DS2 sleeping 2

And again last night! This has meant that's he up and ready for the day between 5.30am and 6am rather than after 6am. You win some you lose some :).

DS2 Sleeping

Woohoo, DS2 slept 9 1/2 hours between feeds last night.

Homeschooling decisions

I'm slowly after almost 3 years of researching beginning to set down the curriculums we wish to follow with the children. Some of my thoughts I'm putting down here to not forget them as new and exciting things come up.

Religion
LOTS - mainly the liturgical wheel, saints and prayers this year.

Maths
Rightstart supported by MUS

Phonics
LEM
(Interested in All about Spelling at some point)

History (in time to come)
Either RCHistory or ABC Christian (need to check name of that)

Languages
Latin - still investigating
French - still investigating

Music
Guitar (taught by DH)
Piano (taught by me with aid of some program yet to be discovered)
Drums soon
Flute, Sax and clarinet later.

Art
How to draw books initially (I need to also learn to draw)

Science
Jury's still out

Other
Calisthenics
Possibly gymnatics or dance if above is not available.

will finish this sometime I hope.

New Year Schedule

DH and I sat down New Years Day (after not partying New Years eve - the weekend was then taken up with our old home still owned by my parents, which was trashed when a street party provoked by the tenants, broke in through the windows and trashed the home - this has reinspired me to get to work organising to take our old tenants to court who trashed a unit of ours and refused to pay for 4 months mid 2009 and had to be evicted).

Anyway, we drew up a new plan for our lives and scheduled when we would discuss in greater details the parts of our lives yet to be discussed.

We still need to cover
finances and budget (I am not good with budgeting, luckily so far DH has earnt enough to cover my desire for homeschooling curriculums and books (previously fabric and other craft stuff desires))
homeschooling
home maintenance

We covered our daily and weekly routine.

Our new routine (many things had evolved and were pretty in place anyway.

• 6am ALL wake

(breakfast, washing to be hung, dry dishes put away, breakfast dishes washed, DH to spend time with kids (he tends to play music with/for them)
Outside play when daddy goes to work

• 8.30am Mass on Tuesday
• 9.30am Homeschooling Co-op playgroup on Wednesday during term
• 9am Mass on Friday
• 9.30am Playschool on granny's TV as we don't have reception
• 10.30am library storytime on Thursday
  
• 10.30-11am lunch
• 11.30 naps begin for boys (DS2 sort of fits in)

I then try to school the girls a little - currently we're beginning maths
DD2 then 50% of the time has a nap about 1/2hr after DS1's gone down

• 3pm Playschool occasionally if they're bugging me and not playing nicely.
  
• 5pm DH gets home and I begin dinner
• 5.30pm baths if they're dirty enough (we bath often only every 2nd day)
• 6pm dinner - children are NOT allowed to spek until they have finished what's in their bowl and they get dished what they don't like first (e.g. the bolognaise and then they can have as much 'clean' pasta as they like when they're finished)
• 6.20pm dinner is OVER (no more begging, shouting, smacking, whinging etc. to get DD2 and DS1 to finish their dinner), anything not eaten is put away and served for breakfast and teeth are brushed
• 6.30pm bed with stories read (I was often missing out on getting to read to them and this way they're confined to their beds and not jumping all over me and complaining who's touching who and who can't see and DS1's attention span will hopefully stretch. )(DH washes dishes and cleans table)
• 6.50-7pm ish St. Michael prayer which we've all recently learnt (I can't believe the girls learnt it fast than us and they can't read) and 1 decade of the Rosary. I then stay and pray the rest of the Rosary in their room and DH continues remaining cleanup.
• 7.20pm DH and I fold washing and discuss 3 things (taking from the Celebrate Love weekend we did early 2005)

What was the hardest thing you found today?
What was your strongest emotion?
What did you most appreciate about your spouse?
(This we are really finding helpful in helping us to connect and briefly review eachother's day - otherwise we could go for a week or more without really talking.)

• 9pm I put on the daily washing (especially with 2 boys in cloth nappies) as the electricty is cheapest then
• 10pm I'm in bed with lights out having done my short bit of bible reading. DH has ranging bedtimes from 9.30pm to 11.15pm (a point of contention still as I can never remember what they are and he seldom abides by them and then manages to sleep in in the mornings a fair bit as a result)

The routine has done wonders and I still have dreams for it, but I'm very happy at the moment that for almost 2 weeks I've not had a washing dumping area, I know in advance what to cook (as it has to be done in 1 hour), My nappies are always ready and waiting in their drawers and we're not spending HOURS at mealtimes. Also I'm beginning to slot in where the formal part of our homeschooling will eventually happen.

DS2's routine and update

I am writing this post, as having babies always throws me in the deep end about what to expect. I can only ever remember small snippets of previous childrens' babyhoods. I remember distinctly that DS1 would sleep for 1 hour, wake for 1 hour all through the day at 3 months. DS2 however at the same age was waking for 1 1/2hr to 2 hours at a time and then sleeping 3 times per day of between 1 1/2hours to up to 6hours at a stretch, averaging a 3-4hour sleep between each 1 1/2hr - 2hour wake period. The late afternoon sleep shortened and at around 4 months he seemed to have moved into 2 sleeps per day, still of many hours and with about 2 - 2 1/2 hour wakes inbetween.

From birth it took us a few weeks to pull him back from about 11pm to a 7pm bedtime in line with the other children (this took me MONTHS with DS1). At 4 months (now) he goes down between 6pm and 7pm and the other children have changed to a 6.30pm bedtime. DS2 began waking only 2ce per night (sometimes even 1ce) from about 6 weeks from memory. Lately this has been slightly more frequent, but he can move around a little and is getting bugged by me in the bed. Up until last night he slept between DH and my heads. Last night he slept in a cot with one long side off. The cot is exactly the same height as our mattress (which is a mattress on top of limestone block crates to keep it as low to the ground as possible as for the previous 3 years we had a mattress on the floor, but this caused mould to grow. I have now taken the outer shell of the mattress off, so there is no mould and the mattress is thinner and therefore slightly easier to lift.) and is butted right up against my side of the bed. He went down around 6pm I think, then woke once when I changed his nappy upon going to bed at 10pm and then woke just before 5am and finally at 6am (though not interested in feeding). He and DS1 have both not been interested in feeding for comfort or for long periods of time. He often refuses the breast.

On his back he moves upwards pretty quickly by kicking out both his legs. He does clockwise circles pretty quickly too and uses both hands to grab at things to chew. He seems to be rolling front-to-back and back-to-front in one direction, but I've only seen it a couple of times on the bed. I have been surprised a number of times this past fortnight to find him on his back, or far away on the bed (requiring 2 rolls) still on his tummy, but in no way could he have got there simply by kicking or moving. This mornings sleep found him about 1m north of where I put him down, still on his tummy and so I think he may be able to move somehow on his tummy.

He's huge and I've just switched him into size 0 (age 6-12 month) one-pieces and trousers due to his rolls of fat and his big cloth nappies. DS1 is still in 0 trousers and some of the short sleeved one-pieces had to come directly out of DS1's drawers.

The cloth nappies which I love and have been using solidly for about 3 months now cannot handle him overnight and so I always have to change him when I go to bed, which causes him to wake and then feed. They handle DS1 overnight.

DS1 slept his first night on a mattress on the floor and was excellent. He went to sleep on it, stayed asleep on it and even kept sleeping after his sisters left the room from their squeaky bunk bed and out their squeaky door.

New tooth

DS1 new tooth FINALLY he now has 4 teeth at the lower front, the one on his right has just come through.

Kid's version

DD1 singing the Our Father (Janet Mead version I think) gets to the part where 'Our Lord needs snot'

I had to sing the prayer in my mind to figure out it was the 'Oh Lord lead us not'.