And Then There Were Three...

The youngest member of our family joined us in mid-December. After an extremely straightforward (if exhausting) pregnancy, our plans for another homebirth went out of the window rather fast thanks to a placental abruption, and Benjamin arrived by emergency c-section. He had a rocky start with breathing and spent the first day and a half in the neonatal unit but is fine now.

His big brothers absolutely adore him and he directed the majority of his first smiles at them! He sleeps through most things, which is just as well as the other two average a fairly hefty decibel level! He is just starting to ‘chat’ to us and is generally pretty chilled. 

As it has been cold and wet, we have mostly been hibernating for the last couple of months. Daniel has been doing Reading Eggs (and, more recently, Maths Seeds) virtually every day and his confidence with reading has soared. We have discovered David Walliams’ books and read most of them now (inspired by an upcoming theatre performance of Awful Auntie) and Daniel loves his use of different typefaces and font sizes for extra effect, turning the text itself into another dimension of the reading experience. 

There has also been cooking. Adam makes his signature jam tarts every time I do anything involving pastry...

...while Daniel has mastered choux pastry to make the most incredible profiteroles! He informs me that chocolate soufflés will be next.

There has also been a little progress at the allotment. The boys claim to be preparing their potato patch but at this rate will be planting them in Australia!

As a contrast, freak weather at the end of February resulted in this:

DH is teaching Daniel to play chess, and we have all started learning Italian at a new local class. We have found a new home ed group we like, done the usual museum/theatre/cinema/soft play group trips, carried on with music and swimming and gymnastics, had numerous playdates with friends... hmmm, maybe not quite as quiet a few months as I thought! 

We are looking forward to the change in pace that the warm weather will bring. With that in mind, I am going to challenge myself to blog every day to show how things shift according to the time of year. I reserve the right to cheat by adjusting the dates of posts. So there!