Common catch cries

We have recently let the boys watch the first three Harry Potter movies.  They have been supervised the whole time they were viewing, especially as we were unsure if the youngest would manage, and they have done better than I thought they would.  There have only been a couple of moments of fear or anxiety as evidenced by the high frequency movement of feet hanging over the edge of the couch.    In the third movie it was the Dementors that had the middle kid crawling into my lap, I'm not surprised it was the Dementors, just that it was the middle kid!

As a direct result of watching the movies we now know we have a wizard living in the house: "I'm not a normal person Mum, I'm a wizard" says T.

We have also had numerous wizarding duels with calls of "Expelliarmus" (and muffled yells of "smelly arm pits") and "Eat slugs" followed by much giggling on an almost daily basis.  There have also been requests for other spells to be remembered so they can add them to their repertoire.  I think I'm going to have to look them up.

This morning they armed themselves with short sticks wands and played outside for a couple of hours mixing potions and playing pretend.

Gotta love the inspiration provided by these movies.  We will be watching some more over the school holidays :-)

The end of Term is fast approaching

The past 8.5 weeks have been full of surprises.

The biggest one being how well and how quickly the youngest has settled into school.  By week three when I needed to help my sister out, I was allowed to drop them all in the car park and wish them well and the youngest refused one of his brothers accompanying him to class, "I can do it myself Mum".  Cue me being equally grateful that he feels so comfortable at school and appalled that I am no longer needed all the while rushing off to be in the City on time to help my sister out with her young kids.  There is no way I could have done the same thing with either of the other two 3 weeks into Prep!  Today was school assembly and the youngest received an award for "Praising his fellow classmates and reading like a champ!"  I think he is totally in the right place and am so grateful he feels comfortable and has a wonderful interaction going with his classmates and teacher.

The middle and eldest child have had trouble settling into the new year of school.  This was especially surprising in light of how the Preppie settled in.  H had a lot on his mind, he's learning more about reading the social cues around him and also doing his absolute best to not be distracted in class, so by the time he came home there was nothing left in him with which to behave appropriately.  Totally understandable but totally frustrating at the same time.  Two weeks in and he started to settle down which was a relief.  His teacher has helped with that, working with him and reminding him to focus when he needs to.  Z on the other hand always finds first Term a challenge so his issues have been no surprise.  Getting a handle on the other kids in class (he has amazing empathy and awareness of the other people around him) and trying to work out what everyone's "normal" is takes a while so he comes home with nothing left either.  This year was made harder by having a new to the school teacher and a classroom with no one in it from a previous class he had been in so he was learning everyone.  I've had a few conversations with his teacher now and I'm still reserving my final opinion of her, she seems to be ok about some stuff but there are other aspects that make me think "hmmmmmmm" she is an older teacher, which is fantastic in some ways, but she also has some very old fashioned ideas about stuff and I'm not sure where that will go this year, it will be a matter of waiting and seeing.

I have been lonely and bored.  The house is empty during the day, it's deathly quiet most of the time too, apart from when the kittens are playing chasey with each other.  I alternate between doing heaps of things and nothing and constantly feeling like I should be doing "more".  It's been quite unsettling.  It's not just the fact that all of the boys are now at school all day, it's also that for the past 3 years I have been volunteering at the kinder and essentially working a part-time job with all the aspects that take up brain power to go along with it.  Now there is none of that and while I have a whole pile of things I would like to do around the house, and craft-wise as well, I find myself totally unsatisfied with the thought of it all.  It doesn't help that I injured my shoulder the day I last posted and have been receiving treatment and not being able to do Boot Camp and swimming as usual so I have a lot of physical frustration happening as well as mental.  The shoulder was a soft tissue injury, mostly caused by inflammation so will resolve without ongoing issues in the future as long as I can maintain some semblance of patience and not aggravate it before it's sorted.

Let's just say I ran out of patience a couple of weeks ago....So I have been knitting to keep a grip on my sanity!

Since last we spoke I have completed a pair of socks for young T with yarn bought at last year's Bendigo Show - yes Kate that green we went back for!

I am halfway through the first sock of a pair for Z.

I have added a couple of inches to my jumper at the Botanical Gardens last Sunday while trying to ignore the sounds of the Grand Prix.

 I have started and finished a shawl.

 I have finished the cardigan for my friend J's daughter.

I have completed the first sock in a pair for another friend, M, I'm currently working on finishing this pair of socks asap, hopefully prior to a craft trip M is attending so she can wear them while she is away.  It's a very simple pattern so as long as time permits it should be achievable.

Another half a sock has snuck in there as well for J's husband G.

And a cowl also seems to have begun itself.

It's at this point I sigh and realise I have done an awful lot more than I thought I had done over this period of time!  It's always good to make lists and sit back and take stock of your progress, I can see it is going to be especially important for me over the coming weeks so I can appreciate just how much I am not "wasting time". 

A New Year

This year is going to be an interesting one.  Changes are afoot, natural progression ones and hopefully some self directed ones as well.

So far, we've been camping at the beach

and the seam sealer for the tent worked meaning that although it was a very rainy night one night, neither I nor the youngest had water dripping on our faces from the badly designed construction of the tent fly which puts too much tension in one spot and holds the seam open wide enough for water to get through.  Woot!

We also had windy weather (85 km/h gusts) and sunny weather (though not as hot as Melbourne), we had rough seas

and calm seas.

I got into the ocean twice for a swim and some other times to get wet to the knees.  It's not that I don't like the ocean, I just have a great respect for it and don't like to be bashed about by it, so yes the two times I was in it, it was as calm as a pond and excellent for playing throw and catch the ball.

This year was a rock collecting year

The kids are browner despite the sunscreen, two weeks straight of essentially outdoor living including a lot of sand and sea will do that for you.  They learnt a new skill: fishing.

I learnt a new skill: tying sinkers and hooks onto fishing line and threading bait onto hooks.  One cousin even caught a fish but we threw it back in as there were other plans for dinner that night.

The kids chilled out.

We had a cloudy sky with smoke in it that had my heart sinking and my mind thinking good thoughts for those at risk of bushfire.

We have booked next year already :-)

First business day back home saw me calling up three different shelters to see if they had kittens, the children have been very patient about waiting until we got home from camping, they have known since our second cat died in October last year that they would be getting new kittens after camping so Monday was it!  The closest one had the most kittens available at half the price so that's where we headed to and we came home with a pair of sisters who are 3 months old.

Careful Isabel (Izzy)

and Curious Caitlin (Cate)

have been making themselves at home here this week.  Cate has been into everything and Izzy is taking her time and is slowly expanding her play space :-)  They are very well behaved, quite gentle and we are all learning to walk without stomping as they are high speed movers when they want to be and we don't want to step on them.  They are staying indoors for a month and then we will see if we let them loose during the day.  This means we are having to be very careful with the doors at the moment although neither of them have become very interested in the doors yet as they are still getting used to the rest of their surroundings.  We have discovered a multitude of kitten size hiding spaces including spaces we didn't know were spaces.

We lost them for 30 minutes one day before realising they were hiding behind a bookshelf in the fireplace (yes that sounds weird but we have more books than opportunities to light a fire so the fireplace has been repurposed), they spent 9am - 6pm behind the kitchen hutch yesterday sleeping, they only came out because I was cooking our dinner and it smelled good!

Knitting last year happened a lot and I expect it to happen even more so this year as all three children will be at school.  So far this year I have finished a pair of socks for the eldest, I am halfway through a jumper for me

and have just started a cardigan for a friend.  I'm still searching for the right buttons for my stripey Tempest cardigan, finding the right grey is a bit of a challenge.  I have lost my black one in the week between Christmas and New Year, so I will have to fit making another one into this year sometime.  My plans for this year include doing some knitting and some sewing in the form of making quilts and possibly a shirt each for the boys (I've had the fabric for a while now) and sorting out the house and the garden (we have been here for almost 10 years and you could be forgiven for thinking renters live here).  At some point I need to make a decision about where my work life will go from here.  I've never had a full time job (and will only be looking for part time at this point) and the thought of job interviews petrifies me, so I will have to work on that.

So there you go, a New Year, a holiday, some new family members for our house and the welcome news that my brother and his wife are expecting a new addition at their house in July makes for smiley faces all round really :-)

Reflecting on 2012

 I would like to be someone who thinks about and reflects on the day/month/year gone by and learns from my reflections.  Mainly I forget to even remember to reflect, other times it is hard to take the time.  I tried to do some reflecting in December last year but wasn't in the right brain space at all.

A blogging friend recently posted about a month of prompted reflections - Reverb12 hosted by Kat at I saw you dancing.  One a day: you can write a blog post, get on twitter, or just reflect privately.   My preference is for the reflecting privately but I might pop by occasionally here and note my answer to a particular prompt.

This year has seen lots of small changes and some big ones, and as my youngest finishes kinder and heads off to school next year there are some more big changes about to happen, so a month of being prompted to think about different things sounds like a good thing to do.

The first prompt was: How are you starting?  And it made me realise that even though we are heading into  a very busy week/month ourselves, I'm relaxed, happy with where the year has gone and ready to face the challenges of the coming month in a way I have not been for the last 4 years.  So I'm happy and this is good.

The second prompt: Your most significant spend?  Now I thought this would be a hard one and then I realised it was actually an easy one.  I thought we hadn't done a lot of significant spending this year but there is one thing that I have not held back on the spending on.  Not to say we have spent exorbitant amounts of money but the purchase  has been ongoing and significant: books for the kids.  We get Scholastic book club brochures home from school and we are lucky to have the Scholastic Warehouse (direct sales at discount prices) nearby, so this year we have expanded the size of children's library of books significantly. It has had two major effects: the kids see that we value books and their reading skills have expanded dramatically.  With three boys in the house (aged 5, 7, 9) and a husband who confesses to not being a reader at all until after age 17, I had feared that our children, especially our second child,  would struggle with reading.  I grew up in a house where books were always around and important, we visited the local library every week/second week and borrowed numerous books that always were finished way before they were due to be returned.  I wanted that for my kids and we have always read to them and have at times been regular users of the local libraries.  Our eldest reads constantly (except when I send him outside to play!) and the same books get read multiple times, so having a library at home isn't a waste at all, it keeps him occupied!  The middle kid has clicked with reading this year in a way that brings great joy to my heart, he was ok at the beginning of the year (grade 1) but has come leaps and bounds during the course of the year, his teacher is so impressed, as am I!  Our youngest, who doesn't start school until next year is already reading very simple readers from school and picking up on the words written on things around him, sounding them out, putting a bit of effort in, getting frustrated but not giving up.  Seeing this happen over the course of the year I have been both apprehensive and proud.  Apprehensive because I want him to learn but not get too ahead of his peers, and proud because it has all been self directed, he wants to know so he asks questions, we answer them and he gathers knowledge and reading skills as well.

So there you go, Day 1 and Day 2 down, this might be a very interesting exercise!

PS If you sign up by 8pm tonight you can go into a draw to win a great prize :-)

Today...

Two got prepared

for a science experiment.

One made use of a shady spot

for reading.

and one worked on a knitting project :-)

The School Holidays

We're in the midst of the school holidays, J has taken the four days spanning the middle weekend off from work and it has changed how our holidays run.  There's an extra set of hands around and the boys and I all notice the difference.

We've had a lot on:
*A brand new niece arrived.
*My Dad dropped off an awesome box he made for me for my knitting. A friend spotted one on Etsy and asked if anyone knew of someone who might make them locally.  He made one for her and then a second one for me :-)

The inside with removable insert

The outside with beautiful detailing

 *A Birthday party for the youngest to attend.  
*The purchase of a long awaited and saved up for iPod touch for the eldest who also went off for a sleepover at Nanny and Poppy's.
*Knitting group on Tuesday: an excuse for milkshakes and treats.
*A visit to the vet for the ancient and arthritic cat.
*Cousins staying over and camping in the big tent in the backyard overnight and using the big swing.
* I bought a new cupboard to put my knitting in progress in so it's not all over the place.  It fits perfectly in the space available and both of my new knitting toys fit on top.

IKEA Aspelund Bedside table

*We went out for dinner with friends and their kids that we haven't seen in months.
*J took the boys for a visit to the big new waterslide that opened locally while I met up with some wonderful ladies to pick up my new toy.

Garnrollenhalter-or thing that spins (Lazy Susan) as yarn is used from outside of ball. This one is made from Oak.

*The youngest turned 5 yesterday, he wanted a chocolate cake with rainbow icing.  He was happy with my interpretation.

*Today the boys have all gone off to the Royal Melbourne Show together leaving me home alone for the day.
And that's all in the first 10 days!

On to Knitting:
In the past few weeks I've finished up some knitting.

Baby's hat

Smaller baby's hat

Kiss Me Kate by Mary Annarella

Maree's socks #1

And now I'm working my way at high speed through the next few items and carefully trying to avoid planning the next thing until after I have knitted the boys' next round of jumpers which they all could really do with now!

Pas De Valse for me, done both fronts now needs the back piece (in the
middle of the picture) done.

Monkey Socks for Em's Birthday in December.

Maree's socks #2

A hat to use up some sock wool.

Skyp socks for me.

So busy all round really!

Appi Arrives

I have a new baby niece as of 9:30 am this morning.  She arrived reasonably quickly a day before her due date and weighs in at a respectable 3998g.  I got to meet her this afternoon and give her her cardy.

The boys were looking forward to meeting their new cousin who has been giving them pokes and prods from the inside for the last couple of months.  The confusion will reign when they have to try to remember her out in the real world name :-)

Cardy: Maile Sweater, Moseley Park Barna (machine washable wool) in the colourway Tidey.  You can find my Ravelry notes here.