Half term was mainly brought to us by….
20th February 2012
PR parcels. 
oh, with added Hama, fimo and junk modelling, which means no great change here 
I had every intention of a good half term as I really wanted to make the most of Fran being off school but I was probably being over optimistic in all sorts of ways. However, in the main, it was a lovely week, mostly just all together and relaxing which is always good. I was stressing too much about Ben to be really nice company and too much of that got picked up on by the girls. Still, no one is perfect. Looking back, now that he’s picking up again, I can see that I started to perceive the frail, fragile look that Freddie got in his face as he lost weight and got I’ll and it frightened me. Once Ben got more food into him, and began to reinflate, I got much less frightened and now he has begun to be like a normal baby. It’s almost like he was on demo mode until he got to his due date
We’ve needed a fair bit of help but a few blood tests confirmed he was healthy and the yellow is now receding. He’s not quite back to birth weight but he’s close so I am really hoping that he will gain weight now and things will get easier.
On Monday the girls all had music lessons. The festival is coming up, as are exams, so after a long period of the teacher being ill and missing her badly, they were thrilled to be back in her clutches They’ve been practising really hard since too; Fran wants to try to learn the viola after grade 3 (hmmmm) and Amelie just wants to beat Fran’s grade one score
One rather lovely parcel were received to review was the Journal10 which Ian kindly sent us. This is a blank ‘diary’ style book, with slim slots, ten to a page, for every day of the year. The idea is you have a brief record of important events that happen to people in the family. It’s almost like blogging in a retro style 
Fran was particularly taken with the idea, particularly because she can write in things like getting new gym moves, doing well at an exam or achievements at school. We’ve set it up in spot with a pen and anyone can write in it to make note of meaningful achievements or events. It should be a good blogging prompt for me too I’ve promised to text them in 10 years to tell them what they were doing on any given day, especially if embarrassing. Will they make note of first kisses and dates I wonder?
I think this prompted Fran to go back to blogging; I was pretty choked as well as rather awed, by what she wrote about Ben’s arrival.
We managed to take a walk out to the local park one day once it got above -5c which was lovely. I always forget how much a section hurts but three weeks on the sofa was making my muscles waste and I needed a sanity stretch out too. I had spent too long looking at Ben and wondering if he was okay. Considering it was 9c by then, we were amazed to see all the lakes still thickly frozen.
It did us all some good to get out and just be an ordinary family doing ordinary things again. The younger girls played in the bushes but Fran wouldn’t in case someone from school saw her
Less activity thanks to weather, baby and treats of the wrong sort has led to a couple of girls noticing what they call ‘flabble’ on tummies (hmmm….. Not much of it!) so snacks have been healthier. We were sent some Sweetcorn Bites to try out, so they substituted these for a biscuit at 3pm. Now, I must admit I’m lazy and left to me, I’d probably spend money, if I had it, on easy veg snacks. These are chopped corn cobs (8 pieces, I think 2 cobs) that microwave in 4 minutes inside the bag. They are around £2.50 although I like this site, which has deals and found me 2 bags for £3. Max was outraged at the idea but as I don’t do the shopping and don’t know what a corn cob costs if it doesn’t come from my allotment, I’m oblivious The girls loved the idea and the novelty and happily ate all the ones we were sent and it was a nice easy way of having a fast, hot and unusual for us, vegetable snack. There is a Facebook page if you are curious.
It prompted some good discussion on seasonal veg, microwaving, healthy snacks and what we ought to change a bit and also meant we started planning the allotment again this year. Lots of corn down one end is certainly on the agenda
By Wednesday, Max and the bigger girls had got obsessed with the Civilisation computer game, which I highly approve of as an excellent educational tool. Maddy is fairly new to it and worked very hard at all the strategies required for playing. However, after a morning at the hospital, while they all played in the fresh air at the local park, it felt like some order was in order so I said that computer time ( there was a lot of club penguin too) had to be hour about with practical and creative and exercise time.
They were very patient with me about that!
Maddy made a rather awesome hat from left over card.
Nice easy St Patricks Day craft this one; she modelled the cardboard hat, then used green tissue and PVA, paper mâché style to cover it and finished it with the card belt and buckle. Love it.
I think Amelie’s Hama design deserves a post of its own. Josie also modified a Santa board to make a leprechaun which I loved.
Fran was very pleased with her acrylic painting. She’s not a natural at art and she worked very hard on this.
I thought they deserved a reward, so I dished out some more lovely free PR gifts. We’ve been very lucky this month Cutey sent us two lovely bracelets to try out and the big girls fell totally in love with them. They are really good value for what they are I think; several lovely quality beads and charms on a nice strong chain and a good clasp, all things that get skimped on too often. The colours and designs are gorgeous and the girls love them; they have a a nice weight to them and feel lovely to twiddle. I do love a good twiddly bracelet, however, I think I have no chance of getting these ones back from the girls!
Meanwhile, Amelie and Josie got to lay hands on a set of new Build a Bear sets that arrived just at the right moment. Amelie adores these, having been bought a full size one (coincidentally called Benny) by her best friend. I’m extremely grateful we don’t have a shop here or I’d never have any peace
I actually think these little Build a Bear workshop fun packs are good value at £6, great for a little collectible or cheer up gift. They have lots of bits in them and it talks you through all the little rituals that come with buying a full sized best, including making his heart love you and then tucking it into the back of the bear. There is a code for some online bear fun (!), trading cards, clothes and clothes stickers. We like very much.
That gave them endless fun for a day or two, which took the heat off me needing to entertain them.
We spent a good bit of the weekend tickling the newly fully functional Ben. And then I decided I needed to walk, as I want to do race for life in 5 months so need my muscles back. We practised slinging again.
I took the little girls with me; it was lovely. Back to a new normal.
Disclosure: where I say sent, we received the items free for review. Opinions are my own. I generally try to find an optimistic view of products because it is in my nature as a shop owner to do so, but I would always say if I disliked an element of something and I only blog items I approve of.
Maddy is 12.
19th February 2012
I planned Bens birth, well, his virtual birth, as carefully as I could so as not to affect Maddy’s birthday but Ben had his own ideas and so we were home and back. Luckily I had done lots of early buying, but things didn’t arrive on tie or were wrong. It all felt like, as usual, Maddy got a raw deal although she was beautifully gracious about it. Luckily, right at the last moment, her main present arrived, which I blew the budget on totally as I knew she would just love it. And she did. Lego Technic is made for the ‘addys’ of the family. Maddy and daddy had 2 days of total delight.
The super car thrilled them both, with endless discussions of gears and suspensions and differentials and plans for future projects. Not even doctor who Lego, or the tkd hoodie or the other bits and bobs she got could come close.
Maddy is a huge smurf fan so Josie went to great pains to smurf-ise her cake and lay the table nicely to make it special.
Maddy, I cannot believe you are 12. You are so big now, teetering on the edge of young woman, thoughtful, creative, gentle and kind. You are so uniquely yourself in this family and if I could wish anything for you in this last year before you become a teen, it is that you’ll have the courage to believe in yourself and take credit and delight in yourself and your skills and the wonderful, essential part of this family that you are.
We love you.
How times change.
19th February 2012
We are now into the 4th year since Max left being employed by someone other than us and the fifth year since he worked full time. I feel like, even without all the added complications of the tragedy that then befell us, I’m only really properly recovered from 5 years of trying to be a full time home educating mum as well as a full time business owner now. Looking back on the four years from here, sat on the sofa with our second baby boy beside me, with our growing (growing up FAST) girls all busy around us, it suddenly seems like a very long time ago.
I took a huge risk by setting up that business and carrying on running it for as long as I did. I didn’t intend it to be so all encompassing as it was. It started off as pin money, tucked into a cupboard and generating a couple of orders a day, then turned into something that took up a little too much of my time, but was altogether manageable. The girls were small, home ed was laid back and I’m not really sure how it was that it suddenly became something that engulfed me. I’m surprised, looking back, by the compulsion I had to succeed and grow it. I must have got horribly diverted from my initial goal of being with the girls. In some ways, I resent that I lost that time, because I’m not sure I can get it back now, that desire to home educate in a dynamic and exciting way. Time, circumstance and energy all scattered and collided in a way that broke the excitement somehow. And if the girls ever read this, I’d like them to know I’m sorry that this life, this home ed life, didn’t turn out quite how I planned. I meant for it to be more exciting, more than just protecting a childhood. I meant it to be amazing.
Luckily enough, in among all the twists and turns life took after we moved to this house, we got lucky. This photo, of the living room covered in boxes while I struggled to manage a 200 orders a day Christmas, was the tipping point. Our marriage was in jeopardy through lack of time and understanding and the girls had been told ‘in a minute’ once too often. Max took a temporary cut in hours at work and although I distinctly remember that somewhere in the weeks leading up to Christmas there was a week, from one Tuesday to the next, where I barely seemed to stand up from packing parcels on the living room floor, the girls were no longer suffering too badly. It feels like they had a long time where they came second, but in reality I don’t think it was, just long enough for me to realise that no need for personal success and achievement and self worth is big enough for children to come second to a computer screen and the telephone.
But I’m sorry girls, I really am sorry that you came second. You shouldn’t have. Your faces were always more beautiful than the screen and your voices always more interesting than the ones on the telephone. I just forgot.
In the space afterwards, finally recognising it had gone on too long and too much damage was being done, I drew a plan of the unit we’d moved into in the intervening year and where it had grown into an even bigger business, working out what space I needed to keep, what brands needed to be cut out and what hours I needed someone employed for to run it without me. I’ve still got the plan now; I’ve kept it to remind myself of how wrong I went but that I did try to fix it. I showed it to Max, roughly at the same time we took other steps to fix things too and he looked at it, with Plan A to reduce, Plan B to continue and Plan C to close down completely, all drawn out in my typical, visual mind map style that makes me so different to him with his spreadsheets and databases – and he said he’d make the changes so I didn’t have to throw it all away.
Max went permanently part time and shortly afterwards a voluntary redundancy offer came up at work, which he took and which was a life saver. Had it not been for Freddie’s little life, things would be so different now. I feel like the girls have done 6 years of waiting for me to do better. But then, they are different in their own amazing and worthwhile ways for that, as resourceful and self reliant as they are thoughtful and gentle . it’s not what I planned and it could do with some improvement, but after the next few weeks, I think we can make a start on that.
Leaving work let Max work full time on the business and I enjoy being separate to that now. But the toy industry online is no place to make a fortune any more; gone are the days when it was nearly just me and no one else – now we compete with all the big names and a thousand other small businesses. So I’ve had to move on and find new ways to bring in my half of the income. The trick, I think, is making sure I learn the lessons about balance. And also to make sure that Ben gets better and more of me than the girls did for a while and that I always look at him more than at a screen. If I make sure I learn that, I think all of them will get a better mum. Sometimes it is hard to take the real steps that make change. I feel like I thought “must do better” for 5 years before I actually started to make the changes that I had to make. But just because the girls didn’t always have the most engaged mummy on the planet doesn’t mean they can’t have now. Josie doesn’t remember the business being in the house, or even me running it – for the older girls it is history that seems brief. But they all remember too much about a sad mummy wished for more and cried too much. The next stage in changing our lives is to try and make that fade away too.
Posted in Family Life, Featured Post, Merrily Empire, Uncategorized | 
Tags: home educating while working, life work balance, running a small business, taking redundancy | 
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Happy due date Benedict.
17th February 2012
In another world, I would have hit today and been thinking ‘well, any time in the next fortnight’. Instead we have a three week old. Today we’ve had slightly better feeding, immediately after mummy had a total meltdown about all sorts of things which now seem entirely remote, and more awake time. He even fixated on Godzilla for a while tonight. He feels a bit like a newborn and a bit less like a prem baby who isn’t ready to be out yet. That is, he has since about 5pm. He wakes up about then. Fran says its because he was born at 4.20pm and his day starts then.
What I really wanted to put here was a clip of film of him awake, my sanity clip for when I convince myself something is wrong. But YouTube doesn’t know it is there yet, so you’ll have to make do with a photo for now. Happy due date Ben. Glad you could make it.
Ha! Found it!
St Patrick Day craft.
16th February 2012
One or other of the children pointed out that with rainbows and green as his theme, we should have called Ben Patrick instead. I did try, but no one would have it at the time
Today I wanted to do something crafty with the girls and got as far as pulling out some inspiration, including the pinterest board I did last year (but failed to be meaningful with then too). Unfortunately life got in the way again, with an infernal itch in my scar driving me mad till I had to go to the doctor to have a stitch cut out (which hasn’t really worked). Still Maddy, Josie and Amelie had a good go and tomorrow I will definitely find a story to read to them so they know a bit more about it.
A while ago Maddy tried to do something without using fimo for any of it. However in the end she conceded that fimo is good for everything these look lovely and would make great fridge magnets I think. The letters are metal letter stamps thati got for the princely sum of £15 on eBay. We used some. Zoe’s last week, proper engineering ones. I don’t know why these were so cheap, given other sets were 10 times the cost, but I do love them and can foresee lots of crafting with them.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: easy kids fimo models, rainbow craft, st patricks day craft | 3 Comments »
These days
14th February 2012
These are not easy days. I used up all my emotional energy getting to the end of being pregnant. In my head I foresaw two outcomes: scbu followed by death and healthy baby who came home and did well. It didn’t occur to me I might find myself coping with staring endlessly at a sleepy baby who isn’t quite thriving and rarely wakes, is jaundiced and lethargic but, in most senses, well enough. I’m struggling. I’ve tried most things but Ben is not quite gaining weight, though not quite in a bad way either. His jaundice comes and goes. His feeding comes and goes. We’ve done syringes, we’ve done ebm in a bottle, we’ve tried different positions and approaches. Somedays are fine, some a little bit harder. Every time I think we’ve turned a corner, it turns out to just be a twist in a maze. Nagging at me is this awful fear that he’s sleepy because he shares some problem with Freddie we just don’t know about yet. He twitches at times, little movements that were occasionally pointed out to me in Freddie as possible fits. When it was Freddie, I didn’t agree, I said that I had seen all my girls do them. Now, in Ben, they make me frightened.
Over the weekend I was feeling very positive; he was pink and feeding well and I really thought I was doing better for him. Then on Monday the health visitor came and he’d only put on a couple of ounces from the lowest he was weighed at and was more yellow and she blew all my confidence out of the water. She lacked tact, to put it mildly, but mostly I’m just fragile and struggling to believe I’m doing well. It’s hard to know other babies, including mine, have put on a pound a week, and my little boy is failing to thrive. This hasn’t happened since Fran, who did at least have a recognisable reason for being hard to feed. With Ben, I’m fretting that whatever caused his early jaundice is actually a problem and we are going to get our hearts broken again.
I have so little reserves for worry. I’m struggling to stay on top of it. Sitting looking at a baby who sleeps for 22 hours out of 24 just feels too much like scbu for me. It’s hard not to second guess every last thing.
I’m taking pictures of awake and alert. When he is awake all my fears go away because he is so alert and bright. I just need him to do it more. But photos help at least. I hate that I’m wishing this bit away – its dangerous – but I need to be a week or two on with a hungry, demanding boy who takes up all my energy in a different way. I hate that I’m transmitting my fears to everyone else along with me. It’s exhausting and we need to not be exhausted any more.
Two weeks old & been to WedEd.
10th February 2012
So Ben is two weeks old. It seems quite amazing that all that stress and worry turned into a baby and being at home and everything being really quite normal. I look, it is quite obvious, about ten years younger. I hadn’t realised quite what the time had done to me. I don’t know when it started? Did I look sad and drawn since Freddie or since before that? Either way, it seems to have melted away.
He’s settled with his feeding, though he does have a cold, which has set us back a bit. 5 sneezes in a row is a lot for a baby. I think he might be gaining weight now, since we’ve just realised he can’t straighten his legs in the tiny baby size babygro and he’s back in the newborn size one he wore his first night in hospital. His cord came off a couple of nights ago and we get lots of awake time now, with big thoughtful looks like this.
The girls have all been thrilled to learn to change his nappy; he sprinkled Josie twice in the process, to her horror. I think they mostly like doing this to marvel at the relative size of his boy bits compared to his body though. Willies are interesting, but squishy testicles are a source of endless fascination 
I still just like gazing at him, especially when he folds up all sleepily like this.
But the crowning achievement of the week has been losing the yellow and dumping the syringes; as of yesterday he wakes up and feeds and asks and is flesh coloured.
It’s funny the things that catch me out though. It’s not the obvious things, like people in the house who almost never mention Freddie accidentally using the wrong name. It’s the curved balls that get me. Ben is growing eyelashes now, which he didn’t have at birth. They are blonde. I didn’t know if Freddie had eyelashes. I had to check a photo. And he did, long, dark ones. Ben is blonde, getting fairer by the day. And his lashes are blonde. And his mouth, much as I want it to, looks more like mine than Max and Amelie and Freddie’s. He isn’t him, nor really going to look as he would have looked. There are just shades of Freddie, little expressions and flickers. But not him.
We went out on Wednesday and went to WedEd. The girls made paper mache hearts and fimo charms stamped with letters and did gravity and forces by driving toy cars down slopes into pieces of banana and seeing what damage was caused and working out… Errr….. Something. They know, I don’t. Maddy says it is the best science ever.
They also did amazingly good animations using black card on white paper. Amelie has done two more since we came home. These are Maddys pieces.
It was lovely to be out, doing normal things for a day and be with friends. I loved showing Ben off and I loved the girls being relaxed and happy and back to ordinary life. And he and I went out for a baby wearing walk together
I love this photo. I love it for the life in his eyes and the fact we’ve nearly got this feeding thing cracked. And his beautiful gorgeous healthy looking self. But this one is my very favourite.
This was why I knew, all that time ago, that we needed to bring home one more baby. Because I just love watching this man be a daddy. And we make good parents. Not perfect, but really, really good.
Posted in Arts & Crafts, Benedict, Home Education, Science, Wed Ed Group | Tags: babywearing, close sling, easy animation style, gorgeous breastfeeding picture, home education science post, measuring energy, new baby, paper mache hearts, stop go animation with black card, valentine craft | 14 Comments »
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