I have moved

Hi Everyone

This blog has now moved to:

http://notesfromemily.blogspot.com/

I will be blogging under the new tittle of  'Notes from Emily', you will still be able to see all of my past posts from 'Days with the Walker family' on this new blog, but I will no longer be using our surname.

Please take a moment to update my details if you follow this blog etc as I will be deleting 'Days with the Walker family' in the next month.

Many thanks for all your comments and support, look forward to hearing from you at 'Notes from Emily'.

Love
Emily x

PS A new banner will be coming soon.

Rain and my To Do list

Harry got to try out his new umbrella this afternoon.

This week has gone soo fast, I have started to think about what extra things, on top of the normal household duties and my massive ironing pile, I would like to achieve next week.

My To Do list looks like this:

Find a baby yoga class for Ollie and me, and hopefully starting it

Make a memory frame for Ollie (I will post pictures)

Visit the two local nurseries ready for Harry in September, they get booked up so fast

Practice my new Photoshop skills

Print off some of the gazillion photos I have on my USB stick

Look for an awesome birthday present for my friends gorgeous girl who will be turning 3

Catching up with a couple of friends that I have not seen in ages
Finalise our holiday booking (very excited as we are going on holiday with all my family)

I think that is enough for one week

Happy weekend x

Fresh Basil Anyone?

This morning whilst I was making the boys porridge, Harry decided to take the basil plant to 'show' Ollie.

It was so sweet, Harry telling Ollie to smell the leaves. Despite the mess, I could not get cross, so I just took pictures instead.

Photoshop for Mummies

Today my lovely friend Sarah and her little man, gorgeous George, came over to visit us.

While all our boys were napping Sarah gave me a lesson in the basics of Photoshop, she is a bit of a Photoshop genius. I am very slowly learning, but I can now do some clever things like this:

Thank you Sarah x

But I do completely love Charlie and Lola

Harry’s latest obsession is Charlie and Lola, watching them, reading the books, drawing them....

In case you are not familiar with Charlie and Lola here is one of Harry’s favourite episodes, Lucky, Lucky Me! (Isn’t YouTube Great?)

At a toddler group this week, when talking to another mother, I mentioned Harry’s current love for Charlie and Lola and was totally shocked by her response. She was horrified that I would allow Harry to watch this programme because of its ‘terrible use of the English language’, and how she would ‘never allow her daughter to watch it!’ How funny is that? It is a children’s cartoon for goodness sake.

This evening before bath time we all sat on the sofa together, watched two episodes of Charlie and Lola and laughed out loud!

Mr Oliver

Is it me or is Ollie getting more and more cute? I think it is because he is in the six to eight month stage, which is my favourite, I just love it!

I love his big smile and chubby cheeks

I love his chubby little ankles and wrists

 I Love the way he splashes in the bath and giggles when he gets his face wet.

I love our cuddles together, when his big brother is napping.

Is it weird that I love him so much I could bite him? (Don’t worry I won’t, well maybe just a little nibble)

He is just yum!

Highlight of the weekend

Date Night

On Saturday night Luke took me out for a date, it was a fantastic evening, dinner and then the cinema. This is something we said that we are going to try and do more of this year.

We saw Avatar in 3D and it was awesome, you must, must go and see it in 3D. This was not Luke's film of choice but I really wanted to see it so he went along to keep me happy, and now is really glad he did as he loved it too.

You have to wear these really geeky looking glasses, which is hilarious. It looks a bit like the entire cinema audience is at a 'Blues Brothers' convention.

(Geek Chic - taken on Luke's phone)

Cupcakes

We are snowed in again!

So I have put off all those jobs I should do and used the time to try out my new hummingbird bakery book.

Harry approves!

Colours

Yesterday afternoon I decided to try and teach Harry his colours. This is something I have been trying to do for a while but recently I had started to get a little concerned that all his friends knew all the colours but Harry still said the first colour that comes into his head or if in doubt yellow is his normal reply (I know we shouldn’t compare our children but it is hard not to sometimes). Anyway while Harry was napping I set out little groups of the same coloured things, got out some drawing pens in those colour and play-doh, thinking we would have a fun afternoon of learning and playing?

However, this was not to be as Harry was not at all interested in learning the colours; he just wanted to play with the strange array of toys out on the floor. It was all a little frustrating as I was saying ‘look this bus and this block are both RED’ and he was off making noises and waving a helicopter above his head. Then we moved on to the drawing ‘look a RED pen’ but Harry wanted all the pens to draw multi coloured trucks. In the end I got out his car garage and road mat and just let him play and I had a chat on the phone with my mum instead who reminded me of how precious these years are at home and that I should enjoy them. She also told me (in a way that only mum’s can) that I need to stop comparing him with other children, they all develop at different rates and they all get there in the end. It is better, she said, that he is happy and contented rather than knowing that Mummies flowers are yellow. Mum is of course right, so I decided to chill out about it a bit and just play with Harry as normal.

At breakfast this morning, as if by magic, Harry said ‘look mummy Ollie’s bowl, green’ and it was green, then I asked what colour his beaker was ‘its blue’ he said, and it was, so apparently something went in!

Brothers

Harry hates waking up

He is sooo grumpy

The only thing that cheers him up is

Ollie!

(Dummy is being phased out, he is just having it at sleep times while we get them settled in the same room)

Follow your dreams...

When clearing out some draws I came across this little poem Harry's Godmother put in a card for us on his Christening day. It got me thinking about his special day and how great it was, I am now really excited to start planning for Ollie's this summer.

(Harry's awesome Godparents)

Happy weekend x

My two little Snowmen

Pear pancakes and blogging

Today we were all feeling a bit blue now all the Christmas festivities have really come to an end. The tree came down last night along with all the decorations, so the house is feeling bare. Plus we were really missing Daddy as he went back to work. So in an effort to try and cheer ourselves up, Harry and I made Jamie Oliver style pear pancakes for lunch.

(This picture is from the Jamie Oliver website, I was not going to mess around photographing my delicious pancakes, plus after Harry helped they didn’t look exactly like this)

They were really gorgeous and as they have a pear grated inside them I managed to get some fruit into Harry without him even noticing. They are also cheap to make as most people have all the ingredients in the back of the cupboard, you can get the recipe here.

When the boys were napping I checked my email and discovered that one of my posts Moving Day was included in the:

The Best of British Mumosphere -- The First Blogging Carnival of 2010

You can read about the Carnival here, but in short it is The British Mummy Bloggers best of posts from the last month, my entry is called ''Can moving day be easy? Emily at Days With The Walker Family thinks it is.''
This has all cheered me right up - no need to break out the last of the Christmas choccies after all.

The Walker Family best days from 2009

The end of another eventful year is here, so I have decided to write a blog about what I think are the best 5 days from 2009 for the Walker family.

1. The arrival of Oliver on a very hot day in June

Obvious, I know, but it was definitely the best day of the year. Harry’s birth was very traumatic, but the experience with Oliver was completely different and was actually a really wonderful experience. The short hand version of events was that I laboured at home for a couple of hours and managed fairly comfortably, then midway through Luke making a sandwich I said 'we have to go to hospital right now’ and luckily we did leave straight away as after 1 hour and 40 minutes Oliver was born completely naturally, it was amazing. Oliver was born straight into my arms and didn’t cry for a few minutes, he was absolutely gorgeous. As everything had gone really well the midwife allowed us to go home that afternoon. So we were back home having tea only 6 hours after we had left to go to hospital.

2. A day on the beach, September

 

In September we took the boys on holiday to Poole in Dorset and had a fantastic time, but one day stood out to me, probably because the weather was so great! We had an apartment in walking distance of the beach and when we woke up to beautiful sunshine we packed up all the beach things, baby paraphernalia and our lunch into the twin pram and went off for the day. We just played all day with Harry building sandcastles, making tunnels for his cars, paddling in the sea and best of all both boys slept in the pram for two hours at the same time so Luke and I had a chance to relax a little. As Ollie was only 8 weeks old we really welcomed the break and were able to lay next to each other in the sun eating ice-cream, bliss.

3. A day we spent at the farm, April

It was lambing season and we decided to take Harry to Brocketts farm to see the baby lambs, this was a couple of months before Ollie arrived and we were making the most of having just one child. Harry loved seeing all the baby lambs but his favourite animals were the horses. He particularly like the horses in the stables and insisted on us lifting him up so he could say ‘be bo horse'.

4. Picnic in Windsor Great Park, August

It was an impromptu visit to Windsor to really do some shopping but when we arrived we decided to ditch shopping and go and play in the park. We stopped to get supplies for a picnic and spent the rest of the day playing and laying about on our picnic blanket. I remember we had massive Ben and Jerry’s chocolate ice-creams in the afternoon.

5. This is a joint 5th place between:

A lovely hot day in August we spent in our back garden with Harry's Godmother, Emma-Louise. Emma had come over to visit us and play with the boys. We had so much fun just chilling out, playing in the garden, in and out of the paddling pool and drawing on a massive roll of paper on a picnic blanket. It was a great day.

And any of the wonderful days we have spent at my parents house especially bbq’s in their back garden in the summer. There have been so many great days spent with my family that I can’t chose one, although the family rounder’s day this year was a favourite.

Looking forward to many, many more great days in 2010.

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!!