Last weekend marked Sophie’s 2nd birthday – and I must admit I’m really struggling to believe my baby daughter is two years old already. Years are vanishing in the blink of an eye.

With Alex a massive fan of birthdays, the build up to Sophie’s special day had been lengthy and exciting – with regular practice renditions of “happy birthday” being sung by the pair of them.  Sophie knew to anticipate cake and presents!

When the big weekend finally arrived, we had a wonderful time.  The clocks changed on Sophie’s birthday morning, and miraculously – following a slightly later bedtime the night before and a trip to Pizza Express with their grandparents, both children slept an hour later, so we weren’t impacted by the clocks change at all.  The best gift Sophie could have bought me – an hour of sleep 🙂

We had a fun hour unwrapping presents.  Alex was keen to unwrap everything on Sophie’s behalf, but she did a great job by herself.  They loved Sophie’s new easel in particular.

After a quiet morning, it was party time!  At 3.30pm, our house was filled with 14 little ones – thank goodness it was warm and dry enough to play in the garden!  All Sophie’s friends from her childminder were there plus a few neighbours, and they all pottered around happily together:

Love these pic of siblings Sam and Una:

As it got dark, we served up dinner for the little ones – and they were all so well behaved at the table, quietly munching through pasta, crudites and lots of bread:

After the obligatory jelly and ice-cream, it was cake time.  There were so many children and grown-ups singing, that Sophie was a bit unsure, but she seemed happy to blow out her candles.  She certainly enjoyed the cake – she stuffed so much in so quickly she was a little bit sick – classy girl!

Here’s my beautiful birthday girl – turning into such an independent, feisty lady!

I’m so behind with the blog! I’ve been wrestling with the photo editing / collage software I normally use, and with so many photos to share from the past fortnight, it’s been a challenge. But I can finally share all the snaps from a fabulous weekend of parties earlier in October.

We’re in the middle of birthday party season for the children, with two of Alex’s NCT friends turning four at the start of October. We started our weekend at Arlo’s 4th party.  Alex loved playing musical statues and pass the parcel and had a brilliant time running around with all the other little ones.  Sophie enjoyed polishing off everyone’s jelly and ice cream while they weren’t looking…

After the party, we headed up to Northampton for a night with my parents ready for Freddie’s party in Oxfordshire the next morning.  We made the most of the glorious Autumn sunshine, stopping for a wander along the canals on the way to the party.  Sophie had selected a fabulous outfit of a bright yellow cardigan, pink shoes and thick, long purple wellie socks.  Classy lady.

Freddie’s party was absolute heaven for my four-year-old explorer.  Organised by Little Wild Things, it basically involved the gang of children running wild in a forest for a few hours, completing a range of brilliantly fun and messy challenges!

We searched for bugs under logs and dirt:

Made sticky mud pies:

We swung from the trees:

And built a woodland den:

We smiled all day:

And chased bubbles in a clearing:

Sophie adores bubbles – especially when super big ones pop on her face!

We hung around upside down and giggled non-stop:

And if that wasn’t brilliant enough, we ended the party with an open camp fire to toast marshmallows on!  The children were so well behaved sitting nicely until it was their turn to go up to the fire, although neither Sophie or Alex particularly enjoyed the marshmallows!

Even Sophie got a turn:

We were all exhausted after the party, but had a wonderful time.    I love getting my urban children out into the woods and all muddy!

Alex is entering his fourth week at nursery (or “school” as he likes to say – he’s convinced he’s started school properly!) and he’s taken to it like a duck to water!  He’s going five mornings a week to Bessemer Grange – the school we hope he’ll go to from next year.

Here he is with his morning nursery classmates – can you spot him?!

The nursery post pictures occasionally which is wonderful as sometimes it can be hard to get Alex to tell us what he gets up to!   Here’s clearly been doing some exploring and bug hunting:

And building forts for dinosaurs!

But occasionally, we do get a bit of an insight into what he’s learning and doing every day – mostly in the form of new songs!  I’m loving hearing him burst into new songs, including:

• A phonics song to the tune of “Who let the dogs out?”
• A days of the week song to the “Adams Family” theme song
• A brilliant alphabet song about letters coming to tea and “Z doing all the dishes”

He’s regularly coming home with reward stickers, which generally seem to be given to him for helping with tidying up and occasionally for good counting.

On the downside, his white polo shirts are taking the brunt of the creative element of his nursery activities – coming home covered in mud and paint.  I’m losing on average one polo shirt a week – need to get some better stain remover!

More formal phonics learning is getting underway, and I have to go to a class this Friday on how to keep Alex’s “home learning diary” and some tips on guided reading.  Matt and I both glowed with pride at Alex’s very first written school feedback in his reading diary – “Alex has great letter recognition and letters/sound correspondence”.  Yay for Alex!

They’ve just started doing a sound a week, so we spent the weekend carefully selecting something for him to take in that starts with an “S”.  He settled on a photograph of his sister Sophie (after we persuaded him that he couldn’t actually take his sister to nursery) and a selection of stones!

So far he seems to be behaving himself – fingers crossed that continues!  I think Jacqui gets a slightly hyper Alex for the afternoon when she picks him up – I guess he uses up his good behaviour quota for the day in the classroom!

Yesterday was the day Alex has been anticipating for weeks – his fourth birthday! He was so excited the night before, having counted down the sleeps for the past week, that I was worried that he couldn’t sleep. But he was good as gold, and stayed in his room until 7am.

He came running into our room and immediately spotted the big pile of presents (although frustratingly completely ignored his main present –  a lovely new red bike!).  So while Sophie attempted to climb all over the bike and pull off all the ribbons I’d decorated it with,  Alex focused on the wrapped presents.  He was delighted to find some new train track and a diesel train, some DVDs, books and a maze puzzle book.

After a special birthday breakfast of croissants, Alex turned his attention to his new bike and realised it was actually quite cool, particularly when decorated with bright “spokey dokeys” (thanks Uncle David and Auntie Sarah!).  He was so keen to have a go, that he decided to ride it to nursery.  Here’s the gorgeous birthday boy in his nursery uniform raring to go:

Quite soon after this, he discovered that not only does his new bike go significantly faster than his old one, but it has substantially better brakes….  It was slightly traumatic watching him go straight over his handle bars within minutes of setting off – but an enormous relief to see how well his helmet functions!  Straight back on it, we managed to get to nursery with no further mishaps.  Phew!

I think he had a fun birthday at nursery (where he got another good behaviour sticker!) and at Jacqui’s (where he shared a birthday cake with his little friends).  He was certainly on a sugar high at bedtime!

Today, we carried on the celebrations with his birthday party.  We held it in the sports hall at a local school who brilliantly offer bouncy castle parties for little ones.  And best of all, they set everything up for you and even tidy up afterwards!

So Alex, Sophie and 20 of their friends had a complete blast running around for an hour in the big space:

The bouncy castle was a huge hit with everyone:

And the bouncy slide made it even better!

Here are just a few of our guests getting stuck in!

After an hour, we called the very hot and tired children over for lunch and silence descended as they all tucked in:

Alex’s favourite moment came right at the end – as we brought out the cakes.  Not entirely sure why, but I decided to bake them myself this year.  It took a day off work, but I just about managed to make Octonauts cake with recognisable characters on it!

Alex’s face was a picture as everyone sang to him and he blew his candles out.

Safe to say, Alex had an amazing time –  he got so hot and sweaty running around, I was worried he was going to make himself sick, but thankfully not!

After the party, we headed home to celebrate the past four years (and our wedding anniversary!) with some wine in the garden with friends and family.  All in all, a thoroughly lovely day resulting in two very tired but happy children.

I can’t believe Alex is four – here he is on all his birthdays.  I’m such a proud mum!

Just time for a quick blog post to get up to date before we get into Alex’s 4th birthday weekend!

Last weekend we passed another two milestones – the first being our very first trip to A&E! Not a milestone to celebrate really. Thankfully it wasn’t for a major crisis. Alex did something to his ankle, and couldn’t put any weight on it at all. Cue much upset and drama as he desperately wanted to go to his cousin’s christening party that day. But, with school nursery starting the very next day, I decided we should perhaps double check he hadn’t seriously damaged himself.

So Matt and Sophie headed to Shere in Surrey for the christening, Alex and I ventured into King’s College Hospital A&E! Turns out they have a special childrens’ A&E which meant lots of toys and books to play with making the wait less unbearable.  They were fabulous and got Alex’s foot x-rayed really quickly – thankfully no breaks, just bad bruising.  After a day spent on the sofa watching movies, and a good sleep – it seemed much better.  So school was back on the agenda 🙂

Matt and Sophie had a lovely day at the christening and the pub in Shere, Sophie clearly enjoying having the undivided attention of her Nanny Michele and her cousins!

The next, more significant milestone was on Monday when Alex started the local school nursery.  He was so excited, I was worried he’d get completely hyper and get told off on his very first day.  But he was brilliant and, from what I have heard, very well behaved.  I was so proud when I dropped him off.  There were plenty of children sobbing about being left, but Alex went straight in, looked totally in awe of the vibrant classroom, sat down with one of the teachers and immediately joined in with a song – huge grin on his face and dimples showing.  So proud!

I’m yet to buy the official school jumper as they are out of stock, so I’ll do a proper uniform shot soon – but he still looked cute in his pristine polo shirt.  Sadly, we soon discovered the mud kitchen, and that was the end of that tshirt (any tips for removing stains…?!).  Here’s the before and after…

Four days in, and he’s loving nursery school. He goes for five mornings a week and seems to be thriving.  He’s come home with three stickers for good behaviour (and three pretty much ruined outfits!) and appears to be learning new songs, doing some phonics/number work and lots of free play (not that he tells us much about what he gets up to – something I guess I’ll have to get used to now he’s become more independent from us!).

What else have we been up to?  We visited the Tall Ships Festival in Greenwich last weekend.  I’m not sure we quite saw the best of it as there weren’t that many ships – but the ones we did see were very impressive, and the peripheral fair really good. I think the children enjoyed the massive playground in Greenwich Park and the DLR journey a bit more! We didn’t take many snaps, but here are the ones we do have.

We’ve also enjoyed some more tree climbing

And a fun playdate with Alex and Sophie’s friends, Sam and Una.

In a matter of minutes, my baby turns four-years-old.  I still can’t quite believe that.  He’s incredibly excited about the big day – I wonder how early he’ll wake up!!