Simple Sunday

My boys are wild at the moment. Wild, testosterone filled and madly pushing at boundaries.  They are a lovely big handful, full of energy and life and completely exhausting, frustrating, annoying and exhilarating.

My eldest boy amazingly got himself dressed this morning, before I had even got up. Clothes seem unimportant to my boys. Like their mummy, if they could get away with staying in PJs all day, they absolutely would.  He proudly came in to my room sporting his new tall, skinny physique that doesn’t have an ounce of baby or toddler left in it.

His daddy is away for the weekend visiting grandma and I just had to take a photo for him of our baby. Our once 6lbs 3ozs tiny bundle of  baby that we brought home from hospital nearly  5 and a half  years ago is now showing signs of the teenager he will become. His daddy’s response to my emailed photo was “he looks like he is 14!” He certainly does, and at the moment has the attitude to match too.

Earlier this week, I found myself likening this phase in my boys’ boyhood as the dog phase; they need plenty of food, plenty of fresh air and exercise, lots of praise for good behaviour and lots and lots of treats (preferably sweets rather than dog biscuits).

I spent the whole of yesterday bribing the boys with these treats – M&S Percy Pig sweets and TV were yesterday’s treats of choice. I know, I know, I am a bad, bad mother.  I hasten to add that one of the bribes was the BBC’s wonderful Museum of Life documentary about the Natural History Museum, my beloved ex-employer, which seems slightly better than back to back episodes of Chuggington.

So today I woke up knackered but knowing that my bad ways must change. I couldn’t continue trying to control the kids with sweets and TV. Instead I would just try and fill their day with simple things to keep them busy, to use some of their boundless energy and that would produce something that they could say “I did that!” about, when Daddy returned home.

The day has been a part success. With some lovely times as well as some rudeness, a few squabbles, some tears and a refusal by the youngest to have a nap (I’m slowly losing that battle). Which meant by 4pm, when I usually resort to a  bit of TV while I tidy up and make tea, I had one tired child and one slightly astounded that I actually wasn’t going to turn the television on.

Anyway, the fun stuff has been fun, lovely, and simple;  so I thought I’d blog about it and pretend that all the other stuff never happened!

Orange squeezing.

Our eldest boy loves squeezing oranges. He loves our squeezer, in fact he loves anything mechanical. He also loves juice, so it’s all good really! The youngest hates juice but enjoys the whole ‘show of strength’ that squeezer requires. Anyway, for the cost of a bag of oranges, it was a very nice activity this morning. The boys worked well together, and took it in turns, and I got a lovely freshly squeezed glass of juice out of it. How long is it until they will be able to make my morning coffee I wonder?

Windmill making

The boys and I have been hard at work in the garden over the last couple of weeks sowing our vegetable seeds. There has been a slight mishap with the reception class’s swiss chard seedlings, which we have been looking after. I left them out in the sun the other afternoon and returned later in the day to find that the chickens had sat on it, eaten some if it and pooed on the rest. Marvelous.  Today we have planted some more that we hope won’t meet the same fate. We also decided to make some windmills to scare off the chickens, and hopefully any other birds, and also just to look really pretty.

We have made them from foam sheets and the only other things you need are some scissors, some corks, some long pins (I used quilters pins) and some sticks (which we acquired from my lovely friend Jo’s garden).

Here’s how we made them:

Take a square of foam sheet. Ours measured approx 20cms x 20cmsCut in approx 10cms from each corner.

Then twist in every other corner to the centre. Hold in place with a pin.

Then secure pin with half a cork.

Attach to your stick, et voila!

We made quite a few:

And watched them spin in the wind:

The excellent Yellow Moon

As there was no sign of anyone taking a nap this afternoon I suddenly remembered my box of arts and crafts goodies that I had ordered from Yellow Moon before Easter. If you like crafting with your kids and haven’t discovered Yellow Moon yet, then be warned, you may need to take out a second mortgage. This isn’t because it is expensive, it’s because you will want to buy everything!  They can donate a percentage of your spend to your local school or pre-school, so that’s worth finding out about.

Anyway, before Easter I ordered a load of stuff including these fantastic mosaic kits which the boys really enjoyed this afternoon – in between some running up and down the hall like maniacs, emptying the contents of a box of toys from the garden (gravel, sand rainwater and all) on the dining room floor and then clearing up with a freshly washed fluffy white towel!

The littlest needed quite a lot of help, but loved his finished product, and the eldest now has two on the go which he says he wants to finish tomorrow.

Well, my lovely husband has now returned, and I am exhausted, so I shall finish my G&T and say night, night. Have a good week x