Rocky the Ragdoll

We are now the owners of a male kitten who we brought home a week ago. He is 14 weeks old and here's how it happened. A has been wanting a kitten for a long time. I was reluctant because I have never had an indoor pet before that lived outside of a fishbowl. I've had rabbits, chickens and even a stray cat that used to come for scraps, but never an indoor animal. In addition, I had my previous pets when I was a child myself, I have never had my own 2 young children and a pet at the same time!

Naturally, when he had a discussion with the children about this kitten that was coming to live with us, there was no going back. He had done his research, spoken to a friend who is a cat owner, decided on the breed, and found a breeder. All while I was visiting my parents and siblings in Dubai. 

So far he has just been adorable. The day we brought him home he was terrified little bundle of fur and cried a lot for the next 2 days. Then he became very attached to A. On days 4 and 5 he became comfortable in his new home and was exploring every item in every room in the house but was still afraid of the children. And now he has stopped hiding, the children are very affectionate towards him and he returns the affection. 

12.12.12

Well today was a special day for a few reasons. First of all the date itself, 12.12.12 apparently a date like this will not happen again until the 30th century! I spent the morning buying gifts in Harrow, and K and I had lunch at Debenhams. He chose a Gruffalo jumper for himself and some cosy slipper socks and a new winter hat. Here he is in his Gruffalo jumper with his sister.

 And more importantly for me today was the day of R's school Christmas play! She was just brilliant and when I think back to how she was last year she has come on in leaps and bounds in her confidence. Her class didn't have lines but she did an adorable dance and played instruments. She looked like she really enjoyed herself and I was so proud of her.
She's all grown up! I keep catching myself say this and I'm saying it quite a lot!
Here's what we had for dinner!

Scottish mussels and homemade fries, spring rolls and vegetable samosas. For some reason unknown my children love mussels! After they eat all the mussels they scoop up the sauce with a half clam shell. I decided to make homemade chips for once, and they loved these too! So I have now decided that one of our holidays in 2013 will be to take the children on a trip to Belgium where they can have moules frites to their hearts content!

Back to blogging

Oh dear, I've not been keeping up with my blogging as I'd wanted to. If I'm really honest with myself, it all went wrong last summer and I'm now regretting not keeping up to date, because my family and I really did have a brilliant summer. Oh well, you know the saying if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
There are things I have been doing though. I have been keeping a memory box and a memory book. Let me explain. The memory box is just an old shoebox which I get the children to decorate with stickers all over. It gets filled throughout the year with items that remind us of something we have done or somewhere we have been, like theatre tickets, seashells, paper place mats from a restaurant, postcard souvenirs, brochure or leaflet of a place we have visited and so on. The idea is that in years to come, we will look back at the contents of the box and enjoy talking about the memories.
It is a similar idea with the memory book. When I hear something funny, clever or just too cute, I write down the phrase or sentence in the book and the context of the conversation so that I never forget it. I also record their age at the time.  When the children are older, they will read it and laugh at themselves.
And of course, there is the obvious camera photos and camcorder but photos don't capture sound, conversation ,what was said etc. With the camcorder, it only captures what was happening at the time of recording but that might be something uneventful or mundane and often the best moments occur when the camera is off.
The camera has become something of a frenemy though. It's a friend because I always have it to hand, thanks to my iPhone, but an enemy because I never develop them! While I do regular back ups, I haven't been good at selecting which to keep and which to delete because I tend to take dozens of shots in order to get one good one.
Hence I am back to blogging. It is already half way through February in 2013 so I am already far behind but I hope to stay this time!

Wednesday Baking day!

Wednesdays have become something of a regular baking day with the children. During the school pick up time, it was raining heavily, very cold and very windy. It feels so good to be able to come home, shut the world out and get changed into our comfy pyjamas and warm slippers at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Then after a quick snack, sleeves rolled up, hands washed and aprons on!
R is so excited about her ability to read and write sentences so she was able to pick out the ingredients we needed from my baking bag. R and K took turns to crack eggs, whisk them, add the carefully measured ingredients as chosen by R from her Princess Book of Baking. There were no squabbles, arguments or rifts of rivalry. Just lovely pleasantness, chit chat and bonding, not to mention all the hidden learning going on!
I am full of gratitude for the quality time that I enjoy with my children. I cannot think of a better way to spend an afternoon with them when it's horrible outside than to work together on our little projects. Our next task will be making Christmas cards, and others we have lined up are decorating jars, scrap-booking and writing journals.
We turned out 2 batches of muffins, one plain and one chocolate batch. After dinner, we set about the task of decorating these with buttercream, jelly candy butterflies and multi coloured polka dots.
Then of course it was tasting time!

And the washing up afterwards.....

And finally a lovely cup of coffee from my new Tassimo T40 machine which I got in a better than half price deal!

My Girly Girl

I gave myself a pampering session and a bath but the most satisfying part of the day was nursing my poor little baby girl back to her normal self after a night of being sick. It was a relief to see that it was only a 24 hour bug and it went through her system very quickly.

My little R is a girly girl. She loves glitter, princesses, mermaids, Barbies, hair accessories, pink clothes, dresses with sequins and frills that twirl. She is choosy about the way her hair is styled and will not allow it to be cut, or even trimmed. I haven't been able to get her hair cut since she was 2 years old. All it needs is some tidying, but she refuses to have it cut half an inch. But I love all this about her! 

I find it fascinating that she is like this without my influence. As a baby, I used to dress her in pink babygros with heart and strawberry motifs but that is as far as I've gone when it comes to gender stereotyping. Most of her wardrobe is full of clothes of all imaginable colours, but the ones she wears the most are the pink ones. As she's turned 5 this year, I gave her the party she loves, which is a princess party complete with princess dress and princess cake. Up until now, she has not had a girly party, and there's no time like the present, because before I know it she might have grown out of the girly phase.

I had a personal training session at the gym which went really well. I found myself feeling very driven and determined. I promised myself that as soon as I go back to work, I will do some personal training sessions.
As I was walking home from the gym, I crossed paths with a transgender male. The man was dressed as a woman, in a knee length skirt, pick capped sleeve t-shirt, long, straightened hair, (possibly a wig?) and make up on his face. But what gave him away was his angular jaws, and his manly legs. I've never seen one in person before and it was strange to see him right there in front of me. I wonder how one ends up that way, being confused about their gender. It's such a core part of who we are, and the most fundamental part of out identity is whether we are a male of a female, yet some people cannot bring themselves to accept the body they were born with. What an incomprehensibly traumatic experience.

I then started thinking that some day my children will see these sorts of people and start asking me awkward questions. My daughter has already started with the questions. I love the scientific questions she asks me. Like, where does rain come from? How does it stay up in the sky? Why can we see the moon in the sky in the daytime and at the same time as the sun? It's endless. But I love answering them, and I often find myself stuck. I hope that both of my children never lose that wonder. So I make a huge effort out of making their learning fun.

I have a question of my own here: How can one person have so much capacity to love another?

Halloween Half Term

My plans for half term were to spend a lot of quality time with the children, as on school days the time in between school pick up until bedtime just seems to evaporate. There is always so much to be done during the week, whether it's a school activity, swimming lesson or playdate, then cook dinner, reading and bath followed by the bedtime routine. The one thing which we never ever miss out is our bedtime story. We snuggle up into my king bed with me in the middle and each child either side of me, with their chosen story for the night. It's the favourite part of my day, firstly because I get lots of cuddles and giggles, and second it means that I am closer to my daily 'me time'!

One of the quality time activities I planned was baking of course! R had received a cookbook as a birthday present as well as a baking set, apron and hat so we decided to put these to use. She took her time poring over every pretty picture of baked goodies and settled on a few of her favourites. The next step was to find all the ingredients and this meant a trip to Tesco because R had picked some of the most intricately decorated recipes that I did not have all the ingredients for. Luckily I managed to go on my own to do the shopping otherwise R would have wanted to buy everything on the shelves. It was just as well, because I very nearly did this myself! There was a 3 for 2 offer and I just had to make the most of this and replenish my supplies of baking ingredients. I now have a huge bag of supplies in the middle of my kitchen and I need a whole cupboard for baking! This means a major reorganisation of my kitchen, which I have left for another day...for now we can use them straight from the bag in the middle of my kitchen.

So far we have made chocolate biscuits and vanilla biscuits. For the first effort, there were ok but a little too greasy. I accidentally added too much sugar because I measured the wrong quantity and realised just as soon as I had put it into to mixture, which is irreversible. But the children still ate what they made and were very pleased with them. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the finished goods, but I did managed to get a picture of them in the process.

We also went to Bekonscot Model Village, which I have not been back to myself since I was a child. The weather was always going to be a nuisance as it is an outdoor attraction, but I had to take the chance as R has been asking to go for a whole week. As it turned out, the sun was shining on the way there, and when we arrived it started to rain. That didn't stop us as we had our umbrellas with us and we could carry on along the route through the village. Luckily the rain wasn't heavy and only lasted for 5 minutes and then stopped and for the rest of the time it was quite bright. The rain never dampens the children's excitement at whatever they may be doing. They were thrilled at feeling like giants among a zoo, funfair, castle, hotel, horse racing and mini steam train among many. We ended up going around the village three times and then they spent some time in the very pretty and colourful playground there.

Camera, Photo, Canvas!

I realised while reading back over some of my recent posts, that I have not been posting many photographs. This is really because I am hardly ever using my proper camera, but my iPhone to take pictures. My digital camera is not that great anymore, and what I really, really need is an SLR camera.
This brings me nicely onto the blog of a friend who is running a competition to win a 20 x 28 inch canvas from HelloCanvas.co.uk. You can read about her review of the canvas she had made, as well as the details of this competition on her blog http://allbabyadvice-blog.com/

This is the photo I would love to have on a canvas. Naturally, it's my two children and although they seem to be naturals at having their picture taken, this is not the case at all! Like most children, it is so hard to get them to both look in the same direction at the same time and I struggle to get R to stand still without striking the most ridiculous poses and face pulling stunts.
This almost acceptable picture was probably achieved after about 30 shots, and it's the best of many, many, many more!
So it will be a reminder of my hard work and a motivator to keep at it. One of my next goals will be to get a good close up of their faces together, and also one of me and them together, good enough to get blown up onto a canvas.
It is also the day before K is due to have his plaster cast removed, so this is probably the last picture taken of him with it on.