A birthday girl!

 Well, the last two years have seemed a bit of a blur to me! My baby girl is two already, I just can't believe it! She's an outdoor bunny, so we went for a picnic at a local nature reserve to guarantee lots of squirrel viewing - squirrels are her favourites at the moment so it was the highlight of her day watching them collecting nuts and acorns. Here she is with her beautiful big sister, and this is the best photo to demonstrate her birthday dress, which has cost me much stress and my sewing machine many insults in the last couple of weeks! However, I now know what a placket is (that bit the buttons are sewn onto - who knew?!) and I have mastered buttonholes. Only because my machine is much better than I give it credit for - I need to develop my patience!

 A fun cake for a gorgeous girl. We had to have three separate 'cake and singing' sessions throughout the weekend due to several family visits as well as our picnic with friends so the train cake was ideal as we ate three carriages each time and then I added more from the spares tin! I had made a huge traybake style sponge and cut it into chunks and when they were iced and decorated with the beautiful sugarpaste animals my sister and my biggest girl had created, it looked great. Well, the children were impressed, anyway! The animals got a bit battered when we carried the cake around the nature reserve, but it was worth it :-)

The weekend was really rewarding. We spread out the visitors to stop it from feeling overwhelming and that worked really well. Every present was really appreciated and enjoyed individually and it felt really lovely. In this picture, she's falling in love with some gorgeous wool-felted finger puppets. Plus, when a two year old first discovers the 'Happy Birthday' song and walks around singing it to themselves for days, well, it's just really sweet!

 

A lazy day...

 Today we discovered a fantastic solution for a small boy who is fairly addicted to the TV at the moment and asks to watch it every five minutes from about 8am. I don't mind him watching a little bit, it's nice to relax and zone out sometimes, but all things in moderation. So. We decided yesterday that he shouldn't even ask to watch it before he's dressed and ready for the day, because that just isn't going to happen. And today, we used that new idea to it's best advantage. We got dressed at 2.15pm. This may well be the latest I've ever got dressed - I'm a little obsessive about showering first thing and being ready. I've acknowledged today that this is a lesson I needed to learn: it's ok to slow down sometimes.

It's not that we've been doing nothing, though, just that we've been doing it more gently than usual! We read lots of stories and did some cooking, made a lovely lunch and started the evening meal for us all to have later, and then the littlies were delighted to have a tea party with their toys (using the tea set I've saved for 25 years and wished I'd saved a little longer when my tiny girl had one of her throwing moments and smashed a cup :( ) while I managed to get halfway through making the dress we're giving the tiny one for her second birthday on Sunday. This was the calm scene as my boy set up the picnic (with playsilk blanket, thank you mamapixie!) and my girl read to the teddies while they waited for their food. She then ate all their food (raisins) but they didn't seem to mind. The funniest bit was watching her read them a story and then shout 'you stay there, I be back soon!' and run to get another book!

Oh and a little bit of spontaneous learning too - have many children learned to read by fridge magnets alone?! I lie, Reading Eggs is really suiting him at the moment, he enjoys working through the sounds with me and he's just very, very interested in words right now so learning is just happening as we go. He's thrilled every time he works out a real word though! I would like some fridge letters that aren't just capitals - do they exist? Off to ebay I go...

It doesn't happen often...

But wow, when it does, it's something special! The children bathing is, of course, something that DOES happen often - they are usually caked in mud or crayon so we can't pass many days without needing a good wash - but the peace that accompanied the bath this afternoon was very unusual. Maybe it's because it's the afternoon: four hours at Forest School in which it didn't stop raining for even a second meant that we didn't wait until bedtime for the clean routine. Perhaps they were just exhausted after all that hard playing. Whatever the reason, I had to catch the moment (before they noticed me and began pouring water on the floor) where the silent absorption in their own play and discovery was so absolute that I sat outside the bathroom and read my book for five whole minutes. I was a metre away but they both were so quiet and involved in what they were doing that I had to occasionally pop my head around the door to check they were still there!

Our days at home have been challenging as our littlest girl has been ill with lots of different bugs in the last couple of weeks. This has made her grumpy and very easy to antagonise - at which point she forgets her words and resorts to bites and headbutts. Not much fun, but she's much better now and is gaining more vocabulary every day so will hopefully be less frustrated as she can explain herself without battering us all! And in the pauses between tantrums, we've been exploring lots of lego and junk modelling and reading a million or so books daily. Room for much improvement as we adjust to our new cycle, but learning how we work best is all part of the fun. Here's to Autumn!

All change!

Wow, what a rollercoaster the last few weeks have been! We set off in September with Finn starting school, mornings only, with the rest of his local friends. He did six mornings before we decided as a family that this didn't work for us. Our instincts said he wasn't ready, but he was keen to start so we thought we'd give it a go and I'm glad we did, because I now feel much more sure of our route and don't feel that I'm imposing my own dreams on him. He said he hated it after a day but we encouraged him to keep going in and to give it a fair trial, which he did. He didn't hate all of it, he enjoyed the singing and some of the toys but was very articulate at explaining that he prefers both of these things at home and at Forest School. So, after much anxious conversation (why does a meeting with the headteacher still strike panic into me at nearly thirty?!), we've withdrawn him. We're not sure where this journey will go, we know some families who have never been to school and some who only do secondary, as well as some who are delaying their child's entry into primary school. And our local school does have a lot going for it so it may be that he feels he'd prefer to be there to be part of the community at some point in the future. It may be that he's desperate to start next term, it may be next year, it may be in the far distant future, or not at all. I just keep reminding myself that any of those options are ok, it will all work out in the end and we will be guided by him. He has a wonderful understanding of his own needs and is so grateful that we've responded to them. And people keep remarking on how happy he looks this week :-)

He's not of 'statutory school age' until next year (a fact that isn't often mentioned to parents of reception children!) so we're not official home-edders, but our week is becoming a lovely mixture of two mornings at Forest School, a drop-in home ed social group, our local toddler group (which I help run so he helps me!) and lots of fun and laughter at home. Today we read tons of books - Evie is addicted to reading right now and won't go anywhere without a stack of books under her arm! And we made a rocket, inspired by the Charlie and Lola story in which the little sister breaks her brother's beautiful rocket...and the little sister tried that today! The little two are getting on so well at the moment - she cried all the time he was at school and they just keep hugging and laughing together now. And both are delighted when our biggest girl gets home on the school bus. She just started secondary and absolutely loves it :-)

In other news, I've decided to train as a childminder and start my training next month but in the meantime, I've set up an etsy shop for my jewellery, which I'm really enjoying getting into again. It's called Jenner's Jewellery if anyone fancies a peek!

 So I'm a self-employed, home-edding mama this week, which is quite exciting!

Brothers and sisters

 I've been useless at blogging again - my computer makes it almost impossible to get a post completed before the frustration causes me to combust, and life has been quite up and down - fun but confused and a bit manic! But I just found these photos and couldn't resist posting them, they are such an amazing record of how much these little people adore each other:

Above, at a garden party for one of my oldest friends. Below, littlest girl took the sling away from me and carried it over to her big sister, who obligingly carried her for about fifteen minutes, both of them laughing the whole time!

And here, both of them had been asleep for three hours, he's on a single next to the double - after I took this she sleep-crawled even further into his armpit and had to be moved as she started kneading his skin as she does with mine all night long!

I love seeing how much they love each other. And I know how normal sibling-rivalries can be, and they aren't the best of friends every day, but I hope that in years to come they'll keep these bonds strong and continue to support each other and have heaps of fun together :-)

Through a four year old's eyes...

 My boy loves to take photos, and I love to see what he thinks worthy of including in his memories of our days! We went to Quest, the Natural Health Show local to us, and this was what he snapped! :-)

I took the one below, of my tiny girl asleep on the pile of slings I was trying to demo!

Yet more cake...

 And what a cake! I shamelessly stole this idea - my sister-in-law's boyfriend made a similar one for her birthday (although I suspect his was more technical!) and it seemed like the right kind of cake to make an eleven year old cake fanatic smile! Just basic chocolate sponge, layered with cream and strawberries and covered in chocolate fudge sauce. So simple, so impressive looking, and so delicious!

 We spent a lovely family day celebrating the biggest girl's birthday, Father's Day and my lovely brother's fantastic new job. We walked at Haytor, had a lovely picnic with warm champagne in plastic glasses...and played with ribbon poi in the wind - I don't have any pictures of that but it was beautiful!

 Everyone except this little lady climbed to the top of Haytor - we took turns waiting with her, and look how patiently she waited!

 And this little boy was sooooo excited to have climbed to the top and then found a shelter in the rock on the way back down again!

 And here are some of the tribe waving from the top. Who needs sunshine to have a lovely day? Luckily, we don't - we haven't seen much of it lately! Come on summer, it's not too late to make an appearance!

Higgledy piggledy or organised?

 This is the first year I've really had the time to get stuck into growing veg. Every other year we've started well and then I've been exhausted by pregnancy or newborn intensity and just not had the time to make it work. We've found it really rewarding to have a handful of our own potatoes or a few tomatoes, but never really made a success of it before. So this year, we ordered a 'box to grow' from Riverford and received lots of beautiful little plants and seeds. Everything is doing beautifully - even the carrots have finally come up, just as I'd given up hope! We lost our cucumbers early on in the cold, so replaced them with one from the market which is looking lovely.

 Our garden is very well designed and landscaped, it's lovely and fairly low maintenance (luckily!) but that meant there wasn't masses of space for veg beds. We have a couple, but have put everything else in random places to make the most of the space and see what works. I love the beans growing through and up the apple trees, but I'm not sure how practical it's going to be! I like the difference though - the neat little rows of salads look really satisfying, but vegetables appearing in unexpected spots is really exciting and I can't decide which I prefer!

 The pond, though, is seriously higgledy-piggledy! I really need to get a frame made to cover it - I wish we were good at DIY! I love how wild it is in the little corner where the pond is, and I want to grow more wild flowers and things for bees in there. It's surrounded by clematis walls, so we have lots of insects about already and I really want to keep it that way. The littlies are very excited by bugs at the moment - my boy is constantly digging out worms to say hello!

And thinking of the children, I think this little girl has made her choice. Note the shoes - she was desperate to get outside in a hurry...higgledy piggledy it is!

Blue skies

Climbing trees, walking, feeding ducks with Grandma and painting the house with water. We like sunny days!

What is a shark made of?

This is the question I was asked before I opened my eyes yesterday morning. We spent the day moving through many others, including: 'What is the sea made of?' 'Where is Greece?' 'Are cats made of bones, like humans?' and 'What is snot made of?' Nice.

This little boy has become the most inquisitive little person I've ever met. He's always been intrigued by everything, wanted to know how things work and where they come from, but suddenly it's a whole new level of questioning. I'm lucky to be able to hear all these questions and talk about the answers with him, I don't know if a pre-school or nursery would be quite so freely able to spend an afternoon finding worms to see why they don't have legs or making food really, really slowly so we can see how everything goes together to make something else.

That doesn't mean I don't have a moment of 'argh!' with most of the questions, though! They're fascinating, funny and interesting but it's also a little exhausting! Today, especially. On Monday my wonderful childhood friend, who has lived abroad for many years, came to visit us. We had a wonderful, relaxing lunch and talked for hours. She also brought me a lovely box of rich, Belgian chocolates.Yesterday afternoon, my biggest girl expressed disappointment that we hadn't saved a chocolate for her - surprising, as we hadn't actually opened them yet... but somebody had. He'd 'suddenly wanted them', and had eaten every last one in the space of three minutes while I brought the shopping into the house. They were very strong, dark chocolate, so I admire his persistance in getting through the whole lot - one would've given me a headache! He finally managed to stop singing and rocking at about 9.30pm, and woke up today at 4.30am. He's been like a live wire all day, alternately yelling manic questions and bursting into floods of devastated tears. He fell asleep in about two minutes tonight, so I hope normal service will be resumed tomorrow - and perhaps I'll keep chocolates on a higher shelf in future!

Sunshine and smiles...

 We went to dartmoor zoo in the sunshine - a rare family trip as I don't really like zoos (and our weekends usually disappear in a haze of cricket, gigs and gardening) but we all had a great time. The zoo is set in beautiful grounds and most of the animals have plenty of space and the children really loved seeing such amazing creatures - my littlest girl especially loves animals (although she calls them all dogs - still no need for other words in her little world...) and my boy fell in love with a tiger, standing outside her house listening to her snoring!

 Of course, a highlight of the day was the ridiculously expensive play corner. Slightly annoying as the website had promised unspoilt grounds with only fields for the children to play in... but how could we resent for long anything that makes this big girl grin like this. It was great to see these two playing so happily together.

 And then a beautiful walk with friends the next day gave an aspiring climber a chance to get stuck in a few trees...

and the rest of us the chance to appreciate how beautiful this area is and how very lucky we are to live here.

And last night, we decided to go and watch the olympic flame procession - alternating between feeling patriotic and feeling frustrated at the amount of sponsorship and corporate branding involved in what ought to have been a community event... - and we ate fish and chips on the seafront. Here's a very patriotic baby, allowed to hold the flag the children had pilfered from somewhere along the way for the first time all afternoon and making the most of it!

Some lovely days, making a change from what has become the norm - being indoors and watching the rain! I could get used to this sunshine...

Learning all day long

Wow, we just came downstairs after doing some puzzles and building some walls (with mega-blocks, not cement, much to the continuing disappointment of a small boy who loves the building site opposite our road...) and I thought it was about 3.30pm. It was 5pm! Luckily, the biggest girl has been on her climbing course this afternoon so we've just been able to completely lose track of time and it's flown by! So my instant tea-saviour (pasta and pesto) is cooking while I blog...

The children have been so happy doing their own thing this week - we've spent two days at Forest School with them delightedly splashing through the puddles and caking themselves in mud, and today we went to a singing session in our town and have spent the rest of the day learning and playing all at once. We discovered some brilliant letter magnets that stick on the radiator and can be matched up with words and pictures, so that amused a certain little man for ages! We also discovered a good way to make a den out of our dining table - and isn't reading so much more fun by torchlight? We found a couple of books we hadn't read for a while, too, which made it extra special!

Incidentally, I haven't eaten wheat in a couple of weeks (yes, even the birthday cakes were gluten free!) and today had a bit of bread for lunch - it was awful! My stomach really aches and I've felt tired all afternoon - I really don't know why I bother! I've been juicing, and the difference to my motivation and wellness is brilliant - I've finally felt able to start some writing projects I've been thinking about for months and it's really exciting :)

Another day, another party...

 So, Phil normally gets a leftover fairycake from his son's birthday with a candle stuck in the top. If I remember/can find a candle. This is the peril of having your birthday a couple of days after your son. Definitely an ill-advised option. This year he was thirty and was in such denial, you'd really have been forgiven for thinking it was eighty-five (except by him. He certainly would not have forgiven that confusion.) and so we decided to force him into a celebratory mood and held a BBQ party, complete with a huge birthday cake dedicated entirely to him. It took quite a few people to help him eat it, though! The weather held out ok and we borrowed a gazebo so some people braved it but the rest of us brought our barbequed food inside and added it to the remains of the buffet after the tinies had eaten their way through quite a few things...

It was a lovely day and despite the enormous amount of washing up, I quite enjoyed the whole thing! Phil loved it and was really glad we'd made the effort. Happy Birthday Phil!

One of those days...

No, she is not bleeding from her eye socket. She isn't unhappy either, she found the whole thing hilarious but didn't feel like smiling for the evidence shot. Her big brother is now aware of two things:

1. You should never facepaint a baby without checking with a grown up
2. You should never facepaint an eye.

Whether he'll remember these things, or whether we'll have a similar exciting event while preparing breakfast tomorrow, who can say! After a minor panic, we realised it washes off quite easily and she doesn't seem to have any left in her eye...

A long day, which has pretty much carried on in the same way it began. The newly four-year-old is suddenly determined to do his own thing regardless of logic and consequences, which means being extra-vigilant and spending more time shouting warnings than I'd like. I'm still in the endless school/not-school dilemma and days like today really suggest he's not ready for a 28-1 ratio of children-adults and needs more time to develop his individuality and confidence. He's growing a lot, eating masses and stammering a lot, so I know things will change really quickly and I don't want to feel that we're restricting him or keeping him from having a community (where we live, the community IS the school and EVERYONE goes) if he could gain a lot from being part of it. On the other hand, if he's allowed to develop at his own pace and we can create enough community elsewhere (which we can't do without driving to groups about 20 mins away) that may be enough for him. I've never worried so much about something that wasn't a life/death issue! I think I just need to keep reminding myself that nothing is fixed. We know he's not ready right now, so just need to keep re-assessing where we are NOW rather than trying to plan the next few years all at once.

Ah, another blog post which has gone off on a tangent. Some things are predictable, after all!

Beltane Blessings

Things that are making me smile today:

My boy telling me 'a big four year old is coming in' before he enters the kitchen
My littlest girl snuggling in and giving me a great big bear hug
My biggest girl asking me to help her find ways to relax and de-stress (she's cracked the concept fifteen years before I did...)
Making Beltane crowns for the children at Forest School

Sharing a sunny morning in the woods and dancing around the Maypole (well, more like crawling, really. One in the sling and one on my back, threading his may ribbon around my neck. Maybe I'm lying about the smiling with this one. It was a nice idea.)
Singing spring songs
Watching all of the children making cards for Daddy's birthday - even the tiniest girl can draw a picture (of sorts...) now

Things that would make me smile more:

Not having just burned the pitta breads so that they now resemble bullets and have to go straight in the bin.
Getting some sleep. Any amount would be an improvement on the last three weeks. 
Having two minutes to write a blog post without having one child on my lap trying to dismantle the computer and the other standing on the chair behind me, apparently trying to break my neck in a very loving way.
Not being yelled at and made demands of constantly for hours and days on end.


Hmm, I feel very much in need of those ways of relaxing and de-stressing myself at the moment! Breathe. Breathe more. Does anyone have a contact number for Mary Poppins?

Beltane Blessings to you all, sending love and attempting positive thoughts!xxx

Four!

 Wow, four has never seemed like such a big number before! Look at the big boy haircut! Well, half a haircut, to be fair, he ran off before I could get it really even... And he's been doing a birthday countdown for a few weeks now, until the day finally arrived. Almost. It hadn't really arrived at 5am when he got up, not even really at 6am when we talked about it again. It had just about crept over the sleep-deprived horizon by 6.45am when even the littlest girl gave up trying to keep her eyes closed and we began the celebrations.

 So this morning, our boy opened his presents from the family and then spoke to his Grandparents on the phone while we prepared for his party. He had some little friends and their siblings over for a fancy-dress party and it worked out really well! He was a fireman (but of course!), regularly taking breaks to be a builder with his new toolkit (thanks to a very tuned-in Uncle!) and mainly sitting on the windowsill watching for his friends to arrive. Luckily we had anticipated this with a lunchtime party - he'd never have been able to wait any longer!

His biggest sister declined the fancy dress but spent hours preparing food with me, blowing up balloons and applying facepaints to small children - a total star. His littlest sister whinged for most of the day, but looked incredibly gorgeous as a ballerina dragon.

 And the cake. A little standing ovation for the cake, please.

 I've never used roll out icing before, buttercream is my usual favourite way to cover up a lumpy cake - but now I know how easy it is, I'll be much braver in the future! A regular 8" two-layer victoria sponge cake, with an extra layer on top that was baked in the bottom of a round glass bowl (lined with parchment paper, after the first one got stuck!), filled with jam and cream and piled high before being covered in buttercream and then royal/regal icing (what's the difference? Anyone know or care?) and decorated. The chocolate button studs were a big-sisterly inspiration, and the number 4 in chocolate cooking beads (no, of course they're not nasty nestle sweets!) was a similar flash of genius. And the printed Fireman Sam decoration was a big hit, too - and very cheap! I'd been having nightmares about this cake, ever since my gorgeous boy asked me so sweetly for 'a hat cake, please, mummy' that I couldn't let him down. I was hugely relieved by how easy it was and how great it tasted - gluten free, too.

The children at the party loved making and decorating gingerbread men and had fun hunting for treasure in the lounge and playing dancing games with the two older siblings present co-ordinating the music. The food was a big hit and things just seemed to work out really well.

The afternoon was busy, with relatives popping in to say happy birthday - oh and fill our house with gifts... My little boy was on top of the world all day long, pausing every now and then to give a huge grin and say 'I'm so happy!'. He's so delightful and so much fun to be with, I'm so pleased he had a happy and exciting day. Tomorrow we're having a family day out which will hopefully be a bit more relaxing but equally fun, and maybe we'll even get five minutes without any rain...

I just can't believe he's been on the planet for four years. When he was born, I couldn't believe how tiny he was and how loudly he cried. He still cries unbelievably loudly, but isn't quite as tiny any more. I've so enjoyed his company in the last year and I love the way he's becoming so much more sure of himself and his place in the world. It's such an amazing journey, watching this boy grow. I feel very lucky to be walking beside him.