Battling Lightsabers

We came out of school today, and Dude was clutching two screwed up bits of paper - one coloured blue, one green.

I used to do the whole "tell me about what you've made" thing because asking them what it is is meant to be demeaning or crush their souls or something, but as time went on I realised that I am Mum, not divine being, and as a result I am NOT going to know what every single drawing and piece of creativity is, and it's not doing them any damage to know that Mummy doesn't know everything!  So, bypassing the round about method, I went with "What have you made?"

Lightsabers.

I looked at them again, and that was clearly what they were.  They had little black handles too.  He handed one to B when she came out of school, and they began an epic battle on the walk back to the car.  There were leaps, and turns, and no-one complaining that they had been unfairly hit.

Then, B decided to bring the fight to me.  That was a risky thing, because as much as I would love to be fun and bouncy mummy, the majority of the time I am stressy, stroppy, tired mummy, and whacking me with a bit of paper would make me a tad annoyed.

She looked vaguely concerned when I announced that it wasn't on attacking me when I was unarmed.

They both looked vaguely baffled as I got a letter out of the homework bag, and then the penny dropped as I started to screw it into a long shape...

The battle was on, and we fought our way back to the car.  I have no idea what the various passing parents thought because I don't even know if there were any.  Logically there must have been because we all park on the same road, but for that brief window all that was in my world was me, B, and Dude.  There was fighting, laughing, generally ganging up on me (that counts as teaching them teamwork right??), and those few minutes to the car felt like hours.

It's rare that I am that mum, but when I am, it feels incredible.  

Disney Magic

I'm not a TV restricting parent.  They've learnt a lot of obscure things from watching television, and they've learnt a lot of important things.

I alternate when they are wanting to watch films between films that they want to watch, and films that I want them to watch.  I think all 3 of them, even the baby, can recite High School Musical 1 & 2 (less so 3 because if I am going to have these films playing in the background, they can watch the superior two) - that is a their choice thing.  Star Wars and Back to the Future they weren't given much of a choice over (although they were too young for Star Wars at the time, we need to try again).

Disney however (proper Disney - none of this Disney Channel Movie stuff) is generally a united thing.  Nemo got played so much that we had to get a second copy, Tangled is rapidly becoming a favourite (horses and frying pans - what's not to love?), Enchanted was played on repeat one Christmas...

My most often quoted one though has to be Lilo and Stitch.  I adore that film.  I saw it in the cinema pre-kids and sobbed at "I'm lost!".  One of my only Disney Store teddies is a Stitch.  Over the past two years I have found myself using "Ohana" a lot.  It is generally when I am trying to remind them that yes, I am Mum, but we are a family and I am outnumbered so we all have to pull together to look after each other.

We sat in the car earlier in the week, and Strawb mentioned Stitch - she swiped the beloved teddy a while back and sleeps with him every night.  It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn't recall her watching it... I asked her, and no, Stitch is just toy, not film.

This had to be rectified!  She was excited by the idea of Stitch having a film, all was good.

Tonight, I set her up on the sofa, and she curled up with a blanket and Stitch to watch.  She was utterly enthralled in minutes.  Dude came to join her, and the two of them were glued to it.  Even the arrival of Gran which normally brings excitement didn't make her move.

I was going back and forth doing various jobs, and she told me I had to sit with them because she was sad - they had just got past Stitch being lost and alone in the woods.  So for once in my life, I actually stopped trying to slot in jobs, and just got under the blanket with my babies.  I welled up as Stitch talked about his little broken family, and about Ohana.

Yes, we can be a bit broken, I yell too much, things don't tend to go according to plan, but we're a family, and family means no-one gets left behind, or forgotten.

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!