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2007-11-08 - 12.24am previous entry next entry
Big update, some pics, and Arthur will be THREE!
It's reeeally late (way past my bedtime!) and I have a headache, but phooey. This once I am going to write in my diary anyway! I hardly ever get chance and I just FEEL like writing, and so I think I will. Just random stuff, mind you! Expect nothing exciting ;)
I am going to my local church small group in the evenings now! I think we've been back in the swing of that for a month or two. I wanted to write about it more before, but I never get time. Neil and I alternate every week, so we both benefit from it, which is lovely. It's every Tuesday night. It's weird to go along and just be ME while my little boys are asleep in their beds and I'm not personally watching over them! But if I can put that awkward, I'm-meant-to-be-somewhere-else feeling aside and warm up to the evening, it's wonderful. I LOVE worship time with other people where I don't have to be distracted by my little ones, or ANYBODY'S little ones, and where I don't have to worry that Neil is taking on too much chasing them around outside while I get to have some worship time in church, etc. Neil is wonderful like that on Sundays at church. We used to alternate staying with the boys at creche (neither of us "believe" in leaving our kids there without one of us present the whole time, as young as they are. We're the ONLY parents who feel this way in like the whole world, apparently. And thus officially WEIRD, but I don't care. I don't trust the level of care/supervision at our church creche, and I want to be there for my babies the INSTANT they look for me or get upset about something that's happened to them. So we stay.) but now I get too exhausted being an extra pair of hands at creche so Neil stays EVERY SUNDAY while I listen to the sermon. I feel horribly guilty - it doesn't seem right. We've discussed it a lot, and Neil says we should continue that way because I'm only going to get more tired and less able to chase kiddies around, and he's there and happy to do creche. He's wonderful with the other kids too. He's the only one who'll hold a crying baby/toddler and instantly manage to soothe them, whatever the issue. He can distract kids from tantrums and get a little one who is crying for their mummy giggling and playing peekaboo. He's wonderful in general! I probably don't mention that nearly enough :)
Anyway. Arthur is officially old enough for Sunday School from next Sunday (they won't take them before they're three) and his friends are in there already, so he's the oldest in creche. Sunday School is sans parents, which will be lovely, and I don't think he needs us there at all anyway. I will sit in with him at first, as they said I'm allowed to do that and I'd like to get him settled and see what they do. It looks like fun, from what I have seen so far!
So, back to small group! I'm really excited to be attending that again after alllll this time. It's also lovely to have Neil go to small group all reluctant to be sacrificing his evening, and come back on a major high, buzzing about the GREAT prayer time and that God spoke to him about such-and-such for somebody, and how the discussion really interested him, and how he's going to meet up with Gordon for lunch one day this week, etc. I love seeing him inspired like that!
Neil has been out of work since last Tuesday, so 8 days now! It's GLORIOUS having him at home right now. I feel kind of naughty for feeling that way! But I do, right now. I went to a church prayer meeting tonight (sooooo great!!) and a lady there whose husband quit a couple of YEARS ago and they're waiting on God still, told me to enjoy this part and not feel guilty about it. She said it gets less glorious, so we should enjoy it for now! I can believe it. We have a few hundred � left in the bank, and a few hundred in a savings account (that is all, we are very rubbish with money - which we plan to change!), and then we have nothing left. Neil has no income, nor any sign of one on the horizon. We have flumple-thousand pounds worth of credit card debt. We are not in a good place financially! Christmas is coming and a new baby shortly afterwards, and Arthur's birthday is a blink of an eye away. I look at the situation and think there is NO. WAY. we can manage to ride this out! But we will. I have no idea what will happen, or how we'll manage for things we need. But I DO trust in God. I believe everything will be okay, and I don't have any anxiety over it. Yet! ;) I think it will be waaaaay harder to maintain this serenity when we have NO money left and things we need to pay for. Neil is talking about something or other to do with the mortgage, and also a loan option, neither of which sound like a good plan at ALL, but we will see. I have a book that is going to teach us everything we need to know about money management and how to get out of debt (and stay out), but for some CRAZY reason we are being really slow about getting it read, between us. Which is nuts, considering how urgently we need the teaching! Tsk.
Anyway. That is the current situation. Neil applied for a job today in London. He wants to work for a charity. He says if he could do anything, he would choose to be in a hut in somewhere like Ghana, feeding a hungry child a bowl of food. He really means that too. I get scared when he talks like that because I am a "roots" person who hates change, and travel, and being out of her comfort zone, and especially don't fancy living overseas or in a completely different culture! I am just NOT that kind of person, and I find the concept even harder now I have little ones. But I desperately don't want to stifle Neil's longings, especially if they are GOD-inspired. So I don't know what to do about that one. Neil just says he wants to DO something, make a difference. He has such a big heart, and is such a compassionate person. I love that about him! He is currently looking for roles within charities that will make him feel like he's doing something more worthwhile than office-type-work for a non-charitable organisation. But it doesn't totally scratch his "itch", you know? I don't know.
So, he applied today for a role in London, using his skills from his previous office work. It's not THE JOB, but it'll do. It might just pay enough for us to manage too, which is important! It's in God's hands now, whether he gets it or not. We don't feel remotely inclined to pray for him to get that job, as there's no sense of desperation for it, and God knows which job is best for Neil anyway.
It's so nice to have him at home!!! Right now, he is doing a lot with the boys. He is taking them out for LONG walks every day to the park, and both he and the boys LOVE that. That was something he wanted to do more when he was off work. It's great for me because I can't take them for long walks any more (or short walks some days, either) because I get breathless and shaky and exhausted (pregnantly so, that is), or else my pelvis just hurts too much. And also it's great because it makes time for me to be at home with quietness and space to be ME and get a few things done. Which has been something I've craved for a long long time!
I am sleeping in every morning. It's such bliss. I (selfishly) wish there was some magical way that Neil could stay home forever and we'd still have money, haha! It makes such a difference to have two parents at all times to deal with the difficult issues with the boys, and the discipline, daily routine, etc. I still do all the cooking and try to keep up with my FlyLady housework, etc, of course! But the lovely thing is that I can now prepare dinner without tension in my neck and shoulders, because somebody else is watching/entertaining the boys at their most difficult time of day, and I'm not having to run back and forth between chopping onions and disciplining toddlers for headbutting/climbing/screeching repeatedly, etc, etc (the list is LONG!). Dinner would sometimes be delayed by an HOUR purely because of how much time it was taking me to sort out issues, run back to food, discipline a child, run back to food, unplug the TV (long story), run back to food, lift Matthew down from scarily high piece of furniture, run back to food, etc. They tend to behave really badly (or I should probably say "difficult" rather than bad, but BAD is how it feels!) when I'm trying to cook food, talk on the phone, or go to the toilet. Both of them at once. And I've been finding it really hard, and struggling to keep my cool, and keep everything running smoothly. So, it's extra wonderful to have Neil home at this stage of things. Please God let it be some dreadful toddler stage that each of them seems to be going through, unfortunately at exactly the same time (!), that will PASS OFF very soon! I can't fathom coping with their behaviour at the moment when I am about to have a baby (and Neil is at a new job or something). Something HAS to change! Yeurgh!
Arthur will be 3 the day after tomorrow!!! I can't believe it! I think of him as a 3-year-old already. I guess most of October I've slipped up and said he's 3 a lot, but in September I was fiercely protective of his status as a TWO-year-old, not at all ready for him to reach the age of three!
We are having a quiet family day. No party. We talked to him about it being his special day and asked him things he'd like to do. He would like to cut out car pictures (he asks to do this EVERY day - he likes to have a magazine or newspaper with car pictures in it, and then I cut them out for him as he chooses them. He has like a thousand (I do not exaggerate) pictures in a tupperware tub now. I am getting a little tired of cutting out pictures of cars! But he gets so much joy out of it. He has his box of car pictures upstairs at Big Boy Quiet Time, and spends ages laying each one out on the floor.
For his birthday, I bought him a bumper edition of a glossy car magazine with about 50 million pictures of cars inside. I wrapped it up with a pair of children's scissors. He has some cheap-o toddler scissors and he has had a little practise with them, but they're not very sharp for cutting and he can't do much with them. He LOVES to practise cutting though! I think he'll be thrilled to have a proper metal-bladed pair and to learn to cut things out. It might take him a while to get the hang of it, but I know he'll be excited to get started!
His main birthday present this year is going to be dressing-up clothes. He is really getting into role-playing, just spontaneously. He pretends to be all sorts of imaginary things and people and animals, during times where he's playing by himself in his own little world. He's coming to the age where dressing-up can be a great thing to do, and can dress and undress himself to some degree quite well now. I have been on eBay for some cheap (ish) options, and now I have six dressing-up outfits for him! It's his main present because even though they were good value and second-hand, the cost adds up with several items. I hope he likes them! I think they'll get lots of use over the years anyway, with all our little ones! I bought him the following outfits: King, Cowboy, Doctor (with accessory kit!), Policeman, Fireman, and Pirate.
He's having a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate fudge icing (his request!), which has to have Smarties on it (like M&Ms, for US readers). I'm going to make it in the shape of an upright train with Party Ring biscuits for wheels, if I can manage it! I'm going to bake that tomorrow, and hopefully decorate it then too.
So we will cut out car pictures, and then he has asked to go to a specific part of the park that he really likes. It's a long walk and hilly too, but we're all going together, because that's special for him and we never really do. I hope I manage it okay for him! He's excited about it. It's going to be COLD on Friday so we'll bundle up warm! For lunch he will probably request baked beans on toast, and for dinner we're having spaghetti bolognese, because he currently has a mixture of half MY cooking (at last!) and half a jar of toddler spaghetti bolognese. I can't believe he'll be eating from a jar of BABY food, essentially, on his third birthday! Urgh! The food frustrations with that boy.... But anyway. He likes that meal so much and eats the whole lot, and it's his favourite choice, so that's what we're having. For dessert we are having neopolitan ice-cream. He has had vanilla ice-cream in the past, and then a couple of months ago I suddenly HAD to have strawberry ice-cream, but all I could find at the supermarket was the soft-scoop yucko stuff. Anyway, I bought it, since I had to have it in a pregnant way (!), and Arthur has had some of that on occasion too. He was so awed to discover PINK ice-cream that tasted like strawberries! He had no idea such a thing existed. So I have smuggled a tub of neopolitan ice-cream into the freezer without him knowing :) I can't wait to see the look on his face when he realises there's such a thing as CHOCOLATE ice-cream! In the same tub as "yellow" AND strawberry ice-cream too! I bought some wafers to eat with it as a treat as well :) I think he's going to love his birthday dinner!
I wish I could write more (there's SUCH a lot in my head), but it's so late now that I am feeling dizzy, so I need to go to bed. It's really bad of me to stay up late like this anyway, but for once I have managed to write my diary when I FEEL like it and not when I get a window (but don't particularly feel like it!), so I'm happy to have done that at least. Thank you God that I can lie-in to recover a bit tomorrow, with my sweet husband home looking after the children in the morning. It's such a blessing. I don't want to get too used to it, otherwise I'll have a hard time snapping out of it when Neil goes to work again! But it's such a lovely respite right now. I wish we could go and visit my parents in France for a while. That would be the ultimate break for me. But we never did sort out Neil and Matthew's passports, and the prospect of the travelling with the little ones is horrible to consider (!) so we won't. I'll get too pregnant before long, so we can't visit them at Christmas.
I am already preparing for Christmas, using the FlyLady Holiday Control Journal! I LOVE LOVE LOVE FlyLady! Seriously! It's completely different than the last time I tried it, a year or two ago. This time I am REALLY doing it and it is totally transforming things. I'm not sticking to it 100% wonderfully, but I'm not having guilt over it because that's not the FlyLady way! :)
I have budgetted Christmas, planned Christmas dinner and the decorations, and bought most of the Christmas presents already. I have asked for help from my parents and grandparents with buying some of the bigger items on the wishlist for the boys' presents. The price is around what they normally write us a cheque for at Christmas, so I don't feel bad doing it. I'm just being organised, and trying to cut costs wherever possible, which is SO UNLIKE ME! I feel so proud of myself! :) We are making our own Christmas cards again this year - some of you may have received last year's effort, though I was badly organised last year and didn't finish making and sending in the end - I still have about 20 in my drawer! We did dark green fleece Christmas trees on red card with shiny sticker "baubles" (Arthur stuck those on!). I had some of the supplies at home already (the fleece, mainly!) and bought the rest very cheap on eBay.
This year we are doing snowmen. I love doing crafts with Arthur! He is more able to do them each year, and I'm excited about all the future Christmas card designs we'll do! I'll do less and less of the actual crafts myself as the boys get older and able to do the whole thing themselves. I want making our own Christmas cards to be a fun family tradition that we do every year, from early November. I bought pale blue card at eBay very cheap, and cut it to size at home. I bought silver envelopes for the cards. I used my huge fabric collection to make the snowmen pieces - white sherpa for the snowman's body and head, orange windpro fleece for the nose, leftover Christmas fabric for the scarf, brown or black velour for the hat, etc. I bought silver glitter and white paint and I'll mix them together with some PVA glue to make a "snow" spread for Arthur to paint on the cards before we let them dry and build the snowmen on top. I'm excited! I love crafts like this!
I started in October so hopefully this year I'll actually get them all made and posted! I am also going to make the traditional family Christmas cake recipe for the FIRST TIME this year! I need to do that like this week, because it needs weeks to mature before I can marzipan and ice it. I feel very grown-up making my own Christmas cake, because it's something only "Mummy" makes, and to my own mind, I'm still the child in that situation. My mummy always makes the Christmas cakes, and last year she was kind enough to make one for us and bring it over, so we had Christmas cake at Christmas even though were were home without family! I love Christmas cake, mmmm! Anyway. It's a BIG job to bake one. But I got the recipe from my mum, and now I've bought the ingredients and I'm really going to make one! Yay!
We are making baked gifts for all the family this year to cut costs. We're baking a million (almost literally, urgh!) sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas trees (bought the cutter especially!), and Arthur is going to help me! We're going to ice them and decorate them with hundreds and thousands. That should be pretty, and easy enough for Arthur to help me with. And yummy! And Christmassy enough for family to enjoy the gift. I need tins to put them in, but we'll recycle some of our own, and maybe buy a couple of extra if I can find a good deal somewhere. And that's Christmas sorted! I am loving FlyLady :)
So tired and dizzy, so I really MUST go to bed. A couple of pics before I go, though:
Smiley boy with Daddy:
Monkey boy who is really testing boundaries lately!...
Sleepy little sweetie whose mother cannot help forgetting all the infurating monkey business from earlier, the instant she sees him all sleeping and quiet, hehe!
Those long walks with Arthur and Daddy are making the tiny man zonk right out in the car on the way home, and he stays unconscious even when transferred into the house - hence these photos! :) He's walking and running sooooo smoothly now. He can pivot on one foot and change direction as suddenly has he likes without wobbling now too. He can stomp and march and jump and dance. He's a real little mover! He rarely stops.
My boys:
I love them ALL so! I can't wait to meet Nathan. He gets hiccups a LOT at the moment and kicks and stretches and moves a lot too. I know he's getting ready to come out and meet us. It takes my whole hand laid on my tummy to cover his back now - he is getting big in there! I love him so much already. I have BOYS! I'm so happy and excited, and I can't wait to meet my newest little man. I'm in that lovely honeymooney stage where I can't fathom why on earth I could ever want a daughter, I love my boys so much! Of course a daughter would be wonderful, and I'd LOVE to experience that, one day. Right now, I couldn't want for anything more than three little boys and my lovely husband. I'm so blessed.
I will try to write as soon as I can after Arthur's birthday. There's so much more I wanted to write about him turning 3, and about what he is like now, what he's doing and saying, and what he likes and dislikes. There's so much to write about Matthew, too. And about the big changes we'll be making with the boys as we prepare to have 3 little ones. Big changes need making (notably sleep-related and that!).
I have recently suggested the idea of potty training to Arthur (he's still full-time in his cloth nappies with no hint of potty training yet attempted) but he got all sad and said he didn't want to grow up to be a big boy and he wanted to stay in his nappies and NOT in big boy pants! Bless his heart! So I didn't approach the subject again for a while. He is totally ready, physically, I'm sure of it. But I want to wait till he's emotionally ready too.
Last week I read some great tips from BTDT (been there, done that) mothers online, about potty training. At this stage I have NO qualms (not one!) about bribing my child with chocolate to pee and poo in the potty as quickly as he can get used to doing so! So I casually informed Arthur one day that when he DOES decide to start wearing big boy pants and no nappies, every time he wees in the potty or the toilet, he will get one Smartie. And every time he does a poo in the potty or the toilet, he will get three Smarties. AND, if he does a whole day of weeing and pooing in the potty or toilet, Mummy will take him to the shops and buy him one toy car (Matchbox-style, his current obsession - Tesco's own are brilliant at 50p each!). He did this awestruck gasp and asked to try RIGHT AWAY, hehe! Of course I had no Smarties in the house so we didn't start then.
Now I am stocked up with Smarties, and ready to potty train! :) I just want it to be as quick and issue-free as possible (doesn't every mother?!). I hope it will be, when we finally do it. At least I know he's physically ready, no doubts about that, so it has every chance of quick success. He hasn't mentioned it since, so I'm waiting for a little bit - after his birthday maybe? I don't want to start potty training him within 6-8 of Nathan's due date, because the books say not to - it's too close to a big upheaval in his little life, for such a transition. That window is rapidly closing so I hope we can fit potty training in before then, otherwise I'll have THREE children full-time in cloth nappies for the first couple of months after Nathan is born! Yikes! I'm okay with that, but ohhhhh the laundry....
Right, definitely going to bed!
Recent entries.....
Moving time... - 2009-01-04
Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
Lots of news! - 2008-11-03
Nathan at 8 months... - 2008-10-12