Another month has shot past us again, and here we are in Mid-March - I'm still accidentally writing "2016" when I fill in forms and yet somehow we're quarter of the way through 2017 already?! How can that be?!
March is a busy month in Casa Sparkles, with both of my bigger boys celebrating their birthdays within 5 days of each other - we're also heading off on a couple of trips this month too which we're all really looking forward to. We have our first proper holiday of the year to Butlins in between the boys birthdays at the very end of the month, and we also have a little trip to Legoland next week too which is the boys birthday gift from their grandparents - we've never been to Legoland before so we're very excited about it!
Unfortunately I still haven't learned my lesson when it comes to planning two birthdays at once, and instead of going for a joint party like everybody told me to I am in the midst of organising separate ones - a Paw Patrol themed soft play party for Noah's 2nd birthday and a Cops & Robbers themed party at a local village hall for Tyne's 4th birthday - so it is all systems go trying to get everything sorted!
But anyway...enough about that...let's have a chat about how the boys are getting on this month as we approach their birthdays!
Last month I excitedly told you all about how Tyne and Noah had been getting on better...hopeful that we'd turned a corner in their relationship and that from now on they would be firm friends...well, let's just say I no longer have that hope!
This month, they are back to arguing, squabbling and basically killing each other all of the time! The problem is that Noah wants to be involved in everything that Tyne is doing...but he's not content to be involved at any sort of distance. If Tyne is playing with a particular toy, Noah also wants to be playing with that same toy...not another one just like it, but the exact same one! If Tyne is colouring in a picture, Noah wants to use the same pen. If Tyne is eating a packet of crisps, Noah wants to eat the same packet...it is never ending!
Tyne has very little patience where Noah is concerned, and just bursts into tears and fits of shouting whenever he does these things - and to be fair, I can see why - it MUST be annoying to have someone try to take every single thing that you try to play with off you.
But on the other hand I can see it from Noah's point of view as well - he just gets so excited by the things his brother is doing that look so fun and he wants to get involved, he just doesn't know how to interact properly yet.
It's so easy with Noah to forget how little he still is - his speech is very good for his age and he plays like a much older child would, but he isn't even 2 years old so it's really no wonder that he & Tyne can't really play well together yet - Noah really is still just a baby! So maybe in a year or so they will be more on the same level and able to play well together...let's all hope for that because I don't know how much more refereeing I can handle! They really do fight like cat and dog at the moment.
As for Tyne and Sailor, their relationship is one that I have loved watching this month - my focus is so often on the relationship between the younger two because their short age gap fascinates me but actually seeing Tyne with Sailor lately has been really lovely, because he's old enough to really "get" that his little brother is a baby... that he's cute, that he's learning to do things for the first time, that it's all exciting - Tyne was too young to realize any of this when Noah was this age, so it's the first time I feel that we're really getting to see the "Big Brother" instinct come out in him and it's lovely to watch - he loves to hold and cuddle Sailor, he tries to talk to him in a baby voice, he gets excited when Sailor does something new like tries to take a step, and he loves to play "Baby Chase" with him by crawling around the living room while Sailor squeals with glee and tries to run away.
Sailor isn't the cuddliest of babies where his brothers are concerned, and he does try to wriggle out of the cuddles most of the time but he always has a big smile for his biggest brother and I can see how much closer they've become in the last few weeks.
As for Noah and Sailor, they are still very sweet to watch when they interact - they really are like a little team, the Terrible Twosome (Or "Poosome Twosome" if you ask Tyne! Oh 3 year old Poo humour, how fun you are....) - they love to play hide and seek together at the moment, hiding behind cushions from each other and jumping out. They also love to gang up on their mama together, too! If they see me starting to look cosy on the sofa then they come over to me together and squeal at me, usually throwing a few little hits my way too, to get my attention!
These three little boys are as much a handful as they have always been, and as we go through our last few weeks of having 3 under 4 I find myself feeling quite reflective on the last year - having three little ones this close in age happened far more by accident than by design, but what a very fortunate accident it was - and how blessed are we to have this much happy chaos in our lives.
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