First Week With Three Little Ones!!!

Phew!!! It’s Saturday – my whooole first week with Neil back at work is finished! HOW I have longed to write about it over the course of the week (at least 3 or 4 times, honestly!), but I simply haven’t had the chance. Two days (and nights!) running this week, I didn’t even open the laptop or the computer! Such an unnatural feeling, hehe! It was getting too late and I knew if I started then it would get later still (you know how I waffle!). Ahhh, Nathan has just woken up (boys at the park with Neil) so I’ll have to save this already! I’ll be back later though.

Okay, scratch the above – it’s now Sunday LATE evening, and I have to hurry up and post a FIFTY MILLION WORD ESSAY on last week and other bits, into oooh – 15 minutes? Now, how in the wiggly world am I going to do that?! Plus, Nathan is waking HOURLY at the moment for some reason. All the boys caught an awful cough/cold (mostly the cough was terrible, the colds were just so-so) and Neil did too, at the end of last week (before Neil started his new job). Neil, thankfully, had it mildly, but the boys have been quite poorly, especially Nathan. He was the last to catch it (and I’m seriously praising God that I did not catch it at all, despite thousands of productive coughs in my face, drool on my hands, and snot on my clothing over the past week or two!) so his is still lingering. He is also teething (still no teeth yet) like crazy. And his poor little voice is so broken and hoarse :( He seems to be going through the start of separation anxiety, which the other boys really didn’t have much of at all. Maybe it’s that he’s poorly? I don’t know. Anyway, he won’t be put down, or have me in another room for more than 2 seconds, and he wakes aplenty in the evening and at night. But, I love everything about him, even the clingy and the crying-ness, and the waking. Because there’s nobody in the WORLD that he wants more than little old me, and that just takes my breath away. It never gets old, people! It helps me a ton to think of that while I’m walking him in the dark for the fifth time that night. I just love him!

I am about to write about The First Week On My Own With Three Children Under Four (brace yourselves, haha!), but first, I meant to post photos of Nathey when he turned 6 months old. He’s now 6.5 months (literally, I blink and another half-month has zipped by!), so I don’t want these photos to get any more out of date! Here’s my precious baby boy (mostly just wearing a disposable nappy – a cute cloth nappy would have made these pictures better still, but oh well!)...

He is changing so much! Just this last week he suddenly has so much more hair. It’s so dark brown and his eyelashes and eyebrows look darker to me as well. I think he will end up with darker hair than Arthur, but perhaps only by a shade. His eyes remain blue – quite a dark blue too. I feel sure that dark blue eyes are likely to change colour eventually, but we’ll see. Matthew’s went to lighter blue very quickly, but didn’t change to grey until he was 17 months old. Neil has very dark brown hair and mid-blue eyes (which he insists on calling, “blue-green” – they’re NOT! ;) ), so Nathan could have exactly the same colouring as his daddy, which would be lovely!

Nathan has verrrry casually started some solid foods. We are doing the same thing we did with Matthew – Baby-Led Weaning. We don’t do purees in any form, or mashed/lumpy foods (unless we’re eating yoghurt or mashed potato, of course!) – he just eats table food like we do. Matthew did wonderfully on that, and we can’t imagine ever going back to purees and goop :)

I was going to wait till he was 7 months old, since I’m absolutely rigid about waiting till 6 months for their guts to fully mature, and he was a month early. But Jemma reminded me that his gut has been processing breastmilk for 6 months already, and is thus already 6 months “mature”. About a week after he turned 6 months, he had a bit of a gnaw on a stick of raw carrot – no teeth yet so no risk of chopping off tiny pieces:

He was sooooo eager to actually HAVE some of our food and chew on something! He has recently been really getting cross if he’s not sitting right up to the table when we eat a meal, and he has also been grabbing glasses of water out of my mouth by the rim of the cup (!), whipping biscuits out of my mouth at church, and grabbing at our plates like crazy! His eyes are practically on little sticks when he stares at the food on the table, and he looks so eager :)

Next he sucked on an apple (several actually, over a few days – he really seems to like them, though he really hasn’t EATEN any, just sucked juice):

And then had his first real ingested food – banana! This was the same way we did it with Matthew – he chewed on a couple of raw things first, for the flavour, though he couldn’t get any actual food in to swallow. Oh, and cucumber, he sucked some of that too :) The first real food, though, was banana. It got kind of slimy, and he was sitting on my lap, not ceremoniously in a shiny new highchair for the occasion (as it was still being used by Matthew, and decidedly grubby to boot!). He chewed a piece off the banana almost immediately, and looked surprised, posted it straight to the back of his mouth and then gagged slightly, did a “lemon juice” shudder, and voila, he had swallowed it! He paused for maybe 2 seconds looking like he wasn’t sure what just happened, and then lunged at the banana in his hands for another go! ;) So sweet!

Tonight he went to town on a green bean, sitting on my lap while we ate our Sunday Roast. He did bite off a tiny piece and swallow it, with the usual slight gagging and “lemon juice” shudders, but he is doing GREAT at learning to swallow! I’m quite surprised at how well he’s doing straight away. I expected waaaaay more hefty gagging, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of that to come as he learns to control the food with his tongue and swallow it effectively. He seems to be really enjoying it anyway!

He also loves chewing his toes at the moment :)

And puzzle pieces...

And is just about the most scrumbly baby there ever was! I have more photos to prove my claim, but alas, no time today. I must get on and write about The Week! Thanks sooooo much for all the comments last entry, with such great attitudes to a controversial subject, even though everybody had different opinions! And for all the thoughts and ideas and advice (and links!) – thank you! Thanks also for the lovely notes throughout the week, saying you were thinking of me and hoping The Week was going well for us all! You guys are so lovely! :)

Well!

The Week went okay! Yay! Neil is getting on really well at his new job, praise God!! He likes the place he works, and the building is nice, and the FOOD is nice (always important, hehe!) – it has an on-site cafeteria. The people he works with are nice, and the office feels open and friendly and relaxing to work in. Dress code is more casual than he expected, but he likes to dress smartly for work anyway so he is just going to wear the suits/shirts but maybe not the ties. He is nervous about the fact that he is now in a managerial role, but I know he will be an EXCELLENT manager. He is just good at that kind of thing, he’s a great people person and a diligent worker. I love him! I’m so proud of him! He gets a car allowance because apparently he is supposed to have a car that “goes” with his title of manager – hmmm! Of course he’s excited like a little boy about it. *sigh*

The commute is about an hour in the car and the price of petrol is about the same as the cost of travelling to work by train, and it’s more convenient to go door to door in his own car, so that’s how he’s doing it right now. He is home about 6.30pm or so, and leaves about 7.30am.

That’s eleven hours for me with my three! I was plain old NERVOUS last Sunday evening, at the prospect! That’s so silly, they are just my children, and yet I felt like I was the one starting a new managerial job and wondering if I was going to be able to do the work effectively! ;) I have really been praying and praying and leaning on God like crazy for every tiny thing – energy, patience, gentleness, self-control, joy, confidence, encouragement, rest, health, parking spaces (!!), etc. I know that I NEED him and I love that I know that right now. It’s how it should be, how it needs to be, and I’m glad that I’m there. I hope I stay putting my trust in God for everything and leaning on him eleventy times a day. It’s a great place to be! :)

So last weekend I spent a couple of evenings making notes on what on earth to do in order to manage the days, and I ended up writing a sort of schedule for us to try to follow. It has worked better than I thought, although I went into it expecting it to flop to some degree (thus having no stress and feelings of failure when it does, as it’s likely to do – nothing’s perfect after all!) and knowing that I’d need to try it out and tweak it a bit to fit our family. I wrote it out in detail and taped it to the side of the fridge. I refer to it constantly throughout the day, as I’m such a disorganised person by nature! I need to keep track of what I’m meant to be doing, so that I stand a vague chance of building a habit out of it! I learnt that much from FlyLady :) The schedule is flexible, and Nathan’s naps and breastfeeding are basically on demand, so his stuff is not scheduled in. But if he has been awake for 90 minutes, I put him to bed. He can rarely go longer without being tired and cranky. But his nap lengths vary and are not predictable – usually he sleeps 30 minutes, but one nap in the day might be up to 90 minutes long. Sometimes I have to encourage him to go back to sleep (not easy!) and other times he spontaneously takes a longer nap, but not very often. And I breastfeed on demand. But usually when he wakes up from a nap and at bedtime. He’s waking right now, how ironic (or something!)! ;) Back in a few....

Back again – it’s getting so late! I need my sleep for tomorrow! But I know I won’t get chance to update in the week, if last week is anything to go by, so I MUST write about last week tonight! I will try to hurry up. *sigh*

Anyway, the schedule. So, I don’t follow everything on it every day, but I make every effort to, and then do NOT get frustrated with myself if I don’t manage it. I am sticking to it pretty well so far though. I made it based on a list that I wrote, of things that are important to me to include in the children’s day. There will be changes along the way as I think of more important things, and with homeschooling as it gets going more “officially” in a year or so. I wanted to make sure the kids get exposed to God a lot – I want them to experience and observe MY walk with God as much as possible. I am in the middle of reading, “Mission of Motherhood” by Sally Clarkson (excellent, excellent book!) and it is changing a lot in the way I see raising my children, and it’s SOOOO helpful! Anyway. I want the boys to see that reading the Bible is important to me, and that worship is important to me, and prayer, and talking about God too. I also wanted the boys to have outdoor time twice each day (morning and afternoon), and both structured play and free play time. I want them to watch less children’s TV. I want to read children’s classics to them. I want to keep a window for one-on-one quality time with Arthur, and do school with him as we have been doing, just a short time for informal learning, usually just a craft of his choosing actually. We’re working on the Kumon workbooks again and he’s doing the second learn-to-cut book and enjoying it lots.

Anyway, I will painstakingly (!) write out our daily schedule here so you can see what my days are like at the moment (this will also serve as a good record for myself in years to come when I can’t remember a THING about how I managed the early years!):

6.30am: Boys up with Neil (roughly – it’s usually anywhere from 6am to 6.45am)

7.00am: Alice up, wash and dress, and do hair. Nathan will probably wake now too.

7.15am: Neil gets ready for work and leaves at 7.30+
Dress boys.
Change Nathan’s nappy.
Eat breakfast (and do breakfast for boys if not already eaten)
Clean everyone’s teeth
Clear up after breakfast.

9.00am: Nathan to nap around this time – may take up to 30 mins to go to sleep. Once asleep:
Declutter for 15 minutes
Do a 5-minute Room Rescue
2-minute Hot Spot
Fold tumble-dried load
Start a wash load
Empty dishwasher
Boys to help as able with all the above, OR specific activity (tidy living room while I do the rest? Story tape?)

9.45 – 10ish: Nathan awake probably – resettle if needed, up if not

10.00am: Bible Time – Mummy reads her Bible on the sofa for 10 mins or so, boys’ toddler Bible out, and Stoneleigh Bible Week Worship Video on, or worship CD. Sing and dance with boys to the music after reading Bible.

10.30am: Get ready to go out (gather stuff needed, change nappies, shoes on, etc.)

10.45am – 12 noon: OUTING – park, local walk, shopping, supermarket, errands, etc.)
BE BACK BY NOON! Be organised while out with this in mind.

12 noon: Change nappies if needed.
Nathan to bed straight away (asleep by 12.30 hopefully) while boys play cars downstairs or watch TV for a bit.

12.30pm: Make lunch (or serve from lunch made the night before, if I ever get that organised!) for boys and myself.
Boys to start chores – clearing table, scraping old food, and filling the dishwasher, then wiping the table – all under supervision with my help for now.

1.00pm: Nathan likely waking/stirring around now. Resettle if needed while boys play (or bring downstairs after breastfeeding him).

1.15pm: Matthew to bed (BY 1.30pm) while Nathan naps and Arthur does jigsaws/drawing or maybe watches Mist (favourite movie right now, about a sheepdog), OR if Nathan is up, Arthur watches him for me (he does this wonderfully even at his young age) and does jigsaws near where Nathan is playing.

1.30pm onwards: School and quality time with Arthur (Nathan playing nearby or napping).

2.30pm: Nathan to nap (if he was up at 1pm).
Matthew up from nap (before 3pm latest).
Nappy changes.
Time for Matthew to wake up gently (he’s ever so cranky and sensitive after his nap and takes ages to wake up properly) – story tape or soothing TV (Postman Pat works well!), possibly with me resettling Nathan somewhere during this time.

3.00pm: Structured Play at the kitchen table for Matthew and Arthur. This is a different activity each day of the week. This week we did:
Monday: Playdough
Tuesday: Painting
Wednesday: Baking (lemon fairy cakes!)
Thursday: Stickers and glueing
Friday: Chalks on black paper (although this can by any kind of drawing for this activity – I chose chalks and they loved it!).

3.30pm or later: Structured Play at the table ends when the boys are bored of it. It is followed immediately by Free Play out in the garden until dinner time. If it’s tipping with rain then I guess Free Play will be indoors, although I will be using their waterproofs wherever possible! ;) I do meal prep during this time whilst watching them, and attend to Nathan’s naps and feeds somewhere along the line too.

5.00pm: Family Meal (dinner) – no Neil though :(
Boys to do their mealtime chores and help clear up again.

6.00pm: Tidy up for Daddy (15 minutes on the timer)
Run bath.

6.15pm: Baths.
Brush teeth.
Dress for bed, night nappies, etc.

6.45pm: Downstairs tidy, kitchen clear/clean, dressed for bed, ready for sleep (especially Nathan, who might need to go to bed around now) – waiting for Daddy!)

6.45 – 7.00pm: Neil home – greet everyone (kisses, toss boys in air, the usual stuff, hehe!), and then straight upstairs for a quick shower and comfy clothes.

7.15pm: Daddy-led Bible Time/Family Devotional (5-10 minutes)

7.30pm: Nathan to bed – breastfeed, bedtime routine, etc.
Boys’ bedtime routine – short story in bed, milky (that’s me), snuggle and lullabies (me again!), sleep!

8.00pm: Hopefully all asleep!

Phew! That’s the whole thing! So far I am not always getting all the housework done, but I know I can if I put my mind to it. Also the outings have not happened at ALL this week, but there are a few reasons for that. Our tandem pushchair broke and now it’s just me and 3 kids aged 3 and under, with only a single pushchair between them! A sling would not solve this dilemma, because: knackered/backache/too hot, and then I still have one child who isn’t secured. I need to train them better when we’re out and about. I don’t trust them not to run off at the moment. Another reason we’ve stayed home this week is the cough/cold thing. Nathan in particular has been poorly and needing his naps, and I’m not about to trot off with everyone for the sake of the schedule when he is like that. If we didn’t have the garden for the boys to go in, it would be different, but I’m so glad we do and it doesn’t matter so much about actually leaving the house to go somewhere. We only went out once this week and that was to the doctor on Friday to get everyone checked for ear infections, as Arthur had 2 days in a row of NAPS (he dropped those at age 2, remember?!) and woke up both times crying with earache. Also Nathan was clawing at his ear and crying. And we have a great history of being fine on Fridays and then needing out-of-hours doctors over the weekend. *sigh* So I pre-empted it and took the boys to the doctor on Friday! I was so proud of myself! I told them in the car what I expected of them, and that because we had no pushchair (not even the single in the car at that time) and we had to walk from the car to the surgery, I was going to put Nathan on my hip and carry the bag with the potty-and-related-paraphanalia (more on that later!) in one hand, and with the other hand I would hold Matthew’s hand. Arthur must hold Matthew’s other hand. Good boys would get a smartie when we got home. Boys who let go hands before we were in the building, or who ran away in the building, or who did not come when I asked or stop when I told them to, would not get a smartie when we got home ;)

The boys were SO WELL BEHAVED!!! I put the baby on my hip and held little Matthew’s hand, and Arthur held his, and we strolled along in a line, and people actually smiled fondly at us in the street!!! :) They sat beautifully in the waiting room (though we didn’t have to wait long) and then behaved well for the doctor. Matthew cried hysterically and clung to me when it was his turn – he is still traumatised from the conjunctivitis affair a few months back, poor love! Then they behaved well all the way back to the car, and I gushed endlessly about how proud I was of them, and they got their smarties when they got home :) We got smiles in the waiting room too! Nobody has an ear infection, but Arthur and Matthew have one ear each that is pink inside and probably hurts them. They have been so gunky with their colds. Matthew’s were fine, though he is just as gunky. Anyway, yay for no ear infections! They’ve been getting Calpol for earache since then, and hopefully it’s on the way out. Their coughs are much improved this weekend, so that’s encouraging.

We started potty training Arthur 9 days ago. He was fully potty trained, um, FIVE days ago! I kid you not! Now, we haven’t transitioned him to the big toilet yet, because it’s a lot easier right now to empty potties, and he can use those while I’m settling one of the little ones for a nap. The toilet is upstairs past two child gates, so it’s not convenient for him to get to. Plus, he’s a little nervous about it. Anyway. We now have 3 potties! We started potty training Matthew at the same time, and after a week we put him back in nappies. He will wee and poo on the potty, but like a fun game if we suggest it. He will wee and poo absolutely anywhere else as well, especially if he doesn’t want to go on the potty. He seems to have no awareness of starting to wee or poo, and eventually got a bit freaked out about sitting on the potty if we noticed he was starting to poo and tried to get him to sit there. So we backed riiiight off.

I can now safely say that I would HEARTILY recommend waiting and waiting and waiting before potty training a little boy. I know a lot of mothers are impatient and basically want to get their kids out of nappies. If you can manage not to be (!), it’s well worth the effort. When they are ready, they do not need ANY training at all. Within four days, Arthur would stop whatever he was doing to wee or poo on the potty. He could do that from being absolutely engrossed in a movie, or running and playing and squealing outside with his brother. He can wait until I grab the potty for him from upstairs if there happens to not be one around. He takes his own clothes off and puts them back on again (though putting them back on requires a reminder every time!). He puts underwear on in the morning and is still wearing it when we get him ready for bed at night – he never has accidents, even a damp patch. Many times I have come down from settling Nathan to sleep for a nap to find Arthur doing exactly what he was doing when I left him, maybe minus a pair of trousers, but there’s a wee-or-poo-filled potty that he has put up on the sideboard so that Matthew won’t mess with it while I’m gone!!! He’s amazing. After 6 or 7 days I stopped reminding him at all, or asking if he needed to sit on the potty, and he still went every time he needed to. He used the potty at the doctor’s in their toilet – simply told me he needed a wee and off we went. Yesterday Neil took the boys to the park for the morning and Arthur did a wee and a poo on the potty at the park! He gets smarties still, one for a wee and three for a poo, but we need to phase that out soon! At the start I told him that if he could do a WHOLE DAY with all his wees and poos in the potty and none on the floor or in his pants, he would get a new toy car. I figured that was a WAY off but the motivation couldn’t hurt. He got his first toy car that very day! And has had six since!

I’m so glad to have pulled back with Matthew’s potty training. It was adding way more stress to potty train him with Arthur, because he really did need TRAINING. I’m sure if I was feeling pushy I could have persevered and potty trained him, but it would likely have taken ages. Now that I have seen how easily Arthur has made the transition at 3 years and 8 months, I am really happy to wait till Matthew is AT LEAST 3 years and 3 months. I once read a large family blog where the mother recommended waiting till that exact age with boys. She said it was like a golden age for her! ;) Many other mamas with lots of potty training experience commented to agree, and I stored it away in my “ideas” folder in my head for future use. Now that I have experience of potty “training” a boy older than that age, I would definitely do the same again. Unless Matthew is begging for big boy pants or showing obvious signs of being very ready before then, I will wait at least another year or so before attempting to potty train him again. Sounds crazy, but I’m perfectly happy with it! :)

Ack, Nathan is waking AGAIN!

Well, I have nursed him again, but that was probably less than an hour since the last time!!?!?!! He seemed hungry though. It must be a growth spurt.

It’s so late. I must go to bed. I have so much more that I wanted to write about the week! :( Well, in summary, Monday went GREAT, and I was quite confident – it was the boost I needed to start me off. But Tuesday was reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally hard and I have no idea how I even survived the day! That’s the day that I looked back on and decided to stop potty training Matthew. Some of the stress revolved around following a trail of tiny fragments of poo with a cloth – and I do mean TINY fragments. *sigh* Matthew ran outside naked, pooed at the end of the garden, and then RAN back to the house, um, scattering debris in all directions as he ran. Yes, it was as much fun as it sounds. Also Nathan cried himself hoarse while this was going on, dinner did not happen till waaaay too late, I broke something or other that I can’t even remember now, and Matthew fell hard into a sticky-outey nobble on the highchair and nearly impaled his chest. Scary. Arthur needed an absurd amount of correcting and disciplining, Nathan cried on and on, I seemed to be endlessly running breathlessly up and down the stairs to the toilet with a sloshing potty in each hand to dump, rinse, disinfect, and return to the boys before they needed to use them again (!), and it being a nice warm day with everyone’s windows open, the neighbours were privy to the whole jolly affair. I only did not dissolve into much needed tears because I had no time to. My heels and the balls of my feet hurt like crazy at the end of that particular day. They do hurt a lot more in general now. I seem to be running such a lot of the time for some reason! And sweating and breathless and so on. I am unfit, but definitely not that unfit! I had a full blood count done recently (took my lumps to the doctor, who thinks they’re nothing worrisome but did a full blood count anyway to be sure) and it was fine and normal, so I guess my thyroid and all that is working well.

Did I mention that Neil had a full blood count done and he has a hypoactive thyroid?!?! And high cholesterol. He’s had high cholesterol before but never the hypothyroidism. We were perplexed by that – he has NO symptoms whatsoever, but his levels are apparently REALLY low. He phoned his mum to tell her, only to discover that she was diagnosed with the same thing 4 years ago. I think he will need to be on Thyroxine for life now. He has to have another blood test soon to confirm it, and they think that if it’s treated, his cholesterol should go down (the two are often linked).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Wednesday was tiring but WAY better than Tuesday. And Thursday and Friday I was frazzled and exhausted by the time Neil got home, BUT I ran late a few days with the schedule this week, and it turns out that Neil was able to be home in time to help me bath the boys, so I haven’t yet had to do that on my own. Thankfully! Bathtime is not relaxing in this house!

Thursday did have one awesome part to it though – I managed to time the boys’ naps so that ALL THREE were napping at 2.30pm at the same time!!! Yeah baby! I was so proud of myself at that moment, sat there in a comfy armchair, in a quiet house, IN THE DAYTIME, and all arranged by my own self! ;) I put Matthew down first, then exhausted-Nathan, who went to sleep fast. Then Arthur asked if he could have a rest (it’s the virus, it won’t last unfortunately!) and I put him on the sofa and he went right to sleep! They all slept for THIRTY MINUTES!!! Thirty minutes people!! It was bliss, and such accomplished bliss at that! ;) I couldn’t think what to do with myself during that time, so apart from sitting quietly in comfort in my own home in the middle of the day, I whipped out my camera to record the moment for prosperity:

Nathan has just stirred AGAIN (not 10 mins later) so I think I must go and see what sleep I can get for tomorrow. How I wish I could write my diary every day as things happen! I wanted so much to write every day this past week, but I was too exhausted every evening, which is the only chance I get. Two of those evenings I didn’t even touch the laptop/computer! Then Friday night I went to bed at 10.30pm!!!! That’s CRAZY early for me, but very sensible as a time to continue going to bed at! I have had a horrible headache almost the whole weekend, and nothing touched it – not painkillers and not a full-night’s sleep, etc. It vanished mysteriously this afternoon, much to my relief! I hope it stays away during the week because I can’t fathom being able to hold the fort whilst being ill. I went from eager to be pregnant again (last weekend) to perfectly petrified of such a prospect by Tuesday evening, hehe! I don’t know how on earth I could possibly manage right now, with what I’m doing, if I also have pregnancy exhaustion and morning sickness. I’m sure I will adapt even more as the weeks go by, to the new routine and demands on me physically, mentally and emotionally. I’m ENJOYING it! I love being a stay-at-home-mummy and would not (WILL not) ever be anything else. It’s my calling, my privilege and my joy. But dang, it’s hard work! And I only have three children! I’m still eager for many more babies yet as the Lord sees fit, but I will be happy enough if he decides to keep my womb closed for a couple more months I think!

Here are my three sweet little reasons for my daily grind! I love them more than life itself! They make me eager to face tomorrow with all their antics, noise, mess, bodily fluids, and need for discipline, hehe! I just love them soooooooo! :)

Quiverfull comments...

Just a quick pointer to a long-winded entry (!) at my pregnancy diary. I wrote here about my thoughts and feelings on the "quiverfull" mindset of family planning a couple of entries back, and I also wrote about it at my pregnancy diary. I got three comments about it that I just spent a good while responding to at my pregnancy diary, and since it's relevant to this diary too, I wanted to make note of the link to that entry, so I don't ever have to rehash it all here! :)

Also, Nathan is six months old!!! He had his first drink of water from a sippy cup today! I can't believe I didn't get a photo :( He loved holding it by the handles and chewing the soft spout, and that's how he discovered that water comes out of it! He looked so surprised! He eventually figured out how to suck it but it wasn't interesting enough, so he went back to chewing. He is really teething at the moment - no sign of any teeth yet though. I am not really expecting him to get any till at least 8 months old, poor sausage! He's been teething for months already!

Okay, it's ridiculously late, and it's church in the morning so I MUST go to bed! Will post photos soon.

Middle-of-the-night freak outs (!) and Nathan photos!

Thanks for all the lovely comments and congrats for Neil after my last entry!! :) It feels like there's so much to DO before Neil is suddenly back in the swing of full-time work again in just over a week (aaargh!!). It's a bit intimidating, but I have to lean on God and trust him to help me with the little ones. I know I only have three small children, but the last time I was caring for them all day every day on my own (except weekends!), I only had two of them! :) It has been the BIGGEST blessing to have Neil home for so long, and at exactly this stage of our lives, from the start of my 3rd trimester in my last pregnancy, to 6 months after having a new baby. Such a gift! I hope I can pick up and carry on and do it well, once he goes back to work.

I can't for the life of me think why ON EARTH I am up at 1.57am freaking out about lumps! I should be in bed asleep. Or praying and feeling at ease. Or something! I have little pea sized lumps that have been appearing occasionally since I had my first baby. They started in the back of my pelvis, low on my back, and the doctor said the first one was a knotted muscles (to which I thought, "Yeah right!" because it did not feel like one and it was painless! But oh well). Then I saw an osteopath for the back trouble I had after Arthur, and I had a couple more in the same vague area by then. She said they were cysts and not uncommon around joints, especially joints that were complaining (like my lower back was!). But then a while after, I found one in my left thigh, nowhere near a joint. Now I have several in that thigh, one in a buttock, and a couple more in my lower back. I found one next to my spine midway up my back tonight, and have suddenly graduated to Officially Freaking Out. *sigh* Of course I should stay WELL away from Google when I find things I'm worried about, but here I am at 2am googling "lumps thigh back pelvis pea" and finding not-a-lot.

I don't know why I get sooooo paranoid about getting cancer! I just want to tell myself to pull it together and relax and enjoy life! But then I get a new lump thingy and worry all over again. All I can think about is my KIDS. How they need their mummy and how much pain they would go through to lose me during childhood. I just can't bear it! And I want to see them grow up, and bring them up myself! And also, not go through cancer, or die just yet.

Big contrast to last entry, right? Maybe I am not looking to God right now. I always find that so much harder when I'm anxious about something that I can't explain or understand properly. It's (naturally) Friday so I can't go and talk to the doctor about it till Monday at the earliest. I need to pray and relax about it till then. I don't want to dwell on scary thoughts.

So, now I have vented some anxiety, I should go to bed! I do have some new photos to post that will be a lovely distraction for me before bed! :) They aren't new new, but I only just finished resizing some that I took the week or so after Matthew's birthday. I found my camera yesterday!!!! It was between the sofas (not sure how?!?!). So I will get to uploading a TON of new photos soon.

Here's my sweet little Nathan a few weeks ago! He's discovering floor toys like crazy lately, rolling all over the room from wall to wall and object to object, to get to things that look interesting. He loves whatever his brothers are playing with and is especially entranced by toy cars (quelle surprise!), much to Arthur and Matthew's delight! He loves the little red chairs that go with the red toddlers' table, and rolls up to them to kick and rest his feet on them, and cooes and talks to them for ages, hehe! He also rolls to find me when I go in the kitchen and cranes his neck round the doorway with the most inquisitive expression! He is going to be such fun when he gets crawling! I am so eager, on the one hand, but on the other hand I am savouring the stage he's at now too. I just love him to bits!

Here he is being thrilled to touch one of the revered floor toys - a vehicle, no less!! And when the noisy brothers were out for a walk with Daddy! Such bliss! ;)

Figuring out how it all works....

He plays cars at ANY opportunity with the boys. He rolls to their games and tries to get involved, picks cars up and chews on them, etc. And especially loves it when we sit him there to play! The boys adore this and get so excited about giving him cars to hold (they're so thrilled that he's now able to take and hold onto the things they give him!), and talk to him about the cars. Nathan can't sit unsupported yet. He has for like three seconds when very focused on something in front of him, but that hardly counts really! He MUCH prefers push push push on his leggies to stand up, and then if I hold him under his armpits, he goose-steps around the room with purpose, walking himself to all the things he is interested in with a big delighted smile on his face! When he reaches a point of interest, he squats his legs and I sit him down, hehe! He's very decisive ;) Awfully like Arthur was. Matthew never stepped when held, he just jumped and jumped and jumped and jumped (ad infinitum - no, really!). Arthur and Nathan have never been interested in jumping on the spot like Matthew (who is now two and STILL likes to jump on the spot for the sheer JOY of it, hehe!). I digress!!! Cute photo:

I saw Matthew playing with Nathan with some cars on the floor one day, so I started taking photos! The first one is so sweet! Then, they noticed me and did not seem all that impressed! Nathan then rolled away into the distance, while Matthew showed me a bogey that he'd just retrieved (yet ANOTHER cold!). Such is life. But the first photo was lovely! :)

I do have a lot more photos (those are all the Nathan ones for now, but I have more that I have taken since finding my camera, yay!) - I'll have to post some more again soon. Tomorrow Nathan is SIX MONTHS OLD!!!! I hope to write an entry to cover more about my little half-birthday boy!! I can't believe it has been a whole half of a year since he was born. Here's my tiny man a few weeks ago. He loves to play with his feet right now, and roll about - the fewer clothes the better! I love him sooooooo!!! I do believe I feel like going to bed to snuggle his sweet self now. He's due to wake soon to breastfeed anyway. I'll write again soon!

Yayness!!!

Neil got a job today!!!! :)

He has had quite a few interviews in the past month - how I wish I'd had time (and, more specifically, organised that time!) to write here about it as it happened. Oh well. So two of the jobs Neil applied for went to second interview stage, and last week he was waiting for both of those places to decide whether they wanted to give him the job or not! One was in London, and the other was in Hampshire, maybe an hour's commute from here. Both were great roles (same kind of data-related work he has been doing all along) and both were better pay than he's ever been on, and we were praying and praying every evening about it. We didn't know what we should do if he was offered both jobs. We didn't even know which to prefer! We eventually made a pro and con list and the one in Hampshire was a winner for us, using that method. Neil ended up really wanting that role over the other one.

Today the Hampshire people phoned to offer him the job!!! Yay! He starts 2 weeks from today, Monday 21st July, which is exactly the same Monday that he started the last job he had which only lasted 3 months (well, that was Monday 23rd, but still!). We have been without an income since October 23rd, so pretty much 9 months by the time Neil starts work. And God has been so incredibly faithful to us that whole time. We already had huge debts, and no savings. We should have gone under! But we never did.

My family have paid for groceries for months - I love them so much! They have been so supportive and generous. Neil's brother gave us £500 last month. Two of my diary-reading friends gave us some money many months back - even one from the States through Paypal! We are so thankful to God for their faithfulness and generosity.

A piece of our garden is about to be sold for many thousands of pounds - exactly what we need to cover the debts amassed for the first 6 months of Neil's time out of work! Amazing God.

Last month we ran right out of money. We had maxed out credit cards, no notes left in our pockets, and we exceeded our overdraft limit in the bank. Neil took Arthur to Tesco to buy groceries one day and found that he had nothing to pay with. He found a £10 note in his pocket and so came home with milk and bread. I somehow made a few individual portions of frozen leftovers into family meals for a few days, and we did not have to be hungry or thirsty or anything! Praise God!

We prayed so much over the money situation. I asked God to break through and provide us with a lump of money, or several little lumps, I did not know how, but just that he please WOULD, so that we would be able to pay the next mortgage payment and bills, and food and things. Right after that, Neil's brother gave us £500, my parents decided to give us £1500 (did I mention how much I love them?), and when we went to church that Sunday, a couple gave us an envelope with a cheque for £585.05 (exactly the amount that God had told them to give!).

We rejoiced heartily and praised God with thankful hearts, and Neil put the cheques in the bank. We had a few lean days while we waited for the cheques to clear, and then Neil again took Arthur to the supermarket to get money out from the cashpoint and buy a lot of groceries! When he came back (with a crazy amount of food!), he said yes, the money had cleared, but he was confused because it looked like we were quite a good way in the BLACK (which we never are, sad to say!) and he couldn't think why.

I immediately jumped onto my internet bank account and checked the statement. I saw the cheques that had been put in, and then noticed a big amount from somewhere else. It turns out that several months ago, Neil finally looked into getting Child Tax Credit (he is WAY behind on this - we have had kids for 3.5 years!!!). He spent ages on the phone to somebody official and then filled in forms and sent stuff off. We didn't know how much per month/week he would be eligible for, nor how much we'd be due as a backdated lump (they'll backdate 3 months from your application date). We were just amazed when found that, in the same few days that we'd been given lots of money after we prayed, Neil's Child Tax Credit payments had arrived in the bank - our backdated lump was £1,100!!!!! We also had 2 other payments from them totalling over £300 - the regular payments starting. We went from having nothing at all and crying out to God to please provide us with some money, to - within the space of 6 days - having over £3,500. Is not my God AWESOME?!?! It makes me so excited that I want to squeeeeeeeeeaaaal and do a happy dance and just praise God jumping up and down, hehe! :) He is so faithful to us and cares for us so tenderly and generously.

This time of trusting God and living by faith, in a way, has been wonderful for my walk with God. It has been like a workout for my faith muscles, and they feel gooooood like a muscle does (all zingy and fresh and flexible!) after a run of good workouts.

I am actually anxious that going back to the cushiness that is a regular income, bigger home, coupla cars, shoes for my little ones as they grow out of the old ones, etc, I am going to grow slack and flabby in those muscles again. I am all too prone to laziness if I'm not pushed, and this has been SO GOOD for me! For Neil and I both, as a couple too.

Right now we are thinking, what else can we turn TOTAL control over to God in our lives?!?! He should have it all, and it does us so much good. It's even fun! Though I know it's a testing time (and not always fun, therefore!) too.

Personally, I have been reading, researching, discussing, studying, praying, over a certain issue that I have been longing to blog about. More recently Neil and I have been discussing it and praying about it together. I have had to devote a lot of time to reading scriptures from the Bible about this, and reading them out to Neil.

I am personally 100% convicted that we need to be giving full control to God over our fertility and our family size. I know this is hugely contraversial, even amongst Christians. Neil agreed wholeheartedly after we studied, discussed and prayed over this about a week ago, but I felt wary of going too crazy with joy (unbridled people, unbridled) given that he's prone to acting on feelings more than faith (in general), and he gets understandably anxious about the possibility of having a huge bunch of children. So he's currently wavering on this. I am just praying about it. Neil needs to really read the Bible to find out what it says, and he hasn't had time yet since we started discussing it. Also we have not prayed about the issue enough. We mainly do a lot of yabbering and then pray a bit at the end! ;) We need to block off a good amount of time one evening to just come before God and pray, tell him evvverything that's on our hearts about it, and then spend time waiting on God.

If Neil says no to this, I will submit to him over it (total wrench to my self-centred being, mind you! I am not the naturally submitting type!), but pray pray pray that God will change his heart over it.

I also understand that if we give God control over our fertility and ask him to open and close my womb as he sees fit, then he may close it from this point on. That scares me, because I so want to have more babies, and the thought of having no more is just clutchy-cold at my throat! But God is sovereign and his will for my life and that of my family and my children, is perfect and good. I know the Bible says that he has plans to give us a hope and a future, and to prosper us and not to harm us.

The Bible also says:

"Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate."

(Psalm 127:3-5)

I have come across the term "quiver full" or "quiverful" in my studying and reading online, which seems to be some sort of Christian movement, especially in the States at the moment. I am not sure I want to label myself or join a "movement" of any sort - it makes me wary. I would go so far as to say that what my heart has become led to has brought me to be "quiverful-minded", in that I am pretty much on the same page as these folks, but perhaps not quite to the same extremes.

I do not want to use any form of contraception. I should not even TRY for a baby (waaaah, are my charting and TTC days over?! I love that part so much!). I just want to say, "Lord, I give you my womb! You know what's best for our family, each of our children, for Neil, for me, for any future babies we might have! Please take control! We gladly ask you to please open and close my womb in your perfect timing as you see fit! We eagerly accept any precious blessings that you bestow upon us, and if it does not please you to bless us with any more babies, since you are perfect and great in your wisdom, we thank you in that as well. Amen!" How incredibly FREEING it has felt for me to pray that kind of prayer. Though I know I can't really do it fully without Neil 100% on board, obviously. But I'm amazed at the sense of excitement and freedom from control-freakishness (!), from yearning and wanting to strive, from anxiety about whether we'll do the right thing for everybody involved, from the stress of figuring out the "best time" to have another baby, etc. God knows best. It's such a relief to give it all to him. If I get pregnant NOW then yikes! But wonderful - because God knows best and he would not have opened my womb if it was not good and pleasing to him.

Anyway, I have a ton more I could write about all that stuff at the moment! But I have waffled on long enough. I have joined MOMYS!!!! I'm sooo-diddly-ooo excited about that! MOMYS stands for Mothers Of Many Young Siblings. Oh the great advice and empathy I am discovering there already! I do not qualify as a "MOMY" until I have 4 children aged 8 and under, but I applied to be a "Not Quite MOMY", haha! I have three under four and we want another - and are open to the potential of quite a few more, perhaps quite close together. Many mamas there are Quiverful minded as well, and all are Christians. I really value the Christian input actually, on how to raise little ones, and lots of them at a time! Many of them also homeschool. Can you see why I'm so excited about this place?!?! There are crockpot recipes and everything! Wheee! ;)

I will also say that God has been moving our hearts through all this new openness to what his heart is for our family (as opposed to our own, which we've been going by thus far!), over a subject that has never really felt relevant to me before. Both of us are increasingly interested in adoption as part of "filling our quiver", so to speak. I was praying and I suddenly had this clear-as-day thought. I know it could mean nothing at all, and it was probably more linked to blogs I've been reading than anything else, but I suddenly thought that if God ever blessed us (and I do mean BLESSED us) with a Downs Syndrome baby, for me that would be an instant sign that we are to adopt another baby with Downs. I don't know if we ever would have a baby with Downs, but I guess if we do end up trusting God completely with our fertility, then I could potentially still be having babies into my 40s unless I menopause by then (as is the way with my family), and thus my chances of having a baby with Downs Syndrome would dramatically increase. The more this thought has hung around in my mind, the more excited (as well as scared!) I feel about the possibility. Neil is more anxious about the idea of adopting a baby or child with special needs, which is perfectly understandable.

Anyway. Such a lot of thoughts to splash out here all at once, and many of them still formulating really! I have not one single shred of doubt that my God will provide exactly what I need to deal with daily life with a lot of small children, and to homeschool them if that's what he calls us to do. Homeschooling is still the plan, but Neil has waverings over that as well. It frustrates the heck out of me because he has all these "waverings" over everything when it's plain as day to me that he isn't looking at God as he makes his decisions or thinks about the big things in life. Then again, he is perfectly able to pray with me and look to God and see things from that perspective. He just drops out of it soooo easily, and he always has done since I've known him. It's hard to keep up with, and right now my heart for God is just a child running into the wind in a biiiig grassy field on a beautiful spring day, with so much joy that she feels like she can never stop her legs running and running and running. If she had breath spare, she would be squealing and laughing and whooping and shouting, "YEAH!!" and other such things :)

For the first time, I'm not in a place where I'm on a high with God, like at a Bible week or something, the kind of high that inevitably fades (but is AWESOME while it lasts!). I feel more steady and mature in my joy with God than ever before, so much so that it's like a new feeling for me. I still feel sometimes like I'm still a new Christian, but the time has gone so fast and already it has been 12.5 years since I gave my heart to Jesus. It feels like just last year sometimes. This is why I value the past 8 months so very highly - this is the change it has brought about in me, and I LONG to dig deeper into that by giving more to God, more of my own control, more of my heart. His steadfast love and provision when proven, is just soul-changing. And more-ish! ;) I want more!

Anyway. It's getting late and I should wind this up.

I just wanted to update straight away to say that Neil has a job! I am understandably anxious about the fact that he'll be gone all day every day in 2 weeks time (which will flash by in a blink, I know it) on a permanent basis, and I need to somehow learn/manage to care for the three little ones and juggle everything, and for-goodness-sakes-do-SOMETHING-to-rescue-the-state-of-my-home! and oh, raise up three well-balanced, godly, educated and sociable men from scratch, and find time to spend with God (without whom I WILL fall heavily on my behind within the first hour of every day!), and somehow get myself to be an organised person who has a routine and creates order in her home for her husband and children. *breathe*

But...(and for my own reference if nothing else!)...

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippeans 4:13)

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

"Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?... There is no-one like you, O Lord." (1 Chronicles 17:16+20)

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9)

"Listen to me... you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you." (Isaiah 46:3-4)

There's so much more! But I must go to bed. I have a ton to write about the boys, as always! And photos! But, last week I took the boys (all 3!) in the garden for the afternoon to do water play (or roll and kick in the playpen on the grass, depending on age and ability level, hehe!) and eat a picnic lunch, and I took some photos, then had to settle Nathan upstairs for his nap, and start dinner, and get Nathan from his nap, and play with the boys outside again, and so on, and in the process of all this I seem to have completely lost my camera! We've searched the entire house and done a careful search of the garden. We quizzed the boys, but I am pretty sure it was put out of their reach when I went upstairs to put Nathan to bed. Neil cleared the table where the camera was while I was upstairs with Nathan but doesn't recall seeing or moving a camera :( So it is all but completely non-existant and I have no idea where else to look for it any more. I can't bear having NO CAMERA! There were some photos on it to be uploaded, but thankfully not tons of them. It simply has to turn up, but I'm missing stuff every day with the boys that I want to capture, and we went to Grandoug's 83rd birthday do on Saturday with my parents (yay!) and my brother and of course, little Thea! I hogged my mum's camera and took a million photos (it's nicer than mine!) and hopefully she'll send them via email so I can post some here. I don't know what to do about the no-camera situation!

Oh I forgot to say! Neil's job means that we plan to move to Hampshire. The town where he'll work is where his sister, Rosemary, lives! That is so exciting, because we'll be neighbours and the boys will have their cousin, Ella, to play with regularly! I have been so busy that I kept forgetting to update about Rosemary - she had her second baby 6 days before Ella and Matthew's birthdays (they were both June 14th!) - it's a girl! I have three neices now, and no nephews! Apparently we are "doing" the boys for the family, hehe! New baby girl is called Emily Frances and she weighed 8lbs something (how awful, I have forgotten exactly what already!). She was born in the bathroom after a 30 minute labour, delivered by daddy! Ella was a 2-hour labour (first baby!) so they knew it was a possibility, though they still planned a hospital birth. Needless to say, she did not need/have time to use the TENS machine I lent her! ;)

So it will be super exciting to live very close to them! Moving there is exciting because (other than living near family!), it's cheaper to buy a house there and we have discovered we can buy a good sized family home, definitely bigger than the 2-bedroom home we currently live in, and hopefully with a big garden too. Until we move, there is mercifully little pressure, because Neil can commute there within about an hour. It makes for a long day for him, and for me with the kiddos, and they won't see much of him before they're going to bed at night, but it's totally doable. I'm SO much more relaxed this time than when it was last summer and he was about to start a new job a similar distance from home. I tell you, I know a new peace in my soul that God has created in me, going through this difficult time with no income and trusting God. I am almost sad that it's coming to an end.

It's been SO MUCH FUN to put this verse into practise and see it proved true:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." (Proverbs 3:5-6)

I also like the KJV translation for the last part - "and he shall direct thy paths." Sooooo true for us! God is so faithful!! :)

Okay I'm REALLY going now! ;) But I will finish with a couple of photos. The week after Matthew's birthday, we went to a big party for a 2-year-old at church. It was lots of fun! I baked a cake for it too, as her mother asked me if I would (not the actual birthday cake though!). Anyway, one of our good friends from church, David (who was an usher at our wedding, actually!), was taking photos and he asked if he could take a couple of family photos for us!!!! Could he?!?! We never get family photos, it is so hard to manage! So he took a couple of photos. Neither came out perfect (and I'm saying something or other in the first one, unfortunately!) but I still feel so happy to have photographic evidence of our little family of FIVE, for the first time! Here are the pics. I will update again soon! Thanks so much for all the comments after my last entry on Matthew's birthday! I'm so glad you all enjoyed the photos and video clips! :)