We got male :)
27th January 2012
Baby boy, pink, alive and in our arms 
Marmite made an arrival today, having decided to show it was time to leave the premises. A very lovely c/s which turned out to be a very right decision.
He’s 6lb4 and snoozing in my arms
Benedict James George.
Finished It Friday: Marmite’s Nina Blanket
25th January 2012
I was reasonably pleased with the first baby blanket I knitted for Marmite. I had wanted squares and a sort of ‘organised’ feel to it and it came up much as I hoped. But the way I constructed it meant the back was quite raw and ‘back of something’ like and I think it will be better lined.
I’ve got some flannelette to do that with this weekend. It also came up fairly big and I want Marmite to be directly wrapped in something I made for him, so I decided that I’d make another one too.
I did fall quite in love with the Nina blanket I made for my new niece. I hadn’t really ‘got’ how much softer baby yarn is and I knew anything made with the Lang wouldn’t be quite the same, but thought it would be close enough. I swapped to lovely Knitpro 4.5 wooden needles and got going and I’m really pleased with the results.
The bane of stripy knitting – ends! I took advice, mostly ignored it because I’m not of the finisher mentality ( 
) but did sew them down fairly securely before crocheting over them, which worked better than Nina’s blanket did. It’s otherwise the same double seed stitch as Nina’s and in various shades of Lang Superwash Merino 120 (which is nearly impossible to find online). The rows are 120 stitches long and the white stripes are 6 rows and the coloured stripes are 8 rows, except for the two end reds which are 6 rows (knew I would run out of wool!)
It’s smaller than Freddie’s blanket was but that was more than big enough for a newborn and so this is to be a first snuggly blanket. I’m trying very hard not to let myself think of this as being the blanket I would send him to the morgue in if I needed to 
But that is on my mind. Freddie went away from me in a blanket that all the girls used, knitted by my Nana. The nurses had to find it from the hospital washing, which it had got sucked into. But they did; it was one of those little bits of loving care that made all the difference. But if we have to do that again, this time I’ll have two blankets to choose between, one to keep and one for him.
That wasn’t very cheerful was it :rol:
This one has now gone in the hospital bag, ready for the big day which is now countable in sleeps (or not sleeps might be a more accurate definition). I’m going to try and make a hat from the remnants – and maybe a little bag for his first clothes to be in now.
It’s quite amazing, looking at these two blankets, that they’ve used at most 1 1/2 ball of coloured wool each, but almost 7 of the cream. It’s remarkably easy to ignore borders and edges. Even the green round the edge (the edges are two rows of dc crochet in cream, 1 in green) used a lot more than I thought it would.
I don’t suppose anyone who reads regularly would wonder about the rainbow concept, but these posts get a few day trippers so I’ll explain. There is a phrase, oft repeated by those who have lost an infant, that the child who comes after is a ‘rainbow baby’. That after the storm, however terrible it was, what comes next has the potential for peace and beauty and joy. And so it is for most people who have a subsequent child. May it be so for us. Marmite’s colour is going to be green. The girls used up pink, purple and red and yellow and light blue and Freddie stole our hearts with his blue blanket and his oh so short little life. Green is what is left for Marmite; I can’t bear to do blue again and Max and the girls are under strict instructions not to bring blue presents. Luckily, marketing seems to be meandering back in the direction of jungle colours in a less gender specific way, which is making that easier. So Marmite gets to be rainbow, with some green around the edges
Posted in Freddie, Knitting & Sewing, Pregnancy After Loss, Uncategorized | 
Tags: baby rainbow blanket, knitpro needles, knitted rainbow baby blanket, knitting for babies, Lang Merino Wool, pregnancy after loss | 
13 Comments »
Diggy: iPhone & iPad app review
24th January 2012
A long standing Twitter friend asked us to review the Diggy app for iPhone and iPad that her partner has created. It’s a cute tip and tap app for young children and definitely designed by someone with young digger mad sons!
Diggy drives his digger through a beautifully designed landscape, collecting seeds from trees, planting new trees and getting boosts from seed carrying balloons. His digger is also seed powered, so he needs to keep an eye on his load, making sure he doesn’t bounce his precious cargo out or he’ll run out of power. On his way he passes cute characters and as the levels progress, he has to jump water and wade through mud. I confess I can’t do the water
This is a truly delightful app to look at. The design reminds me slightly of everything I like about the artwork in Tiny Wings, though it is very different at the same time. It is easy to use and a simple concept, so suitable for young children just grasping the idea of iPhone apps. It encourages fine and gross motor skills and has quite a different feel on the iPad, where it feels a little more like driving and requires slightly more control, just because of the size of the thing. Getting the hang of tapping enough to jump the water is tricky enough to be a challenge (ahem… no, no, really it is. It’s not just that I’m hopeless!)
I loved this for the how much it would captivate a small child. My lot are a bit old for it now but I (in my slightly woolly pregnant state!) got quite absorbed. Perfect for when you need to hand young and grumpily bored children something quickly while you queue at the post office.
Disclosure: I was offered this app for free but actually I paid for it because I’m too low IQ to work out how to use a redemption code on iTunes. The lovely Anj paid me for my time with some gorgeous yarn from MeadowYarn, about which I will blog more later!
Posted in Gadgets & Tech, Uncategorized | Tags: apps for little boys, apps for little girls, digger game apps, diggy ipad app, Diggy iphone app | No Comments »
Thank goodness for structure.
23rd January 2012
Well, if I’m strictly honest, thank goodness for structure AND Groovy Girls, since the younger two girls are spending a quantity of every day playing with them. Who would have thought that ‘groovy girl gym’ could be such an enduring game???? I’m not complaining though, they are so eager to get back to playing together that they both speed through music practise and all their work every morning at great and productive speed and then, so long as food is served up regularly, that’s the last I see of them. Luckily both of them are very happy with their ‘normals’ and so are putting in a good bit of work, Josie is reading more by the day and loving the drawing stuff we are doing and Amelie is reading lots so even if life needs to up its interesting level by a few notches, I don’t think either of them are unhappy with their lot.
Josie is ADORING being a 4 hour a week gymnast. She’s coming on in leaps and bounds there and loving it completely. Last week she did a forward roll on the high beam without any help, she’s cracked her round off and her beam cartwheel and all she talks about is gym. She’s even learning her first routine 
Amelie is getting ready for a competition next week; she also got a highly commended in her grade 2 ballet and came top of the class. She was very thrilled with her prize
Maddy on the other hand is being a complete dream just at the moment work-wise. She’s incredibly diligent when she’s inside her comfort zone and she’s pushing through verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, maths, comprehensions and various Galore Park books she wants to finish off. While not desperately exciting in content, the CGP KS3 science books are giving her lots of jumping off points and meaning she can talk and do stuff with Max. She’s really liking the physics we have started at our WedEd days too, which is great. She’s deeply absorbed in the Lemony Snickett books just now, which is keeping her quiet
I’ve started a new tack with maths, which is to work Maddy and Amelie together on topics. I’ve got a list of everything KS2/KS3 on it and we are ticking them off using various resources, from Maths Drills sheets to Galore Park and I’m just pushing each of them as far as they can go with the topic. It’s been a relatively painless way of doing things so far and, now that school is on our peripheral vision and I know they could all suddenly tumble in that direction, I’m happier knowing they’ve got age appropriate skills under their belt. Josie is still in that weird ‘maths is a game I play with numbers’ stage and as she’s working like a trojan at reading and maths will be easier once she’s got that skill, I’m leaving her to her games with it for now.
Fran is back at school and while the novelty has certainly worn off now, she seems to be enjoying it okay. She’s finding the geography hard, not the content but the question and answer style and the concept of revising for tests. Sport Science really suits her though and is inspiring her to have some form of career in that after she has gone as far as she can with dance. She plays in her first school netball game tomorrow (don’t ask me how, she only started playing 3 weeks ago) and I continue to get positive feedback about her. Learning to get homework done in plenty of time and use time wisely is still a challenge, but she is getting the hang of it.
This week she also got to choreograph her own new gym routine – and pick the music for herself from scratch. She absolutely LOVED doing that and the dining room was a dance studio for most of the week. And she scraped a commended in her grade 3 tap, despite it being the dreaded Miss H as the examiner and totally screwing it up. So she was passably happy.
As for me… well I’m still here. Still knitting a lot. Doing the 366 Photo project over on my other blog. Reading a bit. Gestating. Trying to remain sane.
Piece of cake :/
- You see, come have my weather!
- Jigsaws and programming and french… oh my!!!!
- Puddles in electrics shock!!!! read all about it!
Posted in Family Life, Gymnastics, Home Education, School | Tags: dancing, gymnastics, home ed maths, Home Education, physics | 2 Comments »
Maternity Purchases. Problem Solved.
23rd January 2012
If it were not for a friend called Sally, who arranged for me to have an outfit for an award ceremony, I’d have probably gone through this entire pregnancy without anything new to wear at all. As it is, one donated pair of trousers from a friend, one pair left over from last time, one swish top and one cool pair of trousers that I imagine will be holding up my saggy tummy for some months have done me nicely. Of course, the introverted state of grief and panic have largely kept me confined to home and I’ve worn baggy pyjama bottoms and t-shirts for most of my pregnancy this time. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to buy maternity clothes for myself, I did actually try quite hard at one point, but I got utterly overwhelmed by websites that wanted due dates and baby genders so they could bombard me with sales emails after the event. I had to unsubscribe from so many of those things after Freddie and it broke my heart over and over again. I also tried going to the high street for them, just to avoid the marketing, but honestly, hardly any shops have a decent choice of maternity wear in their stores any more.
I love this picture. My favourite maternity trousers, and an ordinary top I don’t wear over an ordinary saggy tummy but somehow didn’t mind stretched over a huge Freddie bump
Now obviously I’d not have made it through with so little if I worked (or even had a normal life which involved leaving the house to see people who wouldn’t turn a blind eye to me wearing the same top repeatedly!) but it has rather taken the fun out of it. Shopping, indulging, making preparations – it’s all part of the perception of preparing for a baby. I’m so old time all I can do is knit – and even then, not actual CLOTHES. I know Marmite will need a blanket to be wrapped in, no matter what happens, so I can knit those.
Someone suggested (in comments or on Twitter) that I create a wish list somewhere and then I can just fire off a few purchases from my phone after the event when all is (please, please, please) well. I thought this a rather brilliant idea; although I’m still struggling with feeling presumptuous it occurred to me I could do it on Pinterest and just gather some ‘cute baby ideas’ together. That way I don’t have to sign up anywhere and I can delete it in one swipe of a button if I need to. So that’s what I’m doing. I can click through and order from there at the right moment. One thing I definitely am going to indulge in, given we can do baby toys fairly well ourselves 
and we have a fair bit of 0-3 month baby stuff but very little newborn (so let’s hope Marmite is not too small) is treat myself to some nursing tops. I’ve never had them, or nice nursing bras, before, and this time I am going to have some! I reckon after all this angst, I’ll deserve it.
Of course, I had my wedding dress made with breastfeeding flaps and then had a baby that couldn’t be breastfed, so there is plenty of time for that plan to go awry, but we can hope.
Posted in Pregnancy After Loss | Tags: buying maternity clothes, maternity clothes, maternity clothes online, new look maternity clothes, pregnancy after loss | No Comments »
Mythical Manga Madness!
20th January 2012
The girls got a variety of art books for Christmas to join our collection. We have quite a lot of these, which are variously successful, depending on their approach. Maddy has always been out most artistic but really struggles with accepting ‘teaching’ in any form. She feels she should be able to do things rather than have to learn them. This got rather worse over the summer when her cousin, who she admires enormously for her artistic talents, told her she should just develop her own style, not try to copy other peoples. They’d been drawing Pokemon very happily but after that Maddy wouldn’t do any more. I did try to point out that in fact her cousin had learned to draw so well by using a huge heap of books they’d looked at together but Maddy just couldn’t see past what her mentor had said. *sigh* to combinations of exasperating, highly literal 11 year olds with short memories!
I still bought them a few books though; Amelie has been loving Manga style and asking lots about it and loves to draw faces with make up on, so I got her some of those and I just topped Maddy up with some mythical creature ones in the hope she would try again. I could see she wasn’t overly impressed though. She gets ideas in her head that she isn’t good enough and won’t work at things, which I find familiar but oh so frustrating.
The books were excellent though and Amelie has liked this one in particular while Maddy did have a quick go at this mythical beasts one.
Once Xmas was over and we’d done all our decluttering, I got Amelie to set up an art shelf. It still needs a bit of work actually, but it does have all our step by step books, pads and all our pens on it which works for now.
And then one day it occurred to me that really I’m letting Maddy succumb to her inhibitions about all this and it isn’t really doing her any good. She loves to draw – and she does it well – but she is so hung up on not being as brilliant as various other people that she gets completely strung out. So, as we got back to work, I said that for the next few weeks, everyone had to do a piece of art from a book first thing. I said the object was not to be perfect, just to keep trying to expand skills and to finish each piece as best it could be finished before starting the rest of the day.
This did not go down well and the first few attempts involved angry-ness and scribbling. But, having tried the very autonomous approach with Maddy in all these little niggly places, I can see it isn’t really working for her. She doesn’t expand on her own, she contracts into ever more convoluted circles of self-disapproval and criticism. So for once, I decided to push her boundaries.
And this is what I love about home ed. No long meetings with teachers and hoping they actually do something. No waiting for funding or IEPs or wondering if the staff just think you are mad. You can just spot a problem, realise it is becoming limiting and bend your ordinary life into moving forward. I don’t care really whether Maddy is a great artist. I do care that she is always happy to give things a try, at least once. I do care that she continues being eager to learn and explore and when I saw that stopping, I love that with a bit of thought we had a means, threaded with love and as much patience as I could muster, to tackle it.
Best of all, of course, they ALL worked together and after a week or so, we have some scrap books to show for it and it has become a really lovely way to start the day and a real joy to watch them growing in confidence at it. Maddy is suddenly drawing constantly again – and I’m so pleased.
Mythical creatures from Maddy.
Josie’s manga animals.
Various snippets from Amelie’s sketchbook.
This is Amelie’s but I think they ALL did this creature on one day
More from Maddy. Not bad for a girl who HATED drawing this using books a week ago
And I’m feeling smug. Plus we’ve done maths every day this week too
Posted in Drawing, Home Education, Maddy | Tags: aspergers, drawing using books, inhibitions, manga drawing | 3 Comments »
The only fail safe cure.
20th January 2012
Last Saturday I woke up with what became an increasingly bad pain under my bump. It stopped me walking properly, or getting in and out of chairs, beds or up and down stairs. It didn’t feel like anything particularly terrible, more a muscle or something but as the day went on every movement became more and more unpleasant, bodily functions deeply distressing and when it got to the point that I had actually shrieked out loud several times and could no longer disguise the pain in front of the children, Max put his foot down and said it was time to seek help. It was getting to evening and finding anyone to take care of the kids was going to get harder the longer we left it.
He was right of course; although I was fairly sure that the baby had stretched, bruised or trapped something, thanks to having put his head fairly firmly downwards, I was just beginning to have that slightly unsafe and discomforted feeling that goes with early labour. I was fairly sure it wasn’t, but I wasn’t quite sure. You know how sometimes you hear a child cry and you think “was that mine?” but when it is your you KNOW it is? Well, I felt a bit like that – I just wasn’t quite sure any more and I didn’t really feel happy to leave it.
Off we trotted to the labour ward, the same room I sat and cried in earlier in the week and put ourselves into the hands of a completely lovely midwife. I think she thought I was going to be in labour and I think the doctor I saw did too. I was still firmly in that “I’m sure it isn’t but…” state. And so I was monitored, which naturally produced plenty of wiggling and Braxton Hicks and, lying back on the bed in a semi reclined position, I finally got some relief from the pain.
Naturally, I was exactly this cheerful and gorgeous
Of course, you’d know if I’d been in labour. I got examined and it was nothing, by which time a days worth of pain was reduced to nearly none at all – I still had to talk my way out of a nights stay there though and the next day I spent entirely reclined. Not even the possibility of the baby engaging was enough to make me want to flirt further with that sort of pain
This total recovery the minute you seek help leads me to believe that a whole version of health care is missing from our array of conventional health service, alternative therapies, additional practices and all those myriad of different types of keeping healthy we have. I cannot be the only parent who finally puts a ‘is it croup, is it asthma?’ child into the car at midnight (would you believe I once got stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam after doing this – at MIDNIGHT!) only to have them utterly recover the minute you put them in front of a frazzled out of hours doctor. Amelie has been a champion at this over the years; really she just needs the application of cold air to fix most complaints. I reckon the NHS could be saved billions with some form of out of hours shufle past a doctor and return straight home service. It would be great to be able to look up such things somewhere like this health care services directory from Doctoralia at midnight when what you really need is sleep and the reassurance that you aren’t in fact ignoring meningitis.
Imagine the entry “Bring out your sick! We’ll do nothing for them except sniff at you and suggest Calpol and sleep but they will be miraculously cured by our fully qualified doctors and practitioners! Hurrah!”
I can dream Please tell me I’m not the only one with a season ticket for emergency care that never actually requires medical help at all?
Posted in Featured Post, Uncategorized | Tags: doctoralia, midnight out of hours dashes to hospital with kids, mystifying pain, pregnancy bump pain | 7 Comments »
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