Category Archives: Butterbean

Getting going

a bit of a slow start to the morning due to feeling tired and lethargic, nothing much really happened between getting up and getting girls into the car to go to my parenst house. Had nice time there SB did some painting, sat with Nanny making some little William Morris cardboard boxe, A bit ofreading, playing with a few toys, such as some of the old toy cars from my childhood. Butterbean beaning around as usual, trying to sneak up the stairs – open treaded bare wooden ones so not very toddler friendly.

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She even got my Dad to read bit of a book to her, which is pretty unusal, not because he doesn’t really want to, but becuase he finds sustained reading a bit hard work as this ability was affected by the brain damage he suffered with his botched operation (years ago when I wasn’t even 2) and he finds it hard to concentrate on the words. Bit unfortunate that the book she had picked was a rather wordy one rather than nice simple book with not so many words. Anyway, it was nice to see.

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Had nice lunch there, went out to help my Dad measure up their garden. BB insisted on coming out as well, so got rather wet tights as the grass is damp and she has no shoes yet, she also kept scampering down the drive, where there is no gate yet. Guess it’s time to get some shoes. Got home with just about enough time to get swimming stuff organised, then off to swimming lesson for SB. home, pasta tea, Helen home, happy children, bath and bed. SB is getting to sleep much better recently.

Re BB and sleep, plan is to move her out into spare room /bathroom – it has a bath and handbasin, but shower doesn’t work and proper guestroom has a handbasin so not really used as a bathroom anyway see if that will help.

Alison and the gang are here tomorrow along with Merry and co – upping the ante on last week there will be 10 kids here – kitchen and play room in particualr are disaster zones, half wonder if there is any point in tidying them up ;-)

Dare I go to bed…….

BB is alseep at last I don’t want to disturb her.
Yes I know I should have been in bed but I’m not. Though Helen was in bed at 7.30pm and asleep before the girls – some sort of first I think. Butterbean enterntained me this evening by not wanting to go to sleep…… :roll:

Left her having a feed with Helen while I put SB to bed, hoping she would drop off . But she was as perky as, well, a very perky thing afterwards so I took her off downstairs got coffee and blobbed on front of TV while trying to convince her to sleep. She dropped off ok after a fuss, but wouldn’t settle into a proper sleep, but whinged if just put down to potter about. been in and out of sleep a few times, even ahd a bit of milk from a bottle, had another feed from Helen, fell asleep but then woken by SB wailing on the landing becuase she had woken up. But has finally been asleep on the sofa near me for the last 30 -40 mins or so. so I haven’t done the tidying I needed to do (playroom and kitchen a disaster zone), haven’t gone to bed as early as I intended, etc. etc. – But I do need my post child-gone-to-sleep time before bed. Lay bets now on the first waking time of BB, how long I can put up with the woailing before I crack – or Helen does.

Enough of that, a quick summary of today, then I am off to bed. SB was up with me first so she sat and watched some Milkshake on Channel 5, packed Helen off to work which was a bit sad. We slipped into a different routine really and I was quite happy with us both being here, so missed her once she had gone and felt a bit lost as I’d sort of forgotten how we did stuff.

So drunk tea and sat with SB for bit while I woke up properly. Then breakfast. BB then woke up once we had had breakfast so got her up, and gave her breakfast whilst read bit to SB, then she did some drawing, experimented with different effects with crayons, some Hama-ing:

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BB came up with a new game with Hama beads – popped them in her mouth then looked at you expectantly, you put your hand out and she spits it out into you hand she thought this was great fun. so we pottered like this for a couple of hours, whilst I looked for afew different recipes to cook and made a veg list. WQe were then goign to take the Beanmobile (aka tandem and trailer) up to the farm shop but BB decides that 2 hours was enough and she needed some more sleep – so deferred that until the afternoon.

Did a bit of Maths 1A weekly revision book, it was about spotting, working out patterns of numbers going up and down. bit slow to start with, but was better by the end.

bit vague after that, lunch happened, Helen came home, some more Explode the Code got done , me and SB did the veg run – they were technically closed as they were putting a new shel unit thing, but he let me in and I got most things, there was some Cbeebies website going on, some rather nice saucepans came (Ebay of course…) – a couple of medium largish ones, decided that all we need for now is a proper steamer as that is how lots of the veg get cooked (or stir fryed) I took too long cooking the rather tasty dinner so BB fell asleep before tea (probably leading to the problems later….)

Time for my bed I think……

Not a good start….

Helen couldn’t get to sleep anyway and had gone off to another room.

BB woke up at about 4.30 ish and was not happy – she screams (it’s not just a cry), she tries to scratch/grab you, she hits herself on the head face with her hands – even scratches herself sometimes. She did eventaully fall asleep again, but it tends not to be deep sleep and the smallest thing can wake her again.

By about 5.10, and a couple of wakings I was getting ready to give up when Helen appeared anyway as she had had enough of listening to BB. Of course a feed and BB was asleep, the rest of us, including SB who was woken by the crying didn’t ever really get back to sleep before the alarm at 6.45. :-(

Hope Helen’s day at work isn’t too bad.

A game of 2 halves

I know, I’ve used the title before, but it was.

had a migraine on waking – actually almost certainly stress induced about returning to work – wondering what the chaos will be ike, and the penalty for being away.

So, CHris took beanies for a swim while i took the meds and slept it off. At least it worked! on returning, I could hear Chris doing the ulysses story, and perhaps a few fairy tales as well.

So i got up at lunch time full of resolve! So we had a fun afternoon. In no order, we face painted - rofl! me as Im not quite sure by SB, and her as a piggie and CHris as a bunny [mpre rofl] by me!daddy rabbit!piggies go oink oink

did some drawing and colouring and sticking. Read various story books, played with the fuzzy felt faces, did 4 pages of explode the code [in under 10 mins as allowed her to choose which writing bits to do, but she had to do all the rest - she did half the writing]

fuzzy felt madness

She then told us her present best friend at nursery lives in this village. Now I’m not sure exactly how best friends they really are, as you don’t hear loads about her like we did about rosheen in leeds, but… we have decided to see if her mother would allow her to come to tea after nursery one day, or around to play – so the mum can meet us, or mett at the park etc. Seems a logical place to try for a village friend who she can meet up with perhaps when stops nursery. May well not work out as time so short, but worth a try. SB doesn’t really want to stop nursery, so we may well keep her there until Easter [last possible] – particularly if cements some sort of local friendship.

So SB then wrote a letter to the girls asking her if she would want to come and play, and we will write a more detailed one for the parents. if i’d have known they were local, I’d have made an effort to say hello at the nativity.

over tea SB keen to do some mental maths as well, so we were exploring the concept of adding in tens for the first time, as she seems to be getting there with her understanding of tens and units. Otherwise I told her a few stories and then she chose some cbeebies rather than playing a game, having tidyed p without any fuss. We had a lovely and easy bedtime, both are currently asleep, so Iwill watch the videoed child of our time. Missed the stephen poliakoff thing though as forgot about it – grr.

BB as pootled about quite happilly today, highlights are always the ramming things into the wrong holes with increased frustration until she puts them in the hatch – in fact she would go for this option first if my hand wasn’t there! A bit of drawing at the same time as SB – though a fair bit of crayon chewing too. She loves the mini keyboard toy, and is very certain of which buttons noise she likes the best. She also makes a special sound for whiskey cat – if i was truly besotted I would say she is saying whiskey, SHe isn’t but…

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Can’t find id card for tomorrow, which includes the carpark chip. Unless i find it, I will have to pay ?10 in the visitors carpark!!!!!!! [over 4 hours you see] they prefer you to park and ride, and i might do that if actually get out of the house early enough = always a problem!

A Day of Mayhem

On the sleep front, I finally got to sleep at 5am. not all BB’s fault though, SB woke up so I went in there, thought i might tay and avoid BB, but had insomnia – typical! When BB woke at just before 5, it was a bit of a relief to get the feeding done, then fell asleep. She then only woke 1ce more.

Thanks for advice in comments boxes.

So to today. ROFL! not a quiet day. We did some tidying so that there was room to tread in the house, and Sb did 6 pages of singapore maths 1a [thinking maths weekly revision] we whip through much more quickly if she doesn’t have to write anything. I read a couple of the library books. Sb dressed ready for guests in Belle costume.
The hordes then descended! Merry and girls and Kris [mud and mischief] and girls. What fun. instant mayhem as all tried to play a game [don't wake dad] for 4 [7 big girls and 2 muscling in babies!] I’m not sure that they ever actually played the game. Lunch went quite well, and various princess and fairy games ensued, with lots of different groups playing and then splitting and playing in a different arrangement – reminded me of those 7! type maths sums! All the toys upstairs were out – so I guess lots of fun. We did ice the biscuits – rather appreciated and very messy. forgot to warn that we have caterers food colouring, so not quite so water soluble. I did get most off most of the children. Maddy had a very good line in blue mouth – must flikr! SB had a couple of melts – more at the beginning, but it does seem to be her way of coping with things at the moment – very am dram! Josie was a good influence on BB, as she saw how to stuff her face and ram pasta in, so made a creditable show of eating! We nattered, looked at the garden and thought of seeds and vegetable plots mostly. Very little home ed talk anyway! myf had a go on the 10th size violin SB has – she needs a bigger one, and I’m going to say Elida trading for the ebay people we got it from, as they were very very helpful. i think if she wants one, I would go for a 1/4 size. If you think the others would want to play too, then 1/8.

Anyway, great to have you visit. I will flickr! [now running far behind!!] It hasn’t taken too long to tidy either – always a bonus – and we have found amelies beaker again!

SB clearly needed a chill by the end, so watched a Noddy video, and the start of monsters inc. now about to go to bed. BB looks not one bit tired! But about to be fedded and bedded!! Actually, BB is such a smiler, with a cute dimply grin on her. She hugs and comes running with a lovely beam! She seems very confident in her own world.

i am on annual leave this week [not sick leave] and tomorrow have a fair number of work related projects I want to lick into shape for my return next week – hit the decks running again. However, will try for early night tonight.

oh, and on the saucepan thing, we have gone for some ebayed circulon commercial [20cm saucepan with helper handle and 24cm 5.5l stockpot] and will get 20cm triple steamer from john lewis and a sturdy 18″ stainless steel saucepan [+/- another 20 inch] I unfortunately got outbid on the circulon ones, but don’t think these need to be non-stick particularly.

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Where did she go?

Dear Butterbean, she used to be such an easy going babe (and in manyways still is), as anyone at Melrose last year would remember. So where did she go?

Tonight had a feed from Helen about 7.45 and was soon asleep with me by about 8, Put her down after a bit, but she awoke at 9, cried and fussed a bit, sat awake for a while and then went back to sleep with acuddle. But only lightly, any attmept to put her down had her wailing. Once she spotted Helen at about 9.30 she was on full, ‘I’ve seen mummy wail mode’.

I put her down again at 10, within 5-10 mins she was awake again. Cried/fussed/wailed with me for 30 mins, off to Helen for another feed, but didn’t go back to sleep. I took her off to our bed at about 11, but took another hour before she went back to sleep, mostly not fussing, just being awake and wanting to crawl about, but she awoke crying again at about 12.50……… H is with her.
just up to bed now, after some belated kitchen tidying, ok lay your bets on how many times she wil wake up…..

still shattered

and must flickr!

quick blog then – as will again try for an early night! We hve a plan this time, that if BB wails after a reasonable feed, Chris will sleep with her in spare room, and just bring her back if he really does think she is hungry – controlled feeding – sigh. We are both sad to resort to this, but I just can’t go on with a maximum of 3 hours sleep, and also incessantly feeding. The last 2 days I have tried to stuff food into BB at every opportunity to make her less hungry at night. We’ll see if it works.

So today, having incessantly fed last night, I had a lie in. SB and BB went to the library, both to change books and for the story telling and crafts session. This itme on the senses. BB getting into it now as well. SB loves choosing books, both for herself and for BB. I was up when they returned, so did the usual reading marathon!

We followed about 4 books with 2 pages of explode the code 1, with me agreeing she didn’t have to do the writing today. After lunch I had a phone call from a friend who is happilly on maternity leave with her 4th child, and also contemplating work life balance. I had promised SB we would do some baking from the usborne fairy recipes she had got from the library. While I got out the stuff, instead of finishing the page she had left of explode the code, she did 2 more fresh pages. She has decided that without having to do all the writing, it is quite easy! She is also being funny by trying to work out how many syllables things have [though she is sure she means sentences!]. So dalek speech all over, both for letter sounds, and for syllables!
We baked some biscuits [vegan] for tomorrow, but haven’t iced them. I am debating whether to ice them first thing, or have that as an icebreaker [so to speak!] when Merry and girls and Kris and girls come. During this, SB did lots of mental maths unprompted, as we do things in cups, she was trying to keep a hang of all the cups we had used, and how many ingredients etc. Just simple counting and adding, but growing confidence to just do it.
We failed to get the christmas decs down though – may make a stab at it this evening, though planning a very early night!

SB had her first swimming lesson today, and was very happy with it. only 2 of them were without armbands, and they seem to have done lots of things and she thought it was great. so thats good. I stayed at home with BB, and had a good hour of solid, uninterrupted interacting and playing – we both found this a lot of fun.

girls in bath, but I hear a lot of wailing, so imagine BB about to come down – oops chris not happy. Must go!

Whirl of a weekend

katy and B arrived for the weekend friday lunchtime, which was great. we were disorganised as usual and grabbed the little beans from nursery. Cue the girls disappearing smartish! SB gave a guided tour which involved redressng both of them as princesses and off they went. Much, much later on the resurfaced to listen to the twelfth night story from while the bear sleeps and some apple tree farm books.

A few other standoffs were eased with colouring,games: hungry hippos and don’t wake dad, but actually they got on extremely well, and the standoffs were low key affairs. What amazed me totally was that after an exceptionally rowdy baths they had fallen asleep by 9.30 – what a result! It gave me and Katy plenty of time to natter, discuss wish lists etc etc.

Next day – to our shame, Katy was up first to accept a parcel before either of us had surfaced. In our defence it was cos BB had been absolutely appalling at sleeping! however, it was our seed order = hooray! SB and I pored over the packets, and she decided which were her favourites – in particular the popcorn sweetcorn!

big girls ran around, and BB pootled at our side being adorable. She is definately saying an approximation of look -ook, and pointing at the same time. SHe is a very inquisitve girl, and loves pressing buttons, and also the wacky wiggler cogs. her dancing also improving, with bobs down as well as wiggles, swaying and head shakes! quite the mover and groover. She was also doing lots of drawing – at one point joining in with the big girls – and this was great! Funnily, B kept calling BB ‘Small’ [from making it up] for the first evening.

After lunch the big girls made carrot cake with me, with all the labour absolutely divided equally – I do love using cups! Amazingly it rose as well!!! i must finally be getting this cake making busines [Merry, I need a prairie muffin badge before I ruin it!]. They did some Hama whilst it was cooking and then iced the cake [rofl - would you like some cake with that icing?] and ‘decorated’ it with sprinklies. At some point the playdough came out too.

What else? well, more demonstration of their imaginations, a start at a wacky wigglers robot, hide and seek, excellent 10 number bonds with hungry hippos [ha ha] and some attempt at the 5 times table using all the hands available [maths then!], a show performed by the light of some of the wackly wigglers for us too. Lots of singing of christmas carols in particular.

they went to bed eaily enough but not straight to sleep, they weren’t particularly noisy, but certainly shattered the next day. BB not quite so awful at night – thankfully. Poor katy, spending her weekend with zombies in a shambolic chateau!

Next day SB voluntarily got out explode the code – amazing!! Though she did tell B it was boring. We finished the wacky wiggler, and then did Yoga for children – as Katy had brought the DVD. Thanks Katy, just what i was after! Lunch, some violin playing and the home time. SB was gutted when they left to go home, and wished they lived next door. A few melting moments due to extreme shatteredness! I had a great time nattering as well, so a succesful visit, and looking forward to seeing katy and family in feb.

After they had gone we unwound, did some explode the code, lots and lots of painting, read loads of books together – SB remembered she hadn’t had her 12th night present, so we did today as 12th night read the story again, and got the little token present to go with the story. [another dressing up dress 2nd hand from ebay]

she has had lots of bumps and accidents, so ether drop down exhausted or expecting a growth spurt. BB ecstatic that SB playing with her again, especially when she read BB 2 of her books. Both have been lovely and cuddly this evening. BB coughing at rattling a lot though, so have given her some ventolin that gp gave us a while back but wasn’t sure whether to or not. hmm, wait and see.

AAAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHH

BB awoke at about 11 – is absolutely NOT going to sleep. So we are downstairs and she is being awake. we will try again for some sleep later [it is 01.41]…….

A quiet day

or so it seemed, with both girls at the lower end of their volume control.

I had refound the jump ahead toddler [with hopsalot] which SB used to adore, so she must have spent at least 2 hours over the course of the day engrossed in it. It is nice and simple for her now, and she was doing it without any input and feeling very confident about the ease she did these things.

We also raced trhough 6 pages of singapore maths – again nothing we haven’t done in different forms many times, as adding to number less than 10 – can be done in head or on fingers. Good consolidation of skills, and again she felt really confident there. It involved some writing, and she gamely tried to figure out how to spell all the numbers – rofl! I did help her as she is newly interested in writing, so want her to feel equally positive about that too. She did ten on her own.

We had a brief look at DK eyewitness world atlas – she was interested in the Africa section. Its for adults though, and having not looked at it before, I couldn’t really find what i wanted to, but still a passing interest. We went on to view pretty much all the mini films!

She briefly helped Chris look at the blocked drains – yuck! An then we did the dig out the dinosaur she had got as Xmas pressie – good fun. this one was one you then joined the bones together of. of course they aren’t joining, so are glued and hoping for the best! It came with pictures of 6 dinosaurs, so as we dug it out we looked for the things that would help us identify ours. SB a bit upset ours wasn’t the tyrannosaurus!

What else? well, colouring, making up songs, singing, playing with the toys BB got for Xmas! playing with Sindy’s – the usual stuff really. lots of books – but she chose jason and the argonauts as here greek myths. Only a few minor whinges. We continued the evening games theme, with Chris and SB playing the pipe game [round the bend from elc] whilst I cooked a moroccan influenced root veg stew with couscous.

BB today has had a lot of attention due to SB self sufficiency! We have stacked and demolished cups. doen the cylinder and sphere in the shapesorters, and then tried to ram everything else through those holes! We have played with the click clack caterpillar and the noisy footsteps, chase, bouncing songs and action songs. A fair bit of chase, and sticking stuff in the mouth just as mummy lunges to remove it [sigh!] She has been most intrigued by SB on the computer – and very keen to get a look in. Was enthralled by suasage rolls [veggie] and enjoyed peeling off the puff pastry to get at the sausage. not so impressed by the amazingly bubbly bath though.

Didn’t quite manage to finish this blog in bath time, so have special dispensation [from me!] to finish with a glass of wine whilst the girls have some fruit. Jax’s fault, as she *made* me do an extra blog [rofl!] Might add to it after pondering.

Oh, and I finally managed to order the veg seed – hooray! Sb and I looked at the catalogues together.

oh and barefoot has a sale, and while the bear sleeps is 3.99 I have been so pleased with this book – it tells various winter tales and traditions from various cultures

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