Sunday 26 January 2014

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Siblings: So Happy Together

When Stuart and I made (hopeful) plans for our family, we discussed aiming for a 4 year gap between children.

There were many reasons why:
  • having an older child to 'help' with the baby
  • 4+yrs were likely to mean less jealousy between siblings
  • It was hoped the older child would be at school when the younger one came (in reality, Millie came a year before Callum started school as he is a September baby).
  • less likely for sibling rivalry and fighting
and many more. I assumed the downside to the longer gap would be our children would be less likely to play together.

We were very lucky and feel blessed that mother nature (and maybe an angel or two) deemed us fit to grant us our wishes with two children born just 2 weeks short of 4 years apart.

As we hoped, the 4 year gap has proved perfect for us. The best thing is Callum is so caring with Millie. He really looks after her. If I need to pop to the kitchen to cook while they are playing in the lounge, he'll look after her. If I ask him to fetch something for her, he will. He 'reads' books to her. He talks to her so sweetly too.

However, I was wrong about Callum and Millie not playing together. Obviously, Millie at nearly 17 months doesn't fully understand playing with someone else yet but Callum will build her towers and 'help' her with her toys. Of course he often gets cross with her and doesn't want her playing with his toys on occasion but if I suggest to him he let her play with one of his power ranges, for example, while he plays with the others, he will.

I love watching how they interact with one another and taking opportunity to snap photos of them together. Which is why I couldn't wait to take part in the Siblings linky, being hosted by Lucy over at Dear Beautiful, and others who you can see on her blog. The idea is to capture a photo of your children together once a month and share it with everyone.

This is my two. I walked into the play room the other morning to see this scene - Callum was trying to help Millie with her hair clip.


I'm now looking forward to looking at everyone else's photos.



dear beautiful

Sunday 12 January 2014

Walk this way!

She did it! She bloody did it! At 16 months and 22 days, she found the confidence to take those unaided steps! SHE WALKED!!!!

She loved it and got so excited at her new skill.

Millie found her feet quite young, she loved her legs and for months she has been making us walk all over the place while holding her hands. For this reason, we were convinced she'd be an early walker. But when no walking unaided, or even standing unaided, followed, we resigned ourselves that she was going to follow in her brothers 'last minute' footsteps. In fact I think she is a big tease! She leads you down a path that she will achieve a milestone early then it never materialises. She rolled when she was 12 weeks and then hardly ever rolled again. She took forever to bum shuffle and then started a half crawl, half bum shuffle around 14 months.

Now, with Millie being our second child, we have learnt that children will do things in their own time so we haven't been pushy or even wishing it along, we just wanted to be encouraging towards her next development but she would get us all excited and then never provide. My daughter is no 'completer-finisher' that's for sure! (sorry, you can tell I'm a trainer!)

Even though she was keen to walk around holding our hands, it took some time before she would trust using a walker. Then recently, she started pushing Callum's toy pushchair around with her baby in it which was a big improvement in her confidence.




We would try to make a game of letting go of her hands to see how long she would stand on her own but as soon as you would let go of her hands she would buckle her knees. Then recently she seemed to understand that the game was to half walk and half fall from us to the nearest object (like the sofa) and yesterday she seemed to want to play so I let go of her hands and she took a few steps into the room before falling on her bottom. Then, to my amazement, she tried to stand up on her own - I quickly got my phone out to start recording and this is what happened next:




Well done our clever Millie - no stopping her now. You have a very proud Mummy and Daddy!

Sunday 5 January 2014