Slugs on the Refrigerator

Kat's Crafty Confessions

Ok. So I have something that I need to get off of my chest.

 

 

 

I hate crafting with my children.  

 

It starts with such promise-- usually a beautifully photographed tutorial on pinterest, extolling the virtues of stimulating creativity with your children.  Each time, I approach the project like an optimistic goldfish, if any previous negative memories remain, I brush them away with the simple "this time will be different".

It never is.

On average, it takes 25 minutes to set up, 35 minutes to clean up and about 2.3 minutes for my children to 'do' the activity, managing in that short time to fling the materials as far and wide as possible. There is usually swearing (me), often tears (me again) and sometimes tantrums (yep, me).

Of course, that is if they even do it.  If paint is involved, Georgia just paints herself.  If there are scissors involved, Ellis cuts his clothes/hair/(insert other inappropriate object here).  Theo eats everything (as we sadly learned this morning...no story to follow) and the cats always have a way of getting involved in some complicated way that ends with glitter being traipsed throughout the house.

 

What makes the whole situation worse is that people just assume that I spend my days happily creating with my children.  As local folks find out about my blog and know that Kevin works in the arts as well, I get more and more comments about how creative we are as a family and how much art we must do.  It is like our deep dark secret, because the truth is, if I am bad at doing crafts with the kids, Kevin is worse.  The most laid back man most of the time, art projects with our children turn him into the craft police.  If a project even looks like it is going to change from the  original intentions, Kev loses it, doing that thing he does with his hair when stressed.

What a fraud, right?  All of that Christmas crafting was a blip in a long history of me freaking out about the mess.  I love it when the kids just draw...anything beyond that sends me quivering in a corner. But then, one or two turns 'round the tank and I forget how much I despise it and out comes the paint and glitter once again.

And while I am off-loading.  My children also hate wearing hats.  Each and every one of them has done since birth.  

 

Whew. I feel lighter already.

I Seem to Have Blinked

...because there is no way possible my baby girl is ready for a big girl bed.

 

 

But whether I want to believe it or not, Miss Georgia Grace moved to a futon underneath her brother over the weekend. The decision was quite sudden after she found a thrifted duvet set I'd bought and declared "Mine!"

 

She is so pleased with her bed and every guest has been brought to see it.  She carries around the spare pillowcase. The babies are all put to bed about 50 times a day. When a bout of late night wakefulness caused me to suggest that she go into a cot, tears and sobs followed with her broken declaration:

"No! Me! Bed!"

She's only been in it a few days, but it is alrady littered with her most treasured things. Baby dolls, toy cars, trains and every book she can drag up the stairs and into the bed.

And as Ellis used to sleep with a 10in omlet pan at this age, we are counting ourselves lucky.

 

Art Takes All Shapes

 

Georgia wants to paint or colour all day long.  She will go through page after page of paper.  However, markers and crayons have to be counted in and out, in the same way narcotics are controlled at hospitals, lest we end up with contemporary art at knee level.

Ellis has less interest.  He likes to pour all of the paint out of the bottles into huge swirly puddles, preferably covering toy cars in the mess. All of his "pictures" he brings home from nursery are just blobs and scribbles, not unlike those of a few years ago.

However, his attention remained fixed for over an hour as we transformed an old table.

He told me later he wanted to be a painter. "But not a silly artist one. A serious one. I want to paint houses and walls".

He will be his father's death.

 

 

In a Puddle

Her favourite thing...after cake.

Bringing the Crazy

Aren't these sweet? I am not really into the whole Cath Kidston floral and polka dots thing, but I saw these in a charity shop and had to have them.  They sung to me and at £4, unmissable. 

They were supposed to be £4.50, but I had all 3 children with me, creating havoc with the shop and as I was paying. Georgia was trying to climb into a tub of scarves, Ellis was playing swords next to the ceramic egg cups and Theo was screaming.  When I couldn't easily find the extra 50p, the shop attendant waved her hand to say forget it.

That happens to us a lot.

I have never been organised. I am great at other things, totally crap at organisation.  I always thought/hoped that motherhood would bring out a ruthless efficiency hidden somewhere within me.  Uh, er, nope.  Not a sausage.

In fact, the level of crazy we bring with us as a family of five is starting to become awe-inspiring.  In the last week, I have forgotten nappies 3 times when we've gone out for a few hours.  How many children do I have? 3. How many are in nappies? 2. How long have I had at least one child in nappies? Almost 5.

My friends are very tolerant.  They sigh and hand over their spare wipes/nappies/drinks/snacks/change, knowing that I am good on my debts...or we just confound them with our craziness and dazzle them with our smiles.

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A couple of catchy- up type things:

- I have released the North Sea Herringbone Hat pattern for free.  It is here.  My 3rd pattern for knitting! Woo-hoo!

- I am in the process of a big bloggy overhaul.  Liz from Violet Posy is sorting out some layout issues and I am going back through and recategorising my old blog posts and creating sections for patterns, etc.  Please bear with me. There are likely to be new logos and a new banner as well.

- I have set the date for my first crochet workshop on the 25th of Feb called Crochet and Cupcakes.  Places are booking up quickly, so if you are interested I urge you to book soon.  I will be running more workshops, both beginners courses and on specialist days on hat design, flowers and cabled crochet, so watch out for those.

The World According to Ellis Pt 2

Coming downstairs first thing this morning, he says "Mama, we need to build a magic tent with a big strong door on it to go over my bed"

"Why?"

"So my dreams can't get in.  There is an elephant in my dreams and he's irritating"

Living the Rock and Roll Lifestyle

Yup. That's us.  Rock and rollers all the way.

In fact, We are so rock 'n' roll, our kids don't even play with dolls. No, no, no.  Dolls are soooooo last year.  My kids play with rock band action figures.  Oh yeah. Magic Number figurines, to be precise.  

 

You don't remember them?  Ummm, yeah I didn't either when they arrived in the post from Kevin's parents.  No matter.  Georgia and Theo recognised cool when they saw it.

There has been lots of kissing between the dolls. Yes, I thinnk that they are brothers and sisters. Oh and I had to  pretend to breastfeed one of the beardy ones. But its all cool - 

 

Just so long as what happens on tour stays on tour.

 

 

 

 

Rule Breaker

I'm not certain what his excuse is.  Its not like he was born yesterday (or 12 days ago).  He has been brought up to date with the current set of rules and regulations in operation at Chez Harrison-Goldin. Heck, we even wrote on the census his understanding of English was 'excellent' (well, we may have written 'very good', because it was probably "one of those days", but still...

there is no excuse for this:

 

Apparently its a spiders web.  The spider lives in the window sill and its web wrapped all over the living room and the yarn trunk/coffee table from the car boot sale. Ellis offers a full description in the video below.   

 

I am not certain that laughing and filming him will disuade him from future web building, but it was rather funny.

Glimpses

This is the view from my washing line.  I liked hanging out washing at the old house.  I actually think I might love it here. The only problem is that its quite a posh neighbourhood, so I feel like I need to be dressed to hang out my washing...flip flops and jammies doen't seem to cut it.

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I swear I cleaned this room mere moments before this photo was taken. Kevin thinks I just make up the cleaning so it seems like I do something all day.  I think its lucky he's still alive after 10 years. 

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Theo sleeps in a baby hammock. All day.  He loves it.  Except between the hours of 4pm and 3am, when he doesn't.

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We eat a lot of eggs.  A lot.  Well, I don't really eat that many.  Its because when I lived in Calcutta there was a flood and I was stuck in my accomodation and all they served us was eggs for two weeks.  Deep fat fried, curried eggs was my breaking point.  Of course I get a child that loves to eat eggs above all else.

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Georgia loves Theo. As in Hugo the Abominable Snowman "I will love him pat him and squeeze him and call him George" sort of way.  

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Ellis loves him to, but I am less worried about Theo being literally smothered with love. 

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My life is filled with Lego.  We've graduated to itty bitty lego.  Is it wrong to hate it? It'd suck it up with the vacuum, but then I'd have to listen to how all the pieces are missing. 

 

 

Some Things Are Better As A Surprise

Surely I had some ideas about what I thought it would be like having children before I had them. Try as I might, I can not remember.   Knowing me, it was probably my ruddy cheeked children and I tromping up the hills every afternoon, spending hours doing interesting things like going to museums and reading books.

No, the last almost four years of reality have completely erased what ever fantatsies I may have had.  Though, of some things I can be certain:

Whatever I thought, I am most certain it was not spending the better part of 2 hours reading the complete guide to Lego Star Wars and explaining over and over what podracers, MTTs and Wookies are, whilst simultaneously clicking my tongue at the baby (apparently the funniest thing ever done by a human being), at the same time being pummelled in the kidney by the youngest.

 

The cookies the fantasy children and I made were almost certainly beautiful works of art that I could bring out to impress guests. They most certainly were not rolled out with a half-full bottle of wine because we couldn't find the rolling pin and most definitely not half burnt hockey pucks that we had to cover in sugar and sprinkles to make mildly edible.

 

Afternoon activities were probably not taking turns singing down the vacuum cleaner hose or having the small boy stand inches away from me on his stool so he could watch me doing dishes. I don't think I ever explained to my fantasy children (yet again) that calling somone a "stinky poo poo" is neither funny or appropriate and that, no, we can not get a dog when the 2 cats die.

No, it would be fair to say that I never imagined that having children would be this...mundane/bizarre/crazy/boring/fun/ridiculous/beautiful.

 

Probably better it was all a surprise.