Making It Up

as we go along

Soa

The baby book category

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I never managed to keep a baby book for either of the other two. (In fact we found the blank one the other day that I had for Big I think, came out of a box in the garage. I thought it would be good to fill in for soa, so I put it down somewhere safe 🙁 .)

So, instead of keeping a baby book, I think I’ll microblog those moments on here 🙂 Just now, soa was watching Kirsty’s M walking backwards and forwards across the room (he was doing it on purpose to watch her head turning as she tracked him 😉 ) and then when he waved, she waved back. He did it a couple of times and so did she. So cute 😀

Back to school.

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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 😀

Put the baby down and walk away.

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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.

Two hands free

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and half a braincell working 😉 (so know how you feel Deb!)

Soa is currently on her big sister’s knee, or trying to crawl up her shoulder. She appears to like crawling up ppl’s shoulders. She is a very strong willed baby, who likes to feed frequently, but for some reason, doesn’t open her mouth properly when lying on her left hand side, so I’m getting thoroughly chomped on my right 🙁 I seem to recall that Small had similar issues, though I think he was the other way around, and so the rugby ball hold that I employed effectively with him has come back into play.

Also seem to recall that that only became an issue with him at our first Kessingland, and it was one of the many kind strangers (though mainly virtual friends) that suggested that solution in the first place. I remember sitting in our caravan while numbers of ppl I’d never met irl before filed past my breasts and examined them in great detail. Or so it seemed 😆 There’s no dignity in childbirth it seems to me, and not a great deal more when you’re getting breastfeeding established!

We are getting established, though it is taking its toll on me and on family life. Soa is still quite firmly nocturnal with her standard long nap happening first thing in the morning, which has meant there have been several days when I haven’t surfaced til noon. The other children, despite Tim being here, have felt that lack. It’s usually me that supervises their work efforts, as Tim is doing his own work in the office, and I think they miss my presence. The routine we’d established before the birth has paid off though, with them getting on with some work most days whether there’s a parent around or not.

We are obviously having some teething problems as we settle in to being a family of five, it’s only to be expected, especially after being baby-less for so long. I confess to sobbing this afternoon – sheer exhaustion setting in after I made an effor to get up this morning so as to make Big happier, and she effectively ignored me throughout. Which made me wish I hadn’t bothered, and I ended up in bed this afternoon instead. Hohum.

But I know all of this will pass and these wonderful snuggles (is there anything as soft and wonderful as a baby’s head snuggling against you?) will fade into the past, and if I don’t write them down now, I won’t remember how brilliant they are.

Wouldn’t miss it for all the tears, sore nipples and sleepless nights in the world.