Story time

My favourite time of day is those 10 minutes before bed time, after bath time and snuggled in bed for a story.

Some of our favourites include:

The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Harry and the Bucket Full of Dinosaurs
Mog on Fox Night
Usbourne bedtime stories for boys
Tiddler, the story telling fish
Monkey Puzzle

 I like stories to be interactive; we talk about what we can see in the pictures, what might be coming next and how the characters are feeling. I like the children to count things, label colours and make the animal noises to bring the stories to life. We do have stories at other times of the day, in fact whenever the children ask for a story they can choose a book and I we will read together.

I love books, I love reading and having a kindle as well means that I always have the ability to read something no matter where I am. I would like my children to have the same passion for reading and not just one genre. We all need to read to learn things but, for me, reading stories whether they be children's stories or my grown up  literature (I love fanstasy books as well as sci-fi and historical fiction with my book shelves been cluttered with alsorts).

But, to read I need to help them learn to read and that starts with the letters of the alphabet which oldest and are have started on recently. I am trying lots of different things from acitivty books to encourge and develop pencil skills, posters with the letters, getting him to write them out on paper and his chalf board plus pointing them out when we are reading together plus his leapfrog pad has letter games which he is learning to play. It is going to take time, he is still stubborn and will do much more for pre school and for Grandma than he will for me but he is a bright little boy and i am sure he will get there given time.

Then, he can read to me. I can't wait.   

Half term

I normally really look forward to half term. It is a week when I had the children home, we could plan to do all the fun things that being in school sometimes got in the way of and it meant more family time. Now I am back at work it presented a different challenge. How to ensure that the children were looked after all week which out having to put them into holiday clubs. I feel very strongly that school holidays are just that, holidays from the school setting and children need those breaks to recharge themselves.

We are very lucky in that my husband works shifts so he was home for 3 days of the week. That left us with 2 days to cover – easy, a day of annual leave each.

I made plans for my day, I wanted a day that we could enjoy especially as I do feel that I am missing out being at work full time. The weather wasn’t too good and the morning didn’t start as planned. Youngest got out of bed and we had a trip to the doctors for antibiotics for a chest infection but we made some fun of it taking teddies with us to make sure that they were ok. Our next stop was the hairdressers and once again teddy was treated to a wash, cut and dry (minus the scissors).

Next stop was back home for refuelling. Smallest being poorly meant that food was not something high on her agenda and with both children obviously tired from the long half term I suggested a rest. What happened next was nothing short of miraculous. Both children snuggled down in their beds, with no fuss and slept. Unheard of. Oldest for an hour, smallest for 2 hours – both on the promise that they could choose what they wanted to do once they got up. Oldest very quickly chose to watch the Narnia film – the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of his favourites and he was as good as gold watching it with me until youngest woke up and joined us.

After this it was time for tea – both children love to help so I had planned a meal that they could help with. Oldest is gaining in confidence using a small knife to cut mushrooms and peppers and smallest has plenty if fun cutting out pastry shapes for pie tops but on this day I decided that we could make burgers. Beef mince, seasoning, an egg each plus some grated onion and celery and they got their hands in making the burgers for me to cook. The next job was setting the table with cutlery, drinks, sauces, salad and bread cakes.  

 Our after tea routine is the same every day – finish eating, upstairs for a toilet stop, washing hands and face and then play time until bath time. We find that keeping the routine the same keeps the children grounded, changes can cause a great deal of uncertainty and the resulting fuss is not something we find supportive of a good bed time routine. Bath time is followed by PJs, hair dried, tooth brushing and then into a bed for story time. One of my favourite times but more on that at a later date.

Both children were fast asleep within moments once we settled them – my husband having arrived home mid-bath time leaving us to have a quiet evening but I went to bed happy that my day during half term had been as good as I could make it, not perfect but it didn’t matter.

Looking to the future there are a lot of school holidays to cover – the long one in the summer being one that is slightly scary as we have to find a way to cope and I would be unrealistic to say that we would never resort to using the holiday clubs available. We just don’t have enough annual leave to cover everything – even with the shift patterns that my husband works. 

The Reality of Being a Working Mum

I have been back in work for 4 weeks now and the reality of it all has really hit home.

Guilt. Lots of it. My time has suddenly  become so much more precious as I have so little of it to spend enjoying the company of my children.

Why? 37 hours a week sat at my desk. Added to that a further hour and a half each day driving there and back. Adding their bed times means that my time with them during the week is limited and sometimes it is less than 2 hours a day. I figured that I would be able to make more effort at the weekends but we are all so tired - it is a long week for us all and it feels like the average Saturday is a calm and chilled out day where we all recharge our batteries. it doesn't leave much scope for doing some of the more exciting things in life.

I am really looking forward to half term as taking some holidays will mean that I get chance to spend some quality time but I don't have enough annual leave to do that for every holiday that they children get. For now my plan is to concentrate on the weekend, each one as it comes and hopefully we can do some of the fun things that are on the calmer side. I am sure that given time the school routine will become easier for them and, hopefully, for me too.

Guest Speaking

This week I have received an invitation to be a guest speaker.

I am so very excited as it will be at a prepare to adopt course - a course I attended 2 years ago! I remember listening to the adopter that spoke at our course, she was excellent. She was open and honest about her experiences and welcomed all the questions that were thrown at her.

If I had a time machine I might make a moment to visit myself from 2 years ago and tell myself that one day I would stood there, sharing my experiences with other people about to embark about the most amazing journey I have ever been on.

An expedition

Today we have been on an expedition to a large, well known retailer of toys. We were looking for ideas for youngest as it is soon to be her 3rd birthday and her second since she came home. It is exciting as this starts the round of 'seconds', that is the second of everything that they have had with us like birthdays, Easter, summer and will end with Christmas. We are really hoping that once we have had round 2 that they children will be even more settled and that they might start to accept that this really is forever.

Anyway, back to the expedition. We needed ideas. We had already planned to get her a proper bike which is on order (I am beyond excited as she is going to be over the moon when she sees it) but we wanted other ideas so we figured wandering round and seeing what she liked the look of. It didn't really work. She liked everything and nothing. I keep looking at the toys that I loved as a child - lego, play mobil, sylvanian families, my little pony - and I can't remember how old I was when I played with these things.

I think there is a lot more work to do but all of it is going to be lots of fun.