Parenting Younger Children

Should I Worry About My Child’s Height?

How to monitor your child's growth

When I was pregnant with my son all his scans showed him to be an average sized baby. When he was born he was placed on the 50th percentile. By his 6-week check-up he was down to 2.5%. That’s when I started to panic – was I failing to nurture my baby properly? In this blog post I’m going to look at child growth and development from the experts’ point of view, and help parents figure out what is normal growth rate for your child. As new parents we all focus hard on every tiny development in our children. The …

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The Bug: now you are 10

I don’t often do these posts. Marking an age never seems to be any more poignant than the other things I want to write about our lives, and I’d rather write when the mood takes me. But this week the mood does take me, and I can’t let your birthday pass without comment. Because you’re amazing. You know that, right? Do I tell you enough? I try to, because although I laugh about it, it bothers me that you know that there are 32 photos of your sister, and only 23 of you. It’s that classic parent thing of being …

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What Santa said to the Tooth Fairy

What Santa said to the Tooth Fairy

I know we’re well into January now, and by rights I should be posting recipies involving brown rice, or decluttering tips. Heck, it’s even too late for New Year resolutions now! Which it just as well, because I didn’t make any… I’m terrifically tardy, but I’m going to bend your ear about Christmas, because really, this is one conversation I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share. What Santa said to the Tooth Fairy Prologue A week before Christmas, the wobbly tooth began to feature. Apples and carrots were requested, not to store up for the reindeer, but to force …

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What to get a nine year old for her birthday!

By Helen and GG… Helen: We’re back, and this week’s Ask GG is on the issue that is closest to my daughter’s heart. Stuff. More precisely, stuff for her – stuff she has, stuff she wants, stuff she thinks she wants, and stuff that no self-respecting parent would ever let their child be without. In the opinion of a 9 year old. Which is, after all, the point of the post.  GG: This post is based on what Donna from little Lilypad Co and PinkOddy (who needs ideas for a ten year old) said in their comments. Once again this is …

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Ask GG: Recommended reading list for 9 year olds

Last week we introduced a new feature, Ask GG, where readers get to ask anything they like, and I will give you the definitive answer – according to me. We were inundated with questions, so thank you. I will pick a few each week and post my answers on a Wednesday. This week I have chosen to answer the questions of Anna, from In the Playroom, and Kate, at Crafts on Sea, who both wanted recommendations for a reading list for 9 year olds who are good readers. Remember that I had been chastised for hiding a book under my maths coursework when I …

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Project 365 #01: Love Bombing

By The Bug (mostly) We started joining in with Project 365 – taking and publishing a photo a day – at The Boy and Me in 2011. We tried, but failed to keep going, consistency not always a guarantee with us. Sensibly, we didn’t even sign up in 2012, but as this blog has become more successful, we have increased our brand-related posts, at the expense of some of the anecdotal stories of our family life. That is a shame. And so 2014 sees us joining in again. Just one photo each week. Sometimes with a story behind it, sometimes …

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I took the Savage Challenge. Will you?

Would we take the savage challenge and eat the grasshoppers?   Today sees the start of the Savage Challenge blogger book tour, and I’m delighted to kick off the challenge by telling you a little bit about both the tour, and the book which inspired it. Over the next 20 days, 20 fabulous bloggers will be setting you a #savagechallenge. Read on to discover the theme for today’s challenge. Discover the Savage World The book itself is the kind of read that children won’t notice they’re reading – even reluctant readers very quickly start to find themselves immersed in discovering …

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Reasons to be Cheerful and Thankful Thursday

Mummy is very cheerful, or so she says. I fail to see it somehow. What is it about grown-ups that makes them cry when they are happy. Grown-ups are just not normal. Take me: happy = smile; sad =cry, or at the very least grumble. Grown-ups just have a very upside-down view of the world, don’t you think? But she says she is happy. Happy and thankful, so I guess somewhere in that weird old-lady mind of hers she must be. The Bug (who started school in September and is now 4 and a half) brought home reading books today. …

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Reasons to be Cheerful & I am Grateful for…

There are so many this week I can hardly choose, so I’ll make it brief and list the ones that come into my mind first: 1. My Birthday: That’s just about the most cheerful I can possibly get! In fact I was so cheerful that I forgot to have a tantrum for the whole day! The same cannot be said for the Bug, who whined all day that he just wanted one more present…..! 2. Craft: To keep me busy! My friends all bought me craft for my birthday. I love this kind of thing! And the really great thing is that I am …

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#PassitOn – I’m Grateful For…

Check out the other Gallery entries here. I pester a lot. I try not to, I try to be grateful for what I have, but there’s just so much delicious stuff out there that it’s really difficult to pretend I don’t want it. So when Mummy asked me to stop and think about what I am grateful for I had to mentally change tack. Mummy tried to get me started by telling me what matters to her, but that was too predictable for me: me and the Bug, Daddy, health, a nice house, etc. Actually, once I got going it …

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I need to get out more.

By GG, aged 6 I am quite a busy girl. Aside from the fact that Mummy commandeers an unreasonable amount of my leisure time for such activities as clearing the table, putting my shoes away, brushing my teeth, and going to the toilet before we leave the house, I also have quite a number of other commitments to keep up with. For starters, I am attempting a school record for how many playdates I can fit into just half a term. So far I’m doing quite well, although the Bug has recently started adding his own social engagements to the diary, which …

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