Difficulties...

Rare middle-of-the-day posting! I have no time to post, REALLY no time, because all 3 boys are busy around me, and I never turn on the laptop when they're awake in the day time. I used to, but it didn't seem fair to them, so I stopped.

Today I'm really struggling, and since I'm already being unfair in so many other ways, here I am on the laptop, NOT improving things for them, but instead having a quick vent in my blog, to hopefully "reset" the way I'm feeling by letting out some thoughts. Or something.

I soooo hope this is just pregnancy hormones, but even if it IS, right now I am just so woefully inadequate at this Mummy job that it doesn't matter WHY, even if it's hormonal. I don't believe I should give myself any excuse really. I am so disappointed in myself. I seem to be ANGRY with my children almost all of the time these days, and I can't figure out why, because I surely didn't used to be?! But angry is not good, and it means I am disciplining them in anger because I can't seem to cool off no matter how I try, before doing so. Which means they're disciplined inappropriately, which sucks. And, whereas I never used to shout at them, and then went to occasionally shouting at them, NOW I seem to be continually shouting at them. I really really really strongly disagree with shouting at children!! But here I am doing it. Some days by bedtime my voice hurts. It's awful of me. Also, aside from that, Matthew and Arthur are driving me crazy today. And every day, for a while now! They are more than just excitable and mischievous (which they always have been!) - now they are also wilfully disobedient, aggressive at times, rude, whiney, etc, etc. And don't get me started on Arthur's LYING. I know a ton of people, it seems, who dismiss 4-year-olds lying because it's normal at that age, but I can't stand just letting completely unacceptable behaviour slide because of their age! It feels like I've been disciplining them over the same stuff for EVER and I don't see any changes afoot. I can't figure out whether it's their incessant behaviour over such an extended period of time that's driving me crazy to this point, or whether it's just me being influenced by hormones (where I would otherwise be managing things better?).

Being angry with them, and them behaving horribly for so many straight hours out of each day is starting to make me feel like I don't enjoy them, and that combination (the not enjoying plus the angry) means that I'm even less likely to treat them nicely, which I MUST do! I mean, I'm the grown-up, I'm the Mummy! I need to pull myself together and parent them properly, with LOVE and all the things that spill over from being genuinely loving towards your children. Lately I don't seem to be spilling over much. I am just irritable and expecting the worst from them. I have zero patience and even normal happy play is starting to irritate me. It's scaring me because I feel like I'm slipping into "something" that I can't get out of, or at least the sides are slippery and I can't get my footing, and in any case, I have NO IDEA how to climb out.

I'm starting to pray rather frantically about it, and asking God to help me BE adequate for them during the daytimes, and also for patience, gentleness, self-control, etc. But I am not finding that I am doing any better for trying to lean on God. Which makes me think... am I NOT leaning on God like I think I am? Or AM I leaning on God, but there's something "else" that I'm supposed to do to make it all click and to do better with God's strength pouring into me?

I am not sure how I am supposed to do this! Effectively and lovingly parenting 3 little boys, aged 4, 2 and a half, and 1, that is. Even if I get back to the whole loving and effective thing, still, how do I go beyond that and actually train, teach, discipline, and provide quality time for each child?! I read so many blogs where the mama does this so well, and many with more little children than I have, so I SEE it has to be possible! But at times like this I am thinking I am not the same kind of mama, I don't have what it takes to do that. I know that many of them rely heavily on God for the strength to actually do those things at all, as they can't do them in their own strength, so the same should be able to apply for me - I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength! But somehow it doesn't seem to be panning out that way. I'm tired of putting it down to pregnancy, because that's a bit lame, and also even if it IS pregnancy affecting things, I mustn't LET it! Nothing must get in the way of me doing what God has called me to and raising these lovely little boys well.

Right now they are all playing pretty sweetly, pushing large toy vehicles around the floor pretending they're going on ferries and trains and all sorts. It took a good 20 minutes of whining and pestering for me to get the message across that they (Arthur) needed to play by themselves for a little while so Mummy could get her thoughts straight about the rest of the day. Lots of interruptions and whining about not being able to DO anything unless I play too, etc. WHY do I find this irritating?! It's part of my wonderful blessing of a job, that's all! Everyone talks (or cries) at me at once and my head wants to just explode. I want to scream and cry too! I think maybe I'm just being childish about things lately. I just wish I could shake it off and do better, but it's been a long-ish stint where I'm being just inadequate and poor at what I'm doing.

Nathan needs a nap soon - his "one" nap at lunchtime went hideously - he didn't go down easily despite being tired enough, and ended up crying his heart out for like 20 minutes (till he kind of made choking sounds so I went in and picked him up fast). I hate doing that with him. I lowered his cot mattress to the lowest setting last weekend (he was climbing out, and it was long overdue) and now it's nearly impossible to lower him all the way to the mattress over my growing bump, and even more so to do the thing we're STILL doing with him (aaargh!) which is patting his little bottom (he sleeps on his tummy) till he's asleep or nearly asleep. Otherwise he stands up and screams for... ohhh, he can keep it up for 1 hour and 20 minutes, I have discovered (to my shame!). If I try to do the patting now, I get instant heartburn and/or some lovely regurgitation! So I don't want to do that any more, leaning down that far. So he cried for ever, and then I nursed him to calm him down and he went out like a light. But only slept for 25 minutes before waking crying again. So he needs another nap today! He's transitioning from 2 naps to one, but at the moment he's had 2 naps a day for at least a week. It all depends on what time he gets up in the morning. If it's before 6.30am he needs two. If it's 7am he can stretch to one, but his normal waking time is anywhere between 6 and 7, totally unpredictable!

Okay, I am starting to ramble onto other things, and I didn't mean to write a long post today. Nathan has toddled over (he's toddling everywhere now!) and is poking his little fingers into the holes in side of the laptop and trying to climb onto the sofa (he's a pro these days - he can climb all the way up the sofa and onto the windowsill behind it, and stand UP at the window banging on the glass!), so I think I will go. I just wanted to let out some of my increasingly pent up feelings about things, about ME, in particular. I really am getting frustrated with myself, and not liking who I seem to be turning into. I want to get back on track, but I feel weirdly like I don't have a connection when I try to pull on myself - nothing happens. Urgh.

They're still sweet little treasures though :) And I enjoy them many times each day, it's just that it's a shame how it's gone from enjoying them almost ALL the time, to short bursts of enjoying them in between long stretches of finding them intensely irritating and annoying. So sad, and I need to DO something to change things, or myself. They still seem to be happy (though Arthur has issues with anger and frustration as he has for a couple of years now), but I don't want it to continue because I fear messing them up.

Well, Nathan is tired and crying, Arthur has just got happy with a game after whining for the last 5 minutes straight (I fixed a ribbon for him so that it would tie things together in his game and he's happy now), and Matthew is balling up each playsilk and then stroking each one like it's a little pet, saying, "Aw, this one's so fweet!" :) I love that he says "fweet" for "sweet". Arthur used to say "fnowman", so it's similar. Although Matthew doesn't say "fnowman", he just misses off the 's' and says, "nowman" :) Talking of fnow, or "noes" as Matthew seems to call it (!), we had a ton of it (for London, anyway!) a few days ago. It's thawing fast today but we had 2 days of great snow play for the boys. I have photos, so I'll post them soon!

Sorry for being down. I feel like I'm struggling to do my "job" at the moment ALL the time, and it's starting to get me down about myself a little. I don't need sympathy though, I think. I just need to pull myself together! I'm annoyed at myself about it! I will try to carve out more time to spend with God. I think that is definitely the answer, and things will improve from that alone. Also, Neil and I need to re-initiate the prayer times we used to have every evening. He is overwhelmed at work at the moment with way more than he can possibly do (small team to start with and somebody went on maternity leave for a year in December). He has been working in the evenings from home most evenings lately, and weekends, up to midnight or so. On the snow days he worked from home during the day too, as the road was just an ice-rink, quite apart from the 10 inches of snow we had, and we don't have gritting machines round the residential roads.

Anyway if we're praying together I know things will go better, I just know it. So if we ever have time together (!) then that will help a lot! Okay, I need to go and put Nathan down for his nap and hand out snacks! :) Back soon.

February!

It's February, yay! I love having another winter month behind by this time of year! Tonight it started snowing - we really haven't had any significant snow yet this winter - and there's a good inch covering everything now. I'm really excited about it because the boys are SO thrilled with snow, and they have no idea about it because it snowed after they went to bed. Tomorrow morning, I plan to actually organise myself (!!) and get us all out early to the park so they can really play in the snow before it melts. I'm not sure if it will melt tomorrow though. The high is going to be 2 degrees (celsius) with 70% chance of precipitation, so probably it will just snow more and the stuff that's there won't melt. Yay! Should be fun, if a bit COLD!

I have a new fondness for January, given that I've now had one of my precious babies in that month! My own birthday is in February (21st) and I will be 33. Nathan was DUE on the 10th of February, so I did have a lot of excitement and joy about February once upon a time, haha! He came a month early, of course.

Now that it's February, it means that I only have 5 months till my next baby is due! This month I will reach the halfway point in my pregnancy, have my Big Scan (18th) and hopefully confirm whether or not this baby IS a boy (which, he is!) and be able to call him by name after that. It's passing so fast!

In my post early in January, I mentioned that I have decided to have a few New Year's Resolutions this year (which I NEVER do), to get things on track where they have been slipping (or simply inadequate for years). I write a list of "Five Things" each day that I want to make sure I do. It always starts with getting washed and dressed, because it's, um, still not a habit for me after just not seeming able to get that done for ages and ages, and so if I make it a goal that I can cross off a list, it helps me to get it done each morning! I did have to add "in the MORNING" because sometimes I was not finding time to get washed and dressed till the afternoon. *sigh*

Anyway, I am happy to say that I'm still keeping up the Five Things lists every day - I write them before bed each night and haven't missed a day yet. Two of the things are always goals for my children (reading with them, taking them out, reading the Bible with them, etc), and two are always housework-related, and the other is getting myself washed and dressed. I have only ever done all five things ONCE! But the happy news is that I'm not beating myself over the head about it. I still see 3 as good, 4 as very good, and 5 as excellent. I was sooooo pleased the day I got all 5 done, last week!

Last week was a weird week. The first half was unusually GREAT, I took the kids to the park, made great, tasty, nutritious meals from scratch, handled the discipline, naps, meals and nappy changes without trauma, and kept up better than usual with the housework. I felt good, and I was happy and still able to function in a useful manner (!) when my husband got home from work in the evening! I say all this so you know that it's NOT a usual thing! I need and want sooo much to improve on all these things. Anyway. Then the second half of the week (particularly Thursday and Friday) were DREADFUL. Absolutely dreadful. I somehow ended up on Planet Hormone and it was not a fun trip. I also had lots of dizzy/faint spells and felt completely exhausted for no reason at all (except for the small detail of growing another human being), and the boys were just unbelievably horribly behaved for like 48 hours straight. Well, the older two anyway. Nathey is just a precious little pea-pie still, and apart from his new extreme climbing thing (!) and the disturbed nights, he is such an easy-going baby and not remotely hard work at all. Anyway, they did not let up, once! I was reduced to tears by the afternoon on both days, which is something that never happens to me, even when they're extremely difficult. I absolutely felt unable to cope with them at all, and had no idea what to do or which way to turn. I felt like they were being purposely MEAN to me and it just felt like I was at school being bullied! I'm sure that's due to hormones though, that perspective. I also suddenly had zero tolerance for the slightest irritation (not a great combination with kids who are behaving horribly all the time!) and spent way too much of my time angry and shouting at them, and disciplining them inappropriately, etc. Which left me feeling unhappy and self-loathing - another bad result! Ugh, what a mess!

I truly hope that was 99% due to hormones and that it has all blown-over now! I haven't had the same pressures with Neil home over the weekend, so I really hope that I'll be back to normal when he goes to work tomorrow!

Some other things I had on my New Year's Resolutions list were reading goals. I set out to read a book of the Bible each month, and also to read a book a month about parenting, Christian living, or some similar subject, something that would teach, challenge or uplift me in a godly way. I started a list of books that I wanted to read, but only had 7 at the time. I have a few more now that I know I want to read.

My book of the Bible for January was Ephesians, and I have read that now. I am starting Galatians for February. I read The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell, for January. I wasn't very organised with my reading, so I ended up having a 3rd of the book left to read on January 31st!! Hopefully I'll learn from that for future months! ;) The book was WONDERFUL! Thank you again to Mallory, who sent it to me as a complete out-of-the-blue surprise, all the way from the US, last January. I will say that the whole book was very interesting and challenging, and I learned things I did not have a clue about before - important stuff about how my kids tick. I identified Arthur's primary love language as quality time, but physical touch is RIGHT behind that for him (I think that's why his need for very extended breastfeeding was so intense). This is SO helpful to know! My own primary love language is quality time, without a shadow of a doubt. It's clear as day to me from my own childhood, but also now, in my relationship with Neil. I can't quite identify Neil's very well, but I THINK it might be words of affirmation. I need to work on that! Matthew and Nathan are too young really, to have a primary love language, but Matthew definitely seems to be consistently focused on both giving and receiving words of affirmation. He's SO affirming to others in his speech, always praising his brothers for drawings, constructions, walking or getting down safely, etc. He always says, "Good boy!" or "That's briwant!" in a very excited tone. He told the midwife "Good boy" when she wiped the gel off my tummy after listening to the baby, haha! He glows when I tell him I love him or I'm proud of him, which I do pretty frequently, mainly because I am totally in love with his precious reaction when I do so! :) I do the same with the other boys, of course, but Arthur doesn't receive it in the same way that Matthew does. A very helpful and insightful book!

Also, the chapter on Love and Anger reeeeally opened my eyes to a bunch of stuff. Arthur has a lot of anger, that I am NOT dealing with well (now that I see so from reading the chapter). So that is VITAL for me to have discovered, and now I can start to fix that. I also realised that I have way too much of a problem with anger myself, and I can't parent my children effectively - especially help them to deal with their own anger healthily - until I become more mature in my own dealings with anger. So, tonight I bought Gary Chapman's book called Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way (it's the 2nd book down). I see it as high priority so I'll probably read that book right after I finish the February one, after it arrives in the post. So that was soooo invaluable.

My book for February is Passionate Housewives Desperate for God by Jennie Chancey and Stacy MacDonald. I've been interested in reading this book since it was published over a year ago, but finally I bought it a couple of weeks ago and because it's a NEW book for me, I'm too impatient to wait any longer to read it! ;) So it's my February book. It's only the 1st of February, but I've read the first 3rd of the book already, and it's refreshing reading so far. I'm reading it with a discerning heart and much prayer, because of the mixed reviews, but it's what I'm about. I just WANT to be a housewife and serve my husband, raise a bunch of kids (as many as God will allow us!) in godly ways (NOT doing this too well as yet...) and keep house. I am so far not raising the kids as I want/need to, most definitely not keeping the house in any fit state for any family member, and not doing as God would have me do in terms of the way I think or act towards my husband. I HUGELY want to change all these things, in fact, it's my passion to do so. I KNOW without a doubt that this is what God is calling me to do with my life. I have always wanted it, intensely so, even from a very young age, so I know that is God pressing it into my heart. I'm so blessed to be actually living it out all these years later, to have been blessed to find my sweet husband and marry him, and to have my sweet children and a womb filled with another, and the prospect of more in the future! God has been so gracious and so good to me. But I am not living out the life he's blessed me with like I know he wants me to. I know he doesn't condemn me, but I really WANT to improve things in all areas. So, this book is something I want to read. There are plenty of other sources of biblically based encouragement and inspiration, that I go to on a regular basis, and I read my Bible, though not so much as I would like to (till this last month). Anyway, that is why I am reading this book. I think I will finish it way before the end of February, in which case I'll start another one right away - maybe the Anger Management one, if it arrives quickly?

One blog that inspires me regularly (amongst many others!) is Biblical Womanhood, which I've been reading for a couple of years maybe? There is sooooo much helpful stuff on home-making there, and organisational stuff in the home particularly, which I REALLY need to hear about! Recently, Crystal (the author) started a Spring Cleaning project based on an e-book (Spring Cleaning for Normal People from Simple Mom). I decided to join in! At first I thought there was NO WAY I could actually do it, so I didn't intend to even begin. Then I figured the e-book was only $7 and I could use all the helpful resources I could get on organising and decluttering my home! So I bought the e-book (my first e-book!). And Crystal is in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy with two little ones at home, so she's taking it super slowly, and that suits me well. I started to believe I could actually take part, and maybe see some good results! So I am joining in! :) Here's hoping and praying that I'll actually stick with it and see it through to fruition.

This past week was Assignment #1, to read the first 16 pages of the e-book and throw out all visible trash in the home, and also to put any visible items that were to give away or sell, into their respective boxes. So, I have read the 16 pages, thrown out trash, and put all visible "don't want it"s into a charity bag. I haven't made a sell box because I know I will never get round to selling stuff, especially with the local post office now closed down. I'm really pleased to have completed this week's assignment!! :) They're posted on Mondays so I made it in time! Yay me! I decluttered the bottom step of the stairs this week and ordered a slim bookshelf from Ikea to go in there against the wall. It arrived and I put it up, and it stores all the boys' boxed jigsaw puzzles and games perfectly! It looks soooooo much neater than before, and I have a place for all those things, yay! I also got two pine boxes from eBay this week. One is now storing ALL the toy cars and trains and vehicles, which has freed up two battered cardboard boxes that were holding those things on the living room floor before. That also looks MUCH better! The other box I am not sure about. There's no room to put it, though I definitely have things I want to put in it. I think I want to store the art supplies in it, or at least the paints and glue and craft stuff, because I have no place to put those things and they're multiplying as the boys get older and can use more different types of craft things. I have a ton of bulk-buy (thus CHEAP) paints coming in the post from a school supply shop online, and I have no idea where to put them!! We will definitely use them, but ugh, where to store them?! The box would help a great deal if I could find a place to put it. Our house is so tiny and all the space is used up. I need to downsize and declutter a great deal. At the moment, I have done so many small decluttering projects in January without expecting to, that we're currently reconsidering our plan to hire a professional declutterer. Because MAYBE I can do it?? I don't know, it's the most enormous mountain, you wouldn't believe it. The house is a total state, and the clutter insurmountable, or at least it feels that way. But maybe.... For now, we'll see how my continued efforts go, and this Spring Cleaning project, and reassess at the end of February.

Okay this is a long and waffly post, and it has become very late, so I must go to bed! It's still snowing!! I see a good couple of inches on the car and the roof tops out there! Neil says there's a weather warning for London overnight tonight and tomorrow, for the snow. We never get this much snow! :) I wish I had time to post a few photos, but I'll do that next time. For now I just wanted to update a ton of stuff that I want to keep account of, and record my thoughts on. Back soon!

Arthur learns to film video clips! And three sweet little buddies!

I mentioned before that Arthur takes dozens and dozens of photos with my camera every day, sometimes hundreds (I kid you not). But yesterday I showed him how to use the video function on the camera. He was desperate to understand how to capture MOVING pictures, and when he tried to do it himself without asking me first, he just got zillions of 1-2 second video clips! So I showed him how, and he started right away! He was sooooo excited to be "filming"!!

I just wanted to post his results! He took 6 very short video clips which I decided to merge together into one video to make it easier for viewing, and for better continuity too! I love that he's so excited about it - you keep hearing him say, "I'm FILMING!!" hehe! Also Matthew was TOTALLY engrossed in a block puzzle game - he wanted to make every one of the animal combinations (you can hear him demanding to make each one over the various clips!) and Arthur soooo wanted to tell him he was FILMING him, but Matthew was really grumpy due to his irritation at being disturbed and just said, "NO! Busy my 'nake!" (busy with my snake puzzle right now!)! I also love that he caught Nathan walking (though you can't see his feet, never mind!). He recorded these little clips over about a 10-minute period, but when I watched them back I realised what a lovely bunch of memories they are - they are of nothing specific as such, but it totally captures a normal run-of-the-mill day for me with the boys, in a few minutes! This is basically what I spend much of my time doing, minus the meal-prep, nappy changing, disciplining (okay, so that's at least FIFTY PERCENT of my time at the moment, or at least it feels that way! ;) ), etc. They still watch way too much TV, and the house is still in an awful state (see the pile of junk behind the stair gate as a miniscule example *sigh*), but I am doing a lot more playing with them, and I read to them and do "learning" things with them (I hesistate to say school, which it IS, but it's so "un-schooling" that I don't want to say we're officially homeschooling with it yet!) a lot more of the time.

The last clip of the video is what a four-year-old boy will eventually film after he's got over the excitement of the initial thing! ;) He was laughing too hard for me to understand what he was telling me at first. This is Arthur to a T, seriously!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

My 5 Things a Day project is going well, but I have yet to complete all 5 things on my list (still!). The house is still a tip, but I'm slooowwwly starting to declutter areas that have been sliding piles of paperwork/craft projects/tupperware (!) for YEARS. And I am actually getting washed and dressed every morning! Genuinely an achievement for me! I read to the boys out loud a lot more, and this means Arthur is now starting to read (or "pre-read" if that's even a description?!) without me getting to the point where I figured I'd sit down with him and start to teach him! I got new jigsaw puzzles to do with them that will stretch them a lot more than the easy ones we had, and they're both surprising me with completing much bigger and more complicated puzzles quickly and with enthusiasm. We're playing Orchard Toys games most days - they are just the most WONDERFUL educational games for little ones that I have come across to date (their jigsaw puzzles are great too, we have quite a collection starting!). Seriously wonderful. The quality is the best I've come across too. We have all the ones appropriate for under-5-year-olds now, and a couple that my mum gave Arthur for his birthday that are for 5+ (which he can do fine, but Matthew totally can NOT join in yet). Matthew is FINALLY learning his colours with Red Dog, Blue Dog, and Dotty Dinosaurs, quicker than when I was trying to teach him in other ways. And they're fun! :) They are enjoying those games while Nathan naps, and I find myself thinking (scarecly able to believe it!) that I'm actually homeschooling my children while we're doing it!!! And it's so easy. I know it won't stay that easy, but for now it's perfect for them, and for me too. And so non-pressurey and informal, which I like a lot.

I have been casually (at this stage!) looking around the internet at homeschool curriculums, and lurking on forums to see what people use and what they like best (or what they dislike), for various age groups, or combinations (number of children in the family, etc). The one I'm leaning towards so far is Sonlight - does anyone who reads here have experience with this curriculum? Probably not, since I don't have a ton of readers, and much less, readers who homeschool! I like that Sonlight has a lot of families on forums using it as their most highly recommended curriculum (for large families, various age groups, etc). I also like that it's a Christian curriculum. I worried a bit at first about it being an American curriculum because I didn't know if that would mean if I used it, my kids may not get a curriculum to learn from that's culturally "accurate" enough, you know? To our British culture, that is. But it looks like I don't have to worry about that, plus there's plenty of freedom in homeschooling to ignore a certain curriculum's history section and build in a whole 'nother one more focused on our national history, etc. I do want a "non-biased" history curriculum though, for my kids - not overly heavy on the country we happen to live in, just because we DO live here. The whole world has fascinating and relevant history, and I feel like it should all be treated the same, not a priority order based on where we live and what language we speak or something. I know I'm thinking ahead, but yeah, just some early thoughts.

So far I'm thinking I don't need to worry about any "pre-K" curriculum, because my own stuff will suffice for sure. I want to be very informal to at least age 5 or 6, at least that's my thinking right now. I'm also spending a lot of time looking into Charlotte Mason's methods, and really liking her stuff so far. I found a page on Year O (Kindergarten/pre-school equivalent, so I guess Reception class in the UK?) at Ambleside Online and that was helpful. I need to read Charlotte Mason's original series on home education - I just ordered it from Amazon so I'll add that to my "Book per month" list for 2009! I'm doing okay on my reading (The Five Love Languages of Children is my book for January), and have nearly finished Ephesians, which I chose for my first book-per-month of the Bible, so that's encouraging! :)

Okay, enough rambling, it's late! I didn't meant to write much other than to post the videos that Arthur made. I'll post photos next time - I have a ton! Thanks for all the birthday wishes for Nathan, and sweet comments on the photos of his big day! I loved reading them! :) I have so much to write about Nathan ALREADY since his birthday - he has literally turned into a "one-year-old" the day after his birthday, in soooo many ways, compared with how he was before that. I'll write more next time! Also will update my pregnancy journal again soon - I am feeling a LOT of precious baby wiggles all of a sudden lately, and am 100% into maternity clothes since I turned 16 weeks (a couple of days ago), just like that! The boys now know about the new baby and Arthur is, and continues to be, absolutely thrilled about it, which I'm so happy about! He wants a baby brother (overwhelmingly!) which surprised me, but he just loves having brothers :) He's a wonderful big brother, and so experienced at it already. I rarely have to prompt him to help me distract Nathan if he's screaming during a nappy change, or crying for me if I go to the toilet. He will give up whatever fun thing he's doing to let Nathan enjoy giving 100 items in a row to him (far less interesting to Arthur, but he's so willing and kind about it!), and says encouraging things to both his little brothers all the time, even when they're demanding of his attention at times. He has his moments (plenty of times per day!) where I have to discipline him for being aggressive towards Matthew, or whatever, and he certainly finds them frustrating at times, but overall they LOVE each other - the little ones adore Arthur and he them. They are a sweet sweet band of brothers, and I can't wait to add more!

Oh I know I said I would stop writing a couple of paragraphs back! But I realised that I could post some photos pretty easily after that last bit about my sweet boys - blogger makes it fairly easy for me now! :)

Here is a photo of Arthur and Nathan a few days ago. They are like this ALL the time (Arthur constantly longs to squeeeze his baby brother in a hug, and Nathan just giggles adoringly at him!), and it's easy to find opportunities to take photos like this:



Here are three photos that I don't think I posted here yet, though they're a couple of months old - Nathan was 10 months old in these. I don't want to miss posting them here! I posted them at Facebook so maybe a few readers here would have seen them a while back. The boys were just being so sweet on the sofa, and I took photos of them - to try to get them to smile I made the usual farting noises (!!) but instead of laughing whilst looking at me, they looked at each other (more "little boy camaraderie" than there used to be these days!). After that, Arthur kept making the farting noises so I couldn't get a good picture! Then I asked them to smile for the camera (the last photo) so that I could take a picture, and you'll see the result! ;) Two little boys who immediately pull "Opposite of Smiling" faces, and one sweet baby who wants to get nearer to the camera (or his mummy behind it!), hehe!







Here's another one that's different but I love it all the same, from when Nathan was 10 months old :)



All 3 boys sitting on Daddy (cropped for potential Christmas card photo purposes! Which, by the way NEVER happened! I did not write or send a SINGLE Christmas card! Which isn't like me, but oh I felt so nauseous and over-busy, and I'm just thankful to have let myself off the hook about it for once!) - Nathan was 10 and a half months old:



A couple of photos of my three sweetie pies on the sofa (they love to be on there together, that's why it's often the backdrop for photos, it seems!) just the day before yesterday:





Okay, DEFINITELY going to bed now! Back soon! :)

Nathan's 1st Birthday! Photo heavy (be warned!)

Thank you so much for all the sweet birthday wishes for Nathan! :) I can't believe my littlest man is ONE already! Wow.

His birthday went really really well, and I'm so happy with the whole day! :) I have a million million photos, but I will try to be selective for this blog post, hehe! My last post was the first time I ever used the Blogger thingy for posting a photo (usually I just use html and post directly from my Photobucket account), and I've noticed the photos come out a lot smaller at a glance than I'm used to, BUT you can click on them and see them full-size (which is BIGGER than I'm used to!). And it saves me the tiresome step of uploading everything to Photobucket and editing it a bit there too, as I can just upload to Blogger from my laptop directly, hooray!

So, Nathan's birthday! I MUSTN'T be too long-winded, because it's after midnight and I'm already craaazy to be updating this late. I'm doomed, though, because long-winded is my middle name. Oh well! :)

Nathan woke up at about quarter to six in the morning on his birthday, fussing. This isn't unusual for Nathan, and by that time of the morning he's always in bed next to me, so it's fairly easy to resettle him. I usually only half come out of sleep, offer him the breast and pat him on the bottom if he's still awake after that, and basically doze right back off. But that morning I checked the clock. It was still dark outside so I had no idea whether it was nearly morning or the middle of the night. I LOVE that he woke at that time, because he was born at 5.42am, so I like to think that he woke up at the very time he was born a year ago! :) He went back to sleep after a breastfeed and me patting his bottom a bit. Then he woke for the day at 6.50am, I think.

He had a good day! He was smiley and happy the WHOLE day long. He also suddenly started being excited about walking a lot more than he has so far. Since he took his first few steps, he has been taking just a few at a time, but not really seeming overly interested in doing so. He has done it maybe once a day or once every other day, but has preferred to crawl. Suddenly on his birthday he was setting out frequently, huge open-mouthed beaming smile on his face and arms all tensely outstretched, excited about his new skill! It was sooooo cute. He was doing it a new way too, than all the times before. Until yesterday, he was taking big-ish steps and trying to stride sometimes, and falling pretty quickly. Yesterday he started taking these tiny little birdie steps, so very sweet to watch - just a few inches at a time, like one of his little feet ahead in length. He was much more controlled doing it that way, and took more like 6 or 7 steps at a time consistently. Today he has done more than than, and walked 12 or 13 steps to Neil (with great excitement) when Neil walked in the door from work this evening! :) He has been walking ALL day, and trying to set up opportunities to practise it. On his birthday he would walk to me from Neil, and then do an excited sort of gaspy inhale, and then turn right around and walk back to Neil, do the same excited squeally gasp, and walk back to me again! He suddenly loved walking on his birthday! :)

He had a morning nap (hence looking a bit sleepy in some of the photos!), and as soon as he got up we brought his presents out. Arthur and Matthew were sooooooo eager and excited for him to start doing "birthday things", and were bugging us all the time to let Nathan start opening his presents! Arthur even asked if we could open Nathan's presents just after he had gone down for his nap, haha! ;) He also commented on how Nathan didn't have many presents! I told him a little baby doesn't NEED many, and we already have a lot of baby toys.

Nathan LOVED his rainmaker shaker, and his rattled drum soooo much! Here are some of the 18 photos (!!) of The Present-Opening! ;)

Getting ready to open the first present....



Nathan just wanted to shake the rainmaker in it's wrapping paper, he was not interested in tearing it off at all! I think he preferred it shiny and holographic, hehe!



Discovering his rainmaker shaker:



He just banged it and shook it for aaaaages, and frustrated the boys because they could barely wait for him to move onto the next present! ;)



Matthew helping Nathan to open his rattle drum (Matthew soooo would have loved this present all for himself!):



Nathan's instant reaction to the drum:



Soooo happy to use a beater on his new drum after I showed him what it was for:



Banging away happily!...



Bit of a mixed photo of my three boys - Nathan finding out that sticking a drum stick into your mouth too far is not so fun; Matthew being fed-up that he isn't allowed to play with the drum right at that moment; and Arthur being excited about BIRTHDAY TIME at laaaaaaaast, hehe! He is big on birthdays! ;)



Last present, a 'Wheels on the Bus' board book from Nana:



Me reading the new book to Nathan:



My sweet little birthday boy after lunch (hence removal of lunch-covered top, haha!):



Sweet little pie, with sole toothie visible - the next-door neighbour to that tooth STILL hasn't come through, I can't believe it! It has been sooooo close for like a week! Judging by the drool in the photo, it should be here soon! ;)



The weather on Nathan's birthday (he LOVED standing at the window and watching it!):



A bit later on I found him intently browsing his new book from Nana! He really seems to like it, which is great! :)



Mid-afternoon, after his afternoon nap, we brought out the birthday cake (another thing the older boys (Arthur in particular!) had been begging for all day! They hadn't seen it yet as we kept it hidden). Here's a little video (hope it works - first time trying it at Blogger!) of the singing and candle-blowing bit :)



Then we ate cake! :) I gave Nathan a slice and didn't expect him to do much with it, but he surpassed his brothers on their first birthdays (and our expectations!) and practically inhaled it! He seemed to really enjoy it, and at it ALL up! Once he finished, he actually crawled away from his plate towards Matthew's, since Matthew had really not touched his cake much at all, and ate a good handful or so of that before we managed to stop him! He tried the sugarpaste cow, which I'm not that crazy about, but he spat that out so that's okay! ;)









We cleaned up, and then the boys played. Neil did lots of rough and tumble and tickle-time with the boys, which they loved! I will have to post some photos of Matthew and Arthur having their time with Daddy next time I post! I got some sweet photos! :) But here's a little video clip of Nathan having some time with Daddy. He usually belly laughs like crazy when he's being "eaten" or tickled, but he was somewhat distracted by being allowed to hold Daddy's glasses!!



We had shepherd's pie for dinner, and he was happy as anything and ate a good portion!



After dinner he played a bit, and then we ran a bath, he climbed the stairs all by himself for the first time:



And had a bath, where he played with his new bath squirters that Grandma gave him for Christmas (we only opened those presents a couple of days ago, so we saved the squirters for Nathan's birthday bath!):



All clean and dressed for bed! :)



This is one of my favourite photos from the day! Arthur came over and gave him such a sweet cuddle. He really loves his little brothers, and he can be so so sweet with them. They adore him too!



Phew, I think that's it! Sorry it's so photo-heavy, I hope it didn't cause anyone trouble to view this post! Hope you enjoyed all the pics and videos, it took forever to do this post after all! But it was worth it. I wish I had made such an effort to document Arthur's last TWO birthdays like this, because it's lovely to look back on. I will have to go back and do that when I get the chance! :)

Nathan is nearly one!

Tomorrow is Nathan's first birthday! I just can't believe it! A year ago today (well, early this morning actually), I woke up at 6am in a wet bed, at 35 weeks pregnant, thinking, "Uh-ohhhh..." :) It took us forever to gather things together and arrange for my brother to come over to watch the boys, and we didn't get to the hospital till after 3pm! They weren't too pleased with me, as I'd been leaking fluid all that time, still not quite sure though if it really was my waters having broken (it's never happened to me before till late in labour) or just something.... more embarrassing! Or something. Of course, it WAS my waters, and they induced me that afternoon right after they had me cough a lot whilst watching my cervix (!) to be sure my waters had broken. I was Group B Strep positive so I had IV antibiotics as well.

It's sooo strange to me, for some reason, sitting here tonight, to think that this time exactly one year ago I was in the hospital in labour. Easy-going labour, mind you. He wasn't born till 5.42 the next morning, and only the last 30-60 minutes of that was unbearable! I just can't picture it. Well, I can, but I can't relate to it now. It seems like I was a different person, like it was a lifetime ago somehow.

I'm feeling strangely emotional about it tonight - about Nathan being a year old tomorrow. Which feels weird to me. I don't think I have been emotional about my other babies turning one. This feels like a slightly unhappy emotional, not a happy thing, and I'm not sure why. BUT, I am also pregnant and hormonal, and happen to have a horrible headache, so maybe that's all it is?! I wonder if it has anything to do with Nathan's early arrival? I don't know if it even possibly can, but anyway. I can't quite understand why I feel like I have loved Nathan more intensely than even my other little ones, since he was born. I love all my children just as much as each other, but the intensity is different this time. When he was born I just was OVERWHELMED with love and adoration for that tiny, beautiful boy. I know that's a very normal way for a mother who has just given birth to feel, but I was just busy being happy and processing what had just happened, with my other two births! With Nathan, I couldn't turn around fast enough (I gave birth on my knees with my back to the midwives) to see him, it was like a frantic sense of panic that I couldn't see him immediately. When I saw him, I can't describe my feelings at that point, I just can't begin to. I was overwhelmed. I had two other beautiful little ones, but at that moment, Nathan was THE most beautiful newborn baby I had ever seen in my life. Ever. All I could do was breathlessly (and loudly!) proclaim to everyone in the room how BEAUTIFUL he was, over and over. I didn't do anything like that with my other births, so it surprised me.

To this day, I ADORE him. I mean, pinch-myself adore him. He's the happiest, smiliest, most easy-going little love. He wrinkles up his nose when he's smiling really big. He has such a precious little cleft in his chin, and the same little dip in his bottom lip too. This means that when he cries, his lips come together in a sort of on-it's-side figure eight. He also has the sweetest little lip pout/wobble thing going on the moment before he cries about something that's upset him. When he was tiny, his cry actually sounded like "wah-wah" because of his cute little lip shape! :) He was my first baby to sound like that, and it made me want to kiss his little lips while he was crying, instead of tending to his needs, haha! ;)

He loves his big brothers completely. He beams at them and reaches for them, just the same as he does for Neil and I. I love it when he reaches for me, those times when he's sad or hurting and only Mummy will do. That's me. That's ME! I cannot believe I have been so blessed as to be Nathan's mummy. And not only that, but Matthew's mummy, and Arthur's mummy. AND Babydot's mummy! I'm just overwhelmed sometimes, at all that God has given to me.

Well, tomorrow will be a low-key day. Neil has taken the day off work so we can have a special family day, but we don't have much of anything planned. Nathan is happiest just being around us all in familiar settings, so we'll just hang out at home and play. If the weather is okay, we might go to the park at some point because he likes the outdoors too, so long as it doesn't get too cold or tedious for him! And the boys can burn off some energy at the same time. I think the forecast said RAIN tomorrow though, and it's cold, so we'll see.

I made Nathan a birthday cake today, with a very basic farm theme - a round vanilla sponge cake, sandwiched with butter cream. I coloured some butter cream green (pastel green, not bright green, because I hate using food colourings for little ones!) and covered the cake in that, and used the boys' duplo fences (washed!) to link together in a circle on top of the cake. Neil and I made some sugarpaste animals this evening. I wanted to make pigs, sheep and cows, but quickly discovered I'm not talented enough to pull that off! Neil came to help me, and I managed to turn out some quite good piggies, so I worked on those. My sheep looked like a polar bear, so Neil made a much better one! ;) He made cows too, but they look a bit like something is the wrong way round, colour wise! Otherwise okay! :) And there's one candle in the middle. I'll be sure to post photos when I write about his birthday!

[edited to add: Okay so I took a photo of the cake, so that I didn't forget on the day (so far I think I have done that 2 out of 2 times, hehe!), and uploaded it, so here is Nathan's cake for tomorrow:]



He doesn't have many presents. I feel bothered about that, but everyone keeps saying he's only ONE, and he won't mind a bit about presents. I just wanted him to have some fun things to open for his birthday, but I was annoyingly disorganised (Christmas and New Year having lulled me into a false sense of security, then SUDDENLY it was almost Nathan's birthday). My mum bought some things for him online (she lives in France) and had them delivered here, but one of them doesn't work even when we change the batteries :( We got Nathan some really sweet board books from the Christian bookshop, and also a drum - we don't have one of those yet, aaaargh! He loves banging things right now, and beams from ear to ear if he finds something to bang that sounds good and "drummy". This drum is quite flat and has a clear top, through which you can see coloured beads inside. They rattle about and jump when you bang the drum. We also got him a baby rainmaker. We have one but the beads inside are tiny and have gone all static, so they stick to the container, but he loves it anyway. And that's all! The books did not turn up in the post, which I'm annoyed about, but I'm really hoping they'll arrive tomorrow morning. I wrapped the things he DOES have so far, tonight, and there are just 4 really small presents, including what my mum sent. I SHOULDN'T have any sort of a problem with that! But for some reason I do feel a bit sad about it :(

Anyway! Hopefully he'll be a happy boy tomorrow, and the others won't need SUCH a crazy crazy amount of discipline as they seem to need all the time lately. Nathan might get his second tooth on his birthday! It's soooooo close to cutting through the gum today, we thought it was through, but it's not QUITE. It's his second top middle tooth. I have no idea where his bottom teeth are!

I just finished uploading and editing all the Christmas photos, at LAST! It's soooo out of date now, but oh well. I wanted to post them before Nathan's birthday, because after that they're kind of not interesting or relevant any more, but I haven't managed it, so never mind. I will post them anyway, soon, but probably cheat and backdate them so that the entry falls a couple of days after Christmas in my archives, hehe! I'll mention it in a new post here when I've done it though, in case anybody would like to see them.

Well, I'm tired out and heading for bed. I hope I'll be back with photos of my tiny birthday boy soon! :)

What a day! :)

Thank you for the comments on my last entry! :) Jemma, how funny that our "to do" lists were the same!

I did better today with my five things! I decided the 5th one should be "Take boys for a walk" because the day was sooooo clear and sunny and crisp and beautiful, but sadly that was the one goal I didn't make. I DID make a yummy lamb casserole, which two-thirds of my children refused (sigh), and finish clearing the clean clothing piles from the stairs, and get washed and dressed this morning, AND I read a couple of books aloud to each individual boy today, yay! I felt soooo happy for doing that, and they seemed calmer after story time too. I decided today that I seriously need to ditch the TV. They watch incredibly too much TV and it's on for most of the day, and I can't fathom how it's come to this, when I originally did NOT want my small children watching TV at all!!! Also, Arthur is more aggressive and "nutso" after a block of TV, which I used to be as a child too, so my parents limited my TV quite a bit. I was older than Arthur though. Anyway. I'm nervous about what to do if it's not on! It has (embarrassingly!) become quite a coping mechanism for me...

Anyway, I got 4 out of 5 off my list done today!!! Four out of five = very good! Yay!

Neil ended up working till 10pm or so tonight, and the ringer was off on the phone (my fault entirely) so he left messages but it got so that dinner was running late and it still wasn't quite ready, and I was hoping Neil would watch the boys who were getting tired and hungry and cranky, while I cleared the kitchen enough for us to EAT in it and served dinner. I kept thinking maybe he was stuck in traffic, and then wondering aloud where he could be, and then I thought to check the phone, and there were two messages about working late tonight! Oops. So, then it was not easy getting all 3 fed and ready for bed, and INTO bed and sleeping by myself. Nathan was asleep for 8pm, but that's when I like them ALL to be asleep by, if not earlier really. If I'm on my own they just have to go in order from youngest to eldest. Arthur would not go to sleep because he missed his daddy, so I let him get up to phone Neil at work and chat to him for a few minutes. He went to sleep pretty fast after that, but it was 9.30pm by then.

Also, today we had a "monkey moment", the likes of which we (thankfully!) haven't seen in a while! I went up to put Nathan down for his afternoon nap, and made sure the boys had something to watch on TV (urgh!) that keeps them entertained and thus quiet. Apparently it wasn't entertaining enough for Matthew, who did this instead:



Yes, folks, it's the Sudocrem again. Nappy cream that does not wash out of anything! ;) I had no words when I saw him, as I felt exhausted and was TOTALLY not expecting trouble at that point in time! I think I just said his name a lot, and couldn't find words to follow that, and then grabbed the camera as it seemed like the only vaguely sane thing to do! ;) His face was a picture when he realised he was busted!



But he was very pleased with his "cleaning" - apparently that's what he was doing. He told me he even cleaned his hands and feet. He did a very thorough job - not a speck of cream-free skin on his feet, including inbetween his toes and the soles and heels! Here he is showing me his "clean" hands:



Ohhhh it was everywhere. The carpet was covered, and then he'd walked around the room looking for toys to "clean", and so there were white greasy footprints everywhere. He did a great job cleaning Arthur's car transporter:



My skin is actually cracked from the amount of detergent I used under the hottest water I could bear to clean that car transporter in the kitchen sink! I washed endless tiny little dress-up doll clothes (which they got for Christmas and LOVE) by hand, and scrubbed the carpet like crazy. It still is yucky and greasy and somewhat white though. I made Matthew clean the wall with a towel after I stripped his cream-covered clothes off, and clean the side of the merchant's chest with baby wipes (which at least cut through the stuff), and he was very willing and diligent. He was very quiet! I think he knew he'd been properly naughty!





Arthur hadn't even noticed what Matthew was doing, and gasped in a sort of horror/delight sort of way. He ran for the camera while I was cleaning Matthew up, as he takes dozens of photos on my camera every day at the moment. Lots of them come out blurry if he's too excited about the subject, haha! ;) Here's me somewhat huffily cleaning the cream off Matthew's feet!





The photographer (we have LOTS of photos like this one, as Arthur likes taking them, and pulling as many different faces as possible! In this one he's waggling his tongue to make a silly noise!):



And, so as not to leave him out, my sweet little one-toothed wonder, taken by Arthur the other day!



I can smell Sudocrem even now. And it's so late! I must go to bed!

Tomorrow's Five Things:

* Get washed and dressed

* Wash the cream out of Matthew's hair (it's blotted and wiped as best I could, but yeah, the poor boy has had to go to bed with somewhat creamy hair tonight!)

* Do 2 wash loads and dry loads - the need for which is evidenced by the BULGING portable safety gate behind Matthew's monkeyness - it's all dirty laundry in the kitchen doorway, yuck! I am SO going to wash it all tomorrow.

* Read aloud at least a couple of books to each boy

* Go for a walk? I'll try!

I'll be back tomorrow probably! :)

Thoughts about 2009...

Yay, my second "officially here!" post! :) Thanks for the comments, I feel welcomed in!

I have been having so many thoughts and musings about the year ahead, as well as the year behind me, lately. I'm frustrated with how 2008 ended, especially the last few months, for the boys and my heart (attitudes and such), my walk with God, and my home, etc. I know I've been pregnant over those months and mayyybe should cut myself some slack because of morning sickness and exhaustion, etc. But I still don't feel happy about it, and I need to actively make some changes. I NEVER make New Year's Resolutions because I just don't believe in doing so. I used to, but sort of as a "cool teen" thing to do, because everybody did and it was the thing to do. I used to make like 38 of them and never really accomplish ANY of them. So I just don't do it. It's extra pressure and I feel doomed to failure over big goals! Even small goals sometimes.

Anyway, I really do have things I want to change, and I am not sure how to go about it. All I know is, things NEED to change around here. And it happens to be a few days into the New Year, so I might as well call them New Year's Resolutions, of sorts, while I'm at it? I just need to be careful about my expectations and stuff.

On Saturday afternoon, Neil took all 3 boys to the park for some air and exercise. He's good like that, and they really don't get out much at the moment due to me feeling grim or exhausted. Getting 3 small children ready to go out in the winter is such a huge task! I'm dizzy with exhaustion before I'm halfway through, and it's not like they are well-behaved or helpful during the process at ALL, so it's just HARD to do on my own. I need to fix that too, though, for their sake. But it feels like a mountain that I'm not sure how to climb at the moment.

Anyway, so Neil took them to the park. When they go to the park I usually snap into action (for a brief flickering moment, haha!) and "blitz" a room or cook something that is fiddly to cook with the boys about. Or something. But this time I had a sore tummy all weekend, just IBS/pregnancy-related, but bothersome, and I was sooooooo tired. So I knew I should just rest up on the sofa or something. I bought myself a few new Christian music CDs for Christmas, with Christmas money from my parents! I got 3 Chris Tomlin CDs, a Lou Fellingham one (her latest), and Kathryn Scott's "I belong", which is just beautiful. So I figured it was a perfect opportunity to put on some of my new worship music, get my Bible, and recline on the sofa, just spending some MUCH needed and long-overdue time with God. It has been a lukewarm spell for a few months. Not DRY like it used to be if I wasn't feeling super close to God, nothing like. I have still been praying and praising God (here and there, not lots like I need to). But I'm not happy with myself for the last couple of months of 2008, especially regarding my calling, that is, what God has called me to. And living out God's plan and desire for me, especially as a mother, wife and homemaker.

Neil and I haven't prayed together in a couple of months. I'm annoyed and fed-up about that. Our discipline (and motivation lately) is just pants. We used to pray every night after the kids were in bed asleep, and it was SO wonderful. I feel so frustrated that we have lost that wonderful habit, even though we saw it slipping, we didn't pull ourselves together and keep it going. Urgh!

Anyway, so I put Chris Tomlin's "Hello Love" CD on. It has two lovely slower tracks at the end, and the penultimate track is called "Exalted (Yahweh)". There's such an incredible soaring chorus that just cries out, "Yahweh! Holy is your name! Yahweh! Holy is your name!" over and over, this huge choir without instruments. I put it on all normal and upbeat about a little quality time with God, and then Track 11 came on and I totally did not make it through the first chorus before I was unexpectedly overcome with sobbing and crying. Something about the use of the name Yahweh (which I don't often use/hear - it means "Lord" and is referred to as God's name in the Old Testament sometimes) just transformed it for me. It gave me an image of God as Ancient of Days; awesome, mighty God of Israel - just HUGE, eternal, all-powerful, etc. It just suddenly overwhelmed me to see how lukewarm and POOR my offering to God - this GREAT AND MIGHTY God, awesome and loving and incredibly wonderful - has been, and how VERY much I love him, and how very broken-hearted I felt at the revelation therefore. I couldn't sing along to the chorus at all, though I so wanted to, for choking crying - I just felt so inadequate somehow, coming to God so.... in such a poor state without having fallen to my knees before him and shared my heart and told him I love him, and asked his forgiveness. So I did that (well, on the sofa, not on my knees), and cried a ton and felt so deeply remorseful. It was a WONDERFUL moment, spiritually speaking, yay! I know these "deep heart" moments are the life-changing ones and OH, how I've felt the desire and need to change this past week.

After that I found I could sing along with the chorus after all, but with a huge beaming smile, a swelling heart, and tears of joy, hands outstretched to my glorious God who has cleansed me, loved me, forgiven me and accepted me all over again, and who delights in what I'm doing before him in worship!

Following on from that, I really started to feel like setting some new goals for the year ahead (that is where this post has come from, which is why I shared it all). I do have such a lot of things to work on, to hold myself accountable for, and to try to achieve throughout the year. I desperately long to finish 2009 a "different" person (but not as such - still ME, still who God made me to be, but different in a good way) than I was when I finished 2008. If nothing else, I need to make this progress for God, to be who he has called me to be. I know he calls me to be myself, but I have a way to go, and I need to be working on it! And my children and husband NEED me to make these changes this year. They needed it LAST year, but this year more than any other - they'll all be another year older, their childhoods advancing on, and in July we will add another precious little boy (I think!) to our family. So I need to learn to be a better steward of all that God has blessed me with: my time, my children, my husband, my home, etc.

I am so FED UP of my walk with God being hot, cold, or lately lukewarm all the time. It's always on/off, NEVER consistent, ever. It's ENTIRELY to do with my lack of self-discipline. I really don't think it has to do with a thing else. So it's time. It's time I stepped up (I almost want to say "grew up", but that feels too harsh and uncomfortable - could that be because it's true??) and tackled my self-discipline issues. I can't muster up self-discipline, it has to come from God. HAS to. It is the furthest thing from "natural" for me, I am just waaaay not that kind of person, and never have been. I've always struggled in this area, even in other ways before I became a Christian. But somehow I've GOT to be different in this area, to be consistent, and be disciplined about seeking God. If I am slack on that, nothing can be achieved, because I need God totally involved with me for everything.

So, I must start with that. I need to be in God's word ever day, and spending time with God every day. It's about as important as oxygen, so it's not a question of not being able to fit it in. God HAS to come first - yes, before my children. Because then he'll equip me to meet their needs. And not only that, it's so important that they see me acting/living out this priority order.

I don't want to be unrealistic with any New Year's Resolutions that I DO make, nor set my goals too high or make too many of them. I started to jot down ideas of the kind of things I want to put on my list, just off the top of my head. I haven't really got much further yet, and my list might need revising or tweaking. Or maybe it'll just do fine and I'll work from it this year?! Here's what I'm thinking so far:

1. Read a book of the Bible every month. I saw this idea on somebody's blog (I can't remember whose!) and thought it was a much more realistic goal for me than trying to start a "Read the Bible in a Year" programme. I started that in August but only got through the first month of readings before my self-discipline petered out, tsk! I so need to FIX THAT!!!! So, obviously reading a book of the Bible per month will take longer than a year, but that's fine, so long as I'm actually READING the Bible it's great! :) I need to feed on God's word, and that's what I'll be doing if I'm reading it at all. I will choose any book I want to start with, and go from there. If I get excited and finish one in a few days then I can always read another and another that month, but I will only hold myself accountable for ONE book per month. I'll have to keep a list somewhere of which books I've read, so I don't lose track! I think I could do that here, maybe? I haven't decided which to start with yet, but I'm going to make a start soon, as we're almost a week into the first month of the year already!

2. Write a loose-ish schedule and try to stick to it. I have tried a written schedule before and it worked SO WELL at keeping me better on track. I got so much more done, and the boys' day ran much more smoothly. But I find schedules sooooo very very hard to stick to! It's just completely not in my character! But I need to try again, and keep trying beyond that, because if I'm going to have a lot of small children (well, I already do, but yeah if I am going to have MORE, lol!) then I will need to be more self-disciplined and structured to get everyone's needs met and stay somewhat sane! ;) This particular resolution needs a condition though - I must be realistic when writing the schedule and not "over expect" of myself. I read at the MOMYS (Mothers of Many Young Siblings) forum the other day that you should be happy with getting 2/3 of the schedule done each day, not expect to achieve more, which is good for me to hear, as I tend to set my expectations too high and get all perfectionistic (word?).

3. Read a book each month, specifically about parenting, Christian living, or some other thing that encourages me as a mother, wife, child of God, or home-maker. Now, I may end up needing to tweak that if a month turns out not to be enough for all the reading (if I don't get enough time to read as I hope to), with the Bible reading too. But for now I'll start out trying to read a book per month. Straight away I had 7 books that I want to read, to put on my list, and I'll have time to figure out another six for the rest of the year, so that's fine for now. My seven so far are:

Raising Boys - Steve Biddulph
The Five Love Languages of Children - Gary Chapman
Debt-Proof Your Marriage - Mary Hunt
The Mom Walk - Sally Clarkson
Shepherding a Child's Heart - Tedd Tripp
The Power of a Praying Wife - Stormie O'Martian
Let Me Be a Woman - Elisabeth Elliot

I have started with The Five Love Languages of Children. Mallory gave me that book a year ago (thank you Mallory, I so so so appreciate it!) just out of the blue. She sent it to me unexpectedly all the way from the States! I wanted to read it right away and then it got put to the back of my mind for a while. Arthur is SUCH a challenge right now, and I keep worrying that I'm missing something, or not doing something that he NEEDS me to do. I feel like I'm disciplining CONSTANTLY and there is less and less of the positive stuff, which can't be right. It is a strain between us, and his behaviour is definitely not improving. Anyway, again I was browsing posts at MOMYS and saw a post about 4-year-old boys and behaviour. There was such a lot of wise advice and thoughts from very experienced mothers! I love big family forums! I love that it's so normal for someone to write, "Well, I've had five 4-year-old boys so far, and in my experience...." and nobody bats an eyelid! ;) It's sooooo helpful to read these wiiise ladies' thoughts and see what their experience was. Anyway, a couple of people mentioned this book and said good things about it - even one of them said putting what the book said into action changed their son's behaviour completely. So, then I remembered that I HAVE that book, thanks to Mallory! :) So I grabbed it straight away and started reading it. That's my first "book per month" book this year! It's a very interesting read, and I can see it is going to help me a ton with the boys, and maybe change things a LOT for them for the better. I know I said it already, but thanks so much Mallory! xxx

The other books are books that I've bought in the last 6 months and either started to read but never got halfway, or else didn't have time at all to start them. And I really want to read them. Each will give me valuable insight, I think, and I am eager to get reading.

Okay that was a long-winded explanation for my 3rd resolution! ;)

4. Declutter the house PROPERLY. I can't even begin to describe my house at the moment, and thankful for that because I would not WANT anyone to know about the state of it! Believe me, what your imagination is showing you right now is not the HALF of it. I keep worrying about some social workery person happening upon us for some reason, and us being in BIG trouble. Seriously, it's not good for the boys, or for Neil and I. But we're in too too toooo deep, even with FlyLady's help, to dig out, especially with the time pressures, the boys, and the baby consuming all my energy and physical resources right now! So, we are hiring a professional declutterer. Yes, people, it has come to that. We have money left from the sale of the end of our garden, and this is a high priority now. I need to actually contact the person and arrange it though. The sooner we resolve the problem, the better for all of us, so I need to do it this month. My goal is to arrange that, and see it through.

5. Sort out homeschooling properly. I don't even know what I mean by that. We started a sort of pre-school programme that I made (with the help of a craft activity book for themes) in September but yet again we did not get further than October before it all came to a standstill. I'm so nervous that I simply don't have the ability to pull myself together and really be responsible for my children's education. I can SEE that it's totally possible, and I SO WANT to do it! I am frustrated beyond explanation with myself that, as with sooooo many things my life through, I can't seem to pull myself together and DO it, with sticking power! There is so much at stake with this one, and I'm scared to fail, because it's not just about me this time, far from it. Arthur would be starting school properly this September if he went to school, so I really want to sort myself out, make a plan, and I don't know what else I can do! Praaaay. Seriously. Just pray. Otherwise I'm doooomed, and so are my kids! Or else at school where I don't really want them to be, and where I don't think they'll necessarily receive or achieve the very best they could. Anyway, this resolution isn't necessarily for anytime imminent - just "this year" sometime when I have figured it out a bit better and got my bearings a bit better with 2009!

I may think of and add more resolutions yet, but I don't want to overload myself. I want to set myself up to succeed at them, not flop, because that is just a huuuuge confidence killer. And I don't need that!

The other thing I started today was something I read at Natalie's blog. Natalie inspires me so much because she has 2 more very young children than I do, and struggles in the same areas I do, it seems. She also is wonderful at pointing to Jesus and inspiring me to keep looking to him in the midst of struggling to be self-disciplined. She's so honest! And I love that in a blogger! :) Anyway, she started writing a list of 5 goals to achieve each day. I thought that sounded like a great idea, and just right for me (achievable, I hope!), so I started it today. My five things today were:

* Get washed and dressed (seriously folks, I do not think you realise how much of a slump things have got to! It is actually an achievement for me to tick this off the list!)

* Clear piles of clean laundry off the stairs

* Make a lamb casserole

* Put Christmas tree and box of decorations in the loft (I took them down yesterday while the boys were out getting haircuts with Neil)

* Spend 15 minutes of uninterrupted quality one-on-one time with each child. So, 15 minutes x 3, somewhere in the day.

So I got washed and dressed! Go me! ;) And I put the Christmas box and tree in the loft, yay! I went to make the lamb casserole, but discovered that we used all the casserole-y type vegetables for the roast dinner yesterday! So that couldn't be made today. Neil bought veg this evening though, so I'll try that tomorrow. I cleared more than half the stairs of clean clothes (they are VERY cluttered with piles so it was a big job!) and put them all away neatly in the appropriate drawers, which I'm pleased about! But I didn't finish that job today. And the last one was so important to me to start doing - it's sort of based on the beginnings of what I'm reading in The Five Love Languages of Children. But I'm bothered because I could not find a single window for ANY of the boys in the whole day, and that slightly panics me for some reason! When Nathan napped this afternoon I thought maybe I could do 15 mins with Arthur and then 15 mins with Matthew, but lately I'm having trouble with one or both of them being CRAZY noisy on purpose when Nathan is sleeping, and I'm basically nagging or disciplining all the way through Nathan's nap because of it. Which sucks. And means that I can't go into the kitchen to do something at the (hastily cleared and cleaned?!) table with Arthur, and leave Matthew in the living room doing something fun for 15 minutes, because he will very likely act up and need me to go in and sort him out MANY times, and that will mean Arthur does not get his uninterrupted quality time with me, not even 5 minutes, let alone 15 :( I am not sure if Arthur would let me do uninterrupted time with Matthew either, for 15 minutes. They just do not LISTEN to me when I tell them to be quieter, or if I ask them not to interrupt something or other for even the shortest of time (1 or 2 minutes even!). It's like that makes them HAVE to interrupt even more. I'm really struggling with it right now! So, I did baking with the two of them while Nathan napped, and then started a craft thingy, but Nathan woke up during that so we put it aside for another time. That was good, but I still want to be able to focus on one child at a time for a solid block, each day. They each deserve and NEED that, and I should be able to provide it! I am concerned that I can't seem to, even when I want to! I will think on it some more.

This post is reeeeally long-winded now, and it's so late, so I must go to bed. Here are my 5 things for tomorrow, before I go. I will try to update tomorrow, at least to keep myself accountable for the list of 5 things. I'm trying to be easy on myself a little over the 5 things. You know how with 5 star rating systems, things often say 3 means "good", 4 means "very good" and 5 is "excellent"? Well, I'm trying to think of it like that. Otherwise I'd definitely be looking at my list and thinking critically, "I only had FIVE things to do today and I couldn't even do more than half of them!!" With the way I'm thinking, I almost achieved three, so I'm trying be less critical of myself and think 3 means "good"! :)

Tomorrow's list:

* Get washed and dressed
* Make lamb casserole
* Finish clearing stairs
* Read aloud to each boy, at least a book each
* I can't think of a fifth tonight, my brain has gone fuzzy. I'll get to that tomorrow.

Good night, and congrats for reading all the way through if you made it, haha! ;)

The first real post here! :)

Well, I've finally MOVED IN!! I have been moving all 269 entries from my Diaryland version of this diary, since December 12th! It has been soooo tedious some evenings! But I didn't want to leave anything behind, and I'm so glad it's all done now and I have properly moved here. I already love Blogger, and have been reading Blogspot blogs for a year or two. It feels very familiar here, and I'm so happy to be here! I originally felt a bit bad about abandoning Diaryland, since I've kept diaries there for EIGHT years straight! My original one was started when I was housebound with M.E. and fairly newly married, in January 2001. It was a place to vent. I am not proud of some of the stuff I wrote there, so I am always squeamish to link to it! But I was seeking God, always, and up till that point I had never felt so close to God as those years when I was stuck at home feeling dreadful all the time.

God healed me (yup, just like that! Yay!) in November 2001, and I continued writing, but my thoughts were turning to having babies - something I have longed to do all my life. I never wanted a career, only to marry and have babies. Six babies, as per my goal at age 6! :) So, I started my second Diaryland diary (well, I did have one about ice-skating for a while there, too!), alicesbaby, in January 2003. I knew we were planning to start trying for our first baby that year, so I was excited to start writing about my thoughts and plans and feelings, etc. And our progress, of course! We did not conceive our first baby till February 2004, and my "TTC" (trying to conceive) diary became an exciting pregnancy diary! I decided to journal ALL of my trying-for-babies, pregnancies, and newborn stages at that journal, each time, rather than have seperate diaries for each pregnancy/baby. I like having them all there to look back on and compare! And I LOVE returning there, because I love being pregnant and having babies. It's like coming home when I return there once my baby is 8 months old ish :) I love it! So, I sort of want to switch that diary to Blogger as well, since I'm nervous about the longevity of Diaryland now that it's so tiny compared with alllll the other places to blog. I don't want it to fold and to lose all my precious diary entries! But there are five hundred and something diary entries there, and I can't fathom copying and pasting them all like I had to here! Yikes! So, I'm still there. I'm 13 weeks pregnant with baby #4, so I write there more frequently than here sometimes.

When Arthur, my first baby, got to be 5 months old, I realised that I needed to leave my pregnancy diary behind and start journalling his babyhood and my steps into motherhood somewhere else. I didn't feel like going back to my original diary though, so I set up a new one - arthursmummy. This diary! I started that in March 2005, and have been writing there ever since, adding sweet babies along the way! :) I have Matthew and Nathan now. Arthur is 4 (as my new "about me" bit over on the left there says!), Matthew is 2 and a half, and Nathan will have his first birthday in just over a week!! My new baby looks to be another boy, and he'll be due on July 8th THIS YEAR! Aaahhh, I just realised I'm having a baby this year! Again! :) Yayness!

So here I am! I have not written many diary entires over the last few months, mainly due to morning sickness (I wrote quite a lot at my pregnancy journal though), illness, and a trip to visit my parents in France. Diaryland seemed to be getting quieter and quieter, and my comments fewer and fewer, and that really knocked off my motivation to write for some reason. I feel like a fresh start.

This blog will change in the way it looks very soon - I just grabbed the same header photo from my Diaryland diary for continuity's sake, and a pretty free background from cutestblogontheblock.com, and voila, a readable blog! ;) I'm EVER SO excited, because I faffed about trying to do something decent for a layout and it was just too time-consuming and I appear to be too rubbish at it, so I made a rare decision and chose to get my blog professionally "made over"! I have lots of blogs that I read who have had their blogs made over, so I just went and looked at the people who did their blogs, and chose the person whose designs (and prices!) I liked the best. HANDS DOWN, that person is Jennisa, at Once Upon A Blog. I'm toooo excited for words! We sent a few emails back and forth because I had some questions, and she seems lovely and I can't wait to work with her on my blog layout! I think I have chosen my kit for her to work with, and she has put me on her waiting list - look! If you go to her link above, and scroll down below her header, there's a waiting list on the right sidebar - I'm on it!!!! Yay! Right now there are a bazillion people ahead of me (below me on the list) but hey ho. I know it will be worth waiting for. I'm hoping she'll have reached me on her list by the end of January maybe? After that this blog will look very different, but totally about me, or reflecting what I want it to look like, and I am hoping that will be another factor to motivate me to write here more often! I always have so much to write, and then it doesn't get written. I don't have as much time as I used to, but I LOVE to blog!

If you're already at Blogger (and if you want to, of course!), you can click on my "follow this blog" link below my list of posts on the sidebar, to follow me from your dashboard. Now that I'm here properly, I have been able to officially "follow" lots of Blogspot blogs that I have been reading for ages, and it's so nice to have such an easy way of keeping up with them! I had them bookmarked on my browser before, and that was getting fiddly with like FIFTY different blogs from different bloggy places on there!

I have a BUNCH to write about the year ahead, and my thoughts on last year, AND a ton to catch up on with photos of the boys, Christmas photos, and VERY tardily, Arthur's birthday photos from November! :S I never even got around to catching up on his 3rd birthday in 2007, but I like that I can put a post here that's backdated and it will appear amongst the posts for that year, as though I had posted it at the time! :) So I will probably do that with Arthur's 3rd birthday as well, at some point, and let everyone know when I've done so! I will be back very soon (tonight even?! Or tomorrow) with the post about the year ahead and so on, that I have mostly written already but don't want to post with the New Blog!! post.

I hope you like it here, and that you'll come back to visit me again here!