Yesterday ended on a pretty rubbish note. Little Bean and Beanie Boy were showing some rather testing behaviour whilst we were at Nanny and Grandad’s house. I came home feeling stressed out and miserable, my tiddlers paid no attention to me at all when I was telling them to stop bouncing on the furniture, stop diving onto the bean bags, stop screaming . . . . you get the picture. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to enjoy themselves but there is a time and place for that kind of activity and it’s not in someone else’s lounge! The behaviour continued into the evening and then into this morning when they refused to tidy their playroom. This happens on a regular occurrence and it drives me up the wall.
This morning I decided enough was enough and I emptied the majority of their boxes of toys out of the playroom leaving them only with their houses on the very top, their puzzles, board games and a box of balls. I have also told them that they are limited to watching an hour of TV in the morning and an hour in the afternoon if we are at home and only when Daddy or I say so.
It worked a treat, whilst I was busy emptying and reloading the dishwasher I thought things had gone pretty quiet so went in search of Beanie Boy. He had found himself some building blocks and sat very nicely playing with them for nearly 40 minutes. I praised him heavily for this and awarded him with a marble for his jar. Then in the afternoon as I came down from putting the boys to bed I saw that Little Bean had raided the utility room and had taken all of the recycling that she could find to do some junk modelling. As with Beanie Boy, I heaped praise upon her and awarded her a marble before heading out into the garden to try out her new flying machine. She also made a seat for Beanie Boy’s teddy bear. I was so impressed with them that I’m tempted to just sell all of their toys and keep only the packaging (ok maybe not all!!) because finally they were using their imagination.
At lunchtime I decided to bite the bullet and let Jelly Bean have his first taste of Baby Led Weaning, ok so it’s not a healthy piece of fruit or vegetable but a breadstick is where I am happy to start and he did really well with it, he ate two!!
In the afternoon once the boys had woken up, we decided to follow on from Little Bean’s junk modelling and do a little craft project. We had just received a box of goodies from Yellow Moon and since the wind was blowing we decided to make some Ice Cream windmills and Bright Bugs Windmills. The tiddlers loved doing this and pushed them into the grass all around the garden to catch the wind.
Finally we sat down to watch Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone because we are going to Harry Potter studios this weekend and I wanted to make sure that the tiddlers wouldn’t be frightened by any of it. I have been assured that they should be fine but I wanted them to be familiar with at least some of it and now they are both really fired up for their visit. Shhh, don’t tell anyone but so is Mummy!
I think I may have to try emptying the playroom too – I chucked all the laptops and DS’s on top of the kitchen cupboards yesterday! Fingers crossed that inspires them to creativity although I suspect it will only be creative moaning from mine 😉
Hope the Harry Potter Tour goes great, we’re off next weekend – I’m so excited!! x
It has definitely made a difference, they have played much better with the toys they do have access to and have been more creative. I came downstairs this morning and thought I was in the wrong house it was so quiet as they all sat and did their own ‘thing’ – I loved it!