Space Bath

Me and Safia often sing the Zoom Zoom song which always results in mega giggles as I throw her in the air and catch, this is the song if your interested – http://englishplaynow.com/node/11  Anyway I’m off on a ramble again, but this was a song that provided inspiration for our next themed bath. We sang the song and zoomed off to space without ever leaving our home.

This was our Space Bath, sorry some pictures are a bit blurry

 

To make this bath, first I badly drew some pictures on card :-), ie Rocket, Stars, Aliens, Moon.  The moon was made with a circle of orange card and I stuck cherios on it to make craters (will be a nice activity again for Safia to do when she’s older). Next I added a small amount of of green food colouring to her water (we had a real bath after to clean up). Now the special bit, I used hubby’s chem light sticks, these are designed to be used under water, they are basically glow sticks you can get them from most party shops and even some supermarkets, I put  these around the bath and a few loose in the water, I also put a few in empty plastic coke bottles.

If you do try this bath at home, do be careful not to  let baby chew on the glow sticks, and do not be tempted to cut into the glowsticks and add the liquid to water as even the non toxic ones are firstly not going to be great for babies skin and a lot of them also contain glass 😦 but as long as you keep an eye on your baby they are perfectly safe to use and if concerned pop them in a bottle or container so they still get the glow experience 🙂

This  bath was certainly the most fun bath we have done so far, Safia loved bashing the side of the bathtub with the glow sticks and chasing them about in water, there’s lots more themes and ideas I want to try out so  keep checking back as I’m aiming to do one at least once a month – also in August I plan on having a special 1st birthday bath so look out for that one 🙂 x

Rainbow Bath

I made Safia a Rainbow theme bath today 🙂

I painted the walls using water based paints (it doesn’t stain the tiles and washes off in the shower) I ran her a bath full of bubbles then using food colouring I painted a rainbow on the bubbles.

Safia really enjoyed the bubbles and mixing the colours together. Would be a good bath when she’s older as we will be able to talk more about the colours and make  it a fun learning bath. Here’s a few pictures I took of her bath 🙂

Sensory Bag

Sensory bags are so easy to make and you can put whatever you want in them. It was a Sunday when I made mine, (all shops are shut in Germany on Sundays so I had to raid the cupboards.) Basically you need a ziplock bag, you can get these at supermarkets in the food bag section. then fill your bag with a few of babies toys, or things they wouldn’t normally be able to play with. I put beads and buttons in mine and put hair gel in the bag to make it squidgy. We have also tried this with shaving foam, water and food dye.  When she’s older I will make educational  ones with letters and numbers and ask her questions ie. “can you find the letter A”.

obviously don’t go and leave baby or toddler alone to play with these, mine have  never leaked or been ripped into and Safia was pulling and tugging at the bag. You could also use duct tape on the edge for extra protection, I didn’t have any so I nabbed a bit of hubby’s sniper tape, see there are some pro’s to army life 🙂

We also did a bit of painting using her feet.

Hopefully I will get chance to nip to the Naafi or one of the German Supermarkets, Kaufland or Edeka Centre if so tomorrow we will make goop  🙂

Noodles Of Fun

Today I made Safia a bath with a difference.

 

A SEA CREATURE BATH

First I boiled spaghetti noodles in two separate pans, one with a few drops of blue food dye, the other with green. This was to make the coral. Once it was cooked I drained it off and added a little olive oil so it wouldn’t all stick together. I was actually impressed by how bright they turned out, definatly worthy for a sea bath.

I then ran her a bath as normal and  added blue food colouring a few of her sea creature bath toys and the noodles. I also painted the sides of the bath tiles to make a beach theme using water paints.

We had so much fun with this, the best part was it was so easy to clean up after, food colouring doesn’t stain, I just drained the water and scooped up the noodles in a sieve so we can play with later and tomorrow, everything rinsed off really quickly with the shower hose.

A great sensory activity for babies and especially toddlers we will definitely do again with  different themes, as she had so much fun squishing and trying to catch the noodles.

Tomorrows activity we are going to be playing with goop – amazing stuff so look out for that one tomorrow 🙂

 

Edible Painting

Today we decided to get messy with paint. Safia is at the age where everything goes in the mouth, as seen as ordinary paint was out I raided the cupboards to see what I could find.

The yellow one is blended up maderins mixed with a little flour to make it thicker,  red was strawberry, and Safia’s favorite one was the chocolate one (it was a few scoops of hot chocolate with a small amount of water so it wasn’t to watery).

                  Mmmm tastes gooooooooooood

                    Digging in

                          Rahhhhhh, war paint

         Mummy getting in on the action

      The “It wasn’t me” look

We had loads of fun and Safia giggled at the fact I was letting her create a mess, which funnily enough wasn’t as messy as I had anticipated, I have a feeling my next activity I have planned will be messier – Watch this space 🙂

Update

Ahhhh I’ve had a little break from the blog, due to moving over to Germany and having a severe bout of womanflu, I think I have just about got over the worst of that but no doubt another will be coming along soon, one of the many pitfalls of living in such close proximity to everyone on camp I guess.

So where to begin, Easter .. I made Safia a little Easter basket with a few goodies – I will do a full Easter update later. As I said earlier in one of my posts I’m all for family traditions so I made a start on some Easter ones which I will tell you all about later – along with some recent pictures of course.

I’ve had my parents stay with me all this week which has been nice, Safia has loved it as she’s had lots of playtime with Grandad and cuddles with Grandma, but they had to go back today 😦 not to worry though we will probably Skype later, goes to show it doesn’t matter that we aren’t in the same country we still can have family time and Safia never misses out on seeing Grandma and Grandad.

Being on army camp – pretty much sucks! There is nothing to do, I can’t drive anywhere as Stu takes the car to work with him most days, but even if he didn’t I would still not be able to drive as I have to take a Matrix test (equivalent to UK Theory Test) .. Really must book in for that. Even if did have the car though there’s only so many places can go – I must say I miss Camberley, I miss Tesco’s, I miss Boots and most of all I miss Mothercare. . . On a plus side though hubby found out there is a Mothercare in Hamburg, so we drove all the way there yesterday forgetting it was Good Friday and everywhere was shut, but at least we know there is one over here.

I can’t stand the Naafi (this is the shop on camp – Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) maybe because it’s not Tescos and that it’s obviously always full of squadies, and that it’s the only place i can go in easy reach. It has a few bits and bobs – usually at rip off prices, it has a small selection of books, cards, kids toys, household items, sports things and then a section for food which is usually Spa and Iceland items. I let out a big sigh everytime I go in there as it’s the same stuff, same people day in day out.

Anyway enough moaning about Naafi, we have been trying to think of things to do, this has meant lots of walks around camp, going to the stables to look at the horses, I will probably have a wander in the direction of Bredebeck at some point for a change of scenery – Bredebeck is the officers mess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Bredebeck. Last time we were here hubby used to work there, so we used to have lots of fun down there on a mini moped and taking the dog for walks. There also used to be a kitten there the Adjutants cat who used to follow me around, so will be nice to show Safia. I’m also planning on taking her to feed the ducks .. I have no idea where there is a duck pond … I will find one though, and will have a look at going to some baby groups with my friend, there are plenty of parks with swings on camp so when the weather starts getting better I think that will be somewhere we shall go lots, Safia seems to be enjoying herself anyway and that’s the main thing.

I’ve booked family holiday to Puerto Pollensa Majorca for when Safia turns one, so something to look forward to. Can’t believe she is nearly 8 months already, where does the time go?

Remember How I Said It Could All Change??

Well it did!!!

We are not coming back to UK for 4 months and hubby is away for just the one week now in Sennelager. Told you it could all change in matter of days didn’t I. Well now it stands as hubby will be going Afghan in September, thankfully he will be here for Safia’s 1st birthday but not for Christmas. Now I said my New Years Resolution is to see the positive in things sooooooooo when hubby is back in 2014 at least we will have a nice deposit for a house so we can get Safia a room that will actually be hers and for longer than a few months and it’s a step closer to coming home and getting a permanent address . So no bitching and moaning from this call sign, I’ve had it easy, there’s a lot of ladies out there whose husbands/partners weren’t there for the birth of their babies and didn’t get to meet their baby until days/months later.

Besides as we know a lot can happen in a day ….. It could all change …..