Making It Up

as we go along

Small steps

Aargh….

by

Well, today I have learnt that the work rate of a four year old is nowhere *near* that of a 34 year old. In the time it took me to make 10 hama stars, Big assembled the rest of one card….mind I have got it down to a star a minute (which I know is not impressive by a real Hama-er? Hama-ist?’s standards – but I don’t lay claim to that title anyway!) And now we’ve run out of glue (I’ve got a big new bottle *somewhere*, but it’s in a safe place, so may not be seen until we next move 🙁 ) so I don’t know how we’re going to finish the cards.

And I’ve also learnt that cooking recipes are not the only recipes I can’t follow. Big and I have tried making two loads of the bath things we were planning for pressies – supposed to take 15-20 minutes to set (which would mean we could make three loads an hour, well, ok, two, which might mean we have enough presents for ppl by Christmas) but Tim thinks the second batch are going to take overnight to set, and the first batch, which I gave up on and put into ex marmalade jars for Big to use up, will probably set in the jars. I thought it would be spoonable – he reckons we might need a pick 😉

The Barbie outfit I was crocheting at Barbara’s and continued last night was way off the mark size wise – I think I’m probably using the wrong size hook and or yarn, not that I have the first idea what the right size would be – so what should have been the top half of it has been made into a rather odd shaped skirt, and I started again, using the ideas but disregarding the numbers of stitches it said.

Big and Small are currently fighting, loudly, in the background, and shouty mummy is being ignored (how come a complete stranger saying no to her child reduces Small to tears, but me tearing my hair out is just funny?). Small has a lovely scratch just under his right eye where he walked into the corner of Tim’s desk earlier today – bet you that is just going to come up nicely for any Chrimble photos we might care to take. He’s learnt that if he stands on a little chair he can reach the light switch, and how to use it to turn the light on and off. Which is nice.

Oh, and that blasted walk-o-meter doesn’t work properly. I’ve been running up and down like a mad thing today, and I’ve discovered that it only registers about 1 in 5 of my steps – probably because I don’t wear shoes round the house. So I was feeling bad that my average steps in a day were around 2000, I suspect that the real average might be rather higher. So I can feel good about that, can’t I?

My adorable offspring

by

Both of them. 🙂

Missed Big this morning – had to get Small’s breakfast all by myself! Seriously though, did make me realise that somewhere along the way it changed from being slow waiting for her to do whatever it was she wanted to do to help, to suddenly being really useful having her doing her bits.

Went over to Barbara‘s fairly early on, and spent most of the afternoon there. We had some interesting conversations about maths, school and religion, while the children pretty much amused themselves. Although I did also end up hoovering after the amusing themselves with cornflakes episode.

Small was lovely today. E might disagree after he ran over her head with a block cart, but apart from that I thought he showed how thoughtful he is. At ballet (last lesson of the year!) he went over to look at the little baby asleep in her carseat, and just looked. Later on she woke up, and ever so carefully and gently, he gave her his toy car – putting it under her hand, and then just walking away. Awww….

he also threw a couple of tantrums about not being able to go in with Big and dance, which wasn’t quite as much fun! There’s another younger baby who is there most weeks, L, and she’s just cracked the whole crawling, pulling herself up to get at things. Small likes her too, and was watching her trying to make off with someone else’s bag when her mother shouted “No”. The face went, the lip came out and he came running to me and screamed into my lap for absolutely ages. He’d just recovered when she did it again….took him ages to build up the courage to go tootling around the room again.

Got to say though, I did rather wonder about the approach taken. Surely it would be better to take a bag of stuff for your small offspring, rather than just a paper for yourself, which you have to keep putting down to go and retrieve aforementioned offspring from other ppl’s belongings? Hohum. Wouldn’t have minded, but her chosen method was rather upsetting my son!

Oh, and Big did fit in a bit more of that self educating. Car ed, I think it’s called. In depth discussion of human biology – what is underneath our skin, how it all hangs together, what do you need to live (food, drink and air – “so how is that man going to get out of the hole in the roadworks, because if he doesn’t he’ll die, cos there isn’t any food or drink or air in there…”) And after ballet she was desperate to count her coins again, so she did some sorting of different denominations, and then started adding them up. Didn’t get very far before she was interrupted by tea, and then not far after that before she was interrupted by her bath…think we might end up doing more of that tomorrow!

Last one for the day

by

And I’m currently dragging a pile of things off the camera, so you might want to try scrolling down past all the quizzes to see what other goodies have appeared 😉

Long lie in for us all this morning – Big surfaced after 9 as far as I can tell, Tim got up at 9.15 and brought me a cup of tea at half past. Think Small woke up round then too. I enjoy lie ins, but at the same time, they do kind of shoot the day down. Small wanted hama out again, so I sat him down with that, but was rather cross when Big came and helped him so efficiently that he could no longer get at the beads or the board 🙁

So we sat down and sorted lots of beads, and she did another Christmas decoration, to give to her friend A. And that was the real problem today – she was going for a sleepover at A’s house, and was just itching to go. When A’s mum finally called to say she was on her way, Big was into coat and shoes so fast, and was waiting on the doorstep ready to go, without so much as a glance back!

Small was a bit lost without her this evening, although it did give us chance to have a bit of time together before he keeled over. He’s started using the sign for milk again, but now uses it just to describe a general want, so it isn’t terribly useful. Still, he’s trying. And tonight when I took him up to bed, when he’d stopped screaming, he crawled over to me, gently brushed the hair off my face and kissed me (Small style kiss, which involves offering his forehead to your face so that you can kiss him. Comes from the fact that Tim kisses him on the top of the head, so now that’s how he does it all the time). It’s the first time I can think off that he’s done that to me unsolicited, so I thought it was rather sweet.

Would have been even sweeter if it had been about two hours earlier mind 😉

Right, will just finish stuffing piccies in posts below, then clearing off to bed. Off to a christmas party tomorrow!

Ought to blog the day really

by

As we seem to have fitted an awful lot in.

Think Big was doing her maths workbook before I’d finished breakfast. Turns out that the first couple of easy pages were breaking you in gently, by page 4 it’s onto series with missing bits, but she got the hang of it fairly well. Tim produced a couple more sheets for her to practise numbers on but she didn’t want to do that. And to keep Small out of the way, I loaded up teletubbies on CBeebies for him – he likes that a lot. And I think he’s trying to say hello. His IT breakthrough of the morning was working out how to hibernate my laptop 🙁

We should have been going to Shirebrook today, but Big really wanted to do some Christmassy stuff, so I offered her the choice. She turned down the outing in favour of sewing (!?) and more maths, so we continued as was really. Got the washing sorted out, sorted the kitchen (again) and invited both Barbara and Sarah round in the afternoon.

And suddenly it was afternoon. I’d turned the machine off after teletubbies, but was just having a quick blogfix (Hi, my name is Jax, I’m a blog addict….hello Jax….) as Sarah pulled into the drive. Sent Big upstairs fairly rapidly when she swung at Dino, and she was still up there when Barbara arrived. E went straight up to join her, and the boys stayed downstairs. Small’s big achievement of the day is that he seems to have worked out actually playing with ppl – there was definitely some cooperation occurring. Very impressed, just a couple of weeks ago it was almost as if he couldn’t even *see* other children. He spent a bit more time worshipping baby R as well – he really likes babies. Tries ever so hard to be gentle with them too.

Sarah had to leave just after 4 to pick up the rest of the family, so, very aware that Big *still* hadn’t done any sewing I invited Barbara’s brood to tea, and brought the girls downstairs to sew hearts together.

two girls sewing I never knew that sewing could be competitive before…Big was unbelieveably so! I kept having to say “it’s not a race” and trying desperately hard to find encouraging things to say to E that she couldn’t interpret as criticisms of herself. So odd. She finished first (E ended up taking her heart home with her) and I learnt lots – use contrasting thread for starters. And probably the felt would have been easier. And maybe that blanket stitch is actually easier than running stitch – a definite tendency to turn the piece of sewing over meant that I spent a lot of time unpicking bits. Hohum. But Big is very pleased with her heart, and I think it only took about 45 minutes…

Tea went pretty well – was amazed at how much Small ate. Then Barbara loaded up and I carted mine upstairs to bath. Small hung on for a while afterwards, so I was late coming to blog, and now I’m just pondering going to sleep on the pull out bed, as we’ve had a couple of really bad nights, and I’m about to fall asleep on my keyboard again…

Never let it be said

by

that I don’t learn from my mistakes.

Today I have tried really hard. I have wet washing on the line (sigh) and wet washing in the machine (bigger sigh), the kitchen is trashed again, but was clean and clear before I started preparing our home cooked tea, and I shifted another bit of paperwork before we went out today.

Took the overpriced chocolate decorations back to Wilco’s (hate doing that sort of thing, but at least I did it) and spent a fraction of the amount on fun things instead (paper fasteners and cotton buds – skeletons here we come!), although I did wonder if I should be concerned that Big drooled over the maths workbooks, and was thrilled when I agreed she could have one…

Bought red felt, red checked fabric and blue checked fabric so that we can make some christmassy decorations, and managed to get most of the other bits on the shopping list that I couldn’t get yesterday due to the assistance of Small. Today I had Big to chase him every time he departed, which was often.

Past the library which bizarrely seemed to be shut (blast!) and off to Graves Park for our picnic lunch. Cut the visit short when Small started shivering – I always forget how much colder it is there for some weird reason. Shame, as he was fascinated by the animals, and Big was thrilled to be there too. Ah well, must arrange to go again soon, but togged up for the arctic next time.

Off to Lembas to discover that my nappies have been and gone 🙁 Apparently they’ll definitely be in next week though. Hm. Then we tried the library again, which was open this time, but full of school children?? Apparently they come on their way to and from swimming, so I think we’ll try to avoid Tues afternoons in future. Ever so quiet once they’d gone though, and we could get to the books.

Indulged in a bit of retail therapy – they were selling off loads of children’s reference books, hardbacks for 20p a piece. Well, it would be rude not to really 😉 I was very restrained, only bought 12 🙂

And home again, where we’ve started cutting out some Christmassy decoration shapes to sew, and Big has made a good start on her maths homework book. Turns out it has stickers in it, so she is very happy. We need to do some work on her number formation though – she gets most of them reversed. The maths itself is a walk in the park, but the reading and writing is giving her some difficulties. Will have to have a think about this – she obviously very much enjoys workbooks and worksheets, so I think I am going to have to cater to this need, and perhaps I can figure out a way that I can get to do some work as well *if* I can think of a way to entertain Small. He likes jigsaws, for about 30 seconds, then he throws the pieces round the room, he likes his trains, until the track breaks, and then he throws the pieces round the room, he likes balls (because he can throw them round the room – are you spotting the pattern yet?) Hohum.

We did have a proud mummy moment at the library with him when he went and helped himself to a book, sat down with it and turned the pages carefully one by one to look at the pictures. The teacher wanted to know how old he is – apparently her 21 month old would just shred a book if allowed access to it. Sometimes Small will too, but most of the time he wants someone to read it to him. That’s got to be a good start, hasn’t it? He’s beginning to figure out his insert jigsaw too, so I can see him getting new skills every day now.