Wooden Railway Tracks and Trains by Wooden Railways (Review) [AD]

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When T first started his love of trains, we never really knew what this would involve. Sure there would be the occasional trip to a steam railway (or the level crossing if we were skint!) and of course obtaining a fair few toy trains a long the way. Over time, however, we have in the region of 30 different trains. Ranging from plastic to wooden to even a soft cuddly train.

It’s quite the collection, and I now dread to look at how much we’ve spent over the past three years on train related items. T has an engine driver hat, an array of whistles, and a variety of tickets kept from different journeys. And when I come to think of it, why not?

I like Lego, T likes Trains.

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Milestones: T’s First Trip to the Cinema

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For the past year or so we’ve been introducing T to feature length films. Starting with short films like Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo, which we viewed over Christmas or on long car journeys via Hopster. We then started introducing him to longer films on rainy days and seeing how far he would go before his engagement would naturally drop.

We are huge film buffs in this house, so it was natural that we were going to introduce him to films as soon as possible. One of my favourite past times as a child was watching films in our dressing gowns on a rainy afternoon.

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Swimming: SwimFin and the Dinky Divers (Review) [AD]

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T has now been swimming for over three years, with his first lesson occurring when he was less than a year old. Although it’s not ‘proper’ swimming (I’m talking front crawl, breast stroke, etc), T now knows what to do if he were to fall into water, and his confidence whilst in the water gives me confidence! He genuinely enjoys being in water – even from a young age.

This year, we became SwimFin ambassadors. If you’ve not heard of SwimFin, they’re the creators of the unique shaped Shark Fin swimming aid; created to give confidence to nervous swimmers whilst maintaining natural swim positions. Simply place the SwimFin high on the child’s back and no matter what stroke they’re performing they will be fully supported in the water.

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T’s Reads: A Little Box of Books Subscription Box (Review) [AD]

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Over the past few months we’ve been incredibly lucky to have found a number of new books that included diverse family units as their main characters; as well as talked about a number of topics from prejudice to gender. There was a time when the choice was very sparse or the stories weren’t so much ‘stories’ but more about educating the reader about different families.

These books are still needed of course, but when you’re sat down ready for the bedtime story, all you want to read to your child is a story where they’re included in the tale just like every other child or family.

There are a number of resources we’ve recently found where we can find books that do just this and we’ll be sharing these very soon, as well as an up-to-date list of our favourites titles, but for now I thought I’d tell you about a brand new book subscription service that we’ve recently found that celebrates diversity and families just like us!

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Days Out: The Watercress Line Steam Railway (Mid Hants Railway)

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A few weeks ago, we celebrated Sharon’s father’s birthday with a trip to the railway. It was the first birthday since his passing so we wanted to do something special. Something that we know he would have enjoyed doing.

So far, we’ve been to several Steam Railways and Miniature Railways local to us, and whilst they’re lovely to re-visit, we wanted to go somewhere new in the hope that Sharon’s dad would be with us; exploring it for the first time too.

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A Day in the Life Photoshoot

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Even before T was born I enjoyed taking photos. Whether it was photos of local landscapes, my wife, our dog. I enjoyed capturing moments so the I could cherish them and look back on them in years to come.

I often tried to get in on the picture too, but I quickly noticed that this resulted in the photo looking less ‘natural’. Whilst I’ve captured lots of lovely photos of us over the years, which I will also adore and cherish, a staged photo doesn’t really tell a story like a natural one captured in the moment.

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