Hello everyone! There’s been a lot of work behind the scenes as I’ve been working on making this a self-hosted site for most of the last month. However, in the meantime, there has been some exciting news! I’ve had a bit of help too…(she literally discovered how to change photos using the space bar. I didn’t even know that worked!)
Continue reading “Vote for me at the Parent and Baby Show Blogger Awards!”
I’m going to be honest. The last couple of months have been full of ‘Milestone moments‘ in our family life so far. I’ll see if I can retrospectively remember them all in other posts, but the idea of these posts is to mark the occasions I know I’d otherwise forget!
Bea has always been pretty headstrong when it comes to getting about. She has been attempting to walk for what feels like a couple of months now, and gets incredibly frustrated if our backs are caving in and we take a break to stop holding her hands whilst she legs it round the house, giggling maniacally. However, rolling and crawling haven’t really been part of her agenda till recently.
It was a bit of a surprise to get a message of ‘So, she’s crawling’ on Thursday lunchtime (day #303 by the way)!
More importantly, Beatrice was very happy to show off her skills when I got home!
#gamechanger
She’s not quite going at the pace I read recently (a quarter of a mile in the time it takes to make a cup of tea…really?!), so we’ve got a bit of time to adjust to her newly-discovered talent! More on that later…
On Sunday I set myself four blogging goals. Here is the first one (I didn’t say I’d do them in order!) for the week. Hopefully I can get around to blogging more regularly.
The timing of this is actually somewhat coincidental. Since signing up to WordPress, I’ve been following the odd parent blogger that has been kind enough to like finding out about our little parenting adventure. There are around 20 of you out there following at the moment, so thanks for stopping by and having a look!
One of the people I’ve been reading is This Tiny Blue House, and their recent post on digital citizenship struck a chord here.Maybe it’s the fact we’re both teachers that makes us slightly more aware/cautious about our digital footprints. I tried leaving a wordy comment on her blog, but the internet decided to disagree with me, so I guess a blog post is the next best thing!
With this blog, I decided from the off that I didn’t want to show any full pictures of Beatrice until she was able to decide that she wanted her photos to be on here. I can’t say completely why, but it just felt like the right thing to do. In a few years she’ll know that this blog is part of her life and may want to go back through where it all started (I know I’d be curious!). Already just putting the odd (granted, fairly unique) tag into Google images reveals quite the digital trail!
I’m equally aware that this isn’t a foolproof goal. We share pictures of her on Facebook with family and friends, and like many have closed groups for sharing day-to-day ones. This is obviously a bit hypocritical, but there is a relative control over what is shared there. We’ve never been big sharers online and this is just an extension of that I suppose.
#SaferInternetDay
Today is also ‘Safer Internet Day’ which is generally aimed at preparing children for their life as a digital citizen. As I said, the timing of this post is actually coincidental, but it has thrown up some interesting things, such as the word ‘sharenting’ and some valid concerns from children themselves. Firstly, ‘sharenting’ is a great word by the way! Even if it seems to be attached to negative connotations, it’s a brilliant portmanteau.
It’s thrown up some interesting statistics too (albeit not terribly scientific), which made me think about the children I work with. It’s something I will definitely discuss with them.
You can read more here if you like. By the way, I’m not criticising anyone who does any ‘sharenting’. Most of the photos I see online are positive, and way better than anything I seem to manage with our camera (maybe that’s it, my photos just aren’t up to scratch…). Children are growing up with this being commonplace, and generally know what could happen to a photo of themselves online. I guess it comes down to your own attitude towards it with your children as to whether it has potential to be positive or negative. Either way, I will continue to take countless photos of our girl growing up and equally look for photos of those little moments that I can share with you! Please go and have a look at the discussion Jenny has generated on her post above, or feel free to comment on here too. Blog goal 1 of 4 achieved. Phew!
Baby names. One of the most difficult things to decide. Names are powerful things and what’s worse is that you, as parents, are totally responsible for choosing them. Do you go down the ‘Top 100 Baby Names for 2016/2017′ route? Top baby boys’ names beginning with Q? Traditional names, modern names, family names – they all feature, and we certainly went through a fairly extensive list (including at least 3 baby naming books). Like most people, we had our shortlists. In fact, we had a boy’s name ready. We also had a fairly long list of girls’ names.
Even at the time, at least 24 hours after she was born we still weren’t 100%.
Now, she totally is Beatrice. Or Bea-bea. Or Bea. Or little Bea to her cousin. We love her name, and she loves to hear all the different variations!
However, back to the title. Despite our happiness with her actual name, it’s almost certainly only in the top five, maybe top ten names we regularly call her. No-one tells you that you not only get to choose someone’s name, but you are also the sole creator of their pet names, nicknames and other loving terms of endearment.
I’ve also noticed a bit of a pattern forming in terms of the names I call her, so I wanted to share this little ‘Baby Name Generator’ with you. It’s fairly simple, take a word from the first list, and follow it with a word from the second one. It’s not exhaustive, but certainly covers a lot of her names!
List 1:
Wriggle / Cheeky / Little / Happy / Gorgeous / Bouncy / Cutie
List 2:
Bottom / Pie / Girlie / Baby /Monkey / Monster / Pops
Okay, so maybe ‘Gorgeous Bottom’ doesn’t work. I’d love to see your pet names in the comments, they can really stem from almost nothing and have no meaning to anyone but your little family unit- which is exactly as it should be!Big thanks to all of you who read the last post. It was my most successful to date! If you’ve seen the last couple of posts, you may have noticed a Tots 100 logo appear at the bottom. This is a site that lists the top UK parenting blogs. I’m a long way off of that at the moment, but the more views, likes and reach the posts get, the further I could go up the list- curse my inner competitive streak! I’ll let you know in February how I’m getting on (your position gets updated monthly). Enjoy your weekend!
So, we’ve made it through to the holidays (in terms of the blog at least)! That takes the pressure off of these late night postings, so hopefully the last few memories of the run-up to Beatrice’s first Christmas will be easier to get documented. That is if I don’t spend the whole time having a giggle with her! She’s definitely a bit of a thrill-seeker already. A sure-fire way of getting a chuckle is to swing her (carrying her a bit like a rugby ball) towards either myself or Lucy, or as I found out to my detriment, being held and then dropping down to a squat from standing (and naturally, back up again and repeated to get more giggles!).
Anyway, the day started off with something I hope isn’t going to become a Beacember tradition with the car refusing to work. Silver lining of that was I got to see Bea awake before I left, and I also got a lift in with the awesome duo! It also meant I got to see them earlier as usual as I got picked up as well, bonus!
Onto day 15 then, what was that tissue paper all about? It was in fact this stunning bauble from Bea! Lucy had been making secret trips to Dotty Pottery, which is a local ceramics studio and gave this to me about a week ago. It’s so cool and shiny! It’s also a way better handprint of Beatrice than any of the ones I’ve tried to do (I’ll explain more once the Christmas rush is over and done with). I was totally surprised, and can’t wait to put it on the tree!
Tomorrow is the first one where I’ve felt a little underprepared, so here’s the photo to get you thinking!
You've Got All This To Come 