Can something be a tradition if so far you’ve only done it twice? Well, with this only being Florence’s second Christmas, I’m going to go ahead and say that it can! Last year I created a little Christmas Photo Shoot to mark her first Christmas […]
Today you turned 18 months old – a whole year and a half and it seems that at the moment you are learning and changing so much that if I blink I am afraid I will miss it! It’s really hard to list all of […]
Now that we are past that half way mark, I have been thinking a lot more about how we are going to prepare Florence for becoming a big sister. With time speeding by and the next few months being busy with all sorts of events and festivities his arrival is going to come around quicker than we think and so over the next few months my focus really has to be on preparing her for that.
Florence has always been pretty routine led. She is a bit of a creature of habit and doesn’t really cope well when things go out of sync. Obviously certain elements of our day to day will have to change once baby arrives and to avoid it being such a huge shock to the system we have started to tweak a few things here and there already. We made some significant changes to bedtime a little while ago which have since gone awry due to it being quite a busy time here, but as of next week everything should go back to normal. With any luck we will have cracked bedtime again soon and our evenings will be newborn ready!
Things like setting aside times each day for independent and one to one play are also on our routine agenda. I’m going to try and match these up with standard feed & nap times for baby so that Florence gets a feel for our soon to be daily rhythm.
She’s starting to understand and carry out simple instructions now for example she will go and get a nappy out of the box when asked which once baby is here she’ll be able to do for him when it comes to nappy change time and will not only help her feel more involved but it’ll help me no end when I have my hands full.
I’ve ordered a bunch of books for Florence all about being a big sister and babies. She loves stories and sitting down to read together and I think this is a great way to help her build a bit more of an understanding of her new role as a big sister as well as reassuring her that Mummy & Daddy still love her just as much.
So, obviously Florence isn’t exactly used to babies – she’s only just grown from baby to toddler herself! – so the whole concept is a bit alien to her I would imagine. Making sure she had the opportunity to be around babies and is invited to interact with them is really going to help her build a bit of an understanding of how to behave around them. She has a baby cousin and her godparents have just recently had a little boy so we are just encouraging her to interact with them as much as we can. So far, shes been so good and doesn’t even blink when I have them on my lap and she’s definitely intrigued by them… so long as they don’t touch her she’s fine!
When we get nearer to the time, we are going to go out for a bit of a treat day when we have cake for breakfast in our favourite café and then hit the shops. I plan to get her to choose a couple of things to buy for the baby and then also choose a few things for herself. Involving her in the whole buying process, I hope will help her take a little pride in the things she chooses for her brother.
So she might not completely understand what we’re going on about but I make a conscious effort to at least mention the baby to her a couple of times a day. Simple things like “I think the baby will like doing this when he comes.” and “ooo the baby is wriggling around in Mama’s tummy” are just gently ways of introducing him to her world. With any luck, she’ll be able to make a loose connection to my rambling when he actually arrives.
I’ll be putting a little big sister basket together for when baby actually arrives filled with some of Florence’s favourite treats & activities. This will also double up as a bit of a busy box for her to turn to when I’m feeding or settling the new baby.
Florence has suddenly taken a real liking to dollies and teddy bears and tries to dress them, feed them and wanders around the house with them in her toy pram making sure they’re all tucked in to their blankets. It’s very cute! I love how loving she is to her dolly and it gives me some confidence that actually she’s going to cope just fine! We’ve put a request in to Santa Claus to bring her a new baby and some bits for him and I think she’s going to love it!
Those are the steps we are taking to prepare our toddler for her new sibling. Fingers crossed by the time February comes she’ll be as prepared as she can be for her new role as big sister.
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Oh little Florrie bum. You are 16 months old – going on 16 years – and have grown so so much over the past four months. It has been my absolute pleasure to watch you become the little clever sass pants that you are. We […]
I can hardly believe it’s over! I’ve spent the last month or so planning Florence’s first Birthday Party and on Saturday all of my plans came to life. 60 of our friends and family came to celebrate our little girl turning one and we honestly […]
Last week, in preparation for Florence’s first birthday we headed out to a local park for a little DIY First Birthday photo shoot and an attempt at a cake smash. Having turned to Pinterest for some inspiration, I knew exactly the look I was after.
Florence wore a pink stripe romper from H&M. We borrowed a white teepee from our friends and took along a white bed sheet to use as a blanket. I laid some pink roses close by and hung some ivy around the entrance to the teepee to symbolise her name – Florence Ivy. We took two balloons – a giant silver ‘1’ and a pink latex balloon.
Florence adores Teddy bears & soft toys at the moment so I thought it’d be a nice idea to include some of our favourites in here too. I set them up like a little teddy bears picnic. Each of them have their own little story as to why they’re special to us – one used to be mine as a little girl, one is a collectors bear that Sean and I bought years ago for our future babies, another is a bear from my childhood and the bunny is Florence’s First Build – a – Bear that my mum bought her.
And then for the cake. I chose this pink rose celebration cake from Sainsbury’s for our cake smash and placed it upon a white cake stand. Despite our best efforts, when it came to actually ‘smashing’ the cake, Florence just wasn’t interested! She just looked at us as though we were bonkers.
Instead though, we just let her play with her bears and the balloons which made for some beautiful captures, even if I do say so myself.
I shot these using the SCN, kids setting on my canon 750d. Some are zoomed in but most are not. I edited them, just a little, in PicMonkey adjusting the clarity and exposure.
And there we have it, our attempt at a DIY Cake smash / first birthday photo shoot.
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Oh little girl, I can’t quite believe I’m writing this already. Today you turn one. A whole year. Words cannot describe the joy you have brought into our lives. You’ve filled a piece of my heart that had been void for as long as I […]
So here we are in May. Where on earth has the last year gone? I remember this time last year so clearly – I had just begun maternity leave and we were making the final preparations for Florence’s arrival. Now, in just 3 weeks, our […]
