EMP

So I haven’t posted for a while, which is mostly due to being too busy! You wouldn’t think so, it being the holidays, but we have embarked on re-decorating the living-room, which is done, mostly, but we haven’t moved back in properly yet. In fact we seem to be mosly living at Ikea these days. Anyway, that would be a very boring story to tell you in detail, so let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

The good news first is that Thomas is gradually behaving better and better. He now occasionally backs down from an argument, saying “awwwww, al-roight”. He has even said “sorry, mummy” on occasion, when he felt he behaved particularly badly! His singing is getting better and better, and I’ve heard him singing “My Johnny was a Shoemaker” (folky tune) pretty accurately and his brother’s name “Ollie-Bollie” to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”! His vocabulary is also broadening, so we had the following conversation: “Mum, I need that thing that you look through!” Me: “Do you mean the periscope?” Thomas: “No, not the periscope, the thing we got from the Early Learning Centre!” Me: “Oh, you mean the magnifying glass!” Thomas: “That’s right!”. He can also read the words “No” and “The” and on good days he can read the words “cat, you, and dog”. Oh, and he can spell out his own name.

Ollie is also coming along, in that he copies lots of words now. Unfortunately, he has been throwing frequent and terrible tantrums, some of which are just hilarious, and some are wearing and traumatising to witness. He gets easily frustrated when things don’t go his way. He has also become quite clingy, and cries when David or I leave the room. He is fine at toddler groups, and I don’t see him for most of our time there. The best thing he does at the moment, is try to sing “Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles. This is the cutest thing to witness, and I’ll try to capture it on video for a post. Also, he has been hitting Thomas and me less and less which is great. He has started a strange thing where he will bite me, but not in anger, if anything it’s like an affectionate gesture, when I cuddle him, or pick him up to carry him somewhere. I’ve been trying to ignore it, at most saying “don’t bite” almost in passing, without getting excited about it, but if it becomes any more painful, I’ll have to tell him not to in my stern mummy voice.

As for me, I’m feeling a bit better about everything, and have relaxed into two-toddler-chaos. I’ve even had my hair cut with two blue bits dyed in, but they aren’t that noticeable. I’ve put studs back in my ears, where I haven’t worn earrings for many years. We still haven’t sorted out my tachycardia attacks, as the GP hadn’t received the ECG from A&E when I went to see her, but she did weigh me, and I’m just shy of 9 stone, which is I think my heaviest pre-motherhood weight. I’d like to be a stone lighter than this. Just for the record, I’ve been cutting up old sheets to use as dishcloths, and some of Ollie’s baby towels to use as flannels for the boys. I mention this purely as a record in case you are wondering what on earth I’m blethering on about.

So there’s a little debate as to Ollie’s actual first word. We think it might have been “woof”. He has also said “tree” “dog” and just made quite a good attempt at “sorry”. With Ollie you can clearly make out the words he is trying to say, whereas I’m sure Thomas didn’t make attempts, and just waited til he could say something properly. Ollie has also been whole-heartedly “singing” noteably on the way back from parties we’d been to in Galicia recently. He does the “diamond” in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and surprised me by doing “4 for the Gospel-makers” hands from “Green Grow the Rushes-O”. He can now climb out of his cot, so we’ve put him in the travel cot for now.

Thomas and I were having a long conversation where I ended up pointing out that he might have children of his own one day, and they might have children too, and that he would be a Bedstefar (grandfather). He said “Oh no, I want to be a Bedstemor!” (grandmother). So, I just said “well, we’ll see” which is a bit lame, but there didn’t seem much point in ruining it for him already!

So, the tantrums continue, but we had some good news this week. We heard last week that Thomas didn’t have a place at Playgroup in September, but got a call on Monday saying that he does! So this morning the two of us went to check it out. David got to look after Ollie as his reward for getting his PhD.

I’ve chilled out a bit about the school palava, though it’s more that I put my fears on hold! The boys are now on the waiting list for a school that people say is reasonable, even though it’s not Catholic. We are going to apply to the RC one near us anyway in whatever state of Catholicism the boys are in at the time. Oh, and while my friend and I rushed to the school to get an application form, it turned out that we were a year too early! (Hope we get points for keeness!) Our boys have to apply for school next year. It was good to have moral support when going there, and her boys are almost the same ages as mine. Only, she has two older daughter too – I hold her up as my shining beacon of parenting!

Anyway, to prove Thomas is growing up, despite the tantrums here he is on his first trip to playgroup. He starts properly in September.

By the way, it was raining heavily, hence the wet-gear.

So, I haven’t posted for far to long, and I come crawling back because of confidence knock from a two-pronged attack!

Firstly, at least 3 “yummy-mummys” have chatted to me recently, I think because I was wearing my Nike trousers this week. (they are summery and I got them in a sale years ago). Anyway, I am yet to find out whether they make you feel inadaquate on purpose, or whether they just can’t help it, but I’m thinking of wearing strictly Primark until they all go away and leave me alone…

Secondly, and this is more serious, we are all starting to think about schools. It turns out that all my good friends are Catholics. Now, of course this doesn’t make any difference to us as friends, but it means that all Thomas’ friends will probably go to the good Catholic school, which is nearby, which Thomas won’t get into, because they almost only take Catholic children. This is totally gutting for me, and although there is another school, which is non-denominational, that everyone says is great, I’m sad that he will lose the friend-base he’s built-up already. So, do you think it’s ok to join a church even if you don’t “believe?” I’m keen to give the boys some sort of spiritual education, because, let’s face it, it’s not going to come from me, but are you allowed to join a church for your kids, if you don’t believe it yourself? I feel like I’m being excluded from a club.

sigh

Anyway another bad thing happened where Thomas got bitten at toddler group, enough to leave a mark until the next day. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the girl’s mother, and now I’m a bit scared to, as the moment has passed, and I wouldn’t really know how to. “Hi, how are you, your daughter bit my son…” doesn’t sound right. The little girl is so sweet as well, I’m a bit heart-broken. I also didn’t see the circumstances, so while I’m sure Thomas didn’t hurt her first, he may well have been taking toys off her, and he is twice her size, so she may have felt it was the only thing she could do… Thomas was very good about the whole thing, he didn’t cry, he just came and showed me and said “I was just trying to cook, when the girl bit me!”

Anyway, all this misery needs some cheering, so here are some happy pics, firstly, we got a bike for Thomas, so that he can use it while the weather’s nice, rather than waiting for his birthday.
He took it very seriously!


And finally…

They have been mostly getting on well together, though Ollie has a new trick where he grabs whatever Thomas was playing with, and runs off with it giggling! He still hits Thomas a lot, and me too, which I have been trying all sorts of techniques to try and stop. Anyway, here they are enjoying each other’s company:

So, I’ve just had to deal with a Thomas tantrum, where he wouldn’t part with a small, boring toy at tidy-up time at toddler group. He just totally flipped out and became a small ungreen incredible hulk. I had to leave toddler group early, which was a little embarrasing. You can see when they have this sort of loss of control, that if this happened in a grown-up, I would have been dead. Anyway, after we had got a little way away, we tried to talk about it a bit, but no luck. So I said that if he didn’t calm down and stop screaming/shouting/kicking etc he would get a smack. He didn’t so I did. Just a gentle one on the thigh, but he actually focussed into “upset” crying which meant we could get a conversation going. About half an hour later, after we had made it home and I was making some lunch, Thomas suddenly said “sorry, mummy.” “I’m sorry I didn’t want to put the toy away”. I was a bit nonplussed, as I wasn’t expecting him to apologise. Anway I repeated for the 100th time that the reason we had to come home early (and miss the singing) was that he had a tantrum, and that if he ever did it again, we would just come home.

So, to recover from all this trauma, and to remind myself that he’s also sweet and nice too, I decided to blog some video of him. Ollie is fine by the way – he does, for the most part, do what I ask him to. He hasn’t said any words yet, other than “Hi” and occasionally “bye”.

And here is “This Side of the Blue” by Joanna Newsom and “In Dublin’s Fair City”. He puts on a funny accent when he sings pop songs, but I guess that’s his way of trying to emulate pop stars, who knows?

So finally putting some photos up today, after a bit of a lapse in posting.

We’ve really been out and about a lot these days – everyday, and sometimes even twice a day. We actually need to curb our habits a bit, as we have been eating-out a lot, which is a very expensive way of bringing up children! We can’t go into town without Thomas saying “can we go to a cafe?”

Otherwise we have been going to various toddler groups and Fassnidge Park, which is even better now that the cafe has opened. Here are some pics from the water-play area:

We have also invested in a sand-and-water table, which, as we got the last in the shop, is extremely pink. Still, we decided this can’t possibly do any harm to our strapping boys, so here they are:

In other news, Thomas has begun peeing standing up, which he’s quite excited about, though we have to use a step as, he can’t quite reach otherwise.

I managed to lose quite a lot of weight over the last couple of months, without trying too hard, though I’ve been making an effort to eat a bit healthily, and now that I have more energy, I try and do the odd bit of exercise here and there. I think I weigh less than I did when I went to Wood Norton back in 2003, which isn’t difficult, but I do still have my big pouch on the front which will only go away with crunches or surgery!

Sorry I haven’t written for so long – partly due to the nice weather we have started having, sporadically.

This is just a quick post, as Thomas blew me away this morning. I told him we were going to a shop we hadn’t been to before. When we got there he said oh it’s “Wicks, mummy, look!” I said “how did you know that was Wicks?” “I remember everything!” he replied.

Actually we weren’t going to Wicks, we were going to Halfords next door. But we have only been to Wicks once, and that was before we did the garden over, as I remember going there to buy a hammer. (I’ve been trying to figure out when that was, as I’m sure I posted about it, but I can’t just now.

Anyway, I have some great photos, and video to show you, so I’ll try to get them up soon.

So on Tuesday Ollie couldn’t walk, and on Wednesday he could. It was that clean cut. He can now walk pretty well, across the playpark by himself, though he does occasionally drop on all fours if he thinks he can get there quicker!

I had to buy him some shoes, even though he’s been wearing Thomas’ first shoes, but Thomas had boots, which were warm for the winter, and Ollie needs more summery footwear. Also, his feet are much fatter than Thomas’!

Also, Ollie has signed a few more things, including “dog” and “raisins”. The latter he learnt in 1 lesson, as we were eating chocolate raisins at the time!

We finally got a new car seat for Thomas, so Ollie is now forward-facing in Thomas’ old one.

We also threw out a whole pile more junk. It goes against my upbringing where everything was used to at least its full value and lifetime, if not many times over, but really, breast-feeding cushions take up a lot of room, and it’s a hell of a thing to hold onto in case it comes in handy again… ditto bouncy chairs, and cot mobiles. We have also thrown away all our VHS tapes, without looking at them. It was the only way. I still haven’t managed to do this with my most treasured cassette tapes, though they have been whittled down to 1 small crate.

I’m actually starting to feel a sense of settling down in Uxbridge, even though I still don’t like the place itself much! But, I have friends here, and even people in shops who recognise me, and people I bump into dog- or toddler-walking.

I’m also considering the possibility that I have glandular fever, but I haven’t got time to go to the doctors at the moment, so I’ll wait til the next flare-up which seem to average once every fortnight. The boys have been ill again – Thomas was particularly bad on Friday, where he was setting fire to the very cushions he sat on as he was so hot, and his word count dropped to about 5 per hour, which seemed really strange. More worryingly, he can’t hear anything. He says “what did you say?” after almost everything you say, and sometimes he says it when you haven’t said anything, which means he is really guessing. I even test him by saying things like “would you like some chocolate?” but he doesn’t catch it, so I’m taking him to the doctor on wednesday.

So, I’m finally off painkillers, and just left feeling very tired. However, we’ve been getting back to near normality with toddler groups and shopping trips, though the last to fall into place is the housework, obviously.

This afternoon, I managed to drag myself off the sofa to the green with the boys to kick a bit of football, but mainly to give Ollie some space to encourage his new skill: staggering:

On the way home, I was holding Ollie’s hand as he’s getting quite confident at walking with a handhold, when… KERSPLAT! Not Ollie, but Thomas, who had been bobbling alongside tripped and landed flat on his face! It was a mess, not least as he’d picked a bit of the path where all the birds poo. He did cry, but I told him to calm down, and he stopped pretty quickly. I put Ollie into the buggy and strapped him in as quickly as I could, and grabbed the nappy wipes and antiseptic wipes that I’ve started carrying around as Thomas throws himself around alot at the moment! He managed to wipe his mouth with his sleeve before I got to him, but at least I’d cleaned the muck off his hands before he tried to put that in there too. I don’t think his tooth went through his lip, but there is certainly a big gash there, and he looks pretty awful too: (notice the bloody sleeve!)

So, first of all, the boys weirded me out a bit the other day… I was in the kitchen doing domestic stuff, when i realised it had all gone quiet in the living-room, which is never a good sign with children around! I went to check on them, and found them sitting in absolute silence each “reading” a book, but actually sitting right next to each other, on the same seat in the sofa! It looked so strange, I took a photo:
You can tell it isn’t a setup shot, as kids never normally sit still like that! I also like that you can again see how much lighter Ollie’s eye’s are than Thomas’.

So next David turned 35! That is starting to sound old. I’m still not on top form, so he got a bought cake, rather than home-made, but at least there were candles…

And finally, while my throat is still sore and swollen, I’m starting to feel a bit better. Conversely, the boys seem to be feeling poorly, and have both had gunky eyes. The GP has given us some eyedrops, but I think they are getting better already. Here they are with their swollen orbits: