My sweetie pies!

This little video clip was taken on Thursday, the day before yesterday. That was Elijah's best day to date! He had many times where he would be calm and quiet, just looking around, for quite a while (5-10 minutes), or just cooing and smiling. This has been practically unheard of for him, so it was lovely to see him like that! He cried most of the evening though, and had a not-so-good day yesterday, and a pretty bad one today. He's asleep this evening though. So up-and-down with that poor baby boy!

Anyway, it was just a random moment really, in our day. Samuel (18 months) had been sitting by himself working on something (he does this a lot), and when I looked over I saw that he had pulled a pair of knitted teddy bear dungarees over his head like a hat. He looked so funny, and Benjamin was laughing, so I got the little camera which has video capabilities. After a bit, Samuel stopped doing that, but other things caught my attention so I kept on with the video clip. I happened to get Elijah cooing and smiling a bit which is a lovely first on video! :) I wanted to post it here, because I often take video clips and never get around to posting them, and then I look back at my blog to see what we were doing X years ago or something, and find not a lot recorded, but TONS in my photo or video files on the computer which I wish I had just taken the time to post to my blog, even if just for me to look back on and smile at. So here it is! :)

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Samuel is walking!

My sweet little baby is walking! He has been doing 3 steps (no more) every day for a couple of weeks, and had the usual 3/4 nights running leading up to that milestone where he was awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night. It's nice how when my littles do that now, I KNOW it's because of an emerging motor skill. I was STUMPED and frustrated and irritable about it when it was my first child. And my second and third, for that matter! Took me four kiddies to finally get with it and realise the link, lol! Now I ride it out with less annoyance over it, and it's nice to be rewarded with the inevitable motor skill or new clever-ness that they come out with, and then the sleep goes back to normal! :)

Soooo he did that, and then started taking 2 or 3 steps at a time. He DELIGHTED in practising it between Neil and I, over and over and OVER again. Or from the sofa to me, a couple of feet away. He beams soooo sweetly, and looks around for his audience (there's never a shortage of encouragers at our house!) before beginning. That's how we know he's about to attempt it - the beaming look as he searches us out with great excitement. So we give him our attention, and off he goes!

Yesterday, all of a sudden, he began walking more than 3 steps. He was having fun walking from me to Arthur, and back again. He would fall forwards on his third or fourth step as usual, into our arms. Then one time, Arthur sat that bit further away from him, and he kept going! Then back to me - 6 steps! He practised more after we finished the game, between furniture. I noticed he was able to stop after 3 steps in the middle of the floor, look around for a bit or even try to pick up a toy, and then carry on several more steps to the next piece of furniture! By the end of the day he was walking across the room, steadying himself (most of the time) when he started to lose his balance halfway there, taking 10+ steps without trouble, and stooping very carefully and slowly to pick up a toy before straightening back up with it, in the middle of the floor. He also started to work on getting up from sitting/crawling to standing in the middle of the floor. He would get on all fours, then to hands and feet, then push with his hands so he was just on his feet. As he CAREFULLY straightened up (he fell on his bottom pretty hard every time for a while at first), he said, "UT!" (up) :) And if he succeeded, he set off walking from there! Clever boy! :)

He is 13 months and 2 weeks old - similar age to Benjamin I think. The others before them were all 11 months - they were all walking by their first birthdays, so Samuel and Benjamin are later than average in our house. I presumed Benjamin was later because he was talking so much earlier than the others, but Samuel isn't talking like Benji was at this age. Benji had TONS of words by 13 months!

Samuel is saying, "Ut" (up), "Det-dahn" (get down, for when he wants to get down from the table after meals), "Dat!" (that - this accompanies a graspy out-stretched hand action at pretty much anything and everything!), "Buh" (birds - he says this when looking up at the birds flying over our house from the window), "Nah-nahhh" (night night, when waving at the boys and about to be carried in my arms up to bed for nap or at bedtime - they all call out "Night niiiiight!" to him when he's about to go up), "Dah" or "Dada" for Daddy, "Mummummmumm" or something along those lines for Mummy, lol! Mostly a long mmmm sounds broken here and there by a tight little 'u' sound. He doesn't use it for me at all really, but will say it when Neil's cuddling him and asks him, "Where's Mummy?!" or "Do you see Mummy?" He sometimes says, "Buh" for bye-bye, and waves so sweetly. Love him so much!

I can't think of any more words. Oh he just started to say, "Nuh" for no, with a very clear shaking of his head (he's been doing the shaking head for no for several weeks now), notably when he doesn't want any more milky, or food, or in answer to a question (Do you want any more?). He does a precious little bob for yes, but with his whole body and his neck all squished into his shoulders to tense it up, hehe! I love that - he'll grow out of it way too soon! It's the joyous look on his face and his eyes all shiny that goes with it which makes it so lovely to behold :)

I am not really making much milk any more, now that I'm 25 weeks pregnant. Benjamin and Samuel still breastfeed - Benji usually once or twice as he asks to, during the day, and always at bedtime. Benji doesn't nap any more, so he doesn't have any "before nap" milky. I haven't nursed Benjamin at night for a very long time, except if he has a particularly bad dream and wants the comfort to settle down again, but that's rare. Or if he's ill. Samuel nurses before his only nap (which he takes during the latter part of the morning before lunch, also - not coincidentally - our homeschool time). He sleeps right by my side and sometimes breastfeeds on waking, but more often than not he is eager to get up and go downstairs instead. He tells me during the day if he wants milk by climbing onto my lap (or crying with outstretched arms to be picked up) and once there, immediately sucking his thumb whilst "twiddling" at me with his other hand! ;) That's been his sign for many months, and at least it's a good clear one! Might bother me more if we did more stuff in public, but we don't, so that's fine. The "public" we do see are extended-breastfeeding-friendly and think it's very sweet! :) I do too!

So he nurses maybe a couple of times during the day. I actually find I miss it if he hasn't reminded me (if he's being particularly busy) by late afternoon, and scoop him up for a cuddle on the sofa and that usually triggers his little sign and a breastfeed. Otherwise I offer it to him anyway, and he usually goes for it. He doesn't nurse for long (a few minutes at most) and then pulls my top back down whilst shaking his head. He's nothing if not clear! ;)

He nurses on demand after he goes to bed, all through the night. I haven't done anything about night-weaning him yet, and it's much easier not to, but it WON'T be easier when Elijah arrives, so I will get to that sometime. Probably should think about that soonish, as there are only 3 months to go! :S Right now Samuel probably breastfeeds once or so in the evenings, although he often sleeps through the evening now. He usually wakes between 11 and 11.30 and Neil is still up at that time and rocks him back to sleep. He loves doing it, and comes downstairs again saying, "Aw, he's so sweet when he's just gone to sleep in my arms!" :) Yes, yes, we're not exactly helping him be independent at sleeping, but he does resettle himself countless times over the evening and night-time, as well as the odd breastfeed once I'm in bed next to him, and that evening cuddle with Neil. Also, he's our FIFTH. They've all been the same, and we've learned to give up the whole DRIVE to get them sleeping, and just enjoy the genuinely lovely aspects of a waking toddler/baby - sleepy cuddles, getting to see their cute little faces as they're asleep again, night time tummy-to-tummy breastfeeding. I would love a full night's sleep every night, but we never managed to get there even with a TON of effort and basically every method I'd read about trying, and lots and lots of stress over it all. So we're much much happier now, just going with it - it does help that we've seen that they eventually do sleep through the night consistently, lol! For our children that starts anywhere from age 2.5ish, but is already happening 50% of the time after age 2. So three of our children sleep through every night, predictably. One rarely wakes, but still does sometimes for a drink (with some fussing), or from a bad dream, etc. Sometimes Benji can be quite wakeful for no apparent reason, and get annoyed and noisy about wanting to go downstairs in the middle of the night, which is difficult with a bunch of sleeping children in the same bedroom! But they rarely get woken by anyone else awake, even if they are SCREAMING their heads off! Amazing for my babies who once woke at the slightest tread from socked feet on carpet, lol!

So it's just Samuel, and he's definitely not the worst of our babies for night wakings. He wakes to nurse once perhaps between 11pm or so and 6ish in the morning when he's up for the day. Sometimes I think he wakes more than once (or even twice?) but co-sleeping allows me to know very little about it as he nurses right back to sleep while I barely come round :)

Samuel has 6 teeth still - it has been months since he last got a tooth! He has four at the top, and two sweet little bottom ones, like all his brothers before him. Going by their patterns, I am pretty sure he's due his first molars next (they seem to get those at the same time as the RIGHT tooth next to the bottom middle two, so that should come soon too. The LEFT tooth down there doesn't come through in my children until about 18 months old!! Strange but true!). He seems a bit teethy-looking in the cheeks this week, and is drooling lots, but no sign of anything in his mouth yet. Benjamin's teeth didn't come in until around his first birthday, like Nathan's, so he is later than the "schedule" for teeth. He's 2 years and 7 months old, and I have been keeping an eagle eye out for his 2-year-old molars for some months now. Yesterday at bedtime when I had cleaned his teeth, I asked him to look up and open his mouth (mine tend to get top teeth before bottom teeth), and was surprised to see the first corner of his top right molar already through! No others looked ready to come through, and he said it wasn't hurting him. So Benjamin has started cutting his 2-year-old molars - hopefully they'll be easy enough, and we won't end up with 4 molars coming through for two children at the same time! :S

What else about Samuel? I wish I'd kept up with the "part two" post I started in draft, about Samuel, from months ago. I did part one, from 3 months old, but had to stop before I'd got to his second 6 months I think. Now there's a bit gaping hole in my blog records, photos and everything, of Samuel during that time. I still want to go back and finish it, but I can't keep putting off getting new stuff about him here while I wait to "get around to it" - I might never make it!

He's so precious! Every mother says it, I know! ;) And all my children are so precious to me! But awwww my baby! He's GORGEOUS!!! He is truly a blonde blonde baby - the first I've had, and his hair is curly! He is currently blue-eyed, and has such a lovely shaped smile, very much like Arthur's actually, now I think of it. He's so soft and cuddly and sweet-natured, and has a smile on his face almost all of the time. He is soft-voiced as well, a bit like Matthew, but less husky. He sucks his thumb a lot when he's sleepy or wanting a calm time. I ADORE him, seriously ADORE him. It doesn't matter what else is happening or what my mood is like, just to look at him melts me and fills me with joy and love all over again. Love that baby! All the boys love him so much. They all give him so much attention and desire his attention back for their entertaining antics that they put on for him. They love his funny sweet things he does, that all little ones do. They get so much enjoyment out of their baby brother, especially Arthur and Matthew, who are quite funny themselves now with their "grown up" fondness of him and the things they find funny just like Neil and I do!

Anyway! I meant to just quickly come here to post a little video clip I took yesterday of Samuel walking. I took several, but only edited one to put here. I used the longest one because it's of him walking the furthest, but Neil pointed out to me that I should have shared some of the shorter ones because he's so eager and excited and smiley in those. In this clip, he looks kind of forlorn and sad at one point in the middle, and doesn't beam and squeal with glee when he arrives at me like in the other ones. But I haven't got those ones edited and uploaded, so this one will have to do! Just imagine that he's usually way more smiley and excited than you see in this video!

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Samuel's hair gets SO curly after it's washed, and the curls go sort of limp by several days later (they don't get hairwashes more often than once a week usually, unless there's mega food in there!). After I washed his hair one evening in the bath, it went curly as usual after it had dried, and I took some photos, mainly to send to my parents (my father's gene is responsible for his beautiful curls!). These were taken during "teeth time" and are not very recent. He was 12 and a half months old here, so just over a month ago.











His hair has grown quite a bit longer than this now, so much so that I am able to do this, in my less sane moments, haha!...



Cute though he is, I probably won't do that again. Probably. ;) When I put bunches in their hair, Neil usually insists that I give them The First Haircut the very next day, lol! But he hasn't done that yet. I can't bear to cut his hair because I'm scared his curls will all go away when I do! :S Nathan had some sweet curls before his first haircut, though just at the ends, not like Samuel's curls, and they went away after I cut his hair and never came back! :( I'm hoping Samuel's will be permanent curls (Arthur's hair is wavy and Benjamin's is somewhat as well, but none of the boys have had curly hair like Samuel's as a baby/toddler). When the curls go limp, his hair looks long enough to need a cut to tidy it up, but when it's freshly washed and curly, it looks PERFECT and I can't bear to cut it! It's short enough when it's curly. *sigh* I love every tiny thing about that sweetie pie!

And on that note, he's starting to fuss a bit in the living room where they are all playing pretty well with toys and stuff ALL over the floor, so methinks it's time to snuggle him on the sofa for a breastfeed, and then get the living room tidy and start some sort of activities with them for a change of pace before dinner.

I'm glad to be blogging again! :)

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:

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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.

Officially four mobile children!!!

My Benji-bean started crawling today at lunch time! He has been army crawling consistently for exactly a week, and starting to pull himself along on his elbows for a week or two before that. He's been rocking on all fours for a week or two, and starting to do independent "things" with his individual hands and knees when on all fours this week, so I knew it wouldn't be long. When I posted the last video of him army crawling (6 days ago I think!), I said to Neil that I thought he might even be crawling in about a week from now, and I'm surprised that I was spot on! ;) I don't know why I even thought that, because all the others have rocked on all fours for much longer (3 weeks or something like that) before actually setting off crawling. Not all of them army crawled before crawling either.

Anyway, I am SO PROUD of my tiny little man! :) I can't believe that I have four mobile children now! :-O

He was on the living room floor playing with toys when I was making the boys' lunch, and when I sent them in to eat, I just nipped into the living room to sit on the floor with Benjamin for a moment. We had homemade pizza (with sliced sausages on - Arthur's request!), and Benjamin eats the crust, but not the topping yet. I haven't got as far as trying him on tomatoes yet, and am still working through various foods. Though he now has quite a good range of things he is eating, including wheat and dairy with no apparent problems, which is good! I always feel nervous about introducing wheat or dairy, but so far so good with all of them! :)

So anyway, I brought my plate of pizza in with me to grab a few bites while I sat with him, and the second I sat down on the floor with the plate of pizza on my lap, his eyes went "BING!" (you know how babies' eyes do that when they see something suddenly that they WANT RIGHT NOW!), and he happened to be on all fours when he saw it. He just set off crawling towards the plate on my lap! It wasn't far, and his crawling "steps" were ever so slow and doddery (it was so cute!) but he didn't flop onto his tummy once, and kept going till he reached me! I was so excited and called to the boys that Benjamin was crawling. Matthew and Arthur were really sad to have missed it (they've been waiting and watching for weeks now!), so I put him back where he was and he did it again! The boys were so excited! When they went back to the table, I put a piece of pizza crust on the floor across the room (nice and hygienic, lol!) as bait! ;) I set the camera up this time, and he crawled over. This time he got a bit more excited as he was almost there, and sped up just a tiny bit! :) Here's the video clip!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

So my baby is crawling! He is exactly 7 months and 1 week old today. Nathan and Matthew were both 6 months and 3 weeks I think, and Arthur 8 and a half months.

I distinctly feel my ovaries twitching... ;)

21 Questions About Mummy! - Arthur's answers

Oh it was aaaages ago that I saw this little questionnaire thingy circulating my favourite mommy/mummy blogs, and I so wanted to participate with my little ones, but just never got around to it! I had the list of questions written out, and today I was searching through a pile of papers for something and there it was! So I got the camera and asked Arthur if he would like to answer the questions, and he was very eager to do an interview! :) So, here is a video clip of Arthur's answers. I find the volume isn't loud enough, or else it isn't a great microphone or something, because although your ears can be distorted with Nathan excitedly saying, "ARTHUR!! AAAAARTHUUUUR!!" as he sees his brother in the display screen on the camera (hehe!), I can't always hear Arthur's answers clearly. So I'll post the video, and then a written version of his answers just in case translation is necessary anywhere! ;)

Benjamin woke from a nap halfway through, so there was a pause to go and breastfeed him, and then bring him downstairs before we started up again. Also when I got to the question that says, "How are you and Mummy different?", Arthur straight away pointed out the obvious difference using the correct anatomical words (!) which Neil would rather I didn't post online! I asked him if he could think of another thing right after his initial answer anyway, so I clipped his first answer out of the video! ;)

So here it is (at last!):

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

1) What is something that Mummy always says to you? "Can you go in the porch please?" (this is where he gets time-out sometimes - well, obviously ALWAYS, not sometimes, haha!)

2) What makes Mummy happy? When I obey you.

3) What makes Mummy sad? When I'm naughty.

4) How does Mummy make you laugh? When you do funny noises on the camera (this is when I make farting noises to get them all looking and genuinely smiling/laughing at me at the same time!), and you munch on us. And when you go "Bleurgh!" when you find out that you're eating boy. (I often seize an unsuspecting child walking past me and declare them to be X item of food that I really like (cookie, sausage, etc) and munch on them till they're shrieking hysterically. Then they get their breath enough to yell, "I'm not an X! I'm a BOY!" and then I will exaggeratedly act disgusted and do lots of "Ptheurgh, bleurgh, I can't believe I ate BOY!", etc! They LOVE this game! ;) )

5) What was Mummy like when she was a little girl? Cheeky.

6) How old is Mummy? Um... thirty-six nine.

7) How tall is Mummy? Um... forty five hundred degrees.

8) What is Mummy's favourite thing to do? Play with her boys.

9) What does Mummy do when you're not around? Settle Benji and do your own stuff.

10) If your Mummy becomes famous, what will it be fore? Being kind with her boys.

11) What is Mummy really good at? Being Mummy. (this made my heart sing!!!)

12) What is Mummy NOT good at? You're not very good at catching us when we escape you. (Matthew was calling me in the background at this point, saying, "Benji's woken uuuup!" and then getting annoyed that I wasn't acknowledging him! I stopped after this question to get Benjamin up!)

13) What does Mummy do for a job? Look after her boys!

14) What is Mummy's favourite food? Lamb and bean hotpot? (definitely one of my favourites! Recipe here!)

15) What makes Mummy proud of you? Being really good.

16) What do you and Mummy do together? Play.

17) How are you and Mummy the same? We've got really long legs. (He has no real understanding of the fact that his Mummy has the stumpiest legs for miles around, haha!)

18) How are you and Mummy different? You've got floppy down hair and I've got bald hair on... all this hair on my head. (Wasn't sure where he was going with this one, hehe! He initially pointed out the obvious male/female difference, like I said earlier! I told him he was right, and asked if he could think of another thing. There was nothing wrong with his answer at ALL, but I knew Neil would not want me to post it online!)

19) How do you know that Mummy loves you? 'Cause you never are really really really really really really really really really cross with me. (!!!)

20) What does Mummy like most about Daddy? Her wedding cake... (Not sure WHERE this came from, lol! After a little persuasion, he came up with something else, equally hilarious, hehe!) ... He helps you with the bins and he sometimes puts them out. (True!! Hehe! But not actually the thing I love most about Daddy!)

21) Where is Mummy's favourite place to be? In our house!

This was so much fun! :) Matthew could answer the questions, but he does not want to at the moment, so I will wait as long as necessary before he's interested and then do the same with him! I love hearing what they come out with for their answers! :)

I have so much more to write (as always) but this is all for tonight. It's late! Back soon!

Sleepy Boxing Day :)

Another quick post like last night's - I must actually WRITE about Christmas, but I haven't sorted out the photos yet. Today Neil's mum and his brother came over for the day! It's so nice to see my mother-in-law because she lives up north and we rarely see her. But usually at Christmas she comes down to stay with Neil's sister who lives about an hour from our house - in the same town that Neil works in, actually! :) So we see her then. We are going over to Rosemary's house on Tuesday for the day so we'll see her again (and Ian - Neil's brother - again too), but Rosemary and her hubby and girls were with her in-laws today so they couldn't come to us.

We had a lovely day, and more presents for the boys from Grandma! They went out for a walk while Benjamin napped and I spend a really nice hour chatting quietly with MIL in a peaceful house. I love talking with her about God, about scriptures, about prayer, about spiritual discipline, etc, because I don't have any other relatives who I can talk with in person about things like that. My family are all very NON-Christian, and Neil's siblings are Christians but not awfully "practicing" at the moment, so to speak. I just love (ADORE!!!!) God and right now I want to talk about Him and anything related to Him as much as anyone will let me! :) I love to talk with people who are passionate about Jesus like I am. It's soooo nice to relax and chat with MIL about God's goodness and our experiences and so on. Really nice! I love love love having married into a Christian family.

Nathan had no chance for a nap today. He was excited all morning with the visitors, and then they watched a Thomas the Tank Engine movie which he didn't want to miss, of course! Nathan is our latest EXTREME Thomas fan. First it was Arthur, and then Matthew, and those boys still love Thomas, but Nathan has recently become HARD-CORE, hehe! ;) We got him a Thomas jigsaw puzzle for Christmas with 13 pieces and he's doing great putting it together. He tries really hard and gets frustrated if it doesn't work for him. He got this Thomas movie on DVD so he was thrilled with that. And a few Thomas books. And other non-Thomas presents! ;)

So after the movie and lunch it was time for an outing to the park to go on the swings and run about with Uncle Ian. We didn't venture out on Christmas Day so they all needed a serious run-about today! So Nathan went, and missed his nap therefore. He did so well, even though he was tired. He didn't get upset or whiney, and he took a REAL liking to Uncle Ian. I think he might finally be outgrowing his cry-in-terror-at-strangers phase!!!! I'm so glad!! That was a lonnnng phase! ;) He climbed on Uncle Ian for cuddles and stories a lot, and was not shy even of Grandma.

We ate spaghetti bolognese for lunch, and then a buffet dinner of a whole mixed bunch of things, pasta dishes, mashed potato, cold chicken, cheese, boiled eggs, pickles (mmm!), salad, veg, etc, etc. The boys had sandwiches and picked at the above stuff too. Nathan was so sleepy that he started to nod during dinner, and it was so sweet that I got the (new!) camera to take a video clip. I didn't get the zoom right which is annoying because it should have been zoomed in way more to see him more clearly. Also the quality isn't ideal for seeing the fine detail of his eyes rolling around in his head, hahaha! ;) Soooo sweet and funny! I had a hard time holding the camera still sometimes because I was laughing so much! He just looked so sweet still stuffing his face with food and yet his eyes rolling up into his head and then his eyelids coming down, hehe! Matthew used to do that (not Arthur. Arthur never slept. At all!) but he would doze off with food clenched in his fist, not moving it. Nathan was dozing off the most when he was actually putting food in his mouth and chewing it, for some reason, and at the time it was just so comical!

Anyway, I uploaded the video clip and here it is. Never mind the mess in the background. Be glad you can't see the rest of the kitchen! *sigh* We moved the table out so that more of us could fit around it, but even so we still had one person standing/eating later :S Also, please note the bit later in the clip where Nathan picks up a piece of bread and starts to eat it, dislikes the taste and so lets it fall out of his mouth with a yucky expression, and then proceeds to put the piece of bread over onto Matthew's plate, haha! ;)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Sweet sleepy little boy! We put them to bed as soon after 6pm as we could manage, and they were all asleep around 6.30 or 6.45pm. Then Neil's folks stayed a couple more hours. He showed his brother his flying/shoot-'em-up game on the computer, and I played Scattegories with MIL. I love word games and board games at Christmas, and she does too! All our board games are packed into the loft to save space in the house, but Scattegories is easy to play with just paper and pencils. It was fun! I won! ;)

Will write more soon. I'm already getting in gear for the New Year. As SOON as Christmas is finished it seems like my mind shifts gear and starts going all resolution-y! I never seem to stick to New Year's Resolutions and don't particularly plan to make any (though I still may, for some sort of basic structure/goal for the year), but I do already feel excited about the start of 2010 - a new decade too! Things like homeschooling, and also getting this place cleaned up once and for all! And training (yes, I said training) the children this year. That's about the most important thing I need to work on. They need to learn to obey and respect Neil and I this year way more than they need to learn to read and write and add and subtract. And learn about God more than that. So I'm excited about the year ahead, and starting to work through my thoughts and ideas and goals in preparation, which is fun! :)

Benjamin sits!!! :)

I figured out the new camera today, and just in time too, because I was fiddling about with the settings just before bedtime for the boys when I sat Benjamin up, handed him a toy (he was fussing lying down on the floor) and he STAYED! He sat with a mostly straight back, and just played with whatever I handed him. No "tripod sitting" at all, and he corrected his balance any time he started to lean. I was able to sit further away from him after a while and aim the camera at him properly. I got some still shots as well but haven't uploaded those yet. Blogger is finding the video files too big (as is Facebook) so I have had to go back to good old OneTrueMedia.com to upload them and then post them to my blog and Facebook from there, which is fine with me! :) So happy to be able to post videos of my sweeties again!

So here is Benjamin sitting (and Mummy being thrilled, hehe!). Arthur was trying to get my attention about building a fort with the school chairs or something, but I was distracted by Benjamin for the time I was filming the little clip. Once he lay down I gave Arthur my attention. Nathan and Matthew were still at the table getting wiped after eating dinner, so it wasn't as chaotic in the room as it usually would have been! ;)

So proud of my BIG BOY, at only 5 months and 1 week old! :)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

P.S. Thanks for the lovely supportive comments on my last post! xxx

Starting out with four, and needing God...

I have just discovered Kari Jobe's music lately - such beautiful songs, and what an amazing voice God has blessed her with! I have been listening to lots of worship music on YouTube while I've been resting and breastfeeding these last two weeks, and especially the last week for some reason. I'm involving myself at MOMYS (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) a lot more for the good influence and wisdom there - I'm excited that I have full access there since Benjamin was born, now that his birth makes me an official MOMYS (4 or more children under the age of 8)! I love the fellowship there, and that the ladies there are so Christ-centred. They lean on God for all that they need to do the task to which He has called them. I know I need to do this too. I HAVE to. I can't meet the needs of four little boys aged four and under otherwise! I'm not able. I'm insufficient! I'm human! But His grace is sufficient for me, and His strength is made perfect in my weakness. I've got to remember that I CAN'T do it, nope, no way, no how! ;) With that in mind, I am DRIVEN to God's feet all day long to seek His strength and to allow Him to clothe me in the patience and peace and joy and self-control and allll those things I desperately need to do this next stage of mothering and discipling my Many Small Children (to coin a phrase from MckMama! ;) ).

I've started to read the Bible more, just little bits, because at MOMYS they sometimes post about Bible verses they're reading and people post their thoughts on the verses. This encouraged me to get my Bible out and really meditate on some verses, which I really haven't done for a long time. And then the next day I really wanted to do the same again with a different verse. So I'm really thankful for the good influence! :)

Neil is going back to work tomorrow, after his paternity leave. He took Friday off as holiday time to round out the week, so it's been a longer break with the weekend on top, than the usual paternity leave, and that is lovely! I have been resting the whole time, doing very little around the house or in terms of childcare. It has been such a precious time for me. I'm sad and nervous to see it come to an end! But I would be in a whoooole different anxious place if I didn't have the perspective God is giving me right now - about needing Him to do it. I feel strangely (!) confident about setting out to do the long days with FOUR little children now, much more so than I ever did with 1, 2 or 3 small children when I started out those times. I hope I am not being naiive! But I really do feel confident. I think it's going to be okay. My parents are coming for the week, and staying with my grandparents. They'll come over late morning till Neil gets home every day next week and help occupy the boys. Mummy even said I can go and lie down and get a nap if I need to during the day, but I am not sure if the boys will be manageable for them while I do that - we'll see. I'm so happy to have them coming over to visit and the boys are so excited too! In some ways I am feeling relieved that I will have help next week. I still get tired SO quickly if I do stuff like go for a short walk with the baby in a sling, so I'm nervous about my stamina with these energetic and not-awfully-obedient little boys!

On the other hand, though.... I feel so eager to get "stuck in" and do the wonderful job that God has called me to do! In order to do it, I need to crank up my organisation skills a notch (or two!) - more so with each baby, I'm finding. And I've been browsing the archives at MOMYS and starting to piece together a flexible basic schedule for our household, to help the days run smoother. I'm sure it will need a lot of tweaking before it works for us well, but it's a start! And I need to seriously crank up the discipline with the boys as well. I feel a bit like I can't really get ON IT to the degree that I want/need to until after my parents have left. So, although I feel like I will really need their help, and will so appreciate it and be sad to see them go again, I am also looking forward to being on my own with the boys, to really set up my home and things with my children as I want to and press on consistently without distraction or help. Help is WONDERFUL, but it can impact an intense focus on something like discipline.

Anyway, so it's nearly time for that to begin! I'm so glad my parents are coming, and so excited about the road ahead! I feel sure there will be PERLENTY of days (weeks?!) where I am NOT in this place and feel overwhelmed and far from God, and so on. I'm sure of it. But this confidence beforehand is new for me. I hope it means things will go okay, and REALLY hope feeling this way might indicate a better experience? I am hoping I do not get postnatal depression to any degree this time. I did not last time (I did with the older two, just feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope - which I see is something that raising 4 such little ones might lead me to feel again!) but then Neil was home to help all the time because he was out of work for the first 6 months after Nathan's arrival. I really want to DO it, to the glory of God!! I hope that is how it will be.

Anyway, I still plan to update with photos and all the things I mentioned last time! But the reason I actually opened this blogger box to update today is because I wanted to post a video I found on YouTube. I was listening to Kari Jobe and clicked on another video link after the one I was listening to finished. It turned out to be a church presentation of a Bible story with Kari's song "I know that You are for me" playing. I watched it just out of interest. It made me cry. I just found it so beautiful, and for that reason I wanted to share it here in case it blesses someone else.

Huge post about stuff (but I do actually mean thank you!)

I definitely feel it's time for me to post an update, after such a stressed-out post last time and SO MANY comments - thank you!!! I didn't mean to leave such a gap before posting again, but honestly I'm quite boggled by the huge variety of opinions out there and not really sure how to process them all and apply them (one? some? all?!). I also posted at MOMYS (thanks Annie for suggesting it - Neil did too!) and got some wonderful responses there too - fairly different to the ones I got here, I think because most of my blog readers are not quite of the same.... what word am I looking for?.... mindset? (maybe?) as I am, regarding little ones and mothering them and so on. At MOMYS, most of them ARE, so the responses are different. I really did want to get those two different types of opinions, which is why I posted both here and there. I had some similar advice at both places, though, I don't mean to imply it was totally different to what everyone said here! Thanks so so very much to everyone who commented and gave advice, or just said soothing things or let me know you're praying for me. I appreciate it so much! Some of you (with busy, child-filled lives, no less!) left HUGE-O comments, and I know that took a big bite out of your time, so I just want you to know that warmed my heart and made me feel loved, and I just appreciate you guys so much! :) I intended to write a big "Responses!" post tonight, to comment on lots of different things people said, but now that I sit here tired at the end of a busy day with the littlies, it's just beyond me! I may get to it eventually though, and probably will comment on bits and pieces as they come to mind as I'm writing posts for a while.

I know a lot of people mentioned how I'm germ-phobic, or just basically really afraid of the boys getting sick. I have been thinking this over a lot this past week, really thinking about it. Because it's not good. But I think that's exaggerated, and to the average out-at-playgroups-all-the-time mama, I am probably a pretty weird mother in that respect, and the fact that I talk about not liking the germ aspect at large gatherings of children probably turns that weirdness into an obvious-looking problem with germophobia, or something! Honestly, I DO get anxious about the boys getting sick with things that would knock us all out. I have no idea how we'd function if the parents were too sick to care for the children (whether they were sick too or not). It's plain no fun having more than 1 or 2 ill small children at once to look after, when you're also ill! Which, I know is the same experience for everyone. But it's kind of understandable therefore to have a certain level of anxiety over the whole bunch of us going under with something horrible. That's ALL I'm worried about, honestly. I'm really not as germ-phobic as everyone seems to think!

We used to go to playgroups. The big one with 75 toddlers - ill every single time we went, all year round. With like 3 exceptions all year or something, urgh! I persevered with Arthur when he was Nathan's age and I was pregnant with Matthew, for several months until it just seemed crazy and I wanted to give his immune system a break! Mine was okay, but he seemed to be getting so run down, and it didn't seem natural to have him so exposed to SO many viruses week after week after week. So we stopped going. Any time we went back over the next 18 months, whether it was December or July, we got sick. We also went to a small playgroup run by my church now and then. I mostly stopped going to that because it became such a pain to attend when Matthew was in his first year. He liked his naps regular and long. And at home in his cot, thank you very much! ;) Everything had to work around his naps, and we would basically turn up there as they were finishing up and Arthur would run about during the tidy up time and then we'd come home again. Don't feel sorry for Arthur there though - I read it back and instinctively thought, "Aw, poor Arthur!" but he was FINE. He didn't ever ask to go, miss going, or wonder if we might go. He was equally contented at home as when we were at groups. He never showed any displeasure at all when we left groups, and once or twice asked to go home early, I think just because he got tired or had had enough of all the noise or whatever! Or just wanted lunch! ;) The effort involved got too much, so we stopped, but it took me a LONG time to let myself drop the groups and feel okay about it, since EVERYONE takes their kids to groups, it seems, so if I didn't then I must be doing something wrong, you know?

These days I will happily have playdates (as we don't really call them, but anyway! ;) ) with other kids as and when, and not have any worries about if the kids are coming with colds or whatever. I totally know that the boys will go out there and pick up colds and such, and that's okay. It does irritate me when somebody brings a heavily streaming child to play, clearly THICK with a horrible and highly infectious cold or other similar virus, though. Because, where's the courtesy in that?! I always appreciate it when mothers call me first and say, "Oh, he's got a cold right now, is it still okay to come round?" I pretty much say yes, don't worry about it (even if it's not always my favourite thought in the world that they're bringing us a cold!), but sometimes I ask if it has been a really horrid one, and once or twice I have actually asked if it would be okay if we reschedule, because on those occasions the boys had just been getting over like their 4th cold in a row (back to back - we had 2 really fun months before Christmas!) and were sub-par and had been miserable with the last one. Or the other time, Nathan was acting teethy and had the remnants of a cold still, and was sleeping HORRIBLY. I just thought that I did not want to INVITE heavy congestion and worse sleep, when I was being given the option not to! ;) So I said no thanks!

At playgroups and at church creche, mothers bring their babies and toddlers who are at the mouthing-everything-in-sight stage, streaming with heavy feverish colds, fresh from vomiting the day before (does NOBODY seem to know that all vomiting bugs are infectious for 3 full days after the last vomit or diarrhoea?! Honestly and truly, NO mother I talk to seems to have this piece of information! Aaargh!), or whatever. And not just, oh it's an occasional risk that this might happen, nope. Mothers bring their little ones in this stage EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. Obviously not the same children each week, but across the general membership, there are sick sick sick children in creche/playgroup every ding dong week! Then, I take my healthy, mouthing-everything-in-sight children to the same group and voila, 2-3 weeks of misery (small babies take 2-3 weeks to deal with a cold, not the 7 days or less of a toddler/child), during which time I have to decide whether to let them back to the same germy group while they're still feeling under the weather, or keep them off. I honestly find it really difficult to justify sending my own children into a room full of other children when I know full-well they are infectious with ANY sort of virus. It just seems wrong! I actually had a time where I tried to just push that feeling aside and continue, because one of the mums at church (who also went to playgroups with us) told me that the "rule" out there is that you should always go to playgroups the same as usual if they have a cold, because otherwise you'd never go out anywhere - they always have colds! That did NOT sit right with me, but eventually when Arthur had his run of a million viruses from the big playgroup, I stood tall and bit my lip and took him there anyway. I absolutely could not keep that up, because I'd look at the other sweet little kids, and mine with a streaming nose handing them a toy he'd just mouthed, and I felt so bad for the other little ones! Yes, they probably get colds all the time and it's no big deal, and children "deal" with viruses and keep going as everyone says, but I don't buy it. Kids don't have any say! I bet they wouldn't choose to catch a cold, and no children have any fun when they're full of cold! I think it's more the mothers who are getting used to dealing with colds in their children. Arthur did just breeze on with life after the first bunch of colds he ever got, except really bad ones that made him miserable, but that's no reason to assume that other kids will breeze on and it won't bother them. I just can't feel okay going around making other kids ill (even mildly, to be honest), and I'm sure that steps on toes here because I know I'm about the ONLY crazy mother who doesn't take her kids places when they have colds, but anyway. I tried to shove my feelings aside on it, but I couldn't justify it in the end. So, we don't go spreading colds to others, and I don't like it when others knowingly do so to us - simple as that. But, the boys WILL get colds and stuff, and that's just something inconvenient and difficult to deal with as and when it arises - NOT something I'm anxious or phobic about!! Just to clarify! :)

Now, the vomiting, that's slightly different because as lots of you know, I have struggled BIG TIME with emitophobia since I was a toddler. I think my phobia is actually the best it has ever been now, which surprises me! I would not even call it a phobia any more, which is a BIG deal for me to be able to say! I would certainly call it an anxiety, and a big one, but it doesn't go to "phobic" any more I don't think. I don't obsess, and I haven't actually panicked about it in a very long time, even when thinking about it or contemplating the possibility of getting sick. Which is a big big big wonderful thing to be able to say!! :D I don't even know what has finally improved things for me in that department, I'm completely baffled! I do get scared if someone here is throwing up, especially if it's infectious and I could get it, BUT I can't tell you how different life is for me without the daily panicking and obsessive behaviour that I used to have in my teens and early 20s.

Arthur exhibits the same kind of panic about vomiting that I did when I was little. His stems from a bad gastroenteritis he had at 23 months old. Bad. And, as my mum puts it, his "control issues" that he inherited from his mother. *sigh*) I never knew such awful stomach bugs existed when I was a child! I'm actually pretty sure they DIDN'T, and things are way worse these days. The difference with poor Arthur is he happens to get stomach things BADLY, like Neil did as a child. He throws up and throws up and throws up and throws up and throws up and throws up (seemingly forever, and it must seem so much worse to him) when everyone else here who gets it throws up once. Or just the other end. Apart from NEVER WANTING ANOTHER STOMACH BUG AS LONG AS I LIVE (ahem!), I will do what I can to limit the number of stomach bugs Arthur is exposed to. If people didn't take their kids out in public after they've been throwing up (however mildly THEIR kids seemed to be affected, tsk! OTHER people might not be so lucky!) in the window where they're still infectious (3 full days, remember?) then I wouldn't have such a time with this, or such a bother with going to groups and creche. Nor would such bugs be so commonplace, due to basic infection control by parents. It's a huge bug-bear for me - sorry I'm sounding venty and irritable. I AM irritable about this subject! It bugs me no end. *sigh* And the same applies to colds, really. They don't bother us - they're an annoyance, but every time they get one I just think, "Oh well, at least their immune systems are working on something!" and deal. But there's a chain of people, you know? You might not bother about the other kids you're happily exposing to your child's virus, but I personally know people who have had issues like, say, they have a newborn who ends up in hospital because of colds brought to playgroup (not that they'd have taken their newborn to playgroup, because they didn't want to expose the littlie to the germs brought there, but they didn't want their toddler to be bored, so he went and caught the stuff there instead and brought it home). Or someone whose ailing grandmother lives with them and a cold could be threatening for her. This lady had no choice in the end but to regretfully pull her son out of playgroup because of the risk to her MIL, since everybody brought sick kids to playgroup every week and the risk was unnaturally high.

I'm not worried at ALL about exposing my little ones to NATURAL risk, like going out, socialising with people of all ages, shopping, playing at the swings or the park, etc. But it seems impossible to find groups of small children in any context where the risks of catching viruses are UNNATURAL because of the fact that parents send/bring their children in knowing that they are virally infectious. There are one or two pre-school playgroups (ENDLESS WAITING LISTS, unsurprisingly!) in my local area which state clearly that no child is to be allowed to the group with any evidence or knowledge of infectious viral symptoms of any kind. I imagine those groups are full of kids who get sick WAY less than everywhere else! Now if only all groups were like that, socialising little ones wouldn't be the germy pot-luck it is every time the group meets and the frequency of illnesses wouldn't be so extreme overall.

I guess I'm not PHOBIC, just annoyed about the lack of common courtesy, and the sheer crazy amount of nasty viruses that are there for the taking all the time these days. Arthur is in Sunday School at church now, being over the age of 3, and he does occasionally come home with colds, but it's NOTHING like the little ones in the creche room. I figure it's because the 3-6 year olds are not constantly mouthing toys and passing them around! ;) We'd be going much more regularly over this past winter if we could keep the little ones out of creche - I'm happy to let Arthur loose in Sunday School and risk a few colds and such (though, honestly, he was picking up some BAD attitudes from other kids there - at CHURCH?!!! Tsk!). They don't miss being in creche, but when we're there I don't want the little ones to be hankering after that room full of toys where ALL the other little ones are and not being let to go there. That just seemed mean, so we stopped going for a while. I think it wasn't the right thing to do to just NOT go to church. Going to church is important for us as a family, and for our spiritual walks individually. It's so important to get fellowship and good teaching, and to worship together with others, sooooo important. I don't know. I haven't been sure of any decisions we've made lately (except the family-size-in-God's-hands one! :) ), that's for sure.

I was pretty eager for Jemma's recent visit with Jove to result in chicken pox for the boys!! ;) He came down with it 5 days later. The boys didn't get it (we're out of the window now), but most places I read said it's infectious 2-3 days before the rash, so we probably missed it anyway. I really want them to get chicken pox, because it's important to get it when they're little and not a BAD version when they're older. We don't have a chicken pox vaccine here, but I'm glad of that, because I don't think chicken pox vaccines are a good idea at ALL. I don't know anything about it, but I'm thinking TONS of cases of kids with shingles in the future of countries who do that, off the top of my head. And chicken pox is a picnic compared with shingles!

Ummm.... where did I get to/come from?! I have ranted and waffled for ages, and I'm not sure why I started or where I was heading! ;) I'm absolutely not digging at anyone, and it's just my opinion, which I know will differ from lots of other people's opinions. Knowing that does not mean I intend a debate with this post! I really don't like those. So, please don't take it that way. I was just expressing my (extreme!) irritation over something! Ohhh, I remember, I started out just clarifying that I'm not actually acting this way out of anxiety about illnesses - I think people reckon I have a problem with anxiety over it and it's affecting my children and the way I let them do things. But it's not that dramatic, honestly! Going to groups is a pain in MANY ways, difficult to time, extremely exhausting, usually not fun for at least one of my children who have to come along with their sibling(s), and the whole day gets thrown out of whack with fitting in naps and meals. Seriously. The sickness part is the clincher for me - it's not that easy or enjoyable in the first place (I'm not just talking about me here!) and then if we're all going to get sick anyway, then fine, we'll just give it a miss! ;)

Now, if we DO get to a group, usually at least one of the boys enjoys it and it eats up a nice chunk of the day's energies for them. They DON'T like a bunch of yelling noisy kids. They don't like other kids snatching toys and not sharing, or hitting, or so on. My mum says it's important that they get exposed to a whole lot of toddler-bullying (okay, those are my words, tsk!) so they experience the ways of the world and I get to teach them about it as they experience it. Yeah, that's ONE way of doing it! Forgive my bristling hormonal irritability - I'm honestly not usually this antagonistic (maybe not the right word for it, but I can't think of another right now) about stuff, especially bloggy stuff where it can seem even harsher with only the text to look at. It's just stuff that bugs me and doesn't doesn't doesn't sit right with me no matter how I try to stay open to such ideas or try it out that way for a while, etc. Of course the children will meet bullies in life when they're older, but they don't HAVE to be exposed to it from an early age to learn about it. I really don't think so. I don't plan that to be a big old shock to them later on in childhood when they encounter it, after I've taught them never to behave like that, at home with each other. They'll know bullies exist and what kind of behaviour characterises them, and hopefully how to deal with them.

Anyway. They don't like mean kids or noisy kids, or a group that's just overwhelming all the time. They like to play with each other, and don't ever ask about going to see other children or playgroups, or seem lacking in that department - I know some of you said that their behaviour suggests that perhaps they ARE lacking, but I'm not sure that's true. I don't think a child NEEDS other children of the same age to stay sane and happy during childhood. I think that's what we DO in society, and has been discovered to have great benefits for the children (playmates, etc) but it's not actually necessary. I do think siblings are plenty enough in terms of playmates, especially those who are blessed to be close in age to a sibling or two (or more, even better!). Arthur's best friend is Matthew, as he tells me, and he's not kind of worryingly attached to his brother because he's secluded and has no choice and they rely on each other to feel secure, or anything like that. They fight and argue as much as we try to limit that! But they play together all day and would not have it any other way. Going out of our way to find a "friend" for Arthur his own age would likely increase the options for Arthur as far as playmates are concerned, but why go there if he HAS the constant playmate he desires, right here at home? We do socialise with other 4-year-olds, and he gets on with one or two of them really well. He likes to see them, and if we see them a lot over a shortish period of time, he will be sad if we can't see them for a longer spell like if they're away or something. But he would vastly prefer to spend his time with Matthew. I don't like the whole "best buds against siblings!" thing that goes on with children who go to school. I KNOW, not all of them do this! But the majority do, and we're told it's normal, and part of a child's normal developmental do-dahs. But I disagree. Arthur never has that mentality unless he's repeatedly exposed to other children "his age" who will lead the way in unkindly pushing away THEIR younger siblings with taunting voices, and then after a long while (or two or three visits), he will start to do the same with THEIR younger siblings just to join in what they're doing, and if we continue exposing him to that, he'll eventually start doing the same to his own younger brother. Which, we're not prepared to allow. Other children are teaching him something that is not right, and I don't want him exposed to some of that stuff while he's so little and impressionable. It doesn't come naturally to exclude siblings unkindly, without outside influence. Frustration at younger siblings definitely leads to the desire to have time without those annoyances! ;) Arthur sometimes exhibits plenty of evidence of this. But we are teaching them that their brothers are their best friends, and that they don't exclude or talk or behave unkindly to others, especially their best friends. We always acknowledge the frustrations and try to provide time out from such pressures where necessary, but they are to learn to share and include each other, and also to gradually learn the stages of babyhood and toddlerhood and the limitations those pose to that little child's ability to play this or understand that. They ARE getting it, but it's something we are constantly working on.

I remember one time a few months ago (before Christmas?) at fellowship group, one of the ladies there had a baby who crawled up to Arthur and took a toy from him. She was amazed that he responded so calmly and acceptingly, and just got on with the same game he was playing with a different toy. She even emailed me afterwards to comment on it again, saying other children his age had not had that kind of reaction to her little one grabbing toys! I said that he was used to it, but that's not really what I meant. I meant that he is continually learning (being taught by us) about what babies do and what they can understand and can't understand, and why they grab and the best thing to do about it (and not do!). I'm glad he is learning that from us, and not learning a different response by example in a group of other children his age who are reacting "differently" to a baby crawling up and grabbing their toys! That's just one example of many on why we are focusing on home and home-schooling, and not groups of other same-aged children, for the boys' early years. It's such a formative time.

Yes, we're struggling with their behaviour, and we are SOOOO not experts! But we strongly feel that we're doing the right thing for them. Arthur in particular is very impressionable, highly sensitive and volatile - "highly strung", if you will - just as part of his particular personality and character. Not so much his brothers. He's very like me in that respect, but more so. He CAN be easy-going and relaxed, and sometimes is (which I was a little more than he is) but yeah. It's particularly for Arthur that we're feeling the NEED to keep him close and educate him at home (for other reasons than the keep-him-close thing, but that holds too). He needs more stimulation and we need to work on that. Maybe that's all it is, even? They get outside a couple of hours every day. They run and play and dig and drive and race and shout and all that boy stuff (!), without me standing over them (I do housework, or - bliss! - read or lie on the sofa on a REALLY good day when Nathan's nap coincides, hehe!). They do LONG walks and rambles on Saturday and Sunday at the humongous park with Daddy. When our day goes according to plan (we could do with a bit more routine to it, which might help too), the boys help with housework (they love this), I read aloud to them a lot, they play together with cars constantly, we build train tracks that Nathan can't mess up during his naps, Arthur has school during Nathan's morning nap, they do puzzles and pretend play, and sometimes we manage a craft or baking. What I really want to do is increase the craft/baking activities. They LOVE those! But I am finding that it's hard to fit any more activities into our day with all that other stuff! It's not that the day drags boringly by for them - though believe me, sometimes it DOES when I haven't got it together or am feeling exhausted or unwell or something. They do best when each "thing" we do is followed immediately by another thing, however passive or simple, even a meal will do. So long as there isn't a gap between activities where Mummy says, "Okay boys, I have to just lie on the floor for a bit because I'm exhausted right now!" which unfortunately is happening more and more now that I'm in my 3rd trimester! Those "gaps" tend to be when the TV is switched on, and then once the TV is on, it's all too easy for it to stay on longer than necessary and they then get fidgetty and bored, understandably so.

So much to think about and "fix"! It overwhelms me one moment (most moments lately!) and then I will suddenly wake up clear-headed about it and full of energy and determination with ideas to sort this or that out. Easter weekend was lovely and relaxed, but it let me just feel lethargic and more foggy of brain than ever. It has actually been a great thing to get to Tuesday and Neil back to work, to have the motivation to pull myself together again, clean the house and get back on track with the boys' day. I have less energy week by by week at the moment - I had some GREAT energy back there for a while! :) Housework tires me more, and by the time I made lunch for the boys today (11.45am, not late by any means!), my hand was shaking like crazy as I tried to spread their sandwiches with the knife, because my own blood sugar had just pregnantly "crashed" and I needed my own lunch, STAT! ;) I got theirs first, but I'm wondering if I should just drop everything and feed myself if that keeps happening? It took me a while to recover and trying to seat them and serve them was very hard with weak shakes like that, and I started to feel dizzy too. Things are definitely shifting into 3rd trimester mode for me lately, and I have to make allowances for that, I guess.

Arthur's school is going well! We did Lesson 12 of "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" today (we missed our first day in the whole thing so far, yesterday), and Arthur read his first two 4-letter words - "seed" and "seat"! He is reading 3-letter-words each day, and has learned 7 sounds now - 'm', 's', 'a', 'eee', 't', 'r', and today he learned 'd'. He's so excited about it, but he does get bored of some of the exercises, especially the very repetitive ones and the rhyming games. He just wants to READ! ;) I have had to start covering up all the words except what we're about to read, because he will jump ahead. He jumps ahead on everything we do, and is starting to miss my explanations because he's reading the next word and not listening, or something, and then he makes mistakes and gets frustrated. So I'm covering words. But then I just have to take my hand off the next word and start to say the accompanying script (yes, it's totally scripted!) and I will say two words of it before he says, "Oooh, it's got THREE sounds! sss-a-t - SAT!!" and be highly excited about it, while I'm still saying, "... so get ready to sound it out!" It sounds good, and it IS good that he's eager and able, but it can get frustrating if he isn't listening and then I have to go back over things because he needed to hear them to understand the next step or something! Tomorrow (I think?) is his first story!! Just three words - "see me eat" with a picture of a man eating next to it :) I know he's going to be so excited about that. I have to cover the picture until he's read the "story". It's going so well. He has to write two sounds each lesson in his writing book. His writing is visibly improving already (letter formation, that is), but I still have to put the pencil in his hand right each time, because he just wants to WRITE ALREADY, and not bother with such distractions as holding the pencil in a certain way before he begins! ;) He gets a sticker for completing each lesson and when his writing is really good he gets a sticker next to his letters in his writing book. He was starting to award himself quite generously, sticker sheet in hand, haha! But I took over administering stickers and told him I won't be giving out stickers for writing every day - only when it's especially good :) I thought the stickers would be a good added extra, and they're going down well! I ordered some from eBay this weekend - large sparkly coloured stars for the completion of each lesson, and smaller sparkly coloured smiley faces to put next to especially good work :) I'm excited like a small child about those stickers arriving, hehe!

I've also become freshly confident about teaching Arthur beyond reading, as we've progressed with teaching him to read a little. It feels like it's starting to fall into place in my head. The reading book is an accelerated learning course, and should be completed within 4 or 5 months. I will give birth and do the postpartum thing with a new baby in the middle of that time, so I expect it will take more like 5-6 months for us, even with us having lessons at weekends like we do. I will try to keep the routine going as normally as possible for the boys, but I do plan to totally REST UP for the 2 weeks that Neil has on paternity leave after the baby is born. That will stand me in the best position to pick up and continue when he goes back to work. If I attempt to do any of my usual stuff in that time, I don't think I will be as well recovered come week 3 when I'm on my own again! It's not very taxing to teach Arthur to read, and it's great one-on-one time, so I will try to continue it as often as possible during those 2 weeks, while I'm at home (if I give birth in hospital and stay any time to recover a bit), but I do want to consider the possibility that I won't manage it or something. So it might take us up to 6 months.

Which takes us to September! September 2009 is the month Arthur should be starting school if he is not being homeschooled. He turns 5 in November, so he would start school in September. I am really happy with the idea that he will be able to read fluently by then, AND it feels like a perfect smooth transition to other "school" things as the reading lessons come to an end, coinciding with September so prettily, hehe! I know we don't have to follow the school academic year, but I'm like lots of others who can just SMELL school supplies with an autumn breeze or the leaves turning, or the days shortening and the air getting cooler. School time, folks! ;) So I will be happy to get to a fresh "year" of school every September. It just feels natural! :)

In September, Arthur will have learnt to read, and just finished the lessons. So, I'm thinking after breakfast the boys will have outdoor time, and then come in and have "reading time". Reading time will consist of me hearing Arthur read as he practises from books. I won't call that "school", just "reading time", and I'll finish it with the reading out-loud that I'm doing now, from books that are older than the boys' age range (the "Little House" series right now - we just finished "Little House in the Big Woods" and we're several chapters into the 2nd book - "Little House on the Prairie", and Arthur is still loving it!). Then for actual "school" - I'm not sure when to do it. I am thinking morning would be better maybe, and switch outdoor time to the afternoon? But I like the outdoor time and a "head" activity next to each other... Anyway, that might have to be worked around things with the baby(ies!) when it comes to it. But for actual school, I can smoothly move onto teaching Arthur handwriting and spelling, from the learning to read book. He will have learned to write all his letters and sounds, and to read many many words, six or seven letters long, and complicated sentences (the last lesson is a 200-word story!!). So spelling and handwriting seem to be the next obvious (and very straightforward, hopefully!) step. I am going to spend the next few months researching a curriculum (or methods) for basic maths, although I might not add that to "school" for the first few months - we'll see. I see no need to rush anything at his age really. Reading and writing by the time he's 5 will be a great start as it is, and adding the 3rd 'r' ('rithmetic!) will be great when it seems a good time to throw it in there. It may seem like school is packed full with just handwriting and spelling at first, and I want to keep it to SHORT sessions while he's this little, like we are now (15 minutes per day at the moment, that is all!!!). If it seems like he's really ready to add more, or there's time when he'd like to keep going, I'll start the maths. I want to have it ready, to know what I'm going to teach him and how, for September just in case. Then, the only other thing I'm interested in adding to his school for when he's 5 is Nature Study. I got the idea (and fell in love with it!) from this post at Raising Olives (by the way, a wonderful blog with a ton of great tips and ideas for large homeschooling families!). The post explains it all, but basically it's a mish-mash of science, art, observation, writing, and research. It sounds wonderful, and something Arthur would LOVE. If I am teaching him to do Nature Study every day and reading, writing, spelling and maths every day at the age of 5, I will be very very happy and satisfied with what we are doing at school. Of course we're free to throw in spontaneous history, science, art or geography lessons at any given time ;) And take trips to places if we're able (ideally) to boost or inspire these things. And I'm thinking French, definitely, pretty early. My parents live in France and so he's already had the wonderful experience on our last visit there, of them taking him out for walks and to local shops, and having him say, "Bonjour" and "Merci" to friendly villagers, ALL of whom stop to talk to them when they're out and about, as French locals tend to do. My mum tells me he is confident in being approached and spoken to by elderly people speaking fast French! And also confident and clear-spoken saying the words she teaches him to say to them. He also understands other words in French through having heard them said to him and then my mum explaining them to him - he still remembers that everyone he meets there will give him "bees" (bises = kisses!) when he says hello or goodbye to them! :) So, French should be a given, I think, and there's no need to start early or wait either, just whenever it seems good, and not too far in the future. I can teach him a fair way since I studied it to A-level, but I'm rusty and will need to study with him eventually, I can tell! ;) My parents are eager for him to go and stay with them for holidays (maybe 2 boys at a time, they say?) for a week when he's a couple of years older. He gets on wonderfully with them, so I think that will go down very well! They're keen to socialise him with the village and have him talking to people when he's there, and they do it in a very encouraging and fun way so it will work well for him I think.

Okay, I've just realised how late it's getting and how very LONG and rambly this post is getting! I reeeeally need a drink of water too. I hope I didn't offend anyone with my ranty stuff earlier, as it wasn't intended - just an expression of irritation, or something to that effect! ;) I know I will clash with people's opinions, but hopefully it won't spark anger or protest! I'm just a-bloggin' in my blog. Feel free to ignore me if you disagree with me ;)

I NEED to post photos! And I have a ton of videos that are steadily getting out of date, just stacked up waiting to be seen! Actually I could just quickly put some of those at the end of this post, and then at least they're HERE and not waiting to be posted, even though that will make them a bit random, to say the least! Some of them are of Nathan at 13 months, doing "new" stuff, so it's now old-ish stuff and I must get those posted before it gets ridiculous!

Here's one of Arthur and Matthew that's just totally random and only a few seconds long. Arthur has used my camera to destruction - he takes photos and videos every day, and now my camera (not that old!) is not working properly. It keeps deleting photos randomly so that every time I switch it back on, more are missing than before. I have taken SUCH lovely photos of the boys (especially Nathan) over the last week and all but one or two have disappeared because the camera is broken and keeps deleting them! So, I have bought a new camera. Neil has been bugging me - bugging me, seriously! - to get a digital SLR the next time I need a new camera. He wanted me to get one the last time when I bought this camera, but I am nervous about the expense (we didn't have any money at the time anyway, and those things are EXPENSIVE!) and whether I'll justify the purchase with the way I use the camera. I used to really really want to get into photography. I was looking into courses before I got pregnant with Arthur, and when Arthur was little I was so eager to learn stuff to improve. I wanted to pack him up and go to beautiful places and take photographs and improve the skill. After Matthew, I wanted to be able to take skillful photos of the children, but had little time or energy for much else! But Neil thinks I really should take it up, and I would LOVE to as well. I feel nervous that it's an expectation if I buy a DSLR, that I should be persuing it and if I don't have time or energy then it's a wasted purchase, you know? So I was happy to buy a point-and-shoot again last time. This time, God has blessed us to be able to afford extra things and also to pay off our debt and move to a bigger home!!! I am not in the least bit surprised (I told you he would! ;) ) even though it seemed like a not-gonna-happen back when we had no income at all only a year ago! God is so wonderfully GOOD!!! :D And the camera is bust. So... I bought a digital SLR! Eeep! I researched and researched, and finally went with Kim's review of her Sony Alpha 300. So I bought one!!! I am thinking about setting aside a little time every Friday evening to study up on the "how to"s of photography (or the camera itself - the manual could take forever to read and absorb!), because on my Motivated Moms list, one of the things to check off on Fridays is spending time on a craft or hobby. I rarely rarely check that off. So I could try to do a little photography learning or practise on Fridays, and maybe make some progress that way? I hope I can do it, because I would love to learn to use such a camera well and take (much!) better photographs.

Anyhow, my new camera is coming this week on order, yay! It doesn't have the video function that I've been used to on my point-and-shoot, so I will have to dig out the OLD video camera and find the battery charger (if this is even a possibility!) if I want to video the boys any more! Talking of videos.... Here's the one I STARTED to tell you about! ;) I was upstairs putting Nathan down for a nap. I was only gone a few minutes that time, and later in the evening when I was looking through the stuff on the camera, I found this tiny little clip. It made me smile, and being TINY it uploaded quickly, so here it is :)

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Here's little Nathan at 13 months (he's FIFTEEN months now, as of Easter weekend!! That's one and a quarter! Aaaahhh! He's growing up so fast!), just bumbling about, dancing a bit and "singing" to the Kathryn Scott's "Thank you for the cross" :) If the starting picture below shows it sideways on, that's not how the video is! I don't know why it's showing isdeways on, but anyway.

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This one was taken the same afternoon. Nathan was helping me fold (haha!) the tumble dry load, and I finally managed to get him on video doing his new (at the time) thing of understanding me when I ask him to put some item of dirty laundry in the kitchen (we process and sort in the kitchen - everything goes over the safety gate in the kitchen doorway to be processed). It was CLEAN, but never mind! ;)

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Nathan again at 13 months, playing with "drums" and things in the kitchen while the older two were outside in the garden burning off energy! Lately (just this past week or so) I have started letting Nathan out in the garden with the older two. We found a red ants nest on the grass today. Not good! So I didn't let him stay out long today. But before, he used to play in the kitchen like this, or opening and shutting cupboards and rearranging their contents (!) while I did kitchen-related housework or made dinner:

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This last one is Nathan walking, at 13.5 months. I hadn't taken any videos of him walking since he first started, and I wanted a comparison for a couple of months later (he started at 11.5 months). Obviously this is pretty out of date now - I wish I'd posted it at the time, tsk! - he's trying to RUN now, and do funny little attempts and jumping and dancing with his brothers (sooooo cute!), but oh well - here it is now anyway. He's a sweet little pea pickle! :)

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Okay, VERY last one, I promise! ;)

This is a short little clip of the boys one morning when I was feeling exhausted. I put some worship music on and told the boys I was going to lie on the sofa for a few minutes. To my amazement, they stopped whatever game it was they were playing, both headed for the bookshelves, selected books, and went over to the sofa to sit and read! They didn't say a word, the just did it! I didn't suggest it or anything. When Arthur finished a book, he handed it to Matthew, who looked at that one while Arthur read another one he got from the shelf, and so on. They did this for like 20 minutes!!! Nathan climbed on me and chatted :) I just lay there amazed, and finally grabbed the camera to capture it for the record! Now, it's not that amazing at all, because they love to do this most days. They have a LOT of books so it can last a while! ;) It's lovely. And lovelier still, Nathan joins in and often they're in a little row, all consumed by their story books, Nathan just as much as the others, though he often holds the books upside-down, bless him! ;) Often it's just Nathan and Matthew who decide to read together for a while. I have photos, but not this time. I'll be back soon, I promise!

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