Well, it's about time I updated my blog, don't you think?! ;) It has been over 3 weeks since I last updated, and I have been increasingly wanting to get the chance to update with a load of thoughts and plans in my head to write down. So much is happening in my days now that my head sort of spins on its axis (I know! Who knew my head had an axis?! Apparently so.) and so I never remember a THING from day to day what with all the round-and-round-and-round-and-round that my head is doing all the time. Best to write it down when I get the chance! So here I am :)
I am sort of keeping up with updating my pregnancy blog about Samuel's early weeks. He will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, which is amazing to me. How fast that has gone! He's so lovely, and we all love him completely. The boys' only complaint about him is that they don't get to see him enough because he's upstairs napping for part of the day! Benjamin turns out to be a wonderful big brother, at 18 months old right now. He has not been wary of Samuel at all, just like the others have not been with the sibling right below them when they were his age. I LOVE this age gap! :) He is so gentle with Samuel, and often stops as he passes him in the bouncy chair to stroke his head or put his arms around him in the chair saying, "Cuddoh!", or to give him a kiss with a sweet little peck sound. He hates it when Samuel cries, and fetches nappies for him when I ask him to, and brings him his own favourite toys often. I love watching Benjamin be a big brother! :)
Ohhh there's so much to "make note of" that I think I will just have to do a quick summary of each thing as I come to it, and then start another seemingly random subject in the next paragraph, otherwise I'll never get much of it written about before I have to stop for today!
Nathan turned 3 this month, on January 12th. I just can NOT believe that tiny boy is three! For a few weeks there I had three children aged 2 and under! :) So much fun! Neil had to work on Nathan's birthday, but he had a good day because that week my parents were here to visit, as it was Neil's first week back at work after paternity leave. They stayed with my grandparents and came to visit for the whole afternoon every day for 6 days. They played games with the boys and read stories, brought me lunch every day, and generally were lovely to have around!
Here's my daddy reading a story to Matthew, Nathan and Benjamin (they were forever presenting him with books to read - this is how all the boys are generally. They NEVER get tired of being read to, which is lovely!). Benjamin sees me! ;)
While he was doing that, my mummy was playing a fun geography game with Arthur (which she gave Matthew for Christmas, and he loves it too, but Arthur is intensely interested in geography so would play this at any opportunity!):
And Samuel was in the bouncy chair for a moment while I took photos! :) He was sleeping (2-and-a-bit weeks old here):
On Nathan's birthday they brought him a present and he had fun with them here. We had birthday cake (he asked specifically for a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and Smarties, and it had to have a James (from Thomas the Tank Engine) theme). I made him a cake with James copied onto it with ready-made writing icing. I wish I could have made a James-SHAPED cake but it was too much with everything being so new and exhausting that week! I also forgot to take a photo of the cake :( It's on video but I haven't uploaded it to see if there's any sort of evidence of it yet. I made Smarties into the number 3, so that incorporated his Smarties wish! :) Nathan got a few Thomas-related presents like stickers and a Thomas memory card game. He got some jigsaw puzzles - he LOVES doing those. He is putting together puzzles of up to about 30 pieces now, and those challenge him enough for now. Matthew is putting together 50-60 piece puzzles and can do those fine but will ask for help and think he can't manage without it! Benjamin is putting 2 pieces together, that sort of thing! ;) And Arthur is doing 150-200 piece puzzles, which he really enjoys doing. He sits and sings and hums and clacks his tongue and so on, happily in his own little world, while he puts puzzles together. Arthur's favourite puzzles are the world map with flags, or ones with lots of dinosaurs on, hehe! Nathan's are vehicle or Thomas related, but he'll do ANY puzzle because he so enjoys putting the pieces together and completing it. Matthew seems less enthusiastic in general about jigsaw puzzles than Arthur and Nathan, but still does them eagerly.
Oh yes! Nathan's birthday! Off on a tangent there! ;)
Sooo he is three! Officially a "big boy" in our family - this is the age we make a big thing about reaching. He has been quite happy to be a little boy until this month, and reminded me often that he and Benji were still "little boys". He is telling me how he weew not ever sit on a potty, but that he might do that when he's a big boy! I think that's why he's been reminding me such a lot that he's still a LITTLE boy, hehe! But now he is a big boy! We don't start potty training our boys until age 3 and a quarter at the earliest. Matthew was not ready in the slightest until a YEAR later than that. He is now 100% potty trained in the WEE department. He very rarely has an accident and can hold on if he needs to. He is still in nappies at night (we haven't even considered night time potty training yet for him), and he is NOT there with his poos yet. He still does all of his poos in a nappy. He just tells me when he thinks he needs to do one and asks for a nappy, so I put one on him. He has done a few on the big toilet and gets mightily rewarded for doing so, as per the consultant's recommendation last year! But he mostly opts for the nappy. He is still anxious about it, but we're just playing it cool and trucking on. The consultant he saw said that he is sure that Matthew doesn't have any physical problems, and that he'll get the hang of it eventually. He had a follow-up with a community support team but it was scheduled for Jan 11th and I could not manage to get all the little ones out to it so soon after having Samuel with Neil not here to help me, so I postponed it until March. We're not concerned about Matthew at the moment, and it's really just an appointment for reassurance. I know he's 4 and a half and "late" for potty training (he would be halfway through his first proper year of school if he wasn't homeschooled! Can't imagine putting him through that without being fully potty trained), but I know he'll get there in his own time.
Sooo, pretty soon I will start floating the idea with Nathan. If he asks sooner than April then we'll try it sooner. I think he'll be more ready than Matthew was, and it won't be such a difficult process this early. He DOES have major issues with poos, and has done for at least 6 months now. He won't do them. He holds on for several days, getting more and more miserable and worried in the last couple of those days, and then finally poos with much tears and screaming. We pretty much have to help him most of the time, because he resists the whole time and clamps his legs together. So that part might not be so good for the potty training! But hopefully it will be a different story on the potty, who knows? I am not feeling impatient at all about getting him out of nappies. I feel in NO hurry, and it's another thing that signifies him growing up so I am kind of sad to think of it, in all honesty! I have also been changing nappies without a break for 6 years, and 3 different children in nappies for the last 3 years, so I am 100% used to it now, and it will feel strange one day not to change a bunch of nappies all day long, lol! I actually like it. I know I'm probably strange, but I don't mind it at all. I do not miss cloth nappies one bit! ;) We used them for 3 years and now we have used disposables for 3 years and I have not looked back once, which surprises me. I did LOVE cloth, but I really really don't miss it. I like the ease of disposables, and with four kiddos in nappies I NEED that ease right now! ;)
We are back to school for the first time in MONTHS next week!!! So exciting! I set the first week of February as the time we'd start back up, because that would give me 6 weeks from having Samuel, and that's what the wise advice was at
MOMYS. Also I had planned last summer that we would change our academic year to match the calendar year, instead of starting in September like the schools do. We were behind because I had been morning sick and we'd done very little school during that time. We did school through the summer and then stopped in September to do the Big Bedroom Swap and lay laminate flooring in the living room. That dragged on (ohhh did it drag on!) and then we sort of blinked and Neil was starting a new job at the beginning of November, which was a big change for us all. I reached full term in my pregnancy at the same time and, well, school didn't happen in the autumn after all. We did a loose school schedule and based it on an autumn theme, doing autumn crafts and learning as much about autumn-related things as possible from books. I like what we did so much that I am going to make a seasonal box for each season, to pull out when a new season starts! I got a lot of things for our autumn theme - squirrel, leaf and tree shaped cookie cutters, primary school age books on squirrels, hedgehogs, and seasonal changes for autumn, autumn stories and poems (lots of these!), and collage items, craft ideas, and printouts with an autumn theme. I think I will box all those things up together and bring them out next autumn, because it will be fresh and exciting to open it all up again by then, and I will have a bunch of ready-prepared things to get stuck into for the preschoolers (which will be Nathan and probably Benjamin by then as he'll be 2 and a quarter and will probably go for the crafty stuff!).
Anyway, so that was "school" in the autumn. We had a total break from the very end of November and haven't done anything since. Except that we've given the boys a free rein to explore and learn about anything they're interested in. I have been guilt-tripping all winter about it, hehe! But how surprised I have been, because Arthur has learned so much more in the months that I haven't done school with him, than when I was doing school before that! He wasn't reading as such before, when we were still doing our Rocket Phonics reading lessons. He COULD read the exercises in each lesson, so I guess he was reading. But he couldn't pick up an easy reader lying about the house and read it. He couldn't read Green Eggs and Ham yet or anything like that. Then I stopped teaching him. And now he's reading! He just taught himself, and I started to notice that he would tell me something he'd seen on a world map, and I would ask him how he knew it, and he just said, "I read it." So I began to wonder if maybe he could read more things than I thought he could. Over time he has become more and more fluent at reading, and sits reading the animal encyclopedia, the main encyclopedia and the children's atlas, usually at least a couple of hours a day in total. He used to pick up those books and beg me to read him facts from them, but I couldn't keep doing it for as long as he wanted me to! So in the end he seemed to just determine to read it himself! And he did!
When my parents came over, my mum brought some Oxford Learning Tree readers that she had found at the studio (my dad's business just closed - he ran a studio that made audio books, and when they cleared it out they found a TON of children's books and things in the book archives). She wondered if they would come in handy somewhere down the line. I don't know anything about that range, even after googling, because I couldn't seem to find out much about what sort of ages or abilities matched which books. The books she gave us were the complete set of level 6 and level 7 - very good to have! When I looked at them, the stories seemed way too hard for Arthur. I didn't KNOW that but I just thought they looked complicated. They had most of the different phonics combinations, silent letters, long words and so on, so I figured he would not be ready for that for a while, even though he's reading. I told my mum I was planning to do some sort of assessment on his reading when we started school again, so that I could see where I should pick up in his curriculum. Nice confident plan, but actually I had NO IDEA how I was doing to assess him or how I would know what to do next! Sometimes I wonder why on earth I am trying to teach my own children at home! ;) I really have no clue what I'm doing, do not be deceived if for a second you ever think maybe I do, hehe!
Anyway I put the books on the stairs to take up with me later in the day. Arthur saw them after my parents went home that day, and asked if I could read one to him. I told him they were readers, which he would read himself one day, and he was excited and wanted to read one RIGHT NOW! I told him he wasn't ready for them yet, because I thought the words inside were too hard for him right now, but that we'd learn more with Rocket Phonics soon and then he would be ready to read them in a few months maybe. He was determined to prove me wrong, and said he WAS ready and he was sure he could read them. He was so persistant that eventually I said he could try reading a Level 6 book. He chose the last book in that series and brought it downstairs to me, absolutely bristling with enthusiasm!
He read the whole book, cover to cover, fluently without a break. He did not struggle with silent letters or words with phonics sounds like "ou" or "ai" in them, or longer words like "adventure" or "dangerous". He asked me a couple of times what a word said - "light" was one of them, and I think "thought" was another. I was just speechless, because I totally did not have any idea that he could read like that! I knew he was reading stuff but I had never heard him sit and read a story to me, especially one that was quite a hard story for a young reader! It just wasn't something I expected, that's all. Soooo, now I don't know what to do with his phonics lessons! I am going to read through the Rocket Phonics curriculum this week to get an idea of where I should pick up lessons with him. Or whether it's possible that continuing the curriculum would be a bad idea? I don't want to be pedantic and boring about it, if he's chomping at the bit to devour stories and can do so much more than the curriculum is offering him. He still needs some instruction on various aspects of phonics though, so I am not sure how to play it really. For now, our reading lessons (when they start) will be Rocket Phonics for Matthew, and listening to Arthur read one of these readers every other day. They're quite long and he was tired after reading the last one, so I think half a book a day would be a better pace. It will help him build up his reading stamina in any case.
We are all eager to start maths again! It seems a long time since we've done that subject now, and the Right Start Math curriculum is SO much fun! I can't wait to start that up again with Arthur. He is about 8 or 9 lessons from the end of Level A, and we have Level B set up and ready to go. I will pick up where we left off with Arthur, and begin at lesson one of Level A with Matthew on Monday! How exciting!!! Matthew gets all breathless thinking about it, and his eyes shine, and my heart just melts when I see him look like that! He's such a sweetheart, and I love his excitement over starting school. He is in awe that he'll actually be allowed to start proper maths!
The only other academic thing I plan to focus on is writing. Just the 3 "R"s this year, and the rest child-led. Child-led has astounded me, but I get too nervous to actually pursue "unschooling" completely! It is just incredible how much Arthur knows for his age, and NONE of it has been taught by me. It's completely led by Arthur. He is passionate, and I do mean PASSIONATE about geography. He has several intense interests (animals, science, dinosaurs, history and geography - none of which are "subjects" that we've ever done at school yet) and spends time every day learning stuff about them. I absolutely cannot stop him, even when I WANT to (and sometimes I do!). He seems to me to particularly favour geography-related things. I asked him recently which of those subjects made him the most excited, and he said that was a difficult question to answer but he would have to say "the world" was his favourite thing to learn about. I asked him why, and he said, "I don't know... It's just so.... so INTERESTING!"
He has a globe and a children's atlas, and we look at online maps and things. He has books about animals that have information about the part of the world they live in, and so on. He remembers everything he is told, the first time he is told it. He has an amazing visual memory and if he sees a country on a map, and I ask him about that country at a later point, he'll trace the shape of it in the air with his finger as he's trying to describe it to me, so I know he "sees" it in his visual memory even having just seen it once.
He's especially interested in animals that have become extinct, and can tell me a lot of different animals that I've never heard of and the years they became extinct. He knows random facts about the world like Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and there's a river dolphin in India (I forget its name, but Arthur doesn't!) which is critically endangered and there are only between 100 and 500 of them left. He can tell me all these distinct differences between dozens and dozens of different kinds of whales and dolphins (from a book) and how each one breaches and whether they're shy or inquisitive, endangered or locally common, and what exactly it is that is threatening their numbers. He knows all his continents and oceans, and can name pretty much any flag of the world by sight. He LOVES flags! :) My mum got him a Flags of the World sticker book for Christmas, and he has put all the stickers in place and now just sits reading it. From that book he has started to tell us the exact DATE this or that country adopted its flag!!
I am not remotely trying to brag about my boy here, but I am honestly just astounded by him on a regular basis. I also desperately want to record all this kind of thing somewhere so that I have reference of it as he learns more and gets older - stuff to look back on, and something to chart his progress sort of. I have been longing to write stuff here for a couple of months, but never found time. It is going to sound like I am showing off the stuff he can do or the things he knows, but I DON'T want to do that, because I don't care what other people think in any case, and also I can't stand it when other people do that about their kids! I would not want to. I just want to be transparent and honest about my thoughts about him, and also be honest about how excited I feel that he's so bright and learning at such a pace with such enthusiasm! I also LOVE how it's nothing to do with me, haha! I can't boast in anything, other than the LORD who gave him the brain that he's got. I'm proud of him but I really can't take any PRIDE in it, you know? And that's good for me.
Also I should probably be honest and say that a lot of the time I really struggle with having an Arthur around when he's zinging with information! I LOVE having my Arthur around, of course, but it's the part where he never switches off for a millisecond, from waking at 6.15am or so, to falling asleep at 8pm or so. Random and quick example: last night I tucked him into bed, put my arms around him and told him for the 7th time to stop talking and asking me questions because now it's time to go to sleep. There was finally quiet for about 30 seconds. I pulled back from him and stroked his hair off his forehead and whispered, "Night night lovey. Have sweet dreams." He replied, "What's 12 and another 12? I can't remember, and we haven't done maths in AGES so it's not adding up right on the abacus in my head." I feel WEARY sometimes, and I feel guilty for that because it's TOTALLY AND UTTERLY A WONDERFUL THING that he's like this, learning and eager and never wanting to stop. I should embrace it every single second and give give give to him at every opportunity, no matter if it's starting to frazzle my brain or tire me out. I shouldn't think, "Oh please just STOP telling me facts! Please BE QUIET about the bowhead whale! I really just don't CARE any more about when Macedonia adopted its flag! NO MORE QUESTIONS, PLEASE!!!" And I certainly shouldn't think that on even a semi-regular basis. I feel guilty. But honestly it does drive me absolutely batty a lot of the time. He is so intense! Everybody comments on it, EVERYBODY. My dad says he's glad that Arthur is being homeschooled because he thinks Arthur would have a hard time from other kids at school, and be bored senseless in any case. That sounds a bit extreme but I believe he's right because it was my own experience and Arthur is uncannily like I was at his age, in the same ways too. My grandfather thinks Arthur is "exceptional" and therefore should have the benefit of being in school. *sigh* I think I am doing a good thing for him, and depsite my struggles with his intensity sometimes, I do love teaching him new things and hearing his enthusiastic chatter. I love seeing him learn and grow and change, and I consider it an incredible privilege to be the one to share it with him, to be involved entirely in every aspect of his learning. I would NEVER rather send him to school, even for the "break". I can't fathom having or even wanting a break, physically, from any of my kids! Mentally, maybe, for some quiet-head time, but I wouldn't want them away from me just for the sake of me. It seems sad to me when I hear mothers saying they don't know what to do with their kids because it's the school holidays, or bad weather - are they so unused to the constant company of their children?! How sad, if so! :( Or the other one about not being able to wait until school starts again so they don't have to have the constant company of their children! It seems almost universal too. I do not get that at all, and it makes me feel sad.
Samuel just woke for a feed and it's getting late now so I will have to stop. Oh but the other aspect of school this year is going to be Bible-based, and general focus on learning about God (and living for Him), and some Scripture memorisation too. I want to do much more than we managed to do last year, because it's more important than all the academic stuff put together. I'll also build in a part of our school morning for them to learn about anything they are interested in, since that seems to be going so well! I also want to start preschool as a regular block in the morning before school, with Nathan and Benjamin. Just motor skills and stuff like cutting, sticking, colouring, jigsaws, crafts, etc. I can't WAIT to really get stuck into school this year! Next year we'll start science, geography and history as subjects, definitely with a curriculum for science (I'm pretty set on Apologia Science so far but will wait to buy it until nearer the time, in case I find anything I somehow like better (but I doubt it!)), and maybe a curriculum for the others, if I find one I like. So far I think I may end up just doing geography and history "off the cuff" (!!) instead of from a curriculum, as I think that will suit us better. Music! That's the other thing! Oh but no time to talk about it now, tsk! Must go to bed!
Other things to mention another time (so I don't forget!):
* Photos! Loads to post.
* New vehicle! Trading in our Citroen C8 (7-seater minivan) for a Renault Trafic (9-seater minibus) NEXT WEEKEND!!!
* Benjamin's stuff - speech, mannerisms, sweet little habits, things he's doing now, etc. Loads of changes for little Benjaminny! Love that sweet little manny!
* Haircuts - just starting another round of much-needed haircuts! Have done Nathan's last week, and need to do the other three this week. Benjamin first (gulp! Not sure he'll tolerate it!) because his is actually getting in his eyes.
* More school-y waffle, hehe! Thoughts and plans and ideas! I'm just so excited about it!
* Neil's work - going well! Good things in the pipeline perhaps, too!
* Moving thoughts - we need to move this year.
* Just waffle about being Mummy to my five littlies :)
* Probably tons more but I am forgetting it all now. Must go to bed!
Hopefully I will update again soon!
Oh and thank you Annie for the links you keep posting! :) I DO like you to post them, and am definitely still interested in adoption blogs! Thanks for taking the time to tell me about them! I haven't looked them up yet but I will do!
It's Neil's birthday tomorrow, although he'll be at work. Today the three eldest boys each made a card for Daddy - Nathey is doing great with scissors and glue, I am noticing! A first for him today! We also made a birthday cake together in the afternoon, so it has been a fun day. Benjamin and Samuel took their naps - I have no choice but to make SURE they coincide, which is very helpful for the other three doing "big boy" activities while they sleep (and school, next week!). So tomorrow we'll do cake and presents at some crazy hour (7am? Earlier?!) before Neil has to go to work. He gets home right as they are about to get in bed, so it can't really be done then. It's a long day without Daddy for the boys :( But I hope he has a good birthday, and I'm glad he'll have cake to take with him! And the boys are SO excited! They love a birthday! :)
