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2008-09-13 - 11.34pm previous entry next entry
Started school this week!! Also new hair cut, and Nathan's little photo session...
Ohhh, I know I'm later than I said I would be, updating with photos of Nathan! :S The boys all caught a cold this week (Nathan first, he chewed every. single. toy. on the floor in the church creche last Sunday and naturally was miserable and snot-ridden in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.) and so far Neil and I have managed to avoid it. I know I am exposed to it because I figured I'd get it so I continued kissing drooly, snotty little faces, and I can't fathom how many times somebody's little sneeze sprayed me right in the face. So I am hoping my immune system keeps on trucking and that I don't get it! It's not a horrible cold, but the boys have been a bit miserable with it. Nathan is starting to turn the corner today, I think, so that's good!
I have so much that I want to write!!! I almost feel kind of weird and emotional about it because I really really doooo want to write so many things and they are all equally important to me, but I can't possibly even write about half of them. There's just not time! *sigh* But oh well. I'm feeling hormonal and weepy lately, so that doesn't help (update on its way SOON at my pregnancy diary, for anyone wondering about the gap of several weeks! I'm not pregnant though, just ovulating! :) ).
BIG EXCITING NEWS, though, which I was meaning to write about before, is that we're officially home-schooling!! Yay! I'm so excited. I switched our schedule around quite a bit and started Arthur AND Matthew at "pre-school" this week!! I know Matthew's only two, but I sorted out a curriculum for the entire academic year, starting this week, and when I reviewed it I realised how it was totally suitable for Matthew as well. We started on Tuesday, because I was still finalising the curriculum stuff on Monday. So we have now finished our first week, and it has gone really well! :)
I bought the book, Creative Activities for the Early Years (Brilliant Publications) about a year ago when I was starting to research and read up on things for starting homeschooling, or doing an early version of it. I got it out recently to look for an idea for making a fish (I'd seen one on a children's TV programme that has a craft section in it, and wondered about other ideas for fish-related crafts, to see if I could theme it with Arthur for a few days or something). I found what I wanted on the first page! The book has a different theme for each week (it's aimed at mother-and-toddler groups, playgroups, or nursery-age groups that meet once a week) and the first week's theme is "The Sea". I read the rest of the ideas for that theme, and then started to have one of those lovely moments where everything clicks into place in your head in quick succession - click click click! :)
Two days before, I had been praying about ideas for homeschooling, and for guidance, because I was feeling like I didn't know what to DO next, what was right and what was wrong, etc. I also felt that what Arthur and I were currently doing was going a bit stale. He wasn't too motivated to do anything, and we had no set thing going on. The time for school on our schedule was when Matthew had his nap, and so all sorts of things could influence that time and give us a good patch of time for school, or next to NO time. And he'd want to nurse and relax as well. Yes, he's STILL breastfeeding - didn't you see my blinkie?! ;) Yes, I know he'll be FOUR in a couple of months. Yes, I DO plan to wean him. I have loved our breastfeeding relationship sooooo much, and feel so proud of the aeons that I've breastfed him for, lol! But the happy-happy aspect is finally wearing thin for me. Arthur is in no way ready to wean, which is beginning to unnerve me (which is a strange thing to admit, for me!) given that he's nearly four already! He nurses 3x a day, and Matthew does the same. I tandem nurse them two of those times (first thing in the morning, and bedtime), and I nurse Matthew at nap time (sometimes right to sleep) and then when I come downstairs from doing that, I nurse Arthur on the armchair for our snuggle time. He looks forward to it every day.
I'm amazed to hear myself say/think, "I want to wean!" I have never weaned my own baby/child before, even though I have 3 of them! ;) I never wanted to wean, ever. I wanted THEM to do the weaning. But I am so ready to stop breastfeeding Arthur. I feel a twinge of guilt and sadness for Arthur when I think like that - he'd be so sad if he knew I felt that way. But it's time. I am not sure how to do it (it HAS to be gentle - I have already talked to him about the idea and he was so so sad.), or when. I am thinking around or after his 4th birthday - what a thing to breastfeed my baby till he's four years old!!! I'm so proud! :) I still remember his first week or two when he would not take the breast and it was so heartbreaking and horrible and difficult, and I questioned my ability so many times and wondered if he'd ever breastfeed at all! Now look at us! :)
I could wean Matthew as well, since there are altogether too many people clamouring for my milk all day long (again, new feeling for me, and it seems a bit weird and not-like-me-ish), and he's already nursed to the age of 2. BUT, I really don't want to wean Matthew. I still enjoy nursing him. I don't enjoy nursing Arthur - maybe the odd occasion when I'm feeling particularly "Ohhhh, my baaybeee!" towards him, but otherwise not. And Nathan still nurses on demand day and night (he's 8 months old - EIGHT MONTHS!!!). He wakes 3-4 times to nurse at night, yup he does. And probably goes anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 hours in the day between feeds. He isn't really taking much in terms of solids, but we're not intending him to have much of that yet. His intake should be 95% breastmilk till he turns one, seriously. So we're not stressing with the solids. And those he does eat, are big ole hunks of real food that he picks up himself and gnaws at (aka Baby-Led Weaning, which went so wonderfully when we did it with Matthew!).
I know I'm getting off track here, but I'm glad to have finally written about these things all the same! I am sort of anticipating a maybe-possibly pregnancy soonish (I appear to be fertile and my cycles have normalised much sooner than after my other babies, and we're not using birth control, remember? We will see what God chooses for us! Yay!), so when that happens I want Nathan to have ALL the milk that I produce, because it will diminish anyway before he's 12 months old (probably). Still, I don't want to wean Matthew... But my personal preference would be to just be nursing one little one while pregnant with the next.
Anyway! Where was I before the breastfeeding?
Homeschooling! So I started to think how I could pad out the stuff in the book and make a great thing out of the Theme Per Week idea, but do it every day for a week rather than just once a week. I love how the book is based on themes that are popular with young children. I could vary it depending on what I want to achieve. It's very art/music/discussion/story based, which I love, and I think it's perfect for their age levels. But I know I can introduce learning more "schooly" things with it. This week Arthur learned to read (or recognise) the word "fish", because I wrote it up big in thick black lettering on a piece of paper attached to the mirror in the living room, and the letter "f" at the beginning is in red. It's easy to incorporate counting or first maths with each of them as their age level allows, with pretty much anything we're doing. I'm teaching Matthew his colours as we do the crafts and things. He knows yellow, black, blue and orange, but only orange and black consistently. He totally DOES NOT GET the other colours. His default is "blue?" :) It's different for me because Arthur was not like that. Arthur knew 11 colours consistently at 19 months old, and all the colours I can think of before he was two. He is not colour blind. My mum is a colour blindness carrier. My brother is colour blind. I have a 50% chance of being a carrier, and if I am, then any of my SONS have a 50% chance of being colour blind. Sooo, I know Matthew's not Arthur, and that he's still young for learning colours really. But I get nervous! What if he can't seem to grasp them because he is colour blind? I guess only time will tell. I soooo hope he's not! :S
So, anyway, there's lots of scope, and flexibility, and I like that! Every Monday (it was Tuesday this week though), we go to the library (gasp! We've never been before this week!!) and take out as many books as we can for little ones about the Theme of the Week, and then read them all week, and return them the next Monday when we pick out the next week's theme stuff. I was pleasantly surprised by the library trip! I was nervous in case the boys didn't behave, but they were really good, and the children's area was full of toys and even had music playing when we arrived! My sweet little boys said, "Wow!" when we walked in and they saw allll the books (they LOVE books), and they both went straight to the bookshelves, and each picked out a book, sat down somewhere comfy (not next to each other) and turned the pages quietly, looking at the pictures. When they finished their books, they went back for another, and made a pile of the ones they'd read next to them! They did this for ages. We stayed over an hour, and they had the best time. Arthur said that was the best part of his first day of school and he can't wait to go back to the library again on Monday.
We took out 10 books - stories, picture books, and early years science books, about the sea and the creatures that live in it. I can incorporate Christian teaching, so to speak, into any of the themes, because God made the sea and everything in it, and we can thank him for that, read about it in the Bible, and so on. We can also read other sea-related stuff from the Bible together, like Jonah and the whale. Every day before the craft time (which is now replacing Table Time after Matthew's nap), we read 2 of the books together, sing songs ("One Two Three Four Five, Once I caught a fish alive", "Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea", "A sailor went to sea-sea-sea", "Bobby Shaftoe", etc), and then we watch a quick YouTube video that I have scouted out beforehand. We saw some amazing videos of exhibits at aquariums this week, and also some diving videos of coral reefs and things. It's so easy to find quick videos that are relevant there, and I can browse them to find the most appropriate ones beforehand.
Anyway, I'm so excited about it! The book also happens to have a theme for each week, grouped into three school terms, starting in September! So it was a perfect answer to prayer at the perfect time (thank you Lord!). Next week's theme is The Farm. The boys are so excited about that one! Then it's "Harvest", and then "Autumn". I am excited about Autumn. And the THREE weeks in a row of Christmas themes later on, wheee! :) We will not be doing "Halloween" or "Magic", and we probably won't do "Chinese New Year". As a family, we do not plan to associate with the first two in any case, much less have lessons about it with our very little children! And Chinese New Year... we may do it. But it seems not that culturally relevant for them right now and they're only very little yet.
Here are a couple of pictures of some of their craft work this week. They did tissue paper rainbow fish on Tuesday, and shiny fish on Wednesday. We did painting with (homemade - I'm cheap, haha!) stencils of sea creatures and boats (they loved that!) on Thursday, and then jellyfish yesterday. We don't do school at the weekend now that we've started this, though Arthur is disappointed about that!
The fish - Arthur's are the bottom two, and Matthew's the top two:
The jellyfish - Matthew's is pink and Arthur painted his blue:
Matthew's attention span is waaaay shorter than Arthur's, but that's to be expected - he's only 2! He still starts off eagerly, but usually gets down after a bit to busy himself around the kitchen or run back and forth in the living room (they both do this a lot - BOUNDLESS energy!), and then comes back to do a bit more. This is good because he needs a lot more hands-on help than Arthur does, and although Arthur is fiercely independent with what he's doing, he does like my attention all the time to SEE what he's doing! So I can give him that when Matthew dips out of the "lesson" for a while.
Ahhh this is getting too long-winded!! It's also really late and I'm exhausted suddenly, so I must go to bed. I wanted to post two other things this entry, so I'll try to bash that off now!
I got my hair cut today!!! First time in.... 16 months, I think? And that was the first time in about 18 months. I just grow it till it annoys me with its length, and then get it cut to just below my shoulders, grow it out, get it cut, grow it out, etc. It's all the same length. The thing that bugs me about my hair after I have a baby, is that it falls out in HANDFULS after about 4 months postpartum. I know that's pretty much universal and completely normal with the hormones settling and that, but I hate showers once my hair is at that stage. And the LONG hairs strewn about the place, in my baby's little fists/mouth/clothing, etc. Yuck! Also I have been tying my long hair back and unless it's just pulled to the nape of my neck, it's heavy enough to give me a headache after a full day, and it feels like it's pulling on my scalp.
I also dislike the REGROWTH of hair postpartum! About 5 months PP, I get new thick growth of hair all over my head at the same time. This makes for a really yeurghy crew-cut looking thing making its way down my forehead (painfully slowly) over the months, and since I don't have a fringe and my hair is dark, it's really visible. I really don't like it! But it's only juuuust starting to be long enough to tuck behind my ears when I give birth to another baby, and thus begins another cycle of it!
So since I get RARE hair cuts, we thought it would be okay for me to treat myself to a swishy salon instead of my frugal dry-cut hairdresser down the road! I was nervous in case I went in and they descended on me and I came out with multicoloured hair standing stiffly 10 inches above my head, haha! Fashionably speaking, of course! ;)
But it was GREAT! Such bliss to be pampered! I had iced drinks, and chocolate toffees, and got to talk to the stylist about my hair - she has an 8-month-old baby too! And she said the secret to hiding the regrowth of hair is changing your parting (mine has always been a centre parting). So she gave me a side parting, and it hides it waaaay better, yay! She rolled her eyes when I said I use a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, and told me off for it! Honestly, I would LOVE to shampoo twice, towel dry, condition and rinse, blow dry in a downward direction and then apply serum, but one quick wash with a 2-in-1 shampoo is a luxury in itself some weeks - it's usually achieved in a hurry while Nathan takes his first nap of the day and the boys do all manner of things downstairs (granted, they often just play nicely, but there can also be full-potty-tipping and snack-crumbling into the sofas and TV/DVD/CD player-fiddling, headbutting, or shouting at each other enough to wake Nathan back up while I'm still rinsing carelessly squirted 2-in-1 shampoo out of my eye!). Boy would I LOVE to follow the stylist's advice every other day! If only it were that simple! ;)
Anyway, I then had a complimentary head and neck massage - ohhhhhh! And got my hair luxuriously washed in niiiice smelling stuff. And then had like 8-10 inches cut off my hair, and she blow dried it and put some serum on (my hair can be frizzy sometimes), and chatted about my little ones the whole time! *contented sigh*
Weird thing that bothered me throughout: I felt strangely emotional, and I was anxious about it. I kept feeling at each stage of the appointment, as though I could start to cry at any moment, and not be able to stop! What is up with that?! I was actually nervous about it because I felt so on-the-edge-of-tears some of the time and I was anxious about having a sob-fest right there in the swishy salon full of teenage assistants with highlighted hair, and women with heads full of foil reading magazines! NOT a comfortable thought. I don't cry in front of anyone as it is, for some reason. It makes me uncomfortable. But yeah, it was a weird feeling. I don't even know why it was there. Maybe I have been needing to feel pampered for such a long time, or maybe it was just the joy of a real luxurious treat just for me, I don't know. When the lady started the head massage, my chest automatically swelled up into a sob, and I had to shove it back down. When I sank back into the hair-washing chair and felt the lovely water on my head and heard a voice ask me, "Is that temperature alright for you? Do you want it a bit warmer?" the same thing happened. It bothered me throughout because I couldn't shake it, and I felt so unstable! It was weird. I generally feel kind of weepy at little things at the moment, so maybe it's just random hormones or something? Anyway. Weird.
Neil took some photos of my hair! My mum INSISTED on photographic evidence, haha! So I thought I would post it here too (eep!). Here's my hair this morning, before it was cut:
And after - sorry about the rubbish lighting, it was evening and the flash made things look weird, but hey ho.
And from the front - so so so VERY not comfortable with posting a photo with my face in it on the internet! But never mind. It's to show that the side parting does an okay job of hiding the new hair growing up the top there, and also the fact that the stylist sort of layered my hair near my face so that it has a softer effect or something. I have only ever had all my hair the same length, or else a fringe when I was young, so this is really different for me! It's curling up more than it was earlier after my appointment, because my hair does that, but never mind. It won't all go in a ponytail, but I can tuck the hanging bits behind an ear, and I like that :)
I'm really happy with it! I was surprised at how much happier and more confident I felt walking through town after leaving the salon. I do not really put any focus on how I look in terms of my self-esteem. I have pretty good self-esteem, or at least I thought I did. So I was surprised by how different I felt after the hair appointment. I wanted to smile for no reason, and my step felt light. I held myself more confidently as I walked, which surprised me one time when I glimpsed my reflection in a shop window. I realised I was happy for everyone to see me, whereas sometimes I am glad to have a bunch of small children with me to soak up any attention that comes our way! I feel like I look nicer than I did before, which probably isn't true, but my perception of myself feels different.
So, that was nice! :) I was not at home when it came time for Matthew's nap though, and he apparently cried for FIFTY MINUTES straight, sobbing and saying, "Niddi (need) Mummy, niddi Mummy..." over and over and over again as he cried. It about broke my heart when I got home to hear about that! He had a nap in the end though, and was up again and cheerful when I returned. Nathan was ravenous and I noticed I was engorged and leaking by the time I nursed him! He only had a 4-hour gap! Which is LONG for him though, so that's probably why. But still, he's 8 months old. I am leaking much less in general, as I usually am by this stage, but still have a random let-down sometimes and leak a little. I rarely wear breastpads now - only when we got out somewhere.
In town, I also treated myself to a sandwich for lunch and sat in a pretty garden to eat it. I went to the Christian bookshop and browsed children's Bibles, because we only have The Toddler Bible and it's temporarily missing for some reason. Arthur is ready for longer Bible stories and other things. So I browsed, but didn't find the perfect Bible, so I left. Before I went back to the car, I bought myself a 99 Flake ice-cream cone from an ice-cream van!!!!! I have not had one of those in about a decade, and it was pure, blissful, totally-about-ME indulgence!! I had that weird aaargh-I-might-cry thing then as well. I do not know what gives with that.
The other thing I wanted to post were the photos I made reference to last entry - the little session I had with Nathan on the sofa with Monkey a week or so ago. Remember this photo of Arthur at 6 months old?
Or this one of Matthew at 5 months old?
Arthur's was a one-off, but Matthew's was part of a similar "photo session" to Nathan's. You can see the rest of Matthew's pictures here if you're interested in comparing (scroll all the way to the bottom of the uncharacteristically long-winded entry, haha!)!
Here are the new photos of my sweet little Nathey, at 7.5 months old (6.5 months adjusted age, so similar to Arthur's age in his photo). Be warned, there are lots! And some of them are samey, but I don't care! :)
This next one is my favourite - it's a serious expression, but this is Nathan. I am thrilled that I somehow just happened to capture his features and expression and direct gaze very clearly in this photo. I am in love with his little cleft chin and the shape of his mouth and nose. And the way his eyes see right into me. And his sweet new hair growing in dark dark dark. And his blue blue eyes. These soft, soulful expressions are what I try to drink up visually, every time I see them. This is an image of a very intimate part of my relationship with my baby son, and so it's a precious photo to me!
Quite the opposite, hehe! He is always laughing and smiling, even though you see him so serious in the picture above:
My sweet baby boy! They all still look really different from each other, but I hear WAY more from other people about how much Nathan is so much like Matthew. Two people at church have told me they have mistaken him for Matthew in my arms and then had to shake themselves and realise that Matthew is two now, of course! I don't think he's THAT like Matthew, though he seems to resemble him more than he resembles Arthur. I have been looking at the photos of Arthur at 7 months old, and some of those are UNCANNY in how much he and Nathan look alike. They have different head/face shapes (Arthur seems quite unique so far, hehe!) but otherwise very similar eyes and mouths (and thus smiles), and expressions and mannerisms. And they have dark hair which makes them SEEM more alike. Different eyes though :)
Okay, it's so crazy late. I am going to bed! Back as soon as I can. I have stuff to write about moving house (we're not yet, but EXCITING news - Neil is going to view a house near his workplace on Monday. It sounds like exactly what we asked God for (yes we really did reel off a list, and we do have faith that he will bless us with what we asked for - I want to write more specifically about that soon, and of course about the house Neil sees on Monday!), and about changing our car AGAIN! ;) And various boy news and photos galore as always. Thanks so much for the comments on my last entry! Siobhan, I'm so excited (for some reason!) that your little brother, Nathan, was also called Ninny!! :) Thanks for all the sweet comments about Nathan's pics and his new milestones! :) He pulled up to stand in his cot today, so I have to lower the mattress to its lowest setting tomorrow (I can't reach to kiss him when it's right down low, waaaahhh!), and I'd only just put it to the middle setting a month or so ago! He is also standing and banging toy cars together at the sofas with his brothers (sooooo cute to watch!!) and "walking" on his knees when he pulls up to kneel at a toy with wheels and it sets off with him still leaning! Hehe!
MUST GO 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