It’s half term and, where I’d usually be filled with fear about how we were going to spend the time, keep busy and not just waste it looking out at the rain, struggling to muster up enough motivation to make a cup of tea, I’m actually really looking forward to this week.
I think the reason is because Millie (apart from Wednesday) will still be at nursery each day.
I don’t mean that to sound unfair to Millie. Since Millie was born, I’ve not had much opportunity for mother and son bonding. The odd day or trip to the park just the two of us or, more often, a trip to the supermarket (whoop whoop) while Millie naps at home with Daddy.
Therefore, I’m really looking forward to having fun with my boy and re-establishing the mother and son bond and thought it would be a good blogging opportunity write about our daily half-term activities.
It wont all be just the two of us, we have play dates with my niece and an old nursery friend of his in the pipeline but there’ll be plenty of bonding time.
I had intended to be proactive at making plans and to go out every day but I failed that on day one! The shopping was planned to arrive in the morning and when the weather is grey and wet (like it was today) I really struggle to get motivated to go out in the afternoons. But not all was lost and I think Callum really enjoyed our activity!
It started with the words “Can I keep this to make something with it” as Callum poured the last of a packet of cereal into his breakfast bowl and waved the empty box around.
Now I love the ‘idea’ of crafting! I love sparkly glitter and the opportunity to be creative but the reality of crafting with children rarely meets expectations. I’m too much of a control freak and lose interest when Callum doesn’t see my ‘vision’ of what I thought we were going to create. Oh, ok, I also struggle to just ‘let go’ when the silver glitter gets mixed in with the gold glitter and he decides to use EVERY feather in the brand new pack, and no don’t put blue paint all over the lovely pretty picture you’ve just created, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make it ‘rain’! (there were a lot of ‘…’ words in that paragraph!)
However, today went well. As we were scrolling through ideas on the ipad, Callum spotted a guitar and I thought, actually, why the hell not!? I had an empty tube from wrapping paper too, I had wool, we could paint it – this could work!
There was enough ‘grown up’ bits that only I could do to meet my control freak fix plus enough that he could do on his own to nurture his creative flair. I’m also keen to encourage anything music related, whether for real or role play (yes, I hope to live my dreams through my child and yes, I do hope he’ll make us millions one day).
Even better, I got to ‘try’ to teach him how to finger knit and also attempt to teach him how to play cats cradle (we didn’t get past the third step and then he lost interest) so more opportunity to regress for me.
Callum was chuffed with the result of his guitar and then enjoyed putting on a concert for me, pretending to play along to the CD player. Thankfully, no rock-star style guitar smashing moments – I think I would’ve cried and vowed never to craft again!
Aside from guitar making, we also had fun doing orange peel smiles and learning about dinosaurs for his homework book – Callum drew a picture and wrote how we are going to London to see dinosaurs. Future dinosaur related craft to come!
Tomorrow my niece, Sofia, is coming over and Stuart has the afternoon off work. Hoping to be able to squeeze in bread making and go to see The Lego Movie at the cinema. Will be back to blog about it tomorrow!
Happy Half Term Adventures All!