Excited about the future…

I’m expecting my second child in the next few weeks (am almost 37 weeks pregnant) and I can’t wait to meet my baby. For various reasons this pregnancy has been the most stressful 8 months of my life but now that the bulk of the pregnancy is over I’m feeling really positive about the future. Here are just some of the things I’m looking forward to:

1. Seeing how my 3 year old reacts to his little brother and watching them both learn from each other. My son is so excited at the thought of having a little brother and although I know that it won’t always be easy, I can’t wait to have 2 little boys.  
2. Meeting up with friends much more often and showing off my baby to everyone.
3. Making new friends and talking about all things baby related (feeding, sleeping, weaning etc.)
4. Spending time with my sister and her 2 little girls who are coming back to the UK after living in Australia for 8 years.
5. Attending baby sensory classes – I loved them first time around and am definitely going back.
6. Having lots of time off work – am not due back until June 2011 and then I am planning on making some significant changes in my career.
7. Getting my body back into some kind of reasonable state. I never lost my baby weight from my first baby so this time I am determined to get back into shape.
8. Having some wine.
9. Going horse riding.

It is such an exciting time and I really can’t wait. I will keep you posted on all the wonderful things that happen over the next year or so…

 

Geocrashing

Sheersy has introduced me to the wonderful world of geocaching and I very much fear I may get addicted. Child friendly walking, the promise of treasure, information on whether you can take a buggy, maps, puzzles, fresh air, exercise, geeky technology and stuff to track around the world – what’s not to love?

If, until now, you have been ignorant of this secret world, modern geocaching is essentially a worldwide treasure hunt.  Anyone with a GPS can take part. The seeker uses map coordinates published online and a GPS to locate the cache, or to solve puzzles that lead to it. 

I have known about geocaching for years, but I had the impression it was carried out on large Forestry Commission sites or mountainsides. Both terrain types are sadly missing from Basingtoke until my plan to move a small Munro onto Monk Sherborne comes together. I was also a bit sniffy about GPS (for townies who can’t read maps or use a compass), but I have succumbed to the lures of satnav to help cure my driving nerves and mine understands coordinates.

Sheersy pointed me to www.geocaching.com where you can check out nearby caches by postcode. There are almost a million worldwide and a surprisingly large proportion of them near to us. There are five in the village alone and a seven point clue ridden trail round Silchester. There appear to be caches pretty much anywhere we might think of going in the next five years too, well certainly Durham, South Wales, Thailand, Romania, China and the Cook Islands. I’m particularly keen on finding those Cook Island caches…

So, we decided to try it out when visiting friends in Durham last weekend. Undeterred by the falling snow we loaded Coswise, Baby Brighteyes and Coswise’s scooter into the car and followed a trail round a Durham park. Apart from the temperature and lack of scooting opportunities it worked well. Seven clues were set tens of metres apart from each other, all building to a set of coordinates for the cache location. The satnav worked fine as a GPS, although even in walking mode it kept telling me to ‘TURN LEFT, DRIVE FORWARD FOR HALF A MILE’ in a rather imperious way. The final cache was fairly straightforward to find, hidden in some ivy at children’s head height. I think the idea is to hide them so that they can be found without drawing to much attention to what is going on. It contained several small toys, a log book, an instruction sheet and several cacher calling cards. It was a shame that the developing blizzard had numbed Coswise’s interest by this time.

Unfortunately on the way out of the park our Megane decided to do some downhill skiing towards the dual carriageway Durham ringroad. To stop it Daddy steered up the park bank – a surprisingly long way up the bank – and we ended up teetering on three wheels in a very Italian Job way (but with less gold and more children). Daddy was a complete hero, passing children out to passers-by, organising other passers-by to heave on the uphill side of the car, slowly getting the car off the bank and very gingerly skating down the park drive to the ringroad.

So we are back safe in Bramley (give or take a tyre blowout on the motorway!) and Sheersy is hiding a cache in an area near you. More may be posted once the cache is hidden. Meanwhile, Coswise, Baby Brighteyes and I are off to find some more treasure. See you at the church…

 

The wonderful world of a 4 year old

I am increasingly fascinated (and also slightly concerned) about the world of make believe my 4 year old seems to be living in. Months and months ago two imaginary friends, Luke and Judy appeared on the scene. From what I can ascertain they are both boys, they regularly have birthdays (and seem to increase and decrease in age!), they only eat sugar (!) and, on the whole, they are not very well behaved!

Since then they have become a regular and important part of her life. A lot of the time their behaviour seems to reflect her current or past behaviour. She takes on the role of ‘mummy’ through telling them off or telling them how to behave. At mealtimes they don’t like certain foods- she tells them they need to try new things. In the morning they don’t want get dressed – she tells them that they can’t wear their pyjamas all day. At bathtime they splash and misbehave – she tells them to calm down or they’ll have to get out of the bath. Most of her conversations with them seem to focus on their behaviour or what they like and don’t like. They are there, every day, many times a day. She sometimes seems to talk about them more than she does about real people.

It is quite bizarre hearing your words to your child being repeated from that child to her imaginary friends. It’s even stranger when I hear her younger sister asking her how Luke and Judy are!

Is this normal? I have no idea and don’t know if I should be concerned that they are such a focus in her life or relieved that she has an imagination and the things that I try and drum into her about her behaviour, which often seem to fall on deaf ears, are perhaps being absorbed. I have been given some reassurance recently that this is the age where imaginary friends are quite common so I will try not to worry too much and see how things go over the next few months – and in the meantime, I will try to avoid joining in and talking to them myself!

 

Place of birth discussion on Radio 4

An excerpt from an email from Belinda Phipps, Chief executive of NCT regarding a discussion tomorrow on Radio 4:
“On Wednesday, Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 will be discussing Maternity Matters, and the choices that were guaranteed to all women. Among these is the guarantee of choice of place of birth – the guarantee that all women by the end of 2009 would have the choice between having their babies at home, in a freestanding or alongside birth centre or in an obstetric unit in a hospital.

The Department of Health are claiming that the vast majority of Primary Care Trusts are now delivering on these guarantees. This means that the vast majority of women should be able to choose between the three options above. Our research shows that 95% of women don’t have reasonable access to all three of these options.

I’ll be on the programme, arguing the case – that the three options aren’t realistically available to most of the women in England, and that where they are, all too often staff shortages or insufficient numbers of beds in units means that doors are closed and that choice is removed from women.”

Certainly true here. The nearest Birth Centre is Andover and we have a local GP practice that discourages home births (or certainly did three years ago). Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/ to contribute to the debate.

 

No babies no more…

My baby boy is two years old. How is that possible? I look at him and I see a composite of all the babies he’s been – tiny scrawny scrunched-up newborn, wide-eyed wobble-headed 3-month-old, giggly dribbly 6-month-old, pink-cheeked tiny-toothed 1-year-old, marauding guffawing toddler. And I feel torn in two: loving every new thing (today he picked out his name on a label for the first time) but mourning the loss of my baby.

I don’t remember feeling this first time round, and I can’t work out why. Maybe this time I realize just how fleeting and irretrievable it is, or maybe last time I knew that (God willing) I’d be doing it again, so there wasn’t the same sense of finality. Or maybe it’s just because C was a downright miserable baby, and I mainly felt relief as she grew older and more fun to be with! And it’s not that I actively want more babies – at least my head is clear that I don’t want any more. And luckily my head is in charge of family planning

So I have formulated a plan: I will have a very large glass of wine and possibly a bar of chocolate and bawl a bit about how my babies are growing up so fast. And then I’ll stop wallowing and get on with enjoying the next adventure.

 

Silchester School OFSTED

Silchester C of E Primary School was inspected 2-3rd December 2009 and received a very good OFSTED with an overall grade 2. I had heard a few poor things about the school, but reading through the report it reads as if these issues have been recognised and addressed. The report can be downloaded from the school’s website here.

 

Where have all the heroines gone?

Are we really living in an age of equality? Can I really expect my daughters to rise above stereotypes as they grow up? To embrace being active, assertive, to be leaders of men/women/people? Looking through Tadley library’s childrens’ books last month I realised that many of the stories that appealed to me: adventures, pirates, exploring, astronauts etc. had boys as the main character. After some looking I did manage to find ‘I Want to be a Cowgirl’, but Coswise didn’t get quite a lot of the jokes. 

Looking elsewhere for adventurous girl role models, I rented out several Dora the Explorer DVDs. They are great! Dora is active, solves puzzles, speaks two languages and is NOT BLONDE! Coswise thinks she’s exciting and particularly likes her backpack. Looking for Coswise Christmas presents we visited ToysRUs – always a dispiriting experience but this time I came out fuming. Clearly Dora has been licensed beyond all recognition. I can get Princess Dora, in a eye-catching purple dress (just what you need for hiking through Amazonian rainforest) and Megablock Dora, with a swing and picnic table with a cake on it (even Barbie has moved beyond swinging coyly with a cake in her lap). That was toy Dora’s lot. Diego, Dora’s cousin, gets all the 4×4 driving, animal rescuing, helicopter piloting he could dream of. Presumably now he has taken over, Dora can stay at home swishing her purple skirts and inventing the perfect buttercream icing, until he comes back to rescue her from the tedium. I just hope that in twenty years the toy manufacturers will follow through with Dizzy Dora – a doll clutching a miniature bottle of Bacardi that falls over every time you stand her up, and mutters ‘I used to be an adventurer you know…The things I’ve seen..Oh yes, (hic)’. So come on toy makers and publishers – where are the exciting, imaginative girl role models for my daughters?

All suggestions for fun, equal opps, pre-school toys and books welcome. Otherwise the sisters will have to do it for themselves…

 

Three lessons, no carols

This pre-Christmas week has been full of life lessons.

The first one got lost in translation: I took the opportunity the snow presented to teach Coswise an Important Lesson for Life. Two days later she was discussing dairy products with Daddy. Daddy had expressed a preference for green and red milk, but explained that sometimes we had blue milk for Baby Brighteyes.

‘Well, Daddy’ said Coswise very solemnly, ‘You must never drink yellow milk because that means someone’s wee weed in it!’

The next set of useful, if unexpectedly direct, lessons came at the local playgroup (0-5s)  courtesy of Doctor Dog (Amazon link here): Don’t let other children put their fingers up your nose, don’t play with your bum and then lick your fingers. Coswise hadn’t even thought of these possibilities until they were presented to her. At the end  there was one for Daddy: Don’t eat lots of baked beans and drink lots of beer, otherwise you will blow up. I am hoping Coswise will relate this one back at home.

Finally, the most important lesson of all, from a friend of a friend. Don’t forget to treasure your children every day, because you never know what’s round the corner.

 

Have your Dinosaur cake and eat it!

This time of year gets very busy for me with both my boys birthdays in December. So any short cuts are much appreciated.

I have another fantastic thing to share with you – ‘The Cake Kit Company’. Link below.

http://www.thecakekitcompany.com

They do all sorts of cake kits that come with the cake mix, throw away cake ‘tin’, coloured icing and even candles! Full instructions show you how to cut the cake up to make the shape of your cake and ice it, in my case a Dinosaur!

Although you don’t actually make the cake mix from scratch you still get the whole yummy mummy feeling of making your kids a fabulous birthday cake at home.

The cake itself tasted really good. You can choose between plain sponge or chocolate, I chose chocolate and it was really spongy. 100% better than I could have made myself!

The only thing I can’t guarantee is that you wont be up at 11 o’clock the night before the party making eyes, noses and red plates for your Dinosaur cake.

I think this was a very good cake kit and more than happy to recommend it- good luck and happy birthday cake making!

 

Message From Santa

I have to share this with you as I think this is one of the best interactive Christmas things on the internet I have seen so far.

I am obviously still quite new to the whole Children and Christmas scene but I loved this.

http://portablenorthpole.tv/home

Simply copy/paste this into your Internet Browser.  It is a video message from Santa which you have to prepare in advance for your children and there are different catagories depending on the age of your children.

My three year olds little face lit up when he watched his ‘Message from Santa’

I hope your little ones are as enchanted as mine.