"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

I've been sneaking in lots of spelling and phonics games into mine and Opeie's afternoons recently and he seems to be picking things up very quickly now. We've started playing a game each morning with Opeie's wooden Bigjigs Chunky Alphabet Puzzle which always has us laughing. I pick a letter from the board and Opeie gives me a word beginning with that letter. Before he gives me the word he's actually thinking of he laughs and gives me a word ending in 'at', he thinks this is hilarious especially when it comes to the words that don't make sense, 'Jat', 'Wat' and 'Zat' etc.

We've had some great words during our games and for a three year old he's come a long way, Dog has been replaced with 'disappointed' (which I thought was great) and words like question, Rhinoserous and Unicorn are becoming more frequent, he seems to have a great vocabulary for his age.

Last week when we were playing I picked up the letter 'N' and after the initial 'Nat' with a giggle Opeie very confidently said 'Nazi'. I was a little shocked but just took it as one of those odd times when kids are experimenting with their words. Like one time when we were driving to Nanny and Grandads, Opeie was sitting in the back saying Rock, sock, dock, Lock... Inevitably it was going to get to two of the words we didn't want him repeating to Grandad, and then "Fock". Stupid me said "don't say that Opeie" which was a bad move as the remainder of the journey to see my lovely in laws included an awkward 10 minutes of "fock, fock, fock" resonating from the back of the car.

Anyway back to our alphabet game and a few days later we reached 'N' again, 'Nat' passed with a chuckle and again I was greeted with an awkward 'Nazi'. I couldn't shake an image of a Hitler youth poster I had seen many years ago that had freaked me out and half expecting 'H for Hitler' or 'G for Goebbels' to be next, I asked Opeie where he had got Nazi from? In an adorable and very innocent way he just smiled and said "you know! Nazi, like in the bake off!" (he loves the bake off). I will get round to telling Opeie all about our history but for now his mispronunciation of 'Nancy' is so much more entertaining.

"I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes."

Many of my posts are written about a single event, somewhere we've been, something we've built and sometimes something we are reviewing. Throughout the day though there are a whole bunch of things that we do aside from the boring housework to keep us entertained. Sometimes I feel a little like Hugh Grant's character from 'about a boy' thinking of the day as units of time, each unit lasting no longer than 30 minutes. "Full hours can be a little intimidating and most activities take about half an hour" (before Opeie starts losing interest anyway).

Today was one of those days crammed with mini activities, each as I said lasting no longer than 30 minutes...

Activity 1: a good old fashioned wrestle, all that pent up aggression and anger that builds up as a 2 year old unleashed on to a poor unsuspecting dad.

Activity 2: learning our alphabet. I'm quite sure I've got it down to a T but there's no harm in practising.

Activity 3: working on our creativity, Opeie informed me as soon as we had dropped Seth off that today he wanted to do some painting, which is great. Today's masterpiece was 'the cat in the hat! and the thingamajigger. Which spurred on activity 4.

Activity 4: watching an episode of 'the cat in the hat knows a lot about that', which gave us an idea for a craft activity that we will be doing tomorrow as disorganised daddy doesn't have any glue in the house (oops).

Activity 5: still feeling in a Dr Seuss mood and being quite excited about me finding one of his favourite books that had been missing for a while, Opeie asked if we could read 'Gerald Mcboing boing', while fetching his book though he spotted another of his favourite books, the one I wrote for Mrs M as part of my proposal. This then became half an hour of reading.

Activity 6: bath time, a little paint was spilled and Opeie was sweaty from the wrestling so we had a bath. The super heroes joined us and took it in turns to have their faces and bottoms washed (Opeie is a funny thing).

And all of this before lunch time, just goes to show how much you can do in a few hours. After lunch it was time to pick up Mrs M and then Seth and that brings me to now, sitting in the car waiting to walk up to the playground before starting our 30 minute units of time for this afternoon which so far looks like it is going to consist of blackberry picking, tea, possibly Lego (because we fit it in where we can) and cuddles before bed.

"P for pneumonia, pterodactyl and psychosis"

When we became play patrol agents for Bigjigs Toys one of the wooden toys I really hoped we would be lucky enough to review was the Chunky Alphabet Puzzle as we're teaching Opeie his letters. He's been able to say his alphabet for months but he doesn't understand which letter is which so you can imagine our excitement when we opened our recent mission and found the item inside. We took the Alphabet puzzle with us on our travels yesterday and enlisted the help of an outside agent, auntie Lottie.

I knew that Opeie would like it and its already been played with a lot. I'm really hoping that it will help his understanding of letters over the coming weeks. We've been working on Opeies colours too over the last two weeks so I was pleased to see that Bigjigs Toys had colour coded the wooden blocks to go with the spaces in the alphabet board, on the board they had also included the lower case letters in each slot which I thought was a great touch.

As much as we loved the toy there was one or should I say two issues. Not with the toy on the whole but with the letters 'K' and 'Z', both of these letters only fit one way Round which probably seems like an I significant issue but for a two year old learning his letters via a wooden puzzle it can be quite frustrating when he is expecting each piece to fit. Opeie knew that he had the right letters for the slots but they just wouldn't go in which ended up confusing for him.

Apart from this though the Chunky Alphabet Puzzle is a great toy and I wouldn't let that put me off buying something that I know would benefit Opeie's development. This item is going to become very useful as Opeie is learning and anything that keeps him motivated to learn and entertained at the same time will always be a fantastic toy in our eyes. A definite thumbs up from Gifts From the Pirates.

"Good morning, that's a nice tnetennba."

A few nights back our good friend Chris came to see us for tea and a catch up which was great. He's a lovely chap and always makes lots of effort with the boys. We did the adult chatting (and emptied a couple of bottles of wine in the process) and in the morning he came with me and Seth to Tae Kwon Do which was a nice change. Seth was eager to get home from his class though as he had been going on all night about playing countdown (our boy is so retro). As soon as we got back we were handed our pads by Mrs M, our very own Carol Vorderman...

Seth was loving it and even came up with some longer words than Chris (tut tut Chris), although he did make up for it on the maths round. We all took it in turns to be Carol and surprisingly we ended up playing for quite some time. Thanks to Youtube we even had the countdown theme to use while we were playing. I wonder what will be next on Seth's list of retro games? im really hoping it's something like Blockbusters and not Bullseye!