear it on numerous nights out in Manchester where I was living at the time!

and finally twenty years ago. The number one single twenty years ago was Its Like That by Run DMC versus Jason Nevins. Again this was not something I would normally listen to, but I definitely remember seeing them on Top of the Pops.

So that is what was number one five, ten and twenty years ago. I have really lost all interest in up to date music since my boys were born, so give me some classic rock music and I am happy!!

What does Freddie Takes to Playgroup!

So now that Freddie is at playgroup two afternoons a week for three hours each session, I thought I should do a post on what exactly he takes with him.

The first thing that Freddie takes with him is his Mr Tumble backpack. This hangs on his peg along with his coat!

Inside his back pack we have a wet bag from Poundland and inside this we have: a vest, a t-shirt, a long sleeved top, a pair of joggers and a pair of socks! I always make sure there is a full set of spare clothes in his bag not just in case of him having an accident but the fact he is obsessed with water play and has needed to be completely changed before coming home a few times!! He is completely obsessed with water play and normally heads straight to the water table once he gets into the classroom!

The next thing in his backpack is pull-ups! Now Freddie is nowhere near ready for potty training and wears pull-ups during the day. I always make sure there is at least four in his bag just in case.

Then to go with the pull-ups we have some baby wipes. The ones we use normally use are the Aldi Mamia Fragrance Free. We have used these on Freddie since he was newborn so we know he has no problems or allergies to them. We currently have pampers fragrance free wipes in as it was all I could find when I needed a small packet to go into the bag.

The next thing to go in his bag is some nappy bags. Now these can be used not only for his wet pull up but also to put in his wet clothes. There have been times when he has only needed to have his vest, t-shirt and long sleeved top replaced after playing in the water, so his key worker leaves the dry things in the wet bag and puts the wet clothes into a nappy bag so when I get home I can just rip the bag and put them straight into the washing machine!  

The last thing to go into his bag is his hat. Now this actually only goes in when he is dropped off as it is on his head right up until we get into the cloak room. Over the winter it has been a woolie hat but as it gets into the summer I think it will be a baseball cap!

So this is what my two year old currently takes to playgroup with him, I expect that over the months things will be added and things taken away from his bag as he gets older and of course once he is potty trained. But also once he gets his free 15 hours from turning three, he will be at playgroup longer so will need to take more things!

What does James take to school?

We are pretty lucky that we don’t actually need to provide anything for James for school apart from his school bag and his water bottle. His school even provided every child with a new school pe kit back in September! 

James currently uses his Zip and Zoe multi dinos bag for school. We got this as a review item when James was in reception and he loves it although it is starting to get slightly battered and need to be replaced before he starts year two in September! 

In his bag on a typical school day he will have his water bottle, His home school diary where we record his reading and his homework and his reading book.

I also normally keep a spare pair of socks in his school bag as well as James likes playing in puddles and quite often ends up with wet feet.

On certain Wednesdays James will have forest school so I will put his school shoes into his bag and a carrier bag for him to put his wellie boots and his waterproof trousers into once he has finished the session.

On a Monday James will also have his homework book in his bag, his class are given their homework on a Thursday so they have the whole weekend to complete it and hand in on the Monday.

We will also sometimes have a woolly hat in his bag as well sometimes too.

So this is what James takes to school on a daily basis. I'm expecting once he goes into year two in September he will be taking a lot more stuff with him!

Siblings April 2018

Another month of siblings!

My boys have had a lovely time on their Easter Holidays from school and playgroup. 

We have some lovely photos of them both together.

This one was taken by my dad on Easter Sunday when we went out for the day with my parents. I find it difficult to get them both looking at the same time, so thanks dad!

When Andy went back to work we had a lovely day where the weather was fantastic, so I walked the boys to our local park. They looked so adorable holding hands as they walked!

 

 

Living Arrows 2018 16/53

Welcome back to Living Arrows week 16! Sixteen weeks is four months and I am so proud of myself for completing four months of weekly posts on my beautiful boys!

James has gone back to school today after his Easter break and boy was mummy ready! Although to be fair I only actually had the two boys on my own for one day! The first week of the holidays Andy was on holiday too so there was an extra pair of hands around for the boys, then the second week of the holidays James went to stay with Nana and Gaga from the Tuesday till Thursday on his own then Mummy and Freddie joined him Thursday to Saturday and James then stayed again on the Saturday night and came home on Sunday to go out for Mummys early birthday meal!

Freddie has been such a little monkey these holidays, with lots of copying from his big brother! He did really miss him when he went to stay with Nana and Gaga for them few days and was thrilled to be reunited with him once him and mummy went up!

Before James went to stay with Nana and Gaga we had a lovely day weather wise where we took a walk to Tesco first thing, then came home and played then cooked the evening meal and then had lunch and headed out to our local park!

The boys had a brilliant time playing on the swings and slides, while James saw one of his friends from school and played with her for a little bit while I chased the little whirlwind around!! We then went to the local shop and bought some ice lollies that James chose!!

 

 

My Perfect Office Area

As a stay at home/work at home mum, I literally have to take what little time I have to do my blogging.

My desk is in one corner of the lounge with Andy’s in the opposite corner behind me. Andy has the corner where the plug sockets are so my laptop has to slide down the side of one of our units to charge as there is no socket by my desk. It also gets turned into a dumping ground for James and all his school stuff!

We have been in our house nearly three years yet we haven’t managed to decorate our lounge yet! 

What I would love to do is where my desk is, I would love to have a couple of shelves, something like the Ekby Alex from IKEA would be amazing as it has two draws as well so I would have the shelf to display things and then the draws to hide things away from the boys! In the drawers I would put things like my tapes and pens away from James as he always trying to borrow them! He seems to forget he has his own pens and pencils to use but I think mummy's always seem to be much more interesting to him!

I also love this HOME Cube shelving unit from Argos. This would give me a lot of storage to get things up off my desk like my pen pots and pencil case, which in turn would give me more space to work and also to use my desk for photographing products for blog posts!

I would also be able to put up some photographs of us as a family in the smaller cubes! I would hopefully be able to hang my twine photo holder off the bottom of this as currently it it held onto the wall with blue tac and it keeps falling down!

Another big issue I have is not having a place to store letters that come home from school. 

This desk tidy from IKEA would fit perfect on the desk and would take a lot of my paper work off my desk and I would be able to put my phone into it as well so if I got an alert I would see the screen flash instead of having to get up and go across the room to get my phone! 

It would also mean I would have to go through my school paper work more often as at the moment I tend to only go through it at the end of term and end up filling the bin with paper work that is no longer needed!

My current desk is the HOME Calgary Corner Office Desk from Argos. I do love it but the boxes are a lot smaller than the IKEA kallax unit so the kallax boxes also from IKEA do not fit meaning I have to store things on the shelves where the boys can get to them or they are on the desktop leaving me with very little space to work, meaning I end up on the sofa with the laptop on my knee getting distracted by the TV!

I really do like this desk but if I had more space then I would love to have something like this HOME Tall Unit also from Argos as it would take up a little bit less space! 

I love the fact it has a small shelf and also quite a big draw where I would be able to keep papers shut away from the boys! The only downside I can see with this desk is the shelf is quite small and the draw is not very deep. 

So these are things I would love to have to make my working area a bit more user friendly. I think having a more user friendly working area in our house would encourage me to sit and work without the TV being on to distract me!!!

All going to plan I will be updating a post soon on what we have done to make my desk area more user friendly!