Best Lockdown Day Yet

Yesterday was a really lovely day. I'm pretty sure that's the first time since Lockdown started that I've said that. And it's rained all day!

It's come at a really good time as we have just received a call to say Cub has been added to the UK's vulnerable list - which basically means we need to take extra measures to ensure he remains home and is 'shielded' from the virus by all of us.

So to have a good day was important as we may be facing Lockdown for a lot longer than everyone else.

I asked myself what it was that made it good and I realised we had no cross words, no raised voices, and we did all of the important things.

Then it struck me. We got up at the normal time and the kids actually went to bed a little later than usual (as we kept them up to Clap for Carers at 8pm) and yet we had only done the things that had real value. Family value. We had not pushed ourselves to complete loads of school work and I had not completed any paid work.

We just did the basics and spent the rest of the day in shared activities to keep the kids amused (and in fairness, educated at the same time as I did use each as a learning exercise where I could).

So we built spider tegenariums, we watched a moth hatch from it's chrysalis, we found out how hail formed (prompted by a hail storm), we built train tracks and we baked rice pudding.

Daddy was working all day so it was just me and the three, but we enjoyed our day and all went to bed calm and happy inside.

So this is the way forward for us. Perhaps I'm finally winding down enough to see the lesson in all of this - if I focus on what really matters, spending time doing so much less can give us so much more.

WM xx

Comments

Wondermum Makes - Tegenarium - Spider House!

My Mum isn't a lover of spiders and unfortunately she passed this fear unwittingly onto Roar when he was small. She didn't want him to stay afraid and so one Christmas, she bought him a Spider House Kit. Between us we hoped he would learn about them and watch one and see they spend a lot of their time motionless and aren't really that scary. Don't get me wrong, I don't love it when a spider scuttles too close, but it's usually the shock of something scuttling into view that's more 'scary' than the spider itself. Well, that's what I tell myself anyway! We have no poisonous spiders to worry about so there really isn't anything to fear (although I know that isn't the same everywhere). We've had this Spider House Kit tucked away in a box for at least a couple of years as Roar was initially not keen. However, in Lockdown all the 'kits' are coming out and so has this one and, what's more, he's LOVED IT! He has l...

Wondermum Makes - No-Spider Tegenarium / Spiderless Spider House!

Further to my recent post, I realise not everyone loves spiders and not everyone knows where to find them or is sure if their spiders are safe. And, as we also have a toddler in our house, we needed a 'Cub Safe' version to ensure no real spiders are harmed by an excited toddler shaking their spider-house! So we decided to make a pretend spider so Cub could also be included :) To make the actual spider house, see my other post - this is just to make the fake spiders! Things You Will Need Our list included single and double-sided tape, curling ribbon, scissors, paper, black pen and optional googly-eyes :) But if you don't have all of the above, you could use glue instead of tape or double-back on itself some single sided tape to make it double-side. Curling ribbon could be string/cotton/wool etc. Your spider can be any colour so any colour paper will do or colour some in. You could even use newspaper! And if you don't have googly-eyes, you can m...

Wondermum Bakes, Makes & Creates! - Vegan Chocolate-coated Cookie Dough Balls

Further to my Kids Kitchen post, I thought I would share one of our latest efforts - vegan chocolate coated cookie dough balls - yum :) These are delicious and very moreish and crucially, something our littlest will eat. Looking at him now, he appears a cheeky chubby little cherub and looks the picture of health, but what you don't see is how difficult it has been to get calories into him with his multiple food allergies and initially severe GORD (difficulties keeping food in). So having high calorie allergy safe foods he will eat is a constantly evolving part of our journey with our Cub :) We made these two ways - initially just following a fairly basic dough recipe and then adapting it to make it more vitamin enriched so see also my second post for the vitamin enriched version. Recipe The basic recipe we adapted from one of our favourite You Tuber bakers - Cupcake Gemma - so here is a link to her original (non-vegan recipe) which we then adapted https://www.youtu...

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