Working Sundays is now the norm for me.

 It has been an adjustment, but it's not all doom and gloom.

There are some bonuses. In lieu of Sundays off I get a weekday in its place and this is time to spend with Hayley and Tyne. We get to have days out having fun and going to nice places. I get to spend days (yes whole days) with my family and not just an hour before Tyne goes to sleep.

We don't just have to squeeze in an hour or two at night before bed. I get to sit and feed my son, his breakfast, lunch and sometimes tea. 

I get to experience the joys of daytime shopping during the week. Empty parks and restaurants you don't have to reserve a table for or queue at only to be told there are no high chairs available...

Before becoming a Dad my days off would be spent laying in bed recovering from the night before, possibly a lunch out, maybe browsing online or watching a movie....

But now feeding and cuddles are high on the to do list, playing is higher of course....just sitting with Tyne whilst he plays, or watches TV and relaxing and being with him is my favourite hobby now. 

Watching his facial expressions as he discovers a new feature on a toy, a new advert or programme, or pattern on the sofa he's never noticed before. 

There's always something new and fresh that we as adults may take for granted but to him it's new and wonderful. 

Be it watching TV with him (even the ads for Professional Negligence Solicitors and Loan companies offering to solve financial woes aren't annoying when seen through the eyes of a child!), trying new foods, having funny face competitions..it's all time well spent.

May be we should all take a leaf out of our children's books and start looking at things with fresh eyes and not just taking them for granted. I've tried, and I love it.

Over the last few weeks, I'd noticed that Tyne was seeming less and less happy spending time in the car.

As we spend quite a bit of time in the car doing deliveries for my craft business, this was becoming a bit of an issue and I started wondering if perhaps it may be because he was ready to come out of first car seat.

He was still using his Group 0 car seat, still rear-facing so all he could see was the back seat.

Luckily, with perfect timing, the lovely people at Kiddicare contacted us to ask if we'd be interested in reviewing a car seat from their extensive range....

We had a browse through their website, and from the many great options on offer we settled for the Baby Weavers Shuffle SP.

Choosing a car seat can be a tricky business, particularly for a first time Dad like me as obviously it's not something I've ever needed to do before and the various Groups and age/weight limitations were somewhat mind boggling to me!

Luckily Kiddicare have a fantastic easy-to-use guide on their website which you can view HERE - I found this invaluable when deciding which car seat to go for!

So....why did we choose the Baby Weavers Shuffle SP?

I decided that it made more sense to me to go for a car seat that would last Tyne from now right up until he is 4 years old, it seems more cost effective than swapping and changing again and if he's anything like me he'll be a creature of habit - so will hopefully settle into and get used to his own car seat!

The seat has 4 easily adjustable recline positions, a 5 point safety harness, and a deep side wings for increased side impact protection.

The key points to this for me are that it has removable/ washable covers and an in-built alarm system which alerts us if the harness is released from the locking clip - I think this is such a clever idea as little ones are always playing with these things and how easy would it be for Tyne to undo the lock without us noticing?!

I also LOVE the design of this car seat - its funky and fresh without being in-your-face, and its very unisex so would be suitable if a little sister ever happens to come along too!

I'm really impressed with the car seat, and thankfully Tyne is much happier in it now that he's forward facing and able to look out of the window as we travel!

To browse the range of car seats and many other great items, visit www.kiddicare.com 

It's my decision to share milestones of Tyne's life as he grows up, but obviously there are certain things that should be kept out of the public domain.

Now I have to admit that I'm not the most safety savvy of people when it comes to online sharing - just a few weeks ago  I was about to Instagram a photograph of an exciting looking stack of parcels that had arrived one morning, until Jon pointed out to me that our address was clearly visible for all to see in the photo.

I didn't think this mattered much at first thought but of course anybody who follows my public Instagram account will know that I have a lovely little baby boy at home, and just seeing that one photo will divulge exactly where that little boy lives...

All it would take is a few more simple slip ups - a photo of his bedroom and somebody could most likely figure out whereabouts in the house he sleeps - a very scary thought!, a couple of Instagrams of us out and about would reveal that nobody is home and all of those lovely parcels I Instagrammed earlier are sitting unattended at home.....

When you think about the implications of what you share online, it really is quite frightening. 

Of course I adore blogging and sharing a little bit of Tyne's life with my readers is part of that, but I feel that becoming more aware of how to protect our families privacy online is important and something that I will be giving a lot more thought to in the future.

A few days ago, Mummy told me that we were going to Build-A-Bear in Exeter for the day to see what we thought of it!

Build-A-Bear Workshop is a place you can go to where you can make your very own teddy bear friends, buy them outfits and just have lots of fun!

When we got there, we met a lovely lady called Starla who told us all about it and explained what we would be doing.

Starla said I should look at all of the bears they had and choose which one I wanted to make.

There were so many lovely teddy bears to choose from, so I had a good cuddle of lots of them to make extra sure I chose the right one!

Santa Claus was cuddly and looked really nice, but Mummy thought I might eat his glasses....

I thought Rudolph's light up nose was extra cool!

And the brightly coloured rainbow bear was really snazzy!!

They had so many cool Christmas bears too! The Snowman was really nice!

In the end though, I decided I liked Rudolph and his flashing red nose the best of all!

Starla gave me an empty Rudolph and we set off to make him cuddly!!!

Starla said we could put sounds in Rudolph if we wanted to, we could choose from giggling and words like "I love you" - but because I love music SO much, we decided to get the Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer song!

Starla showed it to me and we had a dance to make sure I liked it!

We went to the stuffing machine, which is full of fluffy stuffing for inside the teddy bears.

The machine has lots of bright lights inside which looked really nice and I got to step on the pedal myself to stuff Rudolph!

Daddy said I did a good job!

Then I chose a heart for inside Rudolph - I could have had a scented heart or a beating heart, but I decided a normal plain heart would be best so I gave it a kiss and made a wish...then we put the heart inside Rudolph!

The nice lady stitched Rudolph up nicely, and said that if he ever opens at all I can bring him back and they will fix him again for free! 

Then we took Rudolph to the Fluffing Station where we brushed his fur and fluffed him up under the hand dryers!

Then Mummy typed up Rudolph's birth certificate - so that if he ever gets lost and somebodys hands him in to a Build A Bear shop, they will open him up and look at his tag number - then they will find our address in their computers and return him to me!!

This is me with my finished Rudolph - isn't he cool?!!

Starla put him in a box for me with a ribbon and my name on, and said I could keep him forever!

I had so much fun at Build A Bear, everybody was super nice to me, and Rudolph is my new very best friend - I have played him with lots since we got home!

We also got an outfit for Rudolph to make him look extra Christmassy! Mummy said it was cute coz it matches my onesie....Look!!!!

I had SO much fun at Build A Bear that Mummy says she's even thinking about taking me and my cousins there for my 1st Birthday party - won't that be cool?!

Bye Everybody!!

Love from Tyne ( And my new very best friend Rudolph!)

xxx

Rudolph costs just £19.00 from Build A Bear workshop, outfits are sold at an additional cost starting from £4.50.

For more information, please visit http://www.buildabear.co.uk/