Living room changes, and lots of photos!

Busy, busy! I have been longing to update here several nights running now. I just have the feel for wanting to ramble about the day and that kind of thing, which I haven't felt like doing for a long while. I wish I had time to write!!

So, randomness, to make me feel like I've offloaded some stuff! ;)

This made me laugh! I was sitting on the sofa and Arthur appeared by my side with my doppler, telling me he was my midwife and his assistant was Matthew, hehe! He proceeded to pretend to use the doppler on my tummy, and Matthew's job was to prepare a wipe to get the pretend gel off! ;) The funniest thing to me about the photos is that there's a baby in the background of one of them that I just HAD, and there he is talking about a baby in my tummy and asking me if it's kicking much and how I'm feeling with my pregnancy, hehehe!









Just a sweet little photo of Nathan and Matthew :)



A couple of months ago when I was collecting stuff for the boys to keep busy doing for after Benjamin's arrival, I wanted some different construction type toys. They LOVE construction toys, but they have Duplo and Stickle Bricks and wooden blocks, etc. I looked for the next thing "up", age-wise, since they've had these since Arthur was 15 months old! But all I found was basically Lego, and then a bunch of stuff that's more mechanical and age 7+. I wanted something a little bit different from what they've had so far. I kept hearing about Lincoln Logs on the blogs of my US bloggy friends, and googled to find out what those were. We have nothing like that here! Arthur loves the Little House on the Prairie books and a toy where you can build log houses and farms and so on REALLY appealed to me for the boys! So, obviously you can't get it here at all. I ended up buying a set at US eBay and paying for international shipping (yikes! not cheap!) and they LOVE it. I saw a ridiculous deal on a much bigger set (again on the US eBay) and even with shipping it was a great deal, so I bought that too, probably to give as a birthday present for Arthur, or maybe a Christmas present for both Arthur and Matthew. It's hidden in the bedroom cupboard for now! :) Here are a couple of recent photos of the boys with their Lincoln Logs set:





Yesterday was a GORGEOUS day - the last day of August (how in the wide world is it SEPTEMBER already?!?!), and such perfect weather. It was also Bank Holiday Monday, so Neil took the 3 boys out for a long walk at the park, and Benjamin and I napped (bliss!). Benjamin woke not long after the boys went out, so we got up and I felt determined to tackle something of the hideous mess that is our home. I took a couple of photos of the living room while I was at it, because I'm about to change it quite a bit for homeschooling (sooooooooo excited now!) and I wanted some "before" photos. I figured I may as well post them here for you guys to see where we live all day long, haha! And these were taken AFTER I tidied up, believe it or not! It's the clutter that is the problem. But at least I got the floor much better. It was evenly covered with rubbish and clothes and toys and books when the boys left to go to the park, with very little carpet showing through! Urgh!

Our house has two rooms downstairs. The tiny porch is where we hang our coats and stuff our shoes (and put the boys in time-out) and it opens up onto the living room. The living room is 15ft by 12ft and has the stairs across the back wall, which you can see in the second photo (those are HORRIBLY cluttered, which isn't exactly safe, but I have a major plan for all of that stuff! Yay!) The living room opens into the kitchen at the back, which is, well, a kitchen. We have a table there which doesn't really fit us all round it, and it's a squeeze to fit it in the kitchen with people sitting round. That's the downstairs. The boys and I spend our days (every day) in the living room, all day. We eat in the kitchen, obviously. We have two bedrooms upstairs (12x9 and 12x7) and a tiny bathroom sandwiched in between them. We SERIOUSLY need to move to a bigger house! With four little boys (three of them rather energetic!), it's getting a bit crazy to still be living here really. BUT, we honestly are getting by fine here, and the boys are too. They have their frustrations, but never about the lack of space - though I'm sure they'll be much relieved to have more if we can ever sell, and afford a bigger home! I know that space is a much bigger hyped-up thing that it needs to be, though. Families of many more children than we have used to manage just fine in homes with just one or two rooms a long time ago. So long as the boys get outside, there really isn't too much problem with the tiny house. They are rarely short of space to PLAY, laugh, chat, read, pretend-and-imagine, or lounge about. Their days are full of busy-ness and laughter (as well as the usual frustrations and squabbles). The only thing they seem to lack is indoor running space, and sometimes they run the long diagonal of the room back and forth a million times till they're out of breath, squealing and screeching and making each other laugh! I think if we had more indoor space I would probably not be crazy about them running indoors anyway. I would send them out in the garden to burn off that kind of energy!

In a few weeks time (hopefully by October), I will be adding homeschooling to the activities that take place in our one room, but I want to have a proper place for that to take place. Much of our learning (which already goes on) takes place all over the house in the run of daily life, and out and about too. But we'll "do school" in a defined school area, and I currently have the fun and happy task of planning and setting that up! This is my forte, planning and arranging! It's once it's all set up and we've been trucking away for a few weeks that my weak point comes. I will be praying at the start of each day for God to help me get past that hurdle, because I really want to do well for Arthur - for all of the boys, in educating them at home. I am excited, less nervous now than I used to be now that I'm sorting it all out in my head. We are going to be getting rid of the big 3-seater sofa because it's damaged and old and peed-on (and unwashable, lol!) and so on. And taking up too much space where we need more. I am going to get a lockable (important!) storage unit to hold all our homeschooling items, as well as house the TV and DVD player on top of it (the current bookshelf that holds those things now will go in the loft for now). I am also getting a table and set of chairs that is appropriate height for kids Arthur's age and a little bit bigger, so that he's studying at a comfortable height. I am getting all the above from a school supplier :) The table will come in very handy even when our older boys have outgrown it and use a higher table for their schooling, because we'll have two littler boys who will still use that for some time to come (and hopefully more children after them!). We are also planning to finally pull up the carpet and replace it with laminate flooring, because we have used a steam cleaner on it DOZENS of times (many evenings in a row too!) and STILL there's a big area which stinks of rancid urine. I kid you not. It just won't come out, no matter how much it is cleaned! Urrrgh! I figure it must have soaked into the underlay originally, or something. We even had a professional company come and clean the carpet recently (what a waste of money that was!) and it still smelt awful after that too - and they used a perfumed shampoo!

So, time for the old carpet to go. It's toooo yucky, and we often keep that stinky area covered with a towel just because I can't bear the kids to have to walk and play on it. Yuck. I can't wait to get the laminate floor down! We need to get a quote from a fitter and then buy the stuff (we already chose what we want at B&Q). When the room is all done I will be sure to post photos! :)

ANYWAY! I digress! So here are the photos of the living room that I took yesterday. The boys had their road carpet thingy out that day, and I left it there for them to play with when they got home. Also, there's my sweet baby boy on his soft mat on top of it! :)





Here is a photo of my next job to tackle - the laundry bomb that went off somewhere between the living room and the kitchen, urgh! It multiplied over the weekend until you couldn't really tell what was clean (living room) and what was dirty (kitchen doorway - WHY we put dirty laundry there to be washed, I don't know! It's not a convenient place! But there's nowhere else really). This is nothing to do with a before shot for my records. I just wanted to show you the laundry crisis, haha!



Benjamin is not impressed with me taking photos of the room instead of picking him up and snuggling him (which I promise I WAS doing right before setting him down to take photos!):



He was MUCH happier once I put him in his bouncy chair with the "buzzer" on, to watch me do the folding. It helped that he found his hand that day and spent a good while chomping on it! He also found his foot for the first time that day and stared at it for ages before trying to lean riiiight down and eat it! ;)





Halfway through the task! :) I actually don't mind folding laundry, it's the putting it in drawers that's the problem! ;) I love seeing piles representing all my family - see the FOUR little boy piles there with Mummy and Daddy piles behind them, and some intruder named "Linen" to the right.



Before I had finished (hence no "after" photo for the laundry crisis!) the boys returned hot and happy from the park, and instantly set to busy play with the cars. Suddenly the room was "full of boys" again like it usually is! :)





Shortly after that, Benjamin got sleepy, and I rocked the bouncy chair a bit (the usual method at the moment) while the others played around him.

Going...



Going...



Gone! :)



Boys crowding at the kitchen gate for a chocolate chip cookie from Daddy (a highly exciting treat!):



Sweet little Nathey showing me what he got - "Guh-kee!"



Another random one of Nathan from Saturday (his eyes are still so blue! Maybe they'll stay that way? Matthew's had turned grey by now):



Here is something I see MANY times each day at the moment, which is somewhat exasperating after a while! Nathan plays eagerly with all the toys, and especially likes vehicles (like his brothers!). He loves the ones that clip together (like tractor and trailer, or articulated lorries) but gets ever so frustrated with them unclipping and then he can't seem to figure out clipping them back together again yet. So he brings them to me, all frustrated and upset. I put them together, and he toddles off happily, only to return mere SECONDS later with this very same expression!



It's a good thing there's also a great deal of sweetness to the day as well! :)













The last photo is actually (FINALLY!) my assignment for the end of Chapter One of my "Photographing Children" book, at last! I haven't posted it at my photography blog yet, but I will get round to that soon!

And now it's soooo late. I have to go to bed. But I hope I'll be back soon! :)