Dreams Coming True
There are a few things that I’ve always dreamed about doing with our child:
- Swimming. I have these adorable thoughts of taking an infant swimming. Well, with all the nanny chaos of the last month I delayed registering and now all the summer classes are full. When we discovered this, I threw my very own two-year old kind of temper tantrum that resulted in me saying to Mr. MPB I know this irrational, but I’m devastated. Please, don’t try to fix it or find a a solution or tell me to calm down. Just let me be irrationally angry and pout for a few minutes. He obliged, and now I’ve come to realize that taking swimming lessons in a few months wont impact his life at all, so I just need to get over it. And, I asked a friend who is a former life guard to take us one-on-one sometime before the fall.
- Reading. I love reading so it comes as no surprise that I love reading to our little guy. I cannot seem to get my hands on enough books for him, and I just love finding him new books. In fact, I just found out about a local used book sale in a few months that apparently has thousands and thousands of children’s books priced at $1. Needless to say, it’s already marked in our calendars! Do you have any must have children’s books to recommend? A few of our favourites are:
- The Family Book (really, almost anything by Todd Parr is worth reading – he’s an excellent children’s author on family diversity).
- 10 Little Fingers and 10 Little Toes
- Everywhere Babies
- Bear Snores On
- A Mother For Choco
- Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
- Only One You
- The Hockey Sweater (a must read Canadian classic)
- I Wish You More
Hiking. We spend countless days in the summer hiking in the mountains. Sometimes we got for 10km hikes and sometimes we go for 30km hikes. Hiking with our child was something Mr. MPB always dreamed of. In fact, one of Mr. MPB early baby purchases was the Kelty Pathfinder 3.0 (purchased second-hand for a steal of deal). Baby MPB is still to little to safely use it for a real hike, so Mr. MPB has started getting him used to it with quick trips to the mail box (I’m sure our neighbours think he’s nuts). But, this weekend we took our first ever hike using our Ergo 360 carrier. We packed up the vehicle, loaded up the dog and took Baby MPB for his very first little hike in the Rocky Mountains. We actually decided his first hike would be the same one as the dog’s first hike. It was a beautiful spring day that made the scenery breathtaking. And, the hike is much shorter and flatter then we are used to so if something wasn’t right we were a quick jog back to the car. And, it was also the very first hike we took our dog on, so it just felt like the right first one for Baby MPB.- Camping. We have our first weekend camping trip booked for July. I’m really hoping for sunshine! But, now matter what I am sure we will have some fun!
- A whole host of other things that will happen as he grows up like soccer, hockey, fishing and walking him to and from school every day with our dog. We are going to have so much fun with this little guy!
Honestly, it’s pretty amazing to be experiencing these dreams come true. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not thankful for our little guy, and humbled that we were chosen to be his parents, and so madly in love that it brings a tear to my eye.
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I love that your dreams are coming true! Seeing life through the eyes of your child once he becomes more and more aware of his world will make the dreams even more magical!
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You are right, I just know it! As he gets older it will become more magical. 🙂
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I love this post 🙂 soo happy for you :))))
I havent got any of the books you recommend. I right now translate all books to my mother tongue so that the A and G pick it as their first language. G still doesnt speak English and i am honestly fine with. Thats what he is going to school for, but anyway, I really want some tips on how to translate these books to him, these books are too wordy. Any ideas?
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I have never before thought about translating children books. I have absolutely no idea, because you are right, so many of them are so wordy! And the not so wordy ones aren’t the most fun to read.
Also, I ADORE that you are teaching your children your mother tongue! 🙂
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Some books that are ‘classic’ here in Australia are ‘Wombat Stew’, ‘Possum Magic’ and ‘Blinky Bill’. I would be happy to send baby MPB some Aussie books for your collection 🙂 I love books too and hope that our children will also love to read.
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You are so sweet! Really, please don’t feel obligated to send anything. But if you really want you can send me an email – myperfectbreakdown@gmail.com.
I love the names of the Australian books – wombat and possum. So cute! Ours are all about bears, moose and hockey. 🙂
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Sounds like a lovely time you had and have planned! We just saw the Rockies for the first time when we drove from Michigan to Alaska a few weeks ago. They completely amazed me!
I bought a book called “Wish” a month or so ago, it is child oriented, but also very much for the parents. I highly recommend it. It is adorable and will make every child understand how wanted and special they are!
How old will Baby MBP be when you guys go camping? I bought B a huge tent for Christmas 1.5 years ago, after the first loss as a representation of the good times we will have camping with the family we will have some day. And I told him that we should take baby Bach next summer (God willing of course, Baby B is due in December) and he thinks it will be too early, I don’t think it will be.
Glad to hear such a happy update from your family!
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Michigan to Alaska?! That sounds like a dream road trip to me!
I will definitely check out “Wish” – the name of it makes it sounds like a great book. 🙂
Baby MPB will be camping by the time he is 6 months old. I honestly do not know how much fun it will be for Mr. MPB and I considering how much more work camping with a baby will be, but we’ve decided it’s important to get him out camping and enjoying the outdoors. The only thing that we haven’t figured out is how dog and baby will be in such close quarters at night, but we still have a few months to figure it out. So, we are doing it! 🙂
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Well, I wouldn’t call it a dream, but we did get to see some cool things: The Badlands, Mt Rushmore, a little but of Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, but it was mostly 7 days of driving and fast food! If we had longer to stay places and see more things it would have been a lot better! But work calls… lol.
I think 6 months will work well, that’s about how old Baby Bach should be next summer when camping season starts! The outdoors are definitely important to kids, especially these days!
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You have have driven right past me 😦 I wish I knew, I would have met you somewhere!
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Probably! We went from Gardiner, MT up through Calgary and stayed in Grande Cache the first night in Canada, then onto the Al-Can and stayed in Toad River the second night and then to Whitehorse the 3rd night in Canada and onto Fairbanks the next day!
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I was going to recommend Wish too. It is the perfect book for someone that has been through infertility and also for adoptive families. I stumbled across it at Target and bought it for us because it fits this struggle perfectly. It has beautiful illustrations and is a very easy read, i.e. very few words on the page and very short. http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Matthew-Cordell/dp/148470875X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1463518920&sr=8-2&keywords=wish
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I was looking for the author page for Wish and came across his blog and he writes a piece specifically about Wish. http://matthewcordell.blogspot.com/2015/05/wish.html
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It’s the simple things that are so exciting now as a parent. Love the list 😊
Side note: we have a provincial program here called strong start. It’s for kids 6m-5yrs. And free. Do you have something similar? The bugs love going to it now.
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It really is all about the simple things! I had no idea how much fun reading children’s books could be! 🙂
I have not heard of anything like that. I’m told our local library has some great free classes, but they typically sell out within 3 minutes of opening and I just cannot be bothered with a mad rush.
Baby MPB and I do go to a weekly class which is basically organized tummy time. It’s cute and definitely not free. 🙂
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we LOVE Bear Snores On 🙂 Pajama Time is a fun one too.
I understand being disappointed about missing a class but don’t worry too much about not being in actual swimming lessons just drop by your local Y or pool and splash around. Maeve loves the pool and loves being dunked. she lies on her back and kicks. her fav is to sit on the side of the pool and “jump off”. she’s a year old and we’ve never done an actual structured lesson.
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I’ve added Pajama Time to my amazon shopping cart so I remember to order it soon. Thanks for the suggestion. 🙂
And thanks for your encouragement re swimming too. For some reason I’m nervous about taking Baby MPB without some sort of trained person the first time. So, once we go with the former life guard, then I’ll take Baby MPB on my own just as you suggest. I’m still super excited!
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Great 🙂 Susan boynton (? Spelling, author of Pajama time) has done several other books as well. I need to take time in chapters next time to check them out. Bear snores on is also a series. At least three more books 🙂 I just took a look at our books this morning and we are also fans of “with love at bedtime” (four stories in one) and “it’s bedtime little mouse” (I think haha) it’s interactive so you push a part of the page to make a noise. That’s great to have a friend that was a swim instructor. You’ll have so much fun.
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I love this post!!! I’m so happy that you’re getting to do all the things you dreamed of with your little man. It’ll be fun to hear about all of your adventures with him as he grows and learns to do more. I think it’s fabulous that you took him on the same first hike that you took the dog on…how special!! Sorry the swimming thing didn’t quite work out, but it sounds like you have so much other fun stuff to do that in the long run, that probably won’t be that big of a deal. This all has me so excited for you!!! ❤
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We have a similar list. So glad you can check things off 🙂
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🙂 ❤
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Aw that’s so sweet, great that you are getting to enjoy all those things now with the little guy. Take lots of pictures 🙂
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This makes me so happy. What an amazing childhood he will have!
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Dreams coming true…oh how I love the title of this post. It brought a little tear to my eye because I know how true it really is….you are such a wonderful mother…you were chosen to be his parents and he is blessed to be your son….what a perfect dream come true 🙂 xoxo
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10 doggies is a fun book!
This post makes me happy.
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I’m glad you sorted out the swimming thing for yourself as honestly, it is ok. We have had Monkey in lessons since 6 mths and seriously the first two years or so of that is more about water familiarisation. Next kid will be taken in the water for little fun times in the pool but I am not committing to weekly lessons from the day dot. And you can’t just do for the summer for example and then do again next summer as they forget all they learnt in between. So it is better to start at a point where you can keep on going year round. We have a pool ourselves so took Monkey out of organised lessons for the summer this year and even with lots of solo swimming he has fallen behind. *sigh* Where in Canada is that pic taken? I must go there one day. Stunning!
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Such wonderful dreams! I’m sorry about the swimming classes. The 1:1 with the lifeguard friend sounds great, and then maybe next year he’ll be big enough to really enjoy the swimming lessons more! 🙂 Hiking sounds great, we have an Ergo 360 too (which so far has held a stuffed beach ball, ha) and I am looking forward to hiking that way too. Although we have nothing like the Rockies and frankly the first thought I had was BEARS but I am the biggest scaredy cat ever, so ignore me. Books — I love books! Some new favorites are Little Owl’s Day and Little Owl’s Night, On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman, Giraffes Can’t Dance!, Little Red Wagon… so many books. If I Could Keep You Little is also quite lovely and I Love You Night and Day, ah. I wonder if we have access to the same books being in different countries… but Chapters and Indigo are like Barnes and Noble, right? Love all these dreams coming into reality. This post made me so warm and fuzzy inside.
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Just take him swimming yourself, you don’t need lessons xx
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If you like Sandra Boynton you need to get Moo, Baa, La La La. It is by her and it is one of my mom’s favorite children’s books. She has it memorized she has read it so many times.
Re: Swimming- My mom put me and both of my brothers in the water at six weeks of age. She says if you blow in the baby’s face they will hold their breath and you can dunk them in the water.
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I have a confession to make. I love reading, but I kind of hate reading to my Nora. I have no clue why. I should love it, right? Like why don’t I love it??
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I totally get this! The kids books are sooo boring and just not as stimulating as “real” books.
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These are really similar dreams to ones that I have for when we finally adopt. Days out in the Rockies, camping, could life be any better than that for a little one?
We were emailing back and forth several months ago. I fizzled out as I was a bit overwhelmed with our adoption process. I’m now reading your blog from beginning to current lol.
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