To my dear Jonah It’s your third birthday tomorrow. You’re only 3 years old, but it feels like you’ve always been with me – isn’t that funny? The boy who made me a mummy. The boy who helped me learn how to be a mummy. I’ve made quite a few mistakes, but you always forgive me and love me. And I love you back, so much. Right now, we are each other’s world. You share my blood type, my air sign, and my love of pumpkins. I feel like you get me (except when you throw yourself on the floor at Tesco, yep, not then). Yet, you bring about such mixed feelings in me. I love seeing you grow, but it’s happening so fast. Each year that passes it feels like I’m saying goodbye to one little boy, and meeting another. You’re inquisitive, fun, nature and dirt loving; a definite…

Well, it’s been a while since I posted a parenting update. This is a long and somewhat cathartic post, but I hope if you have a toddler speech evaluation coming up, you’ll find it helpful. We’ve been concerned over my 2 year old son’s speech since June last year. It began at Jonah’s routine 2-year check, when our health visitor flagged a possible speech delay. After an 8 month wait, Jonah had his toddler speech evaluation. Read on to find out what happened at our appointment and learn more about the activities we were recommended to try with Jonah – they’re proving to be effective for us! Throughout, we’ve sought ways to improve his speech at home. It’s a long wait for the assessment, and a long wait for the speech therapy sessions, and we want to take every step possible to help Jonah along. It all starts at home,…

Birchfield Farm Pumpkin Festival runs from the 14th to the 15th October, and the 21st to the 31st October 2017. It is open from 10am to 4pm. The farm is in Summerbridge, a few miles out of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. It’s in the valley of Nidderdale – an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We travelled about an hour from Teesside to get to Birchfield Farm Pumpkin Festival. The Pumpkin Festival and the farm in general make a great family day out for children and adults of all ages, although those with difficulty walking may not find it easy to navigate around the farm. The day centres around the pumpkin patch, where you can pick your own pumpkins straight from the field. There are lots of family-oriented activities to take part in at the farm, and I will cover them in this review. Let’s jump straight in! Car parking at Birchfield Farm…

Stockton-on-Tees is our home town – we live just outside of the centre of Stockton in a village called Norton. Along with Billingham, it’s one of the most northerly places in Stockton borough. This year, local people have been getting really excited because the council seeded beautiful wild flowers instead of planting rigid rows of traditional bedding flowers. And they look so beautiful! And the pollinators love them! Well done council! We thought we’d take Jonah down to one of the sites on Bypass Road in Billingham to have a look since he’s very much into flowers, trees, and running around like a small boy who’s just found his legs. Weeeeeee! We’re really happy with the photos we took. You can never have too many photos of your toddler, since they grow so quickly and change fast. We’re both camera nwerds and Jonah is the perfect subject! We’ve used a…

It’s long overdue, but I’d like to share Jonah’s birth story here on my blog. It seems such a long time ago as Jonah is now 14 months old. Sitting here to write it makes me feel so happy and gooey, as it was such a beautiful day full of love, tears, music, and pushing! I’d hit 40 weeks and Jonah’s due date knowing that only 5% of babies actually arrive “on time”. I knew he’d arrive a bit later than his due date. North Tees hospital kept moving our dates forward at scans, and since I knew the exact day I fell pregnant, Jonah was actually just measuring big for his dates. We’d followed a HypnoBirthing course with the excellent Vicki Lund, so we had birth preferences in our hospital folder. Jonah’s birth didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped, but it was a completely positive experience! I’m so glad…