The Brick House

B and I finished reading Book One of Deltora Quest last night, but I passed on starting Book Two tonight. We had some mama-daughter bonding time nit-picking instead (fortunately it turns out that she does not, in fact, have another infestation!). Yesterday’s post produced the book I bought her on eBay, Geronimo Stilton and the Curse of the Cheese Pyramid, which she has started to read to herself. This morning she also started trying to play a new game I found, Timez Attack, although she gave up in frustration after a while because it kept crashing. A Daddy fixit job, I think!

She and K have been playing a lot together recently and they seem to have come up with an ongoing elaborate game which they call MummyBethy (or MummyBeffy in the case of K). I have no further details on what it’s actually about, but it keeps them occupied for ages some days… It’s lovely to see them playing together so imaginatively, I guess it’s a side effect of how very verbal and expressive K is these days.

What else have we been doing? The pool has been getting a workout most days, especially since it’s been bloody hot recently. B is very keen to have a garage sale, so she has been sorting out the toys in the green shed. One of the things she put in the pile to go was a set of brainteasers and logic puzzles I bought ages ago but which we’d never used, so I pulled them out and we had a go at a few of them. She’s a natural at the logic puzzles: much more than I am! She’s watched a fair bit of TV (of course). Her riding lessons are still twice a week (Sat and Wed), and I have to remember to book her in for the showjumping day at her riding school at the end of February. She finally did travel to C’s place with E in the morning recently, and ended up staying for a sleep-over. Ummm… I’m sure there’s more but I’m feeling very braindead at the moment. I should update this thing more often!

B and I finished reading Wintersmith tonight. She was very pleased that we have finally gotten through the book, and is already plotting our next read-aloud. Having gone to see The Golden Compass with her riding camp last week and fallen violently in love with the whole universe of His Dark Materials, if we can borrow a copy of Northern Lights relatively soon I suspect it will be the next candidate…

Her own reading appears to have gone backwards slightly, probably because she has been spending so much time riding or playing in the garden, and far less time on the computer. We will be targeting comprehension strategies this year, methinks. Although her decoding skills are certainly coming along – she’s finally having fun playing with the Magnetic Poetry words on the fridge, which you absolutely cannot do if you rely too heavily on context to work out words! She’s been putting a long string of words together at random then reading the resulting “poem” 🙂

This morning the topic of the temples at Angkor Wat came up, and I did an image search for her so she could see what I was talking about. Another “hook” for her knowledge of the world to build on.

What else? She’s going on the bus with E tomorrow morning and spending the day at Caitlin’s house. I will continue to remind myself that she has to be allowed as much freedom as possible to continue her own life and interests, and that she isn’t my built-in babysitter by virtue of a mere accident of chronology… and I will also be exasperated by having to wrangle K and H entirely without her assistance yet again. I think that is perfectly justified, really…

The forecast for the rest of this week is for unpleasantly hot rising to stupidly hot. Bugger. I guess summer had to start sometime… I need to think of things to do with the younger munchkins so that I’m less tempted to yell at either or both of them when I get overheated and stressed.

For a start, I’m going to go fill up all the icecube trays I can find so I can put ice in the cooler. Lock the glass door (if I can) so that K can’t keep opening it and letting the hot air in. Shut all windows for the same reason. Leave curtains shut in the living room. Shut the door to the upstairs rooms which get hottest, so they don’t contribute to heating up downstairs. If it gets too miserable, pop K in the bath while I have a shower – H can sit in his rocker if he’s not asleep.

Dennis came over on Saturday night and played with K for a couple of hours so that E and I could clean the living room and tidy the playroom. Didn’t quite get to the dining room, but the rest of the house is now livable! I’m going to try to spend most of my time feeding H on the couch so I can read to K, instead of plonking myself down in front of the ‘puter and ignoring her. Hopefully that way she won’t get as wound up and do provocative things like coating the TV screen with toothpaste *sigh*

I have been finding things a bit hard to cope with the last few days, but today seems to be getting off to a better start!

I was putting the Boy Wonder back down for his morning nap for the third time this morning (this one finally stuck for more than fifteen minutes, thankfully!), and a few thoughts popped into my head which I thought were worth writing down. Because I’ve been stressing out about trying to get both of them to sleep with breastfeeding, I decided to reframe it. Instead of being about just putting them to sleep, I am trying to think of it as nourishing their hearts and spirits as well as their bellies. And I’ve adopted a new affirmation: “My job is to give them what they need; it’s not their job to give me what I need” (whether it’s an uninterrupted half an hour, or for one of them to stay asleep long enough for me to get the other one down, or what have you). I need to work on finding a balance between martyred motherdom and self-centred bitchness, obviously… *g*

While the Boy Wonder was snoozing, I got some laundry on, put away nappies (why the hell have all the flats evaporated?), did some washing up, and poured endless water into K’s little teaset as she kept me company on her ladder. We even managed to clean most of the counter off as a side effect of the amount of water she spilled. So far this morning she has had sufficient milk that she hasn’t needed any breakfast, despite having no dinner last night either. No wonder I’m losing weight!

Awww… he is feeding on my knee as I type, and K just kissed him on the head saying, “I love you so much”. What a sweetie 🙂

B and I had a lovely evening out together (with H, of course) at Carols by Candlelight. As an actual carolling opportunity it was a bust: it was freezing cold and windy, we were far from warmly dressed and had none of those big fluffy blankets and thermoses of hot soup that of course one would expect to need at an Australian Christmas celebration, and H alternately fed, burped, pooped and complained the whole time we were there. Plus…nobody sang. We looked around us during the audience participation bits and saw absolutely no one singing, although a couple of people were looking at the songsheets. I was sufficiently weirded out by this not to sing for the first carol, and then thought, “Bugger it, I like singing carols!” and belted out the next few as loudly as I could in the hope that it might inspire someone, but as far as I know it failed. Then H was just getting too cold, hungry and miserable (in his pink grow suit with feet, purple cardy and hat and fetching pink loveheart socks) to stay, so we went back to the car so I could feed him without my nipples falling off. After he’d fed, burped and pooped some more, we went off to MacDonalds for dinner, although we had to stop in the carpark yet again for a feed (fortunately no more pooping!). H went to sleep after being swaddled and without needing any more booby (not surprisingly!) or any parental assistance, K went down after some booby milk and a couple of stories and a song from Daddy, and B and I had a snuggle and reaffirmation of how much we had enjoyed spending the evening together. Must do it more often…

We had a bit of a conversation about her Annagramma-ish personality quirks and perfectionism and criticism in general, which was I think quite useful in opening up space for change. She asked why I thought she finds it so difficult to admit to not knowing something and I said that sometimes I thought it was because she had an over-critical perfectionist bitch for a mother… *sigh* Today did manage to be more positive in that I was bitchy in a level and non-screaming tome of voice – let’s work on not being a total bitch tomorrow, hey?

I was also practising the mantra “People can’t do a don’t” very consciously when talking to K, after a conversation with E last night, and it made a considerable difference to our interactions. So I think, overall, it was a good, bonding day with both daughters. Here’s to another one tomorrow…

Today was less successful, as I realised by mid-afternoon that I have come down with a head cold (presumably the one which has K streaming banners of snot, yet again) and the pain in my head was not solely related to the baby yelling in my ear or the profound lack of sleep I had last night, but was actually a sinus headache. Joy.

H slept for six solid hours after we put him down at 8pm yesterday,then woke up approximately every hour or so after I came to bed. It was also hot and manky upstairs and I’m still not drinking enough to keep up with the tandem feeding and the hot weather, so I had a lovely dehydration hangover when I woke up. E let me sleep in til almost 9am, as arranged, then shut himself in his study and achieved something. H went back to sleep (the little bugger!) which gave me the opportunity for breakfast and a shower before it was time to get ready to go out. B did some handwriting in the morning, as I had found the parcel of late-primary workbooks I had tucked away in the spare room, and left them out for her if she wanted to try the cursive one, as she had expressed an interest in improving her handwriting. She didn’t particularly like the book, but it might be worth doing some of the exercises anyway just to get used to practising the joins, and then customise the rest of her penmanship as she chooses.

B had a swimming day with the homeschooling group, which took some complicated logistics to arrange. Mum got there before 11 to do some swimming, and we were running late. E dropped H and me off at the mall (after I gave him some money) and then headed off to sit in the coffeeshop with his ‘puter while B and K swam with Nannie. In the meantime, I pottered around the mall with H, and found some more stuff for the girls’ stockings (chocolate coins for K and giant gummi spiders for both of them) and art and craft present (oil pastels). I looked in various other shops and found a few things I’d like to get, but nothing I particularly wanted to carry around with me! (the one drawback of not having a stroller). I remembered to have something to eat, and fed H a couple of times. When K was finished swimming, B stayed with Nannie, and E met up with H and me at the parenting room at the mall, handed over the car, then headed off to work on the bus. I went home with the small squids and spent several hours trying to feed both sleepy, grumpy babies off to sleep. I only succeeded with H, as Nannie arrived back with B at around this time, but K ended up being happy to watch TV quietly for a while, and so far hasn’t had a sleep at all.

I really started to fall in a heap around this time, and when H woke up I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him and didn’t have the energy to try walking around with him. B volunteered, so we mocked up a sling for her out of a length of fabric, and she walked him down to sleep. I was a bit concerned that he was all twisted up since she is so short and he is so long, so I took him back after a while, and he was mostly contented, but sometimes yowly. I just plugged him with the boob whenever he yowled too much so that by the time E came home he probably had a bit of a tummy ache! He took them all off to the shops so I could have a break. I found the sewing scissors, so I was able to cut and pin a length of woven fabric to make a proper sling for B. Next step to unearth the sewing machine! I can cut out K’s beanbags now, too…

ETA: This evening she watched a program on ABC about the history of the Celts.

This week in brief.

Monday:
Nannie dropped B home after pottery. K, H and I went to playgroup. I finally got H and K down for simultaneous naps and asked B to do some reading with me. B did 90% complaining and procrastinating and 10% reading for the time until H woke up again, causing steam to come out my ears. Went upstairs, got H, and we continued with the reading with H asleep on my knee. Apparently, B learnt to read when I wasn’t looking. She is now reading fluently from context, decoding less than 10% of words phonetically, and panicking much less often when she gets stuck. She still needs to work on comprehension strategies, and needs to pay a lot more attention to punctuation. We made some progress there by explaining that even the best readers still slow down and re-read whenever they need to fully understand something. I said that I read at 800 words per minute, and can plow through a Pratchett book in a couple of hours, and explained exactly how it is that I can mow through so many words so quickly, and then reminded her that when I’ve finished one of his novels I go back and read it again to get all the bits I missed the first time through! I think she believes that she’s still a crap reader because she has to work at comprehension, so I think it made her feel better to realise that I still have to do that too on occasions. After she’d read a couple of pages of Wintersmith, I read to her from a library book about the Roman Empire until H woke up. She then went back on Club Penguin, where she spends the entire day reading and writing… I woke up K, and after she’d finished her post-nap grump, we sat down and played the balancing blocks game while B watched Rollercoaster. When her TV was over she came and played with us, and K played with her big basket of blocks instead. Then she found a muslin wrap and declared that she was “a haircutter”, so we played hairdressers for a while. First K pretended to wash B’s hair, then B did K’s, and then they both played with mine. I ended up with a big sloppy ponytail and some dangly bits, which I’m sure B thought looked terribly stylish. In retaliation I gave her three pigtails and a dangly bit with a comb in it. K got a silly topknot and fingernail polish. There may have been giggling. B cooked a large portion of dinner and cleared off the dining table without being asked. We read some Christmas books and sang some carols. B was knackered and went off peacefully, but K decided to be a pain in the bum about going to bed, and E had a meltdown about the amount of time it takes to get her to go to sleep these days, so I took over. I conked out next to her without getting to any of the things I had planned to do in the evening, and was Rather Grumpy when I woke up several hours later.

Tuesday
E was back at work in the morning again. I spent all morning trying to get H to go to sleep lying down, first in the bed then in the rocker, so I could spend time with the girls. He did not oblige, or at least not for any longer than it took to have a shower. B cleaned out the rat cage. Both girls made far too much noise. I lost my temper and behaved like a dickhead for an hour or so. Fortunately B knows me well enough to know that when I start ranting and threatening all sorts of mainstreamer consequences she just has to wait til I stop being a dickhead again. Eventually I did indeed stop being a dickhead. I wore H for the rest of the day, he slept quite happily, and I spent plenty of time with the girls, and we even tidied up the playroom again so that when K decided to tip the entire contents of her rice game onto the floor after she’d finished playing with it, it was easy enough for E to vacuum up. K is a scrub. B did some spelling, and some more Club Penguin. When E came home, he graciously allowed me to take a mental health break and I went op shopping and found Much Loot. He took the girls down to the playground for a bit while I was out. B made wonglepongs and then she and K had a protest over not being able to drink the remainder of the juice. B made signs saying things like “We wont are jows” and “We wont are right for jows for freedom”. B is also a scrub. She watched a show on ABC in the evening called “War of the Birds”, about pigeons in WWII.

Wednesday
E didn’t go in to work. I slept in til 10:30. E did washing up, and I did laundry, and we traded off wearing H. B played Club Penguin, and spent a lot of time asking me for spellings while she chatted to different players. E took K for a walk in the afternoon and forgot about horse riding, which meant that I had to take B. Walked up and down with H in the sling but he was too hungry to sleep so ended up feeding him in the car for the rest of the lesson. When we got home, B watched Rollercoaster and did some drawing. E complained that this whole staying at home to work thing wasn’t working, whereupon I pointed out he hadn’t actually tried it, and he went upstairs to do so for the remainder of the afternoon/evening, although most of what he accomplished was yak-shaving. B and K entertained themselves: at one point there was a long game in the garden involving upending the pool onto each others’ heads. I finally got H off to sleep, and E moved his computer into the bedroom so he could soothe him while he looked like he was going to wake up. I reheated quiche for dinner, after which K went to bed early for a change, but B stayed up and watched entirely too much pointless TV. I got as far as hunting out some cute material and drawing a pattern for K’s beanbags, but couldn’t find the sewing scissors (grrr).

Must. Go. To Bed. Now.

We didn’t get as much accomplished today as I might have hoped, but it was still a nice day. B went off with Nannie at 11 to look at a horse Nannie is contemplating buying for her. As she was in the process of getting all her stuff out of the car, she let the dog into the front yard, who promptly ignored all attempts to call her back and disappeared for a run. Fortunately the dog was wearing her tag and was found by someone in the next suburb, who called us to come and collect her. Bloody animal… I was not impressed with B having let her out in the first place as only yesterday B was complaining that Z is not responding to voice control as well as she usually does. Some retraining is in order, methinks.

After that, E and I took the littlies to Hall Markets. It was very hot, and H got quite overheated in the wrap with E after a while, so I took him back to the car and gave him a feed. He was bright red in the face, so I took off his onesie and nappy and let him kick in the cool air while he rehydrated. We had fortunately been able to find a parking place under the trees so it was shady and relatively cool, and there was a nice breeze. He cooled down after a while and, with a disposable instead of a cloth nappy plus woollen cover, and no clothes on, he was much happier in the wrap with me for the next hour. One of his big sisters’ hats kept his head and the top of his back covered while he was looking around, and when he went back to sleep I was able to use it as extra shade.

We found a few things of interest while pootling around, but only ended up buying H a tie-dyed sleeveless onesie as his Christmas Eve pyjama present, plus some cute little finger puppets for stockings. We couldn’t resist a finger-puppet layout of Little Red Riding Hood, although I’m not sure who precisely will get that – probably K. When she saw them she said they belonged at Grandmoogi’s house, because GM has a layout of Old MacDonald’s Farm done by the same people. We chatted to someone selling poi, and I was very tempted to get a pair for B as I was thinking yesterday that it would be a nice gift for her if I can find the time to make some (I’m also contemplating making a beanbag toss game for K with hand-made beanbags, and possibly even some retro beanbag animals). But I didn’t have $45. Also didn’t buy any food products; I’ll get them at the Farmers’ Market over the next few weeks. I was suffering from my usual experience of being overwhelmed by too much choice! E and I fell utterly in love with a big pottery platter glazed with a design like a stained glass window, but couldn’t possibly justify the $130 price tag to buy it, so left it sadly behind. At that same stall, we found a gigantic moth clinging to the side of the table, which was an interesting diversion. At that point we decided we were too hot and tired, so headed home.

The insulation people rang and made a time to come round later that afternoon, so when H and I lay down for a nap we decided to make it in the study instead of the bedroom. Obviously that was a good decision, as I woke up three hours later, without even having heard them arrive 🙂 Hence I am still up at 1am, as wake-up time was late enough (7pm) that I’m not really tired.

Tomorrow is playgroup, which I am really looking forward to, as I’ve been going all year with my gradually expanding belly, and now I want to go and show off my new babe! I’ve been feeling very sociable over the last week, as I had a JB meet-up at my place on Wednesday, went to an ABA meeting on Friday, and now playgroup tomorrow. This post-partum time has been such a different experience to K’s – it was hard to realise how very exhausted I was for a long time after K was born because it just seemed so normal at the time, but now, since I am energetic and healthy and even getting enough sleep, the difference really stands out. Anaemia is awful, I’m glad to be alert to the signs now after that experience, and able to counter it before it becomes a problem. It is much easier to cope with the three of them now than it was with the two girls (although B’s added maturity is a big factor in that, of course).

Yesterday Mum took B and K to the zoo, then dropped off both girls in the afternoon. I put K down for a nap as she was exhausted, so B and I spent some time together with the book of ancient games from the British Museum. I was feeling too stupid to figure out the rules to any of the new ones, though, so we just ended up playing Snakes and Ladders, but it was interesting finding out about the origins. We also read about Senet.

This morning started late, but B has done some cursive writing practice, watched BTN Special on Managing the Environment and two episodes of Real Chinese. Then K wanted to paint, so B hit record for the next show she wanted to watch (Nigel Marven’s Venom Hunters), and they spent an hour or so making a huge mess *g* We also listened to another episode of Classics for Kids, on Stravinsky again. K is playing with beads and beans and chopsticks and lacing threads, and B has gone back to Club Penguin.

B just rang her Grandmoogi to ask if she could borrow a needle (she needs to sew the badges back on her Scouts shirt) as I was rousing at K for dropping beads all over the floor when I had just asked her not to throw them around, so GM took pity on me and offered to take them both for a while *g* B is taking her shirt and getting GM to help her reattach the badges ready for Scouts tonight. And I am very grumpy with K, who is being an absolute little toad right now…

Today K was inspired by Play School to want to be a doctor, so we knocked up a doctor’s costume for her. It was less aesthetically pleasing than the pirate’s costume I created for her the other day, but she was quite satisfied with it and played with her “patients” and her “depostope” for a while before getting bored with it and disassembling her “depostope” for the foil covering *g*

We also read books together, as well as having a nap for an hour or so. I’ve given up coffee (again!) so have been feeling very dopey all day. I can’t remember what else we did, but I’m sure there must have been something…