Christmas fake-Danish-hearts

This post has been linked to learning cooperative ABC&123 - check them out!

This is a close-up of our Advent calendar. These are "real" Danish hearts. You can find a tutorial for making them here or by Googling "Danish heart baskets". They're fun to do if you're old enough, but no good for our five-year old. Also they're much easier with paper than with felt - I know because we tried felt last year. But here's what I'm talking about today:

This is our Advent "wreath". Cute, and much easier! We got ours from Ikea, full of tea-lights. Now the tea-lights are hidden it looks much better.

Here's what you need. Well some of what you need. Old wrapping paper or craft paper in various colours - we used both. Scissors, pencil, ruler, template...

You can use the template for making real Danish hearts too - click on the picture if you want a better look. To make the template, we used the bottom of a wine glass and then extended the sides till they were the same length as the diameter of the wineglass (you can see I've marked the identical lengths "A"). To make our decoration we needed to cut out four hearts from plain paper (any colour would do) because I wasn't sure about Froglet gluing stuff directly onto the backdrop. And for some reason I started drawing six. Never mind eh.

Don't worry about that little mark on the template where it says "plus a bit"- that's not relevant here. It just shows to make the cuts a bit longer so it's easier to weave the strips together on a real heart basket.

Here I'm cutting out the template from the coloured paper that we're using to decorate our hearts. Whatever colours you like - we always used red-and-green when I was little.

Cut out the semi-circle and then divide the square into equal parts - I think sixteen would be more traditional but we chose the easy option and did nine. Froglet only cut the little squares out because I don't really trust him with curvy lines yet for something that's actually going to be in the middle of the table for a month! Yes I know. One day I may be less of a perfectionist.

Glue your cut-out paper onto the plain paper heart, making sure your child knows to alternate the colours like a chess-board. Then stick your heart onto whatever you're using it for, if you didn't do that directly. I glued ours on a piece of gold wrapping paper cut to more-or-less fit around the inside of the Ikea candle vase...

Turns out I didn't measure that carefully enough and the vase is wider at the top than the bottom so it doesn't sit quite flat. But at least my semi-circles are well-cut-out. :-)

Advent activities - Week Three

The last week of school was a busy time

Baking and cake decorating

Sewing, knitting and crocheting
Ironing new patches on very old jeans
Reading Christmas books
Playing with friends
Building with Lego
Sledging in the wonderful foot-deep snow on the hill outside
And wondering whether Christmas will actually be spent where we intended...

Christmas cake shared with dear friends...

...who brought us this lovely gift

First gift from Froglet opened

Second gift adorning the shelf
in a beautiful bag he decorated himself at school

"We three kings of Orient are

With our psychedelic camels we travel afar...

...Field and fountain, moor and mountain

Foll'wing a felted star!"

Didn't Froglet do a lovely job on those camels?
Wooden shapes from the DIY store which he coloured with felt-tip pens and glitter glue.

Advent activities - Week Two

Froglet's wrapping paper made at school...

"Mummy, it has to go on the wall, Miss said so!"

Scones, strawberry and rhubarb jam...
with our advent "wreath" behind them...

We give thanks to Ikea for the flat-packed gingerbread house...
and to God for the fun we had decorating it...

A reindeer with handprint antlers to adorn the front door...
although he seems to prefer the floor...

Toilet roll snowflakes, painted pearl and white, strung together for a garland...
much prettier than our blinds outside...

Waldorf-style shepherds...
with misshapen sheep...

And we still have time to hide in boxes too!

Advent activities - Week One

Advent calendar finished and hung up...

Tree decorated with unbreakable baubles, to the great delight of one small girl...

Some Christmas cards made...

New Jesse tree acquired (last year's died) and Holy Family settled beneath it...

Great concentration is required for making jingle bell necklaces...


Pipe-cleaner, beads and bells for a lovely jingle bell bracelet/tree ornament!

I know I've finished my advent list for this year (and yes we are doing all those activities so far - and some extra too! and photos will follow eventually) but here's one to save for next year:

Winter Crafts and Activities for Little Ones from Rhythm of the Home

(I like the one partway down about making felted balls with a bell inside, which I would pair with re-teaching my youngest "Jingle Bells", but there are other things to do with small children too.)

Rhythm of the home is the newest blog on my list and I love it! So many amazing ideas for crafts or food... two of my favourite things. :-)

Stocking fillers

Here's what's going in our little ones' stockings this year:

A home-made Waldorf baby doll and carrier sling each, if I get them finished in time...
A balloon each
A banana, satsuma, piece of pear-and-rye bread each
Chocolate coins - one bag between the four of us
A piece of Haba pretend food each, probably a muffin or berry of some sort
A matchbox car each - Nutmeg likes cars just as much as Froglet does!
A bracelet for Nutmeg, which Froglet will help me choose.
An umbrella for Froglet, for walking to kindergarten with
A mini-archaeology kit (semi-precious stones to dig out of a block of plaster)
A spoon with a coloured handle each. We're always short of spoons.
A blank mini-sketchbook of some sort each, so we can start having family drawing time as suggested in this post from The Green Parent.

This year our stockings are also our main presents, because we know we'll get lots of things from the grandparents.

Advent activities list

Did you know Orthodox Advent has already started? For the Eastern churches (including Byzantine Catholics and perhaps others I don't know of), Advent is a time of fasting similar to Lent. A bit different to what we're used to here, and Priest's Wife over at Fear Not Little Flock has a rather lovely post about how she intends to celebrate it, following the Proverbs 31 model. Check it out! :-)

Here in the more Western tradition, I have finally organised my advent activities list. Not quite the same as last year's, and I think it's a slightly different set of Bible verses each day too, as there seem to be different variants of the Jesse Tree. (You can see the set we used last year here) The verses are not related to the activities in the slightest this year however!

Update: I've linked each week to the post showing (some of) those activities now that we've done them. This post is also linked to ABC&123's Show&Tell series - for lots of other great Advent/Christmas/general activities, check out their site!

First week of Advent
Sunday 28/11: Put up Christmas tree (no reading)
29/11: Make Christmas cards (no reading)
30/11: Get out Jesse tree, Christmas bookshelf and red postbox*; read a Christmas story (no reading)
1/12: Make Xmas cake (Creation: Gen 1:1-31; 2:1-4)
2/12: Learn Jingle bells (Adam and Eve: Gen 2: 7-9, 18-24)
3/12: Make jingle bell bracelets (Adam and Eve cont.: Gen 3:1-7, 23-34)
Saturday 4/12: Make stable and Waldorf-style Holy family (Noah: bits of Gen 6 and 7)

Second week of Advent
Sunday 5/12: Bake scones, have cream tea (Abraham: Gen 12:1-3)
6/12: New Christmas book about St Nicholas (Isaac: Gen 22:1-14)
7/12: Candlelight dinner (Jacob: Gen 25:1-34, 28:10-15)
8/12: Public holiday - Make gingerbread house (Joseph: Gen 37:23-28, 45:3-15)
9/12: Learn Away in a manger; Reindeer paper plate craft (Moses: Ex 2:1-10)
10/12: Make toilet roll snowflakes (Samuel; 1 Sam 3:1-18)
Saturday 11/12: Make Waldorf shepherds, sheep and angel (Jesse: 1 Sam 16:1-13)

Third week of Advent
Sunday 12/12: Make felted star, eat gingerbread house (David: 1 Sam 17:12-51)
13/12: Buy gift from World Vision (Solomon: 1 Kings 3:5-14, 16-28)
14/12: Learn the Holly and the Ivy (Joseph: Matt 1:18-25)
15/12: Paint a Christmas tree or possibly some holly (Mary: Luke 1:26-38)
16/12: Open red postbox, hang up cards; make ironing-bead ornaments (John the Baptist: Mark 1:1-8)
17/12: Take Christmas card to school, eat mince pies (Jesus is Wisdom: Ecclesiasticus 24:2, Wisdom 8:1)
Saturday 18/12: Make Waldorf wise men, centurion, star, camels (Jesus is Lord: Ex 3:2, 20:1)

Fourth week of Advent
Sunday 19/12: Toast crumpets, play Christmas tree game (Jesus is Key of David: Isaiah 22:22)
20/12 Make felt crowns, hang stockings** (Jesus is King of the Gentiles: Psalm 2:7-8, Eph 2:14-20)
21/12: Play out nativity story with Waldorf figures, celebrate Christmas (Jesus is Emmanuel: Isaiah 7:14, 33:22)

* the Red Postbox, constructed out of an old nappy (diaper) box, red paint and some cotton-wool "snow", is where we keep Christmas cards that arrive so we can open lots and hang them all up on the same day. It's a tradition I carried over from my own childhood. I don't expect to get very many this year because we are absolutely rubbish at sending any out ourselves!
** A few days early, yes, but we will be away visiting relatives over the actual Christmas period so we are having our own celebration at home and with friends first using our own traditions.

Ménières Disease

I know I've been absent some time and not responding to comments - I've not been reading much online due to an onslaught of Ménières Disease (which you can read about on wikipedia here). The short version is it makes me so dizzy I can't blog or read online. So if I missed something important, I'm really sorry!

The long version is, I've been having dizzy/vomiting fits sporadically - like one every six months - for two years, and occasional bouts of mild dizziness lasting several days for about 7 or 8 years prior to that, but really extremely infrequently, like maybe two or three over that whole period. The more recent ones make me completely unable to function for the duration, usually starting one evening with the sort of dizziness that feels like extreme tiredness, and then carrying on the next morning with throwing up, inability to move much, getting better towards the evening and gone by the following day. As they only ever last 24 hours we didn't really think about trying to get a diagnosis until this time, we thought they were isolated incidents rather than an underlying condition.

Separately, I suffered a strong and apparently permanent hearing loss in one ear when Froglet was about 6 months old. At the time the ENT did every test you can think of, including an MRI, and nothing showed up at all. He also kept asking if I suffered from dizziness, and always seemed surprised when I said no - at this point I hadn't had any at all for a couple of years. The tests did show up that my inner ear on the affected side was completely non-functional (which incidentally is a pretty cool test where they pour water in one ear and then watch as it runs out to see if it makes you feel dizzy. It should! and it didn't for me, on that side at least.) So we went to him and tried various things for a whole year and in the end he apologised and said there was nothing more he could do but that he would keep an eye out and if anything new came up he would let us know.

Fast forward 3 years and I get the first bad dizzy spell, right after a long drive and while pregnant. We put it down to the pregnancy, mainly. Fast forward another two years and it's now. I'm on my third dizzy bout this year, so the rate is increasing. Several times it has come on on a weekend so we've seen the on-call doctor rather than our own, and he has injected medication to control the vomiting and nausea, but this time it arrived on Monday two weeks ago and we were able to see my doctor and ask him if this was likely to keep happening/get worse/be treatable... and he discussed it with the ENT and got my original audiograms... and so we now have a diagnosis of Ménières disease, although in fact Ménières is idiopathic which means it's not reeeeally a full diagnosis in itself, more a recognition of the fact that I have this recurring set of symptoms whose cause is as yet undetermined - if the cause is ever determined I will then cease to have Ménières and will have whatever that cause is instead, but in many cases no cause is ever ascertained, because the inner ear, like much that goes on inside our skulls, is still very much a mystery! (My apologies to anyone medical reading this. I know that's a gross over-simplification!)

So I now have an appointment with the ENT next Wednesday to do a new audiogram, which they expect will show a further decline in my hearing on that side, and some other tests as well.

And the last thing to say is that although the properly incapacitating dizziness only lasted 48 hours this time, I have been dizzy in the mild-to-moderate range for the last two weeks and am only just getting over it now, and extended computer time, I have just discovered, makes it worse, so that's all from me for now! :-)

Christmas planning

I know Christmas is still a long way off, but we're not American so no Thanksgiving - the Swiss have been having small harvest celebrations for several weeks now, they seem to stagger them so everyone can go to everyone else's village celebrations - and Switzerland doesn't really do Halloween as such (they save the dressing-up for Carnival time in February) and so Advent and Christmas are the Next Big Thing.

For Froglet's Advent bags this year I've bought some of those little cylindrical plastic beads that you make a picture with and then iron together, and I will do some designs for small baubles to make with them, probably while Nutmeg sleeps after lunch.

I have also got a 10-week preparation list from Planning with Kids, where there is going to be more about it each week so do click through!

• 10 Weeks To Go – Review Christmas budget
• 9 Weeks To Go – Start making the family Christmas cards
• 8 Weeks To Go – Make food packs to donate
• 7 Weeks To Go – Christmas present ideas (ones that are easy to pack)
• 6 Weeks To Go – Help my kids organise a mini fundraiser
• 5 Weeks To Go – Finish Christmas tags and handmade gifts
• 4 Weeks To Go – Handmade Christmas decorations
• 3 Weeks To Go – Cooking Christmas treats
• 2 Weeks To Go – Make arrangements for the house
• 1 Week To Go – Christmas celebration with family before we go

I have to say I am very intrigued to find out what some of them will be (a mini-fundraiser for what?), and intend to use the list as a basis for making my own plans. I'm cutting out the fundraiser as my eldest is currently 5, but it's an interesting thought for future years. And we wouldn't know who to give food packets to so unless we manage to find out before Christmas, that's getting replaced with Christmas parcels to send to Eastern Europe.

Here (for my own benefit more than anyone else's) are the posts I made concerning Advent and preparing for Christmas last year:

http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/11/planning-advent.html (this one has links in it to the Jesse Tree stuff)
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/advent-week-1.html
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/second-week-of-advent.html

Something good

I don't know who is actually reading this but I wanted to talk a little bit about Haiti.

I've never been to Haiti. Like virtually anyone reading this, it only really got onto my radar back in January after the earthquake. So I can't claim a special relationship or anything like that. But since then I've been following a couple of blogs of people who are out there, including that of the Livesay family, who simply blow my mind. Their love for the people and the country is amazing, and the things they have been doing out there and plan to do next are wonderful too.

I'm linking to this one post which is about the hospital they want to build, and why, and the funds that they will need, but I encourage you to read the whole blog, because these are wonderful people who really love God but don't make out that it's all easy or that they're perfect. I find that encouraging and inspiring. And they're funny too. :-)

http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/2010/09/bombard.html

Who else loves audiobooks?

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten I still need to post about Corfu.

But first a short break so I can tell you about something really cool.

I grew up with no TV. (And no, I'm not that old. 40 is still quite some way off!) No TV, but loads of books. My mother was a librarian, and she taught us to love books as much as she does. When we couldn't have the written word - for instance on long car journeys - we had the precursor of those nifty backseat DVD players. That's right, the audiobook. Or Books On Tape, as we knew them. (I am *that* old. Just about.)

I love audiobooks. I would listen to them every night before bed. Some my mother narrated for me - mostly when I was smaller - and others were professional versions. As well as being excellent entertainment, they're great for your memory. I can still recite most of Nicol Williamson's wonderful rendition of The Hobbit, complete with regional accents. And virtually all of the slightly-abridged Chronicles of Narnia read by Michael Hordern. That version of The Chronicles of Narnia is still available by the way, in a CD box-set, and I wholeheartedly recommend it, but sadly The Hobbit is now only available secondhand on cassette.

All of this brings us to Librivox.

No this isn't an advert. Well it sort of is. But I'm not getting paid for it, and as Librivox is a completely volunteer organisation, neither is anyone else.

Librivox volunteers record public domain texts - such as The Green Fairy Book, remember that? and make them available to listen to, free of charge, with various different downloading options, over the internet.

Why?

"We love reading, love books, love literature, think the public domain should be defended and enriched, we like free stuff, we like to hear people read to us, and we like reading to other people. It's fun, it's a great community, it's a rewarding public service to the world. And "nothing" is in it for us, except the satisfaction of participating in a wonderful project."

Is what their website says. I've just signed up to be a volunteer. So far I've read one chapter and am halfway through editing a second. Some people have read hundreds. Here's where you can listen to the recordings:

http://librivox.org/newcatalog/

Remember we're only talking about Public Domain stuff here. Generally speaking that means the author has been dead for 70 years or more. The rules differ slightly depending on the country you're in - but basically you won't find any J.K. Rowling or Bill Bryson, to name just a couple of my own favourite authors. You will however find Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and many many others who I have never heard of. And if there's something missing that you know is in the public domain and you think ought to be there, you can leave a suggestion on the Librivox forum, or here in the comments if you don't want to sign up there. If you're not sure whether it's in the public domain, see if it's on Project Gutenberg, and if it's there, it's good to go.

You could even volunteer to read yourself.

Venice

No one told me the first week of kindergarten would be so tiring! And I'm not even the one going!
Anyway, let's not talk about that now. Let's talk about Venice.

The Engineer has wanted to go to Venice for ages, but I've been several times (most recently when I was 18 though) and was rather underwhelmed, so we've never got round to it. However, as our big family holiday to Greece fell immediately after his birthday, and as flights from Switzerland are unsurprisingly expensive, we looked into alternative means of transportation and found… car ferries. Ah, how exotic, I hear you say. Well, no, obviously not. But The Engineer does love the sea, and since working in the aviation industry he has developed an interesting dislike of planes. And the car ferry leaves from Venice, a mere five-hour drive not including stops.

So we booked a Novotel on mainland Venice where things are cheaper and have parking spaces, and that was that.

As everyone knows, the ancient part of Venice - the part you actually want to see - has no room for cars, but you can still get to it by car via a huge bridge, which gives you an excellent view of the ferry terminal and multi-storey car park where you will be leaving your vehicle (the car park isn't related to the terminal, anyone can park there). After that, you hop on a vaporetto, or boat-bus, which takes you round the outside of the city to drop you off at one of various bus-stops. We would have loved to stop at several places just to have a look round, but we had to be back at the terminal to board at noon, so we settled for the traditional Piazza San Marco. Thankfully it wasn't flooded - it's the lowest point of the city - but the queues for the Basilica were so long, even early in the morning, that we decided it wasn't worth it with two children in tow. A shame because I wanted to see if the floor inside was as undulating as on my previous visit - something I assume wasn't part of the original design. However, the children thought that chasing pigeons was vastly entertaining, and there was a live band playing outside one of the restaurants, so everyone was happy.

The tower was boarded up for repairs of some sort, and the bridge of Sighs had some bizarre sky-blue boards with adverts for some watch company or other on either side of it so you couldn't get a good photo (see picture above, on right!) But no matter. We bought ice-cream and wandered through the back streets, vaguely in the direction of the Rialto bridge. Froglet and I spent most of our time admiring the glasswork in the shop windows, to try and keep his mind off the fact that he "really wanted to go to the ferry right now", but The Engineer managed to get some nice shots of things we didn't even realise were there. So when you go to Venice make sure you look up as well as into shops. (This is even better advice when in Prague, where some of the loveliest paintings and embellishments are right under the eaves).

Venice must have a wheelchair-friendly route around it, as some little staircases had locked stairlifts on them. I imagine one has to go to the Tourist Office to get a key. However we managed without - this sort of thing being what we bought the lightweight pushchair for in the first place - and eventually made it to the Bridge. It was quite crowded so we admired it from a distance and then got in the queue for a Vaporetto back to the car park. This one took us through the centre of town, along the Grand Canal. I don't remember doing that last time, but it's definitely a lovely route.

I want to write about boarding the car ferry - I realise that sounds utterly boring, but if you have never boarded a Greek ferry at an Italian port, you are missing out! Anyway I'm out of time, so that will be for my next post.

A Grecian holiday, part one

Have you ever heard of Gerald Durrell? If you have, chances are you're either a naturalist, or you've read one of his books (or, in the UK, seen the TV series). Or possibly you're thinking of his older brother Lawrence, the famous author. Gerald Durrell was an ardent lover of nature and animals in particular, who became a great conservationist, founded one of the first zoos dedicated to conservation, on the island of Jersey, and incidentally wrote a great many very entertaining books about animals and his life with or near them.

As you may be able to tell, I'm something of a fan. But what does all that have to do with Greece? Well, everything. It's the reason we chose our holiday destination. (Well the reason I chose it anyway. Everyone else just thought my suggestion was a good second-best to theirs, so democracy ensured I won.) But back to my point: Gerald Durrell spent 5 years of his early life living on the Greek island of Corfu, and at least three of his books deal with memories from that time. And if you've read them, you can't help but want to go there and see what it's like now, nearly 80 years later.

So we did.

It's quite different. There are more cars, fewer donkeys, and considerably less in the way of wildlife - in our time there we found one shell on the beach. One.
Things are more organised. There are more fences - his books give the feeling that in the early 1930s you could walk from one end of the island to the other without "trespassing", although I imagine that wasn't really the case.

Fortunately, I was mentally prepared for this, and thus not disappointed. After all, who expects a member state of the European Union to be exactly how it was before the war that gave birth to what would eventually become the EU? So, disregarding the changes, I focused on the things that had remained the same. Of course I made sure we had the books with us too!

So that was one exciting thing, for me. (No one else shared this, despite all my family having read the books too. Ah well.) The other exciting thing was being with my whole family - parents and three sisters, some with husbands and kids in tow. Froglet loved having someone almost his own age to play with. Actually his little cousin is almost exactly halfway between him and Nutmeg, but she mostly played with him. Nutmeg mostly clung to me, at least the first few days. I can't blame her though, as it was surprisingly cold and windy. We had thunderstorms and rain for a whole two days, and then for part of several more. (Great for me - I'm not a hot-weather person).

We stayed at a lovely all-inclusive hotel in the north of the island, with several saltwater pools and its own beach. Most of the tourist attractions are elsewhere to be honest, but as we drove down and got the car ferry across we were able to drive into Corfu town for a day, and visit a couple of other little places nearer at hand too. I definitely recommend hiring/bringing a car if you're not staying in the capital of the island, as Greek public transport can be quite infrequent (not to mention slow). That's Froglet on the car ferry on the left, with the island behind him. The photo above is the view of the Old Citadel in Corfu Town, as seen from the ferry while we were docking.

And that is all I'm going to say for now, but at some point soon I'll write more about Corfu itself. And Venice. Have I mentioned Venice yet?

Spring and summer non-posting

My friend MaryLeigh at Blue Cotton Memory was asking where I've been. Well several factors have combined to make posting more difficult.

First we got a new computer - an Apple. It took us quite a while to work out how to sync our camera with it (apparently it doesn't like Canon G10s), and even longer to work out how to put the photos somewhere where I can get at them from my blog to post. For a while I posted sans photos but it's not as nice, is it? But hopefully that is now solved.

Secondly, Froglet starts official kindergarten this August, so we took him out of nursery at the end of May to give him a summer holiday (and save some money!) Not entirely a brilliant idea, as I now have no free time at lunchtimes when Nutmeg sleeps. But then again, children in Switzerland come home for lunch every day anyway once they start kindy, so I had to get used to it sometime. Now I have to learn to make 20-minute posts, like this one!

And thirdly we have had both visits from and visits to family, including a holiday in Greece, so that has kept us busy and offline. The photo is one I took outside our hotel room there, and I will be posting about the trip soon. With pictures. :-)

Review: the voice of psalms

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The voice of psalms is a paperback retelling of the Biblical book of Psalms by the Ecclesia Bible Society, published by Thomas Nelson. It's part of a larger project called “the voice”. Like many Bibles, it includes some commentary and some daily reading plans but that is pretty much where the similarities end.

The first thing that struck me was that here is a very beautiful book. The text is laid out like poetry, with a single column per page, and the pages themselves have a lovely background design giving a feeling of sacred art that the plain-white, onion-skin pages of a standard Bible never really conveyed to me.

Additions to the text have been inserted in italics rather than footnotes, and I found myself in two minds about this. The translator in me understands the need to expand on a phrase because the English equivalent doesn't convey the subtler nuances of the original. At the same time I find the voice in the back of my head going “aha, italics: an optional extra” very distracting! However, having finished reading a whole passage I could then look back and see what the italics had really added, for instance in the 23^rd Psalm a sense of present danger, which isn't so tangible in the more traditional versions, with or without footnotes. Of course, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, so I can't really tell how accurate that sense is either!

I did appreciate that the translators didn't feel the need to modernise the language all the way into slang, which was something I found very off-putting with the Message version of the Psalms even though I was in my early twenties then.

All in all I like the book, but I wonder if the format – especially the italics - will be too hard to get used to, so I won't ditch my NIV just yet. I wouldn't buy it as a first Bible for a new believer, but it's good as a fresh look at a too-familiar text, as long as you're looking for a narrative rather than a constitution-type document to be taken literally.

Just two more things (which I didn't put in my amazon review): some of you may remember I was looking for a program of advent readings last autumn. Well the voice of psalms has one with readings from Psalms and other books! And also a Lent program! Pretty cool huh.

And secondly, they also do various other books, but the one that attracted me most is called the voice from on high, which contains excerpts from 19 Bible books referring to Jesus as the Liberating King. That one sounds really cool and I think would work well in this format, not to mention that Brian McLaren, one of my favourite authors, is involved, so I'll get it and keep you posted. :-)

First words

Froglet's first word, at the age of about 13 months, was "Cake". Prior to this he was using the sound "neng-neng" to mean food or more often drink from the age of about 9 months, but that robably doesn't count as a real word.

About 4 months ago, Nutmeg started emitting a very piercing shriek if food or drink was too slow to arrive, so we began actively encouraging her to say "more" instead. I can't remember exactly when she first said it, but I guess by the time she turned one she was saying "maaa" and meaning more. (She actually said "more" properly once, but it seems to have been an accident because she hasn't said it again).
Now she has acquired a second word. "Nana", for banana. She says the first n a bit strangely, as if she was trying to get the whole "ban" syllable into one letter.

There seems to be a theme here. But at least banana is healthier than cake - if we had a third child perhaps its first words would be "wholemeal bread"?

Lent Bible readings for kids

Haven't had chance to blog for a while. Life takes over...

Nonetheless, I wanted to write a bit abut what we're doing for Lent. We haven't given anything up (although I am working on giving up shouting at the children!) but rather we have picked something up: Bible reading. I've never felt like Froglet could really follow the Bible itself, although of course we have Bible story books. But since we enjoyed having daily readings over Advent, I thought we'd have daily readings for Lent too. These are (mostly) from the Gospel of Luke. I tried to pick stories and things Jesus did rather than too many of the straight teachings, because Froglet is, after all, only four. On Sundays we're reading the bits where Jesus talked about his death. We have a great illustrated book that was also mine as a child, published by Ladybird, and called The Easter Story. Froglet loves it. As he already knows about the death and resurrection, I thought it was worth showing him that Jesus knew this was coming. But you could easily just leave out the Sunday readings (or replace them), as they aren't in chronological order with the rest anyway.

We are reading these out of a copy of the Good News Bible which was mine when I was small - it has more pictures than my NIV, although not many, and the wording is a bit simpler.

Today (Wednesday) is day 25. Sundays aren't counted in the 40 days of Lent so I haven't numbered them.

Day 1: John the Baptist - Lk 3:2-22
Day 2: In the desert - Lk 4:1-15
Day 3: Nazareth - Lk 4: 16-30
Day 4: Lk 4: 31-44
1st Sunday: Who am I - Lk 9: 18-27
5: Calling the disciples - Mtt 4:18-22 and Lk 5:27-31
6: Skin-disease - Lk 5:12-16
7: Paralysis - Lk 5: 17-26
8: The Sabbath - Lk 6: 1-11
9: The Apostles - Lk 6: 12-19
10: Love your enemies - Lk 6: 27-36
2nd Sunday: The transfiguration - Lk 9: 37-43
11: The house on the rock - Lk 6:46-49
12: The Roman officer - Lk 7: 1-10
13: Raising the dead - Lk 7:11-23
14: Forgiving sins - Lk 7:36-50
15: The parable of the sower - Lk 8:4-15
16: The storm - Lk 8:22-25
3rd Sunday: Predicting Jesus' death - Lk 18: 31-34
17: Jairus' daughter - Lk 8:40-56
18: Feeding the 5000 - Lk 9:10-17
19: The boy with an evil spirit - Lk 9: 37-43
20: Sending out the 72 - Lk 10:1-11, 16-20
21: The Samaritan woman - Lk 10:25-37
22: Martha - Lk 10: 38-42
4th Sunday: The tenants in the vineyard - Lk 20:9-18
23: Prayer - Lk 11:1-13
24: Don't worry - Lk 12:13-31
25: Healing on the Sabbath - Lk 13:10-17, 14:1-6
26: The lost sheep - Lk 15: 1-7
27: The lost coin - Lk 15:8-10
28: The lost son - Lk 15:11-32
5th Sunday: the rich man and Lazarus - Lk 16:19-31
29: Forgiveness - Lk 17:3-4
30: Healing the ten lepers - Lk 17:11-19
31: Always pray - Lk 18:1-8
32: Pharisee and tax collector - Lk 18:9-14
33: Children - Lk 18:15-17
34: Rich man / widow - Lk 18:18-27, 21:1-4
Palm Sunday: Entering Jerusalem - Lk 19:28-40
35: The blind beggar - Lk 18:35-43
36: Zacchaeus - Lk 19:1-10
37: Parable of the talents - Lk 19:11-26
38: Passover meal - Lk 22:1-23, 31-34
39 (Good Friday): Arrest and death - Lk 23 (I will use the afore-mentioned book here)
40: Burial - Lk 23:50-56
Easter Sunday: the Resurrection - Lk 24 (book again)

Happiness is...

Watching my four-year-old chase my just-turned-one-year old so he can snuggle her, then seeing her turn round and throw her arms round his neck delightedly.

Snow sparkling in the lamplight outside our bathroom window.

Time to do lots of reading (most recently John Ortberg "Everyone's normal till you get to know them")

Nutmeg having her check-up and MMR jab without crying or complaining at all, then waving her cookie happily at the doctor afterwards, as if he hadn't just stuck a needle in her arm.

Froglet finding words for me to help him read wherever we go.

Lying on the floor with a happily-squeaking Nutmeg crawling all over me.

Froglet stroking my arm and saying "I love you Mummy".

Nutmeg wandering about saying "yeah, yeah" and "oo-ah-oo". If she says it fast enough, it sounds like wow.

Getting a little box to store paperclips in, complete with paperclips, as a free gift from the pharmacy. I'm always short of paperclips.

Watching Nutmeg dance to the strains of Cuban music.

Nutmeg following Froglet wherever he goes.

An elder brother's love for his baby sister: "She is my little sister, Mummy. Don't smack her."
(For the record, I had no intention of smacking her. I must have looked like I was gearing up to it though!)

Going to our first German-language parent-teachers' meeting to find out what school will be like for Froglet when he starts in mid-August. Evidently it will be wonderful. The Swiss are remarkably Waldorf in their attitude to education. (In fact the school down in our cantonal capital is named after Pestalozzi, who once worked in the canton).

Conversation with Nutmeg

She's too young to have a real conversation but nonetheless...

Scene: Nutmeg is carrying her nappy (diaper) to the bin in the kitchen. The Engineer is holding the bin-cupboard door open for her.

The Engineer: "Come on, in the bin!"
Nutmeg drops the nappy, and sits down next to it.
TE picks it up and holds it near the bin. "Come on sweetie, come and get it."
Nutmeg gets up, retrieves nappy from TE, drops it next to bin, sits down by it. Looks at her father and shakes her head very firmly.
Nutmeg thinks: "My intention is to play with this nappy, and hopefully chew it a bit. I'm not putting it in there. I know you won't let me have it back afterwards!"

More conversations with Froglet

Froglet is four years and 3 months.

Yesterday I taught him how to peel carrots. As I stood behind him explaining how to hold the peeler so that it works properly, he said "You sound like Granwen" (my mother). This to me is a compliment, and I think he intended it as one too. Then he volunteered to teach Uncle Luke, my brother-in-law, how to peel carrots too*.

Today The Engineer received an in-depth explanation of tectonic plates:

(Froglet holding up two hands parallel with the floor.)
This hand is Switzerland and this hand is Haiti. Then they go like this!
(bangs hands together vigorously)
And it makes Haiti wobble.
(wobbling Haiti-hand to demonstrate)

*This is admittedly funnier if you know Luke and are aware that he and the kitchen are not always on first-name terms.

Conversation with Froglet

We had this conversation at bedtime after reading Guess How Much I Love You.

Froglet: I love you as far as the moon and the sun.
Mummy: I love you as far as the moon and the sun and back again.
Froglet: How much else do you love me?
M: I love you enough to make your breakfast, and make sure you have clean clothes, and wash your hair even when you don't want it washing. How much do you love me?
F: I already said I love you as far as the moon and sun!
M: Well I said that too, but you still wanted to know more.
F (thinks carefully before answering): I love you as far as God.

One happy Mummy. :-)

Blogs I like

This year we are trying to simplify, scale back and other similar-sounding things.
One of the ways we're doing this is by not buying anything other than what we need (raising the interesting question of what exactly does constitute a need and what a mere desire).

Another way, for me personally, is by scaling back my blog-reading. I have found that with a newly-toddling eats-everything baby and a very wriggly 4 year old I'm not getting any chance to do crafts, so I have removed from my blog-roll a bunch of the craftier blogs along with those whose headlines I tend to peruse without actually reading the post itself. This should save time when I am taking a few minutes to glance through my reading list. However, I don't want to forget where those blogs are in case one day I do have time for crafts, or need an idea. After all, Froglet starts school in August and by then Nutmeg may be interested in messy things to do with Mummy! So here they are:
http://4crazykings.blogspot.com/ 4 crazy kings

http://www.acrossthepage.net/ Across the page

http://adventuresofaflake.blogspot.com/ Adventures of a Flake

http://babymakingmachine.blogspot.com/ Baby Makin(g) Machine

http://infantbibliophile.blogspot.com/ Chronicle of an infant bibliophile

http://growingandlearningbyleapsandbounds.wordpress.com/ Growing and Learning by Leaps and bounds

http://lettersnumbersandbooksohmy.blogspot.com/ Mommy's little artist

http://michellesjournalcorner.blogspot.com/ Muffin Tin Mom

http://raisingsmartgirls.wordpress.com/ Raising Smart Girls

http://filthwizardry.blogspot.com/ Filth wizardry

I now only have 17 (!) blogs on my bloglist. Several of these only post once a week or less, others are still worth my time because they provide specific wisdom, encouragement or help with what I'm dealing with right now. To all the ones I've had to set aside (for now!) as well as to all those I'm still reading - THANK YOU!

And a very Happy New Year.