Happy pictures

Season Table:
Bump Picture:
View out over the fields near the farm shop, on a day so sunny the snow can't last much longer!

Not so sweet when you can hear the words...

I love hearing my children chat away to each other. Then I start to really listen, as I get in the car to hitch a lift into town with grandad this morning...

Jenna: Morgan, you're really smelly. Did you do a poo?
Morgan: No poo. NENNA mells.
Jenna: No, MORGAN smells.
Morgan: (giggling wildly) Nenna mells. POO!
Jenna: Morgan smells like a GOAT.
Morgan: (hehehe) Morgan POO. Nose! Morgan mells. (more giggling)

I'm still grinning.

More makes - and more trials...

Well yesterday I didn't get quite as much done (lol) but I did make this for the season table...


And this shopping bag, to play with the embroidery stitches on the new machine...


But, complaint for the day: The Toddler Who Will Not Be Wet.

Morgan HATES being damp. With nappies, this is great - it means even the less efficient covers don't leak, it means she takes herself to the toilet fairly often, it means less changing and less reminding and so on. With SNOW this is an almightly nuisance! I've run out of coats and gloves.

I dress them warmly. They play, they have a whale of a time.

After about two minutes, in comes Morgan, wanting her coat off and fresh gloves and new socks and more outdoor gear. Then she goes and gets the next lot damp. And cries for a change again. Etc! We have good outdoor gear, lots of pairs of gloves, and tough waterproof coats, but Morgan can't stand any damp at all. And more screaming, and more headaches, and more feeling stressed out.

To be really honest, I am starting to wonder if the medication is out of my system and if I can cope without it. The last week has felt increasingly overwhelming again, and that's why I'm hiding in craft projects and letting the children pretty much run riot. Not that a bit of running riot isn't a good thing ;) but it's starting to feel just a sneaky tiny bit like neglect... Like I'm trying to avoid parenting because I hate feeling cross with them all the time and losing it over a lot of nothing much...

I want to do the right thing for bump. But what if I can't parent Jenna and Morgan without the anti-depressants?

The Two Thing

I won't use the phrase "terrible twos" to do anything other than deny its existance ;) but sometimes two IS very tricky. :( I refuse to believe any age is in itself horrible or simply a trial to go through. Every age and stage has its own sticky patches, and every personality has its own tricky spots to negotiate. I clash with Morgan differently at different events and different milestones than I did with Jenna...

But...

ARRRGHHHH when will she be able to tell me what's wrong with WORDS?!

At least once a day Morgan hits some kind of obstacle, and begins to screech. Not only is Morgan VERY VERY loud, but she also has perfected the nails-on-blackboard noise that some toddlers are so good at. Now, I'm trying to see the positives to this trait of hers, and I'm *glad* she isn't a pushover and has learnt to cope with her current inability to express herself clearly by any other means...

But...

Yesterday she screamed and hollered so loud for so long, with me trying more and more frantically to understand, until I had to rush off to be sick from the stress and noise, and she followed me howling. The more it gets to me, the more distant and/or panicked I get, and the more frantic it makes her. I just can't wait for her to be able to talk more. :(

All I can say is, for the first time in five years, I understand why parents of toddlers screaming in shops would buy them sweets just to stop the noise. My previous self would probably have not used the phrase "rewarding bad behaviour", but I might have thought it secretly. Now I just assume they have a toddler who can make a noise like Morgan can, that every fibre of my being wants to shut up at any cost.

Bad Mummy moments abound right now. This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass... :S

The sewing machine has been plugged in for the first time...

... and I got a bit carried away!

BBO-style mei tai made with fabric bought especially for the purpose (about six months ago lol). So that's Martin's requirement that I don't buy any more slings til I've made up the one I've had in the works forever... ;)

Silk ring sling, using up yet more of the contested fabric stash, and so I suppose making room for more. I will not dare mention this when I proudly present my hard work to hubby later.

Patchwork blanket, more scraps used up, and another planned baby make done to my satisfaction (I loove the clashing fabrics and all those reds and blues and browns! These were some of my favorite little scraps!).
Also, two shopping bags, a gorgeous velvet placenta bag for our planned lotus birth (still to be decorated further), and a small teeny silk bag matching the ring sling - unfortunately disasterously ripped just as I was doing the last seam and I just can't decide how to ressurect it!

Meanwhile, the children have been singing ALL day, and making um just a little bit of a mess. I might just manage to tidy up a bit before Martin gets home, but if not, at least today there is definately something to show for everything I left undone!

When little hands are too cold to make any more snowmen...

... more crafts are the order of the day.

A papier mache sun to hang up when (eventually) we can take those snowflakes off the wall! He was made by cutting out a large sun shape from heavy card, a large circle for the middle, and a smaller circle on top of that. I glued those down while the girls were tearing up newspaper. Then we covered the whole thing with about five layers of paper and glue, and I used long twisted bits of paper to make the features before doing the top layer of flat pieces myself as it involved lots of smoothing down of very lumpy and yucky glue that I did NOT want to be washing out of certain children's hair. ;)

Just needs a coat of paint when he's dry... Or a couple of layers of tissue paper... I can't decide which.

Painting a watery wall hanging, in blues and purples. This time, with no batik tool, I painted swirls on with the end of a semi-melted candle (with no children in the room for previously stated reasons). Then the girls went mad with the paints, watered down a bit because we didn't have much left! When it's totally dry I'll iron it between sheets of newspaper to take the wax off. :)



Little spring gnomes, to help Lady Spring in painting the world green. Jenna is now demanding a smaller set of seven for playing Snow White.


Also today: gifts from afar, a cute little crocheted basket with knitted fruit (thankyou so much Joxy, the girls adore it!) and nappies (which Morgan seems not to leak out of so far, but then neither has she kept them on for more than ten minutes). What is it with this toddler and being stark naked? It's COLD. And yet she still comes in from outdoors, takes of every stitch of clothing including nappy, and runs around happily undressed. As you can see from pretty much every photo of her. IT'S REALLY COLD!

Anyway, presents. :)


Slightly less wonderful: as soon as I got everything out to make cookies, the phone rang. It only took that two minutes withme gone for Morgan to SMASH OUR LAST TWO CEREAL BOWLS and break two eggs all over the floor. Ack. Cue short hysterical hissy fit, followed by apologies (from me *and* from the teeny monkey), followed by a really major clear up.

Ah well, the cookies are so worth it.
Chocolate and cherry flavour, and not *quite* to Joxy's recipe because I've run out of coco powder and didn't have enough nice chocolate. Ah well, they're still very very good. :)

Cold but happy

Small children playing in the snow, now about two inches deep outside my front door.




Retail therapy. Well, Morgan sat in a puddle just as we were collecting Jenna from her dance class on our way back from story time (as you do, in the freezing cold of early spring...). We had to go get some trousers for her from SOMEWHERE and hoped we might find some more Nomads stuff in TKMaxx. Um, well, we did. A very cool but not exactly organic babygro for Morgan to travel home in.


And... A peanut shell pouch (about a third the price it should have been), Nomads Aladdin pants for Jenna (in pink!) and two shiny little goblets from a charity shop. Honestly, these things just jumped into my arms... I rang Martin about the sling, expecting to be told off, but he just said he can't wait to wear our new baby in it, and he loves us all loads, and can I please put the kettle on when he's on his way home?!


But we've been doing more of that art therapy stuff too, as the house isn't exactly its warmest and I resent using the heating when we all own plenty of jumpers. Felting...



Semi-finished cobweb felt, ocean colours for a wall hanging (can't see from the picture, but it has tiny silk fibres in blue and white and silver all through it, waste pieces from Rainbow Silks).


Recent baby makes; a felted rainbow jingly ball and a fun little green and purple pompom. Well the wool was too gorgeous to pass up, and I still haven't learnt to knit.


Needle felting skills improving, as demonstrated by Lady Spring.

With flash, to show the beautiful colours through her hair (yes, more random fibres from Rainbow Silks!).

Candlemas, and so much for spring!

Yup, we had a fairly decent snow here - just as we were heading out for a walk!



Candlemas evening celebration. Using up all of the old half-used candles. Jenna has helped roll some more beeswax candles too, but it felt a bit decadent lighting those already when we had such a lovely flickering display already.


No snowdrops around here yet, mine appear to have not bothered. But the poor little crocuses that had started peeping up in my garden might wish themselves a bit hardier over the next week... Instead we brought in the last withering strands of winter Jasmine, and some newly budding cherry, for our mantelpiece. No matter how wintery it suddenly feels again!

Using up the rest of the henna

The next morning, the children and Martin both got some Henna too, and we did my arm. These are definately my very favorite bump pictures. :)

Belly Blessing evening

So here we are, my equivalent of a baby shower, but without the emphasis on stuff, and a lot messier than the average pregnancy party too...
Hi children!

First, while the children were playing dominoes and eating marshmallows under supervision of Martin, HENNA! None of us had had much practice at this, but it was really a lot of fun (and certainly *one* way to break the ice)...
Emma,
Jeni,
And Lorraine!

Doing my belly-henna...



We made felt beads (just one or two each, because they took a lot of rolling). And after everyone had gone, I turned them into this! Thankyou so much for the extra trouble a few folk went to to wrap up the wooden hoop, you can see how gorgeous it looks all hung with decorations.



Feast! Tabouleh, pitta, humous, tatziki, salad, bean salad, falafel (or wherever the letters go in that one), feta and olives. Followed by cake and brownies. :)



And silk painting, with Emma's new batik tool and a pan of hot wax (Morgan nearly gave everyone a heart attack when she came into the room and ran right at it - eek). Recommended group craft! - but keep toddlers shut away somewhere until the wax is cold. :S

At least the older tots had the sense to keep back!

Isn't the finished baby blanket fabulous? Perfect in fact, and so much more special for being a collaboration.


My finished and dried Henna staining. Sunflower, pomeganates, vines, lotus flowers and daisies. And a little heart by Kim - and lots of dots (by everyone, because we liked the effect).