10th December

Cars all in a row, being dug out from imaginary snow by the yellow digger.

A lovely morning spent taking pictures and playing with cars. The less said about the rest of the day, the better...

9th December

Christmas Biscuits

Ben and I mad Christmas Biscuits, and Mini Mincemeat and Frangipan Tarts today. First time he's "helped" with baking - I think it was quite a success!

Also, it's my mum's birthday today - happy birthday, mum :) xxx

8th December

Advent Calendar number 2

He loves both his calendars: this one is from his Gran.

7th December

Mummy's favourite red heels. On Ben...

Ben loves this pair of shoes. Worryingly, he's getting rather good at clopping around the house in them. I had to stop him halfway up the stairs...

6th December

SplashTime!

Ben had fun in the bath today. I even managed to convince him to tip the water over his own head - which he then found hilarious and did again and again and again!

5th December

Christmas Sticking - great fun :)

Ben and I had lots of fun today trying out the Christmas Sticking craft for tots on Tuesday.

4th December

Pottery Painting

I had a night out with the girls, we went to a friend's house and did some pottery painting. These are the two tiles that I did. The lion is for Ben's room, and the tree is for my mum. I get them back in a week's time, glazed and fired - hope they've worked!

3rd December

The thaw has started already and the icicles are dripping off the palm tree.

Already the snow is melting in the sunshine, things are turning to ice and it's getting treacherous out...

2nd December

The snow arrived and so we made Frosty the Snowman!

Ben loved the snow. Really had a great time in it! And even better, Steve had an early finish to work (because of the snow) so he was able to join in the fun as well.

1st December

Ben's Advent Socks

Ben's Advent Socks - as our "proper" advent train calendar is in the loft, I was inspired by suzypink's advent socks and decided to make one for Ben. I hope that I'll be able to make this blog another kind of advent countdown for us as well!

Imagination is the source of all bonkersness...

Ben, now that he is that little bit older and able to turn thoughts over in his head and remember stuff, has started developing some weird habits and obsessions and doing some generally quite oddball stuff. I suppose it's all to do with a burgeoning imagination which I think is fantastic in principle. Just weird, that's all.

Take last night for instance.

He was going to go to bed in our bed from the off because I was still feeling poorly and couldn't be bothered with the faff of settling him in his bed. We walked past his bedroom door and he says "night night spider".  Now, he already has a habit of saying hiya to every spider he sees, so in theory saying night-night isn't that far removed. But it did weird me out a little bit because I was sure there weren't any spiders visible, and I was pretty certain there weren't any in his room either.

The mystery was solved when I went in to fetch his pillow. There, tucked up in bed (and no doubt given a night-night kiss as well) was the spider he made at nursery this week.

I can understand tucking teddy up in bed, and even the giant elephant to some extent, but the spider? At least he's being fair and giving everything a chance... Even his drumkit was put to bed yesterday, a blue blanket draped over the top. Sadly though drumkit didn't actually get a chance to go to sleep as Ben just bash it through the blanket.

This morning Ben woke up and decided that spider needed breakfast. So insistent was he that he dragged Steve out of bed because he couldn't quite manage to open his bedroom door to get to the spider. At least I managed to dissuade him that spider needed mummy-milk...

Who knows where his imagination is going to take us in the coming years.

A Parental Rite of Passage...

... is making a birthday cake for your child.

Ben didn't miss out technically on his first birthday but, as we'd only just moved in to a renovation project and had not yet got an oven, I made him a cake-in-a-cup in the microwave. But I only had olive oil rather than regular sunflower oil, and I think I overcooked it, and the result really could have been used as a (rather large) rubber bullet, to be quite frank. We didn't eat much of it. It didn't even fry very well in copious amounts of butter the next day (that treatment normally makes any kind of stale cake quite eatable, with a lot of double cream, that is).

Still, he had a birthday cake. And all the family were round so it was ok really.

I made him a oneandahalfday cake to make up for my failings as the mother of a one-year-old - it was rather more successful, and took a little more effort.

So this year, I promised myself that I would be a Proper Mummy and make a Proper Birthday Cake.

Which I have done, and am rather proud of it, even if I do say so myself.

It feels like a bit of a parental rite of passage.

Balance

How do you create a workable work-life balance?

Part of my job (yes, the one that is one morning a month in an office, and any spare hours at home) is doing the wages for a small company. I created our own spreadsheet to record hours and create payslips. I have learnt about HMRC's NI and PAYE calculator. I have learnt about year-end tasks and now know what to record to make my life easier next March/April.

But I don't know how to do databases. I mean, I'm competent enough to be able to find my way around the software, but the actual logic of relationships and what needs to be in what tables and linked to which other tables, just flummoxes me. Totally. I just can't figure out the best way to do it. At all. But on the other hand, now I've got my filemaker trial, I'm at least learning how to create the things, even if the logic is still beyond me at the moment.

And therein lies the problem. I'm enjoying this challenge so much, that when I have to stop what I'm doing, I get irritated, annoyed. It's like an addiction. I am addicted to whatever chemical is produced in my brain when I am challenged in learning something, figuring something out. And poor little Ben, he gets the sharp end of my tongue, for no fault of his own. Just me being irritated that I have to stop what I am doing, or can't go and do what I want to do, because he needs me to be mummy. So I am being challenged in a different way. Where do I need to make that divide, between work and motherhood?

I don't feel like I can live in both worlds, with the divide as it is at the moment. I'm not able to put the hours in to really be able to give my boss the results that he needs and wants; and I'm not being fair to Ben either. So what do I do? What can I do? I feel like I either need to find a better balance (which I'm not sure how to do, given yesterday's real-ness about hours in the day and lack thereof etc), or I need to stop trying to split myself in two and give myself 100% to one or the other. Either way, I need to do something because life as it is at the moment isn't fair on me, Ben, Steve, or my boss. Although my boss doesn't notice really because whatever I manage to pull out of the hat, it'll be better than anything we have at the moment!

Must find Balance. It must be achievable. It must be.

Diabetes Update!

Am chuckling now.

I changed my diabetes medication a month ago, partly because I was having to increase the dosage again and partly because we want to start trying for another baby soon. The gliclazide I was on has not been tested on pregnant women, although my consultant thinks it's completely safe for conception and pregnancy. So I was put onto glibenclamide, which I've been on in the past, and to be honest it didn't work very well then either. But it's approved for pregnancy and I would rather not have to go onto insulin because as wonderful as it is (and during my last pregnancy, on insulin, I had my best HbA1c results EVER) I really hate needles so to be able to stay on tablets would be rather nice.

The glibenclamide however hasn't been bringing my blood sugars down particularly, it's not as effective as the gliclazide was (to begin with, anyway), and it really kind of relies on you eating little and often, and being quite careful what you eat (low GI foods are almost necessary, on glibenclamide, it would seem). So I'm not eating as much as I should be, I'm always hungry, or getting hungry sooner, and I think as a result of that I'm more tired than usual and unless I simply blame the time of year (which is possible) I think that my immune system is a bit down because I'm tired all the time because I'm not eating properly. So I'm getting more colds than usual again.

Anyway. The hospital only gives you enough medication for a month. You're supposed to go and see your GP and update them about your new treatment, and get a proper repeat prescription sorted out, etc etc. But I forgot, being me, so over the weekend I ran out of glibenclamide. Whoops. Luckily I had gliclazide left in the cupboard so I started taking that again. And my blood sugar level went down! It's back up again this morning but the Lurgy attacked me overnight and I feel rubbish and my sugars are always high when I'm poorly. And all I want to eat is chocolate chip brioche, and extremely sweet (and very big) cookies. And drink tea, and not get dressed.

So I phoned and left a rather garbled and all-over-the-place message on the diabetes centre helpline last night, and have just had a phonecall back from my consultant, to say yes, if you are happy to not be on approved medication, but if it's keeping your sugars down, go for it! (She is convinced that these drugs are safe during pregnancy.) And how was swimming, are you still enjoying it?!

We see each other all over the place, at NCT sales, at the beach, at swimming, we bump into each other (not literally) when we're out cycling...  but at swimming the parents now have to sit outside the pool room, the rules have changed.... so we spoke for 30 seconds about medication, and a couple of minutes about swimming! Am chuckling :)

And then I had to phone back because I'd forgotten to ask a rather important question about what do I do in a couple of months' time when I expect the blood sugars will be starting to creep back up again. To which the answer was, phone us back when they do, we'll probably give you a different drug for a few weeks to reset you, and then you can go back onto gliclazide!

I love our diabetes centre. They are a bunch of Good Eggs.

Toddler Communication

Ben signs "B" for "Ben"

We started going to baby signing classes with Ben when he was maybe 9 or 10 months old or so. Partly out of curiosity, partly because it was a good way to meet other mums in the area (we'd just moved, and I needed to socialise!), and partly because I was desperate to get out of the Project that was our house. Baby signing is often based on Makaton, which is a sign language based on BSL but created specifically for children with learning difficulties. I love Makaton - I think all kids should be taught it, not just children with learning difficulties!

Ben decided, after the last class of the 2nd term, after I'd decided not to sign up for a 3rd term, to start signing. At last. So I signed up for a 3rd term and Ben finally started interacting, responding to the teacher, using the signs that he'd apparently built up an arsenal of. He might have spent the other two terms pretty much sat on my knee sucking on boobie (got quite wearing to be honest) but he was apparently just soaking it all in. He was 15 months old. Within 6 weeks he was also starting to talk as well, more than just your average "mummy" "daddy" etc. Learning new words every day, copying speech sounds, trying to get it right.

He now has a massive number of signs and words.

I tell you this story because tonight Ben and Steve were reading the Monkey Puzzle book together. Ben is getting good at reading with daddy, he tells him "oh no!" at the beginning when little monkey has lost his mummy, he signs for all the animals that we know the signs for, and says the names of the other ones.

But "snake" is a problem. He says "Ssssssss" and kind of does the sign for snake. So Steve helped him, showed him how to do it properly. Ben was really pleased, but as soon as Steve's hand let go of his, his own fingers slowly sprung back into a normal hand shape and Ben looked at his hand and said, "Oh no!" and then his face crumpled - he was really really upset that he couldn't do the sign, that his hand didn't do what it was supposed to do. He was also really really tired, it has to be said. Steve said, "Do you want to go to bed?" "Yeah." And Ben climbed down off Daddy's knee, and crumpled onto his bed, crying, devastated.

How cute is that, to get so upset about not being able to do a sign quite right?

Splashzone

I had the worst headache I've had for nearly 2 years yesterday and today. At least, it felt that way. So we had a cbeebies day, while I mustered up the energy to clear the mountain of junk off the kitchen table in order to do the painting with Ben that I have been promising him for weeks and weeks.

We've not done any proper painting together since June, I think. I have way too many photographs on iPhoto to trawl through them to find out exactly when it was. The big picture in yesterday's blog is dated 18th April, and I don't think we've done too much since then.

Anyway.

So it's been a while since we did any painting. Possibly around 5 months or so, not including a very supervised effort at my parents' house over the summer.

The only way I could get Ben to look at the camera was to ask him to show me his tongue.

Oh my word but the splashzone required for a nearly-two-year-old is quite considerably bigger than the splashzone required for an 18 month old. Not to mention the splatzone, for errant paint splats from over-excited manic waving of paintbrushes, and the occasional flung brush.

It took me half an hour to clean up afterwards.

The hands though - they were the easy part! Ben loves washing his hands, we got the worst off in a bowl of water, and then went upstairs so he could stand on his little step in front of the basin to wash them properly with soap. Am very pleased and proud - we went on our playdate afterwards with no trace of paint anywhere on his body.







Except for a very small purple splotch on his cheek.




And orange and green splodges on the seat of his pants. Whoops.

The Tree

Back in May, I realised a new potential for the cardboard walls that were springing up in our house. (These walls were to stop Ben from bashing at the exposed brickwork and thus creating more dust and detritus than was absolutely necessary. They were only temporary, but will be temporary for a little while longer I suspect. Anyway...) They made the perfect canvas for practising on.

My mission is to paint a tree on one of the walls in Ben's room, once it's ready. So I have to practise.

Here's the first attempt, from May.

 

Bit of a practise attempt, really. Ben enjoyed adding handprints. It's since been obscured by a filing cabinet, still taped up from moving house, which belongs in the office. Which we don't have, as it's still Steve's workshop / toolroom.

While Ben had his nap today I felt inspired to try Attempt Number Two.

 

Am pleased with my improvement since last time, although there is still quite some way to go before I dare paint straight onto his bedroom wall... I might cut this tree out actually, and trim the parts that I'm not happy with, maybe I might end up with an outline to trace that I am happy with.

Naughty Gran ... and Getting Soggy

An envelope dropped through the door at lunchtime, addressed to Benjamin Entwistle. Ben was rather excited! He loves going to collect the post from the doormat, and he brings it to me, "oast, oast!"

The front of the bubble envelope gave nothing away. Except for the fact that it was a bubble envelope, which should have set alarm bells off immediately.

The back, however, bore the legend: "from Naughty Gran!"


Ben begged for a "ed beecul", so he had a red beetle, and then wanted a "boo beecul" which I said he could have after he had a sleep. So he went to sleep. Early.

The worst thing about early naps is that it makes the afternoon SO LOOOOOOONG so when Ben woke up eventually I had to send him outside to water the plants. I filled a bucket up, found his little watering can, and left him to it, knowing pretty much what would happen.

I didn't expect quite the scale of waterloggedness that followed. Ben came in soaked from head to toe. Completely. I have no idea how he managed, why he bothered, but at least my gooseberry bush was also watered. As well as half the patio. He seemed happy enough, and took me outside to show me how he'd got so drenched, and then proceeded to paint the shed wall with water.





















Thank goodness for sunshine is all I can say! He came inside and asked for wet clothes to be taken off, and as I went outside to hang them up on the line he followed me out - clad only in his nappy - and seemed perfectly happy. The only thing that stopped him getting in his car was that it was, oddly, quite wet.










Bathtime ensued and he spent nearly an hour in the bath too. I'm surprised he's not gone all wrinkled like a prune.


















Somehow, we have managed to pass the time this afternoon in a very soggy manner, and he has loved every minute pretty much. Apart from when I pinned him down to cut his toenails - but nobody enjoys that, do they.

Shopping

Shopping with Ben is not usually an ordeal. Usually I do the above - stick him in the basket of a shopping trolley, and trundle him around the supermarket. He looks after the groceries, and at the end he helps unload the trolley onto the conveyor belt.

Usually.

Today he didn't want to sit in the trolley. We only had a shallow trolley, and so by aisle 3 and countless times being told to sit down or we'd go and get a proper trolley, we went and got a proper trolley, with a child seat. And by the time we'd reached aisle 3 again, he'd strapped himself in! Cue stress-free grocery shop. Excellent.

Round One: Win.


Next it was off to Boots. They have really tiny trolleys in our Boots store, but at least they have a child seat.

By the time we'd reached the checkout (having had a minor panic when I couldn't find Ben's size in nappies in the brand I prefer (Nature Babycare, if you're interested, which we use for overnighters) only to discover they had been hidden sneakily behind a pack of the next size up) I discovered Ben had again strapped himself in.

Obviously something is sinking in, all the times we go through the "let's put your seatbelt on" rigmarole.

Round Two: Win.


Then, we had to call in at Halfords. Only one thing left on the shopping list, antifreeze/coolant.

Halfords, however, have moved stuff round in the store so that RIGHT AT THE ENTRANCE there is a whole AISLE full of big electronic toy cars, big enough for - yes, a 2 year old to sit in and play in and drive, pretty much. You have to go all the way through the store, and round and round, to find the coolant. (Of course, I suspect if I was a man, I'd know exactly where to find the stuff...) And then you have to go back past all the fantastic toy cars and scooters to get to the checkout. Ben was in tears.

Round Three: Lose.


I promised him that we'd play in the garden and do some digging when we got home and that cheered him up.

I am glad that my son is so easily pleased: digging in the garden over a £200 toy car.

Dooliebops

Made dooliebops at tots this morning.

Thought I'd share the process, so you can create your own daft dooliebop if you want!

For One Daft Doolie you will need...

















a smallish, empty, clean yoghurt pot
a couple of squares of coloured tissue paper
double sided tape
ribbon or string
a pipe cleaner
a couple of colourful feathers
a polystyrene ball
a blob of playdough
bobble eyes or stickers for the face
glue, sequins, bits and bobs

Put the blob of playdough in the bottom of the yoghurt pot.

Use double sided tape to help with the next bit - you are going to give the doolie a skirt. I found that the tissue paper would not stay put around the bottom of the yoghurt pot even with ribbon or string, so used bits of tape to keep it in place.








Finish by tying a piece of ribbon around the bottom of the pot. We used labels like this, so we could write each child's name on.










Next! The neck. Fold a piece of pipecleaner in half, hold a feather with it, and twist round and round and round and round until you have a twisted up pipecleaner with mad bits of feather sticking out at all angles.









Keep going until it's much tighter than this :)












Make a hole in the poly ball first, I used a wooden skewer. (If you're doing this in a group make all the holes before you go, don't let kids do it themselves!)

Stick the folded end of the pipecleaner into the poly ball, put a spot of glue on the end first if you want.

Create a face on the ball using stickers or bobble eyes or just pens, you can add hair with wool and glue, arms with another pipecleaner, whatever.



Stick the sharp end of the pipecleaner twist into the playdough.

Cut another feather into 3 bits and stick them into the playdough as well, just because.

Put glue around the edge of the yoghurt pot and stick anything you can find onto it. Lentils, stars, sequins, bits of felt, pasta, rice......




Et voila, one dooliebop!