- Sarah 1 Comment

Living Arrows 38/52

There’s not a huge amount to report for this week’s Living Arrows post. I have been back at work and Toby has still been enjoying nursery (even though he’s still hardly having any naps while he’s there). His cold is much better this week too which is a relief – he seems to have had it forever! We’ve certainly been getting plenty of smiles and giggles this week, as you can see here…

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I know I keep saying this but Toby seems to be getting cleverer by the day! He has really started actually playing with his toys and this week he has worked out how to stack his blocks and stacking cups. And then he knocks it down and gives himself a round of applause! I love the look of concentration on his face in this picture..

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- Sarah 3 Comments

Best pet reptiles for children

This is a collaborative post

Growing up the only pets we had were a goldfish (which unfortunately didn’t last very long!) and a guinea pig which was great until we discovered I was allergic to it. Looking after a pet can be a great lesson for any child, it teaches responsibility and can improve self-esteem, so getting a pet when Toby is a bit older is something we might look into. However, it turned out that not only was I allergic to our guinea pig, I’m allergic to all animals with hair, fur or feathers so our pet choices are rather limited! There are plenty of other reasons too that the fluffy variety of pet isn’t for everyone – toilet training, feeding and walking all take time and patience. Not always in great supply in busy households!

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A reptile could be a great choice of pet for us for a variety of reasons. A key factor is that reptiles are great for anyone with allergies, due to the lack of pet hair. They are also very low maintenance, as they don’t need feeding or taking for a walk every day. Reptiles are quiet too, which is always an advantage! They will need some special housing and equipment, so a good retailer such as Swell Reptiles is ideal, to ensure you have the best kit.

There are a few things to bear in mind before getting a reptile as a pet – salmonella is a concern amongst reptile keepers with children. If you have children under 5 or anyone with a frail immune system, then a reptile is not for you (so we would definitely have to wait a few more years before getting a reptile as pet for Toby). Older children should be taught to thoroughly wash their hands after handling, to avoid contamination. Just as with any pet, you should do some research on the right one for your family. Children can get involved in this too and learn about their prospective pet.

If you are thinking about getting a pet then here are a few recommendations of pet reptiles for children:

Crested Gecko

These passive little lizards are great for beginners as they don’t require constant supervision.

• They need a terrarium, a heat lamp and mat to keep them in the right climate but other than that they are easy to keep.

• They can eat ready-made food, so perfect for those who don’t like insects.

• Crested Geckos live for around 15 – 20 years.

Leopard Gecko

Another member of the Gecko family, Leopard Geckos are a popular choice due to their appealing looks.

• They can live a long time, some have been known to live for 20 years.

• They are happy to live alone or in pairs and will thrive with constant handling.

• This species eat live crickets, which are easily available on line from good retailers.

• He will need a heat mat and a thermostat to regulate the temperature.

Bearded Dragon

Another popular choice due to their distinctive appearance, they are great for older children.

• They are small as babies, but they can grow to a huge size – needing a big enclosure.

• They can be kept alone, in fact most prefer it.

• They eat a lot, so the vivarium will need cleaning out regularly.

• They also thrive when handled enough, so set aside time to play with him.

• They can live for around 10 years, so they are a long term investment.

Corn Snake

These snakes are great for families who are busy during the day, as they are nocturnal.

• They don’t mind being alone, as they live alone in the wild.

• A corn snake will need a basking lamp and a heat mat to keep him warm and healthy. This initial set up can be costly, but after this it shouldn’t cost much to maintain.

• To keep him active, he will need some logs and other equipment.

• They have a life span of around 15 – 20 years in captivity, so another long term pet.

These are just a few of the best reptiles for children, other lizards, tortoises and some snakes are great too. Speak to your local vet or reptile specialist for more advice. And if we do decide to get a reptile as a pet in the future then I’ll be sure to tell you all about it!

- Sarah 1 Comment

Living Arrows 37/52

It’s week 37 of the I Heart Snapping Living Arrows project which must mean another week has gone by. I was still off work for most of the week but my police check came through on Thursday so I was back in school on Friday (although happily we only have a half day on a Friday!).

Toby has still been going to nursery although a couple of days I kept him at home until after his morning nap to make sure he got some sleep and to try and help him get over his cold. Naps are a bit hit and miss at nursery – at home he still has two long naps (up to three hours sometimes!) but at nursery we’re lucky if he gets two 45 minute naps. I’m glad he is at least getting some daytime sleep but it really isn’t as much as he needs.

Anyway, his cold does seem to be improving which is a relief – he seems to have had it forever! We’ve had more developments this week too. Toby now waves and says ‘hiya’ when he sees us (which is adorable!) and today he managed to get himself stood up without holding on to anything (which I missed because I was out at rehearsals). Still no walking though, but he will now sometimes walk if we hold his hands which he’s never done before.

And so, to this week’s photos… I’m going to share a little series of pictures this week – when it comes to weaning we’ve done a mixture of baby led and traditional weaning (you can read about it here if you’re interested) but I will admit that for my own sanity we have tended to spoon feed Toby anything he can’t pick up without making tons of mess. At 14 months though I think it’s probably time he starts learning how to use a spoon himself so seeing as he was getting a bath straight after tea tonight I let him have a go with his yoghurt (admittedly I only gave him the pot and spoon once it was nearly empty!). As you can see he didn’t quite get it right straight away but he figured it out pretty quickly. Honestly, I am amazed every day at the moment at how clever Toby is and just how quickly he picks things up. I just can’t wait to see what he gets up to this week…

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- Sarah 2 Comments

Everything in moderation

I haven’t joined in with The Prompt (a wonderful linky from mumturnedmom) for absolutely ages but when I saw this week’s prompt [well, last week’s prompt by the time I’ve got round to writing this!] it immediately made me think it would be something I’d like to write about, because it is something which I struggle with every day.

Everything in moderation

I’ve always been an all-or-nothing kind of person. Whether it was eating my Easter eggs all in one go or listening to Babe by Take That a hundred times on repeat when I was a kid, or as an adult spending a fortune going to Tim Minchin gigs all over the country, finishing the whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s just because it’s there, or eating corned beef and salad cream sandwiches for lunch every day for five months (although that may have been a weird pregnancy thing!). Same goes for drinking (or until I had Toby at least) – I never just had one glass of wine, if I was drinking then I was getting drunk. But equally I find it relatively easy to not drink at all for months at a time, or avoid chocolate all together. I just can’t seem to get my head around enjoying just a small amount of something. I think some people just have the kind of personality where they are able to moderate their behaviour; my dad for example used to get a massive bar of Dairy Milk every Christmas and he’d still be eating it in May, a couple of squares a week. I, on the other hand, was given a 1kg bar of Dairy Milk as a leaving present from a job when I was about 23 and I ate the whole lot in about three days!

And so, enjoying everything in moderation is something I find incredibly difficult to do but it is something I’m really trying to do, especially now I’m a mum. I think ‘everything in moderation’ is important for life, particularly when it comes to food, and I really want to try and set a good example for Toby. I don’t want any foods to be ‘naughty’ or even treats. I don’t want to use food as a reward or a bribe (although I think that one might be harder to stick to!). I don’t want him to see me ‘on a diet’ (which, with my all-or-nothing personality I’m actually fairly successful with, it’s just that I tend to put all the weight back on when I’m not ‘dieting’ any more). Mostly I just want Toby to grow up with a healthy attitude to food and hopefully he can avoid all the issues I’ve had with my weight and body image over the years. Although, if the size of him now is anything to go by (he’s very long and skinny) he has inherited the same body type, and hopefully the same attitude to food and metabolism as my dad and brother – to them food is fuel, they eat when they’re hungry and can eat anything they fancy. They seem to have the built-in ‘moderation’ gene that I am sorely lacking!

So how about you? Do you find it easy to enjoy things in moderation or are you an all or nothing kind of person like me?

 

mumturnedmom
- Sarah 3 Comments

Living Arrows 36/52

Last week was a strange week – on Monday morning I was sent home from school when the HR department realised I was working when they hadn’t had my updated police check (the school hadn’t realised I shouldn’t have started work without it. And now I’m not allowed to go back until it comes through, which means I was off work for the rest of the week and might be off for all of this week too! I didn’t want to disrupt Toby’s nursery routine seeing as he seems to have settled in so well so I’ve still been taking him, although not quite as early as I have to when I’m at work.

Toby seems to have developed even more quickly than normal during his three weeks at nursery – he has been pulling himself up to standing since we were on holiday at the beginning of June, but this week has been the first time he’s actually let go and stood on his own for more than about half a second! He’s also started trying to cruise round the furniture more. He still won’t even entertain the idea of trying to walk if we hold his hands though, he just sits down if we even try!

We’ve also been getting much more babbling that is more of an actual effort to communicate – Toby has started saying ‘diss’ when he picks something up and I’m convinced he is trying to say ‘this’  He suddenly seems to understand so much more too – if you hold your hand out and say ‘ta’ he’ll give you whatever he’s got (or even tries to put something in your hand when he isn’t actually holding anything!), he definitely understands ‘no’ and is starting to remember and learn when he’s not allowed to touch something. He’s also been working out what to do with his shape sorter this week, and a few other puzzles too. My favourite one this week has got to have been when I was getting him dressed the other morning – his socks were next to him and he picked one up and put it on his foot! Alright, he didn’t actually put the sock on but he put it on top of his foot and he clearly knew what it was and where it was supposed to go.

Amidst all this exciting progress though Toby has still got a cold (he’s had it a full two weeks now). Not only is he still very snotty but he’s now got a cough too and has had a temperature all weekend. I kept him home from nursery on Friday and had him checked out at the doctors but his chest and his ears are clear so there’s not much we can do except keep him dosed up on Calpol and ride it out. On top of all that the last of his first molars is still coming through and so that’s been bothering him too! I feel so sorry for him, it must be miserable being ill and not really knowing what’s going on. Fingers crossed he manages to shake it off next week.

Anyway, this has been a bit of a long update for what is supposed to be a photography post so I’ll leave it there and share this milestone photo with you – here’s Toby standing all by himself! (And wearing his first proper shoes too – I know he isn’t walking yet but he kept getting wet feet in the garden at nursery).

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living arrows
- Sarah 2 Comments

Living Arrows 35/52

Another week gone, and the second week at work and nursery for me and Toby. My second week at work wasn’t quite as bad as the first (but I’m still counting down the days to the holidays!) and Toby has settled in so well at nursery. There is one downside to all the fun and freedom he’s having at nursery though – Toby really doesn’t like being in his play pen any more and would much rather be crawling around the living room and kitchen causing chaos! His favourite things at the moment seem to be turning the PlayStation on, pulling all his books off the shelves and trying to get his hands on all the remote controls, phones and anything else with buttons or wires! I love that he’s so inquisitive and always exploring but it isn’t half tiring trying to keep up with him.

I had the camera out for about fifteen minutes the other day and got so many photos of Toby that I couldn’t choose just one, so here’s a few of my favourites…

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- Sarah 1 Comment

Me & Mine: A Family Portrait (August 2014)

August has been a month of big changes – two weeks ago I went back to work full time after over 13 months of maternity leave and so Toby started nursery full time. The hardest thing for me (apart from dealing with unruly teenagers!) has to be going from being with Toby all day to only seeing him for about an hour on week days. Luckily he does seem to be enjoying nursery which makes it easier but it’s still not the same as being at home with him all the time. It means as well that we really need to make the most of our family time together at the weekends.

A couple of weeks ago we decided to go for a walk along a short section of the Fife Coastal Path near to where we live. It was lovely to get out in the fresh air and have a bit of a change of scenery. At the end of the section of path we walked we came upon the ruin of St Bridget’s Kirk which is where we took this month’s Me & Mine photograph, looking out over the Firth of Forth (you can just catch a glimpse of the famous Forth Rail Bridge in the background). I’ve lived here 11 years now and never walked along this path before but we’re definitely going to try and explore a bit further when we get the chance.

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- Sarah 5 Comments

One week down, forty-four to go!

44 weeks to go

That’s right. I’ve been back at work a week and I’m counting down the weeks until the summer holidays already! In fact, I’m actually only counting down the days until our next day off (only 13 more school days until we get a Monday holiday, then it’s only another 24 school days until we get a week off in October). I know teachers get a lot of holidays, but believe me, we need them!

My first week back at work was far from plain sailing. Actually, it was pretty bloody awful. Quite aside from the fact that I had to wake Toby up two hours earlier than normal, leave him at nursery for nine and a half hours a day and only see him for an hour before it’s bedtime, work itself has not been an enjoyable experience.

[I apologise now but the rest of this post is a bit of a rant and a moan…thanks if you decide to keep reading, I just need to get it off my chest!]

To start with, I only got the job in the middle of the summer holidays so until in-service day last Monday the only time I had been in the school was for my interview. I didn’t know my timetable or what classes I would be getting, I hadn’t seen my classroom, I didn’t know who I would be working with or any of the school policies or procedures. What I also found out on the first day was that I was replacing a teacher who had been suspended under a cloud of scandal three weeks before the end of last term. What that meant was that her classes hadn’t been taught for the last three weeks (and in Scotland that is important, in secondary school the timetable changes in June and everyone moves up a year so the last few weeks of term are the start of new classes). There was no handover about where the pupils were up to or what to expect from each class as I would expect when starting at a new school. It also meant the classroom I moved into was in a state of disarray – it seemed the teacher I replaced just shoved all her paperwork, resources, even dirty dishes and rubbish, under the desk! It was so bad I couldn’t get my feet under the desk to sit at it.

And so, on Tuesday I had to face my first classes with very little clue as to what I was doing. No-one had really had time on the in-service day to explain the school’s discipline policy so when I had to deal with poor behaviour (and unfortunately there was a lot of it) I didn’t know what options I had available to me. Every school has different ways of dealing with bad behaviour – issuing ‘punishment exercises’ (lines to you and me) is common in Scotland but this school doesn’t have them. They do use detentions but in my experience in the last week the kids aren’t really bothered if they get a detention, it’s only 10 minutes of their break time anyway.

As a new teacher I would always expect the kids to push me a bit to say what they can get away with but some of the classes I had to attempt to teach last week were horrendous – kids refusing to stop talking, constantly shouting out, not following instructions, not doing anything they’d been asked to do, ignoring warnings and punishments…. and I didn’t feel like I had any support to deal with them. On Wednesday night I came home and burst into tears because it had been so horrible.

I like being a teacher, I really do. And I know that managing the kids’ behaviour is part and parcel of that but there is a limit to just how much rude and disruptive behaviour I can cope with. After four years of teaching in some very deprived areas I am used to poor behaviour often from kids with lots of issues who get no support or structure at home, but even so I was astounded at just how bad some of the behaviour I saw last week was. And, even more so since I’ve had Toby, I just don’t want the stress of spending most of my day in a state of conflict with pupils who have no interest in learning a modern language, or even any interest in being in school at all.

I will admit that my week did improve slightly on Thursday and Friday and it turns out I do actually have a few nice classes. I’ve found out a bit more about the school discipline policy and so feel slightly better equipped to deal with poor behaviour. The other two languages teachers are nice and have been doing their best to help me. And I’ve managed to clear up the desk (to a degree) and can now at least get my legs underneath it!

So, things are already looking a bit better than they were last week. There’s still a long way to go before I’m really settled in but I’m not despairing quite as much as I was. And at the very worst, it’s only 44 weeks (and counting) until the summer holidays!

- Sarah 4 Comments

Living Arrows 34/52

Last week was my first week back at work and if I’m honest it was pretty awful! I’m going to try and find time to write another post about that though, seeing as this Living Arrows post is supposed to be all about Toby! He has been an absolute star this week; his first full week at nursery. He has coped with being woken up two hours before he normally gets up – he’s going to bed earlier too but has still missed out on a lot of sleep this week. At home he usually still has two naps a day, usually at least an hour each and often over two hours. At nursery the most he has managed is two one hour naps, and there have been a couple of days when he’s only had about half an hour all day! I’m hoping as he gets more used to it he’ll manage to stay asleep a bit longer.

Apart from the sleep thing though he’s doing great. He’s eating really well, doing lots of good playing and despite the fact he’s still teething there have been very few tears all week. He has managed to catch his first nursery cold though so he’s been pretty miserable all weekend with that.

Anyway, what with work and nursery there’s not been much time for photo taking this week so this one is just one Barry took on his phone. Even though he is coming home knackered and is still suffering with his teeth our little bear nearly always manages to find a smile…

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- Sarah 2 Comments

Living Arrows 33/52

I feel like this is all I ever say, but it’s been another week of teething here. Toby now has his two first molars half through on the top, a corner of one of the bottom ones and the other bottom one on its way so he’s been pretty miserable. And he’s been waking up in the night a lot too which is no fun for anyone.

Toby turned 13 months old last week as well but I’ve decided not to do monthly updates any more. Although I did get him weighed and measured when he got his vaccinations last week – he’s 24lb 10oz which puts him above the 75th centile (a massive jump considering he was in the 9th when he was born), and at 84cm he is still off the top of the height charts! Other than that there haven’t been many changes since I wrote his one year update – still no walking but I’m sure that will come when he’s ready.

So, to this week’s Living Arrows photo. This one when we were out for a walk on Saturday to a local gala/fun day thing (although it wasn’t that much fun!). As you can see, Toby wasn’t too impressed either….

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