Now we are Four

Autumn turned 4 on Wednesday this week.  Obviously a time for reflection and fun.   I've been drawn to thoughts of my first year with Autumn, and I do remember lots of fun, but also a lot of sadness and frustration.  Fortunately, her joy and lust for life drew us on through the harder times.  We really struggled with the first year, the transition was definitely the greatest challenge of my life. Her first birthday was celebrated with a sense of relief that we had made it through.  I am so pleased to say that her fourth birthday was full of fun, family, friends, joy and love rather than relief.  You may wonder why the first year was so tricky, well it was a combination of factors, not least of which were the enormous amount of things I did in addition to being Mama to my lovely children.  At the time I was running my business as Antenatal teacher (I gave myself 6 weeks Maternity Leave) more than I gave myself from my voluntary position as Coordinator of the local NCT (a mere 2 weeks away from face to face work) - though TBH, I probably set to work only days after the birth.  On top of that we were renovating the house with a view to selling, and I was living in a fairly remote village with only access to 6 buses a day, and no car. Then set in a really snowy winter.  It was not a good combo, and that is before I even mention that my daughter struggled to feed during the day, I had insane oversupply of milk, leading to lumps.  Last thing to mention was my son found the entire experience simply horrendous... he underwent the process of grief of the relationship which we had, and no longer shared.  Grief over the arrival of someone who he was made to share everything with, and took over everything, and wasn't even fun. Fortunately, we had a lovely home to live in, enough money to buy food, pay the bills, and a steady income.  We continued to have the love of our family, amazing friendships which gave us so much support.  Also, by this time Facebook was really coming into its own, and I felt connected with others even when I felt isolated in our home.  I am so grateful to everyone who helped us to enjoy this time, and to move on from it in time.

So here we are in 2013, all those difficult things have moved on and are now things that I laugh about now. Evan and Autumn are now very close and particularly good friends, enjoying each others company so much.  We got over the breastfeeding issues by about 9 months, the lumps faded by about 2/3 months.  We now have another car, and live in a more accessible space.  I have rationalised my businesses and ceased my voluntary roles - recognising that my most important role at the moment is being a parent, rather than a supporter of other parents (though I still do that, but not, now at the expense of my own family)  I have learned so much in the past four years about my family, myself and how I live my life.  I look forward to re-reading this blog in 4 more years time and reflecting on how life has moved on in that time.

So to our week.  My mum came to visit from Thursday to Thursday so that she could share Autumn's birthday and take us on a trip to Chatsworth.  Our first photo is them sharing a game before we headed off that way.

The Octolab and Octonauts Megapack were complete hits of the day. (particularly with Evan!!!)

Grown up meal in Chatsworth sit down restaurant.  I haven't taken the risk of a sit down restaurant (rather than cafe) for a long time, but Autumn's fourth birthday seemed a fitting occasion.. I was glad of the paints that I brought with me though!!

It was pouring it down, so we ventured into the house.  True to form Evan and Autumn fully and completely explored the space.  Fortunately, the staff were very sweet about this, and offered some interesting snippets to enhance our day.

Bumping down the stairs!

Autumn also enjoyed dancing to my mum playing the Steinway piano, and other people playing the piano.  The guide remarked it was very avante-guarde!

To ensure we saw as many friends as Autumn wanted to her party was celebrated on the Saturday, and here is the cake - Tweak Bunny, Engineer.

Autumn was dressed as Dashi Dog, and Evan dressed as Peso Penguin the medic (his usual character).  In this photo she said she was going to sit on the cake with her bum!!

We had a staging area in the ahll, in the form of an ocean scene.  I took a few photos of everyone here.

I had a number of games organised, and here are photos of the Decorator crab game - you have to hold as many toys as possible for a specifiied period of time.  We also had:

 Pin the carrot on Tweak.  

Decorate a fish

Storys in the Story Reef

Pass the Parcel

Treasure Hunt

Dig your own Treasure (for party bags)

Autumn had some lovely gifts and cards which she was so pleased with.  Thank you to everyone who enjoyed the day with us.

Sunday nugget 29th September 2013

I have just read a lovely  blog (will link later)  which has a weekly snippets of their lives,  to give an overview away from the special outings and other stuff like that.   I realise that my blog is missing something without that,  do very inspired, I'm doing a Sunday nugget.

Me: enjoying the harvest part of autumn in all its abundance.  Apples,  elderberries,  blackberries galore.
Settling into our new home ed week,  fine tuning activities.
Abundance at Zumba,  and new project in the making of dance style workshops,  dusting off my lesson plans. Glad strictly is back on.

Evan : stepped away from constantly making things...  Having a chill out a bit at home.  Enjoying outings,  and the outdoors in general. Calmed down on the destruction of recent past,  with extra supervision when with friends. Helping me to plan and organise autumn's birthday party,  and presents.  Loving origami,  able to follow pictorial instructions.

Autumn : constant motion.  New dance class.  Enjoying strictly.  Joyful,  enthusiastic.  Reading well on reading eggs. Doesn't like pippi longstocking. :( mostly played Tweak 'burny'  and Cotton tail.

Deep day

Well, The Deep quickly became our second home this year as it is such an amazing, inspiring and thought provoking place.  In addition to the fact that it fits in with the kids love of The Octonauts so completely.  A passion shared with some of our friends.  One entry gets you a year pass, and we are certainly taking advantage of that.  Today, however, we went along with a large group of Home Educators from across Yorkshire, and had some activities to engage the kids.

The Deep takes a trip back in time, and then through the ocean from the coral reefs and lagoons to deeper sea with a 10 metre deep tank which is viewed at a variety of levels and angles. Fascinating creatures from clown fish being tickled by anemone's; Moon Jellyfish; Bio-luminescence; Saw fish; mud skippers.  a very atmospheric space which is best viewed early on in term time, before school trips have time to be organised, or on a hot day in the Summer - it is nice and cool.

We tend to rush round in the morning, hardly stopping, and then take a slower and more concentrated look at things on the way down after lunch.  We often do some things like a spot of observational painting or drawing at the lagoon or the coral reef.  Most times we've managed to get a bit of feely time at the exploring area, where we've touched urchins, starfish and velvet crabs.

Mid august and this is what is going on

Pat is sort of on holiday but is actually running summer school for y6/y7 s as they transition into the school.  Literacy week over,  games and outings next week.  Much more fun!  Though he did manage a trip to the national space place in Leicester,  which he has recommended to us.

Evan lost his tooth on my birthday after a week of wiggles...  Feeling that it might be a bit of a special moment.  Currently he has begun a tiger project. Inspired by Tom's lapbook on whales.  We have lots of great books from the library,  and making ideas.  He managed to earn enough money for the gup-x last week,  so both these things are pretty central to his life right now.

Autumn was really angry last night that Momo came and went home in 24 hours  (she was retrieving her car)  autumn continues to be strongly emotional about everything,  and love knee sits,  and exploring her strength whilst there (back bends among others) Storying and fully embodying the characters and story is one of the core features of where  she is a a presently.  It is fascinating to watch her.  We love her adult type phrases which add he is full of presently,  especially when slightly out of context.

I have been working on the magic,  inspired by Rhonda Byrne.  It is all about feeling gratitude for everything from the water we drink,  to the money /things we were given as children and finding things to be grateful for even in the most challenging of circumstances.  It is putting a lot of the things I've been working on with my self development together,  in a really meaningful and practical way.  It has seen me speak much more nicely to my husband,  find the joy in jobs which I previously saw as chores and negatively,  as well as feeling more powerful,  and sharing it with the kids too. I start each day with a list of 10 things I am grateful for,  and end the day on the best thing from that day while holding my magic rock.  I dill the say with the daily project too. All done alongside what I am doing anyway.  I am so grateful to Rhonda Byrne,  Chris Ojari,  who have inspired to go on this journey,  and my family,  without whom none of this would be happening.

Dressing up

Lily Bobtail from Peter Rabbit

Ginger Cat from Peter Rabbit 

Lily Bobtail at Bolsolver Castle

Lily Bobtail and Peter Rabbit - Rabbit bums

In my old bridesmaids dress

All Glammed up after a dip in the river

Glamour girls at freerange

Head piece

Pirate on Red Nose day

Cat

Mog the cat

Tunips at HesFes

Jingle lady

Just the ears and tails

Floaty fairy skirt

Gup-X

After a number of things were pointing to the answer,  we  finally listened and got the kids doing jobs for money in the house.  This worked for a number of reasons.  They had to pay for damaged or wasted items (within reason)  and on top of that Evan wanted to buy the Octonauts magazine every month,  but actually he really wanted to buy a new magazine every day.  Our pockets weren't willing to run to that,  and I was hopeful that this new scheme would have the consequence of helping the kids learn a bit  about money management,  saving,  respect for property as well.  I had resisted the idea for some time as I was uncomfortable with the external motivation that this promoted rather than my preferred way of working,  from internal motivation.

I got over my ideals,  by realising that the benefits were definitely going to outweigh the risks.

So since then we have improved participation in household chores,  and I feel less uptight about the motivation thing, as doing chores in the house is never going to be an easy thing to encourage, and I feel a little bit more in control of my life as well as things spiral out of control. 

So back to the Octonauts and the Gup X, which was the original impetus for this post.  This weekend Evan had earned enough money to buy the Gup X, at £25 this was no mean feat with his only income coming directly through his work around the house.  We had a Gup-o-meter to help him see his monetary progress (and do a little bit of maths as well).

The satisfaction he got from having worked towards this himself means so much to him, and he is very proud of himself.  His next landmark has already been marked up in his sights - it is the Gup Mega-Pack - a pack of a number of Gups, which originally was going to be bought by Autumn, but she is not very interested in earning money so not that motivated to do chores presently.  Prior to this project Evan earned money for Peso's (Evan's most preferred character) Gup, the Gup-E. He developed a short term and long term savings as on a monthly basis he buys his Octonauts magazines, without fail for the last 5 months.  We have given him an increase in the amount he gets for jobs since he planned to save for the Gup X, as it felt like he had to work too hard, and would lose motivation if we kept the piecework payment at 20p per job or 15 minute unit of time. It is now nicely settled at 60p, which seems to be enough to help him to get to his desired amount, but not so much that it kind of feels a little bit of a token style gesture towards money management.

There have been a few set-backs along the way in the form of having to pay money back for destroyed or wasted items... such as the day he decided it would be really fun to smear the wall with all of my foundation and create a mixture using many of the different items in the bathroom... as it turns out the second of which was to make some liquid soap so he could clean up the mess. Immediately my blood boiled, but then I calmed down and listened and realised that he was trying to put things right, and maybe a little bit of experimenting with making mixtures, even really making liquid soap may help. (as it happens in the end, we never did this, but it can always be returned to if he is interested at a later date)

Going back again, just filling you in a bit about how Octonauts have shaped our lives... So for as long as Autumn has been with us The Octonauts have been a large part of our lives… It began with first watching the Octonauts on television. And soon progressed into a regular game at which both Autumn and Evan assigned themselves characters which were similar to themselves. Evan took on the role of Peso the Penguin, who is the Medic. Helping animals that are sick or hurt.  Obviously he had an affinity for this character, and would most of the time choose to be it during games, however, he found that occasionally when playing with friends others would like to be Peso, so Evan would sometimes play the character Tweak, the engineer, or occasionally Kwazzi, the kitten Pirate, who is the daredevil of the crew.

The games at the beginning seemed to evolve from Evan’s penchant for having games of cbeebies programmes with his friend Summer.  The first of which was Mr Bloom’s Nursery.  As time has gone on the games have become more intricate and more involved.  They have moved on from simply replicating a particular episode, into games where they really embody the characters they are playing.  The friends who have got most involved with these games are Oscar, who usually plays Kwazi, and Tom who will often choose to play Shellington, and Amy, his sister, who will opt for Dashi Dog.

I have had limited involvement in the actual games, my presence is definitely not a sought after thing in these games, but I have heard them, and listened to the conversations and play, and found them to be an incredible source of fun, cooperation, information exchange and actually played a key role in the development of Tom and Evan’s very important relationship.

Evan and Autumn will both invariably attempt to instigate Octonauts play with anyone, or everyone they encounter... to a mixed response.  One person who has shared the love nearly as much as we have is Oscar.  Evan was so keen to show Oscar the Gup-X today, that he brought it to the climbing wall with him.  This evening, after a good 5 hours of play ( not all Octonauts based) Evan said that the thing he was most grateful for that day was showing him the Gup-X, and he was so happy about this because of the excitement he showed about it.  

Interestingly, it was only on holiday last Summer that Evan and Autumn got their first Octonauts products, (my mum bought them some for them to play with on holiday). Up until that point it had been pretend play without any toys, apart from a medical kit which he put together for his role as Peso.
A few of our Octonauts stuff.