Christmas presents for my children

When he was a year old my son became obsessed with trains. All sorts of trains. Real ones, cartoon ones, lego ones crashing over swimming pools somewhere in America. A lot of our time was spent going to the train station and looking at trains. He was easy to buy presents for, if it was related to trains then he would love it.

Then in around September/October last year he went off trains. He had a few mini obsessions with the Octonauts, Go Jetters, Room on the Broom (he could recite the whole book and often did over dinner; he also made us twirl him around as if he was riding on the Broom himself). None of them matched the train obsessions and so buying Christmas presents for him proved tricky.

Just before my daughter was born this year R got into dinosaurs and it was an obsession that seemed to match the train one. I thought it would last for a while like the train obsession did.

However, he has started to talk less and less about dinosaurs or like dinosaurs. His dinosaur toys are languishing in their box. Now all the talk is of Mr Men. I don’t think this Mr Men phase will last all that long so we are not going to get all Mr Men presents. Once again it is quite tricky to choose what to get him for Christmas-if only he could time his obsessions better!

Anniversaries with children

Yesterday was 6 years from the day that I started going out with the man who is now my husband. The first year we celebrated by going away to the Lake District for the weekend. The second year we went for dinner somewhere nice or had something nice for dinner at home. I don’t remember because I was pregnant with our eldest and wedding anniversaries had taken over for celebration worthy occasion status. I am sure, though, that the date would have been marked in some way.

This year is the first year since then that we have marked the occasion, and in a different way to how it was done before. My husband did bring home flowers and chocolates and we both bought wine. However instead of going out for dinner or making something from scratch I went to M&S and found something that looked nice and easy to cook so we were in time for bath/bed. To be honest I spent far less time selecting dinner than I thought I would because my youngest had refused to nap earlier in the day despite my trying all my usual tricks, had been awake for over 4 hours (a long time for a 7 month old) and was just not coping. So we were in and out within 2 minutes. She fell asleep in the car about 5 minutes later and stayed asleep then for 2.5 hours! Dinner was spent with a child on my lap for a large part of it, and a lot of the dinner on my lap-ah baby led weaning. We had a glass of wine, but not too much because waking up with a hangover with a baby is no fun at all. Plus I am breastfeeding. We did raise a toast to the past 6 years and then got back to bouncing the baby and entertaining her.

Life with 2 small children in hectic, and my husband and I don’t have much time with each other. It’s nice, then, to mark occasions like this. To remember what life was like before the children came along. I would not go back to not having them, but I don’t want to entirely forget who I was then.

I was raised by someone who put me and my sister first and foremost. She did work, both she and my father set up businesses of their own, but we were very aware that her needs and interests had been put behind any of ours. She never bought herself anything, but would buy things for us whenever she could. It’s amazing that she did that for us. It’s amazing that we were so important for her. And I understand it from her point of view too. I adore my two more than they will know until they have their own children. However, I also remember that it could feel like a heavy responsibility. It was a worry – she puts us first, what is she going to do when we move out. I don’t want my children to feel that responsibility for me or my happiness. And when they do move out I want to still have a happy life with their father.

So husband mine, as I know you read this, basically you are stuck having to mark these sorts of occasions so I can tell you that you are still important to me even in the midst of the demands of small children. And you know how much I like the fuss! Here’s to the next 6 years.

Homemade Christmas decorations

I love Pinterest and spend a lot of time on there looking for ideas for things to do with the children. Well child. One child just likes to put things in her mouth at the moment!

As it is coming up to Christmas and I love Christmas I thought it would be lovely to make some Christmas Decorations with my boy. So I saw this on Pinterest, I have a lot of yarn at home as I like making things with yarn, and thought this was ideal for a Saturday afternoon.

https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/christmas-crafts-for-kids-yarn-wrapped-ornaments/.

Let’s just say right now that 3 year olds have their own ideas when it comes to what is fun!

I got some cardboard out and ambitiously cut out 3 Christmas Trees (triangles) and 2 stars.

Collected the yarn supplies together and demonstrated how to wrap the decorations to my boy. All good so far. He had a go with a few strands of yarn that I had pre-cut.

My son then got a bit bored and wanted to hug the yarn ball or tickle things (we’re starting a Mr Men phase). After much encouraging and cajoling we ended up with this:

Safe to say it may not be going by onto the Christmas Tree when we get it! Never mind, I shall try salt dough decorations with them next!

Developing routines

We have come a long way with my baby girl already in terms of her sleep and her relationship with my husband. It was only a few weeks ago really that he would take her upstairs for the night and if she woke up and I was not there she would literally scream until I walked in the room. My husband and I would take it in turns to do our eldest’s bath, story and bed routine every night and on the nights I was upstairs with him, all I could hear was our daughter sobbing downstairs. Poor Daddy!

Now not only is she fine going off to sleep with her Daddy, but often my husband works his magic and gets her off to sleep when I can’t! In fact as I write this I am sat cuddling my boy and he is getting our girl off to sleep in the front room. Amazing. And what a long way we have come!

A rare moment of calm

I am thoroughly enjoying a rare moment of calm when I am not holding my baby. She has been a bit poorly lately and so I have held her for as many naps as possible so that she sleeps for longer (unheld she will wake up within 40 minutes pretty much every time).

So now I am sat in the car waiting to go into school and pick up my son. I got a cup of coffee from the drive thru Costa near here and am listening to the radio and contemplating what we will do when we get home this afternoon to keep my eldest away from the iPad for a while. Before I had children I wondered who on earth would be so lazy that they couldn’t get out of the car to buy coffee. Then I had children and suddenly became the mum who will not leave the car if the baby has fallen asleep because he/she will wake up when you stop the car! So for now, I am having a lovely 20 minutes to myself sat in the car.

Dark nights

I went to Parents’ Evening at my son’s pre-school tonight. I had quite an early appointment and came straight home again so I was there for tea and bedtime with both children, especially the baby.

I left the school at 5.30 and as it is winter now it was dark. It felt so late to be out of the house and I thought about how strange it was that while I now think 5.30 is late, it used to be home time. It used to be the time I left the office if I was leaving on time, when I worked in the theatre sometimes I would only have been in Work for an hour or 2 by 5.30 and I would work much later, anytime between 10pm and 3am could be home time. Now I am rarely out of the house past 4. It will all change again I am sure as my children get older. For now, I shall remain a bit of a hermit after dark.

More slings

I wrote a little while ago about how my daughter did not like to be in the sling at all. My son had loved them, so I thought she would too, especially if I just used them from day one so I had hands free for playing with/looking after my eldest. However, C, my girl, had different ideas.

Since then my son has started a new school year and moved into a new classroom at the end of a thin corridor with classrooms either side. Picking him up from school involves a trip up and down that corridor when it is full of parents and children, and is fairly chaotic. I took C along the corridor to collect her brother with me in her pushchair at first and she was worried and overwhelmed by the strangers and the fact that she wasn’t next to Mummy. So it made that part of the school run really hard as I couldn’t hug both of them at the same time, she had to wait because I needed to tell my eldest how well he had done and reconnect with him after a da6 at school. So I started putting her in the sling and she tolerated it for the school pick ups. We also started swimming lessons and as I couldn’t take her pushchair into the venue we went to for swimming, I used the sling to carry her there and back.

So it has now been a couple of weeks, and while she is not nearly as happy in the sling as her brother was, if she is tired and I keep moving then she does not mind the sling at all. I have even had a trip into town with he in the sling rather than the pushchair, and it was so easy going up and down escalators and wandering around without the pushchair. It was easier to just chat away to her than it is when she is in the pushchair. Hopefully this will continue and she will get mor and more used to it as time goes on!