Parenting

A collection of all my posts relating to parenting and family life

Silent Sunday

13
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , , ,

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Silent Sunday

School Run Mums – An apology!

1
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in

I’m sorry! I feel the need to apologise as it appears I’ve had to revise my views :)

To set the scene, I will take you back around 5 years to my horsey days. Many an hour was spent drinking manky tea in dusty tack rooms sheltering from the rain and one of our most frequent topics of conversation was the school run mum.

You see back then (pre children) a 4×4 (or SUV) was a practical tool, they were to be used for towing horse trailers, driving out to the fields and carting bales of straw around. A 4×4 was supposed to be full of horse hair and straw, it was supposed to be covered in mud both inside and out. A 4×4 without a tow bar was like a horse with no saddle -pointless!

Oh how we mocked the school run mums in their shiny 4x4s that they couldn’t drive properly, that had never been off road in their lives and that probably didn’t even know how to turn it into 4×4 mode.

5 years on, my horsey days are no more (for now) but I’ve found myself buying a nice shiny 4×4 and I’ve become one of the mums I used to mock. You see I have 2 children under 2, when we go anywhere in the car it is a military operation. An overnight stay involves 2 travel cots, a portable highchair, a double pushchair, nappies and supplies for 2 and of course all the other 1001 supplies needed and that is before we actually manage to squeeze in some clothes and toiletries for me and the husband. I soon discovered that with our old small car, trips away were a thing of the past and we needed something bigger if we were ever going to leave the house again.

The decision to go for a 4×4 was also made following two bad winters in our village, our road is like an icerink and we’ve been snow bound a few times. I remember glancing out of the window enviously at the 4x4s going past the house as my little car was buried under 2ft of snow and going nowhere fast.

So ladies of the school run, I’ve joined you! I’m one of the 4×4 brigade! I don’t have a horse or a trailer to tow (but I do have a tow bar) and my car is full of biscuit crumbs, baby wipes and toys rather than mud and horse hair. I have only been off road once (albeit driving across a field at a car boot sale) and it will probably never snow again now but the deed is done!

One small point though – I can park mine like a pro, can you? ;)

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Silent Sunday

8
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , ,

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Silent Sunday

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Spot the Difference

0
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , , ,

Oscar aged 6 months approx

Zara aged 5 months approx

The older Oscar gets the more he reminds me of Zara. In fact we showed Zara a video of herself aged 6 months in the highchair this morning and she kept pointing and saying Oscar! Oscar! lol The only sure fire giveaway is the eye colour of course, I think if Oscar didn’t have those bright blue eyes people really wouldn’t be able to tell the photos of them apart :)

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And so it begins – baby led weaning and Oscar

3
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in ,

Well we are a week away from Oscar turning 6 months and he is starting to show an interest in food and so I’ve decided it’s time to start baby led weaning with him. We had fantastic results doing blw with Zara and we started with her around this age so let the fun begin :)

Now I’m not expecting him to really eat anything for a while yet but I’ll be giving him the option and if he picks up the food and eats it fine, if not then no worries he will when he is ready. The whole point with blw is that you wait for them to do it and not force the pace :)

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Canvas Dezign Review

0
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in ,

I was recently offered the opportunity to receive and review a canvas from Canvas Dezign and of course with my obsession with photos I had to say yes :)

Canvas Dezign are one of the UK’s leading printers of bespoke Canvas Prints at an affordable price. They operate out of a design studio based in Darwen, Lancashire with an in line canvas printing and framing production facility. All their canvas printing and framing is done in Darwen and no part of the manufacturing process is outsourced.

I opted to get a canvas made up of this photograph that I took of Zara on my Iphone on our first trip to the beach

Am I brave enough to go in?

I was a bit concerned that the quality of the photograph might not be good enough for a 20″x20″ canvas but I was assured that it would be and I wasn’t disappointed.

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The canvas is beautiful, the quality is fantastic and the colours are amazing. Considering the photo was just taken on an Iphone, it has come out brilliantly on a 20″x20″ canvas and it will have pride of place in our house :)

A 20″x20″ canvas would have cost just £40 which I think is great value, with prices starting at just £10.99 for a 6″x6″ canvas and it being £22 for a 12″x16″. There is even an option to turn your photos into Banksy style works of art! Pop across and check out their website to see how your photos would look on their virtual wall :)

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4 Years Ago Today

2
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in

On 3rd August 2007 I was lucky enough to get married to my wonderful husband. 4 years ago! Since then we’ve had 2 house moves, 2 new jobs, 2 children and 2 cats :) We don’t like to let the grass grow under our feet ;)

Our wedding day :)

I thought I’d share with you the music from my wedding day, we didn’t go for any bog standard music for our wedding, we wanted something that reflected us and our relationship and there are 4 tracks which we chose:

1) Imagine sitting in the wedding room waiting for the bride and groom to arrive and this is the music that is playing

2) The song I walked down the aisle to was of course by Morrissey, although the instrumental version (our first dance was to the version with vocals

3) The song we signed the register to (my husband is a Hibs fan, but the lyrics are so meaningful we decided we loved the song in it’s own right :) )

4) Finally the song we left to, before heading back to the hotel for our wedding reception, again the lyrics are so beautiful we just had to “slide away” to this :)

Everytime I hear one of these songs I get instant goose bumps! They still send a shiver down my spine every time I hear them. They may not be the most traditional songs to play at a wedding but to us they were perfect :)

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Our Day at Build a Bear Workshop in Sunderland

1
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , , , ,

We were very kindly invited to the opening of the Build-A-Bear Workshop at the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland last week and as I was feeling very brave I decided to accept and take Zara and Oscar along. Now I don’t often do trips out alone with the 2 children as I don’t like being outnumbered but as we weren’t going to be out for long and we weren’t far from home I decided to risk it and I’m glad I did now as we had a lovely time :)

Having arrived at the store, we felt rather important to be allowed in before the grand opening and to be some of the first people to build-a-bear at the store. Zara was a little overwhelmed by the choice of bears that she could choose from (try telling a 19 month old to choose just one!) but we settled on a Doggy (no surprise there then :) ) which she fell instantly in love with. She was a bit reluctant to hand it over to have it stuffed and I don’t think she quite understood all the “putting a heart in it” part but we did put a bark inside his hand. Once stuffed we then moved onto the grooming part of the store, this was hands down Zara’s favourite part, I think she could have spent all day going back to brush her doggy, in fact I had trouble dragging her away to choose some clothes for him.

Now I don’t think Zara quite grasped the concept of dressing her doggy and choosing him some clothes so I chose his outfit myself and on the insistance of Zara we didn’t dress him, instead we packed his clothes in his going home box for him for later :) When it came to creating a birth certificate for doggy well Zara opted to call him “Big Doggy”, we already have “Little Dog” at home so Big Doggy was born :rolleyes:

Zara had to choose a Doggy

We were kindly allowed to build a bear for Oscar aswell and Zara decided we were going to make Oscar an owl (with a little help from me ;) ) By this time, Oscar was getting a little bit impatient for his next bottle and I could see a meltdown occuring at some point soon so we decided that Owlie (as named by Zara – got to give my girl 10/10 for originality ;) ) didn’t need any clothes as he was super cute without them.

Owlie The Owl

Both Doggy and Owlie were then packed in their little houses and I made a hasty exit back home before we had any meltdowns lol. I always like to leave before I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown ;)

Zara decided that Doggy’s little house makes a rather nice little house for her as well :)

Build-A-Zara

I’d like to say a BIG thank you to Build-A-Bear Sunderland for making us feel very welcome and inviting us to your pre-opening event. We had a lovely time and Zara and Oscar both love their bears :) (Sorry if we rushed off before we had chance to do any face painting etc but trust me it was best for all of us that we got out of there when we did :) )

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Our first family holiday

3
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , , ,

Well ok, so it wasn’t so much a holiday, more a case of gatecrashing my parents holiday for a couple of nights BUT it was our first couple of nights away with both children!

Last weekend we drove down to Scarborough where my parents were staying in a caravan and we stayed a couple of nights with them. Now just imagine the fun of trying to fit 2 travel cots, a double pushchair, a portable highchair, bedding for 4 and clothes etc into one car. Thank goodness we have the new 4×4 or we would never have managed it. The car was packed with military precision and by 10am on Saturday morning we had everything and 2 children loaded into the car and ready to go!

The Brown Family are on their way!

If we thought fitting everything into the car was a squash, well fitting everything into a caravan was even more fun but luckily we managed to fit one travel cot in each of the twin rooms in the caravan and me and my hubby slept in the lounge. It was chaotic but nice to have a change of scene!

Zara started off the holiday by marching straight into the caravan door and almost splitting her head open. Luckily the skin held together just so it just meant a rather nasty bruise. We went swimming straight afterwards in the pool which was freezing which I think actually helped as the bump didn’t swell much thank goodness!

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The great thing about having my parents around was that they kept an eye on Oscar whilst we could take Zara swimming which she loved, I haven’t taken her since before Oscar arrived and she was so excited to be back in the water, even though the pool was absolutely freezing so we couldn’t spent too long in there.

The site had a lovely play area so we spent lots of time on the swings and on the seesaw (I think I was having more fun than Zara on it ;) )

Wheeee

 

Double Wheeeee

And of course there was also a mini-arcade where I managed to get Zara addicted to the 2 penny push machine (more, more, more she kept shouting holding her hand out for more coins to feed into the slots!) and of course we had to try the dance machine (and I think Zara did better at it than me!)

More, More, More...

 

No mummy, it's left foot, forward, right foot, right foot, back

Once the kids were in bed, my parents babysat for an hour each night so that me and Alex could nip out for a quick drink alone which was lovely and something which we don’t get to do very often :)

Cheers!

It was lovely to spend some time with my parents and have a change of scenery but oh my goodness it’s exhausting being away with 2 young children and away from their usual routines. I think I need a holiday now to recover from it lol

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Galt Playnest Review

4
14 years ago
by dawniebrown in , ,

The very kind people at Galt Toys have sent Oscar one of their Jungle Playnests to review :)

The triangular shaped Playnest has various activities to explore including a furry mane, squeaky elephant ear and crinkly leaves, hiding monkeys and snakes and furry tiger tummy. The triangular shape offers baby additional sideways support when sitting. The fabric cover has a quilted centre for baby’s comfort and is machine washable. Now Oscar is at the stage where he isn’t quite able to sit up unsupported at the moment, but he is wanting to see more of the world and gets very frustrated lying down on his playmat all the time so I was eager to see whether he would like the playnest.

He definitely seems to like it, here is a video of him just chilling out in it :)

We even have a little video of me sitting him up in it and helping him to explore :) (PS you have to excuse my husband commenting in the middle of it (he was of course referring to Rupert Murdoch’s wife lol) and you’ll have to excuse the rather large burp Oscar does at the end of the video lol ) My motto is never work with husbands or babies ;)

Now as with anything in this house, it will also need to be approved by Zara as well and I think she’s found herself a pretty comfy seat for watching TV whilst she’s having her evening bottle lol

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The playnest sells for £25.99 which I think is a pretty good price as I can see us getting months of use out of it and both Oscar and Zara are enjoying it :)

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