"I told you I don't want to join your super-secret boy band."

Today has been a pretty awful day due to situations that arn't really for talking about on here. Seth has been out with William and from what i gather the presents went down well and there was even a piece of cake brought back for me so that certainly put a little smile on my face. The thing that really cheered me up though was answering the door to William and his mom Vicky only to see William standing there wearing an Avengers T-shirt...

Im kicking myself now that i didnt get him an Avengers figure and nudged him closer in the super hero direction. Hopefully we will have seen the end of Williams jedi ways, filling Seths head with 'Commander Rex this...' and 'Asajj Ventress That...' . Its time for some out of school education so i will be looking forward to Williams next visit to our house....

Ironman 1&2, Hulk 1&2, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers back to back for starters.

I asked him who his favourite Avenger was and he said "Ironman" so ive found my way in. Let the brainwashing and Re-educating commence. We'll make a super soldier of him yet, and ill get my little team of vigilante crime fighters......Avengers assemble!!

"When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not."

 
Seth is very excited today because he is going out for dinner with William (his best friend), William's brother Matthew and their parents as a birthday celebration for Williams 6th. When these boys are at school they are inseperable and can be seen walking about with their arms round each other pretending to be a  two headed monster.

If you have been reading the blog for a while then you know that William is Star Wars mad so much so that i dont think he likes anything else and is forever filling seth's head with his Jedi nonesense. (yes I'm not really a fan, especially of the clone wars its just annoying) that in mind and views aside we still had to find a fitting present for the young padawan.

Back in June it was Matthew's birthday and Seth was invited to his party, Obviously another Star Wars Geek we brought him a 13" Chewbacca figure that i had spotted...

Chewbacca went down a treat and we were told by Matthew that it goes everywhere with him, including the toilet. (well wookiee's have to tinkle too).

Me and Seth were discussing what to get William for his birthday and we came to the decision that Chewbacca should never be left on his own so i went on a mission to get hold of his human counterpart Han Solo. After a couple of weeks of looking i found him and he began his journey to our home from the states.

Seth loved the figure so hopefully William will love it too, Seth asked if we could get him a little something else so we decided to get him some Top Trumps too (Star Wars of course). Seth loves playing Top Trumps so im sure he will be loking forward to playing with William.

we didn't have any appropriate wrapping paper so Seth told me to cut up one of his Clone Wars annuals and use the pages as in his words "I'm not really a fan of Clone Wars" (it was like music to my ears). Didn't turn out as nice as when we wrapped Matthews present but still looked great.

We were going to go shopping for a fun Star Wars card for William but Seth said he wanted to make him one so he picked a few of his figures and sat down to draw (i bet you can guess who they are).

Happy birthday Chicken Nugget we hope you have a great day with lots of great (star wars) toys.

"the beast lies somewhere in the stump, choose a passage"

After my post a few days back about Opeie's eating habits ("Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon." ). I decided to go out and buy a few of the products that we had found online in the hope of saving our poor Cream carpets. Asda have got one of their Parent and Baby events on at the moment and as if by chance many of the items from the Nuby I Monster range were included in this. Obviously it was meant to be so i added a few items to my basket.

After mentioning it in my last post i had to purchase the I Monster Snack Keeper (the one that made me think of the Woodbeast from Flash Gordon) and give it a try. Weve been having real difficulty over the last few weeks with feeding Opeie, brought on by his larger back teeth coming through. I know it's happened to all of us already but i cant even begin to imagine how uncomfortable it is for him, poor little thing.

He's really lost his appetite which has been stressing Mrs M out. I on the other hand am a little more laid back about it. One of the moms at the school once said to me "no one ever starved next to a full pot" which i guess is very true, the food is always there just at the moment he's not eating loads. Plus to be fair he's still feeding from Mrs M too so we know he's well fed in that sense.

Well lunch time came round and we unleashed the new tableware onto our unsuspected child. Our little Flash Gordon wasnt at all scared by the Woodbeast and shoved his hand straight in. Our snack of choice for the Monster Snack keeper was cheerios...

 ...as Opeie loves them. Their slightly sticky and when thrown off the high chair can end up as a permanent fixture to the rug. This item completely stopped that (i did the probably typical dad thing and threw it about a little to really test its worth and i wasn't disappointed). The rubber teeth are soft enough for your child's hand to easily get to the snack yet firm enough to not let anything get out when dropped. I will be testing this with maybe raspberries tomorrow to see how that goes.

Opeie really loved this bowl and at one point was even trying to feed him some fresh fruit (obviously concerned that the little monster wasnt getting his 5 a day.

The second item i picked up in the supermarket was the I Monster Toddler Feeding Bowl i was instantly drawn in by the very high sides which obviously is great for the prevention of any unwanted spillages. It resembles a free standing roll top bath. Mrs M made a comment about bathing our new baby bunnies in there for fun... I had to resist the temptation of a cute photo opportunity (our boy will be eating out of it after all). It is a great sturdy plastic bowl and it really put a smile on Opeies face.

The third item i brought was the I Monster Toddler Feeding Plate and to be honest i brought this mainly on the fact it looked so fun. We already have some low sided plastic feeding bowls that are roughly the same size and shape but i really loved the design on this and it was nice to go with the set. Plus one of Opeie's favourite words at the moment is 'teeth' and there's plenty of those to point at.

Opeie ate loads better during this meal and i honestly believe that it was because of the bowls especially the Monster Snack Keeper as he was excitedly putting his hand in and then was eating eating his find quickly so that he could shove his hand back in again. Were really hoping that it continues so that Mrs M can relax a little.

On the whole the range is great the only way i could improve on the design myself would be to add a sucker to the base as although the high sides lessened the spillages Opeie was still able to pick the bowls up and move them about which as we know as parents can sometimes end in food being catapulted across the room.

Well it turns out that rather than being scary the woodbeast instead caused excitement and intrigue and our poor teething boy finally having a full tummy, Thanks Nuby.

"Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft."

There's only 1 week left of the summer holiday and both me and Mrs M are starting to get a little sad. It's so nice having Seth at home and i know Opeie is going to be unhappy when his brother isn't about during the day. As i mentioned in my last post the summer holidays can be a pretty expensive time of the year. 

We love craft in our house, you cant beat a bit of cutting and pasting. I started looking about for something interesting to keep Seth occupied especially as we have had an abundance of terrible weather this summer. An then Bat-Blog posted an article about some fun card craft.

These were great for Seth as they were pretty easy to cut out and put together (well after printing them out again when Seth cut off all the tags), they can be found on http://www.squatties.com/. Seth's going through a batman phase at the moment so he picked two of the characters and i printed them out...

I only had beige card in the house at the time so they came out a little dark so if you do decide to have a go yourself make sure the card is white. I wanted to try something a little more detailed and obviously Marvel so i found these at http://www.cubeecraft.com/genre/pop-culture/ ...

I clearly got into these far more than Seth, they are so addictive and the end result is great. There are plenty of characters to choose from (and not just Marvel). Theres lots of Star Wars characters, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbuster's and even Muppet's (That's right Chris you can even print out Kermit).

As you can imagine these have kept me pretty occupied on many an evening, even though they were meant to be for keeping Seth busy (I'd say he's more of a cutting and gluing kind of child). The great thing about these is there is no need for any glue or tape. all the tabs slot into the holes made. The instructions and the 'cut lines' are very clear so there's little chance of error.

Since making these Bat-blog added another post with print out card craft at mypaperheroes which i have just started. These are going to take a bit longer to make though and you need tape/glue for these. I've been having issues with my double sided sticky tape. The finished item does look amazing though so watch this space. If i can find time i would like to make all of the Avengers.

I'm always on the hunt for interesting craft idea's so if any of you guys out there know of any then please message me with ideas and me and the boys will have a go for you.

"round and round the garden, like a teddy bear, one step, two step, tickle you under there"

I had a lovely day planned for me and Opeie but it didn't work out the way i expected. The inevitable falling asleep in the car kicked off proceedings (Opeie not me, that would have been a different post all together). Then silly me not having ANY change for the car park (because despite running about packing a suitcase sized bag with everything Opeie needs i ALWAYS manage to forget something) which ended in us going home. Opeie slept for 2 hours which isn't like him at all, he was obviously shattered and hes not been feeling great this week with his poor teeth.

I made him a nice lunch and then we headed to the park. Opeie loves going on the swings. When your older you tend to forget how exciting going to the park was. My dad used to take us pretty much every sunday which was always nice. My favourite part was playing frisbee with him though, which i look forward to doing with Opeie.

The most appealing thing about the park (apart from the big smile on my sons face) is the fact that there is no need to spend any money. Lets face it the summer holidays can end up getting quite pricey. Its nice to be able to break up all the activities that cost with good old park time.

Remember the time when a stick or even a rock could bring you none stop enjoyment? how i miss those days. Opeie spent quite sometime investigating this piece of bark, I'm not sure why that piece stood out from the rest and he didn't let me in on his findings.

This is a bit of a lazy post i know but i had the camera with me so i thought i would snap away. We had planned to go and see Mrs M's folks before going to get her from work so we were just killing time. Opeie did the usual and started trying to steal my accessories so i just left him to it today (thankfully he didnt break my glasses).

 I guess he just wants to be like his dad, hopefully he will manage to keep hold of his hair for a bit longer than me though. We left the park and Opeie was shattered, after an hour and a half at the inlaws he had had enough and dropped off in the car (again) on the way to pick up Mrs M. So not quite the day we had planned but we got to spend it together. First thing tomorrow i will be filling the car with car park change.