I love him, I really do. I love that he is no longer a baby and I love that he’s beginning to grow into someone who talks and has opinions and can comment on life. I love that he has favourite programmes and can express his requirements at different times about what he wants to watch, or play or engage with.
I love that he will get on his balance bike now and ride down to the playground, full of pride at being a big boy and still little enough to want Genga the monkey to come too.
I really love that he can play games with Playmobil now and tell stories to himself or come home from nursery and explain what he did and give me an insight into his day. I love that he battles up against Amelie, the only one brave enough to take her on and tells her if she is naughty.
This month, while we wait for outside to be somewhere he can spend his days, he’s played a lot of games in the living room. There have been farm games and car games and games where he matches up coloured pieces from board games we own and games that make a lot of mess and Lego and Playmobil and everything in between.
He’s also had times, as he learns to outgrow a nap through the day, when he’s needed sofa time (with whichever sister is least naughtiest at the time!) or with me or Daddy. He’s a full on boy with lots of energy but when he needs a break, he tends to need to really zone out.
And so, again, Netflix is our friend.
Top of the Pops this month has been Pocoyo, a charming little cartoon with Stephen Fry narrating that combines moral code, friendship hints and a good bit of silliness all so cutely combined that we all end up watching it. On a particularly fraught tummy ache day, we watched about 10 hours of it – possibly the only voice in the world I could listen to for that long! And it looks GORGEOUS, a really clean, carefully thought out and engaging cartoon that has enough slapstick to be funny for all of us and stick in the mind of a 3 year old.
Other hot favorites this month have been Fireman Sam (just who IS Norman’s dad?), Dora (sob) and Dinosaur train which all ring the changes a bit from the interminable Peppa Pig who we have to hunt for elsewhere. Netflix has a KIDS! tab on the sign in page which groups his favourites, plus new ideas, together and means that if he needs a short fix, we can get to them easily.
This last month has also seen another big change; after 3 years I no longer cuddle Bene to bed for over an hour every night. I miss him and he’s not yet weaned but he’s gradually learning to settle himself. Sometimes it is a short cuddle with milk and sometimes it is nursery rhymes via a sub on Youtube and sometimes, if he’s accidentally napped in the day, he goes to bed with the Netflix app on my phone for a while. It’s not perfect and it is so far from how I wanted or intended to do it but I reckon that over the last two years I have spent nearly 800 hours getting him down to bed. That’s a lot of productivity (even if it is a lovely mummy and baby boy time) and was affecting relationships with Max, the girls and my own sense of well being. We drifted into a change of routine remarkably easily in the end and while I don’t really like digital babysitting, it has made everyone happier over all. Max and I sometimes even get to talk to each other now!
Disclosure: we belong to the Netflix Streamteam.
