the little chill

the first snow. we changed the calender from autumn to winter. it feels early, but life sneaks up like that sometimes. i can't help but feel the world is really a lovely place when it snows. despite the mud and leaves and constant woody-burden; carried (to the house from the pile), that snags at my hands, the cold house..... the snow makes us all scoured clean again and gives us another chance. felix saw sparkles all the way from the north pole in the snow. esme thought she'd make a giant lollipop with snow on a stick. isaac hid to make a snowman all of his own. my dh complained he was 'snowed under' at work on the phone earlier and i laughed because he didn't know it was snowing for real right here. something whispered to the wild geese it was time to go, something whispered snow....

learning to be spontaneous (the irony)

My letting go isn't spontaneous. The screen time letting go is a gradual thing. Some days I am still not OK with it. But I let it be. I let myself be uncomfortable with that. It goes. And comes. I get irritated still, it's a continuous slow letting go, not a knife edge of being or doing or feeling. An acknowledgement that some decisions about what others do are not even mine to start with. Getting your head around that is a biggie.



Some days I get this feeling that it's all a big illusion. That it isn't so much the things we spend our days *doing* but the way we *are* as we do them. Is it for me to mind what another human chooses to do? My position as someone older and having more life knowledge isn't rational reason enough to be a decision maker of someone else. I might be wrong. Allowing for the possibility (even if you are *sure* you are right), the possibility that you just might be wrong, makes it harder to get someone else to do something, to insist you are right. Offer suggestions for alternatives, give advice, criticism, theories, but *then* accept with grace another's' choice. The decision they make for themselves. I see my kids hear my suggestions more as orders than suggestions sometimes. I have to point out to them with specific word usage that allows them to decide. Like, 'in that position I would do X or Y' or, 'I think for me, I wouldn't choose to eat that, it gives me a headache, one time it make Granny sick to eat that'. Then let them weight it up. Give the info as you know it, and step back. 'Throwing sand can sometimes get in eyes and make them sore, I can see a good place over there with no people around and lots of space to throw'. Don't guilt them. Don't create feelings of guilt or frustration or anxiety. Why do we do that? I hate people tripping me like that! Like OK, have that chocolate bar, you'll be sorry when your teeth all drop out and you get fat and spotty! I'd be feeling trapped and negative. I want that good chocolate taste, OK, not the fat or bad teeth..... can I help make healthy chocolate treats instead? Would that help the person wanting chocolate? Info, help, advice. Not orders, or guilt. Let them be. Let it be. As it is.




Can our influence be a light rather than a force? To be the trusted person they come to wanting advice as a teen, not the person they hide their cigarettes from. Paradoxically, can we act without concern of long term outcome? Are our children products? Is our parenting a method we use to shape children to be a certain way, to have specific characteristics or traits? How would it feel to know that the people around you were responding and talking and doing things with you with an outcome of who they wanted you to be (or way in which they wanted you to act) in mind? Pretty horrific actually. Get rid of it. Be an advocate. In the moment. If they give you something to hold cos' they don't want to share it, don't give it to the next child that asks to 'teach' your child to share. You are teaching them you can't be trusted. That their preferences are not important. Do we want our children to grow up to be adults who think their preferences have no (or lesser) importance - that they must be subservient to others in positions of more authority? I think it's what happens when we play the authoritarian. We teach not what we think we do, but something else. Something that can't be untaught so well.



Yes. I have been reading Without Boundaries. It's pretty good :)

We saw this Christmas Turkey and thought it a true-blue Star Wars Extra.

new rooms and indoor time

An indoorsy sort of week. Keeping people happy requires some debate and some shifting around of possessions. My sewing room (unused mostly - like when do I have the time to be honest?) is now a lego-play room, with mini TV and video player pulled from the loft. I like space to be used to it's maximum. It feels a lot better this way. I'll figure out where the sewing machine can go in good time. My plan is to find a second computer for this little space too, so that the boys and I are not hustling each other over who uses this one. Not a very visually pleasing room, what with the lego and all but I'll try and take a nice pic anyway since they are in it quite a bit right now.

I have totally let go of my screen time issues. They were only ever my issues anyway *shrug*. I just never saw it. I might not like it (where does it say I have to? Only that I see their prefernce is as valid as mine... and in actual fact, what bothered me was that *I* was forced to watch too, since it was in the main living area, now I don't :) ) In actual fact it's part of their life, part of mine and my limiting it was just getting frustration and resentment and stress. Nothing more. They do other stuff. They actually do. It's not like they sit there and morph into lumps of human shaped pieces of gormless clay.

Right now, in the fog they are playing outside. All three. A bit earlier they were watching birds through the window and drawing them (as was I). In a bit, they want to make pizza dough. Later they are having a friend over. If they watch Star Wars some where in the midst of this day then good for them. Wish I could find the time to slop about and do so. I am in super mode of doing, mainly to keep warm, I am just so cold lately.

Arguments over a single ipod turns to happier silence as they agree to an ear each:



Fireside drawing the birds we see on the feeders.





one boy reading to another



one girl at the sink, her default position ('wasting' all available hot water and washing dishes)



My kitchen shelves no longer hold both cook books and the boys home ed type of stuff. So we await the making of new shelves. I make tiny spaces of neatness elsewhere to compensate. Is it just me? To keep my mind in order I need order around me...? There must be another label out there that can be applied to my OCD behaviour like attitude sometimes....





Outdoor frost, outdoor rain and generally being glad to be indoors this week... I was sternly ordered to 'stop taking pictures of trees and things and take one of me! I have my nice new wellies on and everything!' Obliged.

a day off

It's true. My one day of work outside my home feels like a day off. Not sure what this says about me.....? That it's terribly hard work being at home with three children, day in day out, 24/7? Or just that *I* find it so? It's a truth not often acknowledged that it can be so. Further cemented by it's unpaid status, sometimes it's not even 'counted' in the outside world as being true 'work' at all. There's this idea that we *choose* to have children (true), so we must be both grateful for the privilege (quite true) and thus not mind the hardness of the role (not always true). Why is it so hard? Is it my word usage, is it really just that it's 'challenging'? Do I fail to meet the challenges? No. It's just some days the challenges roll fast and furious one after the other and finding common preferences between us all is an uphill effort (and often failing) means that the default setting of self sacrifice happens. At work, away from home there is non of this. I just do the job required of me, I do it very well. I thoroughly enjoy it. Nothing emotionally extracting is expected of me, or asked. It's all very very easy compared to my regular day. And getting money at the end of that day is like the cherry on top. It's good to have a day off. It really is. Everyone should have one. Especially the Mamas :)

trials of plasticine and an owl

Kat over at Slugs made this for The Beauty and it is good. What a cute as a button design. She custom makes them on her folksy shop too, so buy one if you are hat less this winter. Thank you Kat! We love it.





I asked Esmé if she thought Georgie liked her hat..... we *know* he *loves* birds. He makes a fancy cage for them in his mouth, lets them go for a bit and re catches them over and over just to entertain us. Esmé remembered...



I have been addicted still to the plasticine stamps and made a pretty little winter tree looking thing. It was so nice to use and to look at I was pretty sad when it morphed out of shape into a blob again. The trials and tribulations of plasticine. I did manage to make a couple of cards though so all was not lost.



Now for the rest of the night which will likely consist of: Bonfires, sparklers and the usual annual celebration of the burning alive of a fellow who didn't like the government.... strange how festivals and celebrations also morph into happening. Still. Anything for a knees up, the chance of supping some cider and the ever thrilling excitement of fire! Happy Bonfires :)

pancakes and crafts

On the phone and I could here Boo shouting that her pancake was ready. By the time I got myself to the kitchen, she had pulled up a chair and flipped it over herself. On the hotplate. Ahhh! Kinda alarming, but she was very happy indeed. In fact should anyone else ever want to help me in the kitchen to lick, whisk, stir or roll she rushes madly to get ahead of them and shoves them out of the way not letting them in. So desperate is she to be the one helping. It's gotten so that the boys have to tiptoe in so as not to alert her to any kitchen helping they want to be part of. Otherwise she barges right in screeching to be let to the jackpot (or spoon whisk or rolling pin). I have never seen such a keen helper. In most things actually. Washing, scrubbing, hay fetching, egg collecting (on the rare occasion one may see fit to lay us an actual egg), weed pulling, general too'ing and froing - she can always be relied upon to know where something is or to yell if she thinks something is overcooking (I swear it's true!). Usually she is right. We are all humbled by her home making knowledge and know how.

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For the foodies: These were buckwheat pancakes: one cup of buckwheat flour to two cups of water. Mix and let sit for at least 30 mins but preferably overnight. When ready to cook add two eggs, whisk again and you are ready to start ladling and flipping. Very good with fruit sweetened wild blueberry jam...
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On the crafty side of life I bought a bumper pack of these foam sheets to snip into shapes. They stick very nicely to bath tiles when wet and provide hours of entertainment. Esmé makes fair use of her pieces by snipping them to a thousand tiny snippets that clog the drain, although she did very solemnly hand me a bigger than usual piece (an inch) and said 'shoe'. I placed it carefully atop a cut out man's foot and was rewarded with a beam. Felix and Isaac are marvellously inventive and while I drummed my fingers and wondered what to cut out they were already punching our sharks and bathtubs and goal posts as quick as I could blink. Great fun. Bought right here.







Can you actually see that very busty looking foam woman leaning over the bathtub? Who the heck is it? Can it really be me?!

At this same online craft supplier I purchased a new ink pad, specifically as I had in mind these. Stamps made from plasticine. The nice thing about plasticine is that it doesn't dry out and surely everyone has a few hard brown lumps in their craft cupboard. We do (although it can be bought in strips for under a pound most anywhere).



Not wanting to shell out for proper wooden or plastic stamps this is a cool way to make your own ever changing ones. A pencil is the best tool for marking we have found. I have serious plans now to use these for Christmas card making. I really like how they soften and spread and change ever so slightly the more they are used. very pretty... they look even better as they change shade getting lighter and lighter. We made some nice eye and leaf and flower ones that I didn't photograph (was having too much fun). Actually quite addictive.....



Thank you to filthwizadry for the ideas :)



And a PS) even thought these pics were all taken on different days you might notice The Beauty wears the very *same* pair of most beloved PJ's throughout her extensive photoshoot (s). It's true, we just never change her ;) I have never seen a child more in love with a pair of pajamas.... inexplicably - I cannot honestly see what the attraction is (sorry M&S) ... although I can't fit into them, so I guess that must be why.