MrsB

It’s been a weekend of mixed emotions. I have stayed away from newspapers and actually hidden them so that the kids don’t see the headlines. I am not ready to explain.

If I still lived in the States I know I’d have to explain, and generally I don’t shy away from deep and meaningful conversations with my kids (more with the 7-yr old than the 4-yr old) but living in London now I am hiding this story from them… I don’t know whether this is the right thing to do or not, but it’s what I’m doing…

Other than that, we’ve had some fun moments this weekend but also a whole LOT of moaning and tantrums :| I don’t know if other parents feel the same, but when my kids have tantrums that just last on an on and on and morph into moaning that goes on and on an on – I totally feel like I’m failing at this parenting thing. [...]

The next two weeks are going to go by in fast-forward mode – my calendar is full of notes, appointments and to do lists :| I no longer have Wednesdays off work to run errands, spend time with the kids or cook dinners. In addition, I’ve decided to join the “12 days of CrossFit” challenge at my CrossFit gym and that means that I have to fit in a class every freaking day from this Monday until the 14th of December.

There are also various work/school/nursery related Christmas functions AND a costume hunt for my little “Joseph” for tomorrow’s nativity play (eek!! so soon!!!) AND Christmas presents going overseas that need to be wrapped and posted asap. [...]

We love to read in this household, but I don’t usually blog about books. Maybe because for kids it’s the classics that everyone knows about – Dr.Seuss, Julia Donaldson, fairy tales, etc. + a lot of Estonian books bought during our summers there.

Earlier this year the boys got a book I had never seen or heard about in a party bag from a friend’s birthday – “The man who wore all his clothes”. We loved it as soon as we opened it – great illustrations, great story, lots of funny details to catch the kids’ attention. It involves a bank robber and a car radio that can never get the news right and the mystery of why is a man wearing all of this clothes at the same time.

Last week I saw a book by the same author in the library, “The children who smelled a rat”. Since we brought it home we have been reading it every night – it’s written in the same humorous style as the other book and the kids are totally in love and have memorised many pages of it :). It has a teacher who behaves very oddly and a bird who hypnotises a cat and a baby who’s in a runaway shopping trolley being chased by his dad.

Both of the books are like the kinds of movies where you have several stories going on at the same time but it all comes together nicely at the end. [...]

In 2 days my baby turns 4. Thank goodness it’s only 2 days away as I’m sick of hearing “Is it my birthday yet? I want it to be NOW! I want it to be TODAY!” Poor kid, maybe we should have kept his birthday a secret until it actually arrives :)

Compared to his mellow brother*, Oliver’s energetic to the max, always singing or humming loudly, and making HILARIOUS poop jokes or blurting out phrases from books at home and in public (yesterday on the bus he kept almost shouting “Sometimes you’re the winners! Sometimes you’re the loosers!” – from a Dr.Seuss book).

He’s also very much full of WANT! and NEED! and NOW! and RIGHT NOW! and NO! He sticks his fingers into his ears as soon as he senses a command or discipline in my voice. I have to ‘make’ him do things with the nicest voice possible and always raising my voice at the end of every sentence as if it’s a question and not an instruction to do something. Most of the time I remember but if I don’t and say something too seriously, he stops being responsive to me straight away. It can be quite an exhausting game. [...]

My firstborn child has never been very musical – he could memorise all the itsy-bitsy spiders and humpty dumpties when he was little and enjoyed Monkey Music classes, but he has never sang perfectly in tune.

At the beginning of this school year he said that he’d like to learn the piano at school. My initial thought was – a child who cannot sing in tune will never be able to learn a musical instrument. But then I changed my mind – if he wants to have a go then I should not be the one limiting him based on my views which may or may not be right*. (Besides, I always wanted to play the piano but my mother enrolled me in flute because my sister was doing the piano already. I didn’t stick with the flute.)

So I signed him up. After the first lesson he came home beaming and wanted everyone to hear him play. I was amazed – children are so freaking open minded – when you tell an adult “Now you’re starting to learn the piano” I’m sure that most of them will think “Great idea but piano is SO difficult! And it’s time consuming! And what if I’m never good enough???” Tell a child the same thing and he’ll say “Great! No problem! When do I start??” [...]

I made a decision on 1st of January this year to stop eating sugar. There are many reasons for why I did that and amazingly it hasn’t been as horrible as I thought to give it up. Since I know now much more about what refined sugar does to our bodies, I have been trying [...]

The first two days back at work after a 9-week holiday were a bit disorienting. After I got through a few hundred emails though and answered the question ‘how was your summer?’ 25 times, the rhythm of working life started to feel a little bit familiar again by the end of Tuesday. Coming home in [...]

I took July and August off from work this year and I’ve been thinking all this time that it’s 8 weeks total but I just checked – it’s 9. That means that I have been at home with the kids for 8 weeks already!!! No wonder I feel like I don’t know who I am [...]

I’m at home with the boys so we walk a lot every day, but I definitely miss my long Wednesday runs. And I miss having a bit of energy in the evenings to do some strength work – I’m amazingly tired every evening from just mothering and once the boys are in bed after 8 I don’t. do. a single. thing. any. more.

Holidays from work and just being able to hang out with them children of mine is of course great in many ways, but not having a clear structure to every day makes me struggle with exercise and eating a lot. …

A few weeks ago the boys were obsessed with Captain Underpants. Then Oliver figured out how to play Super Mario Brothers on Oskar’s DS and now everything in this household is about Mario and Luigi. …

Second week of stayathomemothering is in full swing.

The weather is totally bipolar, sunny one moment and raining the next so we’re constantly having to run for shelter and then put sunhats on a few minutes later. Or if we’re at home I’m either hanging laundry outside to dry or running out to collect it, repeating the cycle until it’s sort of dry. (we are definitely buying a dryer once we get the kitchen renovated next spring) …

I am not a baby person, for me the real fun of parenting starts when the kids can interact with me and by the time they can speak in sentences – that’s when it’s just perfect. I love hearing the stuff they come up with and I love giggling every evening with my husband as we’re talking about what the boys got up to that day. …

Just a few photos of the boys from tonight… Bonding over Super Mario.

These are photos from the beginning of last week when the weather was still nice. Weather at the moment – not so nice.

Oskar stayed home from school on Tuesday and Wednesday due to an ear infection. On Wednesday I was at home as well …

On Saturday morning I bought Oskar 3 Captain underpants books, by Sunday morning he had read all of them – it looks like they’re a hit when it comes to 7-year-old boys :) …