Toddlers

Book review: Sparkle’s Song and The Fearsome Beastie

Reviews of two lovely picture books from Maverick Books – Sparkle’s Song and The Fearsome Beastie.

Guest Post – Joanne Mallon, author of Toddlers: An instruction Manual

Today I have a guest post from Joanne Mallon, who’s book, Toddlers: An instruction manual has recently been published by Nell James Publishers (also available on Kindle). Joanne is a freelance parenting journalist, a life and career coach and a parent of two. The book offers parenting tips from parents …

Stopping breastfeeding a two-year-old

The time has come. I thought I would keep going until she chose to stop, as I did with RoRo*. RoRo stopped of her own accord at the same time as she dropped her nap, but she’d already cut it down to one feed a day – to get herself …

Don’t girls love Lego already?

Lego is brilliant stuff, isn’t it? I went to a learning conference this week and there was a Lego stand and they had a huge table-full of Lego for delegates to build with – the idea was to build bits of the school of the future. Brilliant fun. I could …

How not to decorate a Christmas tree

If you need to move furniture around, then you should wait until all possible children are home and in the room. In fact, it would probably be advisable to arrange a couple of playdates, so that you really have maximum numbers of helpers. This works particularly well when moving the …

Quick and simple crafty Christmas cards

I come from a family who pretty much always makes their Christmas cards. Now and then we’d have to cheat (yes, that’s what it feels like) and buy some, because we were too late or someone was in hospital or something like that, but generally we would make them. When …

Expectations

Chris pointed out to me recently that I was sometimes having unrealistic expectations of Eleanor. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how I’ve forgotten a lot of what it was like to have a two-year-old and, even when I remember how Rosemary used to behave, that doesn’t really guarantee that Eleanor …

Independent streak

We’re a bit shell-shocked here at the moment. Eleanor has been, generally, a pretty happy, polite and remarkably compliant child. We’ve had problems, of course – sleep problems, tantrums and breastfeeding issues – but nothing major or unusual. Of course, there’s nothing particularly unusual happening now, but it’s still come …

Chasing the shadows

I had a beautiful afternoon with Eleanor today. It took me back to Tuesdays with Rosemary when she was at nursery school; when life wasn’t such a rush and a juggle. Eleanor started nursery school a couple of weeks ago, and we had been trying out my mum picking her …

Big sister: big role model: big responsibility

One of the most commonest phrases you’ll hear me and Chris uttering to Rosemary (not quite as common as ‘Just sit still for a few minutes!’) is ‘Remember you’re a role model to Eleanor.’ Eleanor copies pretty much everything Rosemary does, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s funny or …