The wings were bought few months ago as a Christmas decoration, although Odessa had different ideas...
She loves wearing the wings, dancing and spinning around to her favourite music - pretending she is a little bird... I have tried explain to her what an angel is but she doesn't like the concept at all... I should have never mentioned that angels are well behaved!
Props and costumes are great for little children as they love games where they can "pretend". It's always good to follow your child's interests - Odessa for her last birthday was wearing a rabbit costume (which she often uses as a jacket), there are plenty of products on the market. Or if you possess the skills, you can also try and make something yourself with a little bit of help from your child... an animal mask for example or a robot outfit from cardboard boxes.
Our wings were bought in a Tiger store (£3), Djeco do some really cool and inexpensive paper masks, in Lettertbox you can find some animals outfits and of course Mothercare do the traditional princesses and faries.
Don't worry too much about items or costumes themselves - children often don't need much to stimulate their imagination... for example Odessa likes walking around the house wearing Tim's slippers, carrying an imaginary cup of tea and pretending she is "The Daddy".
Few portraits I took of Odessa on Wednesday. She has got a cold so we have been at home most of the time this week. We also both mentally preparing ourselves for TUESDAY - Odessa first day at nursery.
And she already has said she is not going...
In the kitchen preparing lunch.
( Odessa's favourite activity of the day: snapping the ends of asparagus and counting pasta shells)
'Mummy go there, daddy come here!!' - you should hear the strength of this scream... the kind of strength which leaves you with no illusion - there is not going be a compromise here - Tim has to get up and I have to go away...
That's pretty much what I hear most mornings nowadays... fair enough, I won't cry over my daughter not wanting spend time with me. I'll have my coffee and read the newspaper instead. So mornings are with daddy only. And this what they get up to...
Baking biscuits with your child is great! First of all home made biscuits are so much better than those from shop - you can make sure there are no nasty chemicals in them and use good quality ingredients and they simply taste much nicer.
Be creative - use extra ingredients: nuts, pistachios, chocolate (make sure is at least 60% cocoa - it really makes a difference), honey, peanut butter or oats whatever you might feel would work. Try to involve your child as much as possible explain what you do, explain all process of baking, name things you use and do the shapes together. There is lots nice shapers on the market we got ours from Tiger as there are cheap and funky we also used play-dough ones on few occasions but apparently they are not great as they not big enough - is what Tim says (he does much of the cooking in our house, being so good at it. I, on the other hand, am just having my coffee and observing, and later trying to pretend I know something about baking biscuits). :)
