Each Piece Tells A Story

So - guess who's started sleeping in a big boy bed?

No, not Mick, he still has to share one with me (ha! ). No, no, at the tender age of almost-20 months we have decided the time is right to put Flynn into a " big boy bed ". No more cot, and no graduation to a toddler bed ( i cant justify the cost of a toddler bed... ) - just straight from cot into a standard sized single bed. A solid, retro style tubular bed, which has long ago been repainted blue. Why "long ago " and "repainted ", you ask? Because Flynns very funky new big boy bed used to be.... mine. Its been recycled and repurposed, thanks to the very generous donation of my parents and my sister ( who previously had it in the spare room of her old flat ).

Ignore all the spare blankets and bags of clothes stashed under the new big boy bed....

This bed started out life as a set of steel tubular style bunk beds, in a lovely, girly fairy floss pink ( as was chosen by my parents. I've never been much of a pink girl myself ). When i outgrew the novelty of bunk beds my very handy Dad decided to be thrifty, took the bunks out to the garage and, using an angle grinder and some precise measurement, sliced the bunk bed in half - resulting into two solid single beds. Not being a super fan of pink - and being a moody girl in her early teens by this time - i chose to repaint them blue. And now almost 15 years later, one of those repurposed bunk beds has ended back in my possession, and is a very reliable ( if not slightly pink flecked in places ) first big boy bed for my little man. Hows that for recycling?

A little toy corner - a mini wheely bin full of stuff, plus a book shelf of plush toys...

And hey - it may not be the coolest piece of very retro, almost vintage furniture to ever see the light of day, but at least it has a heartwarming story....

Knives and Forks and (S)poons...

So - my normally voraciously appetited son went through a stage last month where no matter what i tried to give him for his dinner, it was being thrown off his plate ( or the spoon knocked from my hand ) and onto the floor. He went from being a baby who would eat pretty much anything to a squirming, screaming, messmaker who was refusing food he loved only the day before. Out of exasperation i started giving him a sandwich, some cheese and some fruit for his dinners, but i knew that the scrimping on the vegies couldnt last too long. To be quite frank, dinner time was doing my head in. Mick and I, being first time parents, had no idea what the bloody hell was happening but we sure as hell knew we needed to put a stop to it ASAP. So, as a first time parent, how do you figure this type of conundrum out? You ask your other, older, wiser mummies. And, thanks to my wonderful work colleague, "Aunty " J, we found a solution....we eat at the table, at the same time.

Mr Flynn, munching on a strawberry...

I know - you're reading this now going " uh...duh Amy! " and yes, in retrospect, it all seems so simple to me too. See, i was feeding Flynn on his own, and then Mick was giving him a bath while I cooked our dinner. Even though he was refusing his own food ( the same yummy chicken-and-rice, stir fries and spaghettis that he's always enjoyed ) Flynn would then happily totter over to us while we were eating and demanding stuff off our plates. I explained all this to J and she just looked at me and smiled and said " He's a big boy now - he wants to eat with you ". Doi! Of course he does! Flynns been able to say " big boy " for about a month now and has been doing all kinds of other " big boy " things, like bing allowed in Daddy's garage or being able to walk into the shops ( very slowly ) holding my hand.... of course he wanted to eat at the table with the grown ups. So that night i went home, cleared off the end of our dining table ( yes, we're guilty of eating in front of the tv watching "Neighbours" instead of using the table... ) and proceeded to cook dinner at a time suitable for us all to eat together. That was last Monday, and we've had a blissful week of Flynn eating most of his dinner and throwing none of it on the floor.

Most nights he's eaten the same meal as us ( except when its been a bit spicy ) and he's going really well. I give him a little bowl of stir fry ( for eg ) and he sits quite contentedly, picking up chunks of chicken and bits of vegies and gulping it all down with copious amounts of milk. I even gave him his own little plastic fork last night, just to see how he went...and he was stabbing the little chunks of meat like a total pro! You know, except that he holds the fork like a tiny caveman and has no table manners whatsoever... even better, Flynn even asked for more vegies! He'd picked out all the capsicum and beans in the bowl and was left only with chicken. When he saw me eating a bean he pointed and grunted and i asked him " Do you want some vegies? " and he points again and goes " bej- ees! ". So now, not only do i have a child who is eating his dinner without throwing it AND is interested in starting to learn to use forks and spoons ( or " poons " as he calls them ) but i have a 15 month old who wants more vegies.

Toddlers - they're so weird!