I’ve sown salad seeds which I got free with Gardeners’ World magazine that DH kindly bought me - they’re now seedlings which is very exciting.  There were also tomato seeds so I now have 10 tomato plant seedlings and three more I’m waiting to come up out of the soil.  We managed to get a brand new fold-away wheelbarrow on Freecycle (I love Freecycle!) last night.  This afternoon I dug a hole and mixed the soil with manure from a friend’s farm so that in a few weeks I can plant a blackberry bush to grow up the shed.  Two of the girls’ sunflowers are now showing, which they’re very pleased about.  Other projects we have in mind over the next year or two are:

1. Digging up shrubs to make way for veg patch and more grass

2. Sowing grass seed so the ‘playing area’ is larger (as the veg patch will make it smaller)

3. Flower bed alongside the fence

Over on Sometimes It’s Peaceful, there has been much discussion on the subject of housework in a non-coercive household.  The topic of ‘unfooding’ came up once or twice…a made up phrase which I’m guessing describes more or less what we do. 

I have (unsurprisingly to those readers who have been reading for some time or who know me in real life) breastfed all my babies.  Flopsy and I decided that weaning time for her came at about 2.75yrs - Mopsy is still breastfeeding as, of course, is Cotton-tail.  When it came to introducing solids to Flopsy, at the recommended 6 months of age, she refused all runny/mushy food except for yoghurts.  We worried but had heard vague things about baby-led weaning so tried to be a bit less twitchy about it.  When she was 7 months old, I went to a little Christmas party at our Bumps and Babies group.  I handed her a piece of cucumber to play with as she was teething and I thought it would help her gums - she guzzled it down no trouble.  After that we gave her grown-up food all the time, occassionally pre-chewing it for her.  At her 9 month check, the Health Visitor didn’t really actually look at Flopsy, but only at her weight chart and told me she was too small and ‘needed to be getting her calories from solids now, rather than breastmilk’ (which is very stupid as everyone knows that a calorie is still a calorie wherever it comes from!).  I was very worried despite my knowledge of breastfeeding, because I knew that I couldn’t force her to eat anything more than she was.  So I went away and did more reading about baby-led weaning and long-term breastfeeding and decided that I had nothing to worry about so long as she was still breastfed on demand.  By age 1 year, she was eating adult-sized portions at mealtimes and loving her food.  Now, she is a very healthy little girl, very slightly smaller than the average, but then I’m short and DH is thin so she’s probably the size she’s meant to be.  She’s gone through several phases of eating very little - occassionally next to nothing! - and several stages of having a massive appetite.  I trust her body to get her to eat and drink what she needs when she needs it and it seems to be working.  But we feel the only way to trust her completely is to let her eat and drink whenever and not just restrict her eating to mealtimes.  Just as she was perfectly capable of self-regulating her own nutrition when she was exclusively breastfeeding, so she is perfectly capable of doing the same with solid food. 

But what about table-manners?  What about the social convention of mealtimes?  How will she learn them?  (By the way, Mopsy is now doing the same thing).  We trust that both girls will just learn these things as they grow up if they are free from any pressure to do so.  In fact, while we adults sit at the table to eat meals together, both girls nearly always join us, although we never pressure them to…just offer a plate of what we’re eating.  If they’re wathing tv, they even turn it off in order to join us sometimes!  If they don’t want to be with us, then I can’t exactly blame them…we usually talk about adult things which are boring to them…but it rarely happens.  They nearly always choose to eat with us as they enjoy the social occassion of eating meals together.  Sometimes they eat very little at the table, but I don’t mind that if we’ve cooked for the adults and just left a child-sized portion for them - it’s not exactly a waste and I know they eat a balanced diet over a period of time and that’s surely the most important thing.

Oh yes…balanced diets…how do they do it?  Who knows?  I certainly don’t stop them eating chocolate or biscuits if they’re around.  I don’t tend to buy them very often as they’re expensive, but if I do, they also choose to eat fruit and sandwiches even if they also have the choice of ‘treats’ as well.  I think that this is because they don’t feel the need to eat as much chocolate as they can when it’s available becuase it’s not rationed when it is available.  They know they can have it if they want, so they can take it or leave it and often will choose something else.  If I’m cutting up carrots, they’ll have some raw carrot.  One of their favourite snacks is frozen peas.  They love making their own sandwiches but prefer to eat ham just as it comes out of the packet.

So, a possible food day for the girls might be (I wrote ‘typical’ first, but then changed it to ‘possible’ as every day is completely different:

Get up and watch tv.  Come downstairs when hungry and have a few slices of ham and a home-made ice-lolly.  Drink squash from a sports bottle I leave out for them.  Have a play.  Eat a biscuit.  Join us for lunch, making their own random sandwiches - ham and jam is a current favourite!  Help themselves to a bowl of grapes I’ve left out for them.  Ask me to help them get a yoghurt to eat.  Be discovered sitting on the kitchen floor eating bread straight out of the bag together.  Have a bowl of frozen peas.  Be offered a square of chocolate from a friend’s chocolate bar.  Join us for supper - mince and rice, for example.  Mopsy will have a few breastfeeds during the day, and a mammoth one in the evening when she goes to sleep.  Flopsy usually stays up and has some random late night snack like jam on bread or ice-cream. 

I’m looking forward to having a blackberry bush in the garden, and tomato plants, and carrots for them to help themselves to.

So is that ‘unfooding’?  Whatever it is, it works, and it works with very young children so I guess it works with older children too.  It’s also pretty hassle-free and, once you’ve got used to it and seen it working, it’s worry-free as well.  I have to admit that when they go through phases of not really eating very much fruit or veg, I give them vitamin supplements, or put pureed veg in with their mince, but they usually end up having a fruit-and-veg fest at some point to even it out, so it’s probably unneccessary.  It means we have no meal-time rows about getting them to finish their food, or trying to get them to please eat one piece of brocolli.  And they’re becoming very independent very young, which is easier for me

This has now been transformed into this…

And the aftermath…  plus three big council garden refuse sacks -  it’s going to be some weeks before it’s all cleared!

One of the things I’m looking forward to most about owning our own house is the garden.  Up until now in our rented houses, I’ve half-heartedly planted up pots and hanging baskets but I’ve never felt much motivation to do anything else, despite being very keen to grow our own vegetables and maybe some berries.  It’s just too frustrating knowing that any work I do in the garden will not benefit us in the long-term as we may not be staying there for more than one summer.  Now it looks like we might be able to stay here for as long as we want, we are excitedly making plans for the garden (and the house…but of course house plans are relatively expensive so they’ll have to wait!).

 Over the summer we are planning to clear away the bushes beside the play house.  There’s a silver birch where the bushes start to get taller, so we’ll only clear as far as there.  Then we’re going to move the playhouse and, in the Autumn, dig that whole regtangle over with some rotted manure from a friend with a farm ready to grow some vegetables in next year.

 This weekend, we’re going to cut down the left hand side of this buddleia (can you see that branch growing diagonally?  It’s that one we’ll cut off).  We’re then going to move the hexagonal wooden ’sand pit’ thing into that space, which gets a lot of sun from noon onwards, fill it with compost from Mum and Dad’s ancient compost bin and plant a load of herbs I bought yesterday.

Yesterday the girls sowed their sunflower seeds that Flopsy won when playing pass-the-parcel at her friend’s birthday party:

  And I planted sweet peas:

And Cotton-tail lazed about on her mat:

Just to round off the photos post, here’s Mopsy before her bicycle accident on Saturday:  

and a great action shot of them both in the paddling pool:

Well we made an offer and it was firmly rejected.  We thought that was it, but decided to offer quite a bit more on the basis that it would not be possible to find, buy and move into another house within the notice period and that it would cost us considerably more to move out, rent for another six months then buy a house when the house prices and interest rates have gone up.  So we made a higher offer and it’s been accepted!  Hurrah!  I still can’t help thinking something will go wrong but we’re keeping our fingers crossed and will be contacting the solicitors and mortgage broker in the morning.  Things won’t really get moving until next week, though, as she can’t organise her solicitors until Friday afternoon.  So excited!!!!!!

We received the option of quite a few different mortgages from our broker today so we’re very excited now!  I rang up our landlady to make an offer, with my heart beating very fast and feeling very like Kirstie from Location, Location, Location….she wasn’t in!!!!!!!!!!!!  How frustrating?  Still, in the meantime I rang a solicitor who had been recommended to us by a friend who’s used her twice.  I expected to be speaking to someone very important sounding and felt a bit scared but in fact she turned out to be a very bubbly welsh-woman.  She started to give us a quote, then said “hang on, what’s your postcode?  there are some areas in this city that are exempt from stamp duty.”  She looked it up and, lo and behold, we don’t have to pay it!  Hurrah!  Another exciting thing :-)  So now we’re just waiting for our landlady (who doesn’t have an answer machine!) to be in so we can make our first offer.  Watch this space!

 She’s so gorgeous!

I was just looking at Gill’s blog and Flopsy came up and pointed to the image of Green Parent magazine.  “That says ‘green peter’” she told me!  I didn’t know she knew the word ‘green’, and I guess she knows ‘peter’ from ‘peter rabbit’. 

The girls are bickering less!  After discussion with MIL, I realised that I’m breaking up far fewer rows at the moment.  I’m wondering if, by limiting tv, I was actually forcing the girls to play together, as there’s not really any other choice, really, if they don’t fancy solitary play.  Surely anyone would argue if they had to spend that much time doing things together.  TV gives them the chance to do something alongside eachother that doesn’t interfere with the other’s enjoyment of it.  And of course they’re then refreshed and ready for another bout of playing together.

Well I am pleased to report that both Flopsy and Mopsy are proving extremely capable of self-regulating their tv-time.  They have gone from watching it nearly constantly for a couple of days, to watching a video, then coming down to play, then watching another video and so on, to watching it only when life is boring ie. not much going on during the day.  They haven’t made it downstairs yet (10.40am), but then Flopsy only woke up an hour ago and Mopsy only woke up half an hour ago!  They’re watching Postman Pat or something, but they had such a fun time outside in the paddling pool yesterday that I’m anticipating another day in the sunshine when the garden warms up a bit.  I’ve made them some ice-lollies for later, so they’ll enjoy those. 

A very kind friend of Mum’s has handed down two girls’ bikes with stabilisers to Flopsy and Mopsy so yesterday we went to buy them helmets.  Thank goodness I was so insistent that they don’t even have a little go on them until they had helmets - Mopsy was only on her bike for about five minutes before she rode down a little slope and came off it.  She’s bruised her cheek, cut herself somewhere in her mouth as it was bleeding, bruised her knee and grazed her knuckles.  It’s all very superficial, but if she hadn’t had her helmet on she would have hit her head very hard and we would have had a trip to A&E!  It’s the one time I hate being a Mum when you watch one of your babies hurt themselves potentially very badly and you’re powerless to stop it .  Still, thank goodness for breastfeeding!  It calmed her very quickly and, of course, stopped the bleeding in the mouth nearly instantly so we could see there was no tooth damage or anything.  Flopsy’s too scared to get on the bike at all because it wobbles, being a proper bike with stabilisers - true to form it’s Mopsy who just goes for it and Flopsy who holds back!

I’ve been thinking about this total autonomy malarky and I have these positive things our family have noticed over the last week:  For Cotton-tail, Flopsy and Mopsy watching tv means more time for her with me - something Mopsy didn’t get as a baby; I’m less stressed for a few reasons; partly because I’m working with the girls instead of against them; partly because the ‘electronic babysitter’ allows me to keep the house in a nicer state and gives me a break from entertaining them which then means I’m in a better state of mind for some better quality ‘entertaining’ when they’re not watching tv; of course me being less stressed means that all three get a better Mummy; the girls are both learning lots of songs and dances as most of the videos they choose to watch are things like Fun Song Factory and they both join in so it’s certainly not a passive activity all the time; the tv also informs their imaginative play and they often come out with ‘evidence’ of learning that they must have got from the tv; I’m having to do less washing as they’re wearing fewer clothes (I’m trying to get less hung-up on getting them to do things just because it’s socially conventional!) - in fact…message for Mum - don’t worry about getting them any more summer clothes for the moment…I’m anticipating much near-nakedness this summer and therefore clothing quota will not need to be so high as in winter!; also, we’re getting more lie-ins as the girls are staying up until they fall asleep where they stand, or ask to be taken to bed, which is usually quite late, so they’re sleeping late in the mornings - always a good thing in my eyes

House: Well we didn’t get the co-op mortgage but only because of guarantor problems.  We’ve since engaged the services of a mortgage broker who came to gather information on Thursday and rang me on Friday to say that he’ll definitely be able to get us a mortgage on our income without a gurantor and we’re just waiting for Tuesday or Wednesday next week for a letter with a choice of mortgages.  So it looks like we will be able to buy the house for definite.  I’m a bit nervous of the next step though…making an offer…and finding a conveyancer…it all seems much too grown up for me!