These Days

We have played a lot of minecraft in the past week. the boys have built the homes of spongebob and Patrick and their underwater habitat including cafe. On a separate biom the boys and i have been building houses and statues, a cafe and a hotel with diary farm and flower gardens. Today Bean and I started on elaborate country houses. It's only when you start to do it yourself that you realise quite how long it takes to build and complete something and the ideas flow all the time so your always ready to start the next building project. it made me thankful that the smalls have that extended, uninterrupted time to immerse themselves in a project (mummy, on the other hand, was constantly interrupted by the need to provide food and there was the small matter today of clearing up last nights sickness from Pumpkin. Never a pleasant task.)

Pumpkin has been busy building towers to knock down with his angry birds sling shots. He has two versions of the game and supplements the building structures with jenga bricks and wooden blocks.

Plum has completely and utterly moved into her own room. She goes to sleep in her own bed (with cuddles from mummy and/or daddy, and wakes up in her own bed in the morning. I think she is missing waking up with us there. She has cried every morning this week because daddy has gone to work. I officially moved her toddler bed out of our room today.
Plum is busy playing with her small world collections, Peppa Pig, Sylvanians and doll's house all join together in one beautiful game. 

Still no phone, still no photos. But Pippin turned 4 months today. She has been full of cold for the past two weeks and struggling to clear her airways when lying down so nights have been less sleep until daddy raised her mattress at one end two nights ago and thankfully we are returning to longer periods of sleep at nighttime. It's pretty regular of her to have six to nine hours.

Now I am six (Pumpkin)

Today is Pumpkin's (aka Asher Matthew Timothy aka Roo) sixth birthday.Six years ago today at 40 weeks + 3 days at 2.07am Pumpkin was born, the first child to be born in our house, our first home birth.

Last year we all dressed up and went to Fisher's Farm for the day. This year we held a fancy dress party at the weekend and then spent today, his actual birthday, at Fisher's Farm  (his choice.)

Fancy dress family

Star wars minecraft cake

Decorating gingerbread men

Apple bobbing

dress the teddy

Everyone invited to the party dressed up, we had; farmers and romans and cats, there was superman, power rangers, spiderman and superwoman, along with a fairy, princess and robot. On the games itinerary there was apple bobbing, sweets hidden in flour, decorating gingerbread men, pin the button on R2D2, dress the teddy and pass the parcel. 

There aren't any photos of our trip to Fisher's Farm as mummy's phone is broken but we spent a long while on the go-carts, trampolining, playing crazy golf, playing cannon shooting, the children each rode the horse, played on the ride on tractors, enjoyed the tractor ride and had a brief slide indoors. Mostly we were outdoors today (for 4 1/2 hours) It was a two pairs of socks, thermal vest, hat, gloves, snowboot, crack the ice sort of day but the need for sunglasses seemed to help! 

Pumpkin continues to love butterflies and baking, robots and lego, he has interests in light and shadows, and how the body works. He loves his family most of all and enjoys playing with each of his siblings. The day is not complete without a cuddle with Pippin and teaching her a new word or song. He loves to move about, mostly bouncing and running and twirling but being upside down or fiddling with lego will do. He doesn't stop moving for about 12-14 hours from when he gets up in the morning. He loves to eat...constantly. His favourite things are pancakes, granny smith apples, toast with spread, ham and cucumber sandwiches, prawn cocktail crisps, haribo, soup, muffins, sausages, broccoli and more.

For his sixth birthday he got a remote control car, solar powered robot, walkie talkies and several boxes of lego. 

I-AM-A-RO-BOT

We've been noticing the changes this week. Bean has gone into a shop on his own and chosen a birthday present for Pumpkin, he also went off with a friend of his to look at computer games together and he finished a craft project that he started. This is his finished robot (the leg holes are cut out individually):

Pumpkin is getting ever taller and Plum is in the process of moving into her own room, last night she slept her first full night in there. Pippin has found her hands and has been watching them whilst she wiggles her fingers and clenches her fist and rolls her wrist around.

This time last year we were looking at robots in Woking. Topics and interests often come up repeatedly in our house, it may appear that we flit from one thing to another, most of the time seemingly not finishing what we started but there are repeating themes when we look closely.

This is our house

Last Thursday Bean declared that he wanted to make himself a robot costume (just as we were walking out the house to visit friends.) Today we finally got around to doing it. We're not a highly scheduled family but other things have seemed to come before the robot construction, like going swimming with daddy and Pumpkin on Sunday afternoon and going to Fisher's Farm yesterday. He spent ages choosing the right boxes and drawing on where he wanted parts cut out for his head, arms and legs to go. We then used the craft knife to cut the boxes up. The head box didn't work out quite how he planned with the mouth piece covering his eyes. He then mixed his own paint and got painting. It's not finished yet though! Meanwhile Plum painted herself and a picture, and Pumpkin watched endless Meg and Mog.

Pumpkin brought me his kindle at one point and asked me to look up what 'snapdragons' were. We looked up several pictures and then found out why they are called snapdragons. He wants to go and see some and then grow some in the garden. We also spent some time gathering ideas for his birthday party this weekend. 

Plum set up her own game of Angry Birds today and spent most of the time in her new fairy outfit that she bought with some birthday money as well as playing with some polystyrene packaging. 

The boys spent the evening playing on the wii and Plum and I did several puzzles together before snuggling down to read stories. At the weekend daddy put together the bunk bed for the girl's room. Plum loved the look of it so much and was so excited that she has moved in. She is still crawling into mummy and daddy's bed at some point in the night but her bed in our room has become redundant. It feels a bit weird and is totally unexpected as she had shown no signs of wanting to sleep in her room but she is so happy and loves her big bed and, this evening, she discovered the pictures on her wall and rearranged them all by putting them next to her head and making a "garden."

Patter cake

A really busy day today:

It all began later than usual as everyone had a mammoth sleep, all together on the same morning is rare. This morning was biscuit baking for the third time this week with Plum. We set out to make chocolate cupcakes but part way through mixing the ingredients she decided that she wanted to make biscuits again. Biscuits are really not my strongest baking skill so we tried another recipe today as the first ones have been too sticky to use the cutters with effectively. Today's mixture was too short. Once the biscuits were made I finished off baking the cakes.

Whilst we were doing this Pumpkin had put on Teach Your Monster To Read. I can't even remember the last time anyone looked at it but he was on for about half an hour and this inspired Bean to have a go too. Plum emptied the book cupboard looking for Charlie and Lola stories and Bean spent a while looking through one of his minecraft books and discussing with Pumpkin what they are going to build next. Later on in the day Bean asked me to read him a story. It was The Selfish Giant. I don't even remember the last time he asked for a story in the middle of the day, years. 

Plum and I have also made a necklace today. She sorted out all her beands so that it was a necklace just with heart beads on and then threaded them all so that the hearts all faced the same way. And Pumpkin and I set out to make marmalade (something he wanted to do since seeing the Paddington film.) It wasn't bad for a first attempt although I did the lion's share myself, I'm sure we'll all enjoy the results. 

In amongst all this we also home made a pizza for dinner, hoovered the living room, Got the blackboard out to draw on. Cleared the cupboard under the stairs and did two loads of laundry.

Pippin slept and breast fed and watched me do washing up and enjoyed her daily cuddle with Pumpkin.

Food art is as popular as ever

Playing doll's house together

Thank you for the days

Feeling grateful today that we:

didn't have to rise and shine and get everyone out the door for a school run;

could stay in the warm in our pj's and do our own thing;

can watch 'The Borrowers' together and build in minecraft (a group compilation with Bean, Pumpkin and mummy, inspired by bean's minecraft book that he got for Christmas;)

have a baking happy family. Pumpkin asked for muffins and Plum made some Winnie the Pooh biscuits with her new cutters.

can take time to play Sylvanians and no-one minds that the lego men and Peppa Pig come and join in too.

have home ed friends who suggest us getting together during the week, encouraging us out of our winter cocoon every now and then!

Happy 3rd Birthday Plum

This is my baby Anna (aka Plum):

It was her third birthday this week. You can read her birth story here. 
And now she is three. We celebrated with a Peppa Pig themed gathering. She invited her cousins, Cleo and Hazel with FA#3, and her friends, Eva, Merrilise and Sam with their mummy and new baby. We had it at our house and played Pin the tail on daddy pig, muddy puddles, musical statues and pass the parcel. This was accompanied by Peppa themed food: pigs tails (spiral crisps,) pig faces on cakes, turkey dinosaur shapes (dinosaur, roar!!!!) vegetables and dip (from grandpa pigs garden) which happen to incoperate a few of Anna's favourite foods (that is carrots and houmous) with drinks served in Pepa Pig cups. 

So, now that Anna is three she likes the colours orange, yellow, red and pink. She loves to wear skirts and tights and her brother's Bob the builder t-shirts. This was the year that she gave up breastmilk, she was about 2 and 4 months at the time. She is still not a big eater and can go several days without appearing to eat very much but she does like chocolate and raw carrots and houmous and cereal. She definitely does not like sweets. She loves playing puzzles and doll's house and painting and drawing and playdough and dancing. She does not like her hair being tied up so it is always wild and free. She loves to cuddle especially when she is tired. She falls asleep most nights cuddling mummy in my bed, we then move her to her bed which is in mummy's room. Most nights she wakes early morning and crawls into bed with mummy, some nights this happens sooner, and sometimes she wakes up in her own bed in the mornings. She loves watching Peppa Pig and Mickey mouse, Rosie and Bing, as well as a seemingly strange collection of Youtube videos showcasing Peppa Pig toys or unveiling kinder eggs.  

For her birthday she got an array of Peppar Pig gifts (books, bubble bath, soft toys, small world toys,) a cake baking set (thank you grandma and Pops,) Sylvanian sets (including a woodland toilet and urinal!! Thank you FA#3,) some princess figures and a new set of clothes. All of this was wrapped up in a huge bundle of love.