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Raisie Bay

little man

My Sunday Photo – 22nd October 2017

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My Little Boy riding a bike at his nursery, in his purple jumpsuit
Flashback!
Not having a photo for this week I’ve snatched one from my archives. This is my Little Man when he was in nursery school. He is riding a bike along with his nursery school teacher. The school uniform for the nursery children was this purple tracksuit and I loved it, it was so easy to keep clean too.
It’s quite relevant to this week for two reasons.
One is that I’m quite worried about my Little Man, he’s having problems at school with bullying, he’s having trouble coping at home and he has health issues. He was at the GP the other day and now I have to take him to the hospital for blood tests. He also has an appointment at a clinic in December. It’s not really what I need at all and I just hope it all turns out to be something easy to treat.
The second reason is how time flies. Here he is playing on a bike at nursery which was just after we moved into this house four years ago. The time has flown. The first two years seemed to go slowly but it’s so hard to believe that I have been sick for nearly two years! When we moved we were dealing with Star’s neck so we spent a lot of time at the hospital. We had a nightmare eighteen months, but time seems to have sped up so much since then. My babies are no longer babies.

It’s in the Past

I’ve been pre-occupied with thoughts of my past, all of it, even as a small child I had a lot to deal with. It’s been the same ever since and it’s let me to not believe in Karma because too many bad things happen to good people.
I guess over the last couple of weeks I’ve felt so ill I really believed I was near the end. A Terry Pratchett quote came to mind.

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called life.”

Life certainly does fly by so quickly, but no worries, I’m feeling better now so I have a lot more to cram into it. I have lots of happy memories too, so it’s never all bad. You can’t stop bad things happening but it’s how you deal with them that counts.

I pin My Sunday Photo pics I visit on my Pinterest Board. Please let me know if you wish your photo to be removed.

Photalife
Sunday Snap

The Little Man’s Bouncing Birthday

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My baby is now five years old. If I call him my baby he retorts “I’m not a baby, I’m a big boy” and all too soon he really is. As he is my last child though he has the honour of always being my baby…just don’t tell him okay!

So, what do you do for a five year old’s birthday? What could be more fun than a bouncy castle!

Unfortunately, I had some technical problems with my camera and my phone for his party, but we do have some photos to share. (Is anyone else’s camera refusing to work with Windows 10?)

First up, here is the party table, with my little helper. The table cloth, plates and serviettes were provided by Party bags and Supplies which I reviewed earlier. They also provided the lovely party bags filled with little gifts for the guests.

The bouncy castle was provided by Toyz World. It was the BeBop Turret Ball Pit Inflatable Bouncy Castle which was just the perfect size for our garden at 15ft. I was amazed at how easy it was to put up, just spread it out, pin it down with the pegs provided, attach the fan and the kids were bouncing away within minutes.

The kids loved the bouncy castle, it had a good size bouncing area 214cm x 214cm, a slide entrance/exit, netting all around and a ball pit at the front. We did not have any balls for the pit but my kids didn’t mind. We did put some water in on one day for them to splash around in which they found great fun, and it also helped them to keep cool.

This bouncy castle currently retails at £229.95 which I think is a real bargain. It would be great to own one for the kids to use whenever they wanted. You could even share the cost with friends or neighbours and take it in turns with the castle.

My kids, and all their friends give this bouncy castle a big thumbs up. Looks like I’ll be saving up for one for next summer.

Back to the birthday boy, I did manage one other photo from the party, A rather dark pic of the Little Man blowing out his birthday candle.

Happy Birthday Little Man….now don’t you get growing up too fast my baby x

Thanks for stopping by my blog, let’s stay in touch, you can also find me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and I love following back.



Disclosure: we were provided with the loan of the bouncy castle from Toyz World, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Little Man Shines

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Warining: This is a proud mummy post!

When my Little Man was a baby I was very worried about him. The only time he was happy was when he was lying flat across my lap. He was slow in reaching all his milestones, sitting, crawling (which he never managed to do, he was a bottom shuffler) walking and talking. He did not take his first steps until he was twenty two months old, and he still only babbled a couple of words by then.

He was slow and I was worried. Because of him not reaching his milestones he was offered a place at a preschool at just two years old. It was for two and a half days a week. I didn’t want him to go, he seemed too young, but I’m so glad I did. Suddenly he was catchng up to other children his age. He went from toddling just a few steps to walking, running and jumping in no time at all. His vocabulary increased and he became much happier.

He is now at nursery school. Ironically he does less hours than he did at pre-school, but he’s still coming along wonderfully. Even though he was often a little demon at home, at nursery he became a well behaved little man. He loves mixing with the other children and is, mostly, really friendly.

Last week I went to the school assembly to see my Little Man being presented with an award for working hard at learning how to write his name. He was such a good boy, listening carefully to instructions given, accepting his award with grace and then standing in line while the other children who had acheived an award joined him. The he went and sat down. Not bad at all for a three year old.

I was not allowed to take a photo of him accepting his award, and he hasn’t brought it home yet because it’s on the nursery wall for a couple of weeks. So instead I’m going to share a photo of the Little Man when he gradutated from pre-school.

As an August baby he’s probably always going to be a little slower than the rest of his class, but he’s a determined little fella now and a million miles away from that slow starter he was as a baby.
Congratualtions Little Man, mummy is really proud of you xxx

Ethans Escapades

The Little Man Turns Three

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I’m a bit late with this as we are having a tough time at the moment with Star who is very poorly. I’ll blog more about that when I am able. In the meantime, I’d like to dedicate this post to my Little Man who turned 3 years old last Friday.

Three years ago I went into hospital at 7am at exactly 40 weeks pregnant. My Little Man was born at 9.50am by elective c-section. He was feet first breach and my placenta was dangerously close to my cervix. So my last baby was to come into the world this way and give me a completely new experience of birth.

I knew he was a boy, I’d found out at my scan. We were really excited as the other two littlies were girls, so although my first born was a boy, this was Daddy’s first son.

He gave us a very worrying first two years as he was really slow to develop, preferring to spend his days lying on his back with no attempts to get around. He didn’t walk until he was nearly two years old and his speech was delayed too. Then suddenly, at around two and a half years he began catching up at an alarming rate. Now, you cannot tell he was behind, he runs, jumps, climbs, chats, counts, sings and recognises numbers and colours. In fact he’s pretty bright for a three year old. He’s completely toilet trained, both day and night (although he still wears night-time nappy pants, he rarely wets them)

He loves Peppa Pig and Team Omizoomi, music of all kinds and the see saw in our garden. He had a Toddlebike which he still loves but is fast growing out of so I bought him a balance bike for his birthday.

He still doesn’t sleep through the night, but then I’ve had that with all my children so far so I know it will happen eventually (Soon I hope)

He is a loving, happy little man who is generous with his kisses and cuddles and will often tell me he loves me. He’s also a little monster who can’t be left alone for two minutes without causing a catastrophe. Give him a pen and he’ll draw all over himself and he loves putting things ‘away’ either in the bin or the loo!

He loves playing with his big sister Boo and will join in role playing games willingly and cleverly.

He loves singing and dancing.

He is my Little Man who won’t be so little for much longer, but he’ll always be my baby. A complete surprise as we thought our family was finished, but so welcome.

For his birthday we couldn’t do much because of his poorly sister (the original plan was to go to the sea-side) but he did have a birthday tea and I made him a Peppa Pig car cake.

On Saturday he had a little friend over to play and he was overjoyed in the many times we sang Happy Birthday to him. Today the congregation at church sang Happy Birthday to him and he positively beamed. So he may not have had a party or anything special, but I’m sure he’s had a nice birthday weekend. He’s happy anyway.
Here he is, Happy Birthday Little Man, love you loads xxx
I’d love you to link up with any special celebrations or cakes, please check out my party linky.

Graduation…At Two Years Old!

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The other day I was honoured to attend the graduation of my Little Man from his pre-school.
It was lovely to join in with the other parents to hear about how our little ones have progressed and what they have achieved.
With the Little Man I’ve been through many worries. He was a difficult baby and a very slow learner. He reached all his milestones late and at one stage I was wondering if there was something wrong with him as all he did was cry, he didn’t sit up or roll over, he just lay there on his back. He never crawled, after he finally learnt to sit he progressed to bottom shuffling. He was a late walker, being nearly two years old when he took his first steps. He didn’t even attempt to cruise around the furniture, in fact he wouldn’t even put his feet down to stand. He language development was also slow and his vocabulary was minimum by the time he started pre-school.
I was wary about letting him go to pre-school. He’d been so slow I wasn’t sure it would be the right environment for him. I thought long and hard and decided that I’d let him go, but if it didn’t work out I’d just take him out again.

By the time he started his pre-school, called Little Builders, he was walking and had a small vocabulary. He seemed so young at 25 months to be leaving me all day, even for just two days a week. Surprisingly he settled right away. He loved the staff caring for him and loved going to school. Within no time at all he was on par with all the other children there. His language developed really quick once faced with competing against other chatty toddlers.

I never had any problems leaving him, well he didn’t have any problems, I missed him like crazy. He would go into his classroom quite happily every time. I always went in with him but he was happy to give me a kiss and wave me off. He’s certainly not a clingy child. Sometimes I felt a little jealous of the mum’s who’s toddler would be clinging to their legs, but in reality it was nice to know that the Little Man was confident enough to let me go, he knew I would be back for him. He always looked forward to his time at the Little Builders.

His graduation was a big deal for me, my little boy who had seemed so far behind the other children at the start had grown so much and learnt so much. Being an August baby he’s always going to be one of the youngest in a school group, but now I don’t have to worry that he’ll be playing catch up. To top it all, he is completely toilet trained and I didn’t really have much trouble with him.

I’m so proud of my Little Man, and this is most certainly one my most magic moments of this year.

The Olivers Madhouse

Ethans Escapades