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Like Birdie, we pray with our children every night. Elder Son’s contribution is generally to tell us what he’d like to thank God for – typically either a specific member of the family (siblings are currently quite popular) or something nice but wholly random in the recent past (not always on the day it happened). Daughter’s contribution is generally to say ‘Amen’ loudly several times throughout the prayer (possibly in the hopes that we’ll conclude it faster). Baby Son’s contribution is either happy gurgles or vomit!

Tonight Daughter made a step further in her journey to faith by contributing to the focus of the evening’s prayers…

Mummy: “What would you like to thank God for tonight?”
Elder Son: “Having chocolate at Sarah’s house” (Sarah being a friend we’d just visited who’d shared her Easter Egg with him)
Daughter: “Cake!”
Mummy (to Elder Son): “Shall we pray she gets better too?” (Sarah has chicken pox)
Elder Son: “Yes”
Daughter (louder): “Cake!”
Mummy (to Daughter): “You want to pray for cake?”
Daughter: “My cake”
Mummy (trying to figure out if this has anything to do we the fact that Daughter missed out on cake for pudding because she hadn’t eaten her first course at dinner time): “You want to eat cake?”
Daughter (shaking head): “No, my cake”
Mummy (next guess): “You made cake at nursery today?”
Daughter (smiling): “Yes. My cake”

So we did.
(And later I found a squashed fairy cake with pink icing at the bottom of the bag Daughter takes to her day nursery.)
Tomorrow she can have “Cake!”

I sent Mr Standard off shopping with the kids this morning with strict instructions to buy himself a couple of pairs of jeans because I’m fed up of him wearing the holey ones.

At the counter paying for his trendy-but-cheap jeans Mr Standard notices a display of manly bead necklaces and asks Elder Son, “Do you think Daddy should get one of those?”
Elder Son: “No. You’d look silly”
Cashier: “You’ve got yourself a personal shopper there!”

It appears that I should send Elder Son shopping with his dad again; no beads were purchased. Although there is a four foot long helium filled shark floating in our dining room now that I’m sure wasn’t there before the shopping trip!

Mummy got cross last night. Elder Son and Daughter decided that after lights out they’d play again. This time bouncing on Mummy and Daddy’s bed. On top of the pile of clean washing that had been placed there. Mummy lost her cool and shouted. Elder son ran back to bed and stayed there. Daughter was carried back to bed.

Mummy went downstairs and returned to chores (cleaning the downstairs bathroom). Daddy started emptying the dishwasher. And then he was aware of a little being standing in the doorway watching him.
“Daughter, what are you doing here?”

Mummy hears Daddy (and realises that she must have left the stair gate open). So thunder-faced enters the kitchen and silently picks up Daughter to carry her back to bed once more.
“Hallo Mammy!”
Daughter leans cute little button nose against mummy’s nose, looks into eyes, and says again,
“Hallo Mammy!”
Mummy dissolves into laughter.

So much for discipline.

Learning to speak has a number of distinct stages (according to a speech development book I read recently)… and it’s interesting listening to my kids go through the developmental stages. But what I’ve noticed recently is that learning to tell the time also has its stages:

The first stage has just been mastered by Baby Son – he can tell when he’s day-time and when it’s night-time and sleeps during the correct one!

Daughter is at the next stage, when speech is beginning to be involved. After breakfast she’ll announce, “teef-time”. So we go and clean her teeth. When she sees the changing mat on the floor and she’s aware that she needs a nappy change she’ll say “nappy-time” and lie on the mat. And of-course she’s fully aware of what happens when we get to “bed-time”… or what to do when her brother announces “It’s mornin’-time!”

Elder Son is onto the next stage. He knows about numbers and will ask, “Is it 3 o’clock?” And he’ll often try and connect the time with an activity, for example, “Is 6 o’clock mornin’-time?” But his grasp of the time is poor and getting him to recognise that 6 o’clock is not morning even if the sun is up can be hard.

Actually mornings aren’t too bad. It’s bed-time, 7 o’clock, which occasionally can be a problem. Close the curtains and Baby goes to sleep, but the other two in the room (the 3 share one large room) are less easy. The other evening Elder Son told me that he and his sister were going to play at night-time. I suggested sleeping would be better and continued with the usual routine: stories, prayers and good-night kisses, then I told them it was bed-time and switched out the light. I closed the door and listened:
    Elder Son: “Shall we play?”
    Daughter: “Yes!”
    *sound of two pairs of feet jumping out of bed*
Baby Son remained asleep, Elder Son didn’t switch the light on (he can only reach by standing on a step stool and no stool-moving was heard!), and they remained in their room so I took the relaxed-parenting approach.
I ignored the heavy footsteps and laughter for almost an hour. Then at about 8 o’clock I went back into their room, and found them playing with an inflatable beach-ball by the light of Elder Son’s torch. I suggested that perhaps it was finally bed-time, and they both got into bed without argument and went straight to sleep!

Today, like Rosamundi, I’ve found myself wondering at the insanity that rears its crazy head as soon as there’s a few inches of snow on the ground.

From my window this morning I have observed the following:

1) The park across the road filled with boys and girls and mostly students demostrating their “mine is bigger than yours” attitude to snowmen.

2) A student siding down our street repeatedly on his snowboard.

3) His mate attempting, unsucessfully, to copy him on a skateboard with the wheels removed.

4) A large inflatable crocodile being carried past – presumably destined to be used as a sledge.

5) A ‘bloke’ wearing NOTHING on his top half.

What can I say. The city has gone mad.

We have three lodgers. Male lodgers. Occasionally they attempt to clean their rooms. Slightly ineptly. Sometimes I want to stand in the hall and shout, ‘Vacuuming up dust is not that difficult’. And yet for some it is.

The problem is not that they can’t vacuum, it’s that they expect the vacuum cleaner to handle a lot more than dust. We have a bagless cleaner. I am the one who always empties the cylinder into the bin. Dust is often accompanied by pennies, and occasionally a pound coin. I pocket the lot. To buy chocolate to calm my nerves. Sometimes I find rubber bands or pen lids. One day I found a whole biro in the cleaner. How the entire pen made it up the hose I don’t know, but it did. However, today went beyond even that.

Our vacuum cleaner has seen a lot of action today. Lodger #3 cleaned his room and then Mr Standard tackled the filo pastry explosion that was our tea. (Note to self: never give kids anything made with filo pastry again.) Mr Standard had some difficulty as the vacuum seemed to be reluctant to suck. Then it started to smell of burning. He investigated the situation. A formal black bow tie was stuck in the cleaner. How does anyone vacuum up an item of evening wear and not notice they’re doing it? I am speechless.

Today I received an official looking A4 envelope in the post. It contained a letter informing me that “a tree will be planted on behalf of [my] child at Coed Ysgubor Wen, near Tywyn, Gwynedd. Grid Ref: SH 625 063″.

It’s part of the Plant! initiative.

And it struck me that the initiative is slightly flawed.

The letter was printed, in colour, on paper that did not appear to be recycled. It was single sided. And, since all official stuff has to be bilingual in Wales, the letter was accompanied by a separate letter saying the same thing in Welsh. Double sided printing was obviously beyond their abilities. Oh, and there was a colour certificate too – printed on A4 card.

So, the Welsh Assembly Government’s initiative is basically this: For every child born in Wales from 1st January 2008 (like Baby Son was), a bit of a tree will be cut down to provide 1 A4 envelope, 2 sheets of paper and 1 sheet of card in order to announce the fact that they’ll plant another tree to make up for the ones they’re cutting down!

If you enter our house you may be baffled by the baby gates. There’s one at the top of the stairs – to stop the kids coming out of their room and falling down the stairs. There’s one at the bottom of the stairs – to stop them climbing up unsupervised and falling. There’s one across the kitchen doorway – to stop them attacking lodgers while they cook (or picking up sharp knives lodgers have left lying around after cooking). And there’s one across the ‘office’ doorway – to stop them messing up Mr Standard’s work papers (he works from home) or other precious ’stuff’.

Of course when they were first installed almost 3 years ago we didn’t want to bar the cat’s route to her litter tray (in the kitchen) or hiding-from-Elder Son spot (in the office). So we raised those gates about 5 inches off the floor so Mitsy could squeeze under them. And she did. And was happy.

Yesterday morning I was in the office and Daughter suddenly appeared beside me. I looked and discovered the gate was closed. Confused, I asked, ‘How did you get in?’ So she showed me. She laid on the front and wriggled backwards, feet first, under the gate. I am not happy. I will be spending this week lowering baby gates!

Some mornings Daughter has a snot problem. It seems to build up in her nose in the night. Irrespective of whether she has a cold or not. And first thing in the morning she sneezes. and then it’s all down her face. She generally comes into our room and stands there pointing at her face saying “nose” or “tiss-you” repeatedly until we wipe it.

However the other morning was a little different. We heard the sneeze and then Elder Son came running into our room shouting ‘help, there’s a snotty monster!’ followed by his green-faced sister. Even the grimest of child-related tasks can be accompanied by laughter when introduced like that.

Elder Son and Daughter are now at that lovely age where they interact with each other apart from their parents. When they were younger they needed Mummy to suggest they play bricks or cars together. Now they independently decide that together they will load the car transporter lorry with bricks and crash it into the nearest wall to see how much damage can be done. They may occasionally fight, but generally together they are better: play is more imaginative, punishment is shared and problems are solved.

Take, for example, bedtime. Bedtime was sometimes a problem. Elder son doesn’t like being alone in the dark much (See ‘Monsters’ post below), and Daughter doesn’t like staying in bed on her own. This week they’ve found a solution. Once we’ve put them to bed in their separate beds, switched on the nightlight and shut their bedroom door, Elder Son gets out of his bed and gets into hers- where they play, cuddle and eventually fall asleep together.

And we just lift them back into their separate beds later in the evening.

(Although buying one big bed and putting all the kids together in it has crossed my mind!)