I didn’t ever quite get around to posting my Summer Bucket List Post, but one thing that I’ve had in my mind that I wanted to do with Darcie was to go strawberry picking. I don’t think I’ve ever been specifically to strawberry fields before but I’ve always thought it seemed like a lovely family outing so wanted to make sure we made it happen and maybe it will even become a family tradition. We live quite close to Pickwell Farm where you can go and pick your own strawberries among many other fruits and vegetables so it seemed like too good of an opportunity to miss.  (more…)

It can be very hard to find family days out when you have an under one year old. Lots of kid friendly places don’t really cater for the crawlers and the non movers, and I for one will spend ages trawling the internet for ideas and reviews of places we want to go before deciding if it’s worth it for us and whether or not there will actually be things for Darcie to join in with. She is now 14 months but we first started going to Paultons park when she was around 7 months and so I thought writing about our experiences could help someone with an under one who is deliberating about going. (more…)

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock, or you don’t have children and you don’t read blogs, in which case you probably didn’t mean to stumble onto my page, you’ll probably have come across the phenomenon that is ‘The Mummy Blogger’. It’s become a total 21st century cliche for women to have a baby and start a blog. I should know, that’s exactly what I did. I read somewhere that there are around eleven thousand parenting blogs in the UK at the moment and there are more appearing daily. But where have we all come from? Why are we suddenly springing up, sharing our lives with the internet and expecting anyone to care what we have to say? (more…)

One of my favourite quotes that is quite often written in beautiful calligraphy and hung up on nursery walls is ‘Let them be little, let them be wild’. I don’t want this to be something that I just frame for Darcie and put on the wall, I really want to make this a motto for how we raise our own little wild child. I want to raise Darcie to be free, to run wild, to finish the day with knots in her hair, dirt on her feet and a crazy sparkle in her eyes. I want to encourage her curiosity and I want every day to be an adventure. When I look back at my childhood I think of spending time outdoors, of exploring and of being creative. This is what I want for Darcie, I don’t want her to be glued to the television, finding all of her joy in CBeebies, I want her to be outside whatever the weather. I want us to go strawberry picking in the Summer and splashing in the puddles in the Winter. I want us to go on treasure hunts through the forest and shell collecting on the beach. I want her to feel free, to not be afraid of the world around her but to feel a part of it. (more…)

I don’t think I’d ever heard of a tongue tie until we were told that Darcie had one. It’s not something I’d thought to research which is why I thought I would share our experience to help any other parents out there who are expecting a baby soon or who have been told their baby has one and are making the decision about whether or not to have it cut. (more…)

This feels like Dan’s first Father’s Day, we hardly celebrated the day last year as we were still very much in the frazzled newborn haze. I managed to organise a card for him but I think that’s where the festivities began and ended. So this year I want to do it properly, I want him to know how much we appreciate his hard work and commitment to his role as Darcie’s Daddy. So this ones for you Dan, maybe this will be the first of my posts that you read to the end… (more…)