This weekend just gone was spent at The West Bay Club on the Isle of Wight attending my first ever antenatal classes. I did not have the opportunity with Esther and William as they came 7 weeks before our NCT … Continue reading
We are home from an okay week at Center Parcs and a wonderful weekend on the Isle of Wight at the very luxurious West Bay Club.
Arriving home I have realised that my bump has definitely grown and we are only 7 and a half weeks from D-Day!!!!
And I thought that this pregnancy would not go fast, now it seems to be zooming past and I feel like we still have so much to do!
It is also a generally busy time for us. David is busy with work, we have lots of family events to look forward to and Easter is not far away.
This weekend David and I are having a night away without the squidgers. My beautiful best friend is having the babies over night and we are going to her house for a quiet night alone and our last lazy morning for what I am sure is going to be a very very long time!
Matilda Bump seems to be very active at the moment.
According to my NCT email at 32 weeks pregnant, Baby is about 40.5cm long and weighs about 1.6kg. Over the next four weeks she will put on about a kilogram of weight as she lays down the body fat to regulate her body temperature when she’s born. Her skin is smooth and her arms and legs are getting ‘chubby’.
I cannot get used to the idea of having a chubby baby. I told the lovely couples we met on our antenatal retreat this weekend that Esther and William looked like very athletic old men when they were born and for the first few weeks of their life. Their skin was transparent so you could see every muscle and sinew and they looked like super toned miniature adults.
Baby Athlete
Cuddling a chubby baby will be very strange indeed.
When Esther and William were 32+3 they were 5 weeks old. William weighed 4lbs and Esther 3lbs 5oz. I wonder how much Matilda Bump weighs right now?
My NCT email says that as Matilda Bump puts on more weight I will find myself putting on weight too, by roughly 1lb a week. I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea how much I weigh or how much I have gained during the pregnancy. Perhaps I should have kept a better record? The reason that so much weight is gained in these final weeks is that I will need to consume more calories to share the energy and nutrients with Matilda May. I am going to be writing a series of posts over the coming week about healthy eating and exercise during pregnancy. I have had some great advice this past weekend from midwife Nikki Khan and physiotherapist Jo Hillier. I cannot wait to share it with you.
I am definitely feeling heavier now and also more tired. My 28 week blood tests came back showing that I am anaemic and so I am now taking iron supplements as well as Osteocare which was recommended to me by one of the lovely ladies on our antenatal weekend. I know that I need to be taking more calcium as my pregnancies have been so close together and because I breastfed the twins for so long and am desperate to breastfeed for a whole year again.
As part of the antenatal retreat I had an Espa prenatal treatment and I am planning to treat myself to another one in a few weeks time. It was so wonderfully relaxing and gave me some quiet time to focus on just me and the baby. It was heaven! (Watch out for a full review coming soon!)
Today I treated myself to my going to and coming home from hospital outfit from Vertbaudet. I am going to be wearing an orange floral dress to the hospital that converts into a skirt for coming home. What a great idea! Coming home I will add this white nursing tshirt which looks to be very flattering. I chose to order from Vertbaudet as at the moment they have a special offer code (3800) which gives you £15 off your order and a free baby changing bag which is just too gorgeous to pass up.
For my hospital bag I have a Pink Lining Twins bag (review coming soon!) and so this will be a bag of Matilda Bump’s very own.
Midwife Nikki Khan suggests having two very different bags for yourself and for the baby so that your partner or midwife can easily distinguish between the two after the birth. I think this is a great idea and over the coming weeks I will be talking about packing each of these bags ready for birth as well as packing a toddler bag for Esther and William in case I have to be away over night. There is so much to think about and blog about and do!!!
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So today is our final full day at Center Parcs. The sun is shining for the first time and the skies are blue. Everyone seemed to wake up in a better mood ready to start the day. I had booked … Continue reading
Today I am giving a more indepth review of a selection of activities that we have tried from the I CAN Babbling Babies Activity Pack. You can read our initial review here and find out more about the children’s charity … Continue reading
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Today we drove to Elveden Forest in Suffolk to begin a four night break away at Center Parcs. This break has been booked for months as a time for David and I to relax and spend some quality time with … Continue reading
Here in the Edspire household we are busy testing two activity packs from children’s charity, I Can. Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk are activity cards for parents giving them a wide range of ideas, actiivities, games and songs to use with their children to build upon their language development.
As a primary school teacher specialising in literacy I was keen to review the packs and test them out with my own children.
Language is so important for young children. Communication is vital for the whole family and I think it is fantastic that I Can are taking positive action to help families help their children to read, speak and understand more. To enable them to communicate clearly with one another from a very young age.
Esther and William are 19 months old now and I think that their vocabulary is advanced for their age. They have excellent understanding, can follow multi part instructions, can construct very simple phrases and sentences and have a wide range of words, verbs and nouns. Much of this language skill is supported by their ability to sign using BSL.
So, what are these activity packs from I Can and how can they be used?
Babbling Babies
Babbling Babies
I Can explains in the instruction booklet for this first activity pack that learning to talk relies on developing skills in key areas: Playing and Interacting; Learning to Listen; Learning and Understanding New Words; Expressing Myself and Exploring and Developing.
The pack contains 30 cards, covering the key areas mentioned above, and it is suggested that they can be used to create a 6 week programme for your little one with a new activity to try each day. This method as a teacher appeals to me but you may find that you would rather use the cards randomly and you may choose no to use them all. The activities are not linked or progressive and can be tackled in any order.
Beautifully Illustrated Cards
I Can suggest that you put half an hour aside for these activities and do so when baby is in a playful mood.
I have tried some adhoc activities with Esther and William for the purposes of this inital review. When we return from holiday next week we are going to start a six week programme that I am going to plan using the activities provided on the cards. I am going to write about our plans, activities and progress here on the blog.
Timetable
As I read through these activities I was very reassured as a mummy to find that many of them I do already. And I am sure that you do too!
Do you play Peek A Boo with your little one? Then you are playing with them, interacting with them, communicating with them and helping them to develop their language.
Peek-a-boo is a fantastic game to play wherever you are. When changing nappies, hide behind a clean nappy and pop out. Peek-a-boo helps Baby feel special, building your relationship together.
Buggy Boo!
What I love about these activity packs from I Can is that the activity cards are differentiated by age. So for Peek-a-Boo, for example, there are three levels of play to try. The advised age ranges are 0-6 months, 6-12 months and 12-18 months. But use your mummy intuition. You will know when your baby is ready to move on.
Differentiation
Another common activity used for the Babbling Babies pack is Tower Building. Again there are three suggested levels of language to use whilst building towers with your baby and they also recommend a song set to the tune of William’s favourite, Wind the Bobbin’ Up.
Build the tower up, build the tower up
Up, up, nice and tall
Knock it down again, knock it down again
Crash, bash, watch it fall.
Talking About Towers
There is also an activity card to help parents explore different materials with their baby through messy play. The card gives differentiated ideas not only for what to do but also for what to say to help build baby’s language development.
We had great fun playing with pasta the other day.
Pasta Play
There are so many wonderful activity ideas in these two packs from I Can, Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk. We have not yet had time to explore them all but we will and we would love to share our progress with you.
If you would like to try these activity cards for yourself to give you ideas for structuring learning and development with your little ones they are available to buy from I Can online. Each pack costs £12.99 plus p&p in hardback and £7.99 in paperback and I would say are well worth the money for providing ideas, inspiration and structure to your play and development activities.
We are still busy testing and reviewing our activity packs so please do follow our progress as we create a language rich environment in our home.
We were sent one of each pack, Babbling Babies and Toddler Talk, for the purposes of this and subsequent reviews.