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!