narrating kayoz

One of the things I love about Canberra winters is:

One of the things I love about Canberra winters is the sunshine. So that although we have frosty mornings, and 11 degree rainy days like Monday of this week, we have gorgeous sunny days more often than not.

Right now Eliane is playing out on the deck, splashing with some leftover rainwater she found in a saucepan, picking "her chives" (she says they're hers), spinning around and generally having fun.

I have the other two off sick (Mikaela's just had chicken pox, and Liam's had the coughing bug going around - actually I think Mikaela had that too), but they are outside in the sun now too, and will be back at school tomorrow.

School holidays start next week, and I am genuinely looking forward to them. Sleep ins, no lunches to prepare, lots of Lego and play dough, probably, and hopefully a lot more days like this one.

Me and my colon and my empty stomach

I've been meaning to write a post about how this year so far has been filled with accidents and illness (right now Liam has a sprained ankle and Mikaela is sick with a virus that's been going around at school and work).

And, I've been meaning to write about the fact that I've taken a redundancy from my public service job, and as of today am officially self-employed. Though without an income to show for it yet. More on that another time however.

Because actually, today I am just hungry.

I am on the "clear liquids only" diet today, in prep for a colonoscopy tomorrow.

And despite having nothing to eat all day, I have had the pleasure of eating pretend muffins made for me by Eliane. Three is not a highly empathic age.

Not to mention having prepared dinner for the rest of 'em (Chris didn't get home from work until late, or I would've made him do it!). While starving.

Now it is late at night, and I am going to bed, still hungry, to get up and continue on clear liquids (combined with other nasty colon cleansing prep, which started this afternoon), until 10, when it switches to nil by mouth.

Ah the joys of modern medicine.

Of course, I'll be grateful to it if it saves my life, and am grateful to it for intervening in the lives of various other family members (which is why I'm having the colonoscopy - family history, not personal symptoms), however painfully and miserably. But in the mean time.

I. Am. Hungry!

52 Weeks Photo Meme

I saw this meme somewhere, a photo of each child every week for the year. I can't remember where I saw it, and I'm a month late to the game, but I have decided to do it anyway. (I'll find the link up and add it in later).

This is all three of them from last Monday:

Communing with chickens and other end of winter jobs

Getting out into the very end of winter yesterday to get a few garden chores done (before I fall ill with the nasty bug that's laid into every other member of my family over the past week and a half). This was Liam & Mikaela's first fresh air in a week!

First taking care of a weed tree we've been slackly letting get out of hand, and conveniently thereby creating some small logs of the hugelkultur bed I have in mind.

Both kids had a few goes with the pruning saw till we had the whole thing down and in pieces.

Then there was some communing with chickens to do:

Checking for eggs...

And some lemons to pick...

All in all it was a fun afternoon, with Spring truly on its way. What are you doing for the change of seasons?

This Moment: Sibling Harmony

Ingredients: One Big Pile of Mulch, Two Crisp Sunny Days, Two (or Three) Kids.

Posing:

Working:

Two rooms & a tunnel:

Posing again, at a hot chocolate break:

Inspired by SouleMama: {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo [supposedly!] - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Let's talk about (can I put this in my title without getting a load of spam?) S - e - x

We just borrowed (from the library) Let's Talk About Sex (in the US it's called It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health which I think is a better name)and Let's Talk About Where Babies Come From (called It's So Amazing: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families in the US, which I think is much better), to take a look at the them and see which would be more appropriate for Liam.

We've already got It's NOT the Stork: A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends, which we got when I was pregnant with Eliane, but Liam's a bit beyond that now (though he still listens when we're reading bits of that to Mikaela, and makes his own requests of what pages to read.) He's just turned ten, and I think the first of the one's we borrowed is aimed at 10+, while the second is aimed at about 7-10.

Anyway, after looking at them we really felt we wanted something in between. There's definitely some missed out of the first one that Liam will need to know in the next couple of years, if not yet, but it seemed to go into a *lot* of detail, that he just might not have the patience or interest to read yet. So we thought maybe we'd get the earlier one and give it to him now, but get the later one too and leave it on the bookshelf, making sure he knew it was there.

But. We left both books sitting out on the dining room table, so naturally he had a look at them. Would he think talking about babies was too boring? Would he think talking about s-e-x was too icky? No on both counts! And in fact, although he browsed through both, he Definitely thought the second one was more interesting. Show's how much we know!

The only thing we didn't like was there seems to be an overly strong emphasis on the physicalities of puberty and everything that goes along with it, without as much emphasis on how it feels. But, I have admit that is on browsing, it's not like we read either book all the way through, word for word (is that bad, to admit that we're giving Liam a book to read on sex that we haven't read all the way through - are are reading and talking with him as well, not just leaving him to read it on his own, though he can and is doing that as well). And over all I still think they are still great books.

Hat Tip to Dawn, who recommended these books on her old blog, This Woman's Work.

Now watch while my daily hits suddenly go up by several hundred per cent!

Picking wild blackberries, eating blackberry pie

Yesterday we went blackberrying.

I was unavoidably reminded of Little Sal picking blueberries and hearing them go ku plink, ku plank, ku plunk in her pail, which never filled up because she kept eating them. Especially because everybody ate a lot, especially Eliane!

The kids had a great time. Liam said "Let's put blackberrying on the calendar for February 4 as soon as we get one for next year."

We happened to know that some other children from Mikaela's kindergarten were going out to the same patch this morning, so we tried to stick to berries kindergarteners couldn't reach (Mikaela was excepted from this rule for obvious reasons!), but there were gazillions more we simply couldn't get to. One of the kindergarten parents going out today suggested bringing some planks of wood to get deeper in, and I could see why.

We picked about 2 & 1/2 litres between us. Apparently there are lots of wild blackberries around Canberra, And I've lived here most of my life, but this is the first time I've ever been berry picking. It's scandalous!

We had pancakes with blackberries for dinner last night (those of us who hadn't so stuffed ourselves while we were picking that they couldn't eat another bite), a blackberry smoothy for morning tea today, and of course, blackberry pie for dessert tonight (with ice cream and, you guessed it, blackberries).

Mmm, Yum. I don't think I've ever had blackberry pie before. Australians aren't really the big pie eaters that Americans are. Normally I guess I'd just have the fresh berries on their own, or with cream and ice cream (for a dessert). Actually we did that too - after the pancakes! But we had over two litres of berries to use, and this pie used nearly 5 cups. I don't think we could have got through that many fresh. Not on top of the other litre we ate!

We could have frozen them of course, or made berry preserves for winter. Hmm, maybe we'll have to go blackberrying again next weekend!

{this moment} Dinner play (two moments really)

Inspired by SouleMama: {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words (that's the idea anyway!) - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

This was after dinner just tonight. Eliane is eating the quark I made earlier in the week (much easier for her to eat than normal yoghurt, since she rarely lets anyone else feed her).

Gratuitous Autumn Kid Pics at Weston Park

Posing at Weston Park a couple-few weeks ago.

The colours were fantastic, I really wished I had a better camera and the know-how to use it well.  These were taken on my phone.

And Elli was wearing some red too:

The nine year old & Steiner curriculum

Liam went blackberrying with his class at a local organic farm today. We had blackberries with cream &ice cream for dessert tonight. Delicious. Eliane thought so too, I think she ate as many as anyone, almost.

Recently Chris and I (and Elli) went to a parent teacher class meeting for Liam's class. I love those meetings. It's where we get to find out what they're doing in class, but also about the age in general. And, we get to chat with other parents of similar aged kids, and have issues like our kids' sibling rivalry issues put into perspective of the norm.

This year the kids are turning nine, which is apparently when they typically start to really see themselves as separate to the world, which can bring with it some fear and loneliness. So of course that is reflected in the curriculum. Up until this point they still see everything as connected; animals can talk, magic can happen. Fantasy and reality still aren't entirely separate. So in the last two years they've read alot of fairy tales and stories of magic. And, in terms of mythology last year they looked at Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. This year they are starting with the Hebrew creation myths, with the separation of human from God, the casting out of Adam and Eve from paradise.

I love how everything in the curriculum is so careful thought out and tied together with their age and development. From the stories they tell to the gardening that they will be doing every thursday afternoon thus year, addressing that separation of fantasy and reality by teaching them practical skills of living in the world, from harvesting seeds to composting to making grapejuice and eating their produce.

Eliane's sense of humour, and other eleven month old behaviour

(Okay, so she's nearly 12 months, but not yet. Not quite yet.)

Eliane is developing quite a sense of play. Yesterday she initiated a game of chasies with me, crawling a little away from me, then turning around and waving an arm at me as if to beckon me on. Then as soon as I started towards her she'd turn around a crawl helter skelter (though not always in exactly the right direction to escape), giggling madly.

She also likes to play pass the spoon - or maybe not. She takes the spoon from me while I'm feeding her* and then offers it back, but giggles and pulls it back away as soon as I reach for it. That one is learned - I do the same thing with her sometimes, not with the spoon particularly, but with something else (a toy I suppose), offering it and then retracting it at the last minute a few times until she is really laughing. Then I give it to her (Elli doesn't seem to have cottoned on to that last bit though!). But the game of chasies she seems to have come up with all on her own.

I remember Liam playing chasies with another little toddler at our original mother's group once, when they were even a bit younger than this I think - they were both early crawlers. They had the whole mothers group (the mothers that is) in fits of laughter, watching them. From memory Liam was in front, and we weren't quite sure that the little girl who was chasing him was in on the joke. Liam would crawl away then stop, turn around and wait for her to almost catch up, and then crawl off again, giggling. It was very cute.

My baby - my last baby - is nearly all growed up into a toddler. Lots of people said that with the third child, you just survive that first year, you just have to get through it. And I do see what they mean - things are getting easier now, in some ways: Elli's cutting down to one nap a day, she's often spending most of that nap asleep alone, and she spends lots of time crawling around entertaining herself so that I can, for instance, write this blog entry. But on the other hand I feel like the really easy part is over, as far as parenting goes. The part where you just have to love them and cuddle them, nurse them and make the sacrifice of letting them sleep on your lap while you read and book and the lucky Daddy gets to look after the big kids and do the housework. The part where they don't get cross, can't stick forks in power outlets and are so happy to be outside with the wind on their little face that they'll just sit in the pram and let you hang out the clothes or plant out the basil, without complaining about not being allowed to eat the mud.

Elli's just transitioning into that phase where she gets cross when I don't pick her up instead of just grizzly. Where she's as likely to yell in anger, when dragged around in the car for too long, as to cry in misery. And not that I liked listening to her cry in misery either, but somehow the yelling in anger is a more challenging behaviour to respond to. It's not that it makes me angry back - I know from experience that it's when they hit the magic age of three that my buttons start to get pushed that way. It's more just that it starts to require a different response from me.

I think we messed up a little with Mikaela by treating her baby tantrums (which started at age 6 months!) differently to toddler tantrums. Meaning, we just gave in, far too often. She was only a baby, after all. But that sent the wrong message right from the word go, one we are still working on reversing. So with Eliane, I am making a concerted effort not to give in to anger. I am working on the distract theory instead, which is fine (though not much use when she's trapped in a car seat she doesn't like), but not as easy nor as satisfying parentally as picking her up and comforting her was when she would get sad rather than cross.

Anyway, I know I'm romantising the first 12 months, but I did love them, and now they are (almost) over. When Liam was this age he was much closer to walking than Elli is (he'd been taking a few steps at a time since 10&1/2 months and was fully walking by a few days past 12 months), but I still hung on to thinking of him as a baby rather than a toddler. Somehow with Eliane she's almost made that transition in my mind already, even though she's only been crawling for about three or four weeks. Maybe it's because after having three of them, I am finally able to remember - sort of - what a young baby is really like. And she's so far past that now.

Luckily though, she's still awfully, awfully cute.

__________

* Eliane eats quite a lot now, probably more than either Mikaela or Liam did at this age - in fact way more than Liam did - and we mix it up between finger food, spoon food, feeding her exactly what we're eating or giving her bought baby food. The only thing I don't do is puree any of my own food. When she was younger I would mash it up or maybe cook it a bit longer, but make food especially for her? No. That I don't have time for.

Two new chooks (Isa Browns)

We bought two new chickens today from a school friend of Liam's. They had bought six chicks (being the minimum they could get) six weeks ago and have had them under a heat lamp until now. But they only wanted two, so now they're big enough, they offered them out. Our poor Henny Penny (white Sussex) has been all alone since the start of winter, so it was past time to give her some companionship.

I'm not sure, to be honest, just how these two littlees are going to go with her. They are very little. But with two of them and only one of her, I think it will be okay. So far they've been locked in the house (which she eschews in favour of the fence!), but I'll let them out with her tomorrow morning and stay to watch and see how it goes.

Here are a couple of poor quality photos of the kids with the new chooks in their straw bale house. Mikaela has named the one she is holding Ocean (or possibly Ocean Rain) and Liam has named the other one Little Brown, after one of our first and most friendly chooks, from way back when we first got chickens (this time around).

By the way, the reason for the Sustainable House book being up there in the sidebar will hopefully become apparent in another post soon. :)

Quick baby book entry - Elli at 7 months

Eliane will be seven months tomorrow, and to my absolute delight she is still all baby. By which I mean she can't sit up, let alone, crawl. She hasn't even rolled from back to front yet, though she rolls to the side pretty well, and from front to back. She doesn't have any teeth, and she doesn't eat solid food.

We started her on 'solids', at least in a manner of speaking, a couple of weeks ago. She now sits up at the dinner table with us (in a high chair of course), and enjoys a dinner of rice cereal mixed with some kind of pureed fruit - pear or apple usually. When I say she enjoys, I mean she enjoys smearing it all over the tray and herself. We generally don't spoon it into her mouth  - and when we do she makes a delightful (but not delighted) face and lets it dribble out with her copious amounts of saliva. She does smear some of it into her mouth - of course she does, that's her favourite place to put anything - but I'd be surprised if she'd ingested more than trace amounts. Her dribbling is legendary.

Liam at this age was just about pulling himself up to standing, and had been sitting for a couple of months. Mikaela, I think, was at about this same stage that Elli's at - not able to sit unsupported, but able to sit propped up in the corner of the couch, or, for brief moments, leaning forward on her arms. With Liam I was all for fast development, and indeed within a couple of weeks from this he was cruising furniture and a couple of weeks after that he was crawling. With Mikaela I think I would have liked her to sit but was perfectly happy for her to delay movement (which she did, until she crawled at 10 months).

This time around I find I have a ridiculous niggling competitiveness - with my own older children - wanting to show how clever Elli is, crawling (or whatever) early. As if that indicates cleverngess! But on the other hand, I really want her to stay a baby as long as she can, because she is my last baby, and I am so enjoying her.

What I would like is for her to learn to sleep in her bed during the day. After my aborted last attempt to work on this we have made no real progress. After Dad's surgery he stayed with us for a couple of weeks, and right after he left we all got sick for another two weeks. I spend two full nights sitting up with Eliane, who had a temperature of about 40 degrees and couldn't sleep, and several weeks getting her sleep back to normal afterwards. I'd just got to the point of being able to put her down by 8ish of an evening again (having been spending from two to five hours with her every night - ie 7pm till up to midnight - since the illness), when the kids all got sick again! Elli and Mikaela are still unwell, although Eliane didn't have a fever last night, and now Liam's got chicken pox!

Anyway, so I haven't gotten back to my No Cry Nap Solution program. On the other hand, she has fallen asleep in the pram a few times in the past couple of months - one time when it was not moving - and twice in the car. So that's prgress of a sort.

And now my lovely almost-seven-month old would like some attention and some mummy-milk, so it's time for me to go.

Baby book entry: Eliane sleeps!

Eliane slept for nine hours straight in her bed last night, from 10pm to just past 7am. A little consistency might be nice (it took me till after 2am to get her into her bed the previous night!), but I'l take inconsistency over consistently bad any time!

From 11 weeks old, Mikaela slept through the night for two weeks, starting with five hours but getting up to eight or more. Eliane, who was three months old yesterday, and will be 13 weeks tomorrow, has yet to sleep through for two straight weeks, but she did do four nights in a row of eight hour stints right at 11 weeks, did her first 'through the night' (five hours between 12 and 6am) rather earlier than that, and now rarely fails to have a five to six hour stretch, though it's not always between 12 & 6.

She's been getting unsettled in the evenings again lately, so we've decided, as of last night, to start her bedtime routine of nursing to sleep in the rocking chair in her/our room at the same time Mikaela goes to bed (7pm, give or take), instead of keeping her up till I've read to liam, half an hour or so longer, which often meant she'd fall asleep & then wake up again, delaying her bedtime by another hour or (lately) more. Unfortunately this means short changing Liam a bit. Chris & I will have to alternate who reads to him and who reads to Kaely, then Chris will read with him for another five minutes after he comes out from getting Kaely down - and then it's Liam's bedtime. We were letting Liam read for a little while in bed back in the summer, but we found he then wouldn't get to sleep for ages, so on his teacher's advice, we now have us reading to him be the last thing before sleep, and he goes to sleep much more easily.

Of course, trying the new system with Eliane last night, it took me until 10pm to get her down! But that was partly because I woke her up with a coughing fit shorty after she fell asleep the first time. I am confident things will improve. I just hope it doesn't mean she'll start doing a six hour stretch from seven to one and then wake every two hours for the rest of the night!

Liam is eight, Elli is almost one (month) and Mikaela is still besotted.

It's hard to believe Eliane will be four weeks old at the end of this week. A friend came to visit when she was 6 days old, and asked "Does it feel like she's been here forever, or does it still feel new?" At the time I wasn't sure - somewhere in between, I thought.

But really, it did still feel new then. Now it feels somewhere in between. Last week I kept thinking, well, maybe it's time I did do a school pick up and show her off, it's been... oh, not even three weeks. So it was feeling in some ways like we'd had her for ages. By three weeks old she already has gone through about five different phases of newborn-ness, different sleeping habits, different feeding patterns...

But at the same time, I can't believe how quickly the time is going. My God, she's already nearly a month old.

******

On a somewhat related note, Mikaela has stopped waking up every night, so I think it actually was her cold - or maybe being too hot from having the vaporiser on - and not a reaction to the new baby in her life, that was causing those wake-ups. She did wake up last night, but went back to sleep quickly, and she didn't wake up at all for two or three nights before that.

Mikaela is still besotted with Eliane. Probably the biggest cause of tears for her since Elli was born has been when she wants to see 'her baby' and Eliane is asleep. I've been spending a lot of time shut in the study (yes, I'm back to sleeping in the study, LOL) with Eliane, trying to make sure that I get some sleep during the day, when she is sleeping. I did more of that in the first couple of weeks of course, but I am still trying. Anyway, when I come out, Mikaela is thrilled to see me, but not for myself. No. "Is Eliane awake?" she always asks hopefully.

Liam was like this when Mikaela was a baby. If I came out of the bedroom without Mikaela in the morning, the first question he'd ask would be "Where's Mikaela?" He's not as besotted with Eliane as he was with Kaely. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say not as obsessed. He said this morning she's the cutest baby he's ever seen (actually, at the moment she is covered with newborn acne - way more, according to my memory, than either of her siblings ever had - and is already almost bald on top of her head: so kind of ugly really), and he also is keen to hold her quite often. Just not as keen as Mikaela.

*********

Yesterday was Liam's eight birthday. Yes, Eighth. I know, I can't believe it either. Wasn't it just the other day I was writing his birth story? Wasn't it, in fact, just the other day I was complaining about our pregnancy plans getting put off again? But no, in fact that was about a decade ago. Sheesh. I've been blogging for a long time!

Anyway, so yesterday was Liam's birthday, and I was very grateful that he decided he'd rather have a 'movie day' (hired a DVD) with his best friend, who then stayed on for dinner, than have a party. Yippee! We did, however, have an after school play at the local Adventure Playground today, to which we invited (by casual email) his entire class. I was very specific in the email though that there would be no food supplied (except a cake), no party games, and no party bags. That it was not, in fact, a party, and that people should bring their own afternoon tea and that there was no need to bring presents.

About 10 kids came I think, including all his best buddies (boys and girls), and it was fun for the grown-ups - well, some of us anyway - as well as the kids. And very low hassle. Parents kept thanking me as they left, and I was at a loss for what to say. Well, no, I wasn't, I said "You're welcome, thanks for coming", but really, all I did was show up!

Anyway, the point of all this really is that this was Eliane's first (real) outing. I mean, we went back to the birth centre when she was a week old, and we went to my Mum's for an hour or so when she was two weeks old, but aside from that, Eliane and I hadn't left the house. Chris went and picked the kids up from school and took them to the play ground and I met them there, so that Elli could finish her sleep before we went.

When we got there Mikaela went running off to find her friend Edie, so she could show her Eliane. In the end I don't think Edie was terribly interested, but her big sister - who is in Liam's class - was very charming to Mikaela about 'her purple baby'. And of course all the grown-ups were very charming to me, saying how very beautiful she was.

And Elli herself slept for most of the afternoon in the beautiful maya wrap a friend lent us.* But damn it, I forgot to get a photo.

*********

*We have two ring slings already (not to mention a hug-a-bub and a Mei tai), but they aren't as good as this 'authentic' Maya Wrap. Though I still love my hug-a-bub best.

Regression? Or just a cold?

They say older children often regress in some way when a younger sibling is born. Liam's version was to start wetting the bed. Mikaela's seems to be to start waking - sometimes several times - every night. Couldn't she have picked something that didn't add to our sleep deprivation?

Edited to add: Liam wetting the bed was after Kaely was born. This time there's been no obvious reaction from him, it's just life as usual.

Family meetings, chores, & keeping the place - well, tidyish.

I've been meaning to write a post about our new regime of family meetings, chores cards (for the kids), tidying up after ourselves etc. But I just keep not getting to it.

So I'm going to start small and just talk about chores cards.

A few weeks ago we had a family meeting in which we talked about chores. About how sometimes it feels like Chris and I do everything, and when we ask for a little help it's grumbled about. And how frustrated that makes us feel, because we're all part of the family and we all need to be involved in keeping the household running.

So, as a family we brainstormed a list of all the chores we have to do. It included everything we could think of, from feeding the animals, to cooking dinner, to folding washing, to going out to work and earning money. Then we went through the list and agreed on which chores it was feasible for the kids to do. Not that they would do them all, just which ones they were capable of. At this point Liam made a couple of statements like "I'm not emptying the dishwasher' - something he'd been doing quite often on request - wish I have to confess bothered me, but I let them pass.

Then, we brainstormed ways of sharing the chores more fairly. I had had in mind giving Liam some regular daily & weekly chores. His idea included rather less chores than mine! But we settled on a system which he came up with. We wrote out 'chore cards' of all the chores he could do without help, or with a little help. They included things like:

• Set table
• feed dog (morning & night)
• sweep floors (this requires help)
• pack dishwasher
• clean & tidy bathroom (only expect a fairly basic job - clean basin plus tidying - but he seems to quite like this)
• vacuum (needs help)
• feed chooks
• empty compost, and so on.

Then, each day we'd put the cards in a hat and he would draw out two of them, keeping the ones he pulled out until they were all gone (so that we would get through the lot in less than a week and start again). 

Kaely only has four chore cards - feed dog dinner, feed dog breakfast, check mail, empty dishwasher - but actually, she empties the dishwasher (with a little help, but not much) almost every day anyway.

I wrote down and got agreement during this meeting that things like clearing our own dishes, putting away our own toys, and putting away our own clean washing would continue to be everyone's jobs. Which was just as well, because the very first time Liam got "Clear dinner table" he claimed he didn't have to put his breakfast dishes away!

Of course, we've never been very good at enforcing those things before - clearing away dishes or packing up toys - but we'd already started to improve, especially over this summer holiday.* And putting away their own washing was a whole new thing we'd never asked them to do before, simply because until we rearranged their room and redid the closet, their clothes weren't well enough sorted or didn't fit properly in the draws they had.

This all went really well for the remainder of the school holidays (which was maybe about two weeks). Since school's been back it's been a little trickier, because some days we don't get home between school pickup and dinner. So we revisited the issue at another family meeting and agreed on these changes:

1. I would try to schedule less stuff into our days (a lot of this was trying out carseats in the first week or two of school)
2. We would do duplicate cards for some of the easier, daily tasks, so there'd be enough to see Liam through the school week, and then we'd reserve the more time consuming tasks - bathroom, vacuum etc - for weekends.

It's still not going quite as smoothly now as it was before school started, but it's working pretty well.

And I love what Jane Nelson says about solutions that 'don't work', because they stop working after a month (or whatever) - so for a month were things going better? Then in what way did it not work? It just means now you put it back on the agenda and figure out some new solution, or how to modify the old one to make it work better.

_________

*This really deserves a post of it's own - about systems, and practice and how, for instance, Mikaela is so much better at things like putting her PJs away in the morning instead of dropping them on the floor (Liam's preferred modus operandi), simple because we now have systems in place and have started her following them so much earlier.

Reading to children, the buoyancy of language, the beautiful sounds

As I mentioned a while ago, I'm now reading the Narnia books to Liam. We've got through two so far (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew, in that order), because we have been interspersing them with The Spiderwick Chronicles, which Liam borrowed from a friend, and some Magic Treehouse Books, which my sister just gave Liam last week as a late Christmas present.

As I said, I am really enjoying reading the Narnia books out loud. The language and even the stories are so much richer than many of the modern kids books we've been reading, which I guess are designed to be easily read and digested by primary school kids, with their short sentences and relatively simple language and plots lines. 

We had a parent-teacher night at school the other day (not individual interviews, just a general session with all the parents to talk about 'the class two child' and the curriculum for this year etc.), and Liam's teacher, Margie, gave us a handout about the art of reading.

In the Steiner curriculum the kids are taught to read and write rather differently and more slowly than in the mainstream in Australia. They started writing last year, in class one, first learning their letters, then starting to write out sentences (copying from the board) from the stories Margie tells them each day. They are building up a list of 'words we know' (starting with things like 'and' 'in' 'the'), but at this stage they are still only reading what they themselves have written. They won't get their first 'reader' until later in the year, and that will consist of poems and stories which they already know.

This fits in not only with Steiner teachings, but also with the research that shows that starting all children in reading and writing at five means that those who are not ready at can become frustrated and stunted and often never really catch up or learn to enjoy reading, while children who start at seven have caught up with their earlier starting peers by about the age of ten, while avoiding the problems for those who weren't ready earlier. (know I should really look up a reference here, but I'm bound to run out of time anyway, so just google if you are interested).

Anyway, the problem this does present is when children, and/or their parents, start to feel worried that some of their (non-Steiner) friends can read, and they can't. We tried to avoid having this issue with Liam by explaining up front that in lots of schools they start reading and writing in kindy, rather than having so much outdoor (and indoor for that matter) play time. Since outdoor playtime was always his favourite part of the day, he considered it a fair trade. We didn't even need to point out that he could french knit and knit and sew etc whereas those other kids (mostly) couldn't - he'd probably give all that the flick in exchange for more outdoor play time!

But, we also have had it pretty easy since he has taught himself to read - by word recognition - far ahead of the curve as far as his own school goes. I guess just the amount that we have always read to him, plus maybe a genetic pre-disposition (he probably could hardly help it with such bookish parents), helped with this.*

So Margie handed out this article partly in response to some parents reporting their children's anxiety. It's for the parents, not the children, but the parents need to have the faith first, I think, that we are doing the right thing for our kids. But the article made me feel even better about reading the Narnia books, and also about me reading it to him, rather than the other way around. Last year we were doing a lot of him reading to me (because he wanted to), but this year it's now mostly me reading to him (not just in the case of the CS Lewis books either), and a part of me had started worrying that I wasn't encouraging him in his own reading enough, especially now school's back and light's out is a bit earlier - so not as much reading on his own in bed either.

It's called The Winged Horse: An essay on the Art of Reading, by Henry Barnes. I guess the gist of the article is in this paragraph

"When had this boy first started to learn to read? It was not in his reading lessons, when he first struggled to spell out words, but when he listened to the stories which were told and read aloud to him, into which he entered with his whole being. For reading is an art—the art of entering with one's whole soul into an experience outside of oneself. It is a gleaning of the sunlight hidden in the hard kernal of the word...The technique of reading the printed word is a specialized branch of the reading process and should no more be confused with it than the technique of raising and lowering the fingers should be confused with the art of the pianist."

Barnes goes on to compare the teaching of reading to that of swimming - just as the first step in swimming is to get children comfortable in the water, not to teach techniques, the first step in learning to read is to give them a "love and enjoyment of the great stories and poems which are the element in which the reader swims." He adds

"Learning new words, practicing work families, sounding out syllables, all of this necessary work belongs in special lessons which parallel the reading lessons, but are not allowed to destroy the germinating, imaginative process of reading itself."

But the part of the article that really got me? 

Quoting Nathanial Hawthorne in his 1851 introduction to his Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales:

"In performing this pleasant task... the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the them to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without effort."

And Barnes adds in what I consider the 'money quote':

"It is not the poverty-stricken renderings of obvious and ordinary events which we should give children as their first experiences in reading. Let us have the courage to do what our forefathers did... let us give them the truly great stories, fairy tales, and poems, told by the masters of the language... with the right guidance, the difficulties of the vocabulary will prove no stumbling block and the beauty of the language will itself prove a most potent educational force. Let us have confidence in the bouyancy of language, as we do in water, for language is one of the great creative powers of the race. And let us not fail to value the educative power of what is half-understood in what the children read. This strange word, often beautiful in sounds, placed like an emerald in its native rock, stirs the imagination and allows the child's soul to surmise a shadowy world which it will one day understand but which is now veiled in mystery. Isn't this reaching out to grasp what cannot yet be fully understood an important part of every growth?"

___________

*Having said that, I should add that his writing is nowhere near at the standard of his reading. He is probably among the slower in the class at this, as at most fine motor skill activities, like knitting and sewing (bit like his mother in this area too!). I talked to Margie about this too, but that's another post.

Gratuitous kid shot to brighten up the blog

This is another one that Trish took the other day:

 

She did actually take lots of fabulous shots of their faces too, but I just really like these action shots. And those bare feet are so cute.

A big bus step for Liam

Liam is taking the bus to school for the first time tomorrow. This is a big step for me. I'm not sure it's quite such a big step for him, but it's definitely a step.

He's been nagging me to let him do it for the past year, because one of his best friends at school takes the bus, and gets on only two stops after ours. It's a school bus, so although I gather it goes past a bunch of other schools as well, it ends up at Liam's. And our bus stop? It's about a four minute walk from our place. In the morning there is one street to cross (a fairly big one though), but in the afternoon there're none.

Then again, I don't think we'll be braving bussing home for a while yet. I'd definitely want to wait at the stop for him, and the mother of his friend who takes the bus told me it can be up to 15 minutes late - which means standing at the bus stop, almost nine months pregnant, in 30+ degree heat, with Mikaela, for maybe 15 minutes. There's not even a bench there. No thanks. That's something Chris can maybe do with him after the baby's born and Chris is on leave.

The point of this exercise, aside from the fact that he's been begging me to let him take the bus for a year, is that after the baby is born (and after Chris goes back to work), it would be nice if Liam could take the bus in at least one direction a few times a week. So that not every single nap the baby tries to have is either interrupted by school pick up/drop off or ruined by a sleep in the car.

On the other hand, I don't want to be completely absent from school myself, especially at pick up. There is a great community there and we often stay after school for half an hour or more for a play and a chat. And Margie, Liam's teacher, encourages us to have them show us their work from time to time, which I also like to do.

But aside from all, that, last year I just didn't really feel ready to let my little boy get on that bus and just trust that it would be all okay, not seeing him again until school pick up over 6 hours later. Actually I'm still not sure I'm quite ready for that. It helps to know that his friend will be on the bus though (and they're going to try to get going early enough to walk up to our stop tomorrow, which will certainly make Liam happy). And his mum told me there don't seem to be any bullies on the bus at all, at least as far as she can tell.

So it's all good and I'm sure will be fine. In fact, I suspect once we get used to it we're going to love it, even if it is just for the morning trip. But I did tell his teacher today that he'd be taking the bus tomorrow morning, and to please call me if he didn't show up! Just your average neurotic parent...

Having some belly photos taken

I have just spent a lovely Sunday morning at Regatta Point with Chris and the kids, and the delightful Trish. She brought along her fabulous camera and took lots of photos of my belly. Oh and the rest of me, and the kids, and even Chris got into some of them.

I don't really like having my photo taken, but I do like to look at the results after wards. Especially of the kids. I know Trish got a few good ones, because she showed me on the camera. She even managed to get Liam to look natural (he likes to pose, y'see, but it doesn't always make for the most attractive of shots!). But I can't wait to see them all. Or at least, the ones she considers good enough to show me. The nice thing about someone else photographing you is that they can delete the ugly ones without you ever having to see them!

I didn't get any particularly good belly photos with either of the other pregnancies, and to be honest, I did hesitate when Trish offered to do some this time. But this is my last pregnancy, and - I'm glad I said yes. Actually it was a lot of fun - Regatta Point was Trish's suggestion and it was an excellent one. The kids had a ball, playing on the various playgrounds, feeding the ducks & swans, finding 'secret' spots in the bushes and under willow trees. We are so lucky to live in Canberra, we should really make the most of it and get out more often.

Grrr... car seat frustration!

Chris has been off trying more car seats in the car today.

Our options appear to be:

• Buy new car seats for Liam (a narrower booster) and the baby (a compact reversible), and have Liam behind the driver, the baby in the middle and Mikaela behind the passenger seat, AND have to do up the seat belt on Liam's booster ourselves, because Chris is pretty sure he won't be able to reach (and in any other positions Chris reckoned no-one will be able to do up Liam's seatbelt); or

• Buy all three of them new car seats, getting Mikaela a narrow convertible carseat/booster.

And either way, Chris isn't entirely happy with the options he's looking at for either of the big kids in terms of comfort - but he doesn't have them with him today, so they haven't tried them out themselves.

Grrrr. I really do NOT want to have to put the baby in the middle of the car, and I definitely do not want to have to be doing up Liam's seat belt as well as the other two (and he would not like that either, not one bit). But nor am I keen on buying 3 new seats, especially considering that we love Mikaela's and so does she. Legally, of course, we won't have to have Liam in a booster seat past his birthday next month, but given his weight and height, safety dictates having him in one for probably two more years.

Sigh.

And to think we bought this car specifically because we can fit three seats across it (we couldn't in the old car). The only bigger option would pretty much be a people mover.

School's back, life's good, things are progressing.

This has been a hectic yet fun week.

School started back, and at Orana they always have 'parent cafe' every morning in the first week of school. It's in one of the old kindergarten classrooms/playgrounds, which is also where they have the playgroups from the second week on, and a cafe/craft morning on Fridays (which of course I've never been able to go to regularly because of working Fridays). So Mikaela and I dropped off Liam at his class* on Tuesday & Wednesday, then spent the rest of the mornings hanging out with other parents and younger siblings.

One of the younger siblings was a 7 month old baby, who's brother just moved to the school this year and is in Liam's class. The baby is commando crawling and used to big kids (with brothers aged 7 and 5), so he managed very well with Mikaela's desire to turn him into her personal pet. And she made a new best friend. And a couple of parents commented on how good she was with him (not like with our poor long suffering cat), so that bodes well.

Aside from that we stayed after school for plays on both days until 3:30 or 4:00pm, and on Wednesday we had Mikaela's swimming lesson straight after parent cafe and then met some friends at the pool, so didn't even make it home until 1/2 an hour before we had to leave for school pickup. Like I said, somewhat hectic, but fun.

Then Thursday Chris did the school run and took Mikaela to parent cafe (she was sad that the baby wasn't there that day), while I went and had a lovely session with my doula, talking about the birth and possible positions - I'd really like to catch the baby this time if I can, and would also really like to avoid a tear - though with scar tissue from two tears in the same spot, that's probably not likely.

I also talked about the fact that I'd like to get to the birth centre a little earlier this time (ie not right as I hit transition!), so I have more time to get into the 'zone'. The tricky part being that my labour barely got established last time before we went in - if I'd waited until I had contractions five minutes apart, like they tell you to, Mikaela would have been born at home. So I'm not quite sure how I'm going to judge that. My doula said she normally does a flow chart for her clients to help them figure out when to call, but I just don't fit the patterns. But anyway...

And then she did a guided relaxation with me and a Reiki session. Yes, I love my doula. :)

Sadly I had to follow that lovely relaxing appointment with a blood test (for iron studies since my stored iron was once again at rock bottom when it was last tested), then get home in time for Chris to go to a physio session. Then we all went to school to help with 'handwork', in Liam's class (they are starting the year by making cushions to sit on - beginning, his week, with painting the fabric), then picked up Liam and went to my cousin's for an after school play.

But today. Well, it hasn't been entirely relaxed, but I at least haven't left the house. I have cleaned out the bassinette, made it up, and set it up in our bedroom though, which is a major achievement. And Chris took Liam to check out new booster seats, since his is too wide to fit in the car with another baby seat.

Unfortunately that trip established that

a) the seat Chris was thinking of for him is too narrow - absolutely no growing room;

b) the next choice might be okay (similar over all width but more roomy in the important places), but was not in stock, and

c) it will be impossible to do the seat belt up on either one if we get a full size seat for the baby - even of the narrower kind we were looking at. We will have to get a compact one. Which is a particular bummer because as of yesterday we thought we wouldn't have to buy one at all, since my cousin's eldest is about to graduate to a booster seat and was going to give us hers. Also, the compact one we think we want wasn't in stock either.

But at least we have a better idea now. I just hope we are able to get them before the baby is actually born!

And now it's time to sort through Mikaela's last year or so of clothes and either pack them away or put them in the op shop box, therefore making room to get out the baby clothes (assuming we can find them!) tomorrow. Yes, we are making progress on my list of 'things to be done before 37 weeks', which is just as well, because 37 weeks is on Monday. 

_______

*This is not what this post is about, but Liam is also very happy to be back at school. The holidays were just long enough that he was really hanging out for school by the last week. but it's not really terribly exciting aside from that, since it's the same class, same teacher, and they moved into the class two room in the last week of last year. So no sudden shocks, and none of those beginning of year fears that I remember about which teacher you would have and whether you would still be in the same class as your best friends.

What I have been doing lately (plus some other comments)

Grrr... just wrote half a post and lost it when Firefox crashed. We *really* need to do something about this computer.

Anyway, I was writing a post in dot points...

• I love that poem/short story by Jamaica Kincaid, 'What I have been doing lately'. I'm pretty sure it's from At the Bottom of the River, but I gave the book away before I moved back to Australia after studying it in America years ago. Damn it.
• In less than 2 weeks this baby could be born any time and be considered 'full term' (ie I will be 37 weeks pregnant). I'm hoping to have everything on my very long list done by then, and then have a week (or more?) to rest on my laurels.* But we'll see...
• Liam & I have started reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe this week. Or more accurately, I've started reading it to him. It's really fun to read.
  
  Most nights we have about a half hour of reading together in the living room, while Mikaela reads with Chris and goes to sleep in their bedroom, then Liam has another half hour (or so) reading on his own in bed. And often what he does is reads ahead in whatever book we are reading together, but because he is still mostly reading by word recognition, his comprehension can be limited, depending on the book, so he's happy for me to re-read it to him the next night (or him to read it to me, with help on some words, depending on the book and on how he feels).
  
  But because I'm mean, I'm not letting him take the Narnia books to bed. I'm insisting on reading them all myself. Partly that's because it's been close to two decades since I read them and so I don't remember just how scary they might get, partly it's because with the old-fashioned language I know he'll have a harder time reading it to himself, and partly it's just because I want to enjoy being with him when he hears the stories for the first time.
  
  I am finding the language - the long sentences, and very English way of talking - to be really fun to read aloud, and quite refreshing after some of the modern kids books we've been reading.
• What I am not reading any more of to Liam is the Zac Power books. I am sick to death of them. Zac is, quite frankly, annoying, they are completely unrealistic (in a way that is somehow different to the Magic Treehouse books or the Narnia stories being unrealistic). But more than that, I don't like the values they are promoting. Zac is always going on about his 'geeky' or 'nerdy' big brother Leon, using those as negative terms ('Even the geeky Leon could do that', or 'isn't scared of that', or whatever); Zac is never scared of anything, even when he plainly should be (so he's a twit, but instead he's written as a hero); and the only female characters I've come across so far either turn out to be working for the baddies, or are his mother (who is also a spy, but you certainly wouldn't know it).
  
  People talk about them as 'early readers', there is even a set of four or five of them (the Test Drive books) which have larger print & are shorter - and, from memory, generally less obnoxious - but that just gets the kids in of course. And really, I think they are probably better for an older age group - after all Zac is 12. But given that Liam only just started reading & writing at school last year, at the age of 7, and he can read them now, I figure kids who go to mainstream schools and start the three Rs at 5 must be reading them by now, or earlier, too. Certainly a few of his friends are (though not his school friends, that I know of). Either way, I don't like them.
  
  Liam just borrowed five more of these books from a friend (who I think, I am sorry to say, first came to them when Liam bought him one for his birthday last year), and I've said he can read them to himself, but I'm not reading them to him. I explained some of why I don't like them, but I don't think I did a very good job of it.
• We have had two 'dinner parties' with friend in the past week. This is unheard of behaviour for us! On Friday we had dinner at my lovely friend Simone's house, and didn't get home until after 11. I don't actually think we've done that since we've had kids (unless you count weddings). Another couple were there as well, with their two children, so there were friends for all ages and the kids had as much fun as we did.
  
  Then last night we had another family over for a more casual pizza dinner (home made though!), but again the kids got to run wild while we chatted until about nine o'clock at night. As a consequence Mikaela is already over-tired now at 10:30 in the morning, so I hate to think what the witching hour will be like tonight! But it's all good.
• We finally went to see our lovely doula last week, and she lent me Ina May Gaskin's Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which I had not read before, as a general refresher. It's a wonderful book.
  
  I am really looking forward to the birth. Not without some apprehension - because you just never know how it will be - but with a reasonable amount of confidence & plenty of excitement. I do hope to get to the birth centre a little earlier this time (having arrived pretty much already in transition last time), so that I have some time to get into the calm birth/hypnobirthing 'zone' - it's hard to relax and let go when you arrive so late. Most of the labour at home was okay that way, but of course with Liam here and me worrying about Chris changing the sheets before we left... Yeah, not exactly right out of the neo-cortex (ie rational) part of my brain.
  
  On the other hand, I'm realising that some more time to relax once my list is complete wouldn't be a bad thing. Liam is back at school next week, and while my mum is away that week, the following Friday she's agreed to take Mikaela for the whole day (moreoreless) so Chris and I can take the whole of Liam's school day to be a 'date' day - do to a movie, have lunch etc. And if the baby could hold out another week past that, we could do it all over again the next Friday! If I give birth as early with this one as I did with the other two then we'd be home from the birth centre with a new baby by that time, but then again, every birth is different, as I keep being told! :)

I had more to say about my doula, who is also a reiki practitioner and did a lovely relaxation session with me (visualisations plus reiki) on Sunday, but I gotta go. We leave for Mikaela's swimming lesson soon (which she is still loving), so I better go get those children organised.

__________

*What does that mean, to rest on one's laurels? I mean, where does it come from? Must google it later... (edited to add: apparently the laurels come from "ancient Greece, where laurel wreaths were symbols of victory and status")

Bad parents (that'd be us)!

Poor Mikaela just wet the bed because we (again) forgot to put a night-time nappy on her. Poor little mite. Amazingly the kerfuffle (she was crying) didn't disturb Liam at all.

Swimming the cure for shyness? (not really, but it can't hurt)

My shy little Mikaela seems to be coming out of herself a little. She's not going to stop being shy (I shouldn't think) - if I hadn't lived through these same years with a little extrovert I might believe all the people who say it's just developmental, but I have, and I don't.

But, she is starting to talk to more to people.

Last term she started swimming lessons. And they were a complete flop. In fact she wouldn't even look at the teacher, who was a young man, much less join in with the lesson. It didn't help that it was the first time he'd taught her age group and she was often the only kid in the class. So after a couple of lessons they let us defer, and they suggested that sometimes the teachers who are also mothers do better with kids like her.

I figured going every day to see the same teacher and class might work better, so we enrolled her in the two week summer intensive programme, with a mother-teacher named Tracey.

On the first day, Kaely did almost none of the class. I went in with her (none of the other parents did, although there was another little girl there who'd never had lessons before), and she did a few things with me. At the very end of the class she did a couple of things with Tracey. But, she was perfectly happy to look and even smile at Tracey right from the start, even though she wouldn't speak to her. But Tracey handled all this fine, not making a fuss, just asking her if she would have a go, for each activity.

Well, the next day was much the same, but Wednesday was a little better and then Thursday was the breakthrough day. She did almost everything, including the high five with Tracey at the end. By the end of the second week she was talking to Tracey, and even to a student teacher who did a few classes with them that week, and doing everything she was asked to do.

So we've enrolled her in a Wednesday class for this term, with the same teacher and at the same level. I'm confident that by the time I have to bring the baby along (ie when Chris goes back to work 6-8 weeks after the baby is born), I won't need to go in with Mikaela at all anymore. And both this morning and yesterday morning one of the first things Mikaela has said to me is "Is it Wednesday yet?", very disappointed to hear that it's not.

But the point of all this is not that she's taken to swimming like a duck to - well, you know. In fact she already loved the water, Chris has been taking her swimming most every week during Liam's classes for a couple of years (or more).

The point is that in the past two weeks she's also started talking to other people. Chris told me that yesterday he was at a checkout at the supermarket with her in the trolley, and she suddenly piped up and told the cashier that she was three. And that Liam was her brother. She *never* does stuff like that.

And two weeks ago (in the first week of swimming) we went for a play-date at one of Liam's friend's houses, and his mother said it's the first time she'd heard Mikaela speak. That's not so surprising, because she normally sees us at school pick-up when Mikaela is either just waking up from a sleep in the car, or busy playing in the sandpit. But what was surprising to me is that she started chatting to this woman almost the moment we go into her house. Then last week we were there again and the child's dad came home, and Mikaela even talked to him! I was astounded I tell you.

Now I'm not really suggesting that the two weeks of swimming classes have had this miraculous effect, I suspect it's more likely that she's at a developmental point where she was ready for both - though I doubt that we would have had the same success with the swimming had we kept with last term's teacher and the weekly classes.

But I am very pleased that it's all going so well. This year we have also enrolled her in a playgroup at the school for the first time, where she will hopefully meet some of the children she'll be in kinder with next year. The main reason I'm keeping the swimming lessons going is to help her get used to the class situation, and interacting with the teacher. I'm not honestly that fussed about the actual swimming skills at this age, though obviously learning basic safety stuff (how to float, dog paddle, get out if she falls in), is valuable. 

Although funnily enough, once she did join in with the class, her skills proved to already be reasonably good, although she's still not too happy about putting her face into the water. I guess all the swimming with Chris has paid off in that sense. Now I'm hoping that the classes and playgroup will pay off such that when she starts sessional-kindergarten (pre-school) next year, she'll be happy for me to leave her there. If not as happy as Liam was,* then at least not horrified by the idea.

_________

*Weirdly I don't appear to have blogged this at the time, but on Liam's first day of school, Chris and I waited around at the top of the playground (where the class rooms are) until 'going in' time (they have about 15-20 minutes outdoor play before they go in). When that time came, Liam came racing up to change into his indoor shoes, and rushed past us saying "What are you guys still doing here?" - and went in without a backward glance!

Two kids and their lo-line bunks

Mikaela and Liam are sharing a room for the first time tonight.

Back when Liam first moved out of our room, when he was about two and a quarter, we bought him a double bed. Not only would it allow us to lie down with him comfortably, as we knew we often still would, but we liked the idea of the 'sibling bed' - that eventually he'd be sharing with a little brother or sister.

But then it took us rather longer to provide him with a little brother or, as it happens, sister than we planned, and by the time she was approaching an age when she might share a bed with Liam, he was over the idea. She wriggled too much, basically. And there was the fact that unlike Liam, she slept in a cot, so she wasn't used to sharing a bed.

Today, we finally packed up Liam's double bed, and moved a set of 'lo-line' bunks into his room instead. They're king singles, partly because we still often end up lying down with one or t'other of them in the night (usually Mikaela of course) (and when I say 'we' I actually mean Chris). The other reason is that I was hesitant to go for the bunk idea because it makes it so much harder to sit up there with Liam at bed time. Having the king single makes that a lot more doable, because there's just a lot more space.

On the other hand, when we set them up we realised they take up a lot more of the room than we'd imagined. We knew that not much other furniture would fit in there, but we didn't realise just how dwarfed the space would be.

The room is still a work in progress. We've redone the wardrobe (which is not very big) with lots of drawers and just a little bit of hanging space, and we're hoping to get all the kids clothes into it. Liam got his undies, jamies, & t-shirts drawers sorted today, but there's still jumpers (sweaters, to American readers) & pants. And we've got Mikaela's clothes to sort through tomorrow. I'm trying to weed out the too-small clothes as we go.

Also, we need to get a reading light for Liam, so that he can read for half an hour or so after Mikaela is asleep, and some kind of shelving up there for him.

But the beds are in place, the kids are in the beds (and hopefully asleep - Kaely certainly is), and it's all systems go for their first night sharing. It should be interesting.

Reading princess stories with Liam

Liam and I have just (a few days ago) started reading stories out of an old book of my Mum's called The World's Best Fairy Tales. It has tales from the collections of Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, Andrew Lang etc. He found it on the shelf and decided he wanted to read them - especially the princess stories (more on that later).

I haven't read from it before, because some of them a quite Grimm (ha ha). Like the Little Match Girl (who I'm pretty sure dies in the snow at the end), and the Little Mermaid. Not at all like the disney versions. But he seems old enough to cope now, and I must say when we got to the end of The Little Mermaid tonight, it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered, even though it was sad.

I'm a bit nervous about the nasty bits. He often wants me to read ahead in mildy scary books (like The Famous Five books) and check that it's going to be okay - which, if it's Enid Blyton or some such I can readily assure him it will be. So I've warned him these aren't all sweetness and light. When we started the Little Mermaid last night we got to the bit where the witch is describing to the mermaid what it will be like to walk as a human (every step will feel like you are stepping on daggers etc) and then cuts out her tongue as payment, and Liam decided he wanted to stop, it was making him too teary. But then later he read ahead, checked the end, and decided it wasn't so bad (even though there was probably a lot in there he didn't get - it's pretty old fashioned language), so we finished it tonight.

Anyway, what's interesting to me about this is that Liam has decided he wants to read all the princess stories in the book. After I leave him for the night he gets to read for another half hour or so, and he's read through bits of them and bookmarked lots that he wants me to read to him. So far we've read Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

But today he told me that he can never tell his two best (male) buddies at school, or they will throw him out of their 'club'. Why, I asked him. "I don't know," he said, and then elaborated - because they think girl's stuff is dumb, and they think princess stories are girls stuff. Which, Liam said, is dumb. There's no such thing as 'boys' and 'girls' stuff.

Well, I thought, I guess I've done my job well, but... isn't it a sad world?

Things I should have been blogging about in the past few weeks

1. Mikaela's burn - she chased the cat under the car two weeks ago today. Chris called me up at work and said "There's been a change of plan for the afternoon. I'm going to the hospital." It's not really a dreadful burn - not as bad as I first thought when he called - but she is still having dressing changes every few days (and improvement from every 1-2 days though), and when I asked the nurse on Sunday how long she thought it would be before Kaely could swim again - would she, for instance, be okay for the summer swim school starting in 3 weeks time - the answer was "maybe". So it's bad enough.

2. The vegie garden. A week or so ago I planted out my third attempt at a zucchini plant for the season. So far so good. I planted it inside a half buried ice cream container with the bottom cut out, and have been spraying with cold black coffee. It's been a little bit eaten, but it's still going, whereas the last two plants were eaten within couple of days.

3. The baby! I am now officially into the third trimester, and I can really tell. I also had a long post about how much I do not like people commenting on my size (or the supposed size of the baby), how this is a common complaint of pregnant women (be they larger or smaller) and how I just don't get why people think it's suddenly okay to make comments like "Oh, you're huge!" (on hearing you're not due for a couple of months), just because you're pregnant. Why?

4. My birthday, which was a crappy day (except for the middle part where my cousin threw me a little birthday party with our three little girls, complete with fairy bread and everything), mostly because I was tired and crabby & so were the kids, but maybe, just maybe, because my very, very dear friend was having a miscarriage, although I didn't know it at the time.

5. My lovely friend and how sad I am for her right now (except I don't tend to blog about other people's stuff so much anyway, so I probably wouldn't say any more than that).

6. The fact that despite it being summer - really, truely, 36 degree Celcius type summer - I have another cold (via Liam) and a sore throat. Why?! Also my iron is right down again, so I am taking an iron supplement. But maybe that answers the why question.

7. Liam's school play, Christmas festival, and move to their class two classroom two days before the end of term (which was last Friday).

But right now I have to go to bed, so more detail on any of that will have to wait, probably indefinitely.

Baby monsters to cuddle in bed

The children have just got to bed, a little later than usual (it's 7:25 as I write, Kaely's asleep, Liam's light's just gone out, after he finished reading me a chapter (and a bit more, because I am weak and wanted to know what came next just as much as he did) of his current book), because they were playing so well after dinner. You might think that means we hated to disturb them, but really it means we hated to disturb ourselves when they were playing happily in the other room!

Mikaela took two baby monsters with her to bed tonight. At first she was playing a game of running away from the monster, "It's going to get me. Quick!" But then suddenly it became a baby monster who she had to hold in her arms and rock to sleep. And then the baby monster wanted to sit on her shoulder while she made a bed for it on Liam's bed (where she thought she might sleep too.)

What I found particularly interesting was that she evidently told Liam they could share the baby monster, but then when he wanted it to sit on his shoulder (this is a bit later on, after teeth cleaning when we were all in his room), and she wanted to hold it, it took him quite a while to come up with "Oh, here's my other baby monster under the bed, he wants to sit on my shoulder." For a while it looked like it may all end in tears because both of them wanted to hold their new imaginary friend at the same time.

Then Mikaela was suddenly holding both (they wanted to be together you see, and Liam was busy reading to me), so I told Liam that was another one, and as she took them away to her room he got another one (or two?) out from under his bed to sleep with him.

Also, Mikaela did not want to go into her room, she wanted to stay in Liam's bed, but when I said, "The baby monsters want to go into your room now, they told me," she ran off happily.