The baby to toddler transition is complete
As a mother, your children will always be your ‘babies’ but this household is now officially baby less. The baby to toddler transition is complete and can be confirmed by a few observations. My ‘baby boy’:
- Walks competently on his own.
- Takes short instructions like ‘put that in the bin’ and ignores instructions on purpose in equal measures.
- Everything dropped whether intentionally or not is an uh-oh.
- Says ‘bye bye’ when he leaves or when you’re leaving (no sign of separation anxiety).
- Says ‘waz tha’ and points when he wants to know what something is.
- Is very definite about what he wants to eat and what he doesn’t. He shakes his head vigorously with disdain when required and heads over to the cupboard, pointing his finger aloft and says ‘da’ when he wants a biscuit.
- Has discovered the on and off switch of his lamp in his bedroom, much to his amusement.
- Can take the child safety covers off the power sockets. Great that he’s got such dexterity not so great on the safety front.
- Can open the car door from the inside. Child safety lock has now been applied.
- Can slide down the stairs on his tummy.
- Takes the Peppa Pig DVD off the shelf, walks over to the TV and says ‘Peppa’.
And finally, the temper tantrums have started (albeit fairly short bursts) and the naughty step has been instated.
In honour of this new stage, this will be the last time that I use the ‘Baby Boy’ category on here and I have created a new category, ‘Little Man’.
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First swimming badge
A first swimming badge may not seem like much but when you consider that when I first took Ava swimming I couldn’t get her in the water without screaming (a water baby she is not), let alone joining in the lesson, this is a huge achievement for Ava and one for me too. Both my husband and the lady that ran the swim school had tried to persuade me to wait until she was ready but knowing how head strong my little Madamski is (it’s in the genes!), I didn’t feel it would make any difference and we would still be faced with the same issue in a year’s time so I and she persevered and Ava is now the proud owner of a Grade 1 Duckling Award.
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First letter to Santa
Following on from yesterday’s blog post on Christmas Advent Activities and with the imminent visit to see Santa , Ava has written (she dictated, I wrote) her first letter to Santa.
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Counting down to Christmas
I was hoping to be writing today as one proud Mummy beaming at her daughter’s first ballet show but a vomiting and diarrhoea bug put paid to that so instead we move onto the festive season.
For me December 1st marks the start of this, where we clamber in the loft for the Christmas box and deck the halls (can it really be a year since we last did this?). I usually make the unspoken promise to myself that no Christmas songs will come out of my mouth until this day but as we were driving along with ‘Do they know it’s Christmas time’ blaring out of the radio last weekend, my lips felt a distinct tingle and I couldn’t help the notes that bellowed out (those that know me, know I can’t sing).
Anyway I digress. I had intended to avoid buying chocolate advent calendars for the children this year, as we do have a fabric Father Christmas stocking come advent calendar, where we could put our own treats in each pocket. When Andy pointed out that doing this times two would cost more than two chocolate advent calendars, particularly from Poundland, I bowed into pressure and made what I considered at the time a necessary purchase. If only today’s post on Wokingham Gossip Girls had come a week earlier. One of the gals was asking for suggestions for a note for each day with Christmassy things to do for the children. One lady said that there are some great ideas on Pinterest which I have recently started using (I fear another time suck), so inspired, I logged in and have come up with the following notes that the children will hopefully enjoy ‘reading’ (neither can read yet at Age 4 & 1). Perhaps this will become a new Popple Christmas tradition.
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136 sellers, 445 shoppers and £4.5k raised for the NCT
Back in July when I jointly agreed to run the NCT Wokingham Nearly New Sale with a good friend, I had no idea quite what I had let myself in for. My good friend had offered to co-run the sale prior to going back to work but a high profile promotion later and I was pretty much flying solo. This was going to be a baptism of fire.
So I set about doing what I do best, getting organised and getting the job done. I started by contacting a veteran of NCT Nearly New Sales who had organised four previous sales and met with her to get down to the nitty gritty. It’s fair to say by the end of this meeting, I was pretty overwhelmed with the sheer enormity of the task ahead. I’m a natural born worrywart and the only way I can curb my anxiety is to pro-actively do something about whatever is concerning me. This meant taking control so I armed myself with my master document, detailing all the tasks that needed doing, by whom and when. If it wasn’t on the list, then it wasn’t getting done.
When people ask what I do, I usually say that I don’t work at the moment and am a Stay-at-home-Mum who dabbles in various things, the NCT, being one of those things. If organising an NCT Nearly New Sale isn’t work, then I don’t know what is, albeit it is voluntary work, i.e. no pay cheque at the end of the day!
Heading up a team of volunteers is a very different challenge to heading up a project team at work. At work, there are roles and responsibilities which come with accountability. At work you can hold weekly face-to-face meetings , check on progress, set expectations and delegate. In the volunteer sector, there is no such thing as delegation, you can ask for help and pray that the job gets done.
I was fortunate that there was already a core team in place – I certainly couldn’t have done this without our Volunteers Coordinator, Seller Registration Coordinator, Till Coordinator, Treasurer, PR Coordinator, Café Coordinator, ‘Costco’ Coordinator (who got all our supplies!), not to mention the 40 plus volunteers who helped out on the day and 3 husbands (including mine) who were in charge of parking and queue management. To top it off, we had a great site manager who made sure that all our needs were met and my good friend was invaluable on the weekend of the sale, helping to set up and cart equipment about.
So the results are now in (drum roll please…) and the sale was an overwhelming success – 136 sellers, 445 shoppers and £4.5k raised for the NCT and I made £80 as a seller – not bad for a first time NCT Nearly New Sale Coordinator!
‘I Did It Mummy’ fundraising for BIBS – https://www.justgiving.com/IDidItMummy
I Did It Mummy 