Bug = 3 years 7 months
Bub = 1 year 9 months Linus at this age
Bud = 1 month 8 days Linus at this age – Ada at this age

• This week the whole family (including Nana) joined an acquaintance and a whole bunch of her friends to visit Chancarla* Farmpark. Nana had been there before with Linus and Ada, but this was first visit for Bob, Zoe, and me.
• We all enjoyed a simple little game given to us by a friend (thanks, SA!). It’s “Desktop Darts“, and there hasn’t been a lot of dart-playing, but we’re all enjoying seeing where we can stick the tiny magnetic darts. (Linus is very into magnets thanks to his magnetic Thomas and Friends trains.)
• Daddy went “fishing” with Linus and Ada using an old chopstick, some cotton, magnetic darts (see above), and “fish” cut out of paper with staples in their noses.
• All three kids have been sick, with Zoe even going to the doctor, but it’s all just relatively harmless coughs and sniffles.
• My midwife and student midwife paid us their final visit (the day after my first visit from my new Plunket nurse).
• I baked a chocolate cake (with melted chocolate icing) for no good reason, and decided to pretend it was to celebrate Zoe’s arrival.
• I decided that I need to try to write an “in brief” blog entry (i.e. like this one) every week, rather than keep growing a backlog of items I plan to blog in detail. I’ll still write detailed entries when I get the (ha ha!) time.

Bug = 3 years 7 months
Bub = 1 year 9 months Linus at this age
Bud = 1 month 5 days – Linus at this age – Ada at this age

Books have always been a very important part of my life, and Bob’s not a complete stranger to reading for pleasure either. Collecting bargain second-hand fiction – particularly crime novels – was a major pre-occupation of my twenties, but now that my lifestyle and priorities have changed, so has my taste in books.

These days I have little time for reading, and little space for keeping books. Now it’s all about borrowing books from our wonderful public library, and focusing on books related to life as a parent: children’s picture and story books; reference materials for children (e.g. arts and crafts, science, magic tricks); and parenting books.

Linus and Ada both enjoy books of various levels now, and it’s worth recording some of their (and my) favourites for our own interest and future reference.

From the Library

For a long time now, Linus and Ada have been going to the library every week. Some of the favourite titles, authors, and series we’ve enjoyed borrowing have been:

• James Mayhew: Katie series. So far we’ve read Katie and the Sunflowers and Katie and the Mona Lisa. These picture books are about a little girl exploring famous paintings by walking into them and interacting with the subjects. The stories are fun and aren’t heavy-handed when it comes to “educating” the reader about the paintings, but they include an information page at the back to extend parents’ (or older children’s) knowledge, which I enjoy.
• Usborne Young Puzzle Series: Linus is addicted to these. He has probably read all the library’s copies at least once, but shows no signs of tiring of them. They all have stories that aren’t too captivating for grown-ups, but the puzzles (mazes, find the object, etc.) on each page are fun for Linus. The large, highly detailed pictures of interesting places appeal to me, and when we don’t feel like reading the book to Linus, he is happy to “read” them on his own for quite a while, or we’ll flick through it with him without reading the text.
• Shirley Hughes: Books like Lucy and Tom’s Christmas and My Naughty Little Sister are beautifully-illustrated stories about young children and their families. The same characters recur through many of the books, and there is a lot of Hughes material available: stories at a variety of reading levels; books of poems; and books that she has illustrated for other authors (including Margaret Mahy). Like many of the books and authors I choose for my children, these are works that I read as a child, so – no offence to the artists – I’m sure a significant portion of their appeal to me is nostalgia rather than intrinsic quality.

At Home

• Margaret Mahy: We enjoy her poem books – Down the Back of the Chair and On a Summery Saturday Morning are lovely reads, as is the story book The Lion in the Meadow. I’m sure as Linus gets older we’ll move on to more of her stories.
• Oliver Jeffers: Lost and Found is the only one we’ve read so far – it has charmed everyone in the family. It has very simple text and illustrations that tell a sweet story. The library apparently has more of Jeffers’ books, so we’ll have to borrow them when we remember.
• A. A. Milne: I’ve really enjoyed reading the Winnie the Pooh stories and poems to Linus, and he surprises us all at how long he’ll sit and listen to a book with very few pictures. Milne’s stories are sweet; he had a wonderful way with words; and there are lots of little comments on the quirks of the different characters that make me laugh out loud (and are way over Linus’s head!).
• Rudyard Kipling: I’ve recently read some of The Jungle Book to Linus, which I’ve never read before. Once I’ve finished it I hope to read him some Just So Stories, which Bob and I read aloud to each other while we were in England. I’m optimistic that they’ll appeal to Linus because – like The Jungle Book - they contain a wide variety of wild animals. Like Milne, Kipling was a master of using language with wit and elegance. (I recently found a lot of individual Just So Stories in the children’s books at the library, and was disappointed to discover that they had been “retold”.)
• Fantastic Mr Fox: I’m a fan of most of Roald Dahl‘s books, but this one is my favourite. (Oddly enough, it’s one of the few that isn’t illustrated by Quentin Blake.) Nana recently read this book to Linus (over a few sessions), and he loved it.

I often tire of reading aloud to Linus before he does. I’ve also wrongly interpreted his silence and lack of reaction to what I’m reading as lack of interest, but I think he’s absorbing and processing everything I say; if I ask him if he wants to stop reading, he almost always says “No”.

I must make an effort to let him listen and absorb as much as he wants at his own pace without “testing” him by asking comprehension questions obsessively! I’m sure such grilling is a good way to destroy his pleasure and engrossment (I don’t think that’s a word), and is only done for my satisfaction without doing him any good.

Bug = 3 years 7 months
Bub = 1 year 9 months Linus at this age
Bud = 30 days (due today!) – Linus at this age – Ada at this age

Last night I went in to check on my big kids in the middle of the night, and was pleasantly surprised to find something cute that I’ve been quietly hoping would happen for a while:

Bug = 3 years 7 months
Bub = 1 year 9 months Linus at this age
Bud = 30 days (due today!) – Linus at this age – Ada at this age

Animal Noises

Mummy rips a page from a pad.

Linus: That was a funny noise! …sort of like an elephant or a turtle or something.

Appetite (June 2009)

Linus: Mummy, can I have a pear please?
Mummy: No, we’re going to have lunch in about half an hour.
Linus (whining): But I’m not hungry.

Creative Language (September 2009)

Linus invented a word out of nowhere the other day. We were all in bed in the morning, and Linus was telling Daddy about Mummy changing Zoe the previous day.

Linus: Mummy was trying to wipe her bottom, but she was still SLOVERING!

From the context, “slovering” (rhymes with slobbering) is pooing.

Power Struggle (September 2009)

Nana often reminds Linus to “put his ears on” when he’s not listening (and Daddy and I have started saying it too). The other day when Nana and Linus were enjoying a day out together, Linus was starting to play up a bit.

Nana (gently wiggling Linus’s ears): Have you got your ears on?
Linus: Yes… but sometimes they run out of batteries!

Ada Lays Down the Law (September 2009)

Linus was talking to Mummy and Nana in the middle of the afternoon.

Linus: Can I watch Bob the Builder?
Ada (busy playing with the trains): Not today!

She must have heard Mummy and Nana give that answer quite often!

Bug = 3 years 6 months
Bub = 1 year 8 months Linus at this age
Bud = 27 days (due today!) – Linus at this age – Ada at this age

Our bedtime routine for the big kids has changed recently.

Old (Pre-Bud) Routine

Linus and Ada have been sleeping in the same room since April, with Ada in a bed (rather than a cot) since late July. Our routine before Zoe’s arrival was:

1. Curtains are shut and heaters and dim lamps are turned on in the bedrooms.
2. Daddy helps Linus and Ada with brushing their teeth.
3. Ada and parent A go into her room to get nappy and pyjamas on while Linus and parent B go into parents’ room to get pyjamas on. Usually during this time Linus would rush through to Ada to give her a raspberry on her tummy (and sometimes parent A and parent B would follow suit).
4. “Night-night” kisses and cuddles are shared all around.
5. Back in the big bedroom, parent A reads Linus two or three library books, then has a kiss and snuggle with Linus. Linus is then left (with the light on) to read for as long as he likes before going to sleep. Occasionally he gets up to go to the toilet or ask for a drink (almost always denied), but usually we don’t hear from him again and he is asleep within 20 minutes.
6. (In the meanwhilst…) Parent B reads one or two of our own books to Ada. Recent favourites have been Where the Wild Things Are, The Lion in the Meadow, and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. The lamp is turned off (although a very dim nightlight is on in their room all night), and Ada then gets a song or two, usually insisting on Rock-a-bye Baby and If You’re Happy and You Know It. After goodnight kisses, the door is shut tight and parent B is free for the evening. We listen to Ada on the baby monitor and soon know if she hasn’t settled.
7. When one of us (always Mummy!) wants to go to bed, one of us (usually Daddy) shifts Linus through to his bed (often via a sleepy toilet stop for Linus). Occasionally Mummy will read for a while with Linus still in bed because he’s just SO cute when he’s asleep!

New Routine

Zoe is pretty low maintenance at the moment – provided she’s on Mummy – so the above routine was still do-able. However while Zoe and I were in hospital, Bob tried putting both the big kids to bed in the same bed at the same time while they were at Granny and Pop-pop’s… and it worked surprisingly well! So given this confidence boost, we decided that it would be nice if we could get Linus and Ada to go to bed in the same room at the same time routinely at home.

We tried it a couple of weeks ago, and haven’t looked back since; there have been absolutely no problems, so much so that since the first couple of nights we haven’t even bothered to shut their door tight – they just stay in bed. My impression is that Linus goes to sleep immediately, and Ada sings or chats quietly for a wee while and then goes to sleep.

The new routine is very similar to the old routine, but we’ve added a little movie into bedtime along with the books – every night the kids and parent(s) watch a 3-minute movie (usually “Bernard“).

The biggest advantage of this routine is undoubtedly that it only takes one adult to do it, so the “spare” adult (or adultS, when Nana’s staying) can get the living area tidied or look after Zoe or relax. I’m sure we’ll appreciate this as Zoe gets more demanding over the coming months!

One disadvantage is that Linus is missing out on reading time. Because we have to keep Ada’s attention as well as his, we read fewer less complex books at bedtime, and he no longer gets to read after we’ve left (because the light’s out). We’re trying to counteract this by remembering to read to him more often during the course of the day.

Another drawback is that Linus is no longer getting the chance to put himself to sleep at his own pace every night, which I think was good for him.