Life seems to be manically busy at the moment and my blog to-do list is getting bigger and bigger! It seems that balancing family, work and blogging is harder in the summer holidays! Here’s our Monthly Marvels roundup.

Minion Fever!
The selection of Minion books came at a really good time as it kept M busy when we were stuck at home with the dreaded pox. He especially loved the Minions: Mega Sticker Book and the Minions: Seek and Find activity book where he enjoyed spending a good while searching out the minions on the pages. E was more suited to the Minions: Fun Book and although he can’t quite master reading the Minions: Junior Novel just yet we have been reading snippets of it. It all tied in nicely with M’s first-ever trip to the cinema at the start of the summer holidays to watch the movie too.

Ralphie and the achy tooth
E has been going to the dentist with me since he was 3 and before his first visit, we spoke lots about the dentist and what it entailed. We even role-played this and took it in turns to check each other’s teeth, and it became a game. I think this also really helped with his experience. His favourite part now is being allowed to move the chair up and down!

However, if your children don’t like going to the dentist (who does?), this book might help alleviate their fears. It’s a story about Ralphie, the Rabbit who needs to take a trip to the dentist because he has a wobbly tooth. The book was commissioned by Mr Bhandal a dentist in Coventry who hopes to teach children about looking after their teeth and trips to the dentist from an early age to help combat their fear.

You can download a PDF version of this book from the Bhandal Dental Practice website

Why not give goats a go?
When M was a baby, he suffered from cows milk intolerance which meant he was on prescription formula from the age of 5 months. Had I known this I would have stuck to exclusively expressing my milk (he didn’t take to the breast) but hindsight is a wonderful thing! We weaned him on dairy-free items like soya and goats milk but luckily he outgrew this allergy by the time he was one so we were able to gradually re-introduce dairy items one by one. So we are no strangers to having used alternatives to cows milk.

When St Helen’s Farm got in touch and asked if they could send us a hamper of their goat’s milk products thought I was intrigued. The hamper contained a lovely variety consisting of milk, yoghurts, butter and cheese all made from goats milk.

Hubby was rather sceptical when asked what we’d been sent but he didn’t even notice any difference in his tea when I used goats milk and the boys quite happily had it in their cereal and enjoyed the butter on toast and ate the yoghurts.

They weren’t so keen on the goats cheese though so I went onto the St Helen’s Farm website and found a recipe for a baked lemon cheesecake. Hubby was impressed – we do all love a good cheesecake.

There are so many benefits to goats milk that I was not previously aware of. It’s lower in lactose, the fats and proteins are easily digestible and it’s also naturally lower in cholesterol. As mentioned above, we didn’t taste the difference in the milk at all although it is naturally more watery.

Why not give it a try?

NOTE: We were sent these items in exchange for a review.  All images and opinions are my own