Take One Big Blue Bowl...

This big blue bowl has been the perfect container for loads of different messy and sensory play sessions. It kind of keeps the mess contained and baby B liked sitting in it from about 6 to 9 months and loves climbing out of it.

There are so many things in the kitchen that make brilliant exploratory play opportunities for babies and most of it is really cheap. The bowl was quite expensive but we use it as a paddling pool and ball pool too so is worth it. It's noce to add music and the buuble machine for even more sensory fun.

Ages and Stages in the First Year

The first year of being a mum felt like the shortest and longest year of my life. I think it felt so long because I was awake for most of it. But it also flies by and every different stage is over just as it becomes manageable. Each stage brings its own challenges and rewards. They are gone before you know it so it's important to soak up every moment but also remember ‘this too shall pass!’

Easiest Art Project Ever

If your little one is ready to experiment with mark making, but you can't face 10 minutes of setting up plus 30 minutes of clearing up just for 5 minutes of fun, cheat and paint with water!

Hot and Not at 10 Months

Baby B has grown so much between 7 and 10 months. Being mobile has opened up a whole new world for him and he is very enthusiastic about discovering it. Pretty much everything makes him happy, so the ‘not’ list has shrunk and the ‘hot’ list has grown.

What’s Hot and Not According to Baby B, aged 10 and Half Months

Surviving a New Baby

Having a baby isn’t a steep learning curve, it’s a death slide into the unknown. You think you’ve got it all sorted, then you bring your miniature person home and realise you know NOTHING. But through trial and error you start to figure out what works for your little one and, like a death slide, things even out. You feel like you know what you’re doing, start to enjoy it and even (secretly and smugly) wonder if you might actually be good at it. Then your baby grows into a new phase, everything changes, and you plummet into confusion again. We’re currently figuring out how to manage a mobile baby, but before I forget all the stuff I learned about keeping a baby-baby happy I want to share it here.

Adventures in Weaning: Recipe Ideas

Baby B is thoroughly enjoying his adventures in weaning and gobbles up everything we give him. He’ll happily be spoon fed but really enjoys getting his hands dirty and feeding himself. At the moment he’s experimenting with squeezing everything. Especially cherry tomatoes.

So the challenge for me is to keep finding, new , interesting and healthy things to give him. We tend to do a BLW lunch where B and I sit in the garden and eat the same, and dinner tends to be something mainly spoon fed from a stash of batch cooked meals in the freezer. Worried it was getting a bit samey, I asked around for recipe ideas and here is our collection.

Car Survival Kit

We must have some kind of masochistic tendency because we’ve just taken our energetic, car-hating 9 month old to the Lizard on holiday. That is literally as far as you can drive before you fall off the bottom of the country. And we did it on bank holiday weekend. Knowing it was going to be utterly horrific and he would get bored and shouty before we got the bottom of our road, I put together a car survival kit. It does rely on me being the back with him so won’t work for everyone but I hope these ideas help some stressed parents have a better journey with their small person.