Category: Parenting

Frunt teef

It’s amazing how quickly kids grow up. It feels like only days ago I could hold Elisabeth in just one hand. Now she is nearly as tall as one of my best friends – admittedly my friend is 4ft10 so that is not a massive challenge, but Elisabeth is only six. And not only that, she has also lost her two front teeth to make room for her grown up ones!

Elisabeth had her first wobbly tooth when she was 4. I was so not ready for this, I thought it wouldn’t happen until she was at least 6! Clearly I was wrong. Anyway, little 4 year old Elisabeth was very excited because when the tooth would come out the toothfairy would come! 

Wouldn’t it be lovely to just for a few days to go back to that world where there is a toothfairy, a Father Christmas and an Easter Bunny? 

The first few wobbly teeth were all excitement but the two front ones have been a bit troublesome. They took ages to come out and it hurt when she ate, dinner often ended up in tears until she as fed up with it and asked me just to pull it out! Brave girl. 

The first of the front teeth nearly caused quite a drama. Elisabeth had put the teeth in an envelope with a drawing for the toothfairy in it. It was all ready to be swapped for a few coins. A few hours later I’m in bed all ready to go to sleep. I am dozing off and all of a sudden I am up right in bed…

OH NO! The toothfairy!

I had totally forgotten about the toothfairy! So there is me in my half asleep state, wobbling down the stairs to find some coins – please let me please have some coins!!! – and write a note from the toothfairy. Phew, close call. I can only imagine how distraught she would have been waking up and realising that the toothfairy had not come! 

For the second front tooth Elisabeth wrote a note with a question to go with the tooth…


Just in case you can’t read it, it says:

To tooth fery how do I eta a apple with no frunt teef

Love from Elisabeth

To be so innocent again that your main concern of the day is how to eat an apple with no front teeth.

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Jacob and the big world…

A couple of weeks ago, Jacob went for his first day at pre-school. He was super excited and so was I because the first day I was allowed to come with him. So after lunch I changed him into his school uniform which he wasn’t partuclarly keen on but the promise of some chocolate seemed to help quite a lot (bad parenting, I know). 

He had great fun for the first hour, lots of new toys and a great outside space – pretty much Jacob heaven. But then it was tidy up time……and sitting still on the carpet and singing songs…….and having to wait until everyone finished their snack before being allowed to play again – pretty much Jacob hell. Not the best of starts.

The next day he seemed happy enough to get changed into his uniform (probably thinking he would get chocolate again) and walk to school. He seemed a bit cautious when going in but was ok. I was the one who was worried. I could see him spend all afternoon on the ‘thinking cushion’ (their version of the naughty step) because of not listening. Imagine my surprise to hear at pick up that he had been perfect and he had listened really well! I was proud of my boy, he’d done well.

Last week he started to realise that this isn’t a temporary thing and he was going to have to go to school every day now, apparantly this was somewhat unexpected and on Thursday he cried and didn’t want to go in at all. The teacher took him in and he was fine all afternoon but later that day he told us in tears that he doesn’t want to grow any bigger, he wants to stay small. It was rather heartbreaking, he obviously just wants to stay at home with mummy bless him. 

Unfortunately Jacob, that is not how things go in the real world and school is something you are going to have to put up with every day for a very long time, poor little lamb ❤️❤️❤️

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I’m back!

It’s been a while. A long while. A way too long while since I even logged on to WordPress, let alone wrote anything! But I’m back, well I’m trying to be (I imagine Arnie saying “I’ll try to be back” wouldn’t have made quite the same impact – ha ha).

Jacob has recently started pre-school 3 hours a day, and the weeks leading up to that, a lot of my sentences started with: “Well, when Jacob goes to nursery I’ll have a bit more time to do that…” so I planned to do a lot of things, and I mean a lot of things.

First things first though, I increased my hours at work. Working only two days a week is lovely, but it does not help ones financial situation much, so half of the hours Jacob was going to be at nursery I agreed to work. Luckily the amazing company I work for are really flexible and were happy to let me do the extra hours from home.

After taking off time that I spend walking to school and back to do the now 3 school runs a day, this leaves me with about 3 hours at home to do other things. In those 3 hours I decided to do the following:

  • Go for at least 2 runs every week
  • Cook lots of meals to go in our freezer for the busy days
  • Write at least 2 or 3 blog posts a week
  • Become a domestic goddess whose house is so clean it barely looks lived in
  • Catch up with some friends I haven’t seen for a while
  • And write a book

All of that in 3 hours a week.

I don’t think I need to explain why this hasn’t happened. Although in the first two weeks of Jacob’s new adventure (for details of this you will have to wait for my next post) I did go for 1 run, cleaned and tidied up our dining room and generally got the house in a state that, although it very much looks lived in, you don’t stick to the kitchen floor anymore. And the best bit is that I have actually finished the first draft of my first ever novel – eek!

Oh, and I have just written a blog post, but obviously you already knew that 🙂

 

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When you have kids, life can change in a moment. An amazing fun day can turn into a nightmare within a fraction of a second if a child hurts himself, or a rubbish day can turn wonderful just because of something  they say or do. And then there are days that go a bit like this: good-bad-wonderful-slightly annoying-horrible-nice and quiet-nightmare-lovely-thank God they are in bed!  Last Frifay was a bit like that……

Everything started off fine, Jacob was awake at his normal time (6am)  and Elisabeth slept quite late (the closer it gets to half term, the longer she sleeps). Elisabeth got off to school ok and I treated Jacob to some tv time, he has come down with a bit of a cold and as last time he had one we ended up in hospital for two nights because he had an asthma attack I thought it would be wise to keep him as calm as possible. This worked for a little while, but he is two and a half after all and they can sit still for about two and a half seconds. It didn’t help that we started him on preventative asthma medication the day before. He has never taken this before and reading the potential side affects freaked me out quite a lot (it was a huge list but it was the suicidal tendencies that really got me!) but I thought ought we should at least try it. He wasn’t himself all day, all the little naughty things he normally does seemed to be magnified and I really struggled to get him to listen, I say struggled, I mean failed! Luckily he had a nap so I could get some chores done and sit down for a cuppa for 10 minutes. 

After school we went for a playdate atone if Elisabeth’s best friends and it was there that it became really clear that he wasn’t himself. Normally he loves playing there and he plays really nicely with the girls. But not yesterday, I actually took him home after only  being there for a little while, luckily Elisabeth was able  to stay a bit longer and was dropped off home a bit later. Jacob calmed down a bit after coming home but he still wasn’t right. 

We sat down for dinner and both kiddos tucked in happily (sausages always does the trick) and all of a sudden for no apparent reason Jacob falls down from his chair, head first into the floor, the very hard, tiled kitchen floor. 

It felt like my heart stopped for a second or two. I scooped him off the floor and checked for blood, thank God there was none. After a few minutes of screamin he said “I’m all better now mummy”.  He is a tough cookie and clearly recovers from a shock like that a lotquicker than me! 

After all this we had a lovely movie night watching “Tangled” with popcorn and lots of cuddles, but my word was I tired after all that! 

Tough cookie 

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Kiddos talk

“Fishin!” is what Jacob shouts when he is finished with his snack, dinner, or whatever else he happens to be doing. This is an improvement to what he did before, which was throwing his hands up in the air and shout: “Silly!” 

He is the complete opposite to his sister when it comes to talking. Elisabeth didn’t really say a word until she could talk in full sentences and she rarely said anything wrong. Jacob however is not too fussed about the correctness of his words, as long as we know what he means he is happy. So we get “fishin”, “bicyscle”,  “stool” (for spoon), “ass cream” (for ice cream), “ups and down”  (for  upside down)  and “mana” for banana. 

And whilst Jacob is trying to get his words right, my darling Elisabeth says things like : “you’re the best mummy in the world, even better than the Queen!” 

Happy Friday everyone! 

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Not so bad, considering

Yesterday morning I was all ready to sit down and write a post about how tiring and not nice my day was on Friday. Being a mummy is the best things in the world and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are days when you’re so tired, when the kiddos are so naughty and when there is so many colds, ear infections and other things going around, that you just can’t enjoy it all. 

So I was all ready to write and just popped onto facebook to check out how some of my Dutch friends were doing (I love facebook for enabling me to keep up with what people in Holland are doing even if I don’t get round to speaking to them) and it hit me right in the face…..

What was I complaining about. 

One of my oldest and dearest friends (one of those ones you don’t see but will always have a little place in your heart) has been dealing with the immense pain of a loss of life so awful that I have no words to describe it.

Another friend of mine, who is part of an awesome charity called Global Clowning (look them up and donate a few pennies if you can), is currently in Greece, dressed up as a clown, handing out food, clothes and a bit of laughter to refugees out there.

And I was complaining about a bit of tiredness, an ear infection and a cold. I felt ashamed.

I know that I am allowed to moan about my little problems even if there are millions of people have it much worse, and I know I will. 

But not now. Not today. Today I will mourn a loss that is not mine, today I will hope the poor refugee children will end their day with a banana in their tummies and a smile on their faces. And today I shall be grateful for what I have. Please take a moment to do the same.

Thank you and good night.

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I’m back!

Wow, you know you’ve been busy when writing is one of your favourite things and still you haven’t posted for 5 months! I know! Five whole months without as much as a word. Without trying to make excuses, the main reason I haven’t been blogging is that we have had a lot of illness over the last few months. I was ill pretty much from just before Christmas up to nearly the end of February with one nasty cold and/or flu after the other. And as soon as I was better, yes you guessed it, the kiddos got ill.

Jacob got off lightly the first time with just a cold that was gone within a few days, but Elisabeth was not so lucky and she was poorly for almost two weeks. We even got worried we might have had to cancel her birthday party, but she got better just in time…..or so we thought. Last week she again came down with high temperatures, sore throat and ear ache. Poor girl.

Because she is far too ill to go to school I have taken today off work (unpaid, eek!) to look after her. Normally I work from home when Elisabeth is not well because she is such a good girl and she happily lets me get on with what I need to do, but we have had so little sleep this week that I decided that and trying to work and looking after a poorly girl was just a bit too much. So a day off it is (which was a good decision because even writing this is making my eyes wanting to shut quite desperately!).

Anyway, winter won’t last forever so in theory the colds will go, and hopefully that means I will have a little more time (and energy) to write. In the next few days I would like to share with you my first ever published article about how my super brave grandmother saved the life of a Jewish girl during the Second World War, so watch this space!

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The end is near….

Elisabeth is getting towards the end of the first term of big girl school. And she is tired. She is very tired. She is very very tired. She is very very very tired. She is tired to the stage where if she drops a pen she bursts out in tears poor little lamb.

It is hard to see her get so upset and there is not a lot I can do about it, apart from making sure she rests as much as possible and she is in bed at 7pm sharp! But even worse than this are her strops. Oh my, does she throw a strop when she is exhausted. It is hard to believe that this is the same little angel who never really had her terrible twos abd who didn’t really strop or misbehave until she was 3! And again because she is so tired it is almost impossible to calm her down and sometimes it seems best to let her get it out of her system and just make sure I’m around and ready for a cuddle when she is done.

Apart from the tiredness she is doing really well at school. As expected she is super excited about learning to read. She now reads us a story at bedtime! Last night I heard her spell her brother’s name whilst she was on the toilet. J-A-C-O-B J-A-C-O-B J-A-C-O-B so sweet!

But I tell you what, I am so glad this term is nearly over. A few more weeks until she can relax and re-energise……..ready for the next term!

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Whasaaaaaaaaat?????

Jacob has finally decided to have a real go at this talking thing that we all seem to be doing. After months of just saying “ball”, “wow” and “mama” (which meant fruit, not me!) he is expanding his vocabulary.

After a 10 minute session last Friday where we discussed: “this is a banana” and “this is mama” he finally got it and he now actually calls me mama! Although he also still calls all fruit mama, but hey I can’t have everything.

He has been a very inquisitive little munchkin as well. If I had a penny for every time he points at something and says: “Whasat?” I would not have to go to work. Sometimes it is a bit tiring, most of the time it is cute and every now and then it is just hilarious.

The other day I went to the toilet and he came in with me. He was playing with some water in the sink, perfectly happy. As soon as he heard me do a wee, he turned round to look at me, pointed and shouted from the top of his lungs: “WHASAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?”

Love this little man, he is so funny.

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