Summer Holidays

I've been gone for a while I know.  Mix of a lot of things, but hopefully I am more sorted and can start this up again.

It is the summer holidays!!

Six weeks or so of no school, no routines, and freedom!!

Like most lone parents (and probably just parents in general) summer holidays fill me with a mix of joy and cold dread.

I get my babies for the good stuff.  Not just the day to day routine of going back and forth to school, and shovelling in dinner to be out of the house again in time for beavers/brownies/swimming/gym, but the actual BEING with my children, enjoying the people that they are growing into, playing, having fun.




But then again, there is no routine, no going to activities, and I get my babies all day, every day... ALL day.  EVERY day - where they can fight with each other, and with me, and not let me think for 5 mins.

I am always wary of telling them "this week we shall do x, y, z" or even "tomorrow we shall do x, y, z" because holidays are unpredictable.  With the best will in the world I can plan to go to Moors Valley (trees, play area etc) tomorrow, but then it can pour with rain/the car break down/a child be awake all night etc so I am not physically capable of tramping about Moors Valley.  Then they have their crushed little faces because Mummy failed to deliver.  So instead I decided to go with Wing It.  I like Wing It.  I wake up, look out of the window, and take their moods and my mood into account before planning things.

Alas, B needs routine.  A fortnight in to Wing It and she had turned into stroppy brat from hell taking every negative feeling in her head out on the rest of us.  Sooooooooooooo... new plan.  The rest of us are on Wing It, but after a Very Grown Up talk with B, we discussed that she doesn't cope with Wing It so she is now on the Maybe plan.  I'm not as spontaneous as I would like to be - Wing It is generally me just not telling them my plans for the next day jic (just in case), so now B knows the tentative plans on the proviso that she doesn't tell the others, and that she understands that they may change.  Turns out she is far happier with pre-warned possible change than a mass expansive of No Plan.

It is a learning curve summer, but so far, despite wanting to curl up and hide when the fighting gets too much, it is good.

I am seeing just how grown up B has become.  I am seeing the Dude blossom into himself - he's finally grasped reading!!!  Over the past few weeks I have seen Strawb get better and better at speech and even lost her lisp yesterday (ok, I am kinda crushed by that).

Been doing this lone parent thing for 2 years now, this parent thing for 9 years, and this is the summer that I finally feel like I am getting the hang of it. 

Clothing Cull

I've mentioned The Mountains before.  

My dining room and kitchen are covered in mountains of clean washing.  Crapslides (like landslides, but tis the piles of crap) are a life threatening event.

This weekend I combined moping (the hairy one went away) and caffeine.  For those of you unaware of the equation:

MOPING + CAFFEINE = PRODUCTIVITY

So, in frustration at the constant mountains and never being able to find the clothes I want for the children... I decided on a clothing cull.

Clothing culls have steps.

First - go through the mountains (this involves careful mountain relocation programmes) and remove all clothing that children have grown out of (mine will squeeze into much loved tops, and have pjs that finish by their knees for as long as I will let them) and put into bags.  All clothes are recycled to friends, so B clothes go in one bag to be passed to Beau and Trinity, and the other two go in a bag together because I have friends with matching genders to pass on to, or people who are happy to split the bag up and pass on to the other gender.

Second - Pick a child (I went with the Dude first as he is the hardest) and pull out all of their clothes from the mountains (again, more relocating happens).  Also grab any of their clothes actually in their rooms.

Third - Divide the clothes into types (tops, pjs etc)

Fourth - Go through each type and decide roughly how many they actually NEED to have and keep the ones you like (do NOT let children help with this task - it turns into the classic "TEDDY!!!" moment like when they find a toy they have barely glanced at in 3 years, but desperate love and need when it is being thrown out).  I am not totally heartless - I do keep the tops that they adore even if I hate them.

Fifth - Put away greatly reduced pile of clothes

Sixth - Bag up the remaining clothes to send to Daddy's house (we've spent the past 2 years shuffling clothes back and forth every weekend - sending the stack of clothes to live there makes sense).

Repeat steps 2-6 for each child.

My children have an obscene amount of clothes it turns out.  Not bought by me I should add!  In the same way that I have the bag for Beau etc, I have bags passed to me from several different people.

The boy child had 26 pj tops?!!?  And that isn't including any that are probably still lurking in beds or waiting to be washed.  Plus - he tends to sleep naked!!!

Strawb had 12 cardigans, and she is my least passed down to child!!!

Dude loves it.  He got up and got himself dressed this morning because his clothes were easy to find.  He's not queried where they have gone, he's fairly used to me doing it to be fair.

Strawb however realised what was happening as I was sorting through her stuff.

She came running over, gathered up armfuls of clothes screaming "No!!!  Mine favourite!!!!" and went and sat in a little heap of rescued clothes.

I am Good and Kind Mummy.  I let her keep everything she had rescued.

The fact that she was rescuing everything that was staying anyway as she had missed Stage 4 and I was on Stage 5 has nothing to do with it.  (annoyingly I didn't get a photo...)

Let's try this again shall we?

Sorry, my brain was utterly against blogging for a few weeks.  It's annoying as I had birthday and stuff to blog about but it has completely escaped me.

Potty Training!

We've attempted this half heartedly a few times now (generally with both of us deciding it is too much effort to continue).  Saturday though, the small child was anti-nappies, we were in for the day, so I decided to let her get on with it... and she had no accidents!?!?!

Sunday we went with the nappies as we were going back and forth in the car lots.

Monday was bare bum at home, nappy out.

Yesterday though, we went for it and put on knickers.  Always the fun part.

Everyone has different methods for potty training.  With B we went with pull ups, found that she was lazy if she had them on, so gave up and had bare bum for a few days, and then putting knickers on and pretty much start from scratch whilst she worked out that knickers don't work the same way as pull ups.  Oh, and refuse point blank to use the potty for anything other than wee - that took producing a baby to sort (don't ask me how, but the child who would scream and hold it in until she had a night nappy on came to see her new baby brother, announced she needed to poo, sat on the potty and was fine ever since).

Dude, I did nothing.  He decided he was done with nappies and just did it.  I approve of this method.

Strawb, I have gone with a similar style to B.  Dresses, so no fiddling pulling stuff down, bare bum to begin with so that the "I must go NOW!" is easy, and now getting used to having knickers in the way.

So, anyway - yesterday we bit the bullet and went for knickers.  With the exception of the very first wee, she did it!  No accidents!

Not entirely sure how today is going to be, as we are going out and she is going to be more distracted, but she is ready this time, and I don't want to mess about and miss the opportunity.

(not the most exciting of posts for my return, I accept that, but what needed to be written about right now.  So there.)

Chats with Baby Girl

Chats with Baby Girl (aka Strawb) rock.  We get to about 6.30pm and she comes to join me (that is my hiding at the computer time remember).  She tends to come in to tell me about Very Important Events occurring.  Usually involving frimples or Peppa Pig.

Tonight I heard her come upstairs and start playing in the bathroom sink.  There isn't a great deal of damage she can do there, and she was singing happily, so I let her get on with it.

I then heard and whingy sound.

She came through saying:

"I wet I wet I wet I wet!!!"

She wasn't wrong... her dress was indeed a smidge soggy.

"Really?"  {deadly serious face}

"My dress WET!!!!"

I descended into giggles...

"Not this one FUFFY!!!!"   {stamps foot and gives me her best Angry Face}

"Not funny?"

"NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

{stomps off slamming the door behind her}

Possibly laughing at a frustrated 2 yr old is wrong, but she is soooooooooooo funny at this time of day!

A reminiscey one

What?  That's a word!!

Zombie B in April '12

In two days my baby girl turns 9.  Obviously, it is the same with each of them on each birthday, that feeling of "Wow, when did that happen?"

Last night watching Glee

I sat there with her yesterday evening watching Glee, discussing things like "You never let ANYONE hit you, even if you love them or they say they love you" trying to work out when she became old enough to understand those conversations.

This time 9 years ago I was in full on stroppy bitch mode.  I feel sure you are shocked and horrified by such a notion, but alas, it is true.  I knew my conception date.  The scan date was a month different, and nothing I said would make them agree that I knew when things had happened with my body.

About 18 months old I think?

Which left me a month overdue and ready to kill the world.  I sat sobbing watching Charmed because the entire season had been very accurate for pregnancy progression (which is surprising for tv), and "Even Piper has had her baby and I still don't have mine!!!".

But eventually, she did bother to appear.

Probably about 2 1/2

She's my quirky little girl.  Not quite like the other children she knows, but I kinda like that in some ways.  Where they seem to have grown in and out of Disney and be on Twilight back packs now, she is only just starting on Wizards of Waverley Place.  She will sit and chatter on about Buffy despite no-one at school having any idea what she is talking about.

Her 2nd Birthday

She adores Bon Jovi because Auntie Suzie likes them.

She's just come running in from outside very concerned because a boy wants to be friends with them, but she's not sure it is a good idea because he is telling them to keep it a secret that his friend stole £2000 and now has the police looking for him (!?!??!)  I am with her on this...

First day of school

Yes, she can be a struggle with change, loud noises, and making things orderly (not her room of course, but shopping trips when she was younger and kept neatening the shelves took forever!), but in general she is an incredibly sweet, intelligent, very serious little girl, with an awesome sense of humour.

It hasn't been the most stable couple of years, but she has come out of the other side a child that I am proud of.  I swear that she did most of it without my assistance, but I am still claiming credit!

And added to things I never wanted to say to people...

Remember how awesome Strawb was at swimming last week?

Well, it was either Stray or Adam that told me I would have one good week, one horrendous, and then it even out.  Damn whichever one of you it was for being right. {glare}

So she was tired from the beginning, due to having insisted on walking everywhere for the entire day and not having had a nap.  She decided she wanted to climb in and out of the "baby cot" (playpen) next to the pool, which got us told off by the lifeguard due to her preference for landing in it head first.  This is apparently dangerous.  Me promising not to sue if she hurt herself was met with the same stony stare as when I tried to have the conversation with them explaining that I couldn't take photos with my kindle.

So, she was banished to sit next to me at the side of the pool and Watch Nicely.

That lasted 2 mins before announcing she was bored (in the way of saying "No watch!!!").

So, she wanted to do drawing on the phone app.

That lasted one drawing before we got The Look from the lifeguard due to my clearly paedophile toddler taking photos... I accept I may have a few issues over the swimming pool rules.  My kindle is banned as it might possibly maybe be a tablet and therefore Take Photos of children swimming.  My phone is banned for the same reasons.  I offered to cover up the camera bit with a plaster once, but they said no.  Yes, I am flippant.  I am probably a Terrible Person for not being convinced there is a dude in a trench coat waiting on each corner ready to take photos of my children.

Anyway, that was when I remembered the keyring of awesome (thank you Stray!!), which has on it............... a Sharpie!!!!

So, I handed it to her, and said she could draw on my leg.  Which she did happily.  She then drew on her own leg.  Then I had to draw on her other leg so she had a butterfly too (as you can tell from the photo, I let an actual artist draw my tattoo on me rather than creating it myself...).

All was good, we were happy and joyous.  I have decided swimming shall henceforth take place with a pack of washable felt tips.  No, don't suggest pen and paper!  She will draw on paper for 10 mins, but limbs amuse her for 30.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway.  Not desperately hellish you may think...

Let me continue...

Big two went to have showers, I took photos of her legs as she demanded.  She then decided to amuse herself by hiding in lockers whilst I went to yank the other two out of the showers to get dry.

I had to tell her not to whack the door open so hard as she nearly knocked some woman off her feet, but all was good - amused baby, big ones now getting dry.

So, I head round the corner to start blow drying hair.

That was when I heard Strawb's little voice say "Poo mummy!!!"

Followed by:

"Mummy!!!  Carys has pooed everywhere!!!"

She had decided that she was bored wearing the nappy.  Or that she was potty training. Who knows?  So took it off.  In the locker.

She then proceeded to poo in said locker.

I suspect looking at it that she has had more milk than she should have this week...

Sooooooooooooooooooo, I stripped off her dress (thankfully only slightly "got"), showered off her foot (also only slightly got), and wiped her bum.

Then dragged the nappy bin over to the locker where I set about cleaning it out with toilet paper.  I accept, that had I been a smidge more organised and had babywipes with me, it may have been easier, but we were running late, and due to my general distractedness, they were in the car.  Finally got it all cleared out, there was no sign of it other than the lingering smell.

But I then had to go to reception and utter one of the most mortifying phrases I have ever said...

"I'm really sorry, but my baby has pooed in one of the lockers.  I have cleaned it all out, but it is going to need some disinfectant...."  (I did offer to do it if they would give it to me, but they refused)

The woman just paled completely.  They muttered about how disgusting I was to have "let" her do it as I walked away.

I will lay odds on none of them having children, or if they do, only one!

{sigh}

After her eventful trip, she fell asleep in the car and is now out cold in my hoodie which was made into an emergency dress.

 

One of those nights where I would kill for a glass of wine, but I am not drinking, therefore I get to just enjoy a friend coming round instead.

The Dude

Gonna write a bit about my baby boy now.

One of my favourite photos of him

He has always been diddy.  Actually, I lie, he was fairly standard sized until about 6 months old when he decided to give up on growing.  Now, he is a solid little thing of pure muscle, but still only coming up to his best friend's shoulder (to be fair, Jamie is tall, but still...).

This was his first birthday... he was small enough to fit in a standard sized gift bag

He is the first of the children to have been bitten by the radioactive spider.  We had to put two stair gates on the bedroom door to stop him escaping and he would still climb over the top.

Looking at the date this was added to Facebook - he was about 24 months old

My little dude, when the others would settle to some sort of rock, if we flicked through music channels when he was crying, he would calm to Boyzone.  He was always this little bouncy, flamboyant thing with a love of glitter, and nail varnish, and musicals.  He would sit in the back of the car getting all excited when "his" part of HSM Status Quo would come on ("Coat and tie!") at about Strawb's age.  He would squabble with Trin over having the pink cutlery.

Then, he started school and became A Boy.

He no longer liked girls.  He no longer liked sparkles.  He was too boyish for HSM and just wanted Ben 10 and Bakugan.

He does love Dr Who though so he channelled his need to dress up into that instead, and went through a phase of wanting to wear bow ties lots.

This last 6 months though, MY Dude seems to be suddenly coming back.  It started with "Can I have nail varnish on my toes too please...?  Black or blue though!!" (when he was about 2 he first painted his toe nails with my red nail varnish, and loved them).  It then moved on to "Can I have some of my glitter powder too?" (they each have their own pot of "frimples").  Then a couple of weeks ago he made a request to watch HSM2 and was bouncing round the lounge to it.

Last weekend, B was painting her and Strawb's toenails, and he now sports silver toenails. 

Today was my biggest moment though of feeling like I have my little boy back, not what school and growing up turned him into... We went to the park with Grumps, and he came over to where I was making Strawb daisy caterpillars and asked me if I would make him a daisy chain to go on his hair.

He did however make me promise not to put the photo on Facebook.  This obviously isn't Facebook. ;)

Then he sat himself down with Grumps and told him that he likes to watch football but he never gets to (damn having a mum who isn't into sports, and a dad who is only into rugby).  It was really nice seeing them there together.

I love my little boy to bits in all forms, but seeing the old him emerging out of the cookie cutter BOY is amazing.  I hope he can keep hold to himself as much as possible.