Mum/Me

Easter photographs

I love springtime, and so Easter is one of my favourite holidays. When someone from George at Asda got in touch with us and asked us to take on the challenge of creating an Easter Sunday outfit, I couldn't resist. Buying children's clothes is one of my absolute favourite things, and I was given a budget of £20.

I had a look through their girls clothes department and selected an outfit for Eilidh. I like little girls to look like little girls, so nothing shiny or tight or stretchy (can you see the arguments ahead when she's a teen?) and fortunately there were lots of lovely things to choose from. I actually got a gorgeous dress with hearts on, a pack of vests with hearts on and a white cardi for a total of £16 (which is probably roughly the equivalent of the price of one mitten from Boden or a pair of pants from Gap).

I then had to decide how to photograph Eilidh to show off her beautiful fresh and yet smart Easter Sunday outfit. My little girl has just started standing up by herself for the first time, so I had the idea to photograph her in the garden, standing up, smiling and perhaps holding a flower. Very classic and springtime, right?

Unfortunately, I forgot two things. 1) We live in Britain and 2) My daughter is Eilidh. The first of these things meant that when we went out to the garden, it was actually bl**dy freezing. The second of these things meant that my highly-strung little girly would not only not stand up to order (and when I tried to stand her up she crumpled to the ground and lay there weeping) but she would not sit with her legs touching the horrid, cold grass, which made quite an amusing photo, if not the one I had had in mind.

 

No problem, I thought. She looks so sweet that an indoor photo will be just as nice. So I took her inside, got Mimi mouse to cheer her up and arranged a nice photo (fortunately Mimi's colours blended well). Eilidh, still upset from the traumatic grass incident, was not up for this either. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, The Saddest Little Girl in the World:

Oh dear. Then, just as I was about to give up and try another day, something nice happened. Something that proves that the best photos of children are ones that aren't posed, but are ones that just happen. Arran (3) came over and sat down next to his baby sister.

He talked to her and played peek-a-boo with her. He got her interested in the open-up plastic eggs (which I'll tell you more about in a minute). And finally, finally, with his usual craziness, he got that long-awaited smile from her! This I think was far more of an 'Easter' photo than a posed one would have been, because Easter for me is about family and fun, and when I stopped trying to force a beautiful photo, an even more beautiful one just happened. (The photo really is spontaneous by the way, he is dressed like that as he'd just been to a party! He is particularly proud of his tie and says he looks 'like a teacher'.)

Inspired and cheered by big brother's antics, Eilidh suddenly grabbed Mimi mouse, hunched forward...

And stood up! (Isn't the dress gorgeous?)

And we got our pretty outdoor photoshoot the next day anyway (with a blanket to protect Eilidh's legs from that dreadful grass).

Ladies and gentlemen, may I proudly present The Happiest Little Girl in the World:

George at Asda is also giving five readers the chance to win a £20 gift voucher. If you look at the photos above, you can see the children playing with some plastic eggs. The 19 other participating bloggers were also sent a number of eggs. If you can track down them all, enter the total number of eggs in the box below (you could perhaps google 'Asda Easter egg blog hunt' to find out who else has been blogging about this).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

What's in a name?

I'm always getting notes back from Arran's nursery about putting his name on things. Shoes, slippers and wellies have to be labelled and every item of clothing that they wear has to be labelled in case they take it off. (Every item? Seriously, does anybody do this?!) I am also supposed to label each piece of food that goes in his teabox so that they can find the items in the fridge later, and the teabox itself.

It's safe to say that I am not good at sewing. The last (and also first, and definitely only) time that I tried to sew ended in minor surgery with me having a needle removed from my hand where I had managed to fully embed it (including the eye). Sewing is DANGEROUS and I am not prepared to take risks by laboriously sewing label after label onto my children's clothes, the way I rememeber my own lovely mum doing for us.

I had been looking around at iron-on labels (although, to be honest, even ironing is a little out of my comfort zone) and then I was contacted by a representative from Tiny Me, a company which does lovely name labels.

They kindly offered me a pack of name labels, personalised with Arran's name. This was the first time I had accepted a review opportunity for the blog as although I had been offered one or two things, it is very much not why I blog and I had not been prepared to compromise my blog unless it was something that I thought would add value to our lives and the blog. I really liked the look of these though, so I felt happy to review them.

One thing I did learn, which is quite amusing, is that when you don't disclose your surname on your blog, it's perhaps not a good idea to review something that is plastered with it! I have had to edit it out for this reason, but I assure you it's written in the same lovely style and font as the first name.

The pack we were sent was a variety of stickers in different shapes and sizes. I say stickers, but they are really thick and incredibly sticky. For example, Arran has had these stickers inside his shoes for months and has grown out of the shoes before the stickers wore out or peeled off (they actually do specific 'shoe dots' for this purpose too). The company also does iron-on labels and traditional style too.

When you select your labels you can choose the design and there are so many cute designs to choose from that this was quite a challenge. We chose the 'Jungle Friends' theme. There are six fonts to choose from too. You can also get gift labels, book labels, address labels and so on.

I thought these were lovely - cute and simple and really attractive. Childish without being garish. I wouldn't hesitate to buy some of their iron-on labels (my husband is the ironer in the family so I can put him to work) and they seem like good value. The stickers are coming in handy for labelling up the food items for the fridge and any toys that we send in for the 'letter of the week' box.

Tiny Me has also very kindly offered a 10% discount for readers of this blog. Simply enter the code mooocoupon837 to receive your discount. This expires on the 19th April 2012.

*Disclaimer: One pack of assorted labels was provided free of

charge by Tiny Me. Opinions are all my own. *

Say hello to Bippity

There seems to be a new member of our household at the moment. His name is Bippity and he's a blue robot.

He's actually the robot from Driver Dan's Story Train on CBeebies. This isn't a particular favourite show, but the tv was on in the bedtime wind-down period one evening and Arran came running through to the kitchen where I was making Eilidh's bottle and said, "Do you know who is my best friend?" and then told me, "It's Bippity!"

He talked about Bippity a bit and then said, "Bippity is on television and not in my house", not sadly, but in a way that meant his mind was ticking over.

A few minutes later he suddenly exclaimed, "Who's that at the door?", ran to the door (of the dining room) and exclaimed, "It's Bippity!" as an invisible-to-all-but-Arran robot stepped into our dining room. That was yesterday and he's been with us since.

I was quite excited about the arrival of an imaginary friend. It's a normal developmental phase, with around 70% of children having a made-up buddy at some stage or other. On request, I set a place for Bippity at the table last night and watched happily as my husband (who is usually more reticent about silly games than I am) poured a little gravy onto Bippity's meat. At bedtime, Bippity tucked into bed next to Arran and I had to kiss him goodnight.

I thought that perhaps it would be a short-lived game and that by the morning Arran would have forgotten that he'd had a robot sleepover. Certainly it seemed that way at first, but just before he left for nursery, when he saw me racing upstairs to grab a hairbrush, he cautioned me to be quiet as Bippity was still sleeping.

When I collected the children from nursery, I picked up Arran first (as I always do as otherwise he spots me and gets upset) and then went across for Eilidh. As we were gathering up Eilidh's things, Arran looked out of the big glass doors and said, "Look who's waiting for me out there, Mummy". I looked, expecting to see a classmate from nursery but there was noone around. "It's Bippity" said Arran, and he came home with us from nursery. Arran even urged the nursery workers to 'say hello to Bippity', which, bless them, they duly did.

I love that Arran has such a great imagination and think it's incredibly cute. He's sociable and has enough 'real life' friends that I don't worry at all about it being a 'loner' type thing. I do, however, find Bippity's presence a little creepy at times, as however much I treat him like a game that Arran is making up as he goes along, I can't supress the feeling that Bippity's existence is something outwith our control. Like tonight, I pretended to wash Bippity's hair in the bath, only to be told in amazement by Arran that Bippity wasn't even there, he was downstairs playing.