Night feeding

This baby seems to be the one for trying out new stuff. I never got the hang of feeding lying down with either of the girls, but its working out this time. Yay. Especially "yay" for the first thing in the morning feed...

My big discovery was a way to keep my shoulders and arms warm and snuggly, while not completely covering the baby with the duvet. The solution is simple, once you think of it - I wear my dressing gown to bed! ta-daa. The duvet only gets pulled up to my waist, thus keeping the baby's head well clear of a soft, downy smothering, and I stay super-snuggly warm.

Image (and nice position instructions) from ParentingWeb

So that is what I do first thing in the morning - or if MrBaby doesn't re-settle after his normal night feed, which I still get up and do on the couch while listening to National Radio.

I know some people successfully bed-share with their babies all night, which theoretically makes feeding during the night a cinch. All good if it works for you (and if you never attempt it after consuming drugs or alcohol, don't smoke, and don't have too-soft, fluffy bedding - all of which dramatically increase the chance of SIDS when combined with bed-sharing). But, as Merl will tell you, I am a world-class fidget in my sleep.

I cannot stand to stay in the same position, or even facing the same side for much longer than about an hour and a half. But moving the baby wakes him up. And I don't want to turn my back to him. So total bed-sharing is out. When MrBaby was very very little he slept with us most nights, so I know of what I speak.

So we 'co-sleep' - he's in a bassinet in our room, which allows me to respond to him before he gets majorly distressed, and most nights he ends up in our bed sometime around 5.30am. Then he feeds, I doze off, and generally we have a good cozy start to the day/end of the night.

The 3am-ish feed is a different kettle of fish. If I feed him in bed at 3am then I fall quite deeply asleep while he's feeding and then he, quite naturally, doesn't want to go back to his bassinet - and who can blame him? But then I have the 'aargh, I can't fidget and roll over' problem I described before. Instead, I get up and feed him in the dark in the living-room while listening to the radio. He's much happier to go back into the bassinet this way, though I'm not entirely sure why.

The radio is great - it keeps me from falling asleep on the couch and waking up horribly stiff and sore, and there are some really interesting programs on - mostly repeats of interviews and documentaries from during the day when I don't have the radio going. Yay for National Radio. An added bonus is that our radio is also a flashlight, so I can briefly switch it on to get MrBaby properly latched without needing to turn the main lights on.

Our torch-radio (flashlight) (except ours is yellow)

After 2 months, it's nice to see that we're getting to know our little guy and working out how he's different from either of the girls, and learning the kinds of things that will work for both him and us.
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Wearing my baby

We have found a better way!

MrBaby has settled into a cosy new routine. He'll happily sleep in his bassinet (in our room) at night for 3 or 4 hours, from about 10 or 11 pm until about 3am. Then he'll have a long lazy feed (he doesn't feed any other way) and about an hour and a half later will usually settle back into the bassinet for another couple of hours sleep.

That bit of his 'routine' is unchanged - the new and better bit concerns what happens for the rest of the day...

The first feed of the day is followed by an extended wakey time - he's very happy to lie with his pants off and kick for a while on the change-mat - or the babygym for variety - or being held (with pants on) by his sisters, while Merl and I buzz around getting dressed, dressing children, eating breakfast and generally getting started on the day.

I used to then put him back in the bassinet (following the exalted 'feed, wake, sleep' rhythm that worked so well for Miss2). Cue much unsettled crying, which stopped when I picked him up, and started as soon as I put him down, and continued in this pattern until he was obviously out the other side of 'tired' and was now also 'hungry'. This continued for much of the day, while I completely failed to get anything else done as I spent most of the day either on the couch feeding, or standing beside the bassinet trying to get him to sleep.

Now I might have a go at settling him in the bassinet, but if he doesn't settle fairly happily (i.e. still not happy after a couple of attempts to resettle him) I give up, give him another feed and pop him into the baby wrap.

Baby wraps are magic!

If I get the position right, he can feed whenever he wants to have a wee top-up, and he sleeps very happily tucked up on my chest. Instant quiet, instant peace, and I am able to read stories and play games with the other children without continually yo-yoing into the bedroom. And at the end of the day, he still cluster-feeds himself into a coma and I can pop him into bed. Bliss.

Now the girls have got their own babywraps for their own babies...

...and their elephants too. (Miss2 has got a little pink elephant tucked into her wrap in this photo). She then proceeded to jump around like a kangaroo with a baby in its pouch. Extremely cute.

My first foray into baby-slinging involved a 4m length of fabric which I had in my fabric stash. This was long enough to wrap over one shoulder, and around my middle, but not both shoulders. It was okay, but not very comfortable for more than an hour or so, and I felt a bit lop-sided. So I looked for improvements, and found a couple of great websites showing lots of different ways to wear your baby (links at the end of the post). I'm borrowing wraps from a couple of different friends to see what works for us, before getting my own.

This was the first 2-shoulder wrap I tried. A friend made this wrap using a 6 or 7 metre length of muslin. I can see this being a good one for summer, being a lovely open-weave cotton. It is comfortable, but not very stretchy/flexible, so I found I needed to tie it just right or it pulled quite tightly in places.

This one is the Moby wrap, borrowed from another friend. It is awesome. Its a soft, tight-knit cotton which is not very stretchy at all, but is stretchy enough to easily adjust around the baby and myself. Folks, we have a winner. Now I just need to decide whether I can be bothered making one myself or if I'll just buy one (they seem awfully expensive for what they are).

I know, I know 'making' one only involves going to the fabric shop, choosing some fabric, slicing it in half lengthwise and overlocking the edges - but that's possibly more hassle than I can be bothered with just right now. And by the time I have enough headspace or time to do something like that, the baby won't be a baby anymore!

Babywearing sites:
Wrap Your Baby - Very clear step-by-step instructions, with photos, for lots and lots of different ways to tie the wrap.
The Mamatoto Project - Includes instructions for using different types of cloth, including shorter scarves and traditional wraps from baby-wearing cultures. The videos are particularly helpful.
La Leche League NZ - Articles on all things baby, including babywearing
Make a Babysling - instructions for making your own.

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visual catchup

Some photos from the last few weeks. No, Merl and I aren't in them, because we are usually behind the camera - or are too exhausted-looking to be fit for public viewing.

Look below the jump for the pics.

Grandma (Merl's Mum) and the girls. I am very lucky to have my MIL. We get on very well and she is brilliant with the kids. She came to stay for just over 2 weeks when the little guy was born and was just generally brilliant.

Grandad (my Dad) with MrBaby and Miss2. It's great to be living so close to Dad. And I think he's much more involved with the kids than he would have been were Mum still alive. He used to back off and leave the child stuff to her, but he's been really great - he looks after Miss2 every week while I take Miss5 to her swimming lesson, and tomorrow he's going with Miss5 to the fracture clinic - hopefully to get her cast removed. Yay.

Miss2. Really getting the hang of hide and seek.

Who says the baby gym is just for the baby?

Oh, yes. Remember I mentioned Miss5's cast? Here's the x-ray...

And here's the cast. She fell off the top bunk at 4am. When Ben was still only a few weeks old. Yeah, that was fun. Thankfully she was only in a lot of pain for that first day, and now she even has a super-duper water-proof cast on that she can go swimming in! Very cool.

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more photos

More photos from the last week - this time, you can even see his little face!

sunbathing to help with some slight jaundice

Miss2 gets a chance to be a 'BIG sister'!

Our three children - aren't they beautiful?

Just to prove it hasn't been all baby all the time :)

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keeping on keeping on

Yep. Still pregnant.

For a general pregnancy/quilting obsession update, see after the cut...



The final few days of pregnancy suck. (Oh please let it only be "days"!) I feel like I've been in the early stages of labour for about 3 weeks now - I get a couple of hours of proper contractions here and there - strong enough to stop me in my tracks and get the wheat-sacks out - but just when I'm thinking it might actually be ready to roll it all dies down and goes away. Very frustrating!

I'm not sure what's worse - worrying that when I finally decide that I am in labour I'll be 10 minutes away from pushing it out and have to give birth in the carpark - or the other nightmare scenario of turning up at the hospital thinking that I've been labouring well for a while and must have made some progress to find that I'm only 2cm and have hours and hours of work still to go! My midwife plans to do a 'stretch and sweep' on Friday (the 40 week mark) so I guess I'll find out then a little more about the state of play.

As far as 'schooling' goes, we've gone ultra-unstructured the closer we get to the baby's due date, so the kids' 'work' has mostly been colouring in, role-playing with dolls and puppets, reading, chasing the chickens around the yard, helping Daddy cook tea... just generally living life.

As far as 'what do you do all day?' goes, I've discovered hand-piecing patchwork and am now subject to a whole new craft addiction I had been carrying on with piecing a quilt that my Mum had only just started (having finished the other one), but found the paper-piecing technique to be tedious, and the colour-scheme she chose to be dull and boring. So I checked some quilting books out of the library for inspiration and found one which has step-wise instructions for hand-piecing using a running stitch (instructions are great - Jinny Beyer doesn't even assume that you've threaded a needle before). This is much much much faster, so I've set Mum's 'boring quilt' aside and am making a bright scrap-quilt using random bits and pieces from my fabric stash. I plan to use the 'Squares and Triangles' pattern from this book by Lynne Edwards (also from the library), but have just started by making the random-fabric four-patch blocks so there's room to be flexible with my final pattern if I change my mind!

I never thought I'd enjoy hand-piecing. But it really is more convenient than machine piecing. I'm sure the machine would be tons faster - but I just never get around to sitting down in front of it. Hand-piecing is easy to do on the couch in the evenings, and in odd moments here and there, so it actually gets done.

Other than that, we're just hanging around waiting for the baby to be born. It all feels a bit surreal, really. I've been organised and ready for almost too long now - I'm starting to un-organised again (taking things out of the hospital bag because I need them for something else, the bassinet is somehow not made up properly anymore, the 'baby' corner of our room has had a few piles of non-baby stuff stashed there 'out of the way'...)
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I'm back!

2 year olds should not repeatedly press the power button of the computer!

It leads to the family not being able to even boot up said computer. Which means, in this household, that there is no internet, no email, and (most importantly perhaps) no DVDs.

Fortunately we could still play the Wii, so all was not lost. But it has been an odd week.


It started with the death of the computer (long live the computer!). Fortunately we have a wonderful friend who potters around with the actual hardware of such things for fun. So it has been returned to us in full working order, and luckily, with no memory loss! Yay! No catastrophic data loss! It even remembers my log-ins for things - which is more than I can usually do. It only needed a new motherboard, CPU, power thingie... (no, I don't really know what they do - Merl has tried to explain it, but I confess that my eyes glaze over a little).

Then Merl went to Wellington for more work stuff. Inconvenient. He'd only been back for a week, and was requested back at 'head office' again - at short notice (like, a phone call on Friday to say 'be here Monday morning'). Usually we have at least a couple of weeks notice. Anyhow, it was only a couple of days this time - not a full week like it normally is. And I have friends who are raising children all by themselves all the time, so I should just suck it up. But I do miss him when he's gone. Especially at the end of a long day. AND there was no computer to play DVDs for the children at the witching hour, either.

But all was well, as he returned home Tuesday evening.

Wednesday was great - I felt full of energy and pottered happily around the place. We visited my aunt in the morning and had a good natter over coffee while Miss5 hung out with my uncle outside, setting up their bird-feeder. Then we came home to a freshly cleaned house (I am the only full-time Mum I know with a cleaner - but I just can't quite seem to feel guilty about it!) and got stuck into some actual school work! (I know! shock! actual lessons!). Miss2 had found a CD in my 'teacher box' with a fire safety song on it, so I followed their interest by producing the Teachers Manual for a fire safety unit (provided by the Fire Service) and we made a big poster about fire, and discussed safe and unsafe fires, and how important it is to 'Get Out, Stay Out' if the smoke alarms go off, etc, etc. And then after lunch we made bird feeders ourselves, and I re-hung the auto-feeder for the chickens at a better height for them (I will post more about this in a chicken post later in the weekend I think). I even cooked a real dinner! Wednesday was great.

Thursday was a bit different. I woke in a bit of pain - sore lower back, a bit achy, hadn't slept well, that sort of thing. Then the ligaments in my belly were agonisingly sore for most of the morning - not easing up when I lay down or anything. So I spent the morning on the couch with a couple of wheat-sacks, while the kids engaged in 'self-directed learning' with colouring and reading and finger puppets and all sorts of things. I noticed that I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions. On and off. No real pattern. Nothing to worry about. Probably. I'm only not-quite 32 weeks pregnant, so it can't be... It'll be fine... sweetheart, can you go through to Mummy's bedside and bring me the pregnancy books from the bedside table please?

Hmmm. Symptoms of pre-term labour are - lower back pain, contractions (usually falling into a pattern and getting stronger), lower abdominal pain. Hmmmm. I'm probably fine, I say to myself. There's no pattern there.

Later in the morning I notice that I'm having a 30second contraction about every 10 minutes. But after about 5 of them they go away. So that's okay, I say to myself. They've stopped now.

I have lunch and return to the couch. I end up by having contractions on and off the rest of the afternoon - but still no pattern to them - but I'm starting to get a little more concerned - so when talking to a friend in the early evening on the phone I ask her what she thinks.

She, very sensibly, thinks I should have phoned my midwife hours ago. So I apologetically phone my wonderful midwife (who is flying out of the country on her holiday the very next morning). All her back-up people are busy. She sighs and says "you really don't want to be in labour now - they'll ship you out because NICU is full". I say "I know I don't want to be in labour now - how can I make sure that I'm not?" And she says "well, you'd better meet me at the hospital right now."

The upshot being that, I was hooked up to the monitors for long enough for her to decide that I might be in pre-term labour, and go and get authorisation to do a swab-test for it. I never knew there was a swab-test for pre-term labour, but there is. It's really expensive so they don't do it unless they think there's good reason. It's a check for some sort of fetal factor which, if present, indicates that labour is likely within the next couple of weeks. Cool, huh?

And I was 99.4% likely to NOT be in pre-term labour. Which was absolutely wonderful and my midwife and I happily went home at 11pm. (She to do the suitcase packing that I'd interrupted). But she did warn me to take it very easy over the next few weeks because the test does have a small margin of error, and I didn't want to risk anything.

So today was another day on the couch. And, thankfully, we have a computer again and the girls spent the afternoon reacquainting themselves with Asterix and the Berenstain Bears before we tottered out to the library about 4pm.

So that was my week - how was yours?
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SNOW!

Some photos of last night's snow at our place. I took some at 7.30 this morning while it was still dark (and the kids were miraculously still sleeping!).

And of course, there's the compulsory "children enjoying snow" photo...







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Why Jesus never married

I'm sure this has been a burning question for you. Certainly Miss5 was pondering it on our way home from church on Sunday.

Here is the dialogue that ensued...

Miss5: Jesus never married

parent (can't remember which of us said what, but its immaterial): that's right

Miss5: 'cos Jews never married

parent: Ah, no. Jews get married. It's just that Jesus spent all his time telling people about God.

Miss5: Yeah. Instead of getting married and getting his wife to do it.

!

So now you know.

As I recall, we were both laughing too hard to set her properly straight on this one, although I think we did make an attempt...

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Photo catchup

It has been ages since we emptied our camera's memory card, with the result that mid-way through Miss5's last day at Kindy, we received the "Memory Full" notice and had to hurriedly scan back and delete some useless ones so we could be sure to catch the all important cake and candles shots.

We consequently have a large back-log of photos that we haven't shared with the world, so do join us on a trip through the last couple of months!


This is the rabbit hutch that I'm midway through converting into a little chicken coop for our two hens to spend their nights in. Yes, it's little, but it's much more spacious than the beer-crate they are currently using, and as you can see - two little human chickadees feel quite at home there.

And here's the view from the top. The kids are having their afternoon tea, having chosen a box instead of all the other, more comfortable and (to my mind) exciting places like the tree house.

Miss2's birthday party - the cake

Yay! She blew the candles out!

Miss2 feeding her baby. She initiated this game all by herself.

Oops! Dropped some of the food!

Miss5's last day at kindy. She made the hat all by herself and had a wonderful dayHere's a close-up of the cake. This was a wonderful gift. I mentioned on Facebook that I'd be buying Miss5's cake this year, and a friend offered, out of the blue, to bake and decorate one for us! Very much appreciated!!

And these final two photos are an eloquent example of Dad-physics. These batteries are the ones I took out of the smoke-detectors, so they've been running down their charge for a year, but even so, this is not a Mum-physics lesson. Merl decided it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls about touching batteries onto your tongue.

Yes indeed.

The second photo is taken in the split-second after Miss5 had done so.

However, the batteries must have been worn out enough for the zing to not be too bad, because Miss2 spent the next 2 or 3 days wandering around touching her tongue to the batteries just to get the kick out of it.

I've since done the responsible Mummy thing and explained to Miss5 that you must only ever do it with worn-out batteries, and I've hidden them away from Miss2. Merl insists the batteries will come in handy for electronics experiments, so I'll have to put them somewhere safe and label them as used batteries. Then we can throw them out in a year or so when we find them again and they've gone all melty and yuck...

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cumulus clouds and sheep

Yesterday morning was a very slow start to the day, so we dropped Merl into work in the car, because the bus was long gone by the time we'd finished breakfast.

Driving around the harbour we could see the whole harbour basin filled with cloud, but the hills around it were in bright sunshine. It was very cool.

Miss4 began a discussion on what type of cloud it was. (She's an avid 'Magic School Bus' reader).

Miss4: "That's a stratus cloud, because it's so long and thin... there are other types of cloud, like cumulus and cumulo-nimbus clouds. Yeah, cumulo-nimbus clouds are when the wind comes along, takes the top of a cumulus cloud and the whole thing gets big and dark - that's a storm cloud. Cumulus clouds are big puffy fluffy white ones..."

Daddy suggested that Cumulus clouds look like sheep

Miss 4: "Yeah, just like sheep. But without the legs. And they're not alive."

I'm glad we got that straightened out.
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I must be doing something right

Whenever I put Miss1 down for her afternoon sleep, I give Miss4-and-almost-5 a chance to get anything she would like to play with out of the room. They share a bedroom and so there is usually a half dozen toys and/or books that get ferried from the room and dumped in a pile in the hallway, just in case she might need them in the next couple of hours.

Recently, we had the following exchange...

Me: I'm about to put [Miss1] down for a sleep, it's time to get anything you need out of this room

Miss4-and-almost-5: (with a slightly puzzled frown on her face) But there's nothing I need in here.

Me: (in utter disbelief) Really?

Miss-4-and-almost-5: (as if explaining the obvious) There are lots of things that I want, but nothing that I need. They're not the same thing, you know.
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toast and the spanish armada

Miss4 likes to make shapes with her toast at breakfast, on the odd occasion when we aren't having porridge.

This morning I was vaguely aware of the running commentary of the shapes of her toast, as she created a different object with each bite...

Look! A big boat...now it's a shoe!...a gun. bang bang! I'll shoot you (miss1)...

That's when my ears tuned in more closely, but the toast changed shape again before she got too involved with the gun...

Now it's a little boat! Gunpowder (shake shake goes the toast), and now fire!, then the boat gets launched whooosh towards the big Spanish ships. Here's Elizabeth's little ships, and over here (appropriate gesture) are the other ships. Whooosh goes the wind and blows the fire ships towards them. Oh No! the Spanish ships can't get away. Crash!

And there you go. The bare bones of the Spanish Armada's defeat at the hands of Elizabeth I's navy in 1588. Brilliant.
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pottery

This school term we've been able to join with some other home educators for a fortnightly pottery class. Here's Miss4 showing me which bowl is hers.

We spend a couple of hours every other Friday morning at the pottery club rooms. Miss4 spends the first hour inside with the clay, while I follow Miss1 around giving her scraps of clay to play with as she sits up at an unused wheel and pretends to throw pots, or rolls balls of clay, or generally starts touching things she shouldn't, climbs step ladders to the sinks, opens cupboards, touches other people's works... and occasionally runs around outside in the sun. The second hour is more or less the same except that the smaller kids from the class are kinda done with the work and they all hang out together outside, climbing the bush-covered bank behind the clubrooms, building 'campfires' and generally having a blast.

I've gotten to know one of the other Mums quite well and we generally find time to sit and have a natter and some morning tea (she brings coffee in a thermos and I bring bikkies - a mutually beneficial arrangement).

The tutor is really good with the kids, and copes very well with the large age range. There are two 4 year olds, a 6 year old (whom you can see with Miss4 in the photo), a couple of kids about 9 or 10, and about four or five in their early teens. There's one of those "what a small world" stories about me and the tutor - her husband is a cousin of my father-in-law, which we discovered more or less by accident when she called in to collect Merl's Grandma to take her to the airport. I would go into more 'she said, she said' detail but it would get long and rambly and pointless (trust me, I've already written it out and deleted it!). Anyhow, she's very good at getting the kids to make stuff with the clay, enjoy the process, and doesn't insist that they all sit down and be quiet while she explains stuff the kids don't think they need to know. (She gets them started and is great at jumping in with needed information once the kids realise they need it - and doesn't mind explaining it again individually later)

We've got one final class remaining for the year, so that's when we get to see how it has all turned out. I'm really excited to see the results. I think Miss4's coffee mugs are going to be way cooler than my 'ugly mug' that I made when I was a student. Read more...

queen cleopatra

My sister gave us a treasure trove of kids' books at the weekend, and we have been having a great time exploring them this week.

Miss4's current favourite is a book produced by the British National Museum all about Beauty Secrets of Egyptian Queens. It's an activity book with pop-out cardboard jewelery, lots of information about a whole range of Egyptian Queens, and suggested activities - like making an Egyptian style wig, how to make a long linen tunic and...

milk and rose petal bath

...how to have a bath like Cleopatra - using milk powder instead of asses' milk, for convenience sake. Thankfully, since donkeys are in short supply in this suburb.

Miss4 has been switching between being Cleopatra and Elizabeth I this week. Sometimes she's both at the same time, which makes for interesting conversations among her toys. Read more...

and then today: snow

Yes, truly, snow. And hail.

Remember what the weather was like a couple of days ago?

Well, we woke this morning to snow on the hills. The weather at springtime in a temperate, coastal climate in the pacific ocean is completely mental.

We embraced the moment and, taking morning tea with us in the car, went driving looking for some snow to play in. And we found some! It was fairly sub-par, as snow goes, but it was good for a wee snow fight. It was Miss1's first experience of snow and she wasn't that stoked. She was far more interested in stomping in the muddy puddles and after about 10 minutes was trying to open the car doors to get back in the warmth (or perhaps to get access to the biscuits/cookies we brought with us).

So after a couple more snow balls we called it a day. We climbed out of our wet snow clothes, and warmed up with some hot chocolate from the thermos (fair trade hot chocolate, of course!) before heading back home.

One more thing we wouldn't be able to do if Miss4 was at school next year! Read more...

an afternoon in the sun

Afternoon tea on the lawn with Princess Clarey (the bear in the dress).

Yesterday was a beautiful day - not so hot that you'd burn, but nice and warm while lying in the sun. This photo was taken in the late afternoon, with Miss1 having her catch-up afternoon tea after her long afternoon nap. Miss4 and I had already had ours, sitting on a rug in the shade. Very civilised.

I've decided it's a good thing the election is this weekend, because I'm done with politics for now :) I occasionally get a rush of blood to the head about things, but I'm over it now. I figure that both the major parties are self-serving politicos, and the smaller parties are more or less forced into extreme positions just to make themselves visible to the media.

I was going to put a quote here to express and validate my cynicism, but it turns out I'd mis-remembered it. Perhaps this is better - it is inspirational and optimistic, if only we can find the party to vote for that reflects what we consider to be "high ideals and heroism"

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

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Randomness and children

Miss4 helping in the garden

Miss4 has spent the last two or three days in this dress-up dress. It was actually my flower-girl dress from when I was 5, but it is now the firm favourite dress-up. I think she's being a princess most of the time, but it varies.

She now teams it up with a light blue baseball cap, with a dress-up wedding-veil secured over the top of it. Startling, but surprisingly pretty. She got lots of indulgent smiles from strangers when we went to pick up Merl's Grandma from the airport a couple of days ago. Today the dress and hat/veil were complemented by a shoulder purse (containing a small pony), a tote-bag (containing a stuffed zebra, koala, and two toy rabbits), and the blue surgical hair-net she was allowed to take home after her operation - not worn as a hair-net, but brought into service as a special cocoon/cradle for her toy panda and a couple of dinky cars.

I like hanging out with kids. They're so random.

Merl's Grandma is staying with us for just over a week. It is really wonderful to have her with us, as we haven't seen her since Christmas, and every day is precious! She's our girls' only remaining Great-Grandparent, and my heart gets a lovely warm feeling in it when I see the connection they've made with her.

Back to the theme of randomness in children...

Conversation in the car today:

Miss4: Why did M have a pirate party? Why wasn't it a mermaid party?

Me: Well, I guess he preferred pirates. But that's okay, cos you went as a mermaid anyway.

Miss4: He should have had a mermaid party.

Me: Well, it was his party. He can have any sort of party he wants to.

Miss4: What if he'd had a Sky party instead?

Me: That would be cool. Then people could come as clouds or birds or aeroplanes or stars or all sorts of things. What other things?

Miss4: Fairies, and other flying things.

Me: What would you go as?

Miss4: A mermaid. Read more...

reading in the dark

It's about three quarters of an hour since the girls went to bed, and I've just discovered that Miss4 is even more of a replica of her mother than I'd thought. She was curled up in the passageway with a book trying to read in the dim light coming through the glass front door.

Hmmmm.

So I sent her to bed with dire warnings of eye strain and short-sightedness (I've been very short-sighted since I was 8 years old), then had a quick conversation with her Dad.

The choice is either to ban night-time reading or to allow it under the covers with a torch (so as not to disturb her sister).

We figure that if she's anything like either of us (and boy is she like us both), she'll disregard the banning of the reading and just continue to read via streetlight and moonlight. So, the torch it is. We shall have to get one of those dynamo ones so we don't go through lots of batteries. Read more...

kereru, bruised ribs and puppets

All features of this last week, which has been moderately eventful, as these things go.

For a start, I spent the latter half of last week waiting to discover whether I had Shingles or Pneumonia. Turns out it was neither (thankfully). I had a bad cold and extremely sore ribs on one side - couldn't cough, laugh or even breathe deeply. Went to Dr who sent me off for a chest x-ray and started me on antibiotics in case of pneumonia, but said he suspected shingles, but wouldn't be able to tell until the rash came up. Spent next couple of days in pain and feeling unwell. People from church prayed. X-ray came back clear. I no longer feel the slightest bit unwell. But ribs are still very sore.

Yesterday I recalled being viciously (albeit accidentally) jabbed in the back by a small person's elbow about the day before my mysterious rib pain began. That sort of thing happens all the time so I'd forgotten all about it. Bingo. So I had a cold and injured my rib-cage. Still, at least I've had the x-ray now and know there's no rib cracked or anything. I'll just need to be careful and gentle for the next few days. Yay for a husband who loves to stay home with the kids! He was great - took most of last week off so I could sit/lie around doing nothing while he took care of the offspring. Good stuff.


On to the kereru (native woodpigeon). These were quite common to see in our neck of the woods when I was growing up, but then almost vanished about 10 or so years ago. Well, they're back, and this pair were spotted in the gum tree in our neighbours house. I love them. They make cool "whoo whoo whoo" sounds with their wings as they fly, they try to land on branches that are ridiculously inadequate and fall off, and they're altogether lovely.

I hope they stay and the gum tree doesn't get cut down this year (or ever). There's a couple of neighbours who hate it with a passion as it shades their sections quite thoroughly even in summer, drops gum leaves every where and threatens to 'self-lop' one of its great branches into their section. I can understand all that - gum trees aren't really great in suburbia (they also don't like other stuff growing near them and inhhibit healthy growth of other plants), but they provide great nesting sites for these beauties. And they suck up huge volumes of water each day. My section has kinda soggy bits all through winter so I'm happy for the gum tree to be taking what it needs.

On to our third, unrelated topic for today. Puppets.

I handed Miss4 a book of 100 things to make with paints and paper and suggested she have a look through for something to do today. She decided to make a 'dancing dollie'. She drew and coloured the picture of the dancer, and showed me where to cut the holes for her fingers. Then she cut out around the dancer and voila - a dancing puppet.

I unearthed a discarded wine cask box from our craft supplies stash and improvised a wee theater using the craft knife, and she was quite taken with it for about 20 minutes this morning.


It's fun introducing her to new ideas - she's seen puppets before, and played with our wee finger puppets that you can see in the photos - but we've never taken the leap to staging a puppet performance ourselves. I'll raise it as an idea tomorrow. The usual pattern is that she'll be uninterested in something when I first mention it, but after it rolls around her mind for a while (and this could be a long while) it may pop back up, seemingly out of nowhere, as a full-fledged interest.

I'd also like to get hold of a prism in the next week or so. We're reading the Magic School Bus Color Day Relay chapter book, and there's an explanation of white light being fractured by a prism, but reading about it, hearing about it and even seeing it on YouTube (I haven't looked, but I'm confident its there) doesn't compare to actually holding the thing yourself and seeing it happen in real life. Read more...

So when are we going to "start teaching"?

I got asked this the other day - when we were going to start teaching Miss4. Are we going to have a 'start date' on her fifth birthday, or start before then, or what?

I paused for a bit, wondering how to explain (nicely) that we had been 'teaching' her stuff since she was born, and wasn't sure what we'd actually be 'starting' that we hadn't already started. We'll be stopping kindy, because she can't go when she turns five. And we'll be starting Brownies, and heading along to our local weekly home-educators social catch-up more regularly (like, more than the once we've managed so far), and probably the swimming session with the same group, and maybe ice-skating lessons? But the actual "school stuff"?

So I hummed and haaaed a bit, and said, well, we'll probably be quite relaxed about it. Not do anything too differently from what we have been doing - she's already reading pretty well without us ever having sat her down and 'taught her to read' - about the reading age of a 9 year old (She likes to spend a lot of time sitting on the couch reading Asterix at the moment - I'm fairly sure she doesn't get the puns, but she asks a lot of thoughtful questions so is clearly comprehending the bulk of what she's reading. And heaven help you if you're reading out the chapter book and switch a word around, because she's reading over your shoulder...). So that's basic literacy kinda nailed. And we play a few 'maths' games - dominoes and dice games and card games, and she can do basic addition and subtraction. (We'll get onto advanced calculus when she feels the need for it). And the rest of education is all about life and the real world, meeting different people, doing stuff with others (of different ages and life experiences), getting a lot of exposure to ideas and having the time to think thoughts about the new ideas...

I guess I'm an 'unschooler'. Goodness.

And then my friend shared how well home-schooling had worked for a relative of hers, so we had quite a good wee discussion really Read more...