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. :-)

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"?

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).

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. :-)

Crawling and commenting

Froglet didn't express any interest in crawling at all until he was nine months. I think it was due to our tiled floors - not good for gripping with your sleepsuit-clad knees. As soon as we got a rug he was off like a shot. So I wasn't sure if Nutmeg would wait that long or not. And she hasn't. Today she crawled her own length (falling over once or twice and complaining vigorously all the way through). Then she looked at me and started to cry as if to say "look I've got this far, can't you just carry me the rest?" So I did. I'm so proud of my baby!

Meanwhile Froglet is developing a great sense of humour. At the weekend we went out with some friends, and as he walked along behind me with their small daughter I could hear him commenting on my clothes: "R, do you like Mummy's skirt? And her black boots? And her new socks - they come right up to here." On recounting this to The Engineer later I remarked that I felt like a fashion model, upon which Froglet immediately turned round and said matter-of-factly: "Well, you're not."

His father creased himself laughing.

The things they say...

Some conversations we had with Froglet back in March. F = Froglet, M= mummy, D= Daddy

29 March

D: Get off me... GET OFF ME.
F: *mopes*
M: Did you not hear Daddy the first time?
F: I' not talking to you ever again!
D+M: *lol*
F: It's not funny!
D: Yes it is.
F: No it isn't.
M: You're talking to us right now!
D: Are you talking to us?
F: *pauses to consider* Yes. I know how you love me.

(later same day)

F: *comes into our bedroom stark naked*
M: Why are you naked?
F: Because I like being naked.
M: Would you like a bath, since you're naked anyway?
F: No. I will put my T-shirt on, then I won't be able to have a bath.

30 March, whilst having lunch

M: Stop slurping!
F: I'm not going to talk to you ever again.
M: You said that yesterday so I don't believe you.
F: I believe you.
M: See, you're talking to me already.
F: Well, be happy Mummy. Don't be cross. I love you very much.
M: *lol*
F: Some of your food from your mouth went splat on the table when you were laughing.

(a few minutes later)

M: *scribbling rapidly*
F: What are you doing?
M: I'm writing down what you said, so that Daddy can see it when he gets home.
F: *considers* I love you very much Mummy. Write it down, so that Daddy can see that.

Awwwww. I have to say that while I love the cute love-related bits, the bit I like most is the one about the food going splat. So very small-boy!

My son

I have been reading on Blue Cotton Memory's blog and came across this post called Mother Words. Now you have to know that I had a really awful day on Friday. I'm not sure why, but this often seems to happen when I try to get things done. Being very task-oriented, wanting to get things done stresses me out because people keep getting in the way. By people I mean my beautiful children, mostly. So although I can't put my finger on anything in particular that was really bad, and can think of a lot of things that were nice, I came out of it feeling really tired and cross with the kids, and fraught.

(Fraught. That's a good word, isn't it? My mother used it a lot when I was little. She had four of us, so that's probably why!)

Anyway I had this awful day and then I came across the afore-mentioned post and so I thought yeah, I should try to see the good side of my lovely boy. Because he is lovely. Like right now he is doing something quietly elsewhere. I love it when that happens. (Hopefully it doesn't mean he's doing something dodgy!)

My boy's love language appears to be words of encouragement, like me. This is the child who will of his own accord notice me wearing something new, and say, without being prompted "what a pretty skirt Mummy, don't you look pretty in that skirt." Who voluntarily says "I like you Mummy. Especially when you're cross with me." (He means "except". We're working on it!) He is so sweet.

He's very snuggly, and very good-tempered most of the time. (This also annoys me sometimes. There's nothing like shouting at someone who listens quietly and then goes off happily singing to himself as if nothing had just happened!) And he still thinks his sister is adorable, even after 5 months.

Look, there they are.

Anyway, coming back to the post I mentioned before. She talks about looking at your child's annoying traits and seeing what good there is in them.

Well, my son doesn't listen. I guess it's sometimes because he is focusing so much on what he's doing that he isn't paying attention to anything else. Hey, he sounds like me as a kid. And sometimes it's because he's already on his feet running to do the first half of what you're saying, without waiting for the second half. He's actually very helpful like that. I can't remember when I last washed out Nutmeg's potty, he usually does it for me while I'm putting her new nappy on.

He can't stop when you say stop. If I hear him banging a door and call "Leave it", it carries on banging until I actually advance on him menacingly, at which point he will explain "I'm just trying to make it stay closed" (this happened on Friday too). Maybe he's task-oriented like his mother? I guess that could be good in some ways, like when he needs to do homework when he's bigger.

And he can't be quiet for very long. This is one of the reasons my other blog is called I Need A Garden - I need one for him, not just the plants! He charges up and down our living room like a mad thing knocking over anything that gets near him. But at least he's never going to get fat. He's climbing on the back of my chair, singing in German and exhorting me to come on, thing I am singing to, as I type. So I had better do so.

Wordless Wednesday

Isole di Brissago

A crafty post

I keep meaning to take part in the ABCand123 summer picnic, but never seem to get around to it. However, finally we have done something that fits in with this weeks theme of crafts. Today Froglet and I went for a nature walk to collect flowers and leaves to paint with. We got some daisies, milkweed (possibly), knapweed, clover flower and leaf, buttercup leaf, ground ivy leaves, and various grasses and flowers - perhaps you know the names I don't? (If you can see them!)


On getting home I had to feed Nutmeg so was unable to participate, but I set it all up for them and even made a sort of paintbrush with some of the grass-heads:


Froglet insisted on using the new paint roller that I got him on a whim last week. Here he is hard at work:


Here's what he achieved:


And here's what the Engineer did:


And I did some experimenting of my own later:

The lefthand one is knapweed and the other a daisy.

The inspiration for this came from A Mommy's Adventures (dandelion prints, featured last week on ABCand123), so I can't claim any credit for an original idea.

Weather mark II

Our studies have been interrupted by a visit from the grandparents, followed by some bouts of flu and another visit from my sister, but we have had several thunderstorms during that time. Froglet isn't too keen on thunderstorms - especially when the wind blows our balcony door open with a bang! But I think it was good for him to see all the adults enjoying the lightning and watching the hailstones. The storms also gave us the chance to collect some rain in our rain-catcher, cunningly crafted from a glass and the top of a water bottle. I couldn't use the bottom of a water bottle like you're supposed to, because they aren't flat here. Froglet was excited about this activity because he's seen them do it on CBeebies. We have been measuring how much rain we've caught each day with the help of a wooden spoon with a face on it, christened Spooncle Luke due to its resemblance to Froglets uncle. I write down the number in his lapbook in pencil and then he traces over it in felt-tip.

Also in his lapbook, we have made a little chart to colour in, listing what sorts of weather we have seen each day. The grandparents being here means he hasn't wanted to colour it though (after all, who wants to colour when you could play with cars?) and since they left we haven't gone back to it, but now we will probably start over. Froglet is very much a people-person, but he has a task-oriented mother (and father too!) so this is a good reminder to me that relationship is really ever so much more important than colouring a weather chart, or any other task I set him/myself.

We've talked quite a bit about clouds, the different types and what they mean. He soon cottoned on to which ones were cumulus clouds ("like sheep"), but it took him a while to learn the others, possibly because he doesn't find it interesting. He's taken some photos of them though, and will now point out of the window and comment on the weather we're having and what it's likely to do later. We've bought a tiny weather station from Tchibo - barometer, thermometer and one of those that measures humidity, I forget the name. The barometer needs resetting, it thinks we're at sea-level and as a result always tells us we're on the brink of a thunderstorm.

Froglet being such a fan of YouTube, of course the most obvious thing to do after reading about how tornadoes are formed was to watch some videos online. The Stormchasers have a lot of great videos complete with tornadoes, storm clouds and hailstones, which he loved. We also made our own little tornado with some coloured water and washing-up liquid in a jar.

One last thing in this rather disjointed post. The British Met Office have a nice little children's section with some basic games, one of which involves rearranging some puzzle pieces to form snowflakes. It's surprisingly complicated (for a three year old!) and I wasn't sure if it was worthwhile at first but then realised that rather than letting him touch the computer screen I could get him to tell me where each piece went by saying bottom right, top left and so on. As directions aren't his strong point, this was a good exercise and he really enjoyed it - we played it again the following day.

I still want to make a windsock with him, but I haven't had chance yet. This should be interesting for him because helicopters use them and he is very into his flying machines. I'm hoping he will start liking the wind more as a result.

Muffin Tin Monday

I have seen posts relating to the MTM blog carnival in several places, but most recently at Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile, one of the blogs I follow. The idea is simple - serve a themed meal in a muffin tin, then post a link to the blog entry concerning it at Her Cup Overfloweth if you want to be part of the carnival. I don't know whether this is meant to be just a fun thing to do or whether it's to try and encourage children to eat.

Froglet always has trouble staying in one place long enough to finish a meal (or even get halfway through it), so today I thought we might give MTM a try. This week was Choose Your Own Theme, rather fortuitously as it was such a last-minute decision to do it and I haven't done the weekly shop yet! So the theme I've picked is: Homemade.

Our muffin tin contains both Froglets meal and my own, as it's rather a large tin. Homemade brown bread with nuts in, homemade kumquat marmalade from our little tree, homemade snickerdoodle cookies - rolled in cinnamon sugar by Froglet - and homegrown salad: cress, baby nasturtium leaves (because the nasturtiums are still tiny), marjoram and oregano. Like I said, it was a last-minute thing!

Surprisingly, the salad was Froglet's favourite item. He wolfed down the marjoram, oregano and nasturtiums, exclaiming"these taste funny!", then asked for more. I had to explain that we couldn't take any more leaves off the nasturtiums as it might stress them too much, if they aren't already stressed. I only took one leaf off each plant.

As a method of getting him to concentrate and eat, it was unsuccessful, but he certainly enjoyed seeing all the things we had made and grown ourselves on his "plate". We will be doing this again, and if you have little ones maybe you'd like to join in too!

For lots of different themes, pop over to Her Cup Overfloweth and see what other mums have done.

/ck/ and /ee/

*Photos coming later!

Thought I might post about what we did a few weeks prior to starting this blog. At the time I wasn't theming the lessons so much, so we just worked around the sounds. Not all the activities took place on the same day!

/ck/ as in duck.
1. I drew a picture of a duck with the words "ck as in duck" below it, and then a list of words with ck in them. I tried to pick words he would find interesting, like muck, truck, track and kick, and avoid words with other odd sounds such as chicken. He sounded them out with me.
2. I made a matching game with pictures and words, again using the words he is interested in and that are drawable! Then I filmed him matching them up, for the grandparents to see. The cards can be used for a memory game too.
3. We made a page for his lapbook, letting him cut out my duck picture to stick on it, and looked through some old magazines from the recycling pile to find objects with ck in them, which he cut out and stuck on too. Then he watched me write the names on.
4. We did some writing in a wipe-clean book my mother got for him. I encouraged him to trace over the letters c and k but in the end he just did whatever letters he wanted.
5. I read him various stories including the amazingly out-of-print Pumpernickel tickle and mean green cheese. So glad we own this!
6. A themed meal, including blackcurrant juice, crackers, pumpernickel bread, dill pickles and cheese of course. I think we had this twice, Froglet being a big fan of picnic-style meals.
7. Baking! Snickerdoodle cookies, a new recipe to us but, as it turns out, wonderful for baking with kids. Froglet helped measure and mix, and then rolled the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar for me.

/ee/ as in tree.
1-4. The first four activities were the same as above, but with a list of ee words, which of course included "wee"! He was pleased with that. The matching game this time used some ee words and some of the old ck words. I didn't film this one though.
5. Reading: the Sneetches
6. We planted some cress seeds, and some pear and apple pips.
7. Sound-of-the-week tree - we haven't actually done this yet although I have bought the construction paper for it. The idea, from SOTW, is that you cut out a tree with bare branches, and then stick a new leaf on each time you learn a new sound, with the sound written on it of course.
8. Food: Leek soup. This was not a success. Froglet isn't always such a huge fan of soup, and not only did he not like this one, but neither did The Engineer. Egg and cress sandwiches (grown from the seeds we had planted) didn't go down too well either: he's not keen on scrambled egg, although he did like the cress. But not to worry. Cheese, a perennial favourite in our family, also has the ee sound in it!

The lessons continue even though I'm now teaching /er/, as when something relevant comes up I draw his attention to it, or sometimes he points it out to me! Today we are planting a seed garden in a tray. But more on that later.

Bits and bobs

I don't seem to have had time to post recently, not sure why. We have been very busy with gardening and so on, so maybe that's it.

I have about 5 minutes until Froglets programme finishes, so this will be brief.

Nutmeg sleeps beautifully, drinks well and is learning to grab her dangly toys. The potty training is going ok, but as we're not being very serious about it I don't expect her to really be potty-trained any time soon. We put her on the potty during every nappy-change, for about 2 minutes, maybe more if I can tell she really does need to do something. As a result, messy nappy changes have been incredibly few, in fact I think the last one was on Friday. All nappies are always damp though, and judging from the time she spends au naturel I would have to put her on the potty every 20 minutes to avoid that!

Froglet is looking forward to his grandparents visiting later this week, but we are keeping him busy in the meantime. He has been learning /er/, as described in my last post, and is very much enjoying our work on the weather. So far we have learned a bit about clouds, made a very basic rain-catcher with a glass and a wooden spoon, started charting how much rain has fallen each day, and watched a lot of YouTube videos about tornados and water spouts. Froglet is a big fan of YouTube, although usually he only gets to watch aerobatics displays.

And that's the end of my time. More will follow, with photos.

Learning to read

I am pulling together a bunch of things from various sites to help me teach Froglet some phonics. He already knows the alphabet thanks to the wonderful Starfall website, and as he's started spelling out words to himself while playing, I think now it's time for the more complicated stuff.
Sound of the week is a great place to start, with a different page for each sound (e.g. /ee/), including a theme to match the sound (e.g. trees), book ideas, rhymes or poems, and art projects. So far we have done the first two sounds off this page: /ck/ and /ee/. Other sites I have been using include the brilliant Phonics, and the BBCs Words and Pictures.

After thinking about it quite a bit, and to-ing and fro-ing between various possibilities, I've decided to link the sounds I teach to whatever longer theme I'm currently on, rather than follow the order set out at SOTW or Phonics. And as we're doing flowers and gardening at the moment, next up are /er/ and /ow/ (as in cow not grow). I have ordered a book about plants, which hasn't arrived yet, but fortunately we do have a book on weather, which also has the /er/ sound in it, and as it's particularly rainy at the moment this will be a good place to start tomorrow.

In fact I've ordered a whole bunch of books, which may get reviewed on here at some point. They are:
How Flowers Grow (Usborne Beginners)
Summer Nature Activities for Children (by Irmgard Kutsch, I think)
Floppy Phonics (Stage 1+)
Miffy in the Garden
Things that Go (Trace, Stick and Learn)
Stories Jesus Told (by Nick Butterworth/Mick Inkpen)
and several less educational ones for our own entertainment.

Froglet saw me ordering the Miffy book and said that he wanted one too. I said it would have to be with his own money, so he chose Miffy is crying (!) and now owes me 3 pounds. His first book purchase of his very own!

Turnoff week

I thought I'd do the Blog challenge from over at Unplug Your Kids, even though I didn't sign up to do it. There was a prize draw, but a voucher from Amazon US isn't so useful to me anyway. :-)

So, how did it go? Surprisingly well, I think. Although I grew up sans TV, my husband didn't and Froglet isn't doing so either; he watches at least some TV every day.

Nutmeg is too small for both TV and internet, so she did very well this week. 10/10 for her!

Froglet asked for TV a couple of times towards the beginning of the week, but we explained that this was a no-TV week just like the Berenstain Bears had - fortunately we've just read the book - and he didn't push too hard. Yesterday he happily announced "Yay, today is a TV day!" but in fact he only had two episodes of Pocoyo, which is way below his age range but he still likes watching (I only ever put it on for Nutmeg to listen to). I think we put on some Thomas the Tank Engine for him on Sunday too to keep him out of our hair while we dealt with dinner. We also successfully kept him off the computer and the Wii, apart from WiiFit but we decided that was not going to count because it's exercise. So he gets about 8/10.

The grown-ups did less well. We did keep the TV off, and I certainly enjoyed the evenings more as a result, but the Internet stayed on. In our defence, I work from home so need to check my email at least twice a day, and of course once the computer is on it's a matter of self-discipline not to check the blogs I follow, Facebook and so on. The self-discipline could use a little work there! Nonetheless, I was online less than usual and spent more time cleaning and playing with Froglet, so I get 6/10 - that's 5 for no-TV and 1 for less-computer!
I won't give The Engineer points. He never did like school!

(I have decided to call my husband The Engineer on here. It's a bit long, but accurate, and I haven't thought of anything better yet - suggestions welcome!)