Wise Old Man?

This little guy is one half of my world and he is the best.  Obviously I'm immensely biased based on the fact he's my son.  He's a very responsible little dude for being 5, he loves being a big brother and loves his little sister more than I could ever have hoped for. 

There are days when he drives me round the bend and then there are times when he makes my heart melt.  Like the other night.  We were walking to the local park to watch the Round Table Annual Bonfire and Firework Display when he noticed one of the street lights wasn't working.  I joked around making a comment about someone forgetting to put 50p in the meter (showing my age).  At 5 years old this meant nothing to him!  So I explained that my Granny used to have a meter that you had to put in a 50p coin and turn it round to make the electricity work.  He then asked if my Granny was dead, (we've talked about this before), so I reminded him that she died a long, long time ago.  To which he replied,

'yeah, but she's watching over everyone, that includes you too Mummy'

It was such an innocent but incredibly mature thing for him to come out.  I did have to wipe away a few tears very quickly before he thought he'd upset me. 

We've talked a little bit about heaven, not that I'm particularly religious, but mainly as a way to explain where my mum is, as she died 19 years ago, so he knows about his 'special granny' and that she watches over all of us but it's nothing we talk about that often.  That statement just took my breathe away at a time of year where I feel the absence of family members a bit more than normal.

Love my little dude :)

Productive

I've been busy in the last week.  Really busy.  I had a couple of days off which I'd planned shortly after returning to work from mat leave (I was being super organised and putting in for my Christmas holidays what with being part-time and all I need use annual leave for public holidays and stuff and just decided to book the rest of my holidays til end of March!).

Anyway I had time off arranged for last week and decided at the last minute that I was going to decorate our bedroom.  We've talked about it for AGES, but like most things with us, we talk about it but never really get round to doing anything.  So I decided to just buy paper and do it when I had the time off booked.

But I forgot to account for the many other things going on last week (and for the time taken up actually looking after children!).  So my great plan was to start painting the bedroom ceiling maybe Tuesday night or Wednesday morning then the walls on Wednesday night and get the papering done on Thursday when No1 child was at nursery ........ well that didn't really happen!

By the time I got myself and kiddiewinks home on Tuesday and did bedtimes I was exhausted so all that was achieved was emptying the room of unnecessary 'stuff'.  Wednesday morning I was helping out at Nursery to make 70(!) cupcakes for the Halloween party.  I eventually started to paint at 9pm on Wednesday.  This resulted in us having to camp out in the livingroom

 

(we were joined by a small person and lots of toys just as we were waking up!)

Then Thursday morning we had nursery halloween party so rushing about making sure that we had all of the Dude's Spiderman costume  - superheros can't leave their masks behind! 

Cue 3 walls very hurriedly painted while he was at nurser.  What was intended to be a quick trip to the Baby Clinic early Thursday afternoon ended up taking most of the afternoon and us leaving without being seen so we returned home one grumpy, tired, hungry baby and one highly unimpressed mummy.  Painting resumed after kiddiewinks bedtimes!

Wallpapering finally happened Friday morning - we went from this

 to this in just over 2 hours (all done just by me - I'm really chuffed with myself!)

The room is nearly finished, I've put up the new curtains and shelves are back up.  I need something for the wall facing the bed but not sure what yet - picture, mirror, shelving?  Can't decide what I want yet but I'm not in a rush so I can look about till I find something which is just right.

Over the weekend the Dude also got his first swimming certificate (a Duckling award!), we feed squirrels in the park on Sunday, I got a lovely delivery from Backstitch of goodies to finish my scrappy round the world trip quilt top and I paid a visit to Tesco at 2.30am (yes am!) on Sunday morning to buy essential teething granules for Little Miss who decided her top teeth needed to come through and we were reminded just how useless teething gel actually is.  Tonight the Dude and Daddy went to the local firework display while I stayed home with Little Miss - 8 months is just a tad too young for her first firework/bonfire event.

Life @ 4 (continued)

We had an invite to the Dude's nursery today for a little sort of show and tell session.  A tour of the nursery by the Dude and a chance to look through his development book.  We had the same thing last year just after he'd started and it was really good to see him through the eyes of others.  We had never used anyone other than family for childcare so it was interesting to see how he interacted with others.

This year it was good to see how much he has developed in 12 months.  He's not one for drawing or painting, if you ask him what he wants to do, he rarely opts for arty stuff.  Although he will do something if he has a particular thing in mind.  Like this the other day - quite obviously it's a rocket, including the rocket boosters on the bottom!

But his key worker (who is only temporary, as his usual worker is on sick leave) made a comment when we were being shown the 'numbers' area that made me laugh.  She can see him as a 'numbers geek' in the future.  Then she kind of apologised and stressed that she meant geek in a positive way.  I'm more than happy for my boy to be a maths geek in the future - he certainly doesn't get his fascination with number from me or his daddy!  Geeks rule!

I also came across a list of questions I did with the Dude back in June.  It was something a friend had on facebook that she had done with her son and I loved them. 

Q:  What is the meaning of life?
A:  Mmm - Bug's Life

Q:  What do you want to be when you grow up?
A:  the Captain of the submarine

Q:  What makes you happy?
A:  Happy things! Like getting to watch the telly

Q:  When do you feel loved?
A:  What's loved?  I don't know

Q:  If you could have one wish what would it be?
A:  Being the captain of the submarine.  Me: Which submarine?  D:  the yellow one!

Q:  What is the funniest word?
A:  A clown

Q:  What is the hardest thing to do?
A:  Build a high tower

Q:  What is the easiest thing to do?
A:  Building a low tower

Q:  What is the best thing in the world?
A:  You, mummy, of course  (I did not provoke this response!)

Q:  What is the worst thing in the world?
A:  Rain

Q:  What makes you angry?
A:  I don't know

Q:  If you had all the money in the world what would you buy?
A:  Ice cream and stuff (cookies apparently)

Q:  What does love mean?
A:  I don't know

I'm planning on doing them again next month, so roughly six months after the first time to see how his answers have changed.  It was fun doing this, kind of like interviewing my own child.  It's great seeing him turning into a little person with his own thoughts and plans.  I don't want to fast forward time but it's exciting thinking about him starting primary school next year to see what he enjoys. 

Life at 4

I was having a little conversation with the Dude while he was in the bath last night about his day. 

 (slight obsession with swimming now he's got the hang of it)

He is always a bit reticent to tell us what happens at nursery, 'I can't remember', is his usual response when asked.  Even if we are still in the playground!  Anyhoo, yesterday is turned out there was a fire engine at the school and the nursery kids had been shown round about it.  The Dude even got a wee shot at firing the hose (with the aid of a fireman) so we chatted about that a little.  I then asked him if he wanted to be a fireman when he grows up -

Dude - no, mummy
Me - ok, so what do you want to do
D - 3 things - 1 land thing and 2 water things
M - Really, can you tell what they are
D - the land thing is an explorer
M - oh ok
D - the water things are a deep sea diver and the captain of a ship
M - the captain of a ship sounds good
D - oh no, not a ship, the submarine
M - what submarine
D - the yellow one of course!

I'm still trying to figure out how he knows about The Yellow Submarine but it's a good aim in life at 4!

Scrappy trip

I've had a bit of burst of sewing mojo in the last week!  Don't know what has come over me.  I know what hasn't been done (housework!) but all the blocks for my scrappy trip around the world are complete - 24 blocks all done.  Yay!!!

I should really have been catching up with housework or even playing with my daughter this morning, y'know being like a proper housewife/mummy.  But I decided to play about with the layout of the blocks instead.

There's a lot of yellow and green.  (apologies for the rubbish quality photo - bad combination of rubbish light, phone & fabric colours not coming through properly)  Not sure if I'm entirely happy with this layout, might need to fiddle about with it in a day or two before I'm happy to finish the top off.

Next on my sewing To Do list (I'm a woman of lists, I feel uneasy when I don't have a list!) is to catch up with the Mystery Quilt that Sheila started a couple of years ago.  I got about half way through then it just fell by the way side.  So that NEEDS to be finished and soon.  Actually after a wee trawl through previous blog posts, I found this post which is from 2 years ago and that was pretty much the last time I worked on the quilt.  I had better look out all the instructions and get cracking.  Might even end up as a christmas present, now there's an idea ;)

Right some parenting it called for the dude needs his lunch then it's off to his swimming lesson!

Progress at last

My sewing machine has been in use!  Wonders will never cease :)

The partially started cathedral windows have progressed.  I pondered for a couple of nights on the layout of the inside bits (my rubbish with technical terms) to make sure it looked just right.

 Version1 - Just wrong - too samey

 Version 2 - Better with the blue but still not happy with it

 Version 3 - Still liking the blue but the middle 3 are just wrong (they look almost yellow but are green!)

 Final version - much happier with this layout and combination.  Much more pleasing to the eye.

All sewn up and finished.  No idea what I'm going to do with it now.  It's FAR from perfect, at the moment all I can see are flaws but I've done it and I'm reasonably happy with the results.  Might try the technique again with a bit more thought as to the end use!

 

I've also done some more of my scrappy trip around the world blocks (go me!) so 11 blocks done out of 24 - almost half done.  Isn't it odd how taking a photo can make things look different - I just randomly laid out these blocks with no intention of creating any pattern and now that I'm looking at a picture of them there is a slight pattern.

I'm going to publish now as I started to write this post about 10am (it's now 2.50 - thankfully Firefox has restored my last webpage both times)  Since then my laptop has crashed twice since then, I've collected Euan from nursery, made lunch and taking him to his swimming lesson.  Now Little Miss has just woken from her nap, I need to do other things that don't involve fighting with a laptop!  I'll finish with a little snap of the kiddiewinks from yesterday when I was doing my monthly photo of Megan - 7 months old.  I think I blinked!

Redesign, Refocus, Relaunch

Welcome to my new bloggy home :)

A new home to record all aspects of my life - family, home life, making stuff!, work - if I do it, then I might just end up blogging about it at some point. 

It's been another period of change in the last few weeks as I've only just returned to work after being off on maternity leave after bringing Little Miss into our wee family.  So me and him (that'll be the husband Pete) are finding our new roles and getting ourselves organised.  We are in a very lucky position where due to how he works (guitar tutor - so mainly late afternoon into evening) and me being part-time, we juggle childcare between us with a little bit of assistance from grandparental units.  It's taking some time to readjust our time management skills.

It's a bit weird being back at work - somethings have changed but somethings have remained exactly as they were when I went of at the end of January.  I shouldn't really be surprised but as there was basically no-one covering my mat leave so a huge chunk of things have been on hold waiting for me to return!

Other than returning to work the end of August was busy with the Dude returning to nursery, he's a pre-schooler now - eeek!  Less than a year til he goes to the 'big' school.  I dread to think what I'll be like next August, I'm already stressing about it *facepalm*  However, he loves it and is definitely thriving because of it, this was him just before he ran off on his first day back (I have no explanation for the 'jazz' hands!)

Now that Little Miss is 6 months we have started down the road of weaning, which I know there have been various approaches to over the years, but I'm stuck to the current recommendation of waiting til babe is 6 months.  However, unlike what we did with the Dude (purees) I'm attempting to try 'baby-led weaning' - basically babe eats pretty much what we do and no purees.  Basically I'm reminding myself of the motto 'food for fun, before one' every time I give her something to try.  She's getting the hang of food and finding her mouth more often than I expect.  This is tonight's dinner, some pasta and homemade tomato sauce and a bit of rice cake - she seemed to like the sauce :)

It's also been my dad's 70th birthday.  It's weird to think of him being that age, part of me sees 70 as an old person.  But give him is due he's still working (3 days a week in a supermarket bakery - his preferred shift if 5am-2pm!), he's getting a bit more forgetful these days but hey, my memory is shocking, so I can't really comment and he does loads of funding raising for his church including making approximately 200 jars of jam and marmalade for the christmas fayre every November and runs a cafe at the church every Monday.

I've even managed to do some making and decided to try my hand at cathedral window blocks.  As ever it's not finished yet but I did the immense ironing task which is involved, and actually found it quite enjoyable, so currently it looks like this  (actually it's a bit further on than this, there's 16 sewn together) just need to pluck up the courage to do the next bit of adding in the 'window' fabrics.  Procrastination is a wonderful thing!

That's a bit of round up of August.  Blogging will happen more frequently (well that's the intention) so I hope I didn't bore you too much and you'll pop by again to see what else we get up to :)