7 Quick Takes: 9 November

1.

In case any of you (none?) are desperate for a potty training update, despite me scaling way back in this area due to 3rdSister I having a virus last weekend, she is enthusiastically counting to ten and, um, performing when I sit her on the toilet, as well as asking to come to the toilet after she has done something in her pants. To me, this is progress enough at the moment!

2.

Christmas Cake in progress

Christmas time, Mistletoe and Wine...well not quite, but I've certainly been preparing this month. I've bought shiny purple paper to wrap the books we read, one a day, during Advent. I've started writing Christmas cards. I've made a Christmas cake! (which admittedly, needs sticking back together with marmalade. Yes, I wept, and have had to make a sumptuous carrot cake this morning to feel better.) Last night the 3Sisters took it upon themselves to snuggle on a duvet with hot chocolate watching a Christmas episode of the Simpsons. So lovely to get a glimpse of what's to come! (And if anyone thinks I'm insane doing things this far in advance, remember I'm hormonally challenged, and I also like to get stuff done so I can 'cruise' through the holidays the Flylady way.....)

3.

I'm also using the advent of Advent to re-focus on my prayer life, which dwindled when I was sick for a couple of months. I always take the 6am slot to sit with tea and toast and read scripture. I'm now trying to re-introduce a morning prayer time, using Angela Ashwin's Woven into Prayer collection, accompanied by my Prayer Journal (which I last filled in on 8 August!) I truly feel it sets me up for the day, and I benefit from the discipline.

4.

I have to say, however, that today all 3Sisters were up at 6am today, two of them writing Christmas cards (don't say a word!) and chattering around me and sometimes to me. I was clearly sat in the computer corner, reading aloud from a book, sitting with God - and you know, it is lovely to have a reminder of how prayer and life aren't separate, but I would have liked things to be a little more still. I reminded 1st and 2ndSister about how we visited the Wesley rectory in Epworth a few years ago, and recounted how Susanna Wesley used to put a teatowel over her head to signal her time in prayer. "Can you think of a way I could signal to you children that I am praying?" I asked. Well, apparently it would be a good idea to wear my dressing gown, or put the fish tank on my head. This may require some thought. 

5.

Yesterday I attended the first of three sessions with half of our new Pastoral Visiting Team. This is a new thing set up by our priest, and although it coincides with me becoming a Lay Minister in pastoral care, I've been very much taking a back seat due to illness, and what with having a baby in a few months, I'm kind of along with everyone else for the ride. I didn't learn a lot in terms of the material, but it was good to revise it and spend some time getting to know the new team. It feels very strange returning to work after more than two months away - it was great, and inspiring, and getting back to feed the girls snacks, remind about piano practice, supervise homework on the computer, get 2ndSister ready for dancing, make dinner and bath 1st and 3rdSister was not the rest I needed afterwards, but that's life!

6.

Further potty training update - while writing this, 3rdSister came up and told me she needed  the toilet. And went! There is hope...

7.

Something a little gratuitous, because I'm otherwise uninspired. 1stSister finished the book of The Hobbit recently and wants to see the film which comes out shortly before Christmas (something we'll allow unless it's a 15 Certificate)....we got to see the 3D trailer at the cinema recently and it all looks well worth it - especially   the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, who I really should marry as he's around the same height as me, and looks almost as lovely as the actor who plays him did as Guy of Gisborne in the BBC Robin Hood series. When looking for a picture to try and convey this, I stumbled across a blogger who is even more obsessed with Richard Armitage as Thorin than I am - can you believe it!

* with thanks to Jen Fulwiler @ ConversionDiary.com for hosting - head over there now and read a whole load of other Quick Takes!

7 EXTREMELY Quick Takes

1.

I've been working in 15 minute increments this past couple of days. Potty training. I hope I don't need to say more. I can now get 3rdSister to happily sit and have stories on the toilet, and not leap up in horror if anything emerges from her nether regions. Believe me, this is progress!

2.

We're using pull-ups as well as knickers though, so I have been having some respite from timed toilet visits and unscheduled accidents-on-the-lounge-floor (we knew not to ask for the standard cream-coloured carpets when we moved into our new build houseast December.)

3.

And this morning it's swim nappy time, as after a long hiatus, 3rdSister gets to splash around and play in the local swimming pool. We call this 'swimming'. It's not. But it's exercise, and different to being in the bath.

4.

Yesterday all the ingredients for my Christmas cakes arrived, from organic fruit to brandy. Now I've just got to schedule in time to watch the oven while they bake, at a time that's conveniently after a slot where they could soak overnight, presuming I have had enough time to weigh and measure the ingredients. (I probably won't measure the brandy, mind you, just glug it in there.)

5.

One of our favourite charities, Compassion, through which we sponsor a young Guatemalan child, reminded us this week that if we wanted GuatemalanSister to get a photograph of us all in our Christmas card to her, it needed doing by 1st November. Cue a hasty 'Christmas' family photo from folks dressed variously, including as St Rose of Lima and in dark colours for a Halloween-type party. And 3rdSister, in her pyjamas and not knowing what was going on, refused to smile. The result is not too bad though - I think it'll do for sending with our Christmas cards anyway.

6.

Speaking of which, yesterday was the date I pencilled in for starting to write Christmas cards. But I'm still finishing off sending out birthday thankyous from 1stSister (October) and 3rdSister (August.) Still, big girls & Daddy are off to watch fireworks this evening (I always get much more excited about Bonfire Night than Halloween!) so if I'm not collapsed comatose after 7.30pm tonight, you can guess what I'll be doing.

7.

These are longer than I thought! What else has been happening other than potty training? There are other things, although it does not seem like it. Hmmmm.....we also sent 3 shoeboxes off to Operation Christmas Child this week (you can understand why I'm early for Christmas - all this sending overseas needs to start early don't you know!). If you aren't shoeboxing, consider donating instead. Some of the videos of kids opening their shoeboxes show that what they get really is a gift, and it's a great way for our little ones to learn about giving to and thinking of others.

* with thanks to Jen Fulwiler @ ConversionDiary.com for hosting - head over there now and read a whole load of other Quick Takes!

7 Quick Takes Odds and Ends

1

It's been a bit of a surreal week so far. On Monday 3rdSister (aged 2) informed me that she had a 'little ball stuck up my nose.' I believed her, initially, but my cautious exploration made me think my fingernail was scraping on an inside bone of her nose (shudder), so I put it down to a snot bubble and shipped her off  to Gran's while I did my antenatal pool workout. Later on, when I was changing her nappy beneath a direct light, I found she was telling the truth after all - I managed to help her push out a small circular bead, thankfully with a hole through the centre, and got on with making dinner. On the one hand, I just put this down as one of those normal, everyday things a mother has to do; but on the other, I thank God for being on this and ensuring it didn't get any worse!

2

The reason she'd found the bead in the first place was because, now I've got my 16-weeks-pregnant mojo going on, we had a bit of a house-sorting weekend and the sofas in the lounge were re-arranged, thus revealing an assorted array of toys, tissues, tiny playthings and dust. We also extracted ALL of the toys that were in there for a big sort, so in my kitchen I am trying to box up dolls/doll clothes/cot, lego/wooden blocks, books in a bag, and so on. The lounge, however, is completely empty, and I find it weird. "You like mess, " my husband said. "No, I like a lived-in look, " I replied. "Mess," he reiterated.

 Mess (not even our house, either, and we made it messy.)

3

Since I wrote Take 1 above, coincidentally, a friend of 3rdSister's from church and Pram Service had to be taken to the Accident and Emergency department after lodging a kernel of SWEETCORN up her nose. Unlike my bead extraction, this required surgical implements and a lot of screaming at nurses. (The little girl's mum is a nurse. Uh-oh.) TOLD you it's a weird week.

4

During this second trimester I've been having seriously odd dreams. I know it's TMI, but some of them are emanating from some deeply-buried warped erotic subconscious. At the weekend, for example, Justin Bieber was begging me to sleep with him (and although I may enjoy his tunes, any other type of attraction to him just makes me go ewww!!) in real life. This isn't the weird thing, though (all the best pregnancy websites assure me these types of dreams are completely normal.) The weird thing is that I tweeted about the weird dream, and not long afterwards someone posted back that Justin Bieber was visiting my city soon and wanted to make a film with us both in it! (I can only guess what sort of film it would be based on my odd dream.) And then, mysteriously, the tweet disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Obviously, a case of silly spam and an efficient spam-removal service. But it made me feel like I was living in a parallel universe for a couple of hours, in which I imagined I was going to be walking the red carpet with The Bieber.

5

I'm frustrated today - a longtime friend who kept trying to make plans to visit when I was ill in my first trimester, cancelled on us today. In a way it's a relief not to be hosting, but I've spent the week focusing on some small details for the visit - ensuring fresh soup was delivered, a cake baked yesterday, and baking little cakes at 7.30am this morning. I even listened to the breadmaker kneading dough at 3.30am! I'm still planning to mop the floor though (after we've eaten lots of cake as a second breakfast), so at least domestically things are looking up, even if I feel exhausted because of an event that never happened!

Cake for breakfast

6

Another odd thing - I've recently realised how good 1stSister has become at lying. Not evil, bad lying, but lying nonetheless. She's been writing 'thank yous' from her eighth birthday. In fact she designed templates on the computer, which she then filled in with the gift that had received, and then wrote a little bit about it. About a book she had been gifted but wasn't bothered about (we're talking an 8 year old who's tackling Lord of the Rings, here), she wrote "I read it all the time!" and about a jewellry crafting kit which kind of fell apart when she tried to use it, she wrote "I've made lots of lovely things!" I find this a bit surreal - one the one hand, she's imitating socialised, adult behaviour, but on the other - they are complete untruths!

7

Finally - someone more superstitious than I would put the weird week down to the impending doom of Halloween. But we don't really 'do' Halloween in our family anymore, not even in a Fulwiler way (see pictures below which include FirstSister dressed as a ghost in a towel). Here in the UK, churches seem to be a lot more anti-Halloween, and I am an official church minister after all these days, and our church is throwing a 'Light Party' to celebrate all the good stuff in the world/Jesus, instead of trick or treating for charity, or something. To me, this misses the point a little bit, although we've attended previous Light Parties. I agree to an extent with Dan Lord's piece on why it's good to confront our evils in a fun-filled way. As a  social anthropologist, I'm convinced that mocking the nastiness in the world is a great way of helping confront it. But UK Halloween stuff seems to take elements of what happens in the USA and just render it a bit lame, really. Almost ALL of the costumes are based around witches, ghosts, skeletons etc - no happy pumpkins or glorious fancy dress. People moan about children wandering around the dark streets unaccompanied frightening the elderly. Most kids tend to make little effort - I remember one year a teenager in a black binliner growling 'trick or treat' and seeming offended by the sweets which we gave (I think most kids expect money). FirstSister gets to go to a Pumpkin Party at Brownies, mind you, and I've compromised by focusing on holy dead people (we're reading the wonderful Lion Book of Saints this month and next) and having a saint party with party food with bright colours, and a saint's treasure hunt that copies Kate Wicker's. Oops - I think this turned into a Halloween post! Have a good week everyone - and those of you in the USA, enjoy Halloween for us!

1stSister & 2ndSister Halloween 2007