I made myself a mei tai baby carrier the other day, and then a second one when my MIL gave me some Thai silk she’d been given.  The girls were so entranced by the sewing machine and all the sewing paraphernalia that I let them have a go at sewing some patterns on a spare piece of fabric.  They loved it and I suggested they make something, which they very eagerly agreed to.  We decided on bandanas, which I initially thought was a bit daft as hemming is so boring, and that’s all that’s required.  However, to those new to sewing, even boring straight lines of hemming is exciting so, in the end, they loved it.  They helped me pin and then we sewed together, with them controlling the needle and me controlling the fabric.  Flopsy took to an even pedal pressure very quickly but Mopsy took a bit of experimenting before she got the hang of not doing desperately fast or nothing at all!  But by the end she was sewing like a pro!  It was really fun and we all enjoyed it.  I’m thinking of suggesting they make simple bags next, if they express any more interest. 

 Mopsy the rabbit (oh!  Just realised that Mopsy is a bunny in the actual story!  Ha ha!)

 Flopsy the sky

 Flopsy the clown

 Mopsy the lion

  Flopsy the zebra

The natural learning processes of babies and children is of endless fascination to me.  Observing it makes me more and more keen on autonomous education and I feel very certain that we will continue our parenting philosophy of being led by our off-spring forever

Cotton-tail is currently learning how to eat solid foods.  As regular readers of this blog will know, we unintentionally did ‘baby-led weaning’ with Flopsy (she refused anything off a spoon except yoghurt) and, having learnt more about it, did it on purpose with Mopsy.  Cotton-tail is now 6.5 months and has been joining us at the table in her tripp trapp high-chair (no tray) for a few weeks (of course she’s been with us at mealtimes since she was born, but usually sleeping in someone’s arms or wriggling on someone’s lap).  She is learning to eat in this way:

1. Learning how to pick up food, and, more specifically, learning how to pick up different types of food.  She loves it that cucumber slides around and feels cold but that potato mashes up in her hand

2. Then she has learnt how to get it into her mouth.  Her hand control has developed enough for her to make sure she picks the food up in such a way that there is enough food ‘visible’ to get some into her mouth.  She is also starting to learn how to put food from one hand into another to make it more accessible.

3. Next she is learning how to bite pieces off what she’s got in her hand - a very pleasing experience, particuarly when every food does different things: Brocolli kind of breaks up into tiny little pieces which feel very interesting in her mouth; pasta feels slippery

4. Her current plan is to master the art of moving food around in her mouth with her tongue.  Lots of gagging involved in this phase; and spitting food out onto the table, but she’s getting there.

5. The next thing she has to learn is how to mash the food up so it’s easy to swallow.  We’re beginning to see less food on the floor after mealtimes so I’m guessing she’s doing this a little already.  Her poos have yet to change, though, so she’s obviously not doing it very much!

The theory suggests that all this falls into place at about the same time her gut is ready to digest it all effectively and safely, when it’s less permeable to allergens and bacteria.  I don’t need to worry about her lacking in nutrients due to the lack of solid food intake because she’s still breastfed on demand.  If she’s anything like her sisters, by the time she gets to 8 or 9 months she’ll be eating food like her Daddy (albeit a bit messier!).

 Mopsy is currently learning how to settle herself in the night.  Flopsy is the only one of our babies to experience any sleep-training and that only consisted of a grand total of two minutes controlled crying and a week’s worth of patting/rocking to sleep at 5 months old in the misguided belief that it was bad for her to learn to fall asleep at the breast.  When we stopped all that nonsense, life got much easier and, miraculously, Flopsy has been falling asleep without breastfeeding for at least 18 months and sleeping right through the night most nights; only needing a loo visit and a cuddle to settle if she does wake. 

Mopsy is doing exactly what Flopsy did.  Breastfeeding no longer gets her to sleep. It does switch her mind off and start the process, but the action of suckling now keeps her from falling fast asleep most of the time.  So we feed, and then she rolls over and falls asleep herself while I cuddle her (when evenings work out well, that’s what happens - I won’t go into that whole thing now, though!).  Most of the time when she wakes in the night (two or three times), she now rolls over mumbling a half-hearted request for a breastfeed (yak yak, she calls it) but falls asleep before I get to feed her. 

The next step will be settling before she even asks for milk.  However we’ve upset the process a bit now by decorating their room for them and pushing the two single beds together.  They now both want to sleep in there, which is lovely for them.  And it’s very pleasing to me to note that when Mopsy does wake, she doesn’t cry for me - she’s not scared of not sleeping next to me - she just calls ‘Mummy’ and me or DH go and get her and bring her back into our bed where she settles very quickly.  It does mean that she’s woken up more than she would if she were stirring next to me so she does need feeding to get back to sleep. 

When Flopsy did this, it was the start of the weaning process…maybe I’ll start thinking about weaning Mopsy but I don’t really feel like I want to like I did when Flopsy was this age.  Mopsy is much happier than Flopsy was to have feeds that last a few seconds (more a cursory checking in with me, than an actual need to feed); and she doesn’t ask as much as Flopsy did.  We’ll just see how it goes for now.

Flopsy is currently having a ‘learning to read’ phase.  She’s had lots of these during her life so far.  The early ones were things like a desire to learn her letters; or wanting to sit with me with a book and tell me her own version of the story; or asking me to point out the words in whatever book I’m reading and tell her what they say.  At the moment she’s bringing books to us and asking us to read the words with her.  Her favourite book ever is one she discovered a couple of years ago at the back of a bookcase.  It’s called Daily Light and is a collection of Bible readings - one for every day of the year.  Now no one could describe us as devoted Christians, but I’ve been brought up a Christian and my Grandparents would love it if we went to church regularly and read the Bible.  They gave me this book when I was 15.  It’s small - about 8cm wide; 13cm tall and 2cm thick and Flopsy has fallen in love with it.  It has proper thin pages like a Bible has, which I think appeals to her.  We’ve never read to her from it, so she has no idea what it says (I think!), but she loves it - ‘reads’ it when we’re reading our books in the evening etc.  At the moment she often brings it to me asking me what the words say - she doesn’t want me to read it to her, but wants me to point to the words and if she knows them she reads them and if she doesn’t, I do. 

She’s also very keen on reading one of the bedtime stories they choose every night and that’s really enjoyable.  We have a collection of Puddle Lane books - mostly bought from car boot sales to satisify my nostalgia! - and she is also really enjoying reading those with me.  I read the adult’s side of the page; then she reads the child’s side; then she gets bored and wants me to read it all. 

These reading bouts take place randomly during the day and very frequently happen at 10pm when we’re reading in bed before going to sleep.  Another reason to be glad she won’t be going to school - she can learn to read in her own time and whenever and whatever she likes

PS.  All three girls are also learning heaps of other things all the time, of course, but these things seem to be what they’re focussing on at the moment. 

Yesterday we…

 Cuddled,

  did some ballet,

 drew pictures, watched tv (no photo of that as it didn’t make a very interesting photo ;-)),

 pretended to go to sleep with Teddy,  planted out the lettuce seedlings,

 sowed more lettuce seeds,

  marvelled at how much the tomato seedlings and sunflower seedlings have grown,

 laughed at Flopsy and Mopsy bouncing a ball,

 did puzzles with Grandma during an impromptu visit from her and Grandad,

  grinned at Mummy,

  made flowers (inspired by something on Teletubbies),

 and experimented very briefly with coloured cellophane.

Also did a lot of dressing up and reading stories, which we forgot to take pictures of!

As I think the girls have wrecked the kitchen floor!  It’s now a lovely multi-coloured pattern thanks to the great fun we had doing this activity from Doodle-Do on CBeebies.  Flopys has been talking about doing it for a while, so this afternoon we went for it and they stayed totally engrossed in it for a whole hour!  Pretty impressive for a 2 year old and a nearly 4 year old.  Must remember that activity for the future.  They produced some fab art which I’ve neglected to take photos of…but I do think that the process was way more important than the product in this case anyway

We’ve also heard that our mortgage offer has come through, so that’s the money sorted out.  Just waiting for the solicitor to do the searches now…shouldn’t be much longer we hope.

Forgot to blog that on Wednesday we went to a new (to us) HE group which we all loved.  Flopsy and Mopsy fell head over heels in love with a little dog, which they played with most of the afternoon.  I knew a couple of the families there in real life and one or two from the internet and can’t wait to go to the next meet there.

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

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:

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’. 

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!

Flopsy and Mopsy were having a bit of a disagreement yesterday over some toy or something.  Flopsy hit Mopsy on the head.  Mopsy got very upset but didn’t hit back - just said “no, stop hit me head, Flopsy!”, which is quite good for her - normally it’s her who hits and Flopsy who stands there whining about it!  I took Flopsy out to the hall to defuse the situation and sat down to talk to her about it:

Me: Flopsy it’s just not on to hit people, and I know you can sort these things out with words…and if you can’t do that, you just need to come and get Mummy or Daddy to help you

Flopsy (now calm, and sorry that she hit Mopsy): I tried to sort it out with words, Mummy, but Mopsy just hit me on the head with my words

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing, she was so earnest and sweet about it.