Sock Things

I didn’t find my camera this morning when the boys were doing Sumo wrestling in the sitting room, complete with sumo style clothing (or lack of it) so you have been spared that.

I did however find my camera this afternoon when Lucas and Anton were making sock things.  These masterpieces were made out of tin cans, socks, wobbly eyes and wool.  They have been created, cuddled and cosseted.

They’ve even had beds made for them..

and they even had a campervan made for them out of the baby trolley but I didn’t get a picture.

I was listening to Lucas playing in the bath with Anton later.  They were making an amazing variety of drinks for each other from the bathwater.  Anton is so lucky to get so much attention from each brother.  Oscar carries him on his back and play fights with him, and Lucas makes things with him and plays imaginary games and reads to him (or with us while I’m reading to him) every night.   I can also tell that Anton is very close to Dante these days.  Dante was grizzling on the floor tonight while I was trying to finish a story for Anton and he told me to pick him up.  It was also interesting that when we were saying goodbye to the older two for their weekend away and I gave Oscar Dante to hold for a minute, Anton cried out “Don’t take Dante!”  I think he feels very much a partnership with Dante and Dante rewards him with such lovely smiles even when I am saying “Just be gentle, he won’t like that” and Dante goes and laughs.  He really is the easiest, most rewarding baby imaginable.  He is just so happy and content most of the time, but alert and interested in everything.  He provides such lovely sane moments in my day when I can just snuggle in to his impossibly soft skin and revel in the thought that I am at least meeting someone’s needs.  I can’t see how he could be any happier.

Indoor football

My weekend

by Lins.

I’m writing this in the hope that Joth will blog about his weekend as he took the older two boys off for a weekend at Eyeshine, a fully funded weekend away for parents of 5-11yr olds to remember how to play and reconnect with all that really matters.   And it worked!   They have come back tonight clearly invigorated and excited by the whole thing.  Lucas was beaming from ear to ear and said how he wants to go again and Joth said that not only was it lovely to spend special time like that with just the two of them but that he also found that he got things for himself from it.

I would have been able to tell much of what Lucas enjoyed from it just by the way he behaved when he came back.  He bounced in and hugged us all and immediately asked Anton how he wanted his face painted.  Then he said he was going to say “Yes” to Anton all evening!  (One of the activities was for Joth to say “Yes” to whatever the kids asked him to play for 20mins.)  Lucas made a den with Anton with all the sofa cushions and read him endless stories.  It was really lovely.  I do think that Lucas hasn’t always had as much chance to be as “young” as he might have been had he not had an older brother.  I think he gets an enormous amount from playing with Anton.   In fact sometimes when I think he’s only playing with the playmobil or cars just to be helpful then I realise he’s completely immersed himself.  It’s lovely.  He always has had a wonderful imagination and has only just given away some of his enormous soft toy collection and stopped reading fairy stories.   I can tell Oscar enjoyed the weekend too but he was quick to return to his Youtube videos of painting Warhammer and then ran upstairs to paint some more.

And then Anton painted my face too (no photos of me – shame!)

As for my weekend with Anton and Dante, that was special too in it’s own way.  I had to tell Anton that the others were going to Acorns for a long weekend as that is the only place they go to without him.  We then embelished it further saying that it was going to be very muddy and wet and that we were going to have a special trip to Uncle David instead and the boys made a big deal out of saying they wanted to go to see him and they couldn’t and so on…   He was fine about it in the end but it did feel strange waving them off.  It helped that Phoenix was there to distract him too and we had a picnic tea on a blanket in the lounge while they played the Wii.  Anton was very funny with the dancing!

Bedtime was strange too as Joth usually sleeps with Anton and I sleep with Dante but I put Dante on a mattress on the floor and slept next to Anton.  Anton only woke once and Dante a couple of times so it wouldn’t have been too bad except that Katina had come over for the evening which was lovely – so lovely in fact that we were still chatting at 1.30am.  So I did feel wrecked at 7 when they both woke and missed my usual lie in (come back Joth!)  Once I had come round though I realised that an extra hour in the day makes quite a difference and we managed to leave for Bristol on time and without rushing.

We were held up in pretty bad traffic though so Dante ended up screaming for the last 40 mins which was horrible.  It was lovely to see my brother and little C though.  It was their first full day together since he had split up with his partner.   It’s obviously been an incredibly difficult time for them both and we’re still really worried about how it will all work out.   My brother has no job either as he left his job and rented flat to move to Bristol to be a dad.  He has two second round interviews this week though so we have all fingers crossed.  He’s kipping with a friend at the moment.  Still, it was lovely to spend time with him and see him enjoying being a dad so much.

I got home by 10 and I managed to put Anton to sleep again while Dante stayed asleep in his car seat.  There was a massive unsettling crashing noise in the back garden when I was putting them down which was rather unnerving and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even get the nerve to stick my head outside so I only saw that a tile had smashed on the table when I looked out this morning.  If that had happened when anyone was sitting there they would have been killed.

Today (Sunday) was lovely because Anton and I just pottered and Dante was as happy as larry.  I managed to do quite a bit in the house and also play with Anton and read lots of stories.  He’s still enjoying finding all his toys in his new room.  We had another picnic lunch and then picked some fruit from the garden to make a crumble for when the boys came home.  I have so loved spending calm time with Anton and have rediscovered what lovely company he is and how ammenable he is and easy to reason with.  It does help of course when it’s just us, not because the boys do anything wrong but it’s just that it’s busy and he has to up his game to get noticed I suppose.  I think he’s sorted out his potty training too now (that’s not saying that there won’t be accidents of course!), and the peace and quiet helped with that too.

All in all it’s been a great weekend.  I’ve really enjoyed shaking up the dynamics and doing things differently.  I enjoyed missing the boys and then feeling really pleased to have them back and I’m determined to make the end of this holiday a really good one.  I’m feeling very, very lucky to have such a wonderful family – they are such beautiful boys – every one of them.

Anton painting his “Warhammer” like the boys only his are little army men.

Who needs face paints when you have felt tips?

Where have we been?

So where have we been?  Ironically we’ve been more “in” than we have been for a long time but I’ve been spring/summer clearing out.  It’s been quite exciting actually as we’ve managed to sort out all the boys rooms so that Anton and Dante have one of the bigger front rooms (although Joth sleeps with Anton there while Dante is with me) and Oscar’s stuff has moved to the front smaller room.  He still sleeps with Lucas though in the bunk beds.  I find that I feel so much more comfortable with how the upstairs is looking and the energy it’s given us has spurred us on to sorting out our bedroom too as it still has the bare plaster from 6 years ago.  Joth has put the picture rails on today and we hope to paint it over the next week.   I have decided to try a more feminine look in there.  I’ve never done that before but I think maybe one corner of lace and lavender wouldn’t be such a bad thing in an otherwise all male household!

We even stretched to a new carpet in Anton and Dante’s room as there were holes where the old fitted cupboards used to be from the old owners.  We found an offcut from Tragos for £65 and a bathroom carpet for £16 (yes it is the smallest bathroom in the world) and a carpet fitter for £60 (including underlay for the bathroom – I felt guilty not giving him more) and it has made a huge difference to upstairs.  The boys keep gathering in Anton’s room and jumping on the bathroom carpet to enjoy the “squashiness!”  Anton has been loving having access to all his toys and books (Joth was using the nursery as a study before so he couldn’t go in there while J was working) and Lucas has been enjoying doing jigsaws with him.

The boys have been playing with Anton a lot, especially yesterday as they had a screen free day which I loved.  The day before that had become wall to wall Simpsons so I sort of challenged them to a screen free day and they agreed and at the end of it they said they had really enjoyed it, particularly Oscar.  It was a lovely day actually as I felt we were more “together” than we are when the screen is part of the picture.   For me it is the way the screen distracts us from hearing each other, and yes I get distracted by it too.  Yesterday the boys made a lovely lunch:  Oscar made savoury pancakes for us all (with buckwheat pancakes, pesto, cheese and an egg on top, all cooked and served by Oscar with a smile!) and Lucas made mystery muffins.  It was a lovely idea as in the middle of each muffin was a different mystery filling (jam, blackcurrants, choc chips, banana etc) but what made us laugh was that whenever anyone bit in to one Luc would ask what they’ve got and then say “Oh, that’s the one I wanted!” and we’d all end up swapping with Lucas!

And talking of the new carpet, I’m not sure that potty training goes hand in hand with such things but we are on round 2 of it.  Round 1 only lasted one day (a few weeks ago) as he got through all 6 pairs of waterproof training pants in the one day so I thought that was proof that he wasn’t ready!   This time he’s doing much better and has nearly got the hang of it.   I do feel it was easier with the older two but I think that is because the atmosphere was calmer then and I noticed when they needed to go whereas it’s all too easy for Anton to get lost in the noise.  Toddlers just need 100% attention and nothing less quite does I think.

Still, we have been doing some lovely things in between the sorting and the decorating.  I’ve taken the boys on a few trips, including one to Staverton.  I put all four of them on the big swing this time! (and forgot my camera.)   We also all went to a Family Sing Day at Dartington.  Despite the title it was aimed more at older children and adults but it was still fun and the woman taking it was excellent.  She spent too long warming up I thought and she lost a few people because of that who didn’t stay for the rest but I really enjoyed it.  The boys looked reluctant on soprano so she moved them to sing bass with Joth which I thought was a shame because they are obviously not basses at the moment and I think they might have loosened up over the day.  I feel really disappointed with myself that I have never managed to help them enjoy singing.  I can’t understand why because they are both musical and they both sing to themselves a lot (Oscar particularly is always humming and miming playing the violin) but they just feel so self conscious and uncool to do it in any sort of group.

The older boys have been busking quite a bit too.  They went with Sahila once to play Pachabel and earnt £20 each for about 1 hrs work and it made such a mockery of the pocket money (£1.50 a week) that I give them that I chatted to them about how they would feel if I stopped giving them pocket money but carried on enabling them to earn money by busking.  They would obviously have to stock pile in the summer more but they can still busk through out the year.  They could see my point and I feel comfortable in thinking that I am facilitating them earning their own money (by taking them in to town and being around in case of any trouble with the money or getting moved on, although that doesn’t seem to happen in Totnes).

They busked during the new Food Fair they are doing on the third Sunday of the month and I bought a Thai meal for that night with the older boys which was delicious.  We played “Lifestories” while we were eating, or at least used the cards from the game to spark stories and memories.  I am so treasuring this time where Oscar and Lucas just enjoy our company in a very uncomplicated fun way.

Potty Training and the run

No, not the runs thank goodness, just the one – The Totnes Fun Run.  I feel I could get them under the trade descriptions act for that description but still, the boys seem to trot off to it quite happily year after year although Oscar did look as if it had occured to him that it actually felt like quite hard work.   Hmmm.  It may not be so easy to get him out of the door next year.  Actually, it wasn’t very easy getting any of us out of the door for it as once again I’d only given us 25mins from me realising the race was on today to the starting pistol!   Running the race felt like the easy part in comparison to making it on time!  Mind you, that’s easy for me to say as I was only watching and doing the all important videoing:

Oscar looked like he did quite respectably, Lucas said he got a stitch in the middle and seemed a bit disappointed with how he’d done (which was a particular shame as he’d been the keenest one to do it) and Anton set off with Joth at a great pace only to peter out gradually and by the time the finish line came up (they’d only done half the course as they hadn’t done the 2nd lap) he took a great deal of persuading to bother to cross the line!  Bless him. It was so funny.   He really looked quite shell shocked afterwards and even the complimentary chocolate bar didn’t seem to fix it.  Let’s hope we haven’t put him off running for life.

It was a big day for him anyway as we’d made a big thing about having pants after the holiday.  White pants.  HUGE white pants (thanks to mail order) which incidentally are waterproof so that we don’t have to stay inside for the next 2 weeks while he works this one out.  He seemed very keen but I only bought 6 pairs and he’s on the last one already!  As Joth said, at least he now tells us when he’s done a wee though which he never does in nappies.  We shall see.  We can always slink back to nappies for a bit longer.

Joth and I have been using today to plan the next few weeks.  He will be getting back to intense work tomorrow but we also want to get the upstairs a bit more sorted before Oscar starts school and I’m feeling a chucking out phase is in order.  It would be nice to feel the house is a bit “lighter”.  It’s hard with four different ages not to save everything in case it’s useful to someone but I think sometimes that the good stuff isn’t always used or seen because it’s hidden under piles of other stuff.  Anyway, we plan to move Oscar’s stuff to the small front bedroom to clear his old room (where Anton and Joth already sleep – confusing) in to a room for Anton with the view that he and Dante will no doubt end up sharing and will need one of the bigger rooms.  Oscar seems all to happy to be getting a different room and it will be nice for Anton to have his books and toys in the room where he sleeps.

There is of course a huge amount of organisation that is involved in all this including getting a bed base on Freecycle, finding a cheap carpet (as moving the wardrobe will reveal huge hole in other one!) and selling lots of stuff on ebay.   My idea is as usual to sell more than I buy.  Repeat – sell MORE than I buy…

Another holiday!

How lucky are we to be having another holiday?!  And how lucky are we to have such generous family (Joth’s  cousin) to do house sitting for.  Their house is so beautiful and is right on the  banks of the River Wye in Herefordshire.  I always knew it was a lovely place to be but it seems even more magical now we are here and we’ve done some lovely things and just soaked up the amazing view.  We sat down for tea tonight and watched the wild deer come and join the cows in the field next to us.  It also seems very precious to be able to live in someone else’s house for a bit – it’s like being given a lovely present.  All that trust.  As usual, when I’m given something so nice it makes me want to give the same thing to someone else which all helps the world go round.

Quote of the day

JOTH (on reaching out to cuddle the ever cuddly Anton):  ”So who’s your favourite dad then?”

ANTON:  ”Mum”.

Birthday bonanza

Lucas’s birthday spanned a couple of days here with a party on the Friday involving an Eat as Much as You Like buffet at Pizza Hut  (the kids were free!) and Crazy Golf.  The Golf worked so well even though we were a group of 8.  I thought people would get fed up waiting for their turn but no one seemed to and even Anton was fantastic.  In fact I think he did amazingly, waiting for his go (even if he had several pushes in one go!) and keeping out of the way of everyone’s go.  He was a little star.

We then went home for birthday cake which was a swimming pool cake this year.   Lucas had given me plenty of warning of his request (he gets very excited about his cakes way in advance!) so I could source the necessary blue jelly (after my last failed attempt which looked like an algae affected pond)  and I needed the extra time as believe it or not I had to order blue jelly from Australia!  Thank heaven for the internet.  It arrived in plenty of time so I put somewhere safe, congratulating myself on my forethought and then – yes, I lost it.  Luckily Joth found it for me in the nick of time and the cake was saved.  I was pretty pleased with it and it was a lot of fun to make.  I love finding sweets to use and the candy necklaces to mark out the lanes and the fizzy sticks for the ladder were my favourite this year.   My friend Steven was visiting and together we made little figures out of fondant icing (I like to make sure everything is edible).  Lucas is the one swimming, Oscar is sitting on the side (and seems to have a pot belly), Anton is crawling on the diving board, and Dante is looking like a turtle (oops!) on the beach mat on the edge.  Fun, fun.  When asked (why did I ask?!) Lucas said it was a good cake but not as good as the Hogwarts castle.  Hmmph.  He just loves getting a cake though and I must say they had such fun with it this year laughing over the figures falling in and eating all the different sweets.  I put skulls and bones in the jelly water too for added something (sugar?)

Anyway, that’s jumping ahead because we only had the cake at the end of the party day after the Pizza Hut trip and a game of Crazy Golf.  The

On Luc’s actual birthday (the Saturday) he opened his presents first thing and was pleased to get lots of things that he wanted, and some things he didn’t know yet that he would want (like a Wii dance game that once he and Oscar had tried they have been on it almost constantly ever since!   It’s such fun!)   The only annoying mistake was the fact that I’d bought an Xbox game that he wanted for Xbox arcade instead of Xbox 360.  There were tears about that unfortunately – the let down was too much.  Damn.  That’s what comes of having a mother that tries to buy things more cheaply on ebay.

We had a brunch after they had played with some of the things he got and then they went to a Cameratinis orchestral rehearsal (with pizza and chips!) for the Totnes Show the next day.  Steven had to go home that afternoon but later the rest of us had a special treat evening with snacks and fizzy drinks while firstly playing the Wii Dance game with Joth and myself and then watching “Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thief” which was enjoyable but I always find myself wondering why they make all these films to a formula.

I think Lucas had a lovely day, as did we all.

Dear 9 year old Lucas,

It’s a special day for such a special lad.  I see you growing up – growing in your understanding and your knowledge of the world and yet keeping all your gentleness and empathy for others.  In fact, if we could bottle “Essence of Lucas” and sell it, the world would become a nice place (and I would become very rich!)

It is all too easy in a bigger family to pigeon hole people and say “Oh, that one’s the noisy one or that one’s the people person” and you are so much more than just the one thing – you are considerate, fun, clever, gentle, inventive, conscientious, loving, strong willed, emotional, beautiful, quiet, thoughtful and so much more.  In fact you are all things.  And you are all things to me my lovely boy.

Mummy

Home not so sweet Home

We’ve had such a wonderful holiday.  The trouble was that it has made coming back hard.  Our home looks so scruffy and dirty and the pile of washing is SO huge that it’s really quite ‘orrible.  Jax, I took the photo to make you feel better about yours!  This was taken even after the machine had done two washes.

Joth has to work tomorrow and I have a friend coming to stay, Lucas’s birthday to prepare for, and packing to be done immediately after the unpacking so we can go away to housesit at Joth’s  cousin on Sunday – so it all just felt a bit overwhelming today.  The boys were tired too after our 4am start and only Joth was initially cheerful but even he couldn’t hold out against the rest of us for long.   Shame.

So let’s think of the lovely holiday instead…

We did some really memorable things on the last few days of the holiday.  I’ve just been looking through the photos and felt quite tearful thinking how lovely it has all been and I’m kicking myself for any minute of it when I didn’t fully appreciate how fantastic and memorable it all was.  Even the simplest things were wonderful and the boys just entered in to everything so whole heartedly.

We went to Concarneau on the Sunday and wandered around the enormous market there.  We shared two kids meals between five of us (!) so Lucas could have the Moules Marinieres he wanted (he’s so aware that he’s not usually adventurous with food so he really enjoys being the one who loves these).  The old walled city there is really stunning and they seem to do touristy things so tastefully in France.  The boys bought the most enormous marshmallows to put in their hot chocolate that night and then we headed off to see a jousting show with horses and stunts in the setting of the walled city.  It was great fun.  Anton seemed to be loving it as he still loves his “horses”  but we were so close to them that it was quite overwhelming and every now and then he said “Can we go home?”   Ever since we left of course, he’s been asking to go back and see the horses!  I am finding though that one of the best things about having more children is that it takes the pressure off feeling that you have to win them all!  They don’t all have to enjoy it and show their appreciation for us to feel it was worth it. Two or three out of four is a good enough hit rate!

In fact the last day was a very good example of that.  We went to a maze in a corn field which I have always wanted to do.  A maze from Anton’s point of view seemed a little pointless (just pedalling around on his little bike never knowing where he was going) but he seemed happy enough and even when a strange masked wizard leapt out at us every now and then, which terrified the life out of the rest of us, he didn’t bat an eyelid.  How bizarre!  As Joth said, masked men leaping out of fields taller than you are is the stuff of horror films.  I tried to video it but then I dropped it in a panic when the wizard did jump out at us so the screaming on the video is real! It was all such fun though and the weather held until we got back when it poured down.  In fact that last afternoon was the only time it had rained all week and even then we managed to get the game of crazy golf in that we had been promising ourselves all week.  We just feel so lucky that we had had such great weather during the rest of the week.

Monday (the day before the last day) was particularly sunny and we went to the beach at Pointe du Trevignac.  It was stunning and we all went swimming, although it was my costume’s last outing – Oscar only told me it had a big hole in it after the swim.  Time to get a new one.  I might take it back.  An M&S costume should last more than 20 years surely?

We ended our holiday with a celebratory meal out in Pont Aven.  We all had drinks, meal and pudding (which we had held back on in the rest of the week) and the waitress was really friendly so it was a great end.  We set the alarms for 4am English time and slept for the last time in the caravan we’d got rather fond of.  Oscar said one of his favourite parts about the holiday was going to bed as he liked sleeping so close together and feeling connected.  The sleeping did work rather well as O and L shared a room with single beds, Anton and Joth shared a similar room (although with such narrow beds Anton slept well all week and then fell out of bed three times in the last night but didn’t  wake once!) and Dante and I shared a double bed.

And the journey home?  Uneventful and even rather pleasant which makes us think that we could possibly do this trip to Brittany again.  The boys really want to.  So do I – in fact tomorrow would be nice.