Happy New Year

My children went back to school today. So I have so far done some cleaning and tidying to reclaim the house after the chaos that was this Christmas! We spent a lot of time at home this holiday; unusually for us at this time of the year because I have a rather large family, and most Christmasses going from one place to the next!

This year my husband and I managed to get a horrible dose of flu, which I passed on to my mother (she’s not overly happy about that as you can imagine!) So we spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with family and the rest of the time at home. It was not the Christmas I had planned in any way, shape or form, but it was quite nice to have an extended time just the 4 of us.

My son, who is 5 and currently LOVES lego, lives having plenty of time to build all of his Christmas presents. He got quite a few sets for Christmas, and a large “Creator” box. He has built so very much in the last few weeks, and very happily he told me today that he loved his Christmas holiday. Life with him was very different this year, as he has always wanted us to be with him and do everything alongside him. However, this year he kept taking himself off to his bedroom to build his next lego project. It was very strange for us, but lovely to see that independence growing in him.

My daughter, who has always been more interested in just getting on with things by herself, has actually asked us to sit on the floor and play with her this holiday. She has been playing games with her character toys, she uses phrases she hears on her favourite TV programmes (which she has been able to watch more than usual this holiday with my husband and I being unwell). Her playing has changed to be more imaginative play, and less just knocking things down or bashing things.

Before Christmas our time after school was much nicer and with far fewer fights, because I had something set up for the children to do when they got back, had had their snacks and had done homework -just my son, who has reading and spellings each evening. We made a lot of presents and cards for Christmas, and it made for a much more harmonious house. It also meant that the TV got turned on much later. Previously the TV would be turned on about 30 minutes after we got back as the children, tired after a day at school, would just fight with each other. In the next few days I may do a write up of some of our projects, which have been on Instagram, if any of you follow me on there.

I am keen to keep us doing some projects after school. So I have prepared some Thank You cards for the children to make to be sent to relatives thanking them for their Christmas presents. I don’t know if they will be too tired tonight as it is the first day back, but we will see if they are interested.

The Thank You cards are very simple. I have written Thank You with a white wax crayon on the card, and have put a set of water colour paints out for them to paint over the card. Hopefully this will reveal the words and surprise them a little bit. It should be a pretty and simple card for them, and should be a nice process art activity that I can let them do whatever they want on. I shall let you know how we get on.

What New Year activities are you doing with your children this January?

Update after a long absence

It has been a very long time since I last wrote on this blog. As is often the case after a long absence, there have been a lot of changes to my life in the intervening period.

The two biggest changes are:-

1) I got a job and went back to work

2) C, my youngest, started nursery 3 days per week.

The Job

I started working as a class teacher for the organisation Rhythm Time in April this year. This has been a great job for me. It is just 2 mornings a week at the moment. Whether that will change or not in the near future I don’t know. What I do know us how very much I enjoy the teaching. As a music student in the late 90s I remember thinking that the only thing I did not want to do was teach, so it is rather poetic that I find myself teaching mad loving it now.

Not only do I love the teaching and watching g the faces of the small children I teach, but the job has had all sorts of expected and unexpected benefits- I now have colleagues; I get some adult company every week. I have something in my life other than my own children and I am starting to feel like myself a bit more.

Unexpectedly, I am getting back into music so much more. I listen to more music, I play more music and think about it more. I studied music for many years and it is lovely to be using it again. The degree was not a waste!

Nursery

C has started goi g to nursery 3 days a week. She does not like it and does da quite a bit of each day saying “I not go cool” (I’m not going to school). It is a pre-school nursery attached to the school her brother goes to, and that she came to every day to collect him. I thought, therefore, that she would find it easier to get on with than her brother did as she was used to going into the building. I was wrong.

The poor girl is so unhappy when we drop her off. Hopefully she will get used to it soon and she won’t be quite so upset in the car!

I find myself with quite a bit of time free in the day. I am trying to sort out a routine for myself, and have a lot of jobs I want to get done in the time I have- I am finding motivating myself to get on with those jobs quite difficult though!

That is all for now. I hope to return to blogging more regularly again, but I am not making any promises as they always go a bit wrong….

Sleep problems rear their head again!!

I am stuck in a dark room with white noise on at the moment. It’s nearly 10pm. We are having some sleep issues with my daughter again- what a surprise!

We thought we had actually turned a corner with her recently and she was largely sleeping through the night. We turned her cot into a bed and she was excited. She had the best sleep She had ever had waking up even after her brother at gone 7am when she is usually a 5.30/6am waker. For 2 nights.

Then for the rest of the week bedtime has been awful for everyone involved. She is fine if I put her to bed- takes a long time to go to sleep but does eventually go off. But for Daddy she just will not go to sleep. She screams, she stamps her feet, she escapes the room to come and find me- she is so good at opening doors- she has tried hitting, pinching and biting Daddy. It must be so hard for him. Even though he knows she is just 2 and it will be a phase that passes (soon hopefully) it must be quite hurtful for him.

It’s no fun for me either to be honest as I have to go from one child to another and rarely get downstairs for some time not being mum until at least 9.30pm.

If we just had our daughter then I would say we should pick our battles and just do her bedtime together every night for a while. But we have a nearly 5 year old too. Since before his sister was born we have been taking it in turns to do his bedtime. And it’s a lovely chance to have some one on one time with him which is tricky to get otherwise. I’m not entirely sure how we will manage this phase to be honest. I am repeating my mantra “This too shall pass” to myself at the moment though!

A little update- becoming a pre-school music teacher

I have not posted on this blog for a long time now. There is a rather good reason for that and that is I have re-entered the world of work. I am now on career number 3 or 4-should I count being a stay at home mum as a career, I really don’t know. It was certainly an all consuming thing that I did and very much consumed my identity!

The job I have taken on is being a pre-school music teacher for children aged 0-4. For those people who knew me as a medical negligence lawyer this is a radical departure from what I used to do for a living. For those who knew me when I did my music degree and then worked in various arts venues, not so much. I do remember saying on graduation in the late 90s that the only thing I didn’t want to do was teach! Here I am….

The job was advertised in January. At the time I wasn’t sure whether to apply or not. I felt that I really would be suited to it- it was a music job, working with both children and their parents, sort of putting on an interactive show for them, and it was daytimes and term time only. What more could I want. It had come up a year earlier than I wanted to start really, as ideally I would have started after my daughter was at pre-school. I decided though that as I would have jumped at the chance of this job from September, I didn’t want to miss out on it for the sake of a few months.

Since I found out I got the job I have had several training sessions and spent lots of time learning songs, rhymes and dances, and cajoling the children into being my test subjects! Our house is now full of random puppets and instruments that I have to hide from the children or they will try to play with them!

My classes started on Friday last week and I add Monday morning classes in just over a week’s time. I like having a job again. I like having another purpose in addition to the children, I like having colleagues, I like using my music degree. I really liked seeing the babies and toddlers in my class last week and how much they liked what we were doing. I attended these classes with both of my children-am still attending them with C. We have loved going to them. Both children have got a lot out of them, and I think they helped my boy gain confidence with other children in preparation for pre-school.i hope other mums and their children enjoy these classes as much.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – Jan 22

We sadly have not done Tuff Tray Tuesday this week as my poor little girl has not been well the last couple of days. She has had a tummy bug and has just wanted me to hold her and to sleep.

Usually she is a little live wire and I sometimes say to people that I wish she would sit still for 5 minutes! But it’s been so sad to watch her struggle these last couple of days and to be so tired and lethargic.

My mum and sister cane to visit us today and C was initially so unhappy to see them she cried whenever they even looked at her. My mum held her at one point while I went to the bathroom and she just sobbed the whole time! Generally I leave her with my mum twice a week and she doesn’t look back! Later on mum held her again to give my arms a break and she was so tired she couldn’t summon the energy to get off my mum’s lap and come over to me. So she just looked at me, whined and then resigned herself to staying there for another minute and then tried again!

Poor girl has spent most of the last 2 days like this

Or this

I hope she is back to her lively self very soon!

It’s back- Tuff Tray Tuesday January 2019

Ok so it’s not the first week of January, but it was our first week back doing our Tuff Tray Tuesday activities.

I thought I would start off fairly simple and gave the children play dough to play with. Neither of them could wait for me to get set up. As soon as the Tuff Tray came out they jumped up and got straight onto the Tray. R tried to steal almost all of the play dough, leaving his sister only 1 colour.

I left out a number of tools that they could use with it, including craft sticks, clay/paint spreaders, clay moulding tools and an old potato masher. C was taken with the potato masher and its stamping capabilities- loves nothing better than getting excited with something she can stamp on the ground, on the table, on paper, on a Tuff Tray. However, she got bored quite quickly and then went off to amuse herself with other toys in the room. R took over. He also loved the masher, and he also tried standing it in between his feet and sticking the play dough on it to cover it up.

i tried to get Clara interested in the play dough by making a snail with it. Actually that captured R’s attention and he had a happy half hour making several snails!

Finally, possibly as a result of having watched too many surprise egg videos on YouTube, R decided to cover his PH Masks characters in play dough. Apparently the bad guys did it and he then had to wait for the rest of the heroes to come along and save him!

A lovely start to this year’s Tuff Tray exploits.

Happy New Year!

It is New Year’s Eve. I have had my traditional NYE morning of giving the house a bit of a tidy (not the playroom which still looks like a bomb has hit it. And despite having done a lot of clearing out before Christmas I still have no idea where half of the stuff will go to!), vacuuming, changing bedsheets and towels and putting washing away and more washing on. It always feels good to start the year this way- fresh pyjamas are out for everyone as well.

So now as my daughter is fast asleep in my arms, and my son and husband are playing next door my thoughts are turning to the year we have just had and the one ahead of us. It will be a big year as my baby girl, my youngest, should start school in September. I will hopefully start to find enough time to make a little money and turn what I do as a break from being a stay at home mum into a business. I think I found this blog’s aims and it’s voice over the last year- I found the direction I wanted it to take at the moment.

I aim to continue our Tuff Tray Tuesday activities, and if I get a little time later on today I may post a little round up of what we have done in the last 3 months.

Rolling out air drying clay on the Tuff Tray

Over Christmas one of the activities I really enjoyed with my boy was making gingerbread houses out of cardboard.

I want to do a cardboard project each month, starting with making a cardboard aquarium! We will only do one a month because i don’t want to leave a lot of cardboard lying around the house at the moment after we had a rather uninvited and unwelcome guest over Christmas!

I have some projects I want to do around the house as well. Over the next year I want to go through every room in the house and get rid of anything we don’t need or want any more. Then the year after, when C is at school, I plan on painting the whole house. It has needed a little redecoration since we moved in, and while we have done a few bits to the house- and are having quite a big project at the start of the year to replace all our back windows which have rotten wooden frames- I my husband and I just haven’t had the time to redecorate properly. I was pregnant when I moved in so we never stood a chance with the place!

I can see a big change in the relationship my children have with each other. My daughter is no longer just going up to whatever my son is doing and breaking it or messing it up. They occasionally play together, or next to each other doing different things. Each night they put the Hokey Cokey on and dance to it together while my husband and I obsessively clean the kitchen after tea (see the reference to an unwelcome visitor above…..) I love hearing them together. And while they still fight a lot, it is getting easier for them to be in the same room as each other without resorting to pushing or biting the other one.

I am quite excited about what the year will bring. I look forward to sharing it, and the activities I do with my little handed ones with you! x

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 4 December 2018

Today’s Tuff Tray Tuesday activity was painting and glittering Christmas stars.

This was something that R was given by school to decorate for a PTA competition. Of course C wanted to join in so I made her a couple of stars out of white card as well. R states that he wanted the biggest star, and even though I told him that I had used his star as a template so they would be the same size, he measured them and announced that his was bigger.

We started by painting the stars using some paint pens that we have in our cupboard. They are relatively low mess, although my 1 year old likes to touch the brush part and my 4 year old likes to squeeze them as hard as he can, so they are not mess free. We only did one side of the stars so it could dry, so have the second side of them both to do tomorrow night. (Once finished 2 stars will fit together and stand up.)

To be honest it was harder to do with the 2 children than many of the other projects we have done. I think because it was a project set by school, R wanted to do his nicely, and he was attempting a design where he used a different color for each of the points of the star and another one for the middle. Meanwhile C was just splodging some paint on her star and having a great time. Then she wanted to have a go with R’s. Then she wanted to just roll the pens around on the tuff tray, including all over his star. So it all became a little tricky.

Eventually I resorted to putting Peppa Pig on the TV to distract C from what R was up to, which worked until we got the glitter out.

Both children thoroughly enjoyed putting glitter on their stars. Some with their hands, some poured straight from the tube. They did not care. The world is much better with glitter as far as they are concerned and you cannot put too much on. The star was more glitter and glue than paint by the end! And I then spent the rest of the evening clearing it up. Well most of it. The rest I will find all over the house for weeks! And we get to do it all over again with the second side tomorrow night!

Countdown to Christmas box – a few weeks in

We have been opening our Countdown to Christmas box on a Tuesday every week for a couple of weeks now and my son is really enjoying it. My daughter is, really, too young for it, but she has been getting in on the action in her own way.

Over the October half term my son and I made a Countdown to Christmas box. He decorated the 7 little boxes that went inside, and I decorated the main box itself. We had a lovely morning together doing this while my youngest was off with her Grandmother. My boy loves creative activities so this was right up his street. The idea behind the box was to have one small box to open each week with an activity inside it that he could do. I went for little lego kits this year as he really likes lego and I didn’t quite have time to make my own for him. I also put a couple of chocolate coins in each box – one for him and one for his sister.

Now, the boxes he decorated were not as pretty as the ones I had in my head (this is often the case with the craft activities we do together), but he did do it by himself, and he had such a lot of fun with colour changing pens. I must admit that if we do this again next year I will be getting him to make new boxes. His sister may also want to make some boxes next year.

So, each week we open one of the boxes. We talk about how many weeks there are until Christmas, how many weeks there were last week when we opened the box and I ask him to tell me how many weeks there will be this time. I talk to him about there being ‘one less’ week this week and ‘one more’ week last week, a concept I know he has been practising at school. Sometimes we get my calendar app up on my phone and have a look at the date today and use that to count how many weeks we have left. Then he gets to open the right box. He knows he can only open one box and the rest have to wait for another week, and he also has to give one of the chocolate coins to his sister not eat both of them himself. Once R has opened the box and taken out the lego kit in there for this week, I put one chocolate coin back in the box and close it letting C have a go at opening the box. She will often ask me to put something in the box several times so she can open and close it and shake it about. Mostly shake it about to be honest! She does not seem to mind that R gets a new lego to build, and I will put her old toys in the box for her to ‘find’ and this keeps her quite happy!

We have done this for 3 weeks so far and have another 4 to go.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 20 November 2018

A rather lovely and easy to set up and clean up Tuff Tray Tuesday activity this week – making Christmas decorations from air drying clay.

We used DAS air drying clay, cookie cutters and a rolling pin. We also used an old chopstick for the ribbon hole.

We cut out a large circle from the clay and then used a smaller cookie cutter inside the large circle. I then poked a hole at the top of the clay for a ribbon to hang it from the tree.

The clay takes at least 24 hours to dry out, so we are waiting for the ornaments to dry out before painting them.

It was definitely a much better activity for my eldest, who is nearly 4.5 that my 18 month old. But she liked it for about 5 minutes. She did manage to have a go with the rolling pin, rolling the clay out and helping me press down on the cookie cutter to make a small ornament.

R used the whole packet of air drying clay, and wanted to do more. He asked me to get some more as soon as we finished making the decorations. I think I can quite safely say that this was a hit with him.