Happy Birthday to me!

We'll today is my birthday. Another day older than yesterday. No bother, my life is getting better each year so I'm not in turmoil that I'm no longer a 'youngster' lol.

I've had a truly wonderful birthday today. The last couple of years I've felt that I've not really been made a fuss of by the boys and husband but this year was perfect. They had gotten me lovely cards, a box of my favourite chocolates and an A4 Finsbury Filofax in Raspberry that I had asked for. I want to use this to start brainstorming homeschool ideas and also for meal planning and household bits. They also sung Happy Birthday on repeat!

My favourite birthday gift by far was the card that I received from Nathan and Ethan. For the last few weeks we've had a homeschool schedule in place just to start covering some reading, writing and maths. It's taken a few tweaks and adjustments but we've found a great rhythm now and I just need to add in some topic work and fun science type experiments and we'll be in a great groove. Here is what made me so happy.

I was so impressed that Nathan had written his own name unassisted and so we'll it brought a tear yo my eye :-)

We finished the day off with a lovely tea party. 

I've had the best birthday in years and feel very loved and lucky!

I hope you're Valentines day has been equally as nice!

Lisa x

We're having a girl!

That's right folks, a couple of weeks ago we found out that our baby is a little girl. If you follow me on Instagram (@lisarye) this will be old news-sorry!

We're very happy with this and she's doing great and growing well. Here's our latest picture:

And here's the beginning of her first blanket. Lovely and bright don't you think?

I'll be back soon. There's lots to add about our homeschool!

Have an amazing day. 

Lisa x

A Schedule is formed.

I decided that over the Christmas break I wanted to get a rough schedule in place so that we started covering a bit of the basics. Reading, writing and math. As it happened what with family being over, spending time generally being with the boys and Kenny time ran away with me (quell surprise) and it didn't get looked at.

I set aside Saturday morning to have a look through it and after 3 hours I had a rough schedule in place. Not a long period of time, just 15 minutes for each. I'm not sure how it's going to go and to be fair I tried to implement it after having 3 hours sleep which was crazy-I certainly didn't have the enthusiasm required and it rubbed off onto Nathan. I also had a  few activities in place for Ethan but mainly a couple of Montessori activities.

I would class this morning as an epic fail and I have completely doubted having a schedule at all. After all one of the reasons we're homeschooling is to make the boys learning fun and not have them sitting doing worksheets-exactly what I had Nathan doing this morning although to be fair, I only wanted him to do a couple of pages but he seemed to enjoy it and did 6.

I'm also at a loss on how to introduce ideas to them to spark an interest so that we can go down an 'interest lead' route? It'll come to me but any ideas/suggestions are greatly received!

Thanks :-) x

Potty training.

So a week ago today, we took the nappy off of Ethan (nearly2.5) and popped his lovely pants on. He was so excited bless him. I think he was probably ready a couple of months ago but what with the tiredness and nausea I had, he didn't stand a chance as I had very little patience.

I have followed Gina Fords book with both the boys and can highly recommend her way of thinking  with the whole just go straight to pants rather than pull ups etc.

Kenny thought I was a little bit bonkers but I felt in my gut that he was ready. And he was. I did doubt my decision after he had gotten through 6 pairs of pants in 45 minutes but then it clicked and now a week on he's pretty much mastered it!

He's so pleased with himself too! As he should be :-)

Happy New Year!

Why hello there lovely people!

We had a wonderful christmas and a very quiet New Years eve. In fact I was asleep by 9:30 last night and I woke up feeling amazing. In years gone by we would of still been partying until the morning and then sleeping our way through New Years day. I don't miss those times one bit. Yes we had fun but everything's different now, we're different. And I'm so much happier for it :-)

I always struggle at christmas. Since we've had the boys there seems to be a competitiveness between mine and Kenny's mums. I'm not sure what it is but they can't just be normal and enjoy being together. It makes family gatherings hard work and tedious. Don't get me wrong they don't not get on, there's just always an atmosphere. It's never easy. Kenny is far more laid back than I am but it really riles me which is why we don't have that many family things anymore. Not that I miss them, it's always me that has to host them anyway. Hey ho nothing will change so there's no point dwelling on it.

Looking forward into 2014, what are my hopes and plans? That's easy. I'm going to be more positive and rid myself of any negative outside influences. My mood is easily influenced so I'm going to make sure that it's only in a positive way! We'll start to be a bit more focused with our time with the boys and our homeschooling will kick up a notch this year and become more purposeful.

Goals for Nathan this year are for him to learn to read and write. This is just the academic part. The most important thing is that he has fun and enjoys learning and stays hungry for it. This will take a lot of work on my part as if I am tired or feeling under the weather I don't have the patience I need to have but I'm a work in progress on that! We're going to follow his lead on other aspects of learning for example we are going to kick off the new year with learning about reptiles as he is very interested in this at the moment. There will be structured reading, writing and maths daily but only short bursts and just to get a small routine in place.

With Ethan I'm going to do a little bit of Letter of the week and some Montessori activities, number recognition but nothing major.

I have just taken delivery of the amazing Spielgaben set which I will post about soon and will include some pictures of it being used. We will also be using more Montessori materials intentionally.

The playroom is going to have a big overhaul and makeover so I will be sure to take pictures of the before and after. This will be a work in progress though. I'm also going to include more arts and crafts, messy play, sensory tubs and we will cook at least once a week.

My personal goals are to stop procrastinating and get all of the above in place, I will also be blogging every day. Yep every single day. Even if it's not much. The idea of this blog was to keep a log of what we had been doing together and this hasn't happened at all, but it will do me good to look back over the year and see what we have achieved, places we have visited and hopefully happy pictures of our family. I'll also be using my camera more. Oh and having another baby of course! I've also joined the Instagram (I'm @lisarye) band wagon and will be crocheting a square a day so that at the end of the year I'll have a beautiful new blanket. I will be doing more crochet generally through the year as it's something I love doing. I need more colour in my life too and need to have a major declutter which will be happening over the coming weeks.

Sounds like I have an awful lot to be getting on with!

Happy New Year to you all and thanks for reading my rambles!

Lisa xx

Ever wonder why you bother?

Ever have one of those days where you break your back trying to make sure everything is great, running around last minute because you forgot some bits with your pregnancy fuzzled brain (maybe that's just me), and then when you present whatever you've been doing it's met with an "Is that it?" kind of attitude. Or "Can I have the TV on now?" Cue my day today.

It started well, we took the boys swimming this morning, as we do every Sunday morning and they were amazing. They've both been having swimming lessons and their confidence in the water has increased so dramatically in 6 weeks that it astounds me. Nathan will now swim in the deep end, albeit with a float thing on his back, but he'll also swim with his face underwater and jump in unaided. In fact yesterday Nathan spent his whole time in the deep end yesterday. Ethan is going through a phase where he doesn't want to go swimming but once he's there he's great. He too was jumping in unaided but stayed in his depth. Still great progress for him.

We then rushed home as we had my brother and sister in law popping round. The boys idolise Kenny's brother so it was a really great morning. Upon coming home from swimming we found these little fellas waiting for them.

The excitement was short lived and they soon ran off. Not quite how I was expecting it to go but hey. Both boys were very tired come lunchtime. Ethan has a nap everyday for at least an hour. Nathan rarely naps but he looked exhausted so both boys went to bed. Neither of them slept. Not a wink. Great.

We thought we'd take them to the beach as they love spending time there and the tide was out. Perfect crab hunting conditions. On went welly boots and coats and we set off. It was horrendous. We shoud of stayed home. Withing 10 minutes Nathan had tripped Ethan up so he was covered in sand and wet. Nathan then ignored warnings of going in the rock pond where there was deep water as he'd get wet. Do you think he listened? Nope. Did he get wet feet? Yep. Cue a complete meltdown followed by him taking his socks off, screaming blue murder that he wanted his wellies off as well, to which we said that he'd get cold feet. He obviously ignored us. Took his wellies off and within minutes was going nuts again as he had cold feet. Eventually we got back to the car, picked up fish and chips on the way home-shouldn't of bothered they were crap and got the boys in the bath. Bedtime was in sight!

I then remembered that at 7am I'd frantically been wrapping 24 books for a book advent I had decided to do.

After their bath I made them hot chocolate and we went into the front room to see what the surprise was I'd just told them about! To be met with nothing short of ungratefulness. They weren't bothered, I got the hump and my husband helpfully told me I'd picked the wrong time. I then went through different emotions. Were we raising spoilt children? Why didn't they appreciate what I'd done? Why were they more interested in the chocolates on the tree? Why does Nathan love the TV so much? Is it too much?

I then  put it into perspective. They're 4 and 2. Nathan only has TV at certain times of the day and after his bath is one of those times. Ethan doesn't sit still. What kid doesn't like chocolate? They were both exhausted. I was exhausted. Still am.

Excuses? Maybe but I have to think like this otherwise I'd never bother with anything for them and where's the fun in that?

What have we been up to?

As usual it's been forever since I last blogged-surprise surprise!

The big news that we have here in our household is that baby number 3 is cooking :-)

The first 11 weeks were really tough, the toughest I've experienced, bad sickness and terrible tiredness. I'm not sure if it's because I have the two boy that I have with me full time that made it harder or that this was just a harder beginning or my pregnancy.

Regardless I'm now feeling much better and more like a human again!

I'll leave you with a picture of our new little one :-)

Hope you've had a great weekend.

Lisa xx