“You have to be odd to be number one”

I am a little bit of a book hoarder, especially with the books the boys love the most. If i see copies of the books we love in charity shops (even if we already have more than one copy), i have to buy them. That probably seems a little odd i know but they com in extremely handy for craft ideas and various activities. We used a copy of Cat in the Hat last year to make bunting for Opeie's Birthday which turned out great. Last week it was cold and wet out and i wanted to come up with some games to entertain Opeie but that were educational too.

We had a shabby looking copy of Fox in Socks that i had brought for 10p so I thought it would be fun to cut numbers out of the pages and use them for some fun games.  I'm always trying to get Opeie more familiar with his letters and numbers and thought that including images from one of his favourite books would make the activity more fun for him.

We scattered the numbers around the room and cranked the music up. Our own version of musical statues. Instead of being as still as he could i stopped the music, shouted out a number and he quickly had to run to it. I then hid the numbers around the house and told Opeie to track them down, bring them back in to the lounge and put them in order. We finished up with putting numbers together to make bigger numbers. A simple yet fun set of activities.

We've got plenty more books to cut up, i wonder what we will do with them next?

"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!

"3, that's the magic number"

Today Opeie counted to 10 for the first time and were so proud of him. We starting calling the numbers out and he copied us all the way. Mrs M had such a lovely look on her face while he was doing it, it was so cute. Opeie's speech has been coming on so well over the last few months and he comes out with new words daily so its great to know he is moving in the right direction.

I'm selfishly counting down the days until i hear the words 'daddy i love you' i think I'm going to be an emotional wreck when i hear it.