Fitting FIVE boys into a 12x9ft bedroom!

We have finally moved Samuel into the boys' room, just last night. We were meant to do that earlier, but things kept putting it off! We really can't wait any longer, so I'm relieved that it's done! I have just 10 days to go until my due date! :)

So last entry I wrote belatedly about when we changed the room around to fit four little boys into a 12x9ft bedroom, and now it's time for the promised post with the photos of the new layout for 5 little boys, in their small bedroom. It's the bigger of our two bedrooms, so the only choice really! I am so pleased with how well they fit in, and how much play/storage space they have left with how small the room is, AND how much they all love it in there together! :)

First off, here are pictures of the room after the change-around, ready for the big day!

The bunks in the L-shape give soooo much more space to the room, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out! On the other wall you can see their double chest of drawers for their clothing, which I mentioned last entry. I did figure out storage for Samuel's clothing in the end. Those drawers used to hold the older 4 boys' clothes - one drawer per child - and the two drawers across the top were for their pyjamas. I discovered that Arthur and Matthew's pyjamas actually fit into their own drawers, so that made a top drawer available! :) Nathan and Benjamin have a lot more pyjamas than the older two, because of a million hand-me-downs mostly, so they needed the other top drawer to store their pyjamas in still.

So I changed the drawers around. They came with animal and fish drawer handles which were randomly placed, but I decided to pair them up to help the boys remember which drawers are which. In the photo above, I hadn't got round to doing that yet, so they're still randomly placed, but there's a photo I'll post in a minute of Samuel at the drawers where you can see what I'm talking about. I put the animals/fish in alphabetical order because I have a tendency to be a bit like that! ;)

So Arthur has the top drawer with the fish handles, then the other top drawer with mis-matched handles is the remaining pyjama drawer. Below Arthur's is Matthew's drawer with hippo handles, and next to it is Nathan's drawer with ladybirds. Then at the bottom, below Matthew's drawer is Benjamin's, with lion handles, and then Samuel's has starfish next to Benjamin's. I am pretty sure that if we ever store all SIX boys' clothing in these drawers, it will be totally feasible, and I will find another place to store pyjamas. I love the thought that we have this big chest of drawers with six drawers in it, and I might one day have a different child (of my own!)'s clothes in each one of those drawers! Precious! :)

On top of the chest of drawers, we put the Ikea storage unit that we bought at eBay recently. I am so excited about that piece of furniture, because they get bid on a LOT and are not that cheap. This one is in excellent condition and the previous owners happen to have chosen the exact colours for the storage boxes that we would choose to complement the boys' bedding set! Perfect. They had bought two units and bolted them together, one on top of the other, and although we had the option to undo their system and have them side-by-side, we actually wanted something just like this, so we kept it as they had. Even easier for us after purchasing it! We didn't have to build a thing, just brought it right in from the car and voila! It uses no extra space on top of an existing piece of furniture, which is definitely a big bonus.

Those drawers are so useful for storing quite a lot more stuff that we thought they would! The top unit has mostly clothing in - out of season clothes like bulky jumpers and gloves and hats, and also a big box for summer clothing. Some of the boys have summer clothes at the back of their own drawers, but the extras that won't fit, or things like beach-wear, are in the Ikea box. There are almost-ready-to-be-grown-into clothes for Nathan in one of the top green boxes, and another of those has alllll the underwear aged 3-5 for when he finally potty trains. He's 4 years and 4 months old and not potty trained yet. We have tried, and he is NOT ready, just like Matthew was not ready at this age. He will be though, and I'm happy not to push him for now. He is on new medication to help him with chronic constipation that has caused him a lot of trouble over the past couple of years, and it's FINALLY working well, so after that is settled down for a while, I think we'll have a better shot at potty training him later in the year.

Anyway! Getting off track! So those are the top drawers. One of the big boxes is empty, so there are still further storage possibilities! :)

The lower unit is at a more accessible level for the boys, and we have chosen to store some of their things in these boxes. These are things that they can play with when they come upstairs for Quiet Time - which is reserved only for the older 3 (ages 4 and up). The toys are ones that are suitable for that age-range and which we don't allow downstairs because of small parts for the little ones, so it makes it special for them to play with those upstairs and keeps the little ones safe at the same time. They play with these toys unsupervised, and do great. Here's a photo of the contents of their drawers in the bottom Ikea unit:

The green drawers contain Lego from various kits, a wooden farm set, and various build-it kits like Meccano. The bigger red drawers contain Lincoln Logs (two kits that I had shipped over from the States a few years ago - I love Lincoln Logs!), and then two drawers full of various jigsaw puzzles. Some are 45 pieces (Nathan works on this kind of size) and others are up to 200 pieces (Arthur's range). I think there's also a Logic Links game in there for Arthur, but in general, all the games are stored in the big cupboard that they're not allowed to go in. These drawers hold the things they're allowed to play with for Quiet Time, but they may take something else upstairs that they choose, or ask for something that's put away, like a specific game or more challenging puzzle (there are lots more puzzles in my room under my bed), if they like. They LOVE Quiet Time! :)

Here are some photos taken at bedtime last night, when they were all allowed upstairs to enjoy Samuel exploring the room! He couldn't keep still, and was so excited! He has been in there before at bedtime, but not for long before being whisked away (crying!) to be put to bed in my room. He loves being with his big brothers! Bedtime was 7pm but we knew it would be a good while before they were even ready to get into bed. We let them roam about, and Arthur asked if he could read them a bedtime story while Neil fixed the new safety gate to the bedroom doorway. I sat and watched them, and took photos, while Arthur read the story.

Matthew on his bed, wanting me to take his picture :) It looks as though the drawers are leaning out dangerously, but I promise they are straight against the wall! The camera did it! ;)

Arthur on his bed, asking, "Shall I read them Paddington?" He reads with a torch after the others are asleep, so he always has a book or two on his bed that he's in the middle of. I suggested he choose something else other than Paddington, because it's a bit grown-up for the littler ones and doesn't keep their attention for long!

He chose "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" in the end, and they really enjoy the Dr. Seuss books so they were thrilled! Nathey and Benji are so sweet in these photos, especially the smiley one! Ahhhh, love them soooo! :) Samuel usually sits to hear a story but was too busy wanting to explore the room this time!

Here are the boys in their beds, ready for the curtains to be closed! You can't see too clearly, but Nathan is in the far corner (that has been his bed for a long while now) with Samuel on his new big boy bed, crawling towards him - he could NOT stay still, lol! Benjamin's new bed is at the other end of Nathan's. They are little enough to top-and-tail, and very excited about sharing. Benjamin used to sleep in Samuel's bed on the floor, and he was the only one I had concerns about, whether he would miss his usual bed and feel funny about Samuel being there "in his place". But he was fine! He and Nathan slept really well there, and Benjamin seemed happy about being "moved up" and for Samuel to be in the bed he used to sleep in, so that's a relief!

I don't know what the time was when we closed the curtains and started trying to get them to sleep. It took a while! ;) But that was to be expected, and will probably be similar for maybe the first week. After that I am really hoping things will settle down and they will be used to bedtime. It might be that we have to stagger their bedtimes for a while if it doesn't. I recall doing that around the time that Samuel was born and for his first few months. Bedtime was crazy chaos otherwise, and the little two were so tired and ready for sleep, but the big two would keep them awake. So we took the little two to bed and once they were asleep, the big boys would go to bed. If Matthew was tired, he would go up with the little ones, on the understanding that he made NO noise in his bed while we did their bedtime stuff (back-rubs, breastfeed for Benjamin, etc.). Arthur is the only child in the family who really isn't a natural at sleep. He is restless in bed, his head whirls with thoughts all the time, and he isn't tired until quite late. I think he will be a natural night-owl type, like me, as he gets older. Matthew and Nathan in particular are the opposite, and always have been. They're always tired by bedtime, and go to sleep quickly and easily. Nathan will go to sleep within minutes, no matter how early he's put to bed! 6.30pm will do nicely for him if we are organised enough! He has always been a boy who needs his sleep, and took 2 naps a day still at 2 years old, when Arthur was giving up naps altogether!

Here are the "after" photos, taken with a flash once all the boys were asleep. I think I took these photos around 8.45pm. Nathan was asleep LONG before that, maybe an hour even, and Matthew not long after. I am not sure when Arthur dropped off. Benjamin didn't go to sleep while he was breastfeeding, so he took a while longer than usual, and Samuel was probably the last to go to sleep. He was too distracted to breastfeed for long with me in his bed, and wanted to crawl about and get out of his bed, etc. Neil walked him, which is what he usually does during the evenings if he wakes, and it works quickly. But he was distracted with me in the room, so in the end I went downstairs and he settled off to sleep on Neil, and then Neil put him on his new big boy bed!

My sweet little sleeping top-and-tail boys!

Tiny Samuel zonked out on his bed (never mind facing the wrong way! I moved him after the photos) with Nathey in the background.

The night went pretty well. They didn't wake during the evening, and Samuel stirred awake and fussed a little bit around midnight, so that was pretty good for the first evening. I kept my door open so I could hear anyone's wakings and come through to help if necessary. Usually I have the door shut AND a fan on in my room, so as to keep Samuel (who has been in my bed with me since he was born in it!) undisturbed by any wakings of the boys in the other room. It has meant I haven't been disturbed by sounds from the other bedroom as well, until last night. I don't like to shut them out though - I want to hear if they're okay in there! Neil is with them overnight, so I know they're okay, but I worry about my little ones when they first move away from Mummy's side, in case they miss me or get particularly upset. I will always go through and breastfeed anyone who is really distressed at night, and I wanted to be sure I could hear Samuel. It was a warm night in their room so the fan went through to them in any case, so I didn't have it in with me.

Samuel woke and cried 4 or 5 times in total, and I woke each and every time. I nearly went through once because he had only just gone back to sleep from the last waking, and I was wondering if he was feeling sad. But he was settling quickly with Neil giving him a cuddle or a drink, so in the end it was okay and I didn't need to go through. Neil wanted me NOT to come in if at all possible, because he wanted to start as he meant to go on, if you know what I mean. He thought it would just prolong the wakefulness if I went in - something we've found at times with our previous little ones. I found it a bit difficult and heart-wrenching though! :( And OH how I missed my baby next to me at night! It is supposed to be a lovely free feeling to walk into one's own bedroom and potter about at a late hour, and then get into one's own bed and stretch about and not worry about disturbing anyone, not have little feet in my face an hour after I got to sleep, and not be woken to breastfeed or say, "It's too early darling, lie down!" for the fifteenth time, but I felt no such relief. I was looking out of the window just enjoying the night air and thinking, and I just realised that I don't NEED or even desire that kind of respite at all. I know some will say that I've only got like 10 days or something until that small window of a break is over and I have another little person in my bed to nurse and change and settle all night for the forseeable future (another 16-or-so months?). I see the rationality of that. But I don't feel it. I don't need it. I don't even want it. There are some exasperating nights when somebody small is really fretful or seems to wake every 30 minutes all night long when I'm tiiiiiired out and wanting a break from it all. Early wakings every single day, or those times when a little one is about to do something new and wakes for a block of 2-3 hours for several nights running to process his thoughts on the matter - those are frustrating and tiring times! But even thinking about those times, I really really REALLY don't desire a break, even now I've got one. I was so sad going to bed without Samuel there, knowing it was a real milestone moment, because that's IT. No going back. 16 and a half months of sleeping next to him since he arrived, has ended, and there won't be even one more night of it now that it's finished. It's permanent, and that season with him has suddenly passed. I know there are more seasons, each so precious, to come for him, and I'm glad and excited about that, but I do somewhat mourn the loss of the last one - that particular season from birth to "I'm about to be a big brother!!" is soooooo precious, and I cherish it so dearly. It isn't affected at all by the fact that I'm about to be blessed (and I do mean BLESSED) to experience the whole thing again with another sweet baby boy. It's THIS boy I'm moving on with, and THIS boy's company that I will miss! He was such a sweet little bed-fellow - my easiest of all the boys so far. *sigh* I do love that baby beep!

I had trouble with restless legs last night as usual, but it was a bit easier to get to sleep knowing I could fling myself about the bed as much as needed without waking Samuel up. I could also change ends if it helped, or open my window, etc. At one point in the night Benjamin and Samuel woke up at the same time - I think Samuel cried and that woke Benjamin, and he was a bit upset about it. I was worried about that before the big move! But Neil told me that Samuel was fine sitting on his bed for a moment while he tucked Benjamin back in, and then went back to Samuel to give him a cuddle, and both boys went back to sleep, so that's MUCH better than we'd anticipated. I hope it continues that way, and that if Samuel wakes, the boys will quickly get used to his sounds and sleep through them, like they have when Nathan moved in, and then Benjamin. I got up when they all did this morning, about 5.30 or so, and when they were all settled downstairs I went back to bed. I'm so glad for the weekend because I have become very sleep deprived with insomnia and other pregnancy-related fun, so the weekend thankfully offers me a chance to catch up a bit, and Neil is wonderful and lets me take advantage of that.

Samuel still napped in my bed with me today. I am not sure what to do about his naps, and I'm not sure about the safety gate on the bedroom door either.... We need it there when he's in the room, to keep him from coming out near the stairs, but it's IN the doorway (it's pressure fitted, so it can be removed whenever) so the door can't be closed. But when some of the boys are up early in the morning and others remain sleeping (read: Arthur!), we HAVE to close the door so they are not woken by the boys' sounds downstairs, and now that means taking the gate off, which is a bit of a faff. Also if Samuel naps in there during the day, he will need the door closed as well, otherwise he'll never sleep through the sounds downstairs, and that means he won't have the safety gate on. The bedroom door is easily pushed open, so even when it's closed, it's not safe for him without a safety gate. Hmmm.... Right now he can continue to nap in my bed, but when Elijah arrives that's it for naps in my room, so we need to think of a solution.

Anyway, hooray, the long-awaited transition has been done, and the boys are all doing fine. Mummy is a bit sad and wistful! But she always is at times like these! ;) At least I did not cry about it, like I have done with some of my others when they moved out of my room/bed. I am MUCH closer to giving birth than I ever have been before when we've done this, so maybe it gives me a focus and that helps. Talking of which, while the boys are at the park with Neil, I now need to go and see what I can check off on my "To Do Before Baby" list! There is still plenty to do. I have flapjacks baking in the oven, and pizza dough rising. They have no idea I've done those things and will be THRILLED when they get home all tired and hungry. My boys LOVE my homemade pizza (it's Nathan's favourite food!) and flapjacks! :)

Benjaminny, and a few other bits and pieces

I can't believe he will be 3 in July! Of course July feels like ages away, because it's still like WINTER outside this week (tsk!) and there's the whole add-a-new-member-of-the-family thing between now and then. But it's only 3 months! My little manny is somehow two and three-quarters! I have about 5,000 paragraphs of sweetness that I could happily sit and write about Benjamin this morning. But whatever I type has to last the length of a cup of tea, while the boys build a Winnie the Pooh fort of some kind in the living room, and then I need to take sweet Samley to bed. I really should write an update on just random stuff about Samuel too, because I know I haven't done that when typing "Samley" is a new thing, even though that's what I call him about as often as "Samuel". I wish I had more tiiiiime to write these special memories down!

He's so giggly and assertive and chunky around the chest (since he was born - he has some really defined chest muscles, this boy!) and snuggly. He is usually being a little "cweature" who squeaks and makes cute faces and wants his mummy! He snuggles such a lot, and still breastfeeds in the day time. If he has a nightmare (rare) I will nurse him at night on occasion too. He is SO PRECIOUS!!!!! I love my little Benjamoo.

I just planned to post two things about Benjamin today, so I'll get on with it! A couple of weeks ago, Benjamin and I made brownies - actually Nathan did as well, but Samuel was napping and the older two boys were experiencing the consequences of poor behaviour choices by sitting in corners, so they missed out unfortunately! Nathan did not want to taste the batter, when the brownies were in the oven, so he went out of the kitchen, and Benjamin gladly took on the whole responsibility of cleaning the bowl! ;) He LOVES anything sweet and was very pleased with the batter! He made me laugh because the more he tasted, the more giggly and silly he got! It was almost as though it went to his head or something, lol! I took some photos of my sweet silly boy tasting brownie batter. He was showing me his "taste" on his finger and then eating it while giggling like crazy around his finger! ;) He eventually gave up on the slow scooping method, and started licking the bowl, hehehe! He got brownie batter in his hair big time. Sweet in even more ways! :)











The other night I got into his bed to breastfeed him. He sleeps on a shorty mattress on the floor underneath Matthew's cabin bed. We decided on that when he moved out of his cot, as a makeshift "bunk bed" that would be safe for him with nowhere to fall out of bed. It's a full sized cabin bed width-ways but shorter by about 6 inches (or is 9?). Anyway, we found it on eBay. Did I ever post pics? The big bunk bed is still there and the cabin bed matches it exactly - it was a great find! :) They've been happily installed there since May 2011. Arthur is on the top of the main bunk bed, Nathan below him, Matthew on the top of the cabin bed, and Benjamin below. I found the photos that I took in May, but Blogger is being extremely annoying and refusing to let me open any picture files to upload right now! >:-/ So I can't do that, but I will try to find time to update on the bedroom changes, since I can't find any evidence of having posted about it here before now!

Anyway, so the routine at bedtime is still that I get into Benjamin's bed and breastfeed him. He nearly always falls asleep nursing, which is precious, and I cherish it because I know it won't last much longer! He loves his milky. After he's asleep, I go to Nathan who has usually already fallen asleep, and kiss him goodnight. If he's still awake I get in with him to snuggle him and give him "back-a-rubs" as he calls them! :) Then Matthew, then Arthur, except now that I'm huge and pregnant, the boys who are up ladders have to come down onto the futon bed on the floor (where Neil sleeps for ease of dealing with night-wakings and less disturbance to his sleep than if he was co-sleeping with Samuel and me) for their snuggles. I pray for each boy as I do their snuggles and back-rubs.

Anyway, the other night I got into Benjamin's bed with him as usual, and he didn't go straight to breastfeed, which surprised me. He was just looking at me with a little smile in the semi-darkness, big round eyes all shiny. He looked so happy and secure, and it was wonderful to see him look at me that way. I waited and he didn't do anything different for a few moments, and then in a soft little voice, he patted me and then himself, saying, "Das you, an' das me!" I said, "Yes, that's right." and he said it again, almost to himself, "Das you... an' das me", did a big happy sigh, and lay down to nurse. Typing it out, it doesn't seem so special as it was, but I HAD to record it somewhere because to me that was an absolute Memory Treasure. It was an example of Benjamin expressing his security in our sitation. Him and Mummy. He looked so happy with the world around him, and his voice was so soft and.... something, I can't put my finger on. It was a lovely moment and I don't want to forget it.

He has so very many cute little sayings and ways of pronouncing things, and I SO want to make note of them all! I haven't got time now, but my current favourite is, "I 'pose so, Mummy..." when considering something I've suggested, usually when it's not what he originally agreed with. I love his use of the phrase, "I suppose so" and his way of pronouncing it. He uses such a grown-up, serious expression when he says it, and it's a moment to support him in his seriousness, but I have to work hard to fight the urge to sweep him up off his feet and smoosh his soft little cheeks with kisses for 5 straight minutes! ;) He's such a cutie pea pie and I love him so much!

He has a strong and assertive personality, most similar to Arthur's (out of all the boys) but without the tendency to be anxious and fretty and fidgetty that Arthur has. He is very confident and takes charge easily amongst his brothers. I could see that in him even when he was a baby, well before he was old enough to act on that potential with them! ;) He DOES have typical shyness of new people though, but warms up quite quickly now - much quicker than he used to. He is TERRIFIED of dogs. Shaking, sweating, screaming, TERRIFIED. Of even the tiniest dog in the distance. He even gets like that on occasion when he sees a dog on the TV, so it's more than the anxiety one or two of the boys have had over dogs at the park. Dogs do bound up to them and act playful at the park, and Benji has had a few experiences where he was totally taken by surprise, and once a dog bigger than him pushed him down and even with Neil there shooing it, it would not go away until the owner (SLOWLY) sauntered over and took it. He is so very scared of them now, poor lovey. We have been considering getting a dog to help him with his fear, but the thought of adding a pet with lots of care needs to a large bunch of very young children plus homeschooling is overwhelming right now. Also we need to ascertain if anyone in our household is allergic to dogs before we do that. Neil is allergic to cats (since we met actually, he wasn't when we first met) and has various other triggers to his asthma and hayfever that we don't even know the source of, so it's possible I guess. We've never been in a home where there's a dog, or spent any time with a dog, so I suppose we don't know if any of the boys might be allergic either. But the general thought amongst us all is that we will probably get a dog at some point in the future. The boys actually think it's a great idea, even though all of them are nervous to varying degrees about dogs.

With his assertive personality, Benjamin also tends to be pretty in-our-faces with grumpiness or defiance when he disobeys us. He has phrases like, "I not listnin'!!" with his hands covering his ears and his best frown on. He has been saying, "Stupid Mummy!" a lot in recent months, when he's cross with me, but I've noticed he hasn't said that much these past few weeks, since I have been RIGHT on him to discipline every time he does it. He is sweet-natured in general and loving and kind towards his brothers. He is very concerned when somebody is sad or hurt, and tries to make them better, as all of them do.

I love his little chipmunky voice and the little quirks and mannerisms of his speech, different from all the others because they are unique to him. I can't even get those across in type, so I will have to try to take some video of him to record it for prosperity. Our "video" is a fairly basic point-and-shoot camera and the audio is really poor. Even right up close, the sound is distant and fuzzy, which is such a shame. Our really old point-and-shoot camera that finally died when Nathan was born, had a MUCH better microphone and their little voices were crisp and clear when recorded with that. Oh well.

Benjamin knows his numbers but not letters, though he holds up our fridge magnet letters on a daily basis at the moment and asks me, "What this one?" over and over, and I tell him. I don't know if he's retaining any though - I guess he must be to some degree? He's only 2, and my 2, 3 and 4 year olds learn through osmosis generally, now that I have two homeschooling at school age. I don't task myself at ALL with teaching the littler ones anything at all. I provide activities that they might learn from but they are meant to be independent activities for the most part. They're fine. Nathan learned his numbers and some phonics sounds without any attention on it from me, as Matthew began his school lessons last year. But I have no concerns with a 5-year-old knowing absolutely NOTHING of numbers or phonics or letters when they start school. The curricula we have are excellent and they'll pick it up in no time when they're old enough to actually do school work. Before that, it's play play play and stimulating activities. If they learn as they go, great! If not, no big deal. They are learning though! :)

One thing we do as a group is Bible time at the beginning of school every day. It's first because God is first. We are in Romans now - a chapter a day straight from the Bible. We started with Matthew's gospel at the beginning of the New Testament. After the chapter, we do Bible Memory Verses. We have a system, which I think I mentioned before but have no time to check/link right now. They have learned a lot of verses. We never do a verse or two. They learn whole passages, and with ease too. People usually assume little children (or even older ones) are only up to the task of a single line to memorise as far as Bible verses go, and think it's amazing when they do! They can learn SO MUCH MORE. I have taken a few videos of Arthur and Matthew reciting their memory verses, quite a while ago so I haven't got record of their more recent ones, and again - no time to find and post right now! What I really want to do is get Benjamin on video, but it's hard to clearly understand his pronunciation and he sometimes just acts silly when he's being videoed! ;)

He has learned the whole of Psalm 1 - probably about 8 months ago, just after turning two, and since our system means we go over ones we've already learned regularly, I have him repeat that quite often. He knows it well, but mumbles a lot of the words together. If I can help him say the words clearer then perhaps I'll video him doing it. He LOVES saying it! Nathan won't join in at all, though he sits with us, but Benjamin has been eager for his turn since he was tiny and not really able to say stuff yet!

Arthur and Matthew can recite Psalm 23, Psalm 121, Psalm 1, Psalm 100, Psalm 9:1-2, and then shorter ones that we started with at the beginning - Romans 8:28, Philippeans 2:14 and Ephesians 6:1-3. We are about to start Philippeans 4:4-9 because it's such a useful passage to have in your head when you need it, about anxiety and worry. Arthur knows some of it already because I use it to help him when he is having trouble with panic or anxiety. He has some issues - I haven't had chance to write about it, but yeah. He's very like me, unfortunately! Poor boy with his genes! He's phobic about vomiting and has many many other frets and worries. It's a personality thing, and my mum and I are the same way. Overcoming it is such a HUGE battle, and it's the single most complicating factor in my entire life, not easy to live with. I don't want that for Arthur! :( But I am praying for him and trying to help him, and at least I understand him.

Anyway, getting off-topic and taking too much time on the computer now, so I will stop! Must get my little tiny to bed - he is stumping around on his sweet little toddly leggies right now, with a pirate hat on his head that is way too big, saying, "Maowwww? Maowww?" because when I say the word "cat" he says "maowww?" in such a cute little high-pitched baby voice, associating cat with meowing. He hasn't cottoned on yet that hat isn't the same as cat! ;) It sounds the same, I can see his reasoning! Cute little beep! Going to snatch him up and try not to eat him on the way to bed now :)

An attempt to catch up! :S

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! :)

Huge boy-related update!

So. Very. Bad! Probably my longest break from updating my blog yet! And completely unintentional - just time ran away from me and I didn't get around to updating. I can't believe the last time I updated was mid-August! Now it's mid-October, and I have a LOT to catch up on here! I will have to TRY to make it as brief and bullet-point-y as possible, otherwise I'll do myself a disservice and stay up too late (yet again!).

Let's see, last time I updated, Benjamin was 13 months old. He has changed a lot since the summer, even though we're not really all that far into autumn (or so it feels!). At the end of August I finally gave him his first haircut! I was so nervous to do it because I just knew he would constantly be whipping his head this way and that, and trying to brush away the scissors or comb with his hands. So in the end, I nursed him to sleep on my bed for his nap a little later than usual so that he was REALLY tired, and as soon as he was asleep, I cut his hair while he lay on my bed! He was so fast asleep, he didn't even stir when I rolled him onto his sides to do the sides of his hair, or even right onto his front so I could see if the back was even, hehe! He had no idea he had a haircut and I kept all the cut parts of his hair between thumb and forefinger so that it didn't sprinkle all over the bed or him, as I cut it. I was pretty pleased with it, for a first haircut, and a lying-down one at that! Here's his "before" photo the day before (looking rather serious demolishing the clean laundry pile!):



And here he is an hour or so after waking from his "haircut" nap! Cute little manny!



His hair is ready for another cut now though. It's over his ears and down to over his eyebrows, so I need to get brave and do it again! All the boys are really needing haircuts at the moment, especially Arthur and Matthew, who had theirs done last before Nathan and Benji did. Must get around to that soon before I forget what their eyes look like, hehe!

Benjamin's personality and character have just been SHINING through over these last couple of months - more so each week that passes, it seems. I just love this stage of baby/toddlerhood! I am SO enjoying getting to know him - and he's a special little man for sure! Different yet again from any of the other boys. Benjamin is so self-assured and confident. He's very like Arthur in that respect, though he has also had the crying with strangers thing that most babies do (but which Arthur never did). He is still big for his age, and beginning to close the gap on tiny Nathey-noo, who remains as teeny as they come for HIS age! ;) He is verbal and physical, almost equally, assertive and lightning quick to pick up anything new and retain it for next time. He is absolutely on a level with his brothers, never mind the age difference, lol! No bossing this baby around - he holds his own and we are having to teach him no hitting, and enjoying some pretty assertive tantrums lately when he does not get his own way! He's such a strong little character, and I am so very excited to learn more about Benjamin as he grows older! I have a feeling he is going to be very challenging and VERY rewarding to parent and teach. He is also affectionate, cuddly and cute as a button! He snuggles frequently, still breastfeeds on demand during the day, and has recently nightweaned without too much trauma. NOT his choice, but necessary now, in preparation for the new baby! He has dropped to one nap a day, and on quite a lot of occasions has gone without one altogether. He gets too tired that way but still manages the day okay, and goes out like a light at bedtime whilst breastfeeding. His one nap takes place late morning at the moment, which is fine as it doesn't alter bedtime!

Benjamin is all about his FOOD! So different to my last toddler! He has been that way from the start though - my only baby to never choke on my fast let-down as a newborn. I remember being so surprised about how he somehow knew to go very still and let his mouth fill, and then swallow - how he knew to do that and never choked?! He also nursed without a break the night he was born. He didn't sleep or come off the breast once! Again that was a first for one of my babies! NOW I know him better and it makes perfect sense, lol! He can wake from a deep sleep and be eating lunch or breakfast (still swaying!) in his booster seat within 60 seconds! And eat WELL too. Nathan can't eat when he's sleepy, and sometimes it takes an hour or so for his tummy to wake up enough to eat. Benjamin is the exact opposite! If it's vaguely near a meal time, or he sees the kitchen gate open, even if we're still carrying him downstairs from his nap, he will immediately point and make urgent sounds towards the kitchen. He can eat a full meal right from sleep. He is beginning to get fussier about what he eats, as they all have after they turn one, but he eats plenty. He enjoys lunch and breakfast the most, and is picky in general about dinner options. I never know whether he'll eat it or throw it. *sigh* We are working on the throwing thing (he knows full well that he's not to do it, even at this age, believe me!). He loves cream cheese sandwiches and Nutella sandwiches, cheese of any sort, yoghurt and raisins, etc. He has supersonic hearing and can hear us quietly mention the word "Smarties" or "cake" even in hushed tones with loud play around him, I kid you not. He will drop whatever he's doing and appear at the kitchen gate looking hopeful, saying, "Gake?" or "Mar-bee?" (that's "Smartie", just so you know!). He adores the occasional treat of either one of those things. Right now Matthew is still potty training (starting to poo in the toilet, yaaaaaay!) and getting Smarties as rewards. Benjamin gets very upset about not receiving a Mar-bee every time Matthew gets one! ;) Full-on tantrum style!

His words are uncountable now. He didn't slow down with his talking at all while he learned to walk. He's walking EVERYWHERE and practising speed walking round and round in circles. He walks well in shoes outside, has begun to break into a funny little bobbly speed-walk in the house as he tries his very best to run about with the boys, and can pivot and dart very quickly in different directions during chasing games. HOW this boy loves to be chased! :) He's adventurous and a very typically rough-and-tumbly boy, and delights in being tickled, eaten (playfully of course!) or chased. He squeals and giggles the whole time. He entertains the other boys SO much now. They often just take a seat at the side of the living room and watch him for like 15 minutes at a time, just laughing and laughing at his antics and encouraging him to do more! They love watching him speed-walk in circles, crawl on hands and feet shovelling the ground with his forehead (I know, he's a funny one!), and pretend to spin around till he's dizzy by standing on the spot, swinging his torso about and shaking his head like crazy, hehehe! He's such an entertaining little boy - I love seeing it all emerge and the boys are having so much fun with him. He likes an audience, and the audience likes him right back!

He makes lots of animal noises now - my favourite is the sheep because instead of a flat "baa" sound like my other little ones used to make, he actually does such a cute little chipmunky "baa" with a tiny tremor to the sound, to make a real bleat!!! Sooooooo adorable, and I'm frustrated that I still haven't managed to catch it on camera! My camera batteries died (the small one that can take video) after his birthday and it has taken me till September to recharge them and use it again! Tsk! Anyway, he's fascinated with it and stops whatever he was doing to reach out and touch the camera or walk towards it, so it's hard to capture him doing cute things! I did manage to capture him walking at the beginning of October (a couple of weeks ago). I put a few little snippets of him walking together into one video. It was QUIET here while he was walking. One of the snippets was taken while Arthur and Matthew were upstairs playing (they are increasingly being allowed to now, so long as they don't get into mischief) so it was very quiet downstairs with just Nathey and Benjamin! The other times the boys were being unnaturally quiet - don't get any false impressions with this video! ;) They were reading and Nathan was playing with the baby boy doll that I dug out again recently. Benjamin LOVES that doll and gives it kisses constantly, calling it "beh-bee" (which he also says now when he pats my ever-expanding bump - so cute!). Here's the video clip to show you how well he was walking only a month after starting. I posted this one at Facebook already, so some of you have already seen it:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I so rarely see him crawl any more! :( He crawls when he's playing on the floor with the boys, but then so do they if it's easier to stay down there with the cars and Duplo and things rather than keep getting up and walking a foot or so and then getting back down on all fours again! ;)

Here are some more photos of Benjaminny from September:

With his brothers just before bedtime on the "temporary sofa"! We got rid of our sofa and armchair at last - part of my plan to maximise the space in the living room and improve the living conditions in there too, hehe! In the meantime we put a single futon mattress down and covered it with a blanket, so the boys could sit along it to "read" stories, as they like to at random many times a day. Benjamin has really started to join in with this kind of activity and turns the pages in a book excitedly, squealing out the few words he knows for the pictures he sees as he goes along, gasping with surprise at things, and pointing enthusiastically! It's so sweet! He wasn't doing that in this picture, but I love it because this is a snapshot of Benjamin's personality. He's so happy and mischievous and gleeful just about all the time, full of enthusiasm for life. I LOVE this little boy who is emerging from my baby boo! :)



Yes, he loves Nathan's monkey. LOVES him. Nathey is very gracious and lets him cuddle Monkey, kiss Monkey, hold Monkey, etc most of the times he wants to. If Nathan is crying about something, Benjamin will toddle over to him looking so concerned and serious, and bring Monkey with him, trying to press him into Nathan's lap or hands. Beyond precious, I tell you. I love seeing their hearts for each other even while they're still so little. Except when they're being mean to each other, of course! ;)

A random few photos of Benjamin playing - loving lining cars up and pushing them around like his brothers:



Something he does a LOT - seeing something out of the window and pointing (he uses his pointy finger much more now though. A month ago he would use his whole hand to point). He usually sees birds or cars, and points, saying, "CAR!" or "BUR!" and engaging me with this very look. He will repeat and hold his position as many times as necessary for me to actually pay attention! ;)



Playing with a sleepsuit on his head, for some reason! Another thing the boys love to see him doing! ;)



In September we went to Box Hill in Surrey for the day with Neil's brother and sister. They live fairly near to us and we all drove to one central point to meet up and enjoy each other's company and a nice walk. The weather turned out to be lovely, and the boys were very excited to spend time with their cousins (Ella who is now 5, and Emily who is 2). We had a lovely time, though I couldn't walk far without my pelvis hurting and my bump feeling too tight, so I sat down and took some pictures. I tried to walk with everyone because I didn't want to be a party pooper and sit out from all the fun activity! That evening I didn't feel well and had closely spaced regular Braxton Hicks contractions for hours. So I am not being very active now in my pregnancy (31 weeks now already!!!!) because if I do then I regret it - my uterus seems quite easily irritable this pregnancy and I've had other evenings after doing too much in the house since then, where I've had strong (even painful) Braxton Hicks contractions coming ever 2-3 minutes for many hours straight. So I am having to be careful and not be too active.

Here are some of the photos I took at Box Hill! :)




I loved these next couple of photos! The little ones were learning about bugs and insects under logs and bark. My BIL would roll back big logs and the kids would crowd round to peer at the little creatures scuttling underneath. They peeled back the rotting bark on a log, and I took a few photos. I found it so funny to watch them, because all my boys were, although fascinated, rather squeamish! They stood at arms length or poked with sticks, while the girls casually scooped creepy crawlies onto their hands and examined them on their palms in a very relaxed manner, hehe!





Little Benjamin sat in the pushchair for the walk part of the outing. When we stopped to look at things, he fidgetted, so I gave him my water bottle to keep him busy for a minute. (Oooh, Samuel has hiccups! They are blipping away quite sharply in my pelvis on my left side! I can't WAIT to meet this sweet little one!!) I took some photos of him sitting there with my water bottle:

There was only a tiny bit left....



But he soon figured out something he could do with it....



"Uh-oh Mummy...."



Sweet cheeky little treasure! :)




Little Nathan having a serious discussion with his uncle! They were like that chatting for such a long time, and looked so relaxed together that I couldn't resist a photo after a while.



My sweet little 2-year-old! :)



I'm trying to think how Nathan is doing - there must be some news to report since August! He seems so tiny and young still, MUCH more so than my previous 2 1/2 year olds have done. He carries his beloved Blankie and Monkey everywhere around the house, and is very attached to them, especially Blankie (a yellow cot-sized flannelette sheet). We have lots of Blankies so that's a relief, and they're easy to come by, but only one Monkey! We never take Monkey out of the house for this reason - he stays behind to sleep a lot, because he's the type of monkey who needs lots of sleep. ;) Nathan is fine with this, thankfully!

Nathey talks on a level with the older boys, uses long words and complicated sentences, and pronounces things well and clearly. But his voice is SO TEENY and chipmunky still!! I LOVE this about him! Any question we ask that requires a detailed answer (ones which start with "Why...?" for example) is met with a response starting with, "That's because...." and then a long explanation :) A month or so ago I noticed him talking with ease using various tenses in the same discussion, and I can't remember that from before so perhaps he had newly "got" that concept? He was talking about "he was" and "they were" and "we will". He has used all of those for a long time, but often he would get the context wrong or the tense wrong, and then suddenly started using them correctly this summer.

He has finally finished getting his two-year-old molars (no trauma whatsoever, weirdly!) and now has all of his baby teeth. He still drools and chews his fingers though, for some reason! He does not bite his fingernails, which his older brothers were doing by his age, so hopefully he won't at all! He is cute and cuddly and affectionate, and has the squishiest little round tummy I ever did squeeze! He can be very serious and if he sees other children messing about and having "silly" fun out and about, he will go very serious and quiet and not want to join in. He tells me they are being silly! At Box Hill, he was very taken with my BIL (Neil's sister's husband) and sat on his lap for ages looking at a stick collection they'd made, while the others ran about playing football and things. Neil's brother was resting on the grass with his hat over his eyes, and I heard my BIL whisper to Nathan that he could go up to Uncle Ian and tickle him if he wanted to! Nathan's face was such a picture, hehehe! He looked HORRIFIED at such an idea and insisted that it wouldn't be right to do such a thing! Funny sweet little boy! :) Of course right then, Arthur and Ella (the cheekiest pair of 5-year-olds I ever did see) ran up and BIL repeated the same suggestion to them. Their eyes lit up and within 5 seconds (no exaggeration), they were both sitting on poor Uncle Ian's tummy, working as a team to gleefully tickle him to death! Nathan watched them looking very unimpressed, hehe!

On the other hand, he is often the silliest boy in my house on any given day when we're home. He initiates silly games and puts on silly voices, does silly walks to make the boys laugh, tackles family members and plays lots of rough-and-tumble with his brothers, so I have no idea why he's sometimes so serious in other settings!

He is increasingly stubborn and tests the boundaries a lot lately, though it's just a stage he's reached more than anything else. We most definitely don't put up with that, but I can see that it's a stage more than emerging personality, if that makes sense. Nathan is very laid-back and quite shy. He still cries and freaks out if anyone unfamiliar approaches him to talk or ask him to do something he doesn't want to do. He is finally perfectly happy with absolutely anyone in our own home - door-to-door salesmen, family members, friends visiting that he has never met before, etc. But out and about it's different. We went to the dentist this week and he had a humongous melt-down when it came to his turn. We had been preparing him for ages, reading stories like "Topsy and Tim go to the dentist" (which he loves - he loves all the Topsy and Tim books!) and he knew a lot about what to expect. He watched me have a check-up, and then Matthew and Arthur being very good and calm having their check-ups (no cavities, yay!) and then when the focus went on him he couldn't handle it, poor lovey. He screamed like he was terrified, even sitting on my lap, and covered his mouth with both hands, crying that he just wanted to get out of here! So, no check-up for Nathan. Hopefully when we go back for another round of check-ups in 6 months he will be in a better place to allow that kind of thing! We took all the boys to the opticians for their first eye-tests today, and Nathan did the same thing there too, so we had to abandon ship for his appointment. Benjamin, on the other hand, walked right up to the optometrist, engaged him with babble, pointed excitedly at various things in the room and tried to say the words for them, and gasped with eager excitement when the guy handed him a little vision test card! He stared at it with bugging eyes for a moment, held in his little hands, and then looked up at him and said, "Guh! Doh! Gih-GUH!" If only he had the words to communicate, he would SO have taken an eye test today, lol! He's so confident and enthusiastic, and wants to try EVERYTHING and engage everybody. Soooo in contrast to little Nathey, it's funny. Not always ha-ha funny either - sometimes I feel a bit sad for Nathan because I don't want him to be overshadowed by bold brothers embracing life, both older and younger, while he struggles somewhat. I hope he doesn't find it difficult to see Benjamin really stepping out in this way these last few weeks.

I'm so grateful to my sweet online friend, Grace, for blogging about one of her boys' eye appointments, and encouraging others to get their little ones' eyes checked and not wait! I had not really given it much thought until then, and I made appointments for them right away after I read her post. I'm thankful that Arthur and Matthew have healthy eyes and good eyesight for now! They are both slightly long-sighted, as the optometrist told me that young children naturally are until their eyes stop growing around age 8. They are both NOT as long-sighted as he would expect to see at their ages though, so he feels that it's likely they will end up short-sighted before their teens. I fully expected that because both Neil and I are really short-sighted and needed glasses around age 10-12 for the first time.

The only slight bummer was that it seems as though Matthew may well be colour blind. My brother is colour blind (red/green) and my mum and her sister are carriers (it's carried on the X-chromosome) - my cousin is colour blind too. Soooo all this time I have never known whether I picked the X from my mum that has the colour blindness gene on it, or the other one! And then having all these BOYS (boys are the ones affected, girls are only carriers unless they have a colour-blind father AND a carrier mother, which is rare), I worried that if I had that gene they would ALL end up colour blind or something! But, Arthur knew 11 colours with ease by 19 months old so I felt pretty sure he was not. Matthew was much later to be sure about his colours, but he can still tell me what's green and what's red without trouble. But then again, so can my brother.... Nathan has picked up his colours easily and younger than Matthew did, so I'm HOPING he is not colour blind, but it doesn't follow that he wouldn't be just because he learned his colours well or early. I had let myself become too confident that I hadn't got my mum's X-chromosome with the colour blindness gene on it. So it was sort of sad today when Matthew quickly identified the numbers on those bubble pictures when they were blue and yellow, but could not seem to see them on the red and green pictures :( The optometrist switched to mazes instead of numbers, for Matthew to trace his finger on (red maze on a green background, for example), and he couldn't follow the line :( The optometrist said that he'd see them again in 2 years and by then he would be able to be absolutely sure about whether Matthew is colour blind or not, but he suspects he is.

Soooo I did get the gene to carry after all, and I have FIVE little boys, all of whom have a 50% chance of being colour blind. They either take my affected X-chromosome, or the other one. Thankfully Arthur is not colour blind! :) I so hope Nathan, Benjamin and Samuel somehow defy the odds and can see colour normally. My brother reminded me on the phone tonight that out of all the genetically inherited "defects", colour blindness is the BEST one to have! ;) He says you never know any different, and the only thing it affects is career choices (same as the optometrist told me) - Matthew can not be an electrician, and he would find graphic design tricky, but otherwise it should not affect anything. Bennie has always asked us which crayon or pencil is green and which is red, if he can't tell. He can tell red from green but it's the subtler shades that he can't tell apart. Anyway, it's NOT really bad news at all. I wish he could be an electrician if he wanted to! Silly thought, but no mama wants to think her child must be restricted in any way, however slight.

They were such good boys at the dentist and opticians! Matthew was so brave and went first when Arthur would not at the dentist. I saw that he didn't want to, but suddenly he straighted himself up, puffed out his chest and marched up to the chair and climbed onto it! He made the decision to be brave and DO it, and I was so proud of him!

What else with the boys? It's getting way too late and this post is already too long, but I have just got SO much to write about, and I don't want to miss stuff in case I have another long break without meaning to! I need all this precious stuff recorded somewhere so that I don't forget it! Oh - Nathan has stopped napping in the day. He really still needs a nap. REALLY. But he resists it a little - not a lot - and then when he has a nap he stays up too late in the evening not able to sleep, and the accumulated sleep over the 24-hour period is actually less in total than when he doesn't nap and conks out within minutes of going to bed at 6.30 or 7pm! He only naps for an hour or so when he does, but then he's up at least 2 hours past his bedtime as a result, and gets up at the same early time as always in the morning. So we are just avoiding putting him down for a nap these days. If he asks and it's a good time for him to nap, he will go and take one, but that doesn't happen often. More often, when he DOES nap, it's during the afternoon where he lays himself down on the futon in the living room with his Monkey and Blankie, and falls asleep. Or while I'm reading him stories - again in the afternoon when he's tired. He IS too tired in the afternoon without a nap, and can get kind of cranky, but he generally doesn't fall asleep and manages okay. He sleeps better at night without the nap.

The first week or so that he did not regularly take a nap, he was pretty cranky and had lots of meltdowns. That week we were undertaking some big projects in the house like storing or laying laminate floor (that I won second hand and CHEAP therefore!) on eBay, or switching the boys from the smaller bedroom to the bigger one (I'm in the smaller one with Benjamin now) in preparation for Samuel's arrival and so that Benjamin can move in with the bigger boys soon too. The 3 older boys and Neil spent TWO WEEKS sleeping down on the living room floor on their mattresses while the whole house was in horrible disarray:



I did not cope with this at ALL well, hormonally speaking, and it's the only time in my whole pregnancy that I have had some major hormonal sobbing and crying, and feeling unwell and contracting regularly in the evenings. MUCH better once we'd finally got the floor laid with help from a sweet school friend of mine and her very DIY-handy boyfriend! And the boys' room sorted, of course, so that they could move back upstairs at night! :) So it was very hard for Nathan to get his naps while all that went on, and it turned out that he could manage the day okay and sleep well at night, so we ended up keeping him on no naps. I sometimes think we should encourage him to take naps again, as he really does need to sleep most days.... But the effects are just that he gets less sleep overall, so... Anyway, those first couple of weeks were quite an adjustment for him. He would have hour-long meltdowns in the afternoon, poor boy, and then fall asleep mid-tantrum or mid-snack. I sooo felt for him! But instead of falling back into his nap routine with great relief once everything settled down, he seemed to adjust and do better at night for it. Here are a few photos of Nathan struggling to adjust in those first couple of weeks:

Asleep mid-snack :)



At the table after tantrumming for one whole very very very long hour about the content of his sandwiches. *sigh*



Precious little lovey! I was reading him stories (he brought me a huge pile, something that he does many times a day) and when I finished he was fast asleep in my arm with his head on my shoulder! Neil took photos :) I love this photo. My hair wasn't washed and the floor was literally covered from wall to wall with toys and clothes and whatnot. The kitchen was in an even worse state, and oh probably fifty other things that needed serious attention. But here - THIS - here is what counts. Not the house. Not my hair. Cherishing the moment with my little children while I still have them with me. How I love it, and how I'll miss it when it's over. I'm so glad of this photo to serve as a reminder and a sweet memory all in one:



I have so much more to write about! I haven't posted photos of the changes we've made in the house yet, and there's plenty of that happening! I'm excited about it, because finally, FINALLY, we are actually dealing with the clutter we've always lived with, and down-sizing things, and storing things more efficiently, etc. I am so relieved! I so want to write about it in more detail, and post photos (which I haven't taken yet!) - you can see the new laminate floor in the video of Benjamin walking though. I also really want to write about school, though we've had a frustrating break that was not intended due to the aforementioned huge upheaval in the house. Matthew has not even started school yet and the autumn term for children his age who go out to school is already half over!! (I must not compare, I must not compare, I must not compare.... but it's so hard not to) I had so much I wanted to be doing with them over the autumn before we have a 2-month break when Samuel is born. I have lots of thoughts and feelings about it that I wanted to just sort of, get out there. And LOTS more. Neil is still unemployed - no income here for 7 months and counting now. We are trusting God! Neil is stressing about it somewhat, understandably, but I feel peace about it. And I'm so grateful that he's home to help me so very much, as he does.

I must update my pregnancy blog - I'm getting behind there too!

I made a decision to give my heart to Jesus, to live my life for him, 15 years ago this very evening, and since I'm here on October 15th writing my blog, I just had to mention it! I'm so very grateful to God for the grace and mercy He pours out on me every single day. He is so patient with me! I am as stubborn, childlike and tantrummy as my own children and He is the most patient, loving Father to me. I go my own way and take my own path way too often. I have so much that I want to work on and change in my life, but even so I am happy. God has called me to a work that He already prepared my heart to long for and desire from childhood, so I am HAPPY and glad and thankful that He has brought it to fulfilment! I love being Mummy. I'm in awe of God's blessing, and of the sweet little ones He has seen fit to bless me with - even me?! I am in His hands and cannot be snatched away. And I love Him, love Him, love Him.