Tempting Tuesday: Fruishi

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I've been dying to have a go at making some fruit sushi.

I've been making wonky sushi for years and as with most foods, I was always left thinking; "yes, this is great, but how can I make it into pudding?"

Mmmmm pudding. 

So, here we go. Rather pleased with them myself, despite them being a bit of a nightmare to make. 

First things first. You want to get the rice right.

Don't, under any circumstances, half cook the rice, leave it in a pan with a lid on and then do the school run. You'll end up with rice that has turned to smush and yet unbelievably is raw on the inside of each tiny grain. Trust me when I say, this is un-fixable. 

Banana chunks with the middle removed, filled with sushi rice & topped with chocolate balls. It's easy to get the inside out with an apple corer, but its a nightmare to fill the things with rice without the whole thing splitting.

Thinly sliced strawberries, laid out on cling film, with a dollop of rice in the middle. Form into a ball & chill before unwrapping. 

These little balls are actually really easy to make, so long as you cut your slices thin enough. Once you've got the knack of balling it all up into the clingfilm, you're on a roll.

Thinly sliced kiwi, laid out on cling film, with a dollop of rice in the middle. Form into a ball & chill before unwrapping. 

Slices of kiwis and strawberry in the centre, wrapped in rice using cling film and a sushi rolling mat, then dipped in poppy seeds. 

A bit tricky to roll, even trickier to slice. I find chilling the whole roll in the fridge for a bit before attempting to slice it up makes it much less likely to disintegrate.

The recipe inspiration I used, I found here and here.

Of course, I never followed the recipe because, well, I can't. Though that's probably why I struggled so much getting my rice right.

The possibilities are endless!

And it's all so very, very yummy.

I'll definitely be making more in the very near future.

What fruits would you use? Share your Fruishi ideas, I'll give it a bash.

Monday Make: 'The Dark' Diorama

Monday Make: This week's project

 

So, this is my first attempt at a diorama and I'm pretty pleased with it.

I decided to do it based on Lemony Snicket's 'The Dark', which is a lovely little book with really striking illustrations about a little boy who was afraid of the dark.

 

 

I started with the bottom of a posh chocolates box I couldn't face throwing away but had no real use for and painted the inside black.

 

 

I painted a piece of paper, left it to dry on the bathroom radiator (while panicking about the consequences of boys and their bathroom breaks) then drew the stairs. Painstaking doesn't quite cut it, it took me forever to be happy with the perspective and even then I screwed it up.

Now to make the little drawers. I cut out the sides out of cardboard, taped it all up with masking tape and painted it.

 The little set of drawers is slightly too big for my liking but considering this was made on a rainy Bank holiday Monday while trapped in the house with a bored husband, two kids and a newborn, it's really not bad. In between attending to everyone's needs I have been painting and paper cutting and I'm finally finished.

 

I hope this inspires you to make something, anything, just be creative and enjoy it.

 

 

Silent Sunday

Sticky Saturday: April Showers

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

 

Every Thursday, I run the messy play at a local mums'n'tots group so I thought I'd include some of the fun we have there and share crafty ideas (which were all stolen from Pinterest obviously). 

This week we made April Showers pictures, a lovely and simple craft which just involved cotton balls, raindrops cut out of paper and lots of pva glue.

I always make one to show the parents what we're doing but I always prefer the kids versions myself. 

 

 

 

Throwback Thursday: Back in 1999

So the other day this popped up in my Facebook news feed, and while this isn't your usual 'Throwback Thursday' post, I really fancied a good old reminisce.

Before I was 'Mom' I was kinda cool. Now I mostly live in badly fitting jeans and old t-shirts I don't bother to replace when they get all saggy, because lets face it, once I'm in the clothing aisle of the supermarket, I'm hunting out cool clothes for the kids or replacing the underwear they've grown out of. I wish I had more time and money to spend on myself, but for now, while the kids are young, I don't and that's life.

Anyhoo, enough of the martyrhood. I thought I'd put together the uniform of my youth for your viewing pleasure. I tried so hard to find an image of the Bloodhound Gang hoodie that I wore for years, but it does not exist, and of course, there are no photos of me because...well...we didn't do that much then did we?

The uniform of my 1999 (all the way up to about 2003).

I still love these clothes. 

The keychain would have to have either your keys or your wallet on the end, tucked into your back pocket. Wannabes who simply clipped it to their beltloops were mocked.

The shoes had to be an acceptable level of battered. New shoes made you look like either a scally (now called a chav) or a wannabe (someone who recently got their Mummy to buy them a whole new wardrobe so they could fit in)

The fact that I still own my keychain and my battered old Buffaloes probably says a lot (pictured above). I attempt to wear the Buffoloes during winter, along with a pair of Vans I still have but having children gave me the hottest feet in the world and aside from twisted socks, there is nothing more annoying than hot feet, so I tend to stick to pumps. I don't need my keychain any more, which used to keep my purse safe in my back pocket but since I now cart round a massive handbag full of cereal bars and receipts, it goes in there. Mr Strawberry however still uses his.

I shall leave you with one of the few photos of me I could find without an ex-boyfriend. Just for fun.

Now please excuse me while I re-evaluate my boring wardrobe....

Wreck it Wednesday: Scribbling on the Edges

Wreck it Wednesday: a page from one of my journals.

 

This is the first of my 'wreck it wednesday' posts, so I thought I'd start with the first journal I started almost a year ago. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm sure I will over the course of this series. It's not the only journal I currently own, I also have the Anti-journal amongst others, and I even made one for my boys.

I love these books, they kept me sane during a really rough time I had last year. There is such freedom in the way they force you to 'ruin' a perfectly good book, something any book lover would struggle with. And I love completely nerding out and watching YouTube videos of other people's completed books, its fascinating how differently people interpret suggestions.

Anyway, here goes...

 

 

Wreck this Journal is available here.

About 'Wreck This Journal' by Keri Smith

(Description from Amazon)

It is book for those who've always wanted to draw outside the lines but were afraid to do it. For anyone who's ever wished to, but had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes Wreck This Journal, an illustrated book featuring a subversive collection of suggestions, asking readers to muster up their best mistake - and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book (and destroy them).

Through a series of creatively and quirkily illustrated prompts, acclaimed artist Keri Smith encourages journalers to engage in "destructive" acts - poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting with coffee, colouring outside the lines, and more - in order to experience the true creative process. With Keri Smith's unique sensibility, readers are introduced to a new way of art and journal making, discovering novel ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process.

Tempting Tuesday: 'A Gallant Effort' (a Bad Cake)

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.
My new 'Tempting Tuesday' series is supposed to be for my cooking/baking experiments. However, this week's endeavour went a little sour, so I thought I'd include it regardless, mostly for comedy value but also as a 'how NOT to'.

 It's so not in my nature to give up but maybe I should give up baking, at least until I can be better prepared. I should have given up on this cake before it went in the oven. Before I wasted two bars of chocolate on it.

My baby sister turns 21 this week and she asked me to make her a chocolate cake for her tea party. Despite having a new baby, I decided to say I would. I should have said no, but it's my baby sister, how could I?

Even the ingredient are messed up, because as I was making it I forgot to exchange some of the flour with cocoa powder to make it chocolatey. Thankfully, I have a side note in my recipe book which splits the ingredients by a third, so I just added another third, making it a rather large cake. 

Large cakes aren't a large problem with my family. 

Unless it tastes like shit of course.

So, the ingredients were as follows; 

13oz plain flour

3oz cocoa

8oz sugar

6tsp baking powder

8oz butter

4 eggs

140ml milk

Filling; whipped double cream with 200g melted chocolate folded in.

Topping; (and this is where it goes completely awry)

150g butter

150g sugar (SHOULD HAVE BEEN ICING SUGAR but I had a brain malfunction)

200g melted chocolate

I got all my ingredients together at 5pm.
Zander, the four week old baby decided he didn't ever want to be put down, so my ingredients were sieved and weighed in sporadic intervals. Then I realised I had to cook the bigger boys dinner by 6pm and get them to bed by 7pm - alone as Mr Strawberry was working late. 

By 8:30pm, after three attempts at frying it due to the un-put-down-able baby, I had managed to have a bacon sandwich for dinner.
I finally found some cake tins of similar size and got this fucking cake in the oven by 9:30pm, when Mr Strawberry finally got home. At 10pm, it was finally yielding a clean knife when I poked it, so I threw a fresh tea-towel over both the tins and went to bed.
The next morning I set out to decorate it. Not putting it in a sealed box overnight of course meant it was a little dry. I should have known how bad it was going to be because when I was adding the whipped cream and chocolate in between the layers, it was all a bit too easy, with none of the tentative 'oh god the cake is going to split' as I lifted each cake layer.
I had already whisked the sugar into the butter before I realised the consequences of using the wrong sugar. Durrrrrrr. Gritty much. By then, it was too late, like running down a hill, there was no way of stopping now. So I threw the melted chocolate in regardless and chucked it on the cake. As I lovingly (begrudgingly) smoothed the 'butter icing' over the cake, my darling Mr Strawberry wondered in and kindly told me (knowing the issues I was having) it was a 'gallant effort'. I was going to make a nice cereal box cardboard stencil to use while sprinkling on the gold glitter sugar but by then there seemed no point trying to improve this monstrosity so I carefully sprinkled it on by hand, making a delightful '21'. 

Of course everyone at the tea party was very polite, those who weren't chocca full of party food and braved a slice, said it was lovely, but I tried some myself and I can honestly say, it wasn't worth the calorie intake. I was tempted to dollop on some cream to add some sense of moisture, but I never bothered. 

This cake and me, we're not friends, despite how much chocolate it contains.  

So, here's my how NOT to bake guide;
1. Don't bother to make sure you have everything you need before starting. 
2. By all means, attempt to bake while looking after 3 children, including a newborn, without another adult to help.
3. Always attempt to make a very special cake during dinner time or bedtime, or both for maximum effect.

4. Always bake past your bedtime. 

5. It's okay to substitute icing sugar for normal sugar, not gritty at all. 

6. Forget when you put the cake in the oven. 

7. Leave cake out overnight to dry. 

8. Decorate with glitter sugar sprinkles, those things will go a long way in disguising how gritty your butter icing is. 

Gritty butter icing.

Mmmm, so dry and crumbly.

Sorry Baby Belle :(

*****************UPDATE**************

 I just had to share the lovely thing my Mum posted on Facebook. 
"Actually, lots of us went back for seconds. The butter icing is a little, er, unusual but the cake is yummy & not dry at all. What really mattered to the birthday girl is that her big sister made her a cake, despite having a new baby. Loving people is what really matters & that's what you've done."
And she's right you know. It doesn't matter if we cock up, it's all about the trying and the loving people.

Monday Makes: My growing bump

Monday Make: This week's project

This is the first of a series I intend to do, and although it's not strictly a 'make' in the crafty sense, it still took around nine months worth of work (obviously) and is something I always wished I'd done during my other pregnancies.

I don't know if this is obvious, but every four weeks I took a naked selfie in my bedroom mirror, turned them each into a silhouette in photoshop and then brought them all together. 

New Human Alert...Zander is here!

I have been too quiet here, I miss it terribly, but I have been very busy making a human.

Zander was born on the 26th March, on a Saturday night, weighing a mahoosive 10lb 4oz (I was a little shocked to say the least when I plucked him from my ladygarden).

I have grand intentions for lots of regular blog posting, which may or may not be fruitful, depending on how forgiving my beautiful little Zander is. We shall see won't we?

My little hunky chunk

Ed with his new baby bro

Telling the Truth About the Tooth Fairy

Over the Summer, Bean lost a front tooth. Cue the obvious visit by the tooth fairy.

The next day, he called me for a private conversation, away from his brother’s prying ears.

I had no idea what it was going to be about.

With a coy smile, he asked me who the tooth fairy was.

A little taken aback, I asked him who he thought it was.

He immediately replied; “You!”

I thought about continuing the lie, but as promised (mostly to Mr. Strawberry) I resigned to tell him the truth. We always said, in those ‘how will we parent our children’ discussions, we would go along with the fun and games of Christmas and tooth fairies and all that palaver until they asked with straight faces.

“But it’s a fun story don’t you think?” I asked in reply.

We then chatted about how sometimes it’s nice to believe in stories and how boring life would be without stories and imagination.

I’ve written about this before, so it’s obviously something that is close to my heart. I love all things fantastical and my life would be genuinely awful without my nightly escape into someone else’s world when I tuck myself into bed with a book. Everything I said in this blog post, only a year ago, I still stand by. I didn’t tell Ed the truth that day because I knew he wasn’t ready, but Bean obviously was this time. He has lost teeth since and has put them under his pillow with gusto, so my truth telling clearly hasn’t destroyed his childhood.

My worry is, as we head into December, Timmy Twinkles will of course be returning and I can only hope he gets a good reception….

A Boy or a Girl...Who knows?

I am so torn.

When we were expecting the boys, we found out what we were having as soon as we could, and luckily so because I was convinced Ed was a girl and called him Beth for 5 months. I cried when I found out and I’m glad I had the adjustment time before he arrived, rather than going through 9 months of thinking I was getting the girl I dreamed of and trying to deal with not only a newborn baby but a newborn baby boy.

With Bean, it was important to find out because, being just 16 months apart, I needed to know if I could re-use Ed’s stuff and I was super happy to get another beautiful boy.

Now things are very different.

There are no hand-me-downs.

I honestly don’t care what we get. Now that I’ve hung around with kids a little more I can see the pros and cons of both genders. They both come with joys and difficulties of their own. Boys tend to be noisier whilst girls tend to be talkative, boys tend to have a lot of energy but girls seem to come with a lot of drama.
So, when we found out we were expecting, we originally said we wouldn't find out what it was. Let it be nature's best surprise we thought. But it turns out to be one of the most frustrating withheld truths known to man.

I absolutely love surprises. I am not the person shaking the presents under the Christmas tree. Even when I help my computer illiterate husband to order my present online, I cover the screen until the payment has cleared and I can close the page (I get very annoyed if I fail and accidentally see what it is). And in preparation for our last wedding anniversary a few months ago, I refused to help him order me something and therefore got the basic flowers and chocolates. If it wasn’t going to be a surprise, I didn’t want anything.

But growing a human inside me feels different.

I’d love to have that moment when I’ve given birth and my husband hands me our baby and tells me himself if it’s a boy or a girl.

But I am already sick of calling our beloved growing fetus ‘it’. I've named it Pixel so I can avoid this a little.

Trying to find a unisex pushchair I like is becoming a nightmare.

Everything I want to buy in preparation is so gender orientated these days, even washable nappies come in delightful bright prints, leaving me with the choice of white or…white. And try buying a snowsuit, the gender neutral ones are genuinely disgustingly beige.

Knowing what it is might help us all bond with the unborn baby, especially the boys who are basically dealing with the abstract at the moment. There isn’t even a decent bump for them to stroke. The other night, as we all sat on the sofa digesting our dinner, I suddenly yelped and the boys were very surprised to hear me tell them I could feel the baby wriggling. I was especially surprised because with them I hadn’t felt anything until I was about 17 weeks so I wasn’t expecting to feel anything at all at just 14 weeks. The first thing Ed said was;

“I thought it was a lie baby. That means it’s almost complete!”

I guess dealing with an abstract idea, one without any actual proof, is not his strong point and I wonder if telling him whether it’s a boy or girl would help him. Otherwise, he’s in for one hell of a shock.

As much as having a girl terrifies me (they turn into teenage girls you know), I don’t honestly know how sad I’ll be at the thought of having a house full of children and no tutus.

Chatting with a friend last week, she described having baby girl after having a boy as the opening of a new door, and she’s right. I’ve always had the girl door closed on me. How sad will I be to find out it’s always going to be closed? (no. 3 is the last baby we’ll have, it is a car full after all) Will I be better off finding out sooner rather than later? Will it matter at all?

Another part of me doesn’t want to find out just so, if I am having a girl, I’m not swamped in that delightful shade of baby pink. I do so love green, teal, turquoise and yellow.

A friend of mine posted this on my Facebook wall and it made me think, even if I did have a girl, this is probably the kind of girl I’d end up raising anyway, especially with two, superhero obsessed big brothers.

I also love this.

In fact, I already have the cutest skeleton babygrow stashed away in Pixel’s drawers.

According to this, odds are still 50/50 ish regardless of the fact that so far, I’ve only managed to make boys. My chances of having a girl have only fallen 2% after having two boys, so we'll just have to see. We may find out in just over a month, or we may not. Or we might find out and only tell the boys. I just don't know. We've got  month to decide.

He Threatened to Punch Me...He Couldn't Help it.

When Mr. Strawberry and I started spending the night together, he gave me a warning;

“I might punch you in the face when I’m asleep”

Sure you will, I replied, I’d like to see you try.

It didn’t take long for me to realise what made him think he might but it was an exaggeration of the truth and almost ten years later, I can honesty say he has never punched me.

He’s not 100% sure what happens at night, and personally I think his mean ex was the person who hyped it up in his head and told him he’d punched her. I personally don’t trust her opinion but in my experience, although we tend to sleep bottom to bottom so his fists are nowhere near me anyway, it’s more of a judder than a lashing out, so I don’t see how that could have happened. Sometimes his legs jolt, but even they’ve never kicked me.

It turns out Mr. Strawberry suffers from a mild case of sleep myoclonus, which means that as he drifts off every night, he has involuntary twitches, particularly in his arms and legs. The only pattern I’ve been able to notice is that the more stressed he is in his day to day life, the more violent the twitching and this can delay his sleep transition. A really strong judder will wake him up so the poor bloke has to start all over again in trying to get to sleep.

I’ve also noticed is that if I gently stroke him, he never judders. Unfortunately, although I am sometimes the last person to fall asleep, I can’t seem to do it until he’s actually in deep sleep, my arm gets tired or I enter the deeper doze state of falling asleep.

After doing some research, I think most of us suffer with some form of myoclonus without even noticing. Hiccups are the most common type but also that feeling of when you are just falling asleep and you feel like you ‘catch’ yourself, often from a brief falling dream and jolt yourself awake.

Myoclonus is a symptom not a diagnosis and can be related to more serious issues, but because he is healthy and has no other symptoms, I honestly don’t think its anything to worry about, except that maybe he should take it easier and relax more but you try telling him that. Mild sleep myoclonus, which only happens during the sleep transition stage is very common and from what I’ve read, often unexplainable.

So, it looks like I’ll have to put up with it. My only real complaint is that I can’t cuddle him because his jolts stop me from settling. If it gets worse, affects him during the day or starts happening at other times, I’ll whip him off to the doctors.

Sleep well my dearies x

Information sources;

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/myoclonus/detail_myoclonus.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myoclonus

http://sleep.lovetoknow.com/Twitching_While_Sleeping

http://www.enkivillage.com/body-tremors-at-night.html

http://www.sleepdex.org/myoclonus.htm

Baby Panic

I started writing this when I was two months pregnant but didn’t publish as we hadn’t announced it.

I’m having a panic.

A friend from Uni recently had a baby, and therefore her Facebook posts are full of her beautiful baby and super cheerful notes on how happy she is and how lucky she feels.

Me however, I’m mid panic.

I know what its like to have a baby. I know the mind numbing monotony of feeding, wiping, dressing, washing, desperately trying to squeeze in a nap, trying to make it out the house for it to only end in tears. I know how it feels to have not had any where near enough sleep, to have someone else entirely reliant on you.

And yet here she is, always so positive. I want to message her asking if she really is that positive all the time. I wrote the message in my head and then realized, I really didn’t want her to admit to feeling a little blue. I really didn’t care to have my bubble of her and her joy burst.

I also remember those moments when you look at your baby’s face and think, bloody hell you’re beautiful. I still have those moments now, even though they’re not cute little squishy things anymore, they’re strong and muscular growing boys. And although their temper tantrums are more destructive than when they were in nappies, their hugs are fiercer too.

It may just be crazy hormones, but sometimes I think ‘what the hell have I done?’, but more often I cry with sheer happiness that finally the baby have talked about for years is here, growing well and will be with us in no time at all. The idea of watching this little human grow up and become even half the person the boys have become is absolute bliss.

It’s going to be messy, noisy and sleep deprived, but it’s also going to be full of sloppy kisses and giggling, because if nothing else, the shit the kids get up to makes me laugh until my belly hurts.

I can’t wait.

Silent Sunday

Knicker Flashing

Okay, so I don’t have any little girls, but if I did, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t flash their knickers in public.

When I pick the boys up from school, their teacher sends them to me, but after a brief hello they go straight to the trim trail in the playground and climb on it until I insist that actually, I’d really like to go home now, if only to feed them.

Boys and girls from both infants and juniors do the same, and there’s always some knicker flashing involved.

A friend of mine, when I expressed these concerns, told me she didn’t think it was any different from wearing a bikini, or playing on a beach in your pants. But I can’t help but think it’s about appropriateness. You wouldn’t let your kid go to school in a swimming costume would you? The only places you can go out in a bikini yourself is on holiday or those stupidly hot days, but it wouldn’t be round the Birmingham Bullring, it’d be round some tourist coastal town. And even prudish me has let the boys play in a local park paddling pool in just their pants on an unexpectedly roasting day.

My lovely friend also made a very sensible point that these days, kids are over sexualized. And she’s right of course, but for me it’s more about equality. There aren’t any boys flashing their pants, and why is that? Oh, it’s because they don’t have to wear a stupid skirt. In shorts or trousers, they are free to climb and jump and hang upside down without flashing their pants. Bellies maybe but not pants. Some of the older girls wear shorts under their skirts and that’s super, that’s how I spent my teenage-hood (there was a fair amount of skirt lifting when I was at school so shorts were the only way to go).

It’s not that I’m offended by the sight of underwear, I just feel bad for the girls. I would never let my boys flash their pants outside the house. I guess some parents of girls just don’t feel it’s an issue. Girls like to do handstands, cartwheels and dangle from the climbing bars too, and no-one should be stopping them. Maybe parents of girls just don’t get time to think in between frozen sing-a-longs, dance/martial arts class and the usual “Mummy, watch me, I made a dance up, watch me Mummy!” They should be applauded regardless because it must be a hell of a job. My memories of being one myself and watching my baby sister grow up tell me its a fuck load of drama.

I’ll be honest, if you come to my house, expect to see naked boys. I insist on underwear if we have a guest (even if it’s my sister) and clothes if it’s someone we don’t know very well (like when a SafeStyle salesman came to give us a quote).

But while only wearing underwear, they know only too well they aren’t to play in the windows or come to the door. I’m protective over their man bits because someone should be until their old enough to take charge.

And, just so you all know, I wouldn’t have a problem if my boys wear skirts if they wanted to, but I’d probably insist on a little pair of shorts underneath.

What do you think?

Raising a Big, Boisterous Boy.

Its 5am. 

I’m snuggling up to the cheeky 6 year old who has snuck into the parental bed again when I realize his feet are resting on my shins. 

When did my youngest get so huge?

Bean is growing at a phenomenal rate. Yes, I know, everyone says that about their children but Bean is something else I’m sure of it. His 7 year old brother is perfectly average, if not a little rounder in the bottom than most kids his age (presumably due to his annoyingly restricted diet). However Bean’s body, being 17 months younger, seems to have decided this growing up thing is in fact a race. 

At first clothes buying was easy, I’d buy a bunch of clothes and Ed would grow out of them just in time for Bean to grow into them.

There was a seasonal issue, in that Bean was wearing Ed's Summer clothes in Winter so his wardrobe would have to topped up with a few extra jumpers and jeans, but other than that it was brilliant.

This photo was my first clue. At just 3, Bean (left) was looking bigger than Ed (right) who was 4 and a half. I took a few of these photos, thinking the angle was all wrong and being confused by what I kept seeing on my camera display.

The hand-me-downs went on until we reached 4-5 years clothes, when there was a hefty overlap. By size 5-6 they were in the same size, making clothes buying literally twice as expensive. Thankfully by this age they were actually wearing the clothes out, rather than growing out of them before they got even the tiniest bit scuffed. I couldn’t have made Bean wear holey hand-me-downs anyway, so it didn’t matter so much.

Now they are both in 7-8 years clothes, despite the fact that they are in fact 6 & 7. The clothes that are tight on Bean, fit Ed perfectly, so the hand-me-downs are now going in the opposite direction.

My ‘little’ brother is built like a brick shit house, so it looks like Bean has ended up with a load of his genes which is odd because I thought he got his general hugeness from my step-dad…but they do look very similar both in appearance and mannerisms. I’d show you photos but my brother literally will not allow anyone to take a picture of him.

I started to see some actual problems when a house guest moved in. We have a two year old boy staying with us at the moment, and of course my boys love him to pieces but I keep catching Bean, in his usual over-excitedness, being a bit of a bully. I can’t accept bullying in my house, so I have had to spend some time explaining to him that he needs to be aware of what his body is doing and how it might feel to someone half his size.

I personally think, however young a child is, they should be allowed to express their own opinion on who invades their personal space and what happens to their body. It is their body after all and I think they should be encouraged to be confident enough to say no. Except if they have a really stinky nappy of course. Or teeth brushing issues. Actually anything personal hygiene related. That stuff just needs shoving into their daily routine.

Unfortunately for Bean, as well as being huge he is also extra (definitely more than usual) boisterous. He’s heavy handed, clumsy and playful.

So I asked him, if I backed him into a corner, even just to tickle him, would he not be intimidated as I towered over him? Yes he replied.

I’ve tried to explain to him, that as a big boy, bigger than most of his class (as his recent class photo shows), he needs to be extra careful. He needs to be aware of his body, where it is and what it’s doing to ensure not only the safety of other children but also their feelings too.

It’s perfectly possible I’m thinking about this too much, and it’s also possible he’ll plateau at some point and everyone else will catch up. Or he’ll end up like my brother, and 11lb baby who turned into a giant 22 year old.

Hopefully I’ll manage to raise a gentle giant rather than a boisterous beast of a man. Thankfully he has a heart of gold buried in that wide chest so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

I’ll continue to praise his kind acts, his sweet affection and remind him to be kind when I need to.

I am so looking forward to seeing the man he’ll become in a few short years.

Good luck raising yours too my lovelies xxx