Mount Gnomon Farm Visit

Today our Home Ed Group went on an excursion to Mount Gnomon Farm. The kids had a great time getting up close to Wessex Saddleback pigs, chooks, ducks, guinea pigs, kittens and rabbits. They also got to check out the poppy fields.

The Home Ed Group is made up of a fantastic bunch of kids ranging from babies to young adults. It's lovely seeing them naturally interact with each other and the older ones are so good with the littlies. It has been wonderful to see my boys gain so much confidence from interacting with the other kids who have all been very kind, generous and responsible (see the pics of the guinea pig and kitten holding - the older children, 10-12 year olds, made sure that the younger ones all got to have an equal cuddle... there was no fighting or pushing/shoving!). Am thrilled to have found such a great group! There are a couple of large families that attend too... 7-9 kids in each. Makes me feel all clucky seeing the big families! :)



   

31w1d - 8w6d To Go!

I'm starting to get the feeling that when The Bean decides it's time to come out, it's gonna be fast. And I'm not expecting to go over either. Of course, now that I've said that I'll probably have a 10hr labour at 42w!

Doing pretty much anything other than lying down triggers off the crampy contractions/pains these days and they are increasingly bad enough to make me feel nauseous and, occasionally, actually vomit. But, hey, as long as they're not doing anything to my cervix yet then it's just a matter of getting on with life until a baby pops out LOL.

A couple of hours of walking up and down hills is probably overdoing it though. The Home Ed group did an outing to the Arboretum on Friday and I figured I'd just see how I went and sit down if I started feeling sore. Problem was, the horrible cramping/nausea/back pain didn't kick in for an hour or so after we'd finished trekking around the place LOL. Am only just starting to get over it all today. The kids had a great time anyway. I'll have to post some pics later.

We also took them to the Christmas carols at Penguin last night and they had a blast running around and listening to the music. We only stayed for just over an hour though. Decided it was time to get going when the area was overrun by teens using lots of very bad language LOL.

28w5d - Bits & Pieces

- Not much going on with the pregnancy, just feeling a bit crampy lately and nauseous. Not sure what the deal is there.

- Wish Beanie would hurry up and turn around. Last night he was giving me such strong kicks to the cervix it felt like he was going to put his feet right through!


No angels here. Just Shmoo trying to say 'hello'.


Princess Fatty Puss

- Had a home education group meet-up yesterday which the boys quite enjoyed (Loo filled his pockets with stones and gumnuts and, as I expected, I forgot to empty them and thus ended up with a washing machine full of clean stones and gumnuts this morning LOL). 1st time we've been able to make it as Shmoo usually has Little Ninjas early Thursday afternoons but yesterday the home ed get together was held at the town just up from us and Shmoo has Little Ninjas on today instead because he is grading (going for his next belt).

- I was putting on some moisturiser after my shower this morning and, as he was watching me, Shmoo made this insightful comment: "Your tummy is nice and big now, Mama. And your bottom too". Thanks Shmoo.

Oops

I have been using a curriculum guide to get an idea on what Shmoo should be learning and when. Of course, standards vary widely from state to state and country to country so I've just been using it as a general guide, not following it too strictly and we've been tailoring it to where Shmoo's at - giving him more advanced stuff to learn where he's obviously ahead and doing more work where he struggles. The problem is, this guide covers preschool, kinder and then grades 1-12. Not being a Tassie native I assumed that the kinder in the guide was the same as the kinder in the Tassie education system, and preschool was 'pre-kinder', ie the stage Shmoo is at now. Last night I finally managed to work out that in Tasmania kids do kinder, prep and then grades 1-12. So what I've been thinking of as 'kinder' would really be the guide for 'prep' LOL. According to the curriculum guide on where kids 'should' be at, Shmoo's now about a year ahead in 2/3 of the subject areas LOL. Oh well. The good thing about home schooling is that we are able to tailor our curriculum to suit the student!

23w5d

LOL In the space of about 30 minutes today I got told by one person how big I am for (nearly) 24 weeks and then later someone else told me how small I am. Can't win! But I am loving my pregnant tummy. I am so obviously pregnant now. It's nice to be at the stage where people don't have to wonder if I'm pregnant or just overweight! Will have to do another belly pic on Sunday.

Beanie somehow managed to give me quite a good kick in the ribs this morning. I'm not quite 24w! Imagine what it's going to be like in 10w time LOL. I am feeling movement all over my tummy now except for high up centre front and slightly to the right. I'm sure that's where the placenta is and it blocks the movement somewhat. I am curious as to how big he will be when he's born. Shmoo was about 6lb 10oz at 37w5d and Loo was 7lb 6oz at 39w5d.

In other news, Shmoo has been working on his writing. We've done 'a' for a while and now we've added in 'b'. He struggles with holding a pencil correctly and therefore he doesn't really have the control required to write as well as he could (he tends to wrap his entire hand around the pencil and tries to write like that). It's a bit frustrating for him. I'm going to try and hunt down some proper pencil grips to see if that helps him. Shmoo is also starting to get the hang of basic addition and the terminology (X + Y = Z). Not doing too badly.

21w4d

Is it too early to be nesting? Maybe I've just been bitten by the spring cleaning bug. Either way, I have been a little preoccupied with cleaning lately - vacuuming, scrubbing, mopping; cleaning and reorgansing the pantry and kitchen cupboards etc etc. It's not doing my aching back and hips any good but oh well. And at least the OH knows enough now not to argue with the obsessed pregnant woman LOL.

Shmoo and Loo's snowpeas are coming up well with all the sun we've had lately. I think the parsley seeds are just sprouting too... there's a wonky line of little green shoots anyway, so I'll wait and see if they're weeds or parsely before pulling them out. We've forgotten to water them lately after not having to water them at all because we had so much rain (I'd actually worried that the seeds might have washed away!) so the soil's a bit compacted and dry. I snuck out when Loo was asleep to pull out the weeds but didn't have much luck because it was so dry. Will have to wait a couple of days until we've gotten it all moist again. (Didn't want Loo to see me pulling the weeds out as he's too young to understand the difference between weeds & plants - turn my back for a second and he'd be ripping up the snowpeas LOL).

Hoping to get back into playgroups and homeschooling groups soon, now that the pregnancy's going well and hopfully there's not so much swine flu about. There was a homeschooling meet-up today 2 mins up the road from us and we'd been looking forward to going but Loo woke up all croaky and coughing, snot everywhere. Typical LOL. He doesn't seem so bad now but we didn't want to pass it on to all the other kids.

Speaking of homeschooling, Shmoo's doing pretty well. We do need to focus on numeracy a little more though. His reading is coming along well. He does well with all his letter sounds (phonics stuff) and we've just started on some sight words. He can read short sentences when he wants to too (bit of a daydreamer and a short attention span so it's all done in short bursts). The other day he read: 'a frog on a log', 'a baby cat is a kitten', and 'a drink of milk'.

Loo has an appointment with the allergist in Launceston in just over a week (the 19th). He'll be restested and we need to get another prescription for epipens. The eczema around his mouth has been clearing up well with the reduction in salicylates. This has also made it obvious that he is still reacting to something in his diet. The common factor seems to be soy products so we'll try to cut those out and see how he goes. I know he did react to soy when he was a baby. I thought he'd outgrown the intolerance but perhaps his tolerance for it had just increased a little. Anyway, we'll cut it out and then re-introduce it slowly at a later date. It's going to be a PITA though as I can't stand the taste of rice milk. Anything that requires milk I'll have to cook separately, use rice milk for the kids and soy milk for us.

Spelling

Okay, so he's not the greatest speller yet, but Shmoo's having lots of fun trying...


Rabbit


An easy & obvious one

 
Cubby

Ants in the Apple

A little while ago I purchased a few things from Ants in the Apple, including the alphabet CD. Shmoo's pretty good now (most of the time, when he's paying attention!) with recognising the letters of the alphabet so we're making a start on phonics. The boys have been listening to the CD for 2-3 days now and I'm totally amazed at how Shmoo is just getting it so easily. The songs on the CD are great and after we've sung them together I go through some letters with Shmoo and he's able to apply so much of what he's learnt from the songs. Definitely recommend the CD!

Shmoo has also had a bit of a breakthrough with his numbers recently. He still struggles a little to count past 29 (unless he's stopped and corrected he'll count 'twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve etc' LOL) but he's getting quite good at putting 2 numbers together - eg. 4 & 9, put them together and it's forty-nine etc. He can do that up to 99.

So Much for the Terrible Twos

The terrible twos were a breeze compared to the trying threes. At 3 years and 9 months old, Shmoo is amazing and can be so sweet and wonderful and well mannered at times. Lately, however, it has been one tantrum after the other and I find myself getting increasingly frustrated. On the one hand I think the rudeness, selfishness and toilet training regression is probably quite common and normal for this age and stage of development. On the other hand I find myself wondering where we've gone wrong and wondering if we should send him to kinder next year after all, just so he learns how to play well with other children.

Playgroup was awful today. Shmoo screamed at and shoved Loo when Loo (in true oblivious toddler style) sat on the train tracks Shmoo was playing with. Shmoo also screamed and threw tantrums when other children played with the other end of the train set and they accidentally broke apart the tracks. I know it was disappointing and upsetting for him to see something he was enjoying playing with being wrecked like that so I kept showing him how easy it was to fit the tracks back together, tried to get him to show the other children how to do it, but to no avail. Lots of tantrums. He also wet his pants despite me asking numerous time if he needed to go to the toilet.

I find myself wondering if it's because he's a firstborn. He spent 22 months not having to share his toys with anyone else. Loo, being a 2nd child, has had to share from day 1, he's always had to contend with someone barging in and snatching things away. Today Loo was more than happy to let a little girl draw on the same piece of paper he was using and they also made a bit of a game out of banging on one of those spinning globes together. I can't remember Shmoo ever playing 'with' another child (other than with Loo at home). Shmoo doesn't even seem to do 'parallel play' well (playing side-by-side with other children). I know he has always been very sensitive and has overcome a lot of his fears and anxieties given time, patience and encouragement, but I still worry.

I am really unsure as to what to do about the kinder issue. Maybe it would be good for him. But maybe it would be disastrous to drop him into a situation/environment that I'm sure he would find very stressful. I also think that once you're in 'the system' it makes starting homeschooling more difficult. I'm concerned about the indoctrination, the ideologies, the routines/habits/behaviours, conformist attitudes etc, they pick up in schools. A lot of the stuff we were hoping to avoid/delay with homeschooling. I hear so many stories too about how easily, even in kinder, kids learn aggression and negative language (and I don't necessarily mean swearing by that - they get that from their dad at home anyway LOL). It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the current education system, especially considering that Tas schools apparently score the lowest in literacy and numeracy!

It's so hard to know what the best thing to do is.

And I've heard that after the trying threes comes the f'ing fours. Something to look forward to LOL!