A Few Changes

Once again it's been rather a long time since my last post. In my defense, though, I have been a bit busy...

This... 

...turned into this...

...on 28 February. Meet Adam! He was born at home at 41 weeks + 6 days with absolutely no medical intervention during the labour. The full birth story will follow in another post :-) 

In the meantime, his big brother has just turned 3 and now looks like this: 

He's adjusted remarkably well to having a little brother, aside from the odd hiccup you'd expect from a 3 year old. He has sat on the baby once or twice but no major damage seems to have been done! I try to remember that younger siblings throughout history have had a fairly good survival rate so it's not worth getting stressed about. 

In home ed news, we've mostly just been pottering. We did do a bit on Passover, though that was interrupted by a tummy bug that swept through the family. We may put it all together into a lapbook in the next week or two if I get round to it; if not, we'll leave it. 

Daniel has got very into pretend games recently and his new farmyard and animals that he got for his birthday have been a real hit. He also requested (and got) a visit to a real farm on his actual birthday and we have just booked up to spend a week on a farm in the Black Forest in July, following a week in Switzerland where I'm teaching at the first Cued Speech Summer School. (And yes, that is absolutely as cool as it sounds and I am hugely excited!) So I'm thinking the next few months will involve a lot of animal and insect stuff. 

We have just restarted Forest School and joined the under-7s home ed group there, which actually makes Daniel one of the youngest. He is loving it - I haven't seen him so comfortable in a group for ages. He loves being around older children and is thriving with the extra freedom they can have with the slightly older kids there. I barely see him for most of each session, which is a welcome change as he is generally (and understandably) needing rather a lot of mummy time at the moment. 

On the garden front, the veg patch hasn't yet been cleared (maybe tomorrow) but we have planted our potatoes outside and have tomatoes, peas and sunflowers doing nicely in the conservatory ready for planting into grow bags on the patio. 

From my own point of view I'm finding it a bit hard having very little chance to do anything for myself. I'm trying to be proactive and find things that work around the kids and hopefully some of those will come together soon. I am really missing the social side of the university chaplaincy, though, and have yet to find something to fill that hole. 

To end on a happy note, I'll leave you with this...

The wonders of licking out the bowl when making brownies!