Big update, lots of photos!

Soooo many photos to post! And I have STILL only resized 42 out of 52 photos (!!) from Arthur's birthday! I am so annoyed with myself that it's the last day of November and I haven't got round to posting an entry here about his birthday in the same month as his birthday! Tsk. But I do plan to.

In the meantime, I have a bazillion other photos that are finally uploaded and ready to go! Also a bit of time to jot down some sweet things about the boys and such. And I must update on general life and so on.

Neil is still out of work. He has had 2 job interviews (nothing came from them) and has another on Monday afternoon in London. So far they are all in London. We're not thrilled about him getting a job in London but they pay well and he can commute pretty easily because we live in Greater London, so... Definitely not for the long-haul though. He has also applied for a job a couple of counties away, and another right on our doorstep where we live. They all pay well enough for us to live comfortably so any of them would be GREAT! He has also had a meeting with one of the leaders at church to discuss our new link (at church) with a church in Ghana. He is really feeling drawn towards work overseas with the church. Which scares. me. silly! It's SO out of my comfort zone and SO the exact opposite of what I would ever want to do! But we will pray and see. He is also open to the idea of some church work in South Africa, as this particular church leader has done a lot of work there and has links, etc. He could easily put Neil in touch with churches out there.

God needs to seeeeriously change my heart for me to be happy about any of this in any way, shape or form! Which would be a GOOD thing, because it's just my comfort-zone issue, and my personality type, that's keeping me from happily embracing what might be God's calling in Neil's life. I am a set-down-roots type of person, and just want to stay where I am and breed! ;) I really don't want to go even another TOWN away, let alone to another country/continent/culture with my babies, a million squillion miles from anyone I ever knew and all my family. Urrrgh. But if God says go... And if Neil says go, for that matter.... Because I am trying to embrace the fact that he's the spiritual leader of our family/household, and I want to submit to him in these things. Submitting is not part of my blueprint! ;) So it will take a lot of work for me. We are praying about it a lot. And meanwhile, Neil is doing the hugely reassuring task of interviewing for DULL jobs in our local area! ;)

My mummy sent us £500 for groceries! Bless her heart! I love her so. They are so supportive all the time, and never condemn or judge us for our decisions. I still feel absolutely remarkably unphazed about money, and Neil too. We have none, but everything is going to be fiiiine, and in fact there's a strange rose-tinted look to everything all the time, even without any money or income. God is good to us!

Also recently muchly prayed-about here is the subject of our children's education. It's too lengthy and stuff to go into in this entry (which I am trying to be brief and efficient with!), but remind me to post an entry SOON entitled, "We are sooooooo going to homeschool!" or something like that! I will have a lot of links to post in that entry. I have absolutely NO doubts in my mind or heart now that homeschooling is the best option for our family. I was starting to be concerned about Arthur's socialization, but really I just needed to remind myself of a few WELL-researched articles on the subject which do away with the myth of homeschooling getting in the way of a child's socialization, and research ways to socialise if we homeschool. I have my methods sorted out, but I'll write about them in another entry. Neil is on board (he was getting iffy about it before) and it's just SUCH a relief. Also a mounting dread because of people who will NOT be supportive finding out sooner or later. Urgh. But that's for another entry.

Matthew is saying so many words! Many of them are only understandable to us though, with his sweet way of pronouncing them! He has also started to say two-word "sentences", the first of which was "Bah, Ah-yah!" (bye, Arthur - waving). He now says "bah" (always with the cute waving) to everyone and everything when they go anywhere, including TV programmes when they finish, and food when it's about to be wiped off his highchair tray! He also says, "bee-bip!" which is his way of saying "excuse me please", hehe! This is, of course, his pronounciation of "beep beep". If he comes up to something in his way like a toy garage or something in front of the bookshelf, he'll give it an impatient look and say, "bee-bip!" and do a little sort of impatient bounce at the knees till we move it for him. The other day Neil opened the stair gate at the bottom of the stairs for Matthew to go up with him to have a bath. I was sitting near the gate on the floor, and he came to me and said, "Mi-mi (he also says, "di-di" for Daddy), bee-bip!" Funny little boy!

He still says "Ah-yah" allll the time, and lately it has taken on a much more adoring tone :) He just looooves Arthur so so much!

Arthur is doing great too. He talks non stop. And I think it's worth emphasizing: He talks non stop! I don't think there are things he can't say or pronounce, except maybe concepts that he isn't old enough to grasp yet. He sometimes still surprises me with things he says, that I don't expect to hear for whatever reason. If something scares him, he'll tell me, "I was dweadbully fwightened!", and the day before yesterday when he got home from the park with Matthew and Neil, I asked him what the weather had been like. He said, "Well, it was very cold and blust-ree, but it didn't rain." I just didn't expect blustery! I thought he'd just say windy or something. He also describes the weather or windows of cars as "mistry" (misty) and has such a wide range of similar descriptive vocabulary, which he uses a lot.

He can count with ease to 10, no longer reciting but counting how many of something is on a page. He is super helpful with all small children. We were at Fellowship Group yesterday and he's now the oldest child by about a year. Most of the little ones there are Matthew's age or younger, and there's one little girl who just turned two. And Arthur! He sat and "read" books most of the time, and played with toys, but he is thoughtful of the little ones at all times. He went and closed the door at one point, and when I asked him if he was okay, he told me, "I shut the door so that the little ones don't get out." Which was soooo thoughtful of him, as one of us parent-y people had forgotten to shut it, and it WAS an issue that the little ones could escape to other (less baby-proofed) parts of this lady's house. Later, one of the toddlers got hold of a balloon and after a while I saw Arthur holding it, standing next to the little one, and heard him saying gently, "Now, you have to be careful with these. You don't want to make them go bang." in SUCH a grown-up caring tone :)

He has lately been surprising us with his memory. He seems to have an excellent visual memory for things. He will cut out 30 car pictures from a magazine with Neil, and if one is missing at the tidy-away stage, he won't rest till he finds out where the "small blue car" went. I have no specific recollection of a small blue car, but maybe it was just that much more interesting to him so he remembered them all? Anyway, he was right, of course. It was under a sofa cushion. He remembers amazing details about cars.

Last week we had just finished getting the boys ready for bed, and Matthew was about to go with me to his room for milky (a breastfeed) and sleep. Arthur got one of his Topsy and Tim books (the boy LOVES those books) and said Matthew couldn't go before story time. So I said, "Why don't YOU read a story to Matthew, Arthur?" as it's something Neil or I do normally. He was SO pleased! He sat down next to Matthew (who did not keep still and stick around for the whole story, by the way!) and opened the first page, and proceeded to "read" the entire book almost word perfectly, phrasing and intonation pretty near perfect as well! Some of the sentences were quite complicated for him to remember, as he's only had the books for a few weeks (since the week before his birthday) and doesn't read one every night, so we thought he'd simplify or miss out some of those sentences. But nope. Every time he nailed one perfectly, Neil and I would look at each other and drop our jaws! And then look back to him and say what a great job he was doing in between pages. I couldn't believe how accurately he had memorised such a long book (for a little one, that is) so quickly, and the complicated sentences too! If he forgot a sentence on a page, as soon as he turned to the next page, he seemed to realise he'd missed something, go back to the previous page, and recite the sentence he'd missed before turning over again.

When I told my mum this on the phone the other day, she said it sounded to her like he was pretty much ready to start reading. I said, "What?!" (he's only just 3!) but she reminded me that he's ever so like me, and I was reading by the time I started nursery school, which must have been around Arthur's age, since he's now "nursery-starting age". The weird thing is, nobody taught me to read. My mum thought nursery taught me, and nursery thought Mummy taught me, and when they got together for a parents evening after I'd been there a month, they discovered that I had taught myself. Since Mummy didn't know about it, she can't be sure HOW, but she said I was doing the same kind of thing that Arthur's doing, and she just had books around the house with simple short sentences (very early readers I guess) which she guesses I started to associate the words on the page with the words she was vocalising as she was saying them. And she read to me a lot, and stuff. She was purposely waiting till I was 5 and starting school to do actual learning-to-read with me, because she was anxious about being pushy when I was too little.

So, I don't intend to "teach" Arthur to read either. I will have the same stuff around the house that my own mother had for me, and though I can't imagine how it could happen this way, Mummy thinks he might well pick up reading by himself. We'll see. I'm in no hurry, and I love to encourage him and see him develop as his own motivation and enthusiasm leads him, so it should be fun either way, even if it's years before he starts to read yet. I read yesterday at one of the homeschooling sites I was researching at, that sometimes exceptionally bright children learn to read by word recognition like that and do it by themselves at a young age. So that reassures me that it's possible, and okay to let that happen if it does. I debated over whether to write that bit here because it sounds HORRIBLY egotistical of me, writing the phrase "exceptionally bright" in reference to a) my own child, and b) me! ;) But though it's got to be grating on someone's nerves as they read this, I guess I am just genuinely sounding thoughts out. I was an exceptionally bright child (note the reference to CHILD and not person in the present tense, haha! My brain is seriously not what it used to be, these days!), actually assessed to be a gifted child, which was apparently hereditary, so it is a genuine concern for me that I am aware of the same possibility for my own children. Arthur is uncannily like me (I do mean uncannily, it's so exact in so many ways!) in personality, energy and ability, as a toddler. I am desperate to handle things differently to the way "things" were handled when I was a child. The fact that I was bright lead to a miserable school-life for me, and basically a rejection of said brightness on my part. I have to make sure that I don't make the same mistakes with my little ones if they turn out to be bright sparks. I know every child is different (and every school, but that won't be an issue if we're homeschooling anyway).

Anyway - more long-winded that it was meant to be! Arthur is just Arthur. He's not one of these toddlers doing 200 piece jigsaw puzzles or anything! He's just a normal boy bean :) But he's bright and I want to help him to flourish and maintain his zest for life and learning the best way I can. I don't want to squash such an exquisite flower as it is just opening :)

I hope that all didn't come across as horribly proud or anything. I cringe at the thought! I always just lay my thoughts and feelings bare here, and of COURSE I am going to think the sun shines especially radiantly out of my own children's bottoms ;) It's only natural! Hehe!

Okay, onto something else. Photos, I think!

My tiny boy (well, the middle-sized boy, not the tiniest of them!) is still breastfeeding before his nap and bedtime, and on waking in the morning. I think I can now say I have successfully night-weaned, and it was completely trauma-free, so that's a HUGE relief! I need the nights sorted because I'm not someone who can manage to tandem nurse at night, though I am happy (excited, even!) to do so in the day. Arthur is still breastfeeding too, same as before, mainly the before-bed session, but any other time of day when he asks and it's convenient to do so. Which is about two or three times usually. Matthew probably wouldn't ask in the day during play time, as Arthur does, but if he sees Arthur nursing he never fails to come toddling over, saying, "Mih! Mih!" (milk?) and clambering up eagerly to have some from the other breast. I love nursing them together. They never nurse for very long that way, especially Matthew who pops right off again after about 60 seconds, but I do love looking down at their sweet little selves tucked into my sides as they sit either side of me, nursing away whilst they gaze at each other across my breasts. And even more lovely is the fact that in between their little persons is a pretty huge bump which houses another little one of mine! I just love moments where ALL my little ones are tucked into me, touching base and keeping that baby bond with me going.

Matthew nurses TO SLEEP at naptime, which ideally needs to change! I definitely want this to be different before Nathan is born, as it will make life soooo much easier, but I still LOVE nursing little ones to sleep. Matthew gets very cross if he isn't nursed to sleep for nap time, but he is fine about the bedtime routine where he breastfeeds, climbs onto me when I sit up afterwards, has a drink of water, and then I rock him and pray over him before laying him in his cot WIDE awake. I then walk away! I take an age rocking him and talking softly in his ear though. I always tell him how much I love him, how special he is, what things he's done today that I have loved seeing/hearing, and how proud I am of him, etc. I hold him out from me to kiss his little lips and face, and then I lay him in the cot and stroke his hair for a while, telling him I love him and he's going to have a lovely sleep, etc. Then I leave the room! And he goes to sleep! This is NEW as of last week. We did the Supernanny Sleep Separation Technique with him, and for 3 nights (not the same 3 in a row - he would do a few nights fine and then have a bad one) at bedtime he basically cried it out. Which SUCKED. I hated it so. Two of those nights we were right where he could see us, just refusing to engage with him or pick him up. He cried for maybe 30-40 minutes and then suddenly settled down and went quietly to sleep. We have gradually edged our way out of his room, so now we're on the landing and he can't see us, but he's fine. Tonight we just came downstairs, straight from his room! No problems.

We got desperate, because he HAS to be independently going to sleep before Nathan arrives. It will be too hard to handle otherwise, I think. We tried a few other methods where we stuck closer to him and responded to him more, and just didn't see much progress over a few weeks, so we switched to a more desperate method. I hated it when he cried, but I'm glad we did the Supernanny Method rather than leave him to cry without knowing where we were. And SO glad he's adjusted and going to sleep well on his own now. Arthur often breastfeeds to sleep at bedtime but he's doing SO well at going to sleep without fuss on his own. He doesn't even get off the bed, just lays down where we tell him and scrunches his eyes shut and waits to fall asleep. He doesn't mind us leaving. So those things are a HUGE weight off for me! Now if only Matthew would sleep through the night.... He doesn't breastfeed at night but he still wakes and requires "settling". Urgh.

Anyway. So he breastfeeds to sleep for his afternoon nap, which I actually LOVE, even though I'm going to wish I'd stopped doing that once Nathan arrives! Matthew lately HAS to be clutching toy cars when he nurses to sleep! Funny boy! He will not come upstairs until he has selected the specific cars he wants to take up with him. I'm sure he'd take the whole lot if he could, but he can only fit one in each hand ;) His favourite car right now is a large Matchbox-style police car, which is battered and missing parts, but he is so attached to it! He will not let me prise cars out of his hands as he's dozing off on the breast - he just clutches harder in a mini-panic! It's not remotely comfortable breastfeeding with a toy car jammed into the underside of my breast! But he's just so adorable to me when I watch him, that I can't help but let him anyway :)

Neil took photos about a week ago. Here's my tiny boy nursing to sleep (almost there, by the looks of things!) in my bed before his nap, with his beloved police car. See my bump! I'm having a BABY! Hehe! I'm so excited :) Also, I love how Matthew always likes to lay his hand on my bump when he's breastfeeding. He's soooo gentle with it too. *sigh*

Here's the end result, lol! Still clutching the police car! I did take it from him without trouble after the photo was taken :) He's always totally unconscious after nursing to sleep. Toootally.

Such a sweetie-pea-pickle! I just love him soooo.

What other photos do I have waiting to share here? I have to check photobucket to see - I think some of them are quite old! Ohhh yes, I have a bunch of photos of Arthur from about a month ago - before Neil was unemployed we bought a cot for Nathan on eBay. We figured we had to buy another cot, or else a toddler bed for Matthew. But in the end we chose to buy a cot for Nathan because Matthew isn't ready to move into a big boy bed yet. We COULD do it, but he just seems so little yet. His is a cotbed, so it converts to a toddler bed, but I don't think he's even ready for that. I think we'll keep him in his own familiar bed, whether it's in cot form or toddler bed form, and Nathan can have his own cot from the start. Nathan's is a regular cot though, not a cotbed, so it's smaller. That's fine. By the time Nathan is ready for a toddler bed (hopefully I'll be pregnant again, wheeee!) Matthew will be FINE to move into a normal bed, or bunks with Arthur, and Nathan can have the toddler bed version of Matthew's cotbed, while baby #4 (BOY #4, let's face it!) has Nathan's cot. So there we go! I bid on a barely used (baby co-slept) cot at eBay in a simple design that I really liked, and it's a John Lewis one, and I love their stuff - really sturdy, and good quality, etc. And won!

It arrived in the most ENORMOUS box, flat packed in big sheets of solid polystyrene. We opened it when Matthew went for his nap one afternoon, since he would be a bit of a nightmare with all the packaging! It meant some quality time with Arthur on his own, as he was HIGHLY excited about opening the huge package! He got right in after we lifted the cot parts out, and proceeded to have the most wonderful hour with the polystyrene, making "snow" and being a digger and all sorts of other fun stuff! It was like a big sandbox because of the sides, and it was lovely to just watch him have fun in that space for so long! He did help clean up at the end. I took a bunch of photos, so here are some (okay, lots!) of them:

By the way, is anybody else having HUGE issues with loading Photobucket images? It's driving me crazy, and it's been a month or two now. It's getting slower for me all the time, and now I can't view them at all on my own diary. And the photobucket website itself is very sluggish for me. It takes an age to upload pictures because I have to keep on quitting and reopening the website, as it's sooooo slow that it doesn't do anything for too long. YouTube is the same for me and has been for ages, but I wondered if it's the same for everyone, or just me? We have broadband so I feel like it should NOT be the case that anything is this slow! Anyone else's photobucket images take forever to load as well, not just mine. And it's the same on my laptop as well as the main computer. So, is this just what everyone else is finding? If so, I apologise that this page will take forever to load with all these photos and blinkies on it!

Right, it's getting late and I'm tired so I must finish off this entry. A few more photos though! :)

Some mornings when the boys get up, they are wide awake and raring to go, and they get stuck in straight away with toys and lively games, etc. Occasionally it's early and they are super sleepy, but still wanting to get up. On these occasions, Neil usually puts the TV on for them and they wake up more gradually to some CBeebies or Milkshake for a bit before breakfast. He took a couple of sweet photos of them a week or two ago, on one such morning. They look soooooooooo sleepy! They were sitting in the laundry basket watching TV with such dopey expressions! I don't know why but I just loved this photo. There's another from behind them. The quality is weird and fuzzy because our camera is dying a slow death or something. Tsk. It is getting worse all the time with blurry images and doesn't deal well with lower light settings. Anyway, here are my sweet sleepy boys in their fleece sleepsuits that we got them for the chilly nights we're now having!

And here are a few random photos of Matthew's usual casual thing - wrestling Arthur by locking him with his body over Arthur's neck/head! They now do this SO frequently that they kind of just get on with other things at the same time, hehe! Arthur is never perturbed by these things any more, they're so commonplace!

And finally, here is Matthew after lunch the other day - they had marmite sandwiches and ham and cheese, and stuff, but they often like a chocolate spread sandwich for dessert (and then yoghurt, and then raisins, and then gingerbread men - they eat a lot of lunch!). That particular day I used the last of the Nutella in their chocolate spread sandwich, and had the empty jar on the table. Matthew finished his sandwich and starting making urgent sounds and motioning for the jar! I explained that it was empty, and gave it to him to examine. Here are the resulting photos :)

He's the cutest boo! I am just constantly commenting (to myself or Neil) on how CUTE that boy is these days, things he says or does, or expressions he makes at us! He just seems to me to be at SUCH a cute age right now. I love his age! I can't believe he's nearly 18 months old! One-and-a-half! It's also slightly scary that it means I must be nearly due another baby because that's the age my little ones tend to get to by the time I am about to have another baby! But exciting too. I can't wait to post photos of all three of my little boys here. It seems surreal that it will even happen, but it will, and it's so exciting! :)

Okay, I must go to bed. After I eat some cereal. And do my FlyLady bedtime routine! And probably eat something else. I eat a lot at the moment! But it's all for a good cause :)

Christmas-related boy stuff :)

Yay, I finally have a moment to update with the photos of my attempts to get a Christmas card photo of the boys this year! And it's still only 25 minutes BEFORE midnight - go me! Hehe!

There are lots of pics though - be warned!

It was a total nightmare trying to get a nice photo of the boys to send out to family and friends with our Christmas cards. I like to do that every year because I can NOT resist showing off my sweeties! :) I'm still so bummed that the cards went out (well, 21 of 50 - oh dear! Some will have to arrive rather late when I post them AFTER Christmas *sigh*) without photos of the boys for all to see! But I comforted myself with the fact that about 7 weeks after Christmas I will have a baby (WHAT?!?!? Oh my gosh, I am about to have a baby!!!!!), and will therefore have the opportunity to make sure ALL my boys are in a photo on the birth announcement :) That will make up for it! But then, it means I'm going to be a complete freak about getting the perfect photo. Which, not good really. Especially with hormones a-flying. But oh well! Hopefully we'll somehow get a good picture for the birth announcement!

Anyway, I DID try! I took photos of them on 2 different days. I tried all sorts to distract them and stuff, but they played about and climbed on each other and never looked at me and so on! Hey ho. Here is my photographic record of the process! ;)

Day One

Tried setting the boys up together on the floor, completely failing to move the mess on the sofas behind them first (d'oh!) and also used the flash close up (another d'oh!). They looked at me at the same time, but yeah they were basically mucking around together, see?...

I then tried sitting them on the sofa together, but Matthew climbed on Arthur and they had the SWEETEST cuddle! I took a photo of that, of course! :)

Then I tried sitting Matthew on Arthur's lap, but he was kind of fidgetty (poor Arthur!)...

Day One's attempts ended there, as the mild squirming turned into full-on rough-and-tumble, so I gave up!

Day Two!

I went crazy taking photos that day because I knew it was the last opportunity and I was determined to get one! I had 3 "musts" for a useable photo:

1) They must both be looking at me at the same time.
2) They must be smiling or looking cute!
3) The photo must not be blurry or have horrible, unfixable light.

I sat them on the sofa side by side and went to work. But first Arthur picked his nose at the moment I snapped the photo (sigh)...

And then I HAD the perfect shot, but Arthur randomly leapt at the camera at the last second (which is very "Arthur" actually)....

Then I thought, okay, how about the floor? It's tidy-ish, and they might sit sweetly together and smile at me if they're not "sat" in position on the sofa! I got them to climb down onto the floor and they sat soooo nicely and waited. By the time I had turned my back and walked 4 paces, turned again and put the camera to my eye, this was the shot I got:

So back to the sofa we went! Unfortunately, Matthew was all up for games once he'd sat on Arthur's neck like that (!!), so he instantly did this:

He does a sort of fast sit-up-and-down thing on his brother, essentially bouncing on him as hard as he can with his bottom! Arthur is always delighted with this kind of play and finds it so funny that Matthew is being "Wiggly Boy" on him!

Soooo, starting to lose my hope/cool, and with neither boy paying the least bit of attention to my pleas for them to stop for a moment and sit up, or just relax and look at Mummy for JUST A MOMENT! - I grabbed the remote and put the Thomas DVD on. I hoped that this would put a sudden stop to the rough-and-tumble, and THEN I might get a millisecond after the distraction, to get a photo! Matthew was instantly distracted, but only to pause in his pummelling of his brother.

He went straight back to it the moment he looked away from the TV, so then I called Neil to help me! Neil set them up on the sofa for a cuddle:

Which I snapped and it was cute, but I said to Neil that they had to BOTH be looking forward, so that people would see both their faces. So Neil put them side by side and did a little dance (out of shot, sorry, haha!) to keep them looking forward:

By this time I was kind of getting stressy (ALWAYS a sign to stop and get cheerful again, for the kids' sake if nothing else!) and told Neil that - Rule #1 - they had to be looking at ME, not him! I wanted them looking at the camera! So he turned them to face me, and said, "Look at Mummy, boys!" And I'll be darned - they DID! And absolutely perfectly, keeping still and everything! But completely without expression! Which I have never seen in either of them, it's just tooo frustrating that they both chose to look at me with NO expression whatsoever! Thus breaking Rule #2 (looking cute or smiling). *sigh*

So Neil sat them side-by-side on the sofa with a BOOK to look at. He said it would distract them, and then he'd do something behind me (so they were looking in my direction) and they'd look up and smile! But Matthew clapped and laughed, thus breaking Rule #3 - the photo must not be blurry!

After that they started really enjoying reading their book together, and they looked so sweet and I just gave up trying to get a good Christmas card photo and just took a couple of photos of them reading, for me :) And then put the camera away!

So there we have it. It's sooooooo hard to take nice photos of them these days! They never keep still, or they just climb all over each other and giggle, or play rough-and-tumble continually! It must be an age thing, for these particular boys! I feel like I don't get enough photos of them these days, and I am sad about that!

Staying on the subject of Christmas-related things, Neil and I have been having loonnnng discussions lately about what to teach our kids about Christmas. We want a BIG emphasis on Jesus. But we weren't sure what to do about Father Christmas. Do the two even go together?! We couldn't figure it out. I had no experience of anything but Father Christmas, as my upbringing was very anti-Christian. I learned about the real reason for Christmas at school. But Christmas was OH SO MAGICAL, probably the most magical and special part of my childhood, I think. I want to pass that on, and I wondered HOW to do so without Father Christmas! Or without such a big emphasis on him.

In the end, we finally (just the other day) decided to teach about both. We will make a big emphasis on Jesus, and unpack that a lot with the boys. And also "do" Father Christmas with the presents and stuff. We figured we'd go with the imagination aspect, since we do soooo many other imaginary games and things with Arthur now, and he absolutely loves that kind of thing. I figured he would probably enjoy the idea of Father Christmas and maybe find it a lot of fun to imagine. Maybe not so hugely this year, but probably more so at subsequent Christmases (Christmasses?).

Soooo the other day two books arrived (bought at eBay, courtesy of my parents' Christmas money for the boys) to help us on our quest :) One was the Nativity story for toddlers with lovely illustrations - a chunky board book. We read that with them and enjoyed it. And the other was another book about the birth of Jesus, but it's a jigsaw book with a 5-piece jigsaw of the illustration on each page. Arthur loved that one! I elaborated when reading the story because there wasn't much about God in it!

Anyway, then, nice and confusingly (!), about 10 minutes later I talked to Arthur about Father Christmas! ;) We did Father Christmas last year but Arthur probably doesn't remember, because we really haven't made mention of him since then, not even in the run up to Christmas thus far - we have been undecided on what we'd teach the boys about Christmas. Now that we've decided, it was fun to talk to him about it! It felt WEIRD to lie to him, but somehow so much fun, for both of us, at the same time.

Arthur was more excited than I expected about Father Christmas coming with presents while he's asleep on Christmas Eve! He kept asking WHEN that would be, and I told him 3 more sleeps. He was SO excited! Then we wrote a letter to Father Christmas to ask him for the things Arthur would like for Christmas. Arthur didn't hesitate to say he wanted new cars and chocolate, and he said that was all! So I encouraged him to think if there was anything else, and also to think if there was anything Matthew might like, because Matthew was too little to write his own letter to Father Christmas - not that Arthur wrote his of course! He dictated and I wrote :) Here is his letter - we wrote it in red sparkly pen on green paper :)

Dear Father Christmas,

For Christmas, I would like:

New cars and chocolate.
I would like books, new ones. I would like Postman Pat books. I like Mrs. Goggins books.
I want Jesus books. That's all.
A new car magazine too.

Matthew would like new cars. He likes toys. He likes books as well.

Love Arthur

I don't know where the Postman Pat books idea came from! He doesn't mention Postman Pat much, although he DOES like it. He is getting a TON of books actually, but none of them are Postman Pat! He IS getting chocolate, well, chocolate-covered raisins, and also a snack pack of mini chocolate digestive biscuits :) He is always asking for those, but we never have them. We had them MONTHS ago a couple of times, and he has never forgotten them. This boy is a BIG chocolate fan! ;) They will both get yoghurt- and chocolate-covered raisins as stocking fillers, and also the snack pack of bitesize chocolate biscuits. Matthew will LOVE those as well!

They are both getting Matchbox-style toy cars - 8 each, individually wrapped as stocking fillers. I hadn't thought of a new car magazine, hmm.... He is still snipping away at the pictures in the car magazine we got him for his birthday, and has plenty left to cut out, so I hadn't thought of it.

After we wrote the letter, I put it in an envelope and addressed it to Father Christmas, North Pole. Arthur wanted to know if it was near where we live. I said we live in England and that's not near the North Pole. He knows a little about England (as being different from other countries) because of chats about my parents living in France. Then I let him lick the envelope flap and he sealed it. He wanted to post it right away! Which I hadn't anticipated! But he didn't mean to walk to the postbox round the corner. He took it to the front door and wanted to post it through the letter box from the inside to the outside. So I helped him post it through, and when we heard it slap onto the concrete outside Arthur clasped his hands under his chin with glee, and said that Father Christmas was going to get his letter!

So I had an idea :) I wondered (aloud) if maybe Father Christmas might come to get the letter in some way, so he could read it. It was time for Big Boy Quiet Time upstairs, so I said that Father Christmas would not come while Arthur was there watching for him, just like on Christmas Eve. We would check to see if he had come to get the letter after Big Boy Quiet Time was finished. So up he went. After he was in his room with the door shut, I collected the letter and left a generous sprinkling of multi-coloured glitter on the doorstep/floor outside the front door!

He did really well upstairs and stayed for a good while, but before too long there was lots of rhythmic thumping and Neil went up to see what was going on. He brought Arthur downstairs, saying that Arthur told him he was TOO excited about Father Christmas and he had to jump on his bed to "get some energy" (he always says this for "burning off energy" - always calls it "getting" energy instead, hehe!). So we went to the front door and I let Arthur open it. He did this HUGE gasp and said, "It's GONE! Father Christmas has got my letter!" and then he bent over to look closer at the floor outside and did another HUGE gasp. I said, "What! What is it?!" and he said, "It's glitter! He's REALLY BEEN here to get my letter!" Ohhhh it was all so heart-rendingly cute and his enthusiasm and excitement was soooo complete and adorable that I had a hard time not crying for some reason.

He came jumping into the house as we shut the door, just unable to contain himself, squealing and clutching his hands together. At that moment, Neil appeared with Matthew on the stairs, as Matthew had woken from his nap. Arthur ran up to him and said, "Mashew! Father Christmas has been to get my letter, and NOW he knows what I want for Christmas!" It was so sweet - he soooo wanted to share it with Matthew, but Matthew had no idea what he was talking about and was just busy being rather dopey and sleepy! So Arthur talked to me about it some more, highly excited! He kept saying, "I'm SO happy!" and "I'm SO excited!!!" and so on.

A bit later on he was looking thoughtful for a moment, and then suddenly gasped and said, "Father Christmas has read my letter, so he knows what I want - and he knows I want new cars!!!" I said yes, he does! So Arthur beamed, and then said, "I think he must be at Tesco getting my new cars RIGHT NOW!" hehehehe! I laughed so much, but tried not to, you know?! I said that maybe Father Christmas had a whole FACTORY where he makes toy cars for all the boys and girls who want them for Christmas. Maybe he would get Arthur's cars there? Arthur gasped in awe at the idea, and said breathlessly, "YES!" And then after a pause, "... or Tesco."

Funny boy :)

Okay it's late and that's all I wanted to get into writing for today! Thank you so much for the messages after my last entry! I feel better about the sleep arrangements changing, thanks for the encouragement and advice! Jemma, your kids are so sweet! I hope mine share as nicely as yours do! :)

I'll be back soon to FINALLY upload those photos of Arthur's birthday and write about it a little (video clips too, Andrea, don't worry!). Although, hmmm, maybe not before Christmas now, since Christmas is practically here.... I will have a million photos after Christmas though, so I really need to get the birthday stuff done first! I'll try but I'm not sure when. Tomorrow is Sunday. Arthur and I are icing the Christmas cake! I'm so excited that I've made my own Christmas cake from scratch this year, and it's nearly finished! And I love that Arthur has done each stage of it with me. I want it to be a tradition every Christmas that I bake Christmas cakes and other seasonal stuff with my children, like I did with my brother and my mum. I love doing stuff like that!

Our church does not have a morning service tomorrow. There's a short service in the evening instead - well, early evening, 5.30 to 6.30pm. I'm excited about it! The kids at church (including the group that Arthur will join after Christmas, the 3-5 age group) are doing a nativity play, and the service will be candle-lit and we'll sing Christmas carols (I hope! I LOVE singing Christmas carols!), and there will be mince pies and mulled wine afterwards :) I'm hoping the boys can have a packed lunch of sorts as it will be their tea time while we're there, and then we can just do bath and bed as soon as we get home. I hope they enjoy the service!

Then it's Monday, and that's Christmas Eve! Wow, that came up fast! I have wrapped all the Christmas presents but a doll for the boys (they are getting two - Granny wrapped one already), and their lights-and-sounds play kitchen. I'm going to wrap that on Christmas Eve, because I want to put it together first and then wrap it standing, and leave it where it is for the boys to discover in the morning. It's too HUGE to wrap and somehow hide in the meantime, if I wrap it too early! It's in a nice big cardboard box right now, so they have no idea what's in there :)

This year I have cut out the letters 'A' and 'M' a million times over from a pile of blank address labels in the drawer, and coloured them all with Arthur's felt tip pens, all different bright colours. I stuck the 'A' stickers onto Arthur's presents, and the 'M' stickers onto Matthew's. That way, Arthur can easily identify whose present is whose on Christmas morning, and give Matthew's his presents too. He knows his letters really well now, most of them. But I'll get to actually writing their names on packages next year. I figured the letters would be the easiest way for him to do it in the excitement of it all!

I made the boys their own stockings in the run up to last Christmas. I have run out of the lovely fabric I used for those, and I am wondering what to make Nathan's from for next Christmas! Next Christmas Neil and I have decided to STRICTLY follow FlyLady's Cruise Through The Holidays plan, which I started in earnest this year, but never stuck to it well enough. I have done pretty well! I started everything in October, but then got side-tracked after Arthur's birthday, thinking there was a while to go. Christmas comes up FAST! If I hadn't done it to some degree though, I would be way behind now, so I'm proud of what I have managed to do with my FlyLady Holiday Control Journal! It's all organised in there so I can keep myself on track with it. And all my receipts are in an envelope in there too, which is a FIRST for me! I have lists galore, and planned the Christmas Day meals in October. Everything is shopped for, except we need a last minute shopping trip for loo roll, the chicken (we're too small for turkey this year!) we'll be roasting for Christmas lunch, and the edible stocking fillers for the boys.

I'm looking forward to Christmas! We are going to church in the morning - ours joins with another local church at their building (lovely old Anglican church building) for a short service in the morning, and I'm looking forward to that! Then Christmas lunch, yum! And before all that, watching our little boys open their presents! After lunch will come Matthew's nap, and Arthur will undoubtedly play happily with his new things, and then we'll play with the boys till Family Meal time, when we'll have the kind of tea my family always have on Christmas Day - cold chicken, bread and butter, various salads, cheese, pickles galore, and Christmas cake! Yum! The boys (including Neil) are not fans of traditional Christmas pudding :( The boys are maybe just too little, although I have high hopes for Matthew! Arthur is just weirdly hugely sensitive to any flavour other than, well, chocolate and marmite. And cheese. But not cheese SAUCE. Although, HUGE BREAKTHROUGH this week! He is eating MY spaghetti bolognese! He still prefers it mixed with a jar of babyfood spaghetti (blargh! He's THREE!), but I've been reducing the stuff from the jar bit by bit and he mostly gets my cooking now for that meal :) He LIKES the meat! And this week I put celery in the bolognese sauce and he LOVED it! He wanted everyone's celery from their plates! Well I never. So that's a breakthrough. But otherwise he STILL isn't eating the evening meal. He eats a slice of dry bread (won't have butter) as he's allowed bread with the meal (one slice) but that's it. I can't fathom why he still doing this after almost a year of us saying he has to eat what we're eating or not eat anything at all! I figured he'd get hungry and change, but he hasn't. He DOES get hungry, but he's stubborn. He actually THREW UP something of mine that he tried a few weeks ago, at the table! He's so super sensitive to flavours that he doesn't trust. Neil is very similar, but he is at least the type of person who will try anything. He does get gag responses to unexpected flavours really easily though, so I guess that's where Arthur gets it from. Matthew doesn't seem to be that way (thank goodness!) so I hope he'll learn to love traditional Christmas yummies!

Anyway. *I* LOVE Christmas pudding! My family always make their own, but it seemed a bit pointless for me to make it just for myself! So I bought a couple of teeny tiny individual portion sized Christmas puds from the supermarket. Then I get to have some. No brandy sauce though, poo! Custard will do :) I will make the boys a mixed fruit sponge pudding, which they all love. Gotta have mixed fruit in SOMETHING on Christmas Day!

Okay I am waaaay too rambly tonight and MUST put a stop to it so I can go to bed. Ooh but eat a mince pie first! And lay out the boys' clothes for tomorrow, and mine. And then sleeeep. I will be back soon!

Very quick entry!

Just a super quick entry because it's craaaazy late (as in, the middle of the night) and I have completely ignored my "bedtime" and thus HAVE to go to bed about 2 hours ago! But I have been wanting to update here for days and not getting chance. I didn't want to leave it another day in case I don't get chance again tomorrow for whatever reason, after the general low ebb of my last entry, and the WONDERFUL messages that so many people left me in response!

I basically just wanted to say thank you SO much to everyone who left me a message. I got so much wonderful advice and just lots of love and support, and that made everything seem a lot better, believe me! Some of the advice is being acted on! Not so much of the "big" advice, but I have 4 things about to finish selling on eBay! I'm so excited to have created an income of sorts! So they'll only sell for like a couple of quid each (they're clothes so far, I have a BIG black sack full of clothes to sell on eBay, I can't believe it didn't occur to me before now!), but it's still money.

Special super-duper thanks to Jemma, because less than 48 hours after my last entry, a big package arrived at my door with a birthday present for Arthur which she had meant to send earlier (I have to admit (with much shame!) that I still have Jaya's birthday present sitting on the stairs - her birthday was in AUGUST!), and - oh joy! - 2 packets of Smarties and 4 bars of chocolate!!!!! Wheeee! Thank you Jemma! I sat and cried over the chocolate (happy, not sad!), and then smiled all day :) What a lovely friend! Arthur has since had 2 Smarties for 2 wees on the potty, and tonight he POOED on the potty for the first time, and earned 3 Smarties!!!!! Yay Arthur! He was SO excited and RAN to the bathroom where Neil was bathing Matthew, shouting, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!!! I POOED in the potty, look, look!!" His excitement was so precious :) Anyway, thanks to Jemma we had Smarties at the ready to reward him!

I also wanted to just say that I'm doing a LOT better about everything, so not to worry! I just feel better. I trust God, and things are going to be okay, even if they're NOT okay right now. All my panic about it has disappeared so that helps a lot!

I WILL be back asap to update properly, and I am halfway through resizing Arthur's birthday photos, so I'll get a birthday entry sorted soon too. I will also get a diary entry done at my pregnancy diary, hopefully tomorrow, because I'm very behind on that! My last entry was for 26 weeks, and I'm 28.5 weeks now. I have a new belly pic to post. Yesterday I spent all afternoon at the hospital being observed for a racing pulse and breathlessness. *sigh* So I need to write about that. But I seem to be okay. I had an ECG which was normal, and I'm not anaemic either. I am just tired and can't seem to DO anything without acting like I've run a marathon! But I think I was like this my other two pregnancies too. Nathan is fine. He is very kicky-pushy with his legs, and makes his little feet swish across my tummy under my ribs a lot, which I LOVE! It's a bit uncomfy now but I still love it. It makes me feel so mushy towards him and I can't wait to meet him.

Oh, and Matthew is saying Arthur's name! To my DELIGHT he says, "Ah-yah" just like Arthur did!!! I was so sad when Arthur started saying, "Ar-sur" when he sort of outgrew his first baby pronounciation of his name (Ah-yah) - I used to love it sooooo! So I am just full of joy that Matthew is pronouncing it the same way! He ADORES Arthur and never stops saying his name now. The first thing he says in the morning is, "Ah-yah..." - even in the middle of the night if he wakes, on occasion. And when he wakes from his naps too. He just wants to be near Arthur more than anything, it's so lovely. If I give him a snack and I haven't handed Arthur his yet, Matthew instantly says, "Ah-yah?", indignant that I haven't given his adored brother a snack yet! He also "asks" Arthur questions all day long, bending over to see right into Arthur's face if Arthur is trying to play with cars or whatever, but all he knows how to say yet is, "Ah-yah? Ahh-yah?" - not the actual question that would normally follow! Arthur doesn't make too much of the fact that Matthew is saying his name really. He just carries on as normal, and only when we say, "Arthur, Matthew is saying your name!" or "Arthur, look! Matthew's asking you a question!" does he look up and take a bit of notice! Poor Matthew! Arthur is very absorbed in play lately.

Okay, must go. Back soon with more normal chat and a better update on our situation, etc. Thank you so much again for the messages, advice, and just time and effort to support me like that! I really really appreciate you all so much!!! *hugs*

Struggling a bit right now

I hate writing entries like this, but I can't think what else to do with the contents of my head. I just feel so depressed at the moment, and I am finding it hard to see any positives in things.

I know I'm 27 weeks pregnant (already!) and I'm also aware that in the last week there has been some sort of noticable "shift" in my hormones, which doesn't help. I'm SO much more irritable and down about stuff. I can't tolerate a THING that the boys do that's not exactly what I want them to be doing, and the noise they make... I just can't seem to tolerate it at ALL. Which sucks. I don't want to make them miserable. Thank GOD Neil is at home all day. I'm actually feeling panicky about being on my own with the boys.

Anyway. Please forgive the tone and the general no-fun-to-read-ness of this entry. I don't really want to write a long entry either, but I just want to purge some of what's in my head and then hopefully feel better, which I have no expectation for, and then move on and do something enjoyable with the rest of my evening before going to bed. It's worth a try!

We have just NO money. I mean, we have no money. We are past our overdraft limit, so that we are getting CRAZY fees each and every day that we remain over it (and it's not a small overdraft). We have thousands of pounds worth of credit card debt - too much to even use them to undo the overdraft issue. We just discovered that we can't fiddle with the mortgage OR get any sort of loan because Neil is unemployed so nobody will help us there. So we literally have NO. MONEY. We have counted out £25 ish in loose change in the dish on the bookshelf, and found 25 euros that we can change into £. My parents just sent cheques for Christmas presents, so we can buy presents for the boys (the ones outstanding that I had not already bought in late October - thank you FlyLady!), but we can't put those in the bank otherwise they'll get swallowed into overdraft fees and I won't be able to access the cash to buy the presents. And will thus never see the money they gave again.

It's just never ending and I don't know how to FIX the financial situation. Neil just needs a job, but nothing gives so far. The only thing I'm hanging onto positively is faith in God that he is still in control and will bring us through somehow. And that he has the right job lined up for Neil at the right time. I DID strongly feel when we originally prayed about Neil quitting his job, that we might be looking at a season of unemployment which would really test our faith.

But even if we can squidge by for the rest of November, on December 3rd several payments go out of our bank account, one of them being the mortgage which is over £900. Where on earth are we going to find that for 2 weeks from now?! It's scary.

I feel kind of desperate, like we can't buy food and stuff, but it ISN'T that desperate (as Neil pointed out). The cash in the dish is enough for food for a week or two if we budget. We don't have any meat and good protein sources in the house today and this evening I got to panicking that I couldn't buy anything that would be stuff I NEED to eat with how I'm pregnant and building another human being, etc! It's NOT that desperate, but for some reason I had a panic moment and it felt that way.

Matthew and Arthur are NOT sleeping great, especially Matthew. I feel panicky about that suddenly, like we've run out of time to "fix" that because it's getting quite close to when we'll be having another baby, and you're supposed to do big transitions outside of the 6-8 week window either side of the birth. There's a ton more detail I could go into about all that, but I just don't feel like it tonight.

Our car will NOT fit 3 car seats in it. Arthur is too little for a stage 2 car seat. Oh my gosh, we need to BUY a new car seat for Nathan - I just thought of that. [Edited to add: Just remembered the little bucket car seat that we lent my brother for Thea! We could get by with that for a few months, and maaayyybe it might even fit between the boys' seats??] And we need a new (old and clapped out, obviously) car that will fit 3 car seats in it. I have no. idea. how on earth we'll do that in time to actually have three children to drive places. If we don't, we can't go anywhere as a family till it's sorted.

We turned Matthew's car seat to forward facing about a month ago - I forgot to mention that here at the time. He was doing the whole screeching buckaroo game and we thought it was because he was frustrated facing backwards (intending him to be rear-facing for as long as possible, as it's much safer that way). So we spent ages turning the darn thing round, and the screeching buckaroo game continues. Oh well! He does prefer facing forwards now though. He likes to see what's ahead.

Arthur's birthday was last Friday and I think he had a good day. In keeping with my weirdo hormones, though, I was hugely upset that basically nobody remembered his birthday here, well TWO people did say happy birthday to Arthur (thank you!!!) but I noticed like six hundred hits to my diary in the same time that nobody else bothered to acknowledge it. It's not at ALL an obligation to remember the birthdays of children of bloggers! And I kept on telling myself, "Don't be so silly! It doesn't matter, it doesn't even matter!" but for some daft reason it really DID matter and I felt crap about it.

Half the family didn't seem to remember to send cards either (not my side, I hasten to add), though one of them did phone on his birthday. It really doesn't MATTER! Arthur doesn't care how many people signed my guestbook! He doesn't know that this family member or that one forgot/couldn't be bothered to send a card! So that means it totally does. not. matter. But it still seemed to upset me all the same and I haven't been able to shake it too well.

I will post birthday photos, but there are loads and I haven't resized them, and frankly don't feel motivated to right now. I'll definitely get around to it for my diary's records, hopefully soon. And write more about it with the photos, so I don't forget it all.

Positive thought that has just occurred to me!!!.... I have been breastfeeding Arthur for 3 years! I need a new milestone blinkie! I'm SO PROUD! What an achievement, especially with the last 26 months of those being also pregnant or breastfeeding Matthew too, or both! He shows noooo signs of weaning yet, so I'm sure I'll be nursing 3 when Nathan is born. That's fine.

Matthew just turned 17 months yesterday. I can't believe he's nearly one-and-a-half! That's soooo close to how old he'll be when Nathan is born, so it seems ever so close now. I'm excited, and until these last few days, looking forward to it. Now I'm having a bit of a panic about it, thinking that we're not ready, we can't GET ready in time, and oh my giddy aunt, how on earth are we going to manage to juggle things having not GOT ready in the first place?! I'm so annoyed, because all the things that are so overwhelming right now are our very own doing. And that just really gets my goat. I'm so exasperated at US.

I can't think what else I meant to write. I think that's the basic gist of it. I DO have a lot of positive things to write about too, just run-of-the-mill boy news and thoughts and such. I just seem to have hit a slump these last few days. I DO feel very hormonal and weird all the time lately, so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it, and therefore it will hopefully clear up just as quickly, very soon. I hate feeling like this.

Our dishwasher is fixed though (did I say it was broken?) at no charge because it's less than a year old, but for some reason, both our sinks are leaking like crazy in the pipework underneath every time we run a tiny bit of water to wash our hands, etc. I am thinking we REALLY need a plumber or someone, and also someone (same person??) who can tell us why our bathroom fan is dripping water like crazy onto our toilet seat. Ugh. I'm sure it shouldn't be doing that. And Neil said that the other day when I had a shower, he and the boys watched the ceiling drip in the living room, through a patch of previous wet damage from before we moved here. Ughhh. WHY do these things happen at times like this?! Of course we can't afford to have them fixed or looked at. I just hope they don't get any worse for now (or that they miraculously self-repair overnight!). And that nothing else goes wrong that will make life very difficult and require money to fix.

A stupid and trivial thing as well tonight, is that I am HUGELY craving chocolate this week, and we haven't got any, and I know we can't buy any. I had half a tube of Smarties left from Arthur's birthday cake that I was gazing longingly at every evening, but determined to leave them for Arthur's potty training bribes (at the ready! He earned his first Smartie this morning for a random wee in the potty! Yay Arthur!), but this afternoon I was in a hurry to get something from that cupboard in the kitchen and spilled the Smarties ALL out into a pan of water on the counter below. I nearly cried! Such precious stuff, both for me and for Arthur! It's such a stupid thing, I know. But anyway. Out of all the stuff I've written tonight, the Smartie thing is the part that has me welling up! Good grief.

I do have faith in God over all this, I just also feel very overwhelmed and down about stuff right now. We're still praying together in the evenings, and that's SO good to be doing, but I am finding it hard to find words to pray.

And I have my precious little boys. Nothing can surely be unbearable so long as I have my babies! I love them so. That's why I am struggling a lot right now with how horrid I'm being to them lately. Neil says I'm feeling worse about myself over it than I NEED to, but it breaks my heart to make them miserable, or not give them attention like they need, or respond snappily to the fiftieth question in a row from Arthur, when they are all just innocent, sweet questions. I feel kind of self-loathing sometimes lately and I HATE to feel that way. I used to feel that way as a norm, many years ago. It's not healthy to feel like it, and I don't want to stay in that place. I just need a shot of.... something, to boost me back to normal again. Or a big old hormone-shift back in the right direction!

But thank you God for my darling little boys, and my loving husband. Thank you that you have plans to prosper us and NOT to harm us, and that you watch over our coming and going, both now and for ever more. Thank you that you LOVE us like we can't fathom, and that you carry us through difficult times. Thank you that you are faithful and gracious and patient, and I can trust you completely. I love you, Lord. I need you big time right now. Please bring me peace. Amen.

Big update, some pics, and Arthur will be THREE!

It's reeeally late (way past my bedtime!) and I have a headache, but phooey. This once I am going to write in my diary anyway! I hardly ever get chance and I just FEEL like writing, and so I think I will. Just random stuff, mind you! Expect nothing exciting ;)

I am going to my local church small group in the evenings now! I think we've been back in the swing of that for a month or two. I wanted to write about it more before, but I never get time. Neil and I alternate every week, so we both benefit from it, which is lovely. It's every Tuesday night. It's weird to go along and just be ME while my little boys are asleep in their beds and I'm not personally watching over them! But if I can put that awkward, I'm-meant-to-be-somewhere-else feeling aside and warm up to the evening, it's wonderful. I LOVE worship time with other people where I don't have to be distracted by my little ones, or ANYBODY'S little ones, and where I don't have to worry that Neil is taking on too much chasing them around outside while I get to have some worship time in church, etc. Neil is wonderful like that on Sundays at church. We used to alternate staying with the boys at creche (neither of us "believe" in leaving our kids there without one of us present the whole time, as young as they are. We're the ONLY parents who feel this way in like the whole world, apparently. And thus officially WEIRD, but I don't care. I don't trust the level of care/supervision at our church creche, and I want to be there for my babies the INSTANT they look for me or get upset about something that's happened to them. So we stay.) but now I get too exhausted being an extra pair of hands at creche so Neil stays EVERY SUNDAY while I listen to the sermon. I feel horribly guilty - it doesn't seem right. We've discussed it a lot, and Neil says we should continue that way because I'm only going to get more tired and less able to chase kiddies around, and he's there and happy to do creche. He's wonderful with the other kids too. He's the only one who'll hold a crying baby/toddler and instantly manage to soothe them, whatever the issue. He can distract kids from tantrums and get a little one who is crying for their mummy giggling and playing peekaboo. He's wonderful in general! I probably don't mention that nearly enough :)

Anyway. Arthur is officially old enough for Sunday School from next Sunday (they won't take them before they're three) and his friends are in there already, so he's the oldest in creche. Sunday School is sans parents, which will be lovely, and I don't think he needs us there at all anyway. I will sit in with him at first, as they said I'm allowed to do that and I'd like to get him settled and see what they do. It looks like fun, from what I have seen so far!

So, back to small group! I'm really excited to be attending that again after alllll this time. It's also lovely to have Neil go to small group all reluctant to be sacrificing his evening, and come back on a major high, buzzing about the GREAT prayer time and that God spoke to him about such-and-such for somebody, and how the discussion really interested him, and how he's going to meet up with Gordon for lunch one day this week, etc. I love seeing him inspired like that!

Neil has been out of work since last Tuesday, so 8 days now! It's GLORIOUS having him at home right now. I feel kind of naughty for feeling that way! But I do, right now. I went to a church prayer meeting tonight (sooooo great!!) and a lady there whose husband quit a couple of YEARS ago and they're waiting on God still, told me to enjoy this part and not feel guilty about it. She said it gets less glorious, so we should enjoy it for now! I can believe it. We have a few hundred £ left in the bank, and a few hundred in a savings account (that is all, we are very rubbish with money - which we plan to change!), and then we have nothing left. Neil has no income, nor any sign of one on the horizon. We have flumple-thousand pounds worth of credit card debt. We are not in a good place financially! Christmas is coming and a new baby shortly afterwards, and Arthur's birthday is a blink of an eye away. I look at the situation and think there is NO. WAY. we can manage to ride this out! But we will. I have no idea what will happen, or how we'll manage for things we need. But I DO trust in God. I believe everything will be okay, and I don't have any anxiety over it. Yet! ;) I think it will be waaaaay harder to maintain this serenity when we have NO money left and things we need to pay for. Neil is talking about something or other to do with the mortgage, and also a loan option, neither of which sound like a good plan at ALL, but we will see. I have a book that is going to teach us everything we need to know about money management and how to get out of debt (and stay out), but for some CRAZY reason we are being really slow about getting it read, between us. Which is nuts, considering how urgently we need the teaching! Tsk.

Anyway. That is the current situation. Neil applied for a job today in London. He wants to work for a charity. He says if he could do anything, he would choose to be in a hut in somewhere like Ghana, feeding a hungry child a bowl of food. He really means that too. I get scared when he talks like that because I am a "roots" person who hates change, and travel, and being out of her comfort zone, and especially don't fancy living overseas or in a completely different culture! I am just NOT that kind of person, and I find the concept even harder now I have little ones. But I desperately don't want to stifle Neil's longings, especially if they are GOD-inspired. So I don't know what to do about that one. Neil just says he wants to DO something, make a difference. He has such a big heart, and is such a compassionate person. I love that about him! He is currently looking for roles within charities that will make him feel like he's doing something more worthwhile than office-type-work for a non-charitable organisation. But it doesn't totally scratch his "itch", you know? I don't know.

So, he applied today for a role in London, using his skills from his previous office work. It's not THE JOB, but it'll do. It might just pay enough for us to manage too, which is important! It's in God's hands now, whether he gets it or not. We don't feel remotely inclined to pray for him to get that job, as there's no sense of desperation for it, and God knows which job is best for Neil anyway.

It's so nice to have him at home!!! Right now, he is doing a lot with the boys. He is taking them out for LONG walks every day to the park, and both he and the boys LOVE that. That was something he wanted to do more when he was off work. It's great for me because I can't take them for long walks any more (or short walks some days, either) because I get breathless and shaky and exhausted (pregnantly so, that is), or else my pelvis just hurts too much. And also it's great because it makes time for me to be at home with quietness and space to be ME and get a few things done. Which has been something I've craved for a long long time!

I am sleeping in every morning. It's such bliss. I (selfishly) wish there was some magical way that Neil could stay home forever and we'd still have money, haha! It makes such a difference to have two parents at all times to deal with the difficult issues with the boys, and the discipline, daily routine, etc. I still do all the cooking and try to keep up with my FlyLady housework, etc, of course! But the lovely thing is that I can now prepare dinner without tension in my neck and shoulders, because somebody else is watching/entertaining the boys at their most difficult time of day, and I'm not having to run back and forth between chopping onions and disciplining toddlers for headbutting/climbing/screeching repeatedly, etc, etc (the list is LONG!). Dinner would sometimes be delayed by an HOUR purely because of how much time it was taking me to sort out issues, run back to food, discipline a child, run back to food, unplug the TV (long story), run back to food, lift Matthew down from scarily high piece of furniture, run back to food, etc. They tend to behave really badly (or I should probably say "difficult" rather than bad, but BAD is how it feels!) when I'm trying to cook food, talk on the phone, or go to the toilet. Both of them at once. And I've been finding it really hard, and struggling to keep my cool, and keep everything running smoothly. So, it's extra wonderful to have Neil home at this stage of things. Please God let it be some dreadful toddler stage that each of them seems to be going through, unfortunately at exactly the same time (!), that will PASS OFF very soon! I can't fathom coping with their behaviour at the moment when I am about to have a baby (and Neil is at a new job or something). Something HAS to change! Yeurgh!

Arthur will be 3 the day after tomorrow!!! I can't believe it! I think of him as a 3-year-old already. I guess most of October I've slipped up and said he's 3 a lot, but in September I was fiercely protective of his status as a TWO-year-old, not at all ready for him to reach the age of three!

We are having a quiet family day. No party. We talked to him about it being his special day and asked him things he'd like to do. He would like to cut out car pictures (he asks to do this EVERY day - he likes to have a magazine or newspaper with car pictures in it, and then I cut them out for him as he chooses them. He has like a thousand (I do not exaggerate) pictures in a tupperware tub now. I am getting a little tired of cutting out pictures of cars! But he gets so much joy out of it. He has his box of car pictures upstairs at Big Boy Quiet Time, and spends ages laying each one out on the floor.

For his birthday, I bought him a bumper edition of a glossy car magazine with about 50 million pictures of cars inside. I wrapped it up with a pair of children's scissors. He has some cheap-o toddler scissors and he has had a little practise with them, but they're not very sharp for cutting and he can't do much with them. He LOVES to practise cutting though! I think he'll be thrilled to have a proper metal-bladed pair and to learn to cut things out. It might take him a while to get the hang of it, but I know he'll be excited to get started!

His main birthday present this year is going to be dressing-up clothes. He is really getting into role-playing, just spontaneously. He pretends to be all sorts of imaginary things and people and animals, during times where he's playing by himself in his own little world. He's coming to the age where dressing-up can be a great thing to do, and can dress and undress himself to some degree quite well now. I have been on eBay for some cheap (ish) options, and now I have six dressing-up outfits for him! It's his main present because even though they were good value and second-hand, the cost adds up with several items. I hope he likes them! I think they'll get lots of use over the years anyway, with all our little ones! I bought him the following outfits: King, Cowboy, Doctor (with accessory kit!), Policeman, Fireman, and Pirate.

He's having a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate fudge icing (his request!), which has to have Smarties on it (like M&Ms, for US readers). I'm going to make it in the shape of an upright train with Party Ring biscuits for wheels, if I can manage it! I'm going to bake that tomorrow, and hopefully decorate it then too.

So we will cut out car pictures, and then he has asked to go to a specific part of the park that he really likes. It's a long walk and hilly too, but we're all going together, because that's special for him and we never really do. I hope I manage it okay for him! He's excited about it. It's going to be COLD on Friday so we'll bundle up warm! For lunch he will probably request baked beans on toast, and for dinner we're having spaghetti bolognese, because he currently has a mixture of half MY cooking (at last!) and half a jar of toddler spaghetti bolognese. I can't believe he'll be eating from a jar of BABY food, essentially, on his third birthday! Urgh! The food frustrations with that boy.... But anyway. He likes that meal so much and eats the whole lot, and it's his favourite choice, so that's what we're having. For dessert we are having neopolitan ice-cream. He has had vanilla ice-cream in the past, and then a couple of months ago I suddenly HAD to have strawberry ice-cream, but all I could find at the supermarket was the soft-scoop yucko stuff. Anyway, I bought it, since I had to have it in a pregnant way (!), and Arthur has had some of that on occasion too. He was so awed to discover PINK ice-cream that tasted like strawberries! He had no idea such a thing existed. So I have smuggled a tub of neopolitan ice-cream into the freezer without him knowing :) I can't wait to see the look on his face when he realises there's such a thing as CHOCOLATE ice-cream! In the same tub as "yellow" AND strawberry ice-cream too! I bought some wafers to eat with it as a treat as well :) I think he's going to love his birthday dinner!

I wish I could write more (there's SUCH a lot in my head), but it's so late now that I am feeling dizzy, so I need to go to bed. It's really bad of me to stay up late like this anyway, but for once I have managed to write my diary when I FEEL like it and not when I get a window (but don't particularly feel like it!), so I'm happy to have done that at least. Thank you God that I can lie-in to recover a bit tomorrow, with my sweet husband home looking after the children in the morning. It's such a blessing. I don't want to get too used to it, otherwise I'll have a hard time snapping out of it when Neil goes to work again! But it's such a lovely respite right now. I wish we could go and visit my parents in France for a while. That would be the ultimate break for me. But we never did sort out Neil and Matthew's passports, and the prospect of the travelling with the little ones is horrible to consider (!) so we won't. I'll get too pregnant before long, so we can't visit them at Christmas.

I am already preparing for Christmas, using the FlyLady Holiday Control Journal! I LOVE LOVE LOVE FlyLady! Seriously! It's completely different than the last time I tried it, a year or two ago. This time I am REALLY doing it and it is totally transforming things. I'm not sticking to it 100% wonderfully, but I'm not having guilt over it because that's not the FlyLady way! :)

I have budgetted Christmas, planned Christmas dinner and the decorations, and bought most of the Christmas presents already. I have asked for help from my parents and grandparents with buying some of the bigger items on the wishlist for the boys' presents. The price is around what they normally write us a cheque for at Christmas, so I don't feel bad doing it. I'm just being organised, and trying to cut costs wherever possible, which is SO UNLIKE ME! I feel so proud of myself! :) We are making our own Christmas cards again this year - some of you may have received last year's effort, though I was badly organised last year and didn't finish making and sending in the end - I still have about 20 in my drawer! We did dark green fleece Christmas trees on red card with shiny sticker "baubles" (Arthur stuck those on!). I had some of the supplies at home already (the fleece, mainly!) and bought the rest very cheap on eBay.

This year we are doing snowmen. I love doing crafts with Arthur! He is more able to do them each year, and I'm excited about all the future Christmas card designs we'll do! I'll do less and less of the actual crafts myself as the boys get older and able to do the whole thing themselves. I want making our own Christmas cards to be a fun family tradition that we do every year, from early November. I bought pale blue card at eBay very cheap, and cut it to size at home. I bought silver envelopes for the cards. I used my huge fabric collection to make the snowmen pieces - white sherpa for the snowman's body and head, orange windpro fleece for the nose, leftover Christmas fabric for the scarf, brown or black velour for the hat, etc. I bought silver glitter and white paint and I'll mix them together with some PVA glue to make a "snow" spread for Arthur to paint on the cards before we let them dry and build the snowmen on top. I'm excited! I love crafts like this!

I started in October so hopefully this year I'll actually get them all made and posted! I am also going to make the traditional family Christmas cake recipe for the FIRST TIME this year! I need to do that like this week, because it needs weeks to mature before I can marzipan and ice it. I feel very grown-up making my own Christmas cake, because it's something only "Mummy" makes, and to my own mind, I'm still the child in that situation. My mummy always makes the Christmas cakes, and last year she was kind enough to make one for us and bring it over, so we had Christmas cake at Christmas even though were were home without family! I love Christmas cake, mmmm! Anyway. It's a BIG job to bake one. But I got the recipe from my mum, and now I've bought the ingredients and I'm really going to make one! Yay!

We are making baked gifts for all the family this year to cut costs. We're baking a million (almost literally, urgh!) sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas trees (bought the cutter especially!), and Arthur is going to help me! We're going to ice them and decorate them with hundreds and thousands. That should be pretty, and easy enough for Arthur to help me with. And yummy! And Christmassy enough for family to enjoy the gift. I need tins to put them in, but we'll recycle some of our own, and maybe buy a couple of extra if I can find a good deal somewhere. And that's Christmas sorted! I am loving FlyLady :)

So tired and dizzy, so I really MUST go to bed. A couple of pics before I go, though:

Smiley boy with Daddy:

Monkey boy who is really testing boundaries lately!...

Sleepy little sweetie whose mother cannot help forgetting all the infurating monkey business from earlier, the instant she sees him all sleeping and quiet, hehe!

Those long walks with Arthur and Daddy are making the tiny man zonk right out in the car on the way home, and he stays unconscious even when transferred into the house - hence these photos! :) He's walking and running sooooo smoothly now. He can pivot on one foot and change direction as suddenly has he likes without wobbling now too. He can stomp and march and jump and dance. He's a real little mover! He rarely stops.

My boys:

I love them ALL so! I can't wait to meet Nathan. He gets hiccups a LOT at the moment and kicks and stretches and moves a lot too. I know he's getting ready to come out and meet us. It takes my whole hand laid on my tummy to cover his back now - he is getting big in there! I love him so much already. I have BOYS! I'm so happy and excited, and I can't wait to meet my newest little man. I'm in that lovely honeymooney stage where I can't fathom why on earth I could ever want a daughter, I love my boys so much! Of course a daughter would be wonderful, and I'd LOVE to experience that, one day. Right now, I couldn't want for anything more than three little boys and my lovely husband. I'm so blessed.

I will try to write as soon as I can after Arthur's birthday. There's so much more I wanted to write about him turning 3, and about what he is like now, what he's doing and saying, and what he likes and dislikes. There's so much to write about Matthew, too. And about the big changes we'll be making with the boys as we prepare to have 3 little ones. Big changes need making (notably sleep-related and that!).

I have recently suggested the idea of potty training to Arthur (he's still full-time in his cloth nappies with no hint of potty training yet attempted) but he got all sad and said he didn't want to grow up to be a big boy and he wanted to stay in his nappies and NOT in big boy pants! Bless his heart! So I didn't approach the subject again for a while. He is totally ready, physically, I'm sure of it. But I want to wait till he's emotionally ready too.

Last week I read some great tips from BTDT (been there, done that) mothers online, about potty training. At this stage I have NO qualms (not one!) about bribing my child with chocolate to pee and poo in the potty as quickly as he can get used to doing so! So I casually informed Arthur one day that when he DOES decide to start wearing big boy pants and no nappies, every time he wees in the potty or the toilet, he will get one Smartie. And every time he does a poo in the potty or the toilet, he will get three Smarties. AND, if he does a whole day of weeing and pooing in the potty or toilet, Mummy will take him to the shops and buy him one toy car (Matchbox-style, his current obsession - Tesco's own are brilliant at 50p each!). He did this awestruck gasp and asked to try RIGHT AWAY, hehe! Of course I had no Smarties in the house so we didn't start then.

Now I am stocked up with Smarties, and ready to potty train! :) I just want it to be as quick and issue-free as possible (doesn't every mother?!). I hope it will be, when we finally do it. At least I know he's physically ready, no doubts about that, so it has every chance of quick success. He hasn't mentioned it since, so I'm waiting for a little bit - after his birthday maybe? I don't want to start potty training him within 6-8 of Nathan's due date, because the books say not to - it's too close to a big upheaval in his little life, for such a transition. That window is rapidly closing so I hope we can fit potty training in before then, otherwise I'll have THREE children full-time in cloth nappies for the first couple of months after Nathan is born! Yikes! I'm okay with that, but ohhhhh the laundry....

Right, definitely going to bed!