Christmas (no pics yet)! And thoughts...

We had a lovely Christmas! I hope everyone reading this did too.

Arthur came down with a cold on Christmas Eve but it didn't slow him down too much on Christmas Day, and it has cleared up already - none of the rest of us caught it so that's a relief! Neil has a sore throat today, but we spent the 27th with Neil's family, including sweet little Ella (the boys' 2-year-old cousin) who had a runny nose. I know we're coming to the peak of the germy season in the New Year, but I sooooooooo just want us to stay healthy somehow all the same! I really don't want any illness at ALL when I'm this pregnant and when we've got a teeny tiny new baby in the house.

I am eating Thorntons vanilla fudge. Ohhh yes :)

Neil's brother got us a CROCKPOT!!!! I'm sooooooooooo excited! And we had planned to pool our money from my grandparents (they usually give Neil and I a separate cheque to spend on something we'd like) to buy one, after Christmas. I was looking online only last night, and had chosen the one we would buy. And then Ian dropped by today with our Christmas present, and it was a crockpot!! A really nice one too, and as big as the ones I'd been looking at. I can't wait to start cooking meals in it!!! :) And we can use the money for something else, yay!

All the Christmas photos and video clips are still on the cameras and not uploaded or resized and all that stuff, so I will have to get around to doing that before I can post them here.

I'm not sure what I came here to say, actually! I just thought I would update. I kind of want to wait to write about Christmas in a lot of detail until I have photos to go with it, but knowing me, that might not happen till April or something, haha! So maybe I should write about it?

Well, in a nutshell (stop laughing), the boys got up as late as 7.30am!!!! Which was lovely! We spent Christmas Eve wrapping presents, but I'm so proud and joyful because although I did not follow my FlyLady Holiday Cruising thingy to a T, I followed it enough so that most of the gifts were wrapped by the week before Christmas. We put together a couple of bigger toys that Ian brought over for the kids before Christmas - Matthew got a wooden rocking horse! It's an Early Learning Centre one, for toddlers. It took Neil HOURS to put the thing together, but it was worth it when they tore the paper off it in the morning and could ride on it with great delight straight away! I put together the light-up globe that Ian got for Arthur, and wrapped it. He loved it! Straight away we showed him where we live, and where Nana and Grandy live.

And today he learned where America is because my parents are (as I type) on a plane to San Francisco for a 10-day break. I'm nervous. I always feel nervous for my mum when they are flying long-haul. She is terrified of flying, always has been. And the last few times they've flown to the States, she has been really sick after the flight and not at all well. Like flying just doesn't agree with her physically any more. She has refused to go again for quite some years, but my dad LONGS to go and so she said yes this time! I hope she's doing okay over/up there. Anyway that was a good example to show to Arthur on his new globe! The United States has a picture of a car on it (for some reason!) and he wanted to know if they were going to drive that car when they got there :)

My parents came to see us yesterday! It was so nice to see them!! Arthur was so sad when they left. They came a day earlier than they needed to fly out, because then they wouldn't have such an early start in the morning. And they got to spend a good part of the day with us! Yay!

It was so nice to spend Thursday with Neil's family. The last time we did that was exactly a year ago. We must do it more often! We don't live all that far from each other, really, except his mum and youngest sister in North Yorkshire. Ella has changed sooooooooo much! She has a headful of wildly curly hair! She's 2 and a half, and talking so clearly like Arthur does. She is completely potty trained! At one point Rosemary (her mummy) took her for a wee in the toilet, and Arthur waited outside, very curious! As she was coming out, I was busy explaining to Arthur that Ella was a big girl and did all her wees and poos in the toilet, and she wore big girl pants! When she appeared, Arthur said, "Well done Ella, for doing your wee in the toilet!" and tried to look up her dress, I guess to see if she REALLY did have big girl pants on, haha! Ella obliged by lifting her dress to reveal her princess knickers, and Arthur seemed satisfied by that ;)

They played together sooooo sweetly! They sat on the floor at one point while the grown-ups were still at the table eating, and I could hear them chatting away to each other, so I leaned back in my chair to crane my neck round and see them. Arthur instantly spotted me and held his hand out like a stop sign, saying quite crossly, "No! You go away! We're busy talking!" !!!!

We're having SUCH trouble with Arthur's attitudes and behaviour at the moment. *sigh* I mean, yes yes, he's completely normal to be like this at his age. But we really don't intend to tolerate it at all. He's so RUDE and grumpy and, well, kind of like a stroppy teenager if I'm honest! He rolls his eyes and shouts and calls us names, ugh. He gets disciplined a LOT at the moment. Thank God Neil is home all the time. I would not manage it otherwise, I think. I just don't know how I would. I'm praying that it's short-lived, or else that we get a seriously firm grip on his behaviour very soon, because soon enough Neil will suddenly find a job, and equally suddenly, I will give birth and then have 3 children under 4 on my own, one of whom is just impossible half the time! I don't know how to manage that. Matthew is a handful himself, in lots of ways, but it's the attitudes and stuff from Arthur that NEED active responses from us to correct him constantly. That's such hard work at any time, but I can't think how I'll juggle it with the littler boys' needs too.

We are currently working on him saying things nicely, not shouting at us, not using certain words that we have decided we won't have ("hate" in any context, "bleuuurrrr, it's YUCKY!" about my cooking at the table, "BLAST YOU, Mummy/Matthew/Daddy!" when angry with one of us - he got that from Tommy Zoom, which we have finally decided to stop him watching from now on - etc.) It's not just the words, but the nasty tone of voice that goes with them. He also shouts rudely at us all the time, especially when we are attempting to correct or discipline him over something. Quite apart from the shrill screaming of his regular tantrums (!), the neighbours must hear things like, "NO! I'M NOT GOING TO ASSEPT MY DISCIPLINE!!!" and so on, on a regular basis!

He IS, however, completely lovely and delightful the rest of the time! It's just harrrrd work with Arthur right now. And it needs to change, he needs to learn to obey and respect us asap. Our discipline method is still going strong, and it's the longest we've stuck at any method by far. We comfortable and confident with it. We have added "The Porch" into the mix though. When he is just a screaming flailing creature as we're trying to explain why we have to discipline him, or why we have just done so, and he won't stand still and listen to us, he goes into the indoor porch (a tiny room with just coats and shoes in it, between our front door and our inner door to the living room) until he can calm down/behave himself. He HATES this. Partly it sometimes becomes necessary for him to be able to calm down, if he's too far gone otherwise. And partly it's for US, so that he doesn't drive us soooo crazy that we start to lose our cool. It's so so easy to lose your cool with that boy right now. *sigh* We've both done it, so we decided on The Porch to help us all. Matthew also gets scared by the very loud angry screaming that Arthur makes, so separating Arthur till he can calm down gives Matthew some space, and me the opportunity to reassure him instead of wrestling a 10-armed three-year-old while Matthew cries in terror! It's sure to be necessary for when Nathan is here as well. I'm not having that noise and fuss around my new baby. Urgh, it drives me crazy!

Annnyway! Back to Christmas. The boys opened their presents (Arthur peered over the stairs to see if Father Christmas had been, on his way down, and gasped, "He HAS!!!") and we all ate breakfast (the usual cereal/toast thing) at 8.30am because it was "time", despite Arthur's protests - he hardly ate a thing, but wanted ALL his edible stocking fillers to eat moments later! At the last minute before Christmas, I got Arthur a variety pack little box of Frosties cereal, and Coco Pops too, for stocking fillers (Matthew had the same for his stocking). He often asks for "blue cornflakes" and would LOVE chocolate cereal, but never gets them. The boys eat rice krispies and weetabix and normal cornflakes for breakfast, and sometimes my muesli/granola with raisins too. They like those fine, and they're so much better for them, so we don't give them the sugary stuff. The cereal stocking fillers were a big hit! And Arthur ate his Frosties at the table about 15 minutes later :)

I wrote a schedule for the day (mainly the cooking, but also the morning because of needing to get out to church on time, etc) and put it on the fridge door the night before. That was so helpful because I could stick to it and see what was happening next, all day. I put a HUGE chicken in the oven (we're too small for a turkey!) right before we left for church, and then we went to the short service at a different church which we join with on Christmas Day. That was lovely, as some of our friends from waaaay back at our church now go to that church, and we only get to see them for our joint services. They didn't know I was pregnant, obviously, so that was fun :)

Random strangers commented on my bump after the service - ALL of them saying, "Ohhh, that baby's about due, isn't it?" or "February?! You'll never make it that far!" etc, etc. I just smile and nod. Yes I am ENORMOUS and feel positively full-term this last week (I'm 34 weeks tomorrow), but I always manage to go beyond my due date all the same. *sigh*

Anyway. The service was nice, but we spent it with the boys in the creche room trying to referee "tensions" over the one toddler slide and ride-on car in there! I came over sweaty and faint and basically just sat down fanning myself a lot. But afterwards it was fun to chat to friends and see people. Then we came home, and I put the potatoes and parsnips on, and the mixed fruit sponge (no Christmas pud for my picky boys!), and we played with the little ones and their new toys for a while. Then we all ate a YUMMY and hugely successful (yay me!) Christmas lunch with fabulous homemade gravy, and I ate a miserably pathetic individual-sized Tesco Christmas pudding (never again - even if it's just me next year, I AM making REAL Christmas pudding!), and then Matthew went for his nap and Arthur played with his new things.

They got a lot of toy cars which was Arthur's favourite present :) He also liked the chocolate presents - covered raisins, and chocolate biscuits and Smarties. We had trouble limiting those throughout the day! He kept sneaking off with them and eating them behind furniture where we couldn't see what he was doing!

In the afternoon the boys played with toys and watched Arthur's Roary the Racing Car DVD that he got for Christmas, and then a little of Matthew's new Thomas the Tank Engine DVD - those went down very well! Matthew was soooooooo excited about his Bob the Builder presents!!! He is so tiny, still such a baby boy at only 18 months old, and he doesn't speak yet as such, which made it soooooo much cuter to watch him peer into torn wrapping paper, gasp exaggeratedly, and exclaim, "Boh-Buh! Boh-Buh!" (that's Bob the Builder in Matthew-speak!). As we helped him get the item out, he would stand as close as he could, hands held up either side of his face, and his arms and hands did the tense little shake that he does when he's really excited :) He's such a sweetie, that boy. He got some GORGEOUS Bob the Builder boots, but they are a tiny bit too big for him so we'll save them for a few weeks. I reckon he'll fit them within a month though. He is enjoying just "handling" them at the moment! :)

The boys had their usual lunch of sandwiches and stuff for tea, as Neil and I were still so full from lunch (which the boys didn't eat much of). We ate Christmas leftovers and pickles and things, later in the evening after the boys were asleep. They had a bath, and then went to bed! It was a lovely day!

Did I mention that Rosemary (Neil's sister) is pregnant? I can't remember if I did. She had a miscarriage at 11 weeks in March. Anyway she is 17 weeks pregnant now, due in early June, just like Matthew was - and Ella, for that matter! Matthew and Ella both have birthdays on June 14th, and now there will be another little one with a similar birthday! I'm excited!!! They are not going to find out the baby's sex - they didn't with Ella either, and they like the surprise. I can't wait to find out if it's another girl! Rosemary thinks it is so far, though she's had more morning sickness this time, so hmmm. She had very little with Ella.

The three little cousins are such sweet little stair-steps! Arthur is 7 months older than Ella, and Ella is obviously exactly 1 year older than Matthew. Then my brother's baby girl, Thea, is 11 months younger than Matthew, and Nathan will be 9 months younger than Thea. When Rosemary's baby is born, he or she will be 4 months younger than Nathan. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the boys have siblings AND cousins on both sides so close to their ages! It's so lovely for them!

On Thursday, all 3 played so sweetly together. Matthew didn't seem in the least bit left out as the youngest with the biggest age gap amongst them. I think he may do well in that dept though, as he's very forthright and won't BE left out if he has anything to do with it! Also it's good for him that he is close behind Arthur in age, because there are no big gaps to isolate him somewhat in play when the two older ones get together and want to play something that Matthew isn't "big" enough for. Matthew IS big enough because he's still so close to their age, which is lovely. They all ran about together, back and forth, like they were playing races. Matthew runs as well as the other two now, and they had so much fun! They yelled and laughed till they were breathless, and danced to some music on Auntie Lilian's (Neil's youngest sister) mobile phone. The dancing was so so indescribably cute that I swear I felt my ovaries aching, haha! I actually said, without thinking, "Ohhh, my ovaries!" as I watched them, and everybody laughed so hard that I blushed horribly!

We forgot to take our camera AND our camcorder :( I can't BELIEVE we did that. I know some of the others got some pics and video clips so hopefully I can get hold of some soon and post them.

The little ones all played cars and shops and jigsaws, etc. We had to referee a little bit now and then, but mostly between Arthur and Matthew, as Matthew is so.... "forthright" like I said! He is so determined, and currently wants to do everything that Arthur is doing, and play with the exact toy that Arthur has in his hand at all times. Fun times ;) Arthur tolerates this better than many kids might, but it still erupts into scuffles sometimes. Matthew has started to have some serious tantrums lately when we have to give a toy back to Arthur that he's swiped. Poor little boy! It's a learning curve....

Arthur got a few jigsaws for Christmas, and can do the 24-piece one pretty well, though it takes him a while. Matthew got a box of beginner jigsaws but prefers to eat the pieces, so they have been put away for a while! They both got wooden stacking toys. Arthur got quite a complicated wooden stacking jigsaw that said from age 4. Matthew LOVES it! Arthur has been too busy with his Roary jigsaws so far to pay much attention to the wooden stacking one, but Matthew is loving the more traditional toys this Christmas. His favourite seems to be the rocking horse, and although we are making it something they can generally share (whilst emphasising that it's Matthew's present), Matthew gets VERY put out when he sees Arthur on it, hehe! He kind of stands close by with his arm out, pointing at Arthur, face scrunched up into a most dismayed expression, and moaning, "Ohhh!" to alert us to his severe displeasure, hehe! He's so funny :)

Matthew's other favourites this Christmas have been a great ball that we bought him (a red one) - it's soooo easy to catch and grip, and it's so lightweight and bouncy that it doesn't hurt anyone or anything. We inflated it to just the right squishiness for Matthew. He LOVES it! He throws it about for ages, crying with glee, "Boah, boah!" (ball, ball!). He also LOVES his wooden stacking toy. It's just a pole with bright coloured wooden rings, you know the type? Very traditional. He got stuck right in the instant he opened it, and we didn't say anything, just let him get on with it. He sat down, pulled all the rings off, and started stacking them back on. Each time he put one on, he clapped and shouted, "Yaaaay!" and then reached for the next one. When they were all on, he pulled them all off and started again! This went on and on. He got so focused and concentrated so hard that his movements got faster and faster. He would drop each one on with a flourish and whip his arms away quickly to grab another ring as fast as he could! It was such fun to watch! Anyway he loves that toy :)

Arthur did a wee on the potty by himself the other day. He isn't doing much of that lately, but the other day (AFTER our visit to see Ella, actually!), we had him undressed for his bath, and he was running around upstairs while we got Matthew into the bath. He came bounding into the bathroom all excited, shouting, "I did a wee, I did a wee!" Neil thought he had done a wee on the FLOOR somewhere, and was about to be not-so-pleased, but then Arthur said, "In the POTTY! All by myself!" He had found the potty, lifted the lid back, and sat on there to do his wee! He got a green Smartie :) Matthew has lately got very interested in the potty. He likes to sit on it after Arthur has had a turn (not while there's still something in it, of course!) fully clothed or nappied, and he smiles like he's soooo proud of himself while he's sitting there! He makes a concentrated face, and then gets up, peering into the potty, hehe! I think he might possibly potty train earlier than Arthur will - much earlier perhaps? Because he is so keen to do what he sees Arthur doing, and he has quite a different personality - he has always been so determined to get things DONE that he wants to achieve, which Arthur has never really had. He was so determined to crawl that he was cranky as anything about it by 5 months old. He worked on it, literally like an adult working out, day by day, and was crawling at 6 months. He has done EVERYTHING else the same way. I think (hope!) he will tackle potty training this way too, and a crazy thought occurred to me the other day, that just maaaybe if Arthur potty trains on the late side, Matthew will have reached an age where he's actually old enough to potty train at the SAME TIME! What a strange thought! But how nice that would be :) And maybe it would help them, to do it together?

We sooooooo need to get them in the same bedroom. It's going so slowly, getting the room ready, urgh. We are running out of time!!!! I feel a little more panicky about it now that Christmas is over, January is imminent, and I'm ABOUT TO HAVE A BABY, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!!!! Ahem. I made a list of everything that needs doing before Nathan arrives. That way it will be easier to check the list and use any spare 30 minutes I have to chip away at it. I never have 30 straight minutes of energy any more, in fact I'm lucky if I get 15 straight minutes, but I'll take what I can. I feel sure Neil is ABOUT to get a job and then I'm in trouble!

Our sink is leaking big time in the kitchen. We can't fill it at all. Someone needs to fix that but we have no money-o. The bathroom sink was leaking the same but it has somehow stopped for now. It did that a while back, too. There's a towel under it just in case it starts again! We got advice on our damp problem, and it turns out to be a condensation control problem, not penetrating damp or rising damp - PHEW! It's because the bathroom fan broke, probably, and thus the house was too humid. We have no working extractor fan in the kitchen either, and don't open the windows so much now it's all freezing cold and wintery, so there we have it.

The advice line told us we should get some devices fitted in our bedrooms that would permanently remove the condensation issue, even without replacing the bathroom fan. I told them we had no money and were not eligible for benefits! The guy was so great. He asked if there were any children in the bedrooms. I said yes, in both! He asked their ages. I said, "Three, one, and another on the way." He was really concerned and said we had to get the black mould cleaned up right away - today even. He recommended Dettox (Dettol?) mould cleaner, and we happened to have some in the cupboard! Neil cleaned the mould off and it's all healthy again upstairs. We have put the heating up by 1-2 degrees, and make sure to open the windows even if it's just for 10 minutes a day. The thermostat thingy in the bedroom is giving us much better readings now - humidity is down from being permanently between 85% and 95% (!!!), to between 60% and 75%. And the temperature in the bedroom is about 20, whereas it was about 18 before - cold and damp. That might be enough to control the condensation issue without having to spend money on a solution, for now. If the mould grows back then we'll know it's not working (but we'll clean it off again all the same!). For now it looks okay.

Nicola, lovely Nicola! She sent another package! I'm sorry I haven't emailed you yet Nicola. I'm so behind, and I wanted to mention it here in case it takes me a while to get to my emails, to thank you! There was a LeapFrog interactive book thingy for Arthur! He loved it and is learning to use the pen thing to make the sounds and letters. And Thomas trains!!! Both the boys were so excited to see them and spent ages playing with them the day they arrived. They are played with every day. I have photos, but they are with the Christmas ones on the camera still. Nicola sent the sweetest letter and £20 for us. I was just completely bowled over by her lovely generosity! We were all so blessed by the package - thank you so much Nicola! xxx

Well it is getting late and I want to try to keep up with the FlyLady stuff that I've started to pick back up on these last few days. And then go to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday (it's so hard to keep track of the days, the week of Christmas!) and we'll go to church in the morning. On Monday we're going to lunch at my grandparents' house, but if we're all coldy then we'll probably have to postpone - they're in their 80s and get positively battered by colds these days. And then it's New Year!

We are not doing a thing for New Year, as always. I never have any interest in seeing in the New Year, etc. I'm not the party type at ALL, and getting drunk bores/disgusts me, so there's nothing much in it for me really! If I go to bed before midnight (not so likely these days!) then it's no big deal - it's still a brand new year when I wake up in the morning, which is the exciting part! Only I'm not nursing a hangover and have had a (vaguely!) good night's sleep ;)

I'm excited for it to be 2008! I am going to have a BABY in 2008, wheee! And be an auntie again! And have a 2-year-old again :) And a FOUR-year-old! I'm so excited to live out this next year! My little ones will change so much and it's so much fun to watch them change and grow - so long as I always have a little baby or one on the way, haha! Then I'm okay with it! Which I do, so yay for 2008!! ;) Also, I'm weird probably, but I really feel "comfortable" with even numbered years. I love even numbered years! Odd numbered years make me feel strange for some reason. Like, not quite settled under my skin, and I'm always quite keen to see the year go and the next one start. That's so weird and inexplicable. But there we go. I have always felt that way. Maybe it's just something simple like I was born in an even numbered year (1976 - oh that is starting to sound long, long ago!).

Neil will be 34 in January. My mummy will be 60! My brother will be 28. I will be 32 in February, and my granny 82. And Nathan will be born! So exciting!!! :)

Okay I am starting to waffle, so it's time to go! I feel a bit fudge-queasy, but that's my own fault! I think I will go and eat a nice apple. And drink a lot of water. That will be nice :)

Definitely a 3-year-old boy....

Thank you for the comments on the photos of my sweet beany boy! :) I never quite see how he looks SO very much like me, and my parents aren't sure who he looks like! He is a mix like Arthur, but people DO tend to say he looks like me and Arthur like Neil. I'm always intrigued to hear what people thing on that :)

Well, it's 1am and I need to go to bed. I'm up late keeping track of my Christmas budget. I went (waddled) into the local high street today and got MYSELF some Thorntons chocolates for Christmas! That is from my mum's Christmas money for me. I just thought, yes, yes, we've got money issues and this could be far more useful in the bank, etc. But darn heckit, it's Christmas and I feel like I deserve to unwrap a gift that I would reeeally like to receive, on Christmas Day! I don't care if I buy and wrap it myself! All I know is that it's money given to me specifically to buy things that will make me feel happy, special, or pampered at Christmas. So I made a little wishlist!

Half of it is FlyLady tools - I really want to get her feather duster set and also her ultimate timer. And the calendar for 2008. But I will have to wait till next year I think, or maybe even use birthday money in February. FlyLady's shop doesn't take paypal payments - if I don't use a credit card (which I do not intend to ever again!) then I have to BUY an international money order and send it snail mail to them. Tsk! So I am not getting that sorted before Christmas. Besides, the stuff would never reach me before, well, probably February anyway! ;) So, I'm leaving that stuff till next year.

I put other things that I like on my wishlist. Chocolates, obviously! Thortons make me feel special because they're a bit "special" and pricey, and I just like the actual chocolates! I always like getting pyjamas too! But, I'm huge and pregnant so I wouldn't be able to wear any of what I buy, if I get myself some PJs. I decided to look out for PJs on eBay that I really like the look of, in a size that I will HOPEFULLY fit in when I have just had a baby - size 16 maybe? I was easily that size, maybe even 16-18 after Matthew (from a 10 pre-pregnancy!!!), but PJs are roomy, so... Anyway, PJs that FIT during my postpartum period and which I really like and make me feel special, will be LOVELY to relax around the house in :) So far I have bid on (and won!) a pair of La Senza PJ bottoms, brand new (!) for just a few £. Just bottoms is fine with me because I have a zillion tops that will be comfy with them and I'll need to change my top like 3 times a night in the early weeks of breastfeeding anyhoo! I am a leaky lactator once I get going! ;)

I also wouldn't mind some Crabtree and Evelyn soaps and stuff, which feel VERY special to me. They are just expensive and what's-the-word, and lovely quality. And I'd NEVER get that stuff outside of a special gift, so using some Christmas money on a few nice smellies from Crabtree and Evelyn would make me feel very pampered! :) I haven't bought any though. They didn't really have what I was looking for when I went last week. Maybe I won't get anything from there after all?

I can't remember what's on my wishlist - a couple of books?? Something else sugary to eat? I can't remember now. Anyway. I don't mind buying them myself - they are still a gift from someone else, and I'm still excited to have them and keep myself from opening them till Christmas morning!

I don't know what Neil will buy with his Christmas money from my parents. We aren't buying each other Christmas presents this year, because there's just no point really. We have money for gifts from family, and we have NO money to spend on each other! And we don't need to either. We will definitely not feel deprived without buying each other a gift! We'll be super busy with our little boys on Christmas Day anyway. They have got quite a lot of presents now, from my parents and grandparents, and the few things we bought before we ran out of money a couple of months ago. My family have been sooo generous with Christmas money for the boys, so they do have some nice things.

Arthur is getting a lot of books this Christmas! Matthew is getting a few too - notably a Bob the Builder musical book, which he's going to LOVE! He also has a pair of sturdy Bob the Builder boots, and some Bob the Builder slipper socks (Arthur has a pair of the socks too, for stocking fillers). Matthew has one pair of expensive Startrite shoes that he just got fitted for a couple of weeks ago - his feet grew a bit, so he's now in size 4.5. His foot width is an F at the moment, down from his last size of 4G. They are nice little navy shoes with red parts and velcro straps, and they are PERMANENTLY caked in mud from walks at the park! He does have welly boots but they slow him down a bit and get him frustrated, so unless he's out to splash in puddles, he's better running in normal shoes. But ohhhh, the mud! So he needs another pair of shoes, just so that one can be being cleaned while the other is used, or something. The Bob the Builder boots might be a bit big for him at first, as they don't do half sizes so they are size 5. His wellies are size 5 and fit him fine though, so we'll see.

Why am I here waffling about stuff at this hour?! I had no idea of coming here to waffle! It just happened! I like that I'm updating more often at the moment. I hope I can keep it up. I really like it when I keep touching base here, and adding photos and things that I'll otherwise forget, on a more frequent basis.

I DO have the photos ready of the attempts to take a photo of the boys for sending out with the Christmas cards (sent 21 cards out today at LAST! Woohoo! Now only another 30 to go...), but there are LOADS of them and I really just meant to pop on here and write a LITTLE entry (haha!) and one photo and then go to bed! I will update again with those photos very soon - maybe tomorrow even? And I had an antenatal appt yesterday so I want to update my pregnancy journal about that too.

Today I am writing here because there are a few things Arthur has said this week that I didn't want to forget.

He's SUCH a boy, with such a gross sense of humour at the moment! Sometimes it really makes me chuckle, and other times I just want to put my head in my hands, wonder where I went wrong, and pray for guidance on how to bring him up right! Here are three examples, all from the same day, of the kind of humour that characterises my 3-year-old son at the moment (wait, oh my gosh, I have a 3-year-old son!!! I never write it like that! I feel so mature, haha!) - I jotted them down in Word so I wouldn't forget them at the end of the day:

Looking in Neil’s mug of tea (still with a teabag in it) this afternoon: “Is that a poo?”

To Granny when they visited us briefly tonight: “It’s BOGEY time, everyone!” (much giggling). Sticks finger in nose and runs about madly, giggling and squealing.

After covering the Christmas cake with marzipan with me this afternoon:
Me: “You can make the spare bits of marzipan into shapes if you like!”
Arthur: (fiddles with marzipan for a moment, then starts giggling)
Me: “What have you made?”
Arthur: (barely able to get the words out for giggling) “It’s a marzipan willy!! Hahahahaha!” (hysterical laughter and waving about of said marzipan appendage continues for a good few minutes)

This too shall pass, right? ;)

But, the next day when we had finished making the cookies for my grandparents and my parents for Christmas, Neil took the boys over to my grandparents' house to deliver the cookies for them to take to France that day. I was going to go with them, but I had a sore/scratchy throat yesterday, and did not want to give them a cold or whatever it might be, to take to France for Christmas! So I decided to stay home and make dinner ready for the boys when they got home. Arthur was disappointed that I wasn't going with them, so we explained that I didn't want to give them a sore throat if I went to see them.

Arthur listened and then thought for a moment and said, rather shyly, "I know, why don't we pray for everyone to stay healthy?" He has never suggested praying like that before, and he seemed kind of shy about it, but we were so thrilled and proud of him. We sat with him and prayed right then and there, that everyone would stay healthy over Christmas, naming all the family one by one :) What a sweet boy!

He is really pushing boundaries at the moment, testing us a LOT with the discipline. Sometimes he feels like REALLY hard work right now, but he's also just completely delightful and I love him so incredibly much. I can't believe how fast he's growing up. It seems slow sometimes until I step back and look at him and then I realise, WOW, he is shaped like a little boy and not a toddler, he talks fluently and not like a toddler, he moves like a little boy and soooo much less like a toddler (*sniff* I really miss his little toddler strut!), he is learning and developing and understanding and changing at SUCH a fast pace! He tells us when Matthew is "doing something weally dange-wus!!" so we can dash in from the kitchen or down from the toilet and scoop that binky boy from where he's standing on the back of the armchair flicking the light switch on and off! He's kind and generous and affectionate.

Tonight he brushed his teeth in the bathroom in front of the mirror, standing on his potty/step-stool combo thingy. He usually just sits wherever and brushes his teeth a bit and then we finish off. It's HIGH time he was brushing his teeth more like a big boy, so we finally got round to standing him at the bathroom sink to brush and spit properly and see it all in the mirror. He loved it! Meanwhile, Matthew and I were in the bedroom doing Matthew's teeth. After I brushed them for him, he had his turn with the toothbrush, and went over to the bedroom mirror. He watched himself brushing his teeth in the mirror for ages, breaking off from it now and then to smile at himself and look VERY pleased with what he was doing! He has never done that before. BUT, he does copy everything Arthur does at the moment. He didn't see Arthur in the bathroom though so it was a coincidence.

Anyway, Arthur came back in and saw Matthew brushing his teeth (read: chewing his toothbrush!) in front of the bedroom mirror, and RAN up to him excitedly! When he got to Matthew, he leaned right into his face and said to him, "Mashew! You're brushing your teeth in front of the mirror! Well done! I'm so pleased with you!!" :) Then about 2 minutes later, Matthew tipped all the cars out of their box (we had just told Arthur that, no, he could not get the cars out now because it was bedtime, and Arthur had protested at first). Arthur looked satisfied and said, "I'm SO pleased with Mashew again!" hehe!

Okay, that's all from my frazzled memory banks for now! Glad to have downloaded some stuff before it is buried in the mists of time and forgotten. I MUST get the photos from Arthur's birthday up. I know it's crazy late, but I need to post them just for my own sake if nothing else. If I leave it much longer, I'll forget the details of the day and never have it recorded for prosperity. I must do that soon. I still have a few left to resize, so I'll try to get to it.

Tomorrow we are beginning to clear the small bedroom out for transitioning the boys to a shared bedroom - eek! I'm nervous. But I asked around and so far people online are saying it'll be okay. Anyone here have experience with transitioning two toddlers to sharing a room, where both have been co-sleeping of sorts (well, Matthew less so, but right next to my bed and he knows I will respond to him instantly if he wakes in the night because I'm right there), but not in the same room as each other?! Is it toooo close to the arrival of a new baby? We have to have them in a shared room, otherwise we won't all fit in our tiny 2-bedroom house! Also, we have no car that will fit us all. We are just praying that we'll be able to quickly sell the car in January, and that we won't be without a car at any point (unlikely??) while we search for/buy a bigger car, which somehow has to cost the same or LESS than what we got for our already very second-hand too-small car!! Hmmm! But God can provide, even in unlikely circumstances!

Neil's latest sense of direction for a career - he is looking into working for the church, OUR church, specifically. But he may well need a ton of training first. He is going to talk and pray with our good friend Gordon tomorrow, who happens to be one of the leaders at our church. I'm excited and happy about this yearning of his. It keeps me here where I'm comfy :) And I love that he may work for the church. Love it! We are praying about it a lot at the moment.

Okay, MUST go to bed! I can't believe I wrote this much for a "quick" diary entry late at night!

Mr. M. Binks...

No, Binks is not our surname! "Matthew-Binks!" is what somehow pops out of my mouth when Mathie is being a monkey, which is how he is a LOT these days! He's just pure mischief sometimes, but cheeky fun mischief more than anything else :) He's such a sweetie pie! I haven't had chance to resize the photos I meant to get up here, but I have two photos of Matthew, in a particularly "binksie" light! ;) These are two faces that I see a lot. One is just boyish total mischief. And the other one is when I know he's about to do something monkeyish, or even that he's thinking about it, and I might say to him, "Matthew-Binks?! What are you up to?!" and he gives me this look:

I love it because he's being a sweetie with total mischief around the corner at any second. Which is Matthew all over! And I love the little sort of pursed smile he gives me ONLY on the occasions where he is thinking of doing something cheeky, and he knows I know it! I love him soooo.

Here's his other frequently-worn expression at the moment:

Just monkeyness! He was playing a game where he shut the door, waited for us to wonder where he was, and BURST into the room beaming at his own clever joke! Arthur used to love that game too - I think I have a picture of him playing it behind Nana and Grandy's floor-length curtains in France, but he was younger than Matthew then - almost 14 months. I'll see if I can find it....

Here it is!!

I can't believe how much I've forgotten! He was such a chunky little cutie! SUCH a different shape to Matthew, oh my goodness! And how scarily grown up Matthew's photo suddenly looks against tiny monkey Arthur Boo! Matthew has lately become a real little boy in many ways, and he really isn't looking so much like a baby anymore. Neil keeps on mentioning it to me, and I'm seeing it more too. I'm excited to see him grow up! But really sad and wistful to pack his babyhood into a treasure box in my memory banks. I just cherish each moment with that tiny binksie boy! I love him so much. Same goes for Arthur of course, but I'm just writing about Matthew for now :)

Okay, it's late again. Arthur and I made sugar cookies today - 40 of them in the shape of Christmas trees! They are our Christmas present for my grandparents and my parents - my grandparents are setting off for France tomorrow to spend Christmas with my parents, so we baked them today and will drop them off tomorrow before they leave. I'm bummed that we ran out of time for Arthur to help me decorate them, as he would have loved that bit (and my family would have loved the results too!), but it got to bedtime, and anyway we have another SEVEN DOZEN to bake for the rest of the family on Boxing Day! He'll have plenty of chance to decorate some then. I decorated them this evening, and also made chocolate-covered marzipan sweets with little sugar flowers on top! That was a bit ambitious of me, but they turned out fine I think. My family love marzipan :)

Anyway, it's late and I STILL haven't finished the Christmas cards!!! Tomorrow morning I have an antenatal appointment, so I am going to bed for now. I just wanted to post some pictures, and to write about LOVING my Mathsie-Boo-Bean! And also, thank you for the lovely supportive comments about our homeschooling plans! I kind of opened my comments with baited breath and one eye closed, you know?! ;) But everyone was lovely! Thank you!! xxx

LONG entry - our homeschooling plans at last, and other stuff...

Here’s the loooonng diary entry that I wrote last night before Matthew woke up and I had to save it to Word and call it a night. It wasn’t finished but I am going to continue it where I left off last night!

I’m sorry it’s been so long again! Tonight I am going to attempt to update both my diaries in one evening!! I am not sure it’s going to work before my eyes get boggly and fall out of my head. I just can’t seem to keep from being long-winded when I write my diaries! Anyway, I will get on with this entry and try to do both.

Today is December 14th – Matthew is 18 months old today!!! I can’t belieeeeve he’s halfway through another year, and only 6 months from his second birthday. Also, 18 months seems so.... I don’t know. It just seems like a big milestone somehow, like he has left his babyhood behind, this side of 18 months. Waaah! :( I would seriously not be dealing too well with this if I didn’t have another baby on the way! I have no idea what on earth I will do once we are officially DONE having children. I can’t imagine ever feeling like I’m finished!

Matthew is ever such a sweetie pie these days. He is a reeeal handful, but SUCH a sweetie! He is quite different to Arthur at the same age, more on-the-go and playful and mischievous. Arthur was all of those, but somehow Matthew is managing to be more so! His little voice is being heard around the house more and more as he learns to say things, and I just LOVE the sound of it! It’s a different sounding voice to Arthur’s, like I suspected from the start. His cry as a new baby was always more sort of soft and husky than Arthur’s ever was. Arthur’s voice is clear and rings out continually (!!), and Matthew’s is softer (though just as loud when he chooses!). They are both little enough for their voices to be all cute and chipmunky!! I love that about toddlers’ voices! :)

Matthew has a serious thing for Thomas the Tank Engine, and Bob the Builder. The Thomas thing is almost more of a thing than Arthur’s ever was (and he’s a BIG Thomas fan!). We have several Thomas DVDs which Matthew requests all the time. We save them for “meltdown zones” in the day – usually when it’s getting kind of near to Family Meal time late in the afternoon or something like that. Thomas fixes almost any crisis, so he’s useful to put on the TV for unexplained miseries, teething, tantrums, the need for a change of pace in the boys’ games if they get rough, etc. I think Matthew’s favourite engine is Henry (who he calls Ni-ni). He is especially pleased to see Henry and says his name over and over and over. He also loves Bertie the bus, and plays with the toy version we’ve got a LOT.

We don’t really watch Bob the Builder, though it’s probably on TV somewhere most days. Matthew got a Scoop ride-on toy for his first birthday and it has buttons on that make sounds and voices from the TV programme, and one of the buttons plays the Bob the Builder music. He seems to LOVE Bob the Builder, just from this toy! He often requests the music during lunch time (Scoop lives under the kitchen table when not in use, and Arthur’s toes sometimes find the buttons while he eats his lunch! Matthew LOVES this) by saying, “Boh Buh! Boh Buh!” (trans. Bob the Builder, of course!). The boys also have Bob the Builder ham (there really is such a thing!) for lunch pretty much every day with their sandwiches and stuff. Matthew often comes into the house from the morning walk/outing (which leads them right up to lunch when they get in) saying excitedly, “Boh Buh! Boh Buh!” eager for his Bob the Builder ham for lunch, bless him! If he sees anything with Bob the Builder on it, that’s his cry, over and over until we acknowledge that, yes, it IS Bob the Builder, Matthew! You’re right! This includes toys at other childrens’ houses, clothing, etc. He gets so excited, it’s so cute. I won him a Bob the Builder tracksuit at eBay the other day, suuuuuper cheap because it was used already. I know he won’t care about a bit of wash fading, and he’ll love it.

Money stuff is going okay, well, as okay as not having any goes! Neil has had a couple more job interviews and got turned down for those, as well as a few jobs he applied for but didn’t do an interview. He has applied for a few more that we don’t know about yet, and he is with a great supportive agency. They have offered him two or three jobs to go for that we’ve decided to turn down, because they are toooo far away. The agency know we are not necessarily planning to stay in the London area, so they’re showing him jobs all over. Most of them are London-based though. The last one he turned down was in Bath. That’s just too far away, it feels too isolated from family and stuff. We can’t travel to see anyone we know with all the little ones (they do NOT do well with travel times approaching an hour or more, and I know it will be even less when Nathan is here because our newborns HATE travelling for more than 2 minutes straight, for about the first 4 months!). Bath is 2.5 to 3 hours drive from where we live, and about the same on the train somehow, so we decided it was a no-no.

Anyway, so no job for Neil yet. It is so indescribably wonderful having him at home. He really does the majority of the “stuff” with the boys at the moment. I am beginning to feel kind of guilty about the balance of things, because he’s not exactly breezing through it! It’s a REALLY hard job! I am resting a lot more and sleeping in on the mornings. I can’t seem to do much before I get so knackered that I just run out of air and my heart races and all that stuff that the midwife was worried about before. So I don’t push myself to that point, which means I feel like I am doing basically NOTHING! I make the dinner and “co-parent” the boys with Neil for parts of the day, and spend time with them, but rarely have to manage them on my own for any length of time at the moment. I do bits of housework, but even housework makes me have to lie down before I get far with it, but I’m doing it in bits and pieces. My FlyLady stuff has slipped somewhat. I’m not keeping up with my routines, and it’s all too easy to get lazy when I have the opportunity to rest more. I sometimes feel like I’m basically just LAZY and taking advantage (in a bad way) of my sweet husband. I don’t like that feeling. I don’t know if I’m just feeling guilty when there’s no need and shouldn’t let myself, or whether I SHOULD feel guilty and do more, and give my husband a break!

Neil naps or rests during Matthew’s nap after lunch every day. He sometimes sleeps in with Matthew and shuts the door on them so it’s nice and quiet in there. Matthew can sleep a couple of hours for his nap so it’s a good rest for Neil if he does that. During that time I do “school” with Arthur and something fun that he wants to do (nearly ALWAYS cutting car pictures out of his magazines! The boy is obsessed!), which is important to me because otherwise he doesn’t get enough one-on-one time with me. Especially while I’m not as involved as I was, with Neil doing more with them. In school at the moment, we are working through some Kumon First Steps Workbooks which I bought quite a few months ago after reading lots of recommendations on homeschooling websites, for toddlers. Arthur loves to cut with his new scissors but gets frustrated trying to cut some of his car pictures out. He is getting better at it gradually, but one of the Kumon books is for learning to cut, from simple snips to curves, spirals, zig zags and cutting-out. So we started it! Arthur started zig-zags today. He is doing great! He loves the workbooks and asks to do them. We do 2 or 3 of the exercises each time we do school. I am noticing he is cutting out cars waaaay better than a couple of weeks ago when we started. He would cut through a car by mistake and then throw a huge tantrum in frustration – it was so hard to watch because he would try soooo hard to cut it carefully and then not know what to DO with himself if he made a mistake. Now I’ve noticed he only ever cuts into a picture of a car if he decides to for some weird reason! He can trim the paper round them very close without cutting bits off the cars, and if he does make a mistake, he is no longer frustrated about it like he was, which is good. Today I noticed that he can cut pretty fast and stay fairly accurate, opening and closing the scissors many times to cut a long line or a curve around a large picture of a car. That’s soooo much better than how he was cutting even last week, so the workbook is helping him loads.

This week we also started the “Let’s Sticker and Paste!” book from the Kumon range, and he LOVES that! Arthur really loves stickers and has been sticking them everywhere for over a year now! He gets to make pictures with stickers in this book, and later on he’ll learn to paste things into an exact spot, or exactly the right way round, to complete a picture. It’s fun! I have the “Let’s Fold!” workbook as well, but not the colouring one.

He is learning to recognise a few words in school at the moment, just because they are in the Kumon workbooks and I show him the word for each picture before we cut or stick it. He knows the word ‘car’ by sight – what a surprise that it’s the first word he can read, hehe! The boy is absolutely crazy about cars. Not so much trains, although he loves those too, but CARS, oh my. I think he must spend most of his playtime throughout the day playing with cars, or pretending to BE a car, or pretending to drive a car, or looking at books about cars, or cutting out car pictures, or sticking together a car picture collage, or looking through his car magazines, or watching cars from the bedroom window, etc! He just. Loves. Cars.

Such a lovely thing happened after my last entry! Nicola, who has read my diary for yeeeears, emailed me to say she wanted to send me her son’s early reader books! He has outgrown them and she sent them to me without asking a penny for them or for postage – what a lovely friend! They are all the classics like Little Red Hen and The Gingerbread Man, and she also threw in some books about diggers and cars! When I opened the box there were TWENTY FOUR books!!! And two net bags of Father Christmas chocolates :) I know I said it already, Nicola, but thank you SO much! It’s so sweet of you, and Arthur loves the books and they are going to get a LOT of use in this household! I’m so pleased with them because in the summer, I was in a book shop with the boys and saw the first six of the early readers that Nicola sent, and hmmed over them for ages, wanting to buy them. I figured I would buy them later, when Arthur was a bit older. So I’m thrilled to have them!! Also, thank you God for providing through a generous friend!

I was going to write an entry solely about our plans to homeschool, but I am just not getting round to it! Maybe I will update here about that, instead of making a whole ‘nother diary entry just for the homeschooling stuff? It will make this entry very long-winded, but then I am thinking my readers are used to that anyway, right?! ;)

We are definitely going to homeschool our kiddies. We haven’t thought as far ahead as if they start asking to go to school instead of homeschooling, but the intention is to start as we mean to go on, and the HOPE is that they will never go to school. If one of our children is miserably begging to go to school then I am sure we will not say no! But I’m sincerely hoping to give school a miss entirely!

We have lots of reasons, and we are not too clear on some of them (sounds odd but it’s just a LOT to think through, and my brain is mistier and scattier with each passing week of pregnancy, so I sort of go, “Umm.... I can’t quite remember why we decided to make that huge life-changing decision...” a lot when asked directly! Most annoying!). I feel a bit hesitant to say our reasons here in my diary, because it is likely to bring out a defensive response in some people who don’t want to homeschool, or particularly people who actually disagree with homeschooling. I guess because it seems like a challenge to what they feel is right for their kids (by me saying that wouldn’t be right for our kids). Which is not what it is! I am not anti-school! I do not care what anyone else chooses to do with their kids! Horribly self-focused of me, but really I am just thinking about my own children and what I would want for them. The plus side for that is that I get to rejoice in a friend’s decision to send her children to school, even if I’ve researched it all and chosen against that for my own! I really don’t mind what anyone else does, and I kind of find it really uncomfortable when someone else minds what I do in turn. But I think some would respond from that viewpoint, and I HATE debate and defensiveness at my diary (as most of you well know by now!)! I get anxious that if I lay out my opinion, it will be challenged or bashed. Which I definitely want to avoid!

Also I think some people will disagree with my reasons, and even get all angry about what I’m “doing” to my kids by keeping them away from school, etc! Like, reason #1 is that we want to keep our kids close to us while they are growing up. We do not want to send them off to school to get on as best they can with 30 other children their age and 1 adult to nurture and educate the lot of them who, let’s face it, could be the BEST teacher in the world but still will not care for my child or desire to bring out the very best in my child the way I do. I am biologically built to be the best possible teacher my children could have, because nobody could want the best for them more than their own parents, and that’s the key thing to start with, for any teacher – genuine love for that child and motivation for their development. Of course, any parent can do that outside of school hours, adding to what their child gets in school, but I just want to do it ALL, I’m that greedy ! ;)

I would also personally prefer that my kids learn about the nitty gritty stuff of life from a loving adult (so, us!) and not from the playground. You know, sex education, etc. I don’t want the kids experiencing bullying or learning from other kids how to treat each other, or adults. I feel that is the parents’ responsibility, and I want to make sure they don’t learn stuff like that on the grapevine or through unhappy experience, before hearing it from us. I want our children to learn early on how to behave around other people, and to respect us. From my own playground experience, the LAST thing that children teach each other is how to respect their parents. Quite the opposite, in fact! If a child is inclined to respect his or her parents, they pretty quickly learn that it’s not cool to admit it. If they do, they get picked on. If they don’t, they certainly internalize that it’s not the done thing. I think our kids would somehow turn out fine if they went through school, but that’s not the point, for us.

We have also decided that we would like to teach our children to live for God and that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. For now, we don’t actually want them to learn about other faiths, as they would in school. Later, maybe.

A lot of people are going to think we’re suffocating our kids by keeping them at home and restricting their exploration of life, etc. Also they are going to be kind of annoyed about our decision to teach them about God as the truth and nothing else. I just think there’s no way around it, that will just have to annoy some people. I reeeeally do not care for debates or harsh opinions!! I write what I think here as part of a record of my journey as a mother, or my children’s development, and that’s the only place I’m coming from when I write my opinion. I always said in the past, after I became a Christian, “Yes, yes, I’m a Christian, but I will definitely let my children decide for themselves what they want to believe in.” I don’t think that way now that I’m actually a mother and would basically give my life for my kids, I care about their lives THAT much. Yes, they are individuals and have a right to their own choices. While they are growing up, we will teach them what WE believe to be the truth – and we DO believe Jesus Christ to be the truth, not just one of many options that people can pick and choose to believe in. We believe he is ABSOLUTE truth, and thus, anything else is absolutely false, even though we’ll have happy friendships with others who disagree! We are not outwardly judgemental in our personal beliefs, just firm about them in our own hearts and minds. But, if you believe God to be as real as your own husband, I mean, REALLY real, like not a choice, just a fact of the matter – you’re going to want to teach it as truth to the ones you love and care about, as they grow up and ask questions about life.

I mean, the sky is BLUE. I’m going to teach my children that it’s blue, aren’t I? Maybe there’s someone out there who is convinced the whole world is nuts and seeing the sky as “blue” when it’s just stupid because surely they can see that it’s really a neat kind of greeny-turquoise colour, and BLUE is just generalising and not teaching children that there are different ways of seeing things, etc. Okay, I’m being silly with this example! But God is truth as sky is blue, to me. I will teach my children that as a matter of fact, because it IS a matter of fact to me. Hand-in-hand with “God is truth” comes, “and you need to follow him with all your heart”, and also, “those who don’t will not inherit the kingdom of God”, etc. The more “controversial” stuff when it comes to teaching young minds, in this day and age. It’s hard and fast, but to me, it IS hard and fast! It’s the truth! I want my children to know it, without any shadow of a doubt. I don’t want to confuse them with, “so that’s what Mummy and Daddy believe.... But here are fifty different examples of what a million other people believe!...” and essentially give them the idea that there’s a big old list of choices. I want them to have a good grounding in what I believe to be the truth, and when they HAVE that grounding and are mature enough, AND show an interest in learning about it, (if they are not, I will not teach them about it), then they can learn about other faiths. I guess when they are all grown up and they’ve learned about all they want to in the area of world religions, they CAN choose to follow any one they want. But I am hoping and praying that they will choose to follow Jesus because they learned that he is the truth, even though they will understand at that age that it IS a choice, and people can choose to believe whatever they want. Anyway. Those are just my thoughts on that.

I am not going to push my children to “practise religion” though it will probably look like that’s what I’m going to be doing, to some who are reading this. I’m going to “practise religion” (though I don’t DO religion, hate the word, and detest the legalism that makes it “religion” in some aspects of Christianity where it exists), as in, I’m going to live my life for God nice and openly so my children see my example, and when they ask questions I’m going to answer them truthfully and teach them what I believe. I’m going to try to keep what I teach them very much Biblically based – the Bible is pretty much a life instruction manual, so I will try to go from that! And basically teach by example. We will have family devotions where they participate, though I won’t make them DO stuff they don’t want to do. Right now, for example, I pray every night with Arthur while he is breastfeeding at bedtime. I always ask him, “Do you want me to pray?” or “Shall I pray?” and he always nods. On the rare occasion that he doesn’t, I don’t say, “Well, I’m going to anyway!” and proceed to pray out loud! I just ask why he doesn’t want to (usually no reason that he can tell me) and then just leave it at that. I do pray silently for him though, mwa-ha-ha! ;) I sometimes ask him, “Do you want to pray?” or “Would you like to say thank you to God for ____” and he pretty much always says no. So I don’t push it any further, I just pray aloud with him to thank God for thing I had mentioned and that’s it.

Whether or not the children want us to, we will say grace at mealtimes, and attend church. When they are old enough to stay home on their own, if they really don’t want to go to church, then we won’t make them. That would be a LONG way off yet, though. Our family life will revolve around living for God, and that’s okay. Whatever their future choices, they will learn this as their “family” experience, growing up.

Anyway. That is it really.

I am not sure HOW to teach my children! But I know I can do it. I am not sure how to do it while barely hanging in there with babies and toddlers underfoot and crying in arms! But I reassure myself with the reminder that other mothers have done it (and still do!), so there must be a way, even if it’s just REALLY hard work for some years. There are a ton of resources out there, so I know I will learn how to teach my kids everything they need to learn in life. I can’t teach them to play tennis or the saxophone. If they are interested in learning those things, I want them to attend classes (preferably with other kids) outside normal school hours to learn them. I really want to encourage them to take up hobbies and interests outside of what we can learn at home. I can’t WAIT till we are able to afford a bigger house, because as soon as we do, we will have a piano. My brother is “housing” our family piano that I learned to play on (well, in my teens, not the one I learned on earlier than that), because my dad didn’t want to sell it but couldn’t take it with him to France when they moved there. We didn’t want them to sell it either! We wanted it in the family! It’s such a lovely piano, with such a nice tone. Daddy has a piano in France so he doesn’t need this one there in any case. We couldn’t fit it in our house when they moved, so Bennie took it in with the intention of “housing” it until one of us had proper use for it. I am really hoping we can move to a bigger house, and that he will be happy for us to have the piano at our house for the boys to use. I don’t know if he still will, because he’s had the piano at his place for years now, and he is a daddy now too, so perhaps he’ll want to hang onto it for Thea? He doesn’t play the piano – he plays the bass guitar. Anyway. If it does stay with Bennie, we’ll somehow get one. Neil and I both play (Neil much better than me!), and a piano is the perfect instrument to have lying around a home with children in it, to motivate them to learn. Both sides of our family are musical, so I really hope they will want to learn an instrument and get great joy out of making music.

I want them to take up any sport they are interested in too, and pursue any sort of arty or dance interests if they have them. I think when they’re little I might take them to some basic dance-y or art-y classes to see if they get inspired, and go from there. Or not, if they don’t!

Mummy paid for us to join Education Otherwise for a year, as a family. I researched and knew that it would be THE place to join, in the UK, for homeschooling support. So I asked Mummy if she would mind paying for us to join, and she was happy to :) Once we knew we had made the decision to homeschool, I knew we needed to get some information and local support, if it was available. I wanted the boys to mix with other kids who are home-educated, so that they are not the odd ones out, and they see that other kids DO learn at home without attending school. And for some social contact. Though, on the subject, it’s not actually necessary, especially since we go to church and they have social contact there already.

My biggest hesitation about homeschooling right from the start was the socialization aspect. I have since learned that it’s EVERY parent’s biggest concern when they first consider homeschooling! So that was reassuring, that I was just thinking normal stuff, and being concerned in a normal way. It is also therefore the single biggest concern for everybody else who thinks you should NOT be homeschooling your kids! We will probably get a lot of flack for how we’re not allowing our children to socialize like children “need” to. I have been researching homeschooling issues for over a year on the internet, and have now read a lot of articles on socialization, and even some research papers about it from the States (where it’s hugely more common to homeschool than here in the UK, and it’s been going on far longer in large numbers, so research is more advanced there). Basically it’s a big huge myth. School is not necessary for a child’s socialization. Research seems to indicate that it’s quite the opposite, actually! I was surprised about that! Children who are home-schooled are actually better socialized than children who attend school, in the end. They are more able to socialize with other people of all ages than children who attend school during childhood, and are confident and comfortable with babies and toddlers, children of any age, adults, and the elderly. This is much less common with school children, who can feel awkward with children who are not the same kind of age as they are, and with adults. I also agree with the stuff about how unnatural it is for a child to spend the majority of their waking hours for their entire childhood, placed in a large group of children of exactly the same age as them with very little adult guidance over socialization! It’s not a natural setting for anyone to spend all their time with ONLY people of the same age, and research suggests that they do not learn balanced social skills for adult life by doing so. I should look up the stuff I read and post links, now I’ve talked about it here, rather than anybody just take my word for it!

Having said that, *I* went to school and turned out just fine! :) I socialized well as a teenager (less so as a child) with children and adults, and the elderly. I made friends at school that I am SO glad to have made. I sometimes feel anxious that my children will miss out on the friends they could have made at school. But they will have opportunities to make friends just the same. Hopefully even friends who have the same interests, given that their opportunities will be mostly through interest groups and classes, and at church and home-schooling groups. Neil and I were both bullied pretty badly at school for many years, and definitely DO NOT want that experience for our children. One of my Christian friends who disagrees with our plan to home-school our kids (sigh) said that she was bullied horribly at school but that she doesn’t think the solution should be to not go to school. She thinks that God will teach us through such trials. God DOES teach us through trials, but I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that kids should go to school and put up with many miserable years of bullying just because you have to “face up” to that kind of stuff (ie. It’s life, deal with it) and hope that God will deliver them of it, or at least help them in their time of trial! I don’t personally believe that God’s heart for a child is absolutely that they must stay in that situation and endure! I actually feel very strongly that God is calling us to keep our children OUT of school. I don’t think it’s that there is a ton wrong with school, but that it happens to be his plan for our children at this time. So we’ll do it!

AFTER we made the decision, we read about the government plan to introduce a curriculum for the under 5 age group! I joined a Yahoo group for home-schooling parents in the UK (yay!) and have also got some first contacts with other home-schooling families in our area, which I plan to look into further in the New Year (hopefully there will be a local group we can go to!), and the curriculum thing was one of the topics for discussion during my first few days at the group. I had noooo idea. Well, nobody did, obviously. But yeah. I read the above article to Neil in absolute horror, and he just hung his jaw while I read and then said, “Okay, if there was ever any doubt about homeschooling!...” I’m just so happy with our decision. There is SO much relief, and so much pressure off our kids with them out of the school system. There is so much less pressure on us as parents, too. I think it is going to be really really hard, especially during the first year (so I’ve heard) as we get started. But I don’t have to worry about it too much. Some families homeschool quite.... what’s the word? In a very structured way, and follow a curriculum, etc. It’s very much like school, but at home instead of in the classroom. At the other end of the scale, some families practise what is known in the States as “unschooling”, where NO structured, academic learning is done, and all learning is done by practical, child-led activities, as and when interest leads them. I feel nervous about that end of the scale! Though I do know that families who home-school like that have children who learn at the same rate (and more so) as any other kids who learn by more conventional methods.

Right now, it’s early days. I don’t have a whole lot of ideas about the hows and whys just yet. I have a vague idea of what I am aiming at, and that is that I do not want to “run school” at home with desks and workbooks and me grading papers in the evenings! I don’t want to be a school teacher at home to my children. I COULD do it. But it’s not exactly how I want to educate them. At the moment I would probably put myself as sitting in the middle of those two extremes of “how to homeschool your kids”, not wanting to be too structured and academic, but also somewhat shy of not feeling like I’m “teaching” them at all! I feel like I could easily find confidence in the unschooling method, but I am too anxious about others at the moment – what they’d think when they heard/saw that I do not apparently TEACH my kids at all! I’d feel accountable, and like I was being neglectful of their educational needs – in the eyes of others, you understand! I don’t disagree with unschooling at ALL. I love some of the homeschooling blogs I read where the kids are “unschooled”! I wish I could do the same! I just don’t know if I’d be 100% comfortable with it. I think I itch to sit and teach my children things, to some degree, so I will probably be most comfortable doing some structured teaching, and letting the rest go to child-led fun activities and educational-ish (!) outings and stuff. I think I will end up doing a bit of both. I need to have some idea of how exactly I want to proceed though, especially by the time Arthur is getting to school age. At nursery age, I am not worried about it too much. Arthur has already learnt basically everything he would learn at nursery, although I know nursery is largely for play and social interaction, not learning stuff as such, yet. He knows numbers, letters and a billion colours. So I am not worried about teaching him stuff too much until later. I will still look for ideas and fun “school” things to do from pre-school resource sites and homeschooling sites in the toddlers/pre-schoolers sections, though. And he will be used to the fact that we do school pretty much every day. I am happy to be very flexible for now, and will probably need to be for a while, somewhere from late January onwards!

So those are our homeschooling plans! And I’m very excited about them!!! People at church know we are planning to homeschool, and I don’t really know what they think about it. I’m kind of curious to know really! But it doesn’t matter what others think (or, shouldn’t matter, anyway!) – I am trying to keep reminding myself of this! I am probably going to need to develop more of a thick skin if I am going to have a bunch of kids in this particular society (it’s crazy insane to have more than 2 kids, in general *sigh*), and homeschool them on top of that. So far nobody seems to have considered the concept of homeschooling, and I’m not getting negative comments, but I am getting the exaggerated shocked expressions that say, “Why on earth would you want to do something like that?!” or something similar. Which I don’t feel too comfortable receiving, but oh well. Also, other people at church who I haven’t told are coming up to me and saying, “I hear you’re thinking of homeschooling?” so I guess people are talking. I hope it’s positive stuff!

Other than that, we haven’t really told anybody. We don’t really KNOW anybody else, haha! Most of our family knows that we are either “interested in” homeschooling, or planning to do it. My parents know we are definitely doing it. My grandparents do not have a clue that their great-grandchildren will not be going to school, and I’m dreeeeeeading telling them. Dreading. Dreading. Dreading. They have both been teachers their whole lives – Grandoug was a headmaster at a couple of 1950s boys’ schools, and is pretty strict on issues of education! He is also a fanatic about learning, and has still not stopped at age 82. I know it wasn’t an easy place to grow up as a school child, for my dad, because there was a lot of pressure at home about academic stuff. And when my dad finished school, and sat his ‘O’ levels, Grandoug (his own father!) decided to sit some ‘A’ levels, so they both got results for those at the same kind of time. So competitive, which can’t be good. Grandoug just did degree after degree – he did a doctorate when I was a child even. He and Granny do Italian classes at the moment. It’s WONDERFUL for them! They get so much out of learning and are so vibrant and involved in life and use their brains such a lot. They get a lot of social contact all the time through things they choose to study. They use the things they study – travel to the countries whose languages they have learned, and make friends for life there, who they visit and invite to stay with them each year. I definitely don’t think it has been a bad thing. But there’s the situation – they are BIG TIME into school and all the educational benefits it can bring. I didn’t even live with them when I was at school, being their grandchild and not their child, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel under pressure from them about my performance at school, or not even school so much as something I was learning. I was constantly quizzed on things at the dinner table when we were over for Sunday lunch or something, as a child. When I was in my early teens and HUGELY rebelling at school, I remember they came over and Grandoug had a serious talk with my dad about what he was going to “do” with me over it all!! At the time I just thought they were all in it together, all out to make my life miserable over school issues and academic pressure, etc. But looking back, my poor Daddy.... HE was under pressure when he didn’t want to be, and he SHOULDN’T have been! It wasn’t Grandoug’s place at all to have that conversation with his son! But anyway. Daddy rebelled against education to a large degree as well, once he was at the end of school and at college. He started various college programmes and degrees but never finished one. I did exactly the same thing. Academic pressure. Ugh. I would not wish it on anyone!

So. There is NO WAY they will be all, “That’s nice dear” when I tell them that our kids are not going to school, and that I’ll teach them at home. And that, no, I am not planning to get all the school text books and keep up with the work he “should” be doing at school at his age, etc. I think they will be VERY shaken by the idea, and struggle to find a way to be supportive and comfortable with it. They are already concerned that Arthur is not enrolled at a nursery school, and that we haven’t started the ball rolling on that. So far they aren’t pushing it too much because they know we’re kind of up in the air about where we might be living at any given moment, with Neil being out of work and open to getting jobs elsewhere. So far they know that we can’t really enrol Arthur in a nursery school if we’re about to move away, as the waiting lists can be long anyway, and I think that is why they aren’t mentioning it too much at the moment. I feel bad that they are still so unaware of our plans that they are expecting us to do that any day now! I should update them and tell them about it. But it’s just such a huuuuge hurdle and I am dreading it. They think Arthur needs to be in nursery school, like other children. They think any teeny tiny issue that he appears to have while they are visiting (a tantrum, a random moment where he says he has “gone sad” for no particular reason, or gets shy for a moment during a game with them, etc) is possibly due to the fact that he doesn’t get much social contact with other children his age, and that it would all get better if he just started going to nursery school. Yeurgh. I just don’t feel like I have the energy to tackle the whole issue with them. But I will have to, and probably pretty soon.

That was as far as I got last night before Matthew woke! Oh my, what a night. He woke up around 1am and did not go back to sleep till around 4am. He wanted to be held all the time, or if I was able to put him down in his cot, he would lift his head every few minutes to be sure I was awake. If I didn’t immediately see his head go up and say something reassuring, he would cry and need picking up again, so I couldn’t go to sleep till 4am either! Bennie and Sarah and Thea came to see us this morning, yay! We haven’t seen them since September, so it was lovely to see them again! It’s crazy, since they live so locally. Time just passes and we just don’t realise, or we don’t get around to arranging to meet up, etc. Anyway, they were coming at 10am, and I could NOT go back to sleep after Matthew woke at 7.30, so I have felt wrung out today. He at least made up a bit of his night sleep by lying in till 7.30am though, so that’s good. He normally wakes around 6am at the moment, urgh! Arthur was also awake on and off between 2 and 4am. I think he was disturbed by Matthew and then was all wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. Matthew seemed unable to go to off to sleep for all those hours, and it was exactly like his disturbed night at the beginning of the week. Both times, when I picked him up his body felt very stiff and tense, and he just wanted to be held. He didn’t make any sound when I held him, but stayed wide awake, even after 30 minutes of holding him or so. After that I had to put him down again, but I stayed right there because he would cry otherwise. He lay quiet in his cot and didn’t move much, but his eyes stayed wide open. It was weird behaviour for him, and I didn’t think he was quite right. The first night it happened I got anxious that he was getting sick and very nervous that at any moment he was going to throw up on me or something! But he didn’t. I figured he must have some sore wind in his tummy, because he was holding his torso and legs all stiff and funny, and seeming uncomfortable. Also, I would hear his tummy groan and creak from time to time. He had the same kind of wake times the first night, as last night. From about 1am, but the first time it happened he was back to sleep somewhere just after 3am. He went off to sleep in the end last night – I breastfed him for a while, but he wasn’t swallowing much and seemed a bit reluctant to do so (which worried me again about the possibility of being vomited upon! But he didn’t.), and then I went to sleep too. Both times, when he woke in the morning he was bright and smiley and cheerful, had his normal breastfeed in my bed, and then sat up and did a long series of the noisiest foghorny farts I have ever heard him produce! So I know it had to be wind, poor lovey. He did so well to just bear it quietly in the night. When Arthur used to get sore wind in the night when he was tiny, he would just cry and writhe and scream till it passed, and I have to say, *I* would be inclined to cry about it if it were me, and I was a little tiny person who couldn’t use words to tell Mummy that my tummy HURT! Sore wind in the night can be soooo painful. He did so well, bless his heart.

Anyway. I’m thankful that I didn’t feel bad about him keeping me awake all that time because I just wanted to be there for him, you know? I knew he must be hurting and that there wasn’t anything I could really do for him, and he was doing so well dealing with it, so I just wanted to make sure that I WAS right there every time he popped his head up to hear me reassure him, and to just make him as comfortable as he could be. I held him for ages, and put him in his cot if he let me, and held him some more after that. I breastfed him a couple of times, for a bit, and lay him in my bed for a while and sat rubbing his back. I burped him like a newborn for as long as my arm could pat him, and he just stayed quiet through it all and let me try to help him. But that wind would NOT budge. Poor baby. Anyway. At least he must have felt better enough in the end and went off to sleep, and he had reassurance all the time. And his body fixed it for him by the morning, both times! The first morning-after, he got up after breastfeeding and just RAN joyfully to his daddy, calling out “Hah!” (hi) and beaming big smiles as he tooted away noisily from his rear end whilst running along! ;) So I’m glad it’s all mended by the morning. I have no idea why he’s had two such windy nights when he never gets that normally. We can’t think of food he’s eaten that could have particularly given him wind on those days. He is teething right now and has had to have Calpol FIVE days running. He has his four first molars, nearly all in, though some of their corners are yet to follow through. He doesn’t have any canines yet, and those are next on the “to do” list (!), so maybe he’s working on those? I will have to check Arthur’s red book and see when he got his canines. Matthew is still missing one of his bottom incisors! He only has 3 middle teeth at the bottom – his left lateral incisor (well, MY left, as I look at him) is nowhere to be seen! That’s on the “to do” teething list well before the first molars! But funnily enough, I checked Arthur’s red book (where I recorded all his teething stats as they came in) a while ago, and discovered that he only had the same 3 bottom incisors even after getting his molars! That missing toothie finally arrived at 17 months old for Arthur. But Matthew’s 18 months now and still no sign. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually!

So maybe it’s a bunch of canines all about to come through at once? I don’t know. He has large patches of the day where he just cries and won’t be consoled, and the WHOLE time he is just chewing on his whoooole hand, with it stuffed into his mouth up to mid-palm level, pulling his cheek right out on one side as he chews his hand over his molar-ish area on either side. He drools like crazy with it, and has had a few horrible teething poos that we are well familiar with by now! He is better for Calpol and the chewing stops, but sometimes it appears to wear off before he can even have another dose. I guess he is just teething really badly at the moment, and maybe that’s causing the tummy ache at night or the excessive wind?? Can teething do that – anyone know? I can’t think what else. He’s definitely not poorly with anything, and he’s also DEFINITELY teething a lot right now, so I’m trying to put 2 and 2 together.

Anyway, I really hope he does not have any more nights with pain and lots of sleep disturbance! He was tired today too, but very cheerful! He’s such a sweetie pie!

I have photos! But not ones I can post from the laptop – they’re on the computer and Neil is watching a movie there. I will have to post them in a separate entry. I have tried and tried to get photos of the boys to send out with the Christmas cards like I do every year, but to no avail. I was so bummed about it! They just will not sit still long enough, and I can’t get them both looking at the camera at the same time. If I sit them side-by-side on the sofa, they immediately play rough-and-tumble and climb all over each other! I’ll post some of my attempts tomorrow if I get chance, to show you what I mean! I have got a really sweet picture of Matthew (camera actually behaved for once, yay!) that I would have liked to send instead, but I couldn’t get one of Arthur to go with it. He is often doing exaggerated smiles for the camera now, or else he is just a huge blur as he won’t stop moving just as I take the picture! So, poo. It means a lot to me to send out pictures of my sweeties with Christmas cards each year. I like everyone to see them! Most of the people we send cards to are people who we never actually get to see, so they only see our children growing up through photos that I send with Christmas cards. It really gets to me that I can’t send any this year! I would have sent our Christmas cards out at the beginning of December (as planned) but the photo thing held it up. And I didn’t finish the last 15 or so, which I still need to do! Yikes! It’s getting too late, and overseas friends and family are probably not going to receive their cards in time for Christmas, but oh well. I am hoping to finish writing the cards this weekend and post them all on Monday, but I don’t think I will manage it. Today we had visitors, and in the afternoon Arthur and I marzipaned the Christmas cake (did I say we made my great-grandmother’s traditional Christmas cake for the VERY FIRST TIME this year?!!! So excited and proud – I feel really grown up, haha!). Now it has to dry for a week and then we’ll ice it! I LOVE Christmas cake! I wonder what the boys will make of it? Arthur thinks it’s going to be chocolate cake because it’s dark brown (rich fruit cake) and will NOT hear otherwise! He might be disappointed on Christmas Day!

Anyway – got sidetracked a bit. So, this evening I neeeeeded to finish this diary entry. And tomorrow we will go to church and – please God – not pick up any viruses in crèche. I am super paranoid in the 2nd half of December. I guess I just want Christmas to be healthy for us, and also I have twice got nasty lurgies pretty much on this very day of December in previous years which RUINED things for us – Dec 17th 1999 I came down with that really nasty influenza strain that left me housebound with M.E. for the next 2 years - that was fun! And I got it innocently shopping in town for Christmas tree decorations on a busy Saturday morning. And then Dec 16th 2004 we took Arthur to Olan Mills photo studios to get our first family portrait done – he was not quite 6 weeks old! And the wait was horrendous in this tiny waiting area full of annoyed children. And 2 days later – bam. Nasty influenza again. I got it, and gave it to Neil, and we could not spend Arthur’s first Christmas with family that year – we just were sooooooooo ill on Christmas Day and I didn’t know how we’d care for our tiny boy at all. I don’t know how we DID, either. But we did. It took till like February to get over that flu. Sucky. So yeah, I am understandably slightly more paranoid than normal at this time of year! There are such nasty things about at the moment, it seems. But it’s the same every year I guess. And the boys mix with other kids, so I just have to pray! Please let us miss the nasty lurgies. Yeurgh.

So we’ll go to church tomorrow morning, and then I MUST update my pregnancy diary (32 weeks tomorrow!! How can that be?!). And hopefully put photos on here. So I don’t see how I’ll finish the Christmas cards! But I hope to somehow. Arthur and I had a great time making them! We made 50, although we probably need to send more like 70. I have some non-homemade Christmas cards leftover from other years (before kids!) that I can send out if we run out of homemade cards. I’m excited about next year because (we’ll do homemade Christmas cards every year, it’s so much fun with kiddies!) Matthew will be 2½ by then, and totally a part of making Christmas cards with his brother for the first time! We made Christmas cards last year, and Arthur was only just 2, and it was totally doable, so I know Matthew and Arthur will make the cards together next year, which is exciting! Nathan will be 10 months old next Christmas. It’s a crazy thought! If our apparent “pattern” of childbearing continues, next Christmas might be when I find out I’m pregnant again. Or not. I don’t think we have a plan as such! Maybe I’ll already be pregnant by then? Maybe not till the next year. I’m already excited about it, and I am still pregnant with Nathan right now! :) I love being pregnant and having babies!

Okay, there’s sure to be more, but this entry SURELY can’t hold another word, it’s so long! And it’s very late. So I will post it, and hopefully get chance tomorrow to post photos. I might not, if I try to finish the Christmas cards instead, so then I will try the next day. I will prioritise my pregnancy diary tomorrow though. MUST update there. I am so behind at that diary this pregnancy :(

Back soon! :)

More tomorrow....

Shannon, I just love you!! :)

It's soooo late and I have been writing an entry (just for Shannon, hehe!) for a long time, but then Matthew woke up and he's still awake, so I will have to close this down and go to bed. I don't know what is up with him - he had a night like this earlier in the week too. ALL other nights he is now sleeping throooough!!! Yay Matthew! But anyway. It's 2am and he's been awake like an hour - quiet and lying down but not wanting me to be far from him, sort of thing. He is teething right now, but that can't be it, if he's all quiet and wide awake, surely? Anyway. Must go to bed. I was writing my diary entry on Word and it was already SUPER long so really I can just add a bit to the end tomorrow and copy/paste it in! Yay! There's a LOT about home-schooling in it. More than I intended - you know how I am with writing here! ;) And some other stuff - Matthew is 18 months old today! More on that in the copied/pasted entry tomorrow (which I WILL try to get done).

Night night :)

Big update, lots of photos!

Soooo many photos to post! And I have STILL only resized 42 out of 52 photos (!!) from Arthur's birthday! I am so annoyed with myself that it's the last day of November and I haven't got round to posting an entry here about his birthday in the same month as his birthday! Tsk. But I do plan to.

In the meantime, I have a bazillion other photos that are finally uploaded and ready to go! Also a bit of time to jot down some sweet things about the boys and such. And I must update on general life and so on.

Neil is still out of work. He has had 2 job interviews (nothing came from them) and has another on Monday afternoon in London. So far they are all in London. We're not thrilled about him getting a job in London but they pay well and he can commute pretty easily because we live in Greater London, so... Definitely not for the long-haul though. He has also applied for a job a couple of counties away, and another right on our doorstep where we live. They all pay well enough for us to live comfortably so any of them would be GREAT! He has also had a meeting with one of the leaders at church to discuss our new link (at church) with a church in Ghana. He is really feeling drawn towards work overseas with the church. Which scares. me. silly! It's SO out of my comfort zone and SO the exact opposite of what I would ever want to do! But we will pray and see. He is also open to the idea of some church work in South Africa, as this particular church leader has done a lot of work there and has links, etc. He could easily put Neil in touch with churches out there.

God needs to seeeeriously change my heart for me to be happy about any of this in any way, shape or form! Which would be a GOOD thing, because it's just my comfort-zone issue, and my personality type, that's keeping me from happily embracing what might be God's calling in Neil's life. I am a set-down-roots type of person, and just want to stay where I am and breed! ;) I really don't want to go even another TOWN away, let alone to another country/continent/culture with my babies, a million squillion miles from anyone I ever knew and all my family. Urrrgh. But if God says go... And if Neil says go, for that matter.... Because I am trying to embrace the fact that he's the spiritual leader of our family/household, and I want to submit to him in these things. Submitting is not part of my blueprint! ;) So it will take a lot of work for me. We are praying about it a lot. And meanwhile, Neil is doing the hugely reassuring task of interviewing for DULL jobs in our local area! ;)

My mummy sent us £500 for groceries! Bless her heart! I love her so. They are so supportive all the time, and never condemn or judge us for our decisions. I still feel absolutely remarkably unphazed about money, and Neil too. We have none, but everything is going to be fiiiine, and in fact there's a strange rose-tinted look to everything all the time, even without any money or income. God is good to us!

Also recently muchly prayed-about here is the subject of our children's education. It's too lengthy and stuff to go into in this entry (which I am trying to be brief and efficient with!), but remind me to post an entry SOON entitled, "We are sooooooo going to homeschool!" or something like that! I will have a lot of links to post in that entry. I have absolutely NO doubts in my mind or heart now that homeschooling is the best option for our family. I was starting to be concerned about Arthur's socialization, but really I just needed to remind myself of a few WELL-researched articles on the subject which do away with the myth of homeschooling getting in the way of a child's socialization, and research ways to socialise if we homeschool. I have my methods sorted out, but I'll write about them in another entry. Neil is on board (he was getting iffy about it before) and it's just SUCH a relief. Also a mounting dread because of people who will NOT be supportive finding out sooner or later. Urgh. But that's for another entry.

Matthew is saying so many words! Many of them are only understandable to us though, with his sweet way of pronouncing them! He has also started to say two-word "sentences", the first of which was "Bah, Ah-yah!" (bye, Arthur - waving). He now says "bah" (always with the cute waving) to everyone and everything when they go anywhere, including TV programmes when they finish, and food when it's about to be wiped off his highchair tray! He also says, "bee-bip!" which is his way of saying "excuse me please", hehe! This is, of course, his pronounciation of "beep beep". If he comes up to something in his way like a toy garage or something in front of the bookshelf, he'll give it an impatient look and say, "bee-bip!" and do a little sort of impatient bounce at the knees till we move it for him. The other day Neil opened the stair gate at the bottom of the stairs for Matthew to go up with him to have a bath. I was sitting near the gate on the floor, and he came to me and said, "Mi-mi (he also says, "di-di" for Daddy), bee-bip!" Funny little boy!

He still says "Ah-yah" allll the time, and lately it has taken on a much more adoring tone :) He just looooves Arthur so so much!

Arthur is doing great too. He talks non stop. And I think it's worth emphasizing: He talks non stop! I don't think there are things he can't say or pronounce, except maybe concepts that he isn't old enough to grasp yet. He sometimes still surprises me with things he says, that I don't expect to hear for whatever reason. If something scares him, he'll tell me, "I was dweadbully fwightened!", and the day before yesterday when he got home from the park with Matthew and Neil, I asked him what the weather had been like. He said, "Well, it was very cold and blust-ree, but it didn't rain." I just didn't expect blustery! I thought he'd just say windy or something. He also describes the weather or windows of cars as "mistry" (misty) and has such a wide range of similar descriptive vocabulary, which he uses a lot.

He can count with ease to 10, no longer reciting but counting how many of something is on a page. He is super helpful with all small children. We were at Fellowship Group yesterday and he's now the oldest child by about a year. Most of the little ones there are Matthew's age or younger, and there's one little girl who just turned two. And Arthur! He sat and "read" books most of the time, and played with toys, but he is thoughtful of the little ones at all times. He went and closed the door at one point, and when I asked him if he was okay, he told me, "I shut the door so that the little ones don't get out." Which was soooo thoughtful of him, as one of us parent-y people had forgotten to shut it, and it WAS an issue that the little ones could escape to other (less baby-proofed) parts of this lady's house. Later, one of the toddlers got hold of a balloon and after a while I saw Arthur holding it, standing next to the little one, and heard him saying gently, "Now, you have to be careful with these. You don't want to make them go bang." in SUCH a grown-up caring tone :)

He has lately been surprising us with his memory. He seems to have an excellent visual memory for things. He will cut out 30 car pictures from a magazine with Neil, and if one is missing at the tidy-away stage, he won't rest till he finds out where the "small blue car" went. I have no specific recollection of a small blue car, but maybe it was just that much more interesting to him so he remembered them all? Anyway, he was right, of course. It was under a sofa cushion. He remembers amazing details about cars.

Last week we had just finished getting the boys ready for bed, and Matthew was about to go with me to his room for milky (a breastfeed) and sleep. Arthur got one of his Topsy and Tim books (the boy LOVES those books) and said Matthew couldn't go before story time. So I said, "Why don't YOU read a story to Matthew, Arthur?" as it's something Neil or I do normally. He was SO pleased! He sat down next to Matthew (who did not keep still and stick around for the whole story, by the way!) and opened the first page, and proceeded to "read" the entire book almost word perfectly, phrasing and intonation pretty near perfect as well! Some of the sentences were quite complicated for him to remember, as he's only had the books for a few weeks (since the week before his birthday) and doesn't read one every night, so we thought he'd simplify or miss out some of those sentences. But nope. Every time he nailed one perfectly, Neil and I would look at each other and drop our jaws! And then look back to him and say what a great job he was doing in between pages. I couldn't believe how accurately he had memorised such a long book (for a little one, that is) so quickly, and the complicated sentences too! If he forgot a sentence on a page, as soon as he turned to the next page, he seemed to realise he'd missed something, go back to the previous page, and recite the sentence he'd missed before turning over again.

When I told my mum this on the phone the other day, she said it sounded to her like he was pretty much ready to start reading. I said, "What?!" (he's only just 3!) but she reminded me that he's ever so like me, and I was reading by the time I started nursery school, which must have been around Arthur's age, since he's now "nursery-starting age". The weird thing is, nobody taught me to read. My mum thought nursery taught me, and nursery thought Mummy taught me, and when they got together for a parents evening after I'd been there a month, they discovered that I had taught myself. Since Mummy didn't know about it, she can't be sure HOW, but she said I was doing the same kind of thing that Arthur's doing, and she just had books around the house with simple short sentences (very early readers I guess) which she guesses I started to associate the words on the page with the words she was vocalising as she was saying them. And she read to me a lot, and stuff. She was purposely waiting till I was 5 and starting school to do actual learning-to-read with me, because she was anxious about being pushy when I was too little.

So, I don't intend to "teach" Arthur to read either. I will have the same stuff around the house that my own mother had for me, and though I can't imagine how it could happen this way, Mummy thinks he might well pick up reading by himself. We'll see. I'm in no hurry, and I love to encourage him and see him develop as his own motivation and enthusiasm leads him, so it should be fun either way, even if it's years before he starts to read yet. I read yesterday at one of the homeschooling sites I was researching at, that sometimes exceptionally bright children learn to read by word recognition like that and do it by themselves at a young age. So that reassures me that it's possible, and okay to let that happen if it does. I debated over whether to write that bit here because it sounds HORRIBLY egotistical of me, writing the phrase "exceptionally bright" in reference to a) my own child, and b) me! ;) But though it's got to be grating on someone's nerves as they read this, I guess I am just genuinely sounding thoughts out. I was an exceptionally bright child (note the reference to CHILD and not person in the present tense, haha! My brain is seriously not what it used to be, these days!), actually assessed to be a gifted child, which was apparently hereditary, so it is a genuine concern for me that I am aware of the same possibility for my own children. Arthur is uncannily like me (I do mean uncannily, it's so exact in so many ways!) in personality, energy and ability, as a toddler. I am desperate to handle things differently to the way "things" were handled when I was a child. The fact that I was bright lead to a miserable school-life for me, and basically a rejection of said brightness on my part. I have to make sure that I don't make the same mistakes with my little ones if they turn out to be bright sparks. I know every child is different (and every school, but that won't be an issue if we're homeschooling anyway).

Anyway - more long-winded that it was meant to be! Arthur is just Arthur. He's not one of these toddlers doing 200 piece jigsaw puzzles or anything! He's just a normal boy bean :) But he's bright and I want to help him to flourish and maintain his zest for life and learning the best way I can. I don't want to squash such an exquisite flower as it is just opening :)

I hope that all didn't come across as horribly proud or anything. I cringe at the thought! I always just lay my thoughts and feelings bare here, and of COURSE I am going to think the sun shines especially radiantly out of my own children's bottoms ;) It's only natural! Hehe!

Okay, onto something else. Photos, I think!

My tiny boy (well, the middle-sized boy, not the tiniest of them!) is still breastfeeding before his nap and bedtime, and on waking in the morning. I think I can now say I have successfully night-weaned, and it was completely trauma-free, so that's a HUGE relief! I need the nights sorted because I'm not someone who can manage to tandem nurse at night, though I am happy (excited, even!) to do so in the day. Arthur is still breastfeeding too, same as before, mainly the before-bed session, but any other time of day when he asks and it's convenient to do so. Which is about two or three times usually. Matthew probably wouldn't ask in the day during play time, as Arthur does, but if he sees Arthur nursing he never fails to come toddling over, saying, "Mih! Mih!" (milk?) and clambering up eagerly to have some from the other breast. I love nursing them together. They never nurse for very long that way, especially Matthew who pops right off again after about 60 seconds, but I do love looking down at their sweet little selves tucked into my sides as they sit either side of me, nursing away whilst they gaze at each other across my breasts. And even more lovely is the fact that in between their little persons is a pretty huge bump which houses another little one of mine! I just love moments where ALL my little ones are tucked into me, touching base and keeping that baby bond with me going.

Matthew nurses TO SLEEP at naptime, which ideally needs to change! I definitely want this to be different before Nathan is born, as it will make life soooo much easier, but I still LOVE nursing little ones to sleep. Matthew gets very cross if he isn't nursed to sleep for nap time, but he is fine about the bedtime routine where he breastfeeds, climbs onto me when I sit up afterwards, has a drink of water, and then I rock him and pray over him before laying him in his cot WIDE awake. I then walk away! I take an age rocking him and talking softly in his ear though. I always tell him how much I love him, how special he is, what things he's done today that I have loved seeing/hearing, and how proud I am of him, etc. I hold him out from me to kiss his little lips and face, and then I lay him in the cot and stroke his hair for a while, telling him I love him and he's going to have a lovely sleep, etc. Then I leave the room! And he goes to sleep! This is NEW as of last week. We did the Supernanny Sleep Separation Technique with him, and for 3 nights (not the same 3 in a row - he would do a few nights fine and then have a bad one) at bedtime he basically cried it out. Which SUCKED. I hated it so. Two of those nights we were right where he could see us, just refusing to engage with him or pick him up. He cried for maybe 30-40 minutes and then suddenly settled down and went quietly to sleep. We have gradually edged our way out of his room, so now we're on the landing and he can't see us, but he's fine. Tonight we just came downstairs, straight from his room! No problems.

We got desperate, because he HAS to be independently going to sleep before Nathan arrives. It will be too hard to handle otherwise, I think. We tried a few other methods where we stuck closer to him and responded to him more, and just didn't see much progress over a few weeks, so we switched to a more desperate method. I hated it when he cried, but I'm glad we did the Supernanny Method rather than leave him to cry without knowing where we were. And SO glad he's adjusted and going to sleep well on his own now. Arthur often breastfeeds to sleep at bedtime but he's doing SO well at going to sleep without fuss on his own. He doesn't even get off the bed, just lays down where we tell him and scrunches his eyes shut and waits to fall asleep. He doesn't mind us leaving. So those things are a HUGE weight off for me! Now if only Matthew would sleep through the night.... He doesn't breastfeed at night but he still wakes and requires "settling". Urgh.

Anyway. So he breastfeeds to sleep for his afternoon nap, which I actually LOVE, even though I'm going to wish I'd stopped doing that once Nathan arrives! Matthew lately HAS to be clutching toy cars when he nurses to sleep! Funny boy! He will not come upstairs until he has selected the specific cars he wants to take up with him. I'm sure he'd take the whole lot if he could, but he can only fit one in each hand ;) His favourite car right now is a large Matchbox-style police car, which is battered and missing parts, but he is so attached to it! He will not let me prise cars out of his hands as he's dozing off on the breast - he just clutches harder in a mini-panic! It's not remotely comfortable breastfeeding with a toy car jammed into the underside of my breast! But he's just so adorable to me when I watch him, that I can't help but let him anyway :)

Neil took photos about a week ago. Here's my tiny boy nursing to sleep (almost there, by the looks of things!) in my bed before his nap, with his beloved police car. See my bump! I'm having a BABY! Hehe! I'm so excited :) Also, I love how Matthew always likes to lay his hand on my bump when he's breastfeeding. He's soooo gentle with it too. *sigh*

Here's the end result, lol! Still clutching the police car! I did take it from him without trouble after the photo was taken :) He's always totally unconscious after nursing to sleep. Toootally.

Such a sweetie-pea-pickle! I just love him soooo.

What other photos do I have waiting to share here? I have to check photobucket to see - I think some of them are quite old! Ohhh yes, I have a bunch of photos of Arthur from about a month ago - before Neil was unemployed we bought a cot for Nathan on eBay. We figured we had to buy another cot, or else a toddler bed for Matthew. But in the end we chose to buy a cot for Nathan because Matthew isn't ready to move into a big boy bed yet. We COULD do it, but he just seems so little yet. His is a cotbed, so it converts to a toddler bed, but I don't think he's even ready for that. I think we'll keep him in his own familiar bed, whether it's in cot form or toddler bed form, and Nathan can have his own cot from the start. Nathan's is a regular cot though, not a cotbed, so it's smaller. That's fine. By the time Nathan is ready for a toddler bed (hopefully I'll be pregnant again, wheeee!) Matthew will be FINE to move into a normal bed, or bunks with Arthur, and Nathan can have the toddler bed version of Matthew's cotbed, while baby #4 (BOY #4, let's face it!) has Nathan's cot. So there we go! I bid on a barely used (baby co-slept) cot at eBay in a simple design that I really liked, and it's a John Lewis one, and I love their stuff - really sturdy, and good quality, etc. And won!

It arrived in the most ENORMOUS box, flat packed in big sheets of solid polystyrene. We opened it when Matthew went for his nap one afternoon, since he would be a bit of a nightmare with all the packaging! It meant some quality time with Arthur on his own, as he was HIGHLY excited about opening the huge package! He got right in after we lifted the cot parts out, and proceeded to have the most wonderful hour with the polystyrene, making "snow" and being a digger and all sorts of other fun stuff! It was like a big sandbox because of the sides, and it was lovely to just watch him have fun in that space for so long! He did help clean up at the end. I took a bunch of photos, so here are some (okay, lots!) of them:

By the way, is anybody else having HUGE issues with loading Photobucket images? It's driving me crazy, and it's been a month or two now. It's getting slower for me all the time, and now I can't view them at all on my own diary. And the photobucket website itself is very sluggish for me. It takes an age to upload pictures because I have to keep on quitting and reopening the website, as it's sooooo slow that it doesn't do anything for too long. YouTube is the same for me and has been for ages, but I wondered if it's the same for everyone, or just me? We have broadband so I feel like it should NOT be the case that anything is this slow! Anyone else's photobucket images take forever to load as well, not just mine. And it's the same on my laptop as well as the main computer. So, is this just what everyone else is finding? If so, I apologise that this page will take forever to load with all these photos and blinkies on it!

Right, it's getting late and I'm tired so I must finish off this entry. A few more photos though! :)

Some mornings when the boys get up, they are wide awake and raring to go, and they get stuck in straight away with toys and lively games, etc. Occasionally it's early and they are super sleepy, but still wanting to get up. On these occasions, Neil usually puts the TV on for them and they wake up more gradually to some CBeebies or Milkshake for a bit before breakfast. He took a couple of sweet photos of them a week or two ago, on one such morning. They look soooooooooo sleepy! They were sitting in the laundry basket watching TV with such dopey expressions! I don't know why but I just loved this photo. There's another from behind them. The quality is weird and fuzzy because our camera is dying a slow death or something. Tsk. It is getting worse all the time with blurry images and doesn't deal well with lower light settings. Anyway, here are my sweet sleepy boys in their fleece sleepsuits that we got them for the chilly nights we're now having!

And here are a few random photos of Matthew's usual casual thing - wrestling Arthur by locking him with his body over Arthur's neck/head! They now do this SO frequently that they kind of just get on with other things at the same time, hehe! Arthur is never perturbed by these things any more, they're so commonplace!

And finally, here is Matthew after lunch the other day - they had marmite sandwiches and ham and cheese, and stuff, but they often like a chocolate spread sandwich for dessert (and then yoghurt, and then raisins, and then gingerbread men - they eat a lot of lunch!). That particular day I used the last of the Nutella in their chocolate spread sandwich, and had the empty jar on the table. Matthew finished his sandwich and starting making urgent sounds and motioning for the jar! I explained that it was empty, and gave it to him to examine. Here are the resulting photos :)

He's the cutest boo! I am just constantly commenting (to myself or Neil) on how CUTE that boy is these days, things he says or does, or expressions he makes at us! He just seems to me to be at SUCH a cute age right now. I love his age! I can't believe he's nearly 18 months old! One-and-a-half! It's also slightly scary that it means I must be nearly due another baby because that's the age my little ones tend to get to by the time I am about to have another baby! But exciting too. I can't wait to post photos of all three of my little boys here. It seems surreal that it will even happen, but it will, and it's so exciting! :)

Okay, I must go to bed. After I eat some cereal. And do my FlyLady bedtime routine! And probably eat something else. I eat a lot at the moment! But it's all for a good cause :)