Recycling A Cardboard Box

When we gave Ev her new kitchen for Christmas we used the distraction to "remove" her old favourite toy before it fell to pieces.

 That's right, you guessed it - a cardboard box. It was her library, her house, her hiding place even a piece of modern art once she'd painted it!

 She'd sit in there and make tea...

And of course I had to go round for some tea sometimes, you were privileged to get invited in - even if you didn't fit!

I think children know that sometimes the best presents are free. This box gave her around 6 months of joy until it started to fall apart and now it's a mulch on the veg garden so it lives on a little longer yet!

 I think that's proper recycling of a cardboard box!

A Big Change Coming

I can grow a beard,

Drive a tractor,

Hunt,

Skin a rabbit,

Gut a fish,

Herd sheep,

Build a roof,

Hang a door,

Make a flight of stairs,

Start a fire without matches,

Read a map,

Sharpen an axe,

Change a tyre,

So with these many manly things under my belt, why is there a sense of trepidation when I tell you all that in the spring I will be a full time stay at home dad.

I know its down to the way we're programmed to think, and this decision has been met with raised eyebrows by some of the lads I work with. But this decision is one we've put a lot of thought into.

Put simply my wife works less hours than I do and earns more. When the child care for two is taken into account, after fuel, tax and other running costs I'll pretty much just be working to pay for someone else to bring up our children. That's not how we want to live.

There will be a shortfall in our money and I'll have to work some weekends and evening to make it up, but if we've done the maths right then we should be able to live how we want - Simply, with lots of time together as a family.

It should be another adventure and one I hope you will all stick around for. 

Plastic Bags On My Daughters Feet...

Yes this is as bad as the title suggests! For our first "daddy-daughter" Monday of the year I wanted us to do a little gardening together.

When it came to us doing some gardening however we hit upon a snag.

This is the first time she's been able to get "about" outside, she's not walking yet (although not far off I recon!) but she's crawling really well and into everything! The trouble is she's a small baby and when we've taken her to get some shoes and wellies (wellies are much more important I feel!) they've said her little feet are too small and sent us away so she can grow some more. She's only just a baby size 2 so they had nothing in stock.

Well I didn't want to disappoint her (and I was fairly sure we were due no visitors) so I took a different approach to the problem.

Plastic bags.

Sandwich bags to be precise.

Put on with sellotape.

If I'm honest it's not my proudest moment as a parent but she didn't seem to mind.

Anyway, outside tidying up my front boarders my "crawling baby whose into everything" didn't move an inch, just sat there chatting to me as I cut down some old roses!

Must go on ebay tonight!