The second toy we were send from the lovely The Toadstool was the gorgeous Haba Smart Fellow Pegging Game.

The concept is really simple, there’s 18 tactile wooden blocks and the kiddos have to use them to  make a 3D representation of the picture on the card.

Annie absolutely adores this game. She worked her way through the 1 and 2 star difficulty cards the first time she sat down to play and the look of achievement and pride on her face was immense.

I love the look on concentration and determination in these photos. She worked through all the cards one by one like a machine, pausing at the end of each build for us to admire her handiwork before starting on the next challenge.

Ez Bear loves playing with this too. He is obviously too young to make the pictures on the cards, he just has fun making shapes and improving his hand eye coordination through pegging. He also enjoys stacking two blocks and trying to thread a rod through them.

He is also learning about cause and effect with this play, he puts one of the smaller rods into a block and pushes it out from the bottom until it falls out, he thinks it’s hilarious and now expects it to happen rather than looking shocked.

Wooden toys and games always look lovely and inviting and this one is no different. The paint is bright and the blocks are nice and sturdy, which is lucky as Ez has a habit of catching them with his elbow and sending them crashing to the floor! The blocks are smooth and weighty and feel really nice in the hand.

I like the added level of difficulty that comes from matching up the decorations on the blocks, for example the silver one has different patterns on two of the sides. The solutions for the shapes are on the back of each card and show which rods connect the blocks, and how.

The two blocks with heads on are the favourites for both kiddos, Annie likes to make a stage for a puppet show, while Ez likes kissing the faces and talking to them.

It can be used as an absorbing way to spend an hour or more, or to fill the 5 minutes waiting for dinner to be served up to distract the whinging masses!

I really wish there were an add-on pack for this, maybe some more cards and additional blocks, though, saying that, the ‘re-play’ value is high. Annie has gone through all the cards a couple of times and shows no signs of being bored with it. If anything it’s encouraging her to make up her own shapes and towers.

The price for this on The Toadstool is £27.20 which seems just right, the blocks are really well made and the cards are still in one piece despite Ez trying to eat one of them which suggests how well made they are!

This is one of the few toys I plan on keeping until we (hopefully) have grandkids so they can play with them too, I don’t foresee beautifully made, wooden pegging games going out of fashion any time soon.

On Sunday I experienced a rare moment of productivity and made not 1, but 2, family movies!

To keep things interesting I did one from October 2012 and then last month’s one. I love watching them and seeing just how much Ezra has grown, how long his hair got in just 6 months and how he went from not quite crawling to full on toddlerhood.

I also love seeing how Annie’s dancing has not really changed that much (why mess with perfection!) and seeing how she has lost the last of her baby chub and turned into a willowy lanky kiddo with a ‘unique’ taste in clothes.

October saw some epic puddle jumping in fantastic autumnal storm lighting, Ezra’s first birthday, scootering at the skatepark (Annie not us!), a homemade superhero cape that Annie wore nonstop for days, Ezra’s first night time sickness ‘incident’, pumpkin farm trips and Ez preparing to make the leap to crawling.

April on the other hand gave us afternoons spent in blanket forts, Ezra’s first go on the trampoline, the new play area equipment courtesy of the Actimel Family Well Being Fund, the sport of sofa diving, homemade play dough, invitations to play, dancing, fake crying and (bad) pirate face painting.

Two very different but equally awesome months spent with my favourite 3 people.

Do you make family movies?

• Looking back at all the photos of the kids playing in the garden during that run of gorgeous weather. I’m really looking forward to summer now.

• My new Hurraw organic, vegan lip balms. I stumbled across them online and now may have developed a slight addiction! What’s more I found out they sell them in Whole Foods so every time we go there I can hear them calling my name! The moon balm is amazing and the black cherry is my go to daytime balm. As soon as the sun reappears I’m buying the SPF 15 sun balm. I love the range of flavours and they smell gorgeous, it’s like being 13 again.

• I have been watching Australian Masterchef for the past 3 months and really loving it. Now it’s finals week and while I’m sad it’s finishing I can’t escape the fact that I will enjoy having my evenings back.

• Listening to Ezra chat away. He is a proper chatterbox and while the number of actual words he uses may be low, he certainly manages to get his point across using ‘Ezranese’.

• Jon made the nicest meal ever last night, hot squash foldovers with homemade potato salad, and knowing I’ve got one left over for my lunch today is a big reason to smile :)

• My new Picpack magnets, printed from my Instagram stream onto lovely 5.8cm square magnets with rounded corners. I ordered them on Sunday afternoon and they arrived Thursday all the way from Germany. The magnets look lovely, are nice and weighty and I’m really happy with the colours as they look exactly like my photos do on Instagram. Any excuse to have more Instagram photos up around the place!

Now for something to make you smile, Picpack have very kindly offered three readers the chance to win a pack of 12 magnets for themselves so if you’re an Instagram fan simply use the Rafflecopter form below to enter.

Please make sure you complete the compulsory step and then do as many of the extra ones as you fancy for bonus entries. If you can’t see the Rafflecopter widget please refresh your browser window.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Rules:

• Only one Rafflecopter entry form per household
• Open to worldwide entries
• You must be over 18 to enter
• The competition closes at midnight Wednesday 15th of May
• I will contact the winner shortly after the competition closes with the voucher code to claim their magnets.