Making it up

10:10

Tue Feb 2 2010 – 14:05

Was reading around the blogring the other day, as you do, and I came across an interesting post on Honour and Inspiration.

This was the bit that leapt out at me:

Okay, we don’t have a car to get rid of, we never fly, we’re vegetarian and we try to grow as much of our own food as we can in the garden and allotment. We use public transport and cycle and walk. We buy second hand clothes or strictly fair-trade if new. We buy fairly traded tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, bananas, rice and everything else we can manage to. We buy as much from our local farmer’s market as we can. We don’t buy lots of new ’stuff’. We have 1 small, old TV and 1 computer which was second-hand. We turn everything off stand-by, have low-energy light-bulbs and try to conserve water. We have a water butt in the back garden. We use only environmentally household cleaners, ditto with the minimal toiletries we use.

Made me think about our life, and how we are doing. I signed up to 10:10 when it launched, but realistically, we are going to struggle to cut down. Given the electricity bill that arrived the other day, we do need to try though!

Let’s see, how do we measure up these days?

We have one car instead of the two we were running up until last year, and that one spends a lot of time sitting on the drive. It’s diesel as well, so hopefully more economical than petrol. Neither of us is commuting to work any more, and most of its outings are related to children’s activities. It does get used to take Small to Beavers, and children to swimming as well as a drive to music these days, but as the weather improves I’m hoping that we will sort out bikes and they will be used for Beavers and swimming, or we’ll go back to walking down to the pool. Atm I don’t feel right about walking down in the cold and the rain with a baby.

I know that around the world and in history, babies are out and about in all kinds of weathers, and without the coats and warm clothes or warm destinations that we take for granted. But does that mean that I should risk soa’s health/ comfort? I don’t think it does. After all around the world (and in history) lots of babies don’t survive. Hm.

Anyway, getting back to the point. The car really doesn’t get used very much any more. One shopping trip a week – and that shop is just a mile away. I’m trying to cut that down to once a fortnight by doing lots of our fresh food shopping even more locally on foot – we have a greengrocer, butcher, and a good coop all within about 5 minutes brisk walk. Using the greengrocer has improved our diet as well – our family challenge to eat two pieces of fruit a day is going well.

Can’t cut out flying – haven’t done it in years!

Diet – we are not vegetarian apart from me. We’re trying to cook more food from scratch, which is working well in terms of less packaging and lower cost, but probably slightly ups our energy consumption in the cooking. I don’t know whether home cooking is more or less efficient in terms of energy use overall? I guess it means the food is only cooked once, whereas ready meals get cooked both in a factory and at home.

I do find all this about cutting down and back very difficult to work out. Which bits really are efficient? Still, can only try to do our best. I’m hoping that we’ll be a bit better in the garden this year – we have a long term plan to plant fruit trees at some stage, but that won’t come to fruition this year. This year I’ll try tomatoes, potatoes, beans and strawberries I think – need to keep it down to a manageable list so that we succeed. Will ask the kids what they want to add to the list though.

Let’s see, clothing. soa is very environmentally friendly – pretty much all her stuff is second or more hand me downs. I haven’t bought anything new for her apart from a swim nappy Small does fairly well too, with quite a lot of stuff from my sister’s step offspring. Big is the only one who doesn’t get much in the way of hand me downs as she’s just too big! Even I get some second hand stuff given. And I shop in charity shops as well.

Right, children are agitating for food, so I’ll have to leave this here and maybe revisit the topics later.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (3)

If all days were like yesterday

Tue Feb 2 2010 – 0:36

we wouldn’t need workbooks, points rewards systems, timetable charts or anything. It was one of those days that just comes together and everything works, everyone is happy and life generally is good

Started well after excellent sleep by getting up when the alarm went off and getting myself organised before the baby stirred. Then Small finished off his first sudoku and did several more pages from my Daily Challenge calendar (excellent christmas present from an auntie ) including anagrams, cryptic clues and those odd clues like 14 D in an F. I’ve no idea how he knew how to do the last ones, he said that he hadn’t looked at the answers, but he got them all right. He was mainly doing those while I was changing soa and getting her ready, and we all managed to leave the house by 10.15 without any cross words at all (some kind of record!).

We were heading round to Tim’s brother’s to do the Big Garden Birdwatch with them as they have fed the birds for ages *and* don’t have a cat, so usually get a much wider range of more birds than we do. Of course, someone was working on a roof two gardens down, so the birds were rather thinner on the ground than they might have been, but it was still a good hour. Or so I’m told – I went off into the front room and watched Andy Murray instead Shame he lost, but it looked like a good match, and the scoreline really didn’t tell the whole story.

Once that was done, Tim and his brother went off for their constitutional and the children and I walked into town for some fresh air. Part way there Small started jigging so we detoured to the library for him to use the toilet and then of course we had to look at books Small chose a graphic novel about Flash and Dr Seuss Oh Say Can You Say? and Big got The Hip Handbag Book on my ticket as she hadn’t brought hers out – then again, we hadn’t expected to go to the library

On the way back home we called into Halfords to look at bikes – last year’s challenge was swimming and I think that’s been achieved very satisfactorily, so this year’s challenge is bikes. They don’t have a huge choice in there but I wanted to get an idea of what was available particularly for Small. As we weren’t buying anything there and then he wasn’t very happy with it all, and so we quickly moved on to the Red Cross charity shop.

I was very good, and didn’t buy the bundle of wool that had tempted me through the door. I really need to do rather more stash busting before I do any more stash building However we weren’t quite as restrained with the books. They do a deal in there where it’s only £1 for a bundle of children’s books, and we picked up two bundles that featured lots of books about nature. The children have rather got into the idea of nature recently, sparked by RSPB and birds in the garden, so I thought following up on that was a good plan. Small found a little lion he wanted too, and Big a bundle of Harry Potter poster annuals, and for evenings I picked up an audio book of Stormbreaker to see if we can head back to calmer evenings.

Waiting to pay, the baby woke up. So I was stood there swaying and jigging in that “try to put the baby back to sleep” dance. Despite this the woman behind the counter didn’t notice soa until she shouted, and at that point the woman leapt a mile. Funny

Given that I’d not brought out any shopping bags, it was quite an effort to get back home in the requisite number of pieces, and we made it moments before Tim. Though apparently it was his second attempt

Late lunch, and then eventually we sat down for a family film afternoon, and watched Iron Man. It went down really well – even Big, who had turned her nose up to begin with, really enjoyed it. I thought it was great, and Small is rather sad that it has to go back to Lovefilm. I’ve said that I’ll look out for a cheap copy for him.

Family meal cooked by Tim, cheeseburgers, chips and beans. (I had halloumi.) And children into bed without any arguments.

An excellent day all round. We rewarded the children’s lovely behaviour with 25 bonus points each

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (3)

Points make prizes?

Sat Jan 30 2010 – 17:19

The other day Tim was browsing the shop that used to be the coop department store and discovered a number of Ben 10 toys that were very much reduced. He brought home an Ultimate Omnitrix and Swampfire. This provided the impetus for us to try out a new behaviour management system as follows.

The children start each day with 100 points. Through the day points are removed for bad behaviour, things like screaming at me, point blank refusal to comply with requests such as getting dresses, or door slamming or fighting. (Yes, we do seem to be trapped in a cycle of negative behaviour atm.) At the end of the day, remaining points are banked, and when 500 points are reached, then Small will get a Ben 10 toy, and Big will get a haven’t decided yet.

Our previous system was to put in place computer/tv/console bans for serious infringements, and allow privileges to be earned back by good behaviour. This just wasn’t working, and was making life very tough all round – Small in particular struggles to control his temper and explosive outbursts were getting him an awful lot of bans. Plus it all felt very negative so it seemed like it was time to try something different.

Touch wood atm it seems to be working. Small has been much easier to manage for the last two days. I’ve already pointed out that we will not be continuously buying things, but we may move to a system of other rewards such as being able to choose family outings.

Now on some levels it feels wrong to be rewarding behaviour that is just reasonable, but I don’t know what else we were supposed to try. Small is not a child who can always be reasoned with, certainly not in the heat of the moment. But he can focus on Ben 10 through most things, so we’re giving this a go and seeing where it gets us.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (13)

Bitty week.

Sat Jan 30 2010 – 16:32

Children were too tired on Monday for the outing I’d optimistically arranged the evening before, so I had to miss the outing to the hyperbolic crochet workshop Tried very hard not to let my disappointment get to me or adversely affect the day, but it was always going to be a tough one (day that is) anyway.

I do sometimes envy the full program some of the children of some of my friends get. I know that my friends are arranging it for their children rather than for themselves , but very often I’d like to be doing the whatever and suspect it can be a bit wasted on under 10s! My children, however, rarely want to do anything much. It worries me rather that they are not getting a full and varied home education experience, but I try to console myself with the fact that I am responding to their needs instead of mine. Hm.

Monday evening we had battle royal with Small trying to get him out to Beavers. The whole leaving the house thing is next to impossible atm, and I’m rather at a loss as to what to do about it.

Tuesday it was back to work and Small started his new maths book. He’s now on the same Singapore maths book as Big and the way he’s gone at it this week he’s going to catch her up in no time. Understandably she was kind of upset by this, but we had a few talks about it and I think she’s more or less OK with it now. Small seems to be in a workbook frame of mind atm – we found his KS1 Success Workbook: English and he worked through about six pages of it in one marathon sitting. Gave rise to some interesting conversations – one of the sections was introducing verbs and as a word that isn’t a verb, had “water”. We discussed whether it could be a verb – to water the plants for example, and decided that the book isn’t really all that good. Still, it gives us a springboard for that kind of discussions, lets me know what we have and haven’t talked about and has the benefit of ticking all the boxes should we ever want to compare with key stages, or more likely, meet an inspector who does

Despite our low opinion of the content of this book, we are considering getting a couple more in the series, for both springboard and box ticking purposes. I do find that looking at the National Curriculum and SATs reassures me rather – there are times when I feel we aren’t achieving very much because of the incredibly short time we spend doing anything academic. When I look at the national standards I discover that my children are at least at the standard required for their age, and very often far above it, even in areas which seem to me to be weak. Need to remember that concentrated one-to-one attention is worth many hours of school time.

As well as academics, we’ve fitted in a few other bits. Both have been inspired by our new RSPB membership (clubcard deal family Christmas present ) and have started nature diaries. Found some nice glittery scrapbooks in thing-me-bobs (odd little shop on main road in town) and they are using those. Small drew a tree and collected leaves to stick to it, and we looked up one of them. Wondering if it could be time to start a 100 species challenge. Wouldn’t really care if it was plants, animals, birds, local wild or planted up, would just be pleased if I managed to get them to be observant enough to identify 100 living things!

The plant that they found seed pods from this time was Honesty in case you are wondering.

Wednesday I dragged Small (almost literally) out to music. Quite pleased with myself that we weren’t the last there (small pleasures and all that). As I’d assumed Small loved it – they learned about pianissimo through to fortissimo by dimuendo-ing and crescendo-ing up and down the room. Also singing, rhythm and composer (Ralph Vaughn Williams) – an excellent session. And of course they went swimming Tuesday night – Tim walked them down while I walked out with soa in wrap to get bits of shopping.

Which reminds me of our other family challenge. We’re all trying to improve our diets by having fruit at lunch and dinner. Small and Tim find this particularly challenging as neither of them are partial to fruit or vegetables. I’m finding it’s slightly cutting down my chocolate and sweet things cravings which is good, as I’m very down about the state of my body atm. Breastfeeding means no dieting for weight loss, not that I usually diet to lose weight anyway, I usually just cut out chocolate and try to up my exercise levels. Right atm I can’t easily up my exercise levels either, and in fact today I feel completely wiped out without even considering exercising. Wondering if I’m slightly under the weather or whether boosting my vitamin/ mineral intake might be advisable.

Right, this is already a ludicrously long blogpost, mainly because I’ve been interrupted writing it more times than I can count, so I’m going to hit publish and see what I’ve missed out later.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (3)

And so to the weekend.

Wed Jan 27 2010 – 21:11

We left CP mid afternoon Friday, having attempted to wait out the rain shower in Starbucks, but giving up and just getting soggy on the way to the car instead. Then we got lost trying to get out of the carpark and ended up driving round the whole site, which added a ludicrous amount of time to our journey. As did the rain – aquaplaning is not all that much fun really. The part where the road surface was covered with washed out of the ground leeks was at least interesting.

Lovely to arrive at mother’s and have a cuppa, and once grandad arrived home from work, a belated Christmas mark 2 got underway. Children got some really lovely stuff, including bits they’d asked for like the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Bumblebee Voice Mixer Helmet for Small and the vet kit for Big. All in all they were very happy with their haul, as were we

Late night with fractious baby meant late morning all round, then Auntie J appeared with Christmas mark 3. Some excellent presents including underwater digital cameras, which will get plenty of use on the beach this summer I suspect, as the housing should keep sand out as well. Not sure how Small will cope with his no fear flowboard – I never could balance on a skateboard, but we’ll give it a go. The hurricane kites with their own bumbags are likely to get lots of usage as well, and Big’s clothes went down a treat.

Think J enjoyed meeting up with soa who was in an adorable mood, cooing and gurgling and making smiling faces all over the place. I really must start uploading some pictures.

Afternoon vanished – at some point in the day I had a lovely bath in the whirlpool bath my parents have, and we processed the kids through after me. That might have been morning though, I really can’t remember. And J brought Princess down with her, so the children really enjoyed playing with their cousin, to the extent that they were practically fighting over her!

In the evening we went out for a meal to meet up with K and S and Bil and Scott. Chosen pub started out a bit noisy, but when the family behind us finally gave up and went it calmed down rather, and the food was good and plentiful. So were the presents Small had his Ben 10 addiction well and truly fed, with three figures from the 10cm alien force alien collection as well as a number of excellent Marvel Heroes clothes items. He particularly likes the hoody Big got doll’s clothes, a secret diary and some lovely clothes as well.

Soa got a lovely piglet as well as clothes and a fleecy blanket. Oh, and a roundabout toy

All my children did really well this christmas from their relatives – our challenge was to fit everything in the car to bring it home. It took most of the day on Sunday to do it, but we did. Mainly very careful packing of all the clothing which took it down from four bags to two, leaving room for all the new stuff in the other two. I was still impressed when we managed to get it all in, and there wasn’t much room in the car either, with stuff packed into the passenger footwell and even under my feet.

Journey home was longer than it should have been due to a closure on the A14 which added about an hour to the journey. So we were late home with tired children. Pizza for tea and then to bed.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)

Making money online.

Wed Jan 27 2010 – 16:07

But not exactly getting rich from it!

Yesterday I posted a link to my facebook status as follows:

If you sign up to this cashback site before 29th Jan they will donate 50p to the Haiti appeal, as well as putting £1 into your account and mine. I’ve made £20 through it in under a month, mainly by doing a free trial with lovefilm, which gives £18 cashback!

Granted, I probably could have phrased it better, maybe less spammy in wording. But it wasn’t much of a hard sell, and while I hoped a couple of ppl might sign up, I wasn’t really bothered either way. So it surprised me when I was bothered later on when someone commented that they would rather donate breastmilk, and linked appropriately.

I’m not sure why this bothered me, so I thought I’d have a think about it.

Perhaps ppl would have been more happy clicking on the link to donate 50p if they didn’t think that I was getting anything out of it? But I’d have felt wrong linking it that way, dishonest in some way. So I went for full disclosure. Did this then backfire on me – do ppl only feel happy donating when they don’t get anything out of it either? Seems wrongheaded to me – where is the problem in getting something at the same time as giving something? If you don’t want to get the money yourself, fine, don’t ever use the website (I won’t get any money that way either as I only get the referral fee when you’ve earned £5) but sending an extra 50p to Haiti can’t hurt can it?

Is it because the donation feels like a bribe? Again, this is just perception, and doesn’t have to affect future behaviour. Has this donation scheme backfired on the website then?

I happen to think that the website is a pretty good one, I found it via Money Saving Expert which is itself an excellent resource in how to cut financial corners and save yourself a little money day to day. If you *are* going to shop online, MSE and I recommend using a cashback website. You might as well have the referral fees for your shopping instead of someone else having them. And as it won’t harm you, I would like it, obviously, if ppl signed up via my link. So, did I do something wrong putting that link on facebook? You tell me.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (7)

Hate to wake a sleeping baby

Wed Jan 27 2010 – 1:51

so I’ll blog quickly instead.

Can’t face waking her up after the evening she’s had, crying for hours due to tummy pains Poor little mite. Thankfully she doesn’t seem to suffer from that level of pain very often, not sure the carpet would take the pacing otherwise!

Anyways, that isn’t what I was going to blog about. Instead I was going to quickly recount our week and weekend away, at sherwood centerparcs and then on to stop with my parents.

Centerparcs, when we finally got there, was excellent. We were too late arriving for a swim on the first evening, which caused tears, but we managed plenty of pool time in the rest of the week, with various of us swimming twice on Tues and Weds, and once Thurs and Fri. Small declined swimming on the final day, but as he’d pretty much cracked the independent in water thing by then I didn’t mind. He’d given up on his ring and taken off the float jacket and discovered that he could swim both on top and under the water. Very happy boy.

Lovely to spend time with various friends. It’s been a long time since I’d seen anyone apart from Em out of this group – obviously as they were all meeting soa for the first time. She was on best behaviour and gave me 6 hours of sleep three nights running. Hasn’t kept it up since then, but hey, it was lovely while it lasted.

Small managed playing with Bb with only a few fall outs which was a huge step forward for him. Next we need to really get to grips with not hitting ppl Big enjoyed her time with Sb, although with her it’s use of the word stupid that ruins her relating time. We are trying to get through to her that one of these days when she treats ppl badly they are not going to come back for more. Hm.

Highlight of the week for her I suspect was the birthday gathering where she was given a DS. She was overwhelmed by it, and really just didn’t know where to put herself. It’s been well played with since, and as she’d asked for money towards buying one from family, she’s been able to order a game already as well

Think soa just enjoyed being around ppl, she’s a genuinely sociable baby. Dunno where she gets it from And like I say, I enjoyed catching up with friends. BK, twitter and facebook just aren’t the same as a cup of tea (or a glass of wine ) and a chat.

Was going to write about the family weekend too, but it’s rather late now, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (1)

Milestones.

Sat Jan 16 2010 – 14:00

I have been a mother for a decade.

My first child is 10 years old. Happy Birthday Big.

10 years ago I didn’t have the first idea what I was getting into. I had this idea that I was somehow going to balance a career with child rearing and home educating. Big, I’m sorry for the mistakes I made when I was just beginning to figure it all out.

I’m not sorry for the dummy – it allowed me to sleep without a small thing chewing on me for comfort, and drive without my nerves jangling from constant screaming. I’m not sorry about going back to work – that gave you a sane mummy with self-belief.

I’m definitely not sorry for the redundancy – that gave us a wonderful year or more at home with you and your brother, to find out who we are and how we work together.

Am I sorry for the choices that I’ve made that make you different to the norm? No. Home educating is right for us, though I’m sorry that I’m not a fantastic read aloud mum, nor do I get down on the floor to play, nor do I coordinate an incredible social whirl of activities, outings and lessons. (Hat is off to those of my friends and/or readers that do any or all of those things.)

I hope that I can continue to improve as your mother over the next ten years and that you will forgive me for having to learn on the job. I hope too that you can be understanding and not resentful if the lessons that I’ve learned from you mean that your siblings get an easier/ better childhood. I know from being the eldest myself that that can be difficult.

I hope our friendship can deepen through these next few years as we continue to learn from one another.

Happy birthday my firstborn.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (10)

And sometimes it’s tough.

Wed Jan 13 2010 – 18:43

I missed the first session of the kid’s new music group today and soa is in a paper nappy. This is because yesterday went a bit pear shaped. Well, only last night tbh.

Yesterdat started reasonably well. I’d grabbed my extra bit of kip in the morning before Tim went out to the dentists, then I got up and fed in the living room while Small did maths and Big did something or other else. Small’s maths was intriguing – the section in his book was subtraction with regrouping (we used to call it borrowing) but he doesn’t like that method. So he did each sum a different way, all perfectly logical, but somewhat long winded. As he could explain what he’d done and it worked fine I didn’t bother trying to persuade him that regrouping is the way to go, but I’ll be interested to see how he manages when he gets to working with hundreds as well as tens and units. For posterity, heres one of his sums: 62 – 58 first of all he removes 2 from each of them, then minuses the 50 from sixty to have ten, then takes away the 6 from the ten to get 4.

The afternoon sped by – Tim returned from the dentist looking like half the joker with one side of his mouth crooked up and we got organised and I took the bigger two down to swimming. Soa was happy and smily down there, and I put her in the hugabub and she went to sleep. Home again after, and I organised pizza while Tim retired to bed – the anaesthetic wearing off by then. He stayed in bed until 11 o’clock, meaning I had to scavenge food between feeds as the frequency and duration was increasing rapidly, as it usually does in the evening. Kind of wish that our tv picked up more channels as our choice is a bit limited – last night I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Missed the end and really didn’t care, it annoyed me hugely how they had gathered together characters from so many different stories and bundled them together in a pointless mishmash. It wasn’t even particularly interesting to watch.

Tim got up again then and assumed I’d eaten properly, when he found out I hadn’t, he did pizza Just as well, as the night went on, and on, and on. Some time after midnight she stopped feeding and started being very noisily unhappy – we took it in shifts with her over our shoulders or draped along our arms. This went on for hours.

By three o’clock I was fading rapidly, and so was she. She kept falling off to sleep, but when I tried to move her to a sleeping position she would wake up and cry, and still not want to feed. At half three I took her to bed anyway – laid her down and discovered that she would feed that way, and she did until we both fell asleep around 4 o’clock.

Slept until Tim’s alarm went off at 8.30 and then again until mine went off at 9. Or did I feed her then? I can’t remember. At some point I got up and argued with the children until they got dressed. It was quite a strenuous argument, particularly where Small was concerned. He is increasingly reluctant to leave the house, and very oppositional and aggressive in his reluctance. In the end I only won because I started to dress him, and he doesn’t like that at all.

And so to today. Tim took them out – I went back to bed, and had only just got up to feed again minutes before they reappeared just after 12. Which at least meant I wasn’t instantly exhausted, though my resolution to get through the day without shouting didn’t make it through the afternoon.

I think part of the problem is that we are all on top of each other all the time. In Spring, Summer and Autumn we get out and about pretty much daily, which long excursions to the beach or the grove, or just wanders around town. Right atm with a small babe in arms (or in wrap ) and snow and ice underfoot and almost constant snow or rain falling it’s just not weather any of us feel like going out in. Today though Tim brought back a babywearing poncho that’s been sent through to me, so as long as it’s not actively snowing, that should help.

Aims for the rest of the week – try not to shout.

Definitely try not to scream

Clear tables and floor in here, help children clear floor and tidy up their bedroom. If at all possible, process the final bags of stuff from outside.

And then it will be holiday time.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (8)

New giveaway on SunnyDayTodayMama

Mon Jan 11 2010 – 14:35

Pop over and see

Congrats to KellyI who won the previous one.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)

Mon Jan 11 2010 – 2:33

From the guardian letters page

We believe that schedule 1 of the children, schools and families bill represents an unacceptable imposition of state control over families. Although it is aimed at children educated outside the school system, it has implications for all families.

Most parents would not make home-based education their first choice; but any family might need it if school seriously failed their child. Currently, this choice is lawfully available to all parents. If enacted, the bill would – for the first time – transfer responsibility for a child’s education from the parents to the state. We believe this is a matter which should be of great concern to everyone.

You can still show your support against the bill by signing the petition here.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)

Blog carnival.

Sat Jan 9 2010 – 13:20

Making it up is featured in The Best of British Mumosphere — The First Blogging Carnival of 2010 . Loads of excellent posts there if you fancy a bit of a read.

I’m pondering on submitting a post to the next carnival…

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (0)

Back to school.

Wed Jan 6 2010 – 18:01

That would be the school situated in our living room, with a school day that goes nearly all round the clock

Home education for us is very home centred right atm, due mainly to soa’s needs and requirements. We are going to introduce a weekly music group as of next week, which will mean we see ppl every week which will hopefully be a good thing, and of course there are still the weekly sessions of Brownies (soon to be guides I think), Beavers and swimming to fit in. Means that we leave the house three days a week, no bad thing. Must follow up on swimming club for Big too.

Anyway, the formal education part of the day has been reintroduced as of Monday. Big has her weekly planner that lets her choose what to do over and above maths, handwriting and spelling, and the routine of it seems to be helpful to her. Her basic skills seem to be improving along with her overall temper. Having said that, she is full of cold atm so her self control isn’t particularly good. She is very much enjoying the Sharon Creech books that I got her for Christmas, she’s started with Bloomability.

Small is proving to be a bit of a challenge atm. He is very oppositional – a direct request usually gets a direct response of no, without a pause for thought. Indirect requests don’t fair much better, as they are either ignored or misunderstood. I’m working on finding new ways of dealing with him, but it’s an uphill battle right now, mainly I think because of my continual tiredness. If he’s left to his own devices, he forgets to eat or drink, neglects other basic needs, and spend the entire day exploring the internet. Hm. Not ideal really, so he can’t be left to his own devices, meaning we get back to those confrontations. All by himself though, he’s exploring the tree of life, Scratch, learning how to use a calculator and doing mental maths and working on email netiquette. So his education isn’t being quite as neglected even if it’s a rather eclectic mix!

He made us laugh the other evening – he was asking how to divide a series of numbers by 4, and I didn’t know why. Turned out that the nutritional values of the caramel sweets he’s been eating were listed for four chunks and he wanted to know what the values were for one…sweetie maths!

soa, as previously noted, is gorgeous Her current education is to practise smiling, and the entire family enjoys encouraging her

By Jax | Posted in Big, Doodling, drawing and decoration., It's where it is, Jonny had two apples, Puters!, Small steps, Soa, reeling, writhing | Comments (0)

Put the baby down and walk away.

Mon Jan 4 2010 – 20:13

A lot of the time if I put soa down and sit back down in my chair, she gets really unhappy. She can still see me, and smell me, and I think she can’t quite understand why she should be in the (relatively) hard, cold chair when she could be on a warm comfortable lap. She’s a lot like a cat that way. And if she’s awake and on my lap, she can’t quite see why she shouldn’t have a nipple in her mouth, not that she’s hungry, you understand, but just in case…so she mouths and nibbles and arches her back and we make each other not quite as happy as we could do.

Part of the problem is that I don’t want to put her down. I’m not a very tactile or touchy feely person. I don’t tend to cuddle up to my children much at all, to my shame. (If I have one regret with how I’ve brought up children so far, it’s that I still haven’t worked out how to just be spontaneously physical with them.) But soa is so easy to cuddle. Her head fits beautifully into the crook of my arm, her body stretches easily across my lap. If I sit her with her back to me she nestles nicely into my saggy midriff, and her little hands, oh I could go into rhapsodies about her hands. So soft, so delicate, and yet such a strong grip, with long, long perfect fingers. Usually cool against my warmer hands (or freezing against my breasts in the middle of the night!) and such relaxation and trusting! You don’t get that in adults – I don’t think we can relax to that extent, we carry our years as tension in our muscles. Babies are like cats, they can relax completely, and when they stretch, their whole bodies are involved.

And I know that babies don’t last long. They soon become toddlers and while they might still be cuddly, they don’t fit into your arms quite so neatly. soa snuggles into my shoulder – I think Small was too long for that, and I don’t remember ever trying it with Big. (I wish I could step back in time 10 years and give my pregnant self some advice. It would be to relax and enjoy it more, and maybe Big wouldn’t have been quite so screamy with me, as I’m sure part of her unhappiness was my tension.) When she snuggles she rubs her soft downy head against you and it’s such a wonderful feeling.

I love carrying her in the sling – making sure her head is high enough to kiss, and I do a lot of kissing. She really is quite amazingly kissable. Skin is ever so soft and she is just perfect from head to toe, with dreamy blue eyes that gaze at you, and a camera shy smile.

I’m really enjoying babyhood with this baby. I wish I’d known how to enjoy it with the others, but perhaps some of my pleasure can still spill out onto them in the shape of a better tempered, happier mother all around.

This wasn’t where I was going with this post when I wrote the title. I was going to explain how I am realising that walking away and letting someone else settle her means I can get a little of something else done, like tonight when I went into the kitchen and made cauliflower cheese for tea, *and* did the washing up. But instead I got carried away in writing down the things I want to remember. I haven’t managed to capture even a fraction of them, but I’m going to keep trying. I hope you’ll be patient with me, and just skip these bits if you don’t enjoy them.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is, Soa | Comments (23)

New Year celebrations.

Sun Jan 3 2010 – 14:26

New Year’s Eve we’d been invited to a couple of places but with a very little baby who doesn’t sleep I’d decided we’d stay fairly close to home. So I accepted the invite to Big’s brownie friend’s mother’s do – also her hubbie’s 50th. In the event, Tim wasn’t well enough to go, so it was just me and the kids, and I drove as it was very cold – we set out in the falling snow, very picturesque.

Party was lovely, one of the few times away from home ed friends that I’ve felt I didn’t stand out for liking children, having home births and insisting on breastfeeding. In fact I was a bit of an amateur – even though with 3 children we’re a larger than average family now, in this gathering I felt like I wasn’t trying, with many families being 4 or more children. There were loads of ppl queued up to cuddle the cute baby, including a number of men, meaning that it was a fairly easy evening. Soa slept throughout, apart from the three feeds she needed, which meant that after we got home it was 3 o’clock before she settled down again.

So late night, and a very slow start to the New Year here, not helped by all of us except Small labouring under nasty colds. Tim seems particularly hard hit as evidenced by him not going out on New Year. He is improving now I think though, as are the rest of us. Hoping that tomorrow we can start to get into some sort of rhythm and find our feet as a family of five.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)

2009 – a year of change.

Thu Dec 31 2009 – 20:02

A year ago we were living in West Yorkshire, a family of four. I’d come to the conclusion that we weren’t going to have our longed for next baby as I’d rounded off a terrible year with my third miscarriage. I’d given in my notice and finished work at the Montessori school, and didn’t really know what was going to happen next.

Seems so long ago and so very different. We upped sticks and moved to Suffolk, moving into what had been Tim’s dad’s house. It was meant to be a temporary move while we sold our old house in Derbyshire, but we’ve managed to do that and we’ve bought out Tim’s brother, so this Christmas was our first in our very own house.

This town suits us – there’s pretty much everything we need within walking distance. Note – my definition of walking distance seems to be a bit longer than most ppl’s It’s just over a mile to the swimming pool, which is the longest distance we walk regularly, but in the summer we walked that anywhere up to three times a week as we spent a huge amount of time on the beach beside it.

We discovered that the beach is a pretty good draw and had a good succession of visitors, both family and friends. Next year we’re hoping to adapt the house a little and we’ve already cut down a big hedge in the garden, so there’s plenty of camping space for anyone who’d like a return trip or anybody who hasn’t tried it out yet

The kids have started to make friends, and that’s rolled over to me as well. Tonight we’re invited to a new year/ birthday party at the mother of one of Big’s brownie pack, and assuming Tim’s up to it, we’ll be going down in an hour or so. Was considering walking but it’s kind of cold and I suspect walking back at midnight with tired children might be asking rather a lot. It’s not as if I’d have been having a lot to drink anyway.

That would be because of the biggest change of the year. As I packed up the house in West Yorkshire, I realised that I was pregnant, and sitting in a forest in Essex I thought I was losing this baby too. I was wrong. The pregnancy was successful, and in November we welcomed Smallest-of-all to the world (and the blog). She’s a lovely baby, just beginning to be really smily, even though she’s got a horrid cold just now. She’s nocturnal, and if I were trying to work, or carting children to school life would be very difficult. But instead Tim and I are both at home at least for the moment, he’s fabulously supportive, Big is great at cuddling Soa when she needs it and I am loving this extra special chance at parenthood that I didn’t think I was going to get.

Big and Small seem to like our new house and town too. They have Beavers, Brownies and swimming, in the New Year we’ll be going to a home ed music group and we’ve a support group we attend every other week, although funnily enough we haven’t been for a month or so now We fitted in the usual trips out and about as well, with two parties at the Beans, camping in Yorkshire, and much visiting of English Heritage (especially Framlingham castle) and National Trust properties. Our trip to Festival of History was sadly cut short – one year we’ll make the whole thing without associated complications. Closer to home there was Forest School and lots of time with Em and WF and others of the local home educators. We’ve plenty to build on in our new life, and I’m very hopeful which is not something I would have said this time last year.

So here’s to 2010 – 2009 wasn’t that bad for us but I’m still hoping that 2010 will be even better. Maybe not quite so full of change though

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (8)

A quick rant.

Wed Dec 30 2009 – 15:07

I’ve been inspired by an article in a newspaper to have a quick end of year rant.

Toby Young is displaying his educational ignorance in the Independent.

As the father of three boys under five, I share the Government’s concerns. My oldest boy, four-year-old Ludo, started in reception last September and is finding it more difficult to master the basics of reading and writing than his sister did at the equivalent stage. Sasha is now six and has a reading age of nine. Ludo has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, past each developmental milestone – and his two younger brothers are the same. If the discrepancy between them remains, Sasha will start secondary school with a huge advantage over her male siblings.

If all six year olds had reading ages of nine, a reading age of nine would be a reading age of six. Which makes about as much sense as the rest of this article. How can anyone talk of dragging children past developmental milestones? They aren’t requirements for pity’s sake. It reminds me of the health visitor who told a friend of mine that her child’s weight had to be at least average. (And if you can’t see what is wrong with that, I suggest that you may want to brush up on your maths skills )

Mr Young goes on:

In my experience, the most effective way of kick-starting boys’ development is old-fashioned rote learning. At the beginning of 2009, I hired a tutor to teach Latin to Ludo and Sasha and the results have been remarkable. Ludo was three when he started these daily, half-hour sessions and couldn’t even count to 10, let alone write his own name. Almost 12 months later, he can count to 20, write simple words like “mum” and “dad” and recite his times tables up to five. As for his six-year-old sister, I’m convinced she could achieve a passing grade in GCSE Latin.

Toby Young’s experience is very limited. I have a son too. At the age of three I doubt very much that he could count to 10 or write his own name – he’d only just begun to speak. I certainly didn’t panic and engage a Latin tutor. (A Latin tutor for a three year old? Is this man completely barking mad?) Instead we went on with child led learning both at home and at the montessori nursery/ school he was attending two days a week. At 5 he still couldn’t read his alphabet and I was beginning to get a little nervous. At 5 and a half he was reading Harry Potter. Without a single rote lesson in sight.

So, based on my extensive experience (which is more extensive than Mr Young’s it would appear, as I’ve spent two terms teaching in a Montessori school as well as raising my children to age 9 and 6), I advise the government to drop their insistence on boys learning earlier, bin their nappy curriculum and move to a play based system where children don’t start any kind of formal learning until 7 and home educators are fully supported by being left alone to do what they do best, unless they ask for anything else.

There, sorted.

By Jax | Posted in how we do it, political stuff, ranting or raving | Tagged EYFS, nappy curriculum, toby young | Comments (5)

A lovely Christmas.

Mon Dec 28 2009 – 18:06

Late on Christmas Eve, with Tim out at the local midnight service, two children tucked up in bed and a very uncooperative baby getting in the way of wrapping presents I wondered if I was ever going to be ready at all. Somehow though, it all came together, and I was.

Big had already said that she and Small were going to have breakfast and get dressed while waiting for us to wake up – she didn’t want to disturb us in case soa had given us a bad night. She really is very adorable when she puts her mind to it So it was around 9 when I’d had a cup of tea and we made it into the living room to find the pillowcases of parcels that somehow had come down the chimney last night And wouldn’t you know it, Santa had eaten the sausage rolls and mince pies, and taken the notes that the children had left! Even the carrot sticks had gone, guess the reindeer liked them.

(All of which amuses me hugely – in her younger days Big was utterly terrified of Santa, especially of the idea that he could make it into ppl’s houses, and we had to explain that he was an idea rather than a reality. She seems to have undergone somewhat of a change of beliefs and is utterly convinced of his reality now, at least externally it would appear!)

Present pile was well received, particularly the Harry Potter – Interactive Hermione Granger Wand and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Mad Eye Moody Magical Eye and Electronic Interactive Wand Set. They interact, so much duelling went on for the rest of the day

I think Small’s favourite present though was the charity shop bargain – a red power ranger dress up suit. He wore it for the entire day over the top of his new Christmas shirt! Plasticine My Own Morph went down well too, and they both had a good go with it. Big looked beautiful in her size 6 women’s jumper dress – I do have pictures, but babe is stirring so I don’t think I have time to add them right now. soa looked beautiful too in her dress from Auntie K, and cardigan birth present set from Layla

Tim was quite pleased with his assorted parcels – the children bought him a purple monster puppet, and I’d found Time After Time: The Best of Cyndi Lauper as well as The Accidental Spy [DVD] [2001] and Tomy Rummikub Travel Game. I’m hoping that might be something we can play as a family.

Once the present fest was over here we went round to Tim’s brother’s for Christmas lunch. S had excelled herself (as she usually does it has to be said) and not only was there wonderful food and good company, but she’d even laid in activity books and dvds to keep the children amused when adults were chatting. soa was pretty well behaved and of course there were plenty of ppl to cuddle her in between feeding times, so that went well as well.

All in all, a very lovely, low key Christmas. We had a similarly pleasant Boxing day spent round with D and S again, polishing off some of the leftover food and watching Miracle On 34th Street which we’d got for Big as part of her Christmas pile. (I like to make sure that they each get something to watch, something to read, something to wear, nightclothes and something to play with – not an excessive pile and given that they have plenty of relatives who tend to supply toys as well, they do pretty well out of Christmas. Not quite sure when we’re going to see my side of the family mind, but will have to sort something out v soon.)

Right, my writing time is up as the baby needs a nappy change. Back later with updates of time since Christmas.

By Jax | Posted in It's where it is | Comments (2)