Art

I realised the other day, when a friend came over and we all started drawing, that we approach drawing very differently. Neither Linnea nor Emer have the slightest serious interest in drawing what they see; they will sit down with me to sketch something but draw something totally different, or draw a version of what's there but not the actual thing - a bowl of bananas instead of a bowl of apples, for example, or (as this morning) a portrait of me standing up when I was actually lying down, coughing vilely, throughout the whole "sitting."

I did gently suggest once or twice that they try to draw what was in front of them but they met my suggestion with derision and scorn and other flattering things like that.

Their drawings do still develop and progress, in spite of this. Presumably they know something I don't know. I'm going to do that butting-out thing again.

Spring!

I can't help but feel we ought to know what these are but Emer is four and she was delighted that they came up and she could remember planting them. It's time to plant all sorts of things now. As soon as we're all over our bug, I'll break out the compost, flowerpots etc. We have plenty of seeds.

Edit: I thought they were crocuses but then doubted myself terribly. Now I think they might be again. Hm.

Five things I want my children to know (about me?)

1 I love you. I'm lousy at showing it sometimes, and I screw up, and I am not always as kind as I ought to be, and sometimes you think I want you to be unhappy, but that is because I sometimes fail at mothering, and I do, really, love you so much that sometimes I might explode or spontaneously turn into a flying unicorn from the sheer awesomeness of you.

2 My failures are not your fault. When you are older, like about forty, I will tell you more about the things in my life that led to some of my failures, but for now, let me make clear that although a hell of a lot of them are not my fault (truly, not my fault), they are even more not your fault.

3 I am sorry for failing you. I try not to.

4 I sometimes feel like I have lived several lives in one. I want to make sure to sit you down at some point and tell you all about at least six of them - the rural living, the inner-city living, waiting on tables and publishing and IT and cottage industry. I want to take you to where I met archaeology and fresh fish and make absolutely certain you never, ever find out I climbed the cliffs I climbed, because that was incredibly stupid. Maybe I can tell you about some of my friends and partners too. I am so deeply moved that you are all three witnesses to my discovery of painting that I can't possibly explain it because I'll get tearstains all over the internet.

5 I want you to know that I have been incredibly stupid and reckless in my life and some of my stupidities have led to wonderful, life-enhancing, glorious things, and some haven't. (And in case that seems ambiguous, let me add that I have never, ever become pregnant by accident, so don't worry that you weren't wanted, even if you're reading this because you think nobody will ever understand you and everyone hates you. I am thrilled to have you in my life, and I congratulate myself on my brilliance for making you pretty regularly). So sometimes it's worth doing silly things, especially if they're funny or involve really lovely people or good food, but it's always good to make sure you have somewhere to live and enough to eat first. And making small mistakes can help to avoid big ones.

Puncturing dreams and dissing illusions

This evening I spoiled everything for Linnea - erased the last hope from her life, dooming her to eternal despair.

I finally got her to believe that even grownups without children can't do whatever they want all the time.

She was slightly mollified when I explained that we do things we don't want mainly so that we can do things we do want, like work in boring jobs so that we can have nice houses, or spend ages cleaning the kitchen and cooking so we can eat fabulous food, or (pertinently) go to bed before we want to so that we can do what we want the following day.

But only slightly.

Emer was in bed and lying down as soon as I agreed to pretend she was asleep while I brushed her teeth. Hum.

Chapter Book

Linnea is writing one - no text, just pictures. It's difficult not to interfere with what she thinks chapters are for. When she adds the text, later, I'm sure it will all be clearer.

Meanwhile, this is me not interfering.

Eye scream by Linnea

Note twist in optic nerve.

Fail

I've been feeling like a total failure. I've been ill for ages, with one thing or another, and I have a day or two of reasonable wellness and then crash again. My school-age children don't seem to have noticed, and in fact if I think about what they are doing it's obvious they are learning a good deal, but I feel that I should be doing more with them and for them.

I can't work out how to get started again, where to find motivation and energy. Perhaps I need to start taking a multivitamin.

It's working

Linnea spent ages reading to Emer today. Then Emer played a game on my phone and read the words she knew to me. And one of their games today involved multiplication.

They also played a complicated game about the life cycle of birds (species unspecified) and did a lot of drawing.

But let's not mention the running. And running. And running. Not outdoors, oh no, they wouldn't want to do that. Up and down the upstairs landing. For hours. Well, over an hour. They must have run a mile, in 10-foot sections.

Vocabulary and idiolect

The other day we were on a bus with a friend, and Linnea mentioned another bus journey on which she had felt a bit sick. "I was bus-sick," she said. "Yes," I said, "but you didn't get sick, did you?"

"No," she said, "I was bus-ill."

And today Emer fell slightly when going upstairs and said "Oops, I had a little tumble."

Neither "ill" nor "tumble" were in my childhood vocabulary at all. I consciously adopted "ill" when I was nine, but didn't use it much - it wasn't a word in common use in my circles, and sounded faintly wannabe-posh, in the same way that children in 1950s Cork didn't say "mud," they said "mire" but that would sound trying-too-hard for most children I know now.

"Aren't I" instead of "amn't I," too. Unvoiced R sounds. It is interesting, having children whose language is so different from my own, in spite of being the same one.

Talking about death with my *other* daughter

"We're not the kind of people who are going to die ever, are we," she said confidently.

My insides clenched up, because the first child I had to discuss all this with found it impossible to either accept or ignore, and cried for hours at a time for ages. Sobbed, or wept quietly, in wretched, devastating anguish. It was horrible.

However. "Yes," I said, "We're going to die, someday, a long time away. Everything dies."

"Why?"

"I don't know, but everything does."

"But then where will all the people be?"

"There'll be new people, because people always have babies, don't they?"

"But they won't have any parents!"

I think she's envisioning some sort of mass extinction event.

So I started with my grandmother, and when my mother was a baby, and then on to when I was a young grownup, and my grandmother died, and how when our baby is grown up their Nana will die too. Luckily, the baby sister being a grownup seems unbelievably distant to this four-year-old. So she said "We are all going to die?"

Her lips wobbled and her chin puckered and she looked not very happy.

"Yes. But not for a long time."

"Even me? But it's not for yages and yages, right?"

"That's right, not for ages."

So that was all right then. She perked up, dismissed it from her mind, and carried on.

Progress and development

It has all been very informal and unstructured around here lately. Linnea has been practising reading; occasionally I hear her working hard on punctuation, reading things aloud with different inflections to work out what the punctuation marks mean. She also reads to Emer, especially late at night after they've gone to bed and turned off the light. Emer has been writing, and painting. She likes to copy my ways of painting, I think to learn how to "do it right." She does still improve on my ideas and techniques, though, so she's not following me blindly, so that's ok.

They are both casually number-aware. It turns out that Linnea figured out and memorised, at some stage, which colour Cuisenaire rods are which number. I haven't worked that out, what with them not being my toy, so it's a bit confusing when she asks me for a specific one and I don't hand it to her immediately. And Emer's not as clear on number-bonds up to ten as Linnea was at her age, but is a lot clearer on occasionally doing what she's told, so I'll take what I can get here.

Other languages have fallen slightly by the wayside lately but I'm sure they'll be picked up again. I might try to find a conversation group of some sort, though given how they are about attending groups, perhaps not.

And art is big, as usual. We all have tiny little Cotman/Winsor & Newton watercolour sketching sets, and last night we spent ages sorting out huge stacks of artworks. Oil pastels, Pitt markers, watercolours, poster paints, oil paints, crayons, biro, pencil, acrylics. We throw away more than we keep and we keep tens per week.

Oh and Emer has starting making up rhyming couplets.

Five in a row again

Today we read Papa Piccolo. Well, first we walked to town in the rain, because a laundry disaster meant I had to buy disposable nappies. So we ate out, and popped into the only art gallery I knew of, The Lemongrove Gallery, so that the children could see what an art gallery is or does, and some paintings other than mine or prints. That succeeded pretty well. I am hopeful that I can sort out some careful visits to "proper" art galleries later. It helps when they know a bit about what to expect.

One painting happened to be of a couple of gondolas, titled "Venice, Italy," which was handy. When we got home we read Papa Piccolo while we drank our hot chocolate (full disclosure: there was a huge tantrum in the middle of the going home part, and a literal and figurative cooling-down period) and I discussed families and what adults lose and gain when they have children, and then the children read it again later with someone else. You see, our visitor this evening was a good friend of the family who has actually been to Venice, in person, and she was able to tell them all sorts of interesting, engaging things about it. So they had her read the Dolphin in the Grand Canal book (thanks, Tinderbox!), and then Papa Piccolo again, and I fully expect that tomorrow all sorts of things will happen. I anticipate some questions on glass-blowing, for a start.

It was nice to be back in the educational swing of things.

Meanwhile, have a gawp at this map:

Peering and painting

I've started painting. I had a bit of an emotional crash, and realised that I need to make sure I attend to my own mental health so that I can be properly available to the children, and so I bought an easel.

So the children and I have been using water-based oils on canvas, watercolours on proper watercolour paper, etc. Oil pastels on heavy watercolour paper was popular too.

Also, they've been interested in the little microscope, and I keep finding it out places, where they're been looking at nectarine leaves or citrus peel or a friend's split hairs or something.

And they're reading to each other a lot.

Oh, and counting and using numbers.

And preparing food; Emer is getting very good at chopping bell peppers for bolognese.

Somehow it's all working, even though no-one has had much interest in Five in a Row for a little while. It will be interesting to see when that rekindles.

Operation Maternal Kindness is Go

The new storage works beautifully. They are much more willing to tidy up than they were, and they appreciate that leaving things lying around gets them broken or hurts me, and they seem fairly on board with my right not to be hurt by their toys. In return, I have a Things To Glue box, and some of the broken toys are going in there to be repaired, if I feel they are fixable.

We haven't had huge blazing rows much, and we have had several instances of pleasant times together.

I am planning on offering real Five In A Row stuff again starting on Monday; I haven't decided what to start with, really, but I think it would be nice for them to have something to do. Their new maths workbooks have arrived and they like working through them, too, sometimes.

This is the year Linnea will be a reading learner. Gosh.

Kind

"You are not kind!"

Linnea said it to me, a few times, last week. She was absolutely right.

So I had a go at being kind. Friday was the first day, and it was hard; I just said "fuck it," (not out loud, I don't want to hear them swear just yet) a lot more than usual and gave up on trying to get them to do anything.

Saturday was easier because they were out. I tidied the whole front room properly, chose extra storage, and talked to them. I had tidied the whole room, and we would get them new storage, and get the Playmobil out of the attic (it was banished there over the summer because it was getting lost and maltreated, in part because they didn't want to store it in the only available space). In return, they would keep things tidy enough that I didn't gouge any more holes in my feet just walking around.

And if I step on something and hurt myself, I bin it. If I step on something and break it, I bin it. In return for this privilege, I remind them kindly when they have left stuff out in our limited floorspace.

Saturday evening, Sunday, and all day today went well in this regard. I'm pretty impressed. The hard and fast rule only applies to the one room I really, really tidied, but it will help me get the rest of the house under control if that one room is.

And they will have more fun playing with their stuff, and I will have more fun not losing my temper.

I've asked a few times, and I am, apparently, getting better at being kind.

I hope it gets easier with practice.

Leap of Faith

Did it again. Stopped trying to make them do what I wanted them to do, just explained what had to happen so that they could do what THEY wanted to do, and left it more or less up to them.

It may not be wholly unconnected that the eldest child is writing a long, long story about a two-year-old who has to clean houses for a living. Nor that my food is still bleeding from an unfortunate plastic toy/cluttered rug incident 6 hours ago; every time I move the scab cracks.

Ticking over

We have had a much easier time of it lately. And pretty exciting, in our low-key way.

Linnea has flipped over into reading; she will openly read things, and pointing out her errors where I think it's useful is just extra information for her now, not criticism. She reads books to the other two very nicely, and also less nicely, if they don't want to be read to.

She also drew a very convincing map of Ireland but it's not mine so I don't have a copy; it was sent off in the post.

Both children find writing very hard work and tiring, so I'm not pushing that. Some writing happens anyway, for Christmas cards and gift labels and things, but not much.

Linnea and Emer have both been drawing about as much as usual, please send help before we drown in the stuff.

Astrid is learning to sit up and swears she can eat things, but as she's not quite 20 weeks old yet I'm reluctant to believe her.

The learning I'm pushing for at the moment is "if you get up in the morning and GET DRESSED we can do more interesting things than if you get up and immediately become inextricably absorbed in whatevertheheckitis," because even if they get enough exercise climbing the furniture and running up and down the house non-stop for 20 minutes at a time, I don't.

Make the goals match the reality

We've all been ill again, and it's cold out.

I think I need to stop missing organised events and feeling bad about it, and start deliberately skipping them. Anything that needs a packed lunch or a bus journey, I think, I will just not bother with, until things are better in general. We might go anyway sometimes, but we probably won't.

There's a lot to do at home. There's a budding interest in French, and lapbooks, and in sitting around in pyjamas cutting shapes freeform from scrap paper, and in being horribly sick - well, maybe not interest exactly, but it's happened.

I think I will base us at home, keep up with the seeing friends two or three times a week, maybe have more visiting-to-play things, but less group stuff.

At least for a while.

No Education Here

Just observing the flips from hyperfocus to pacing, doodling to reading. Hyperfocus is big this week.

Skipped a day, skimmed a day

We didn't read the FIAR book on Tuesday. We overslept - I dreamed I had twins, and woke devastated that they were gone - it took me a while to remember that I didn't have any children between Emer and Astrid, let alone two - and then felt an urgent need to tidy their room, because I couldn't walk from the door to the wardrobe. Once I'd done that it was time for brunch and getting dressed and going out, really; I did some laundry and stuff, and then we went to the library for storytime. On the way home we bought a pumpkin and a truly astonishing amount of instafood - jars of cranberry and redcurrant sauce, powder mix for breadsauce, mix for bread stuffing, ready-rolled pastry. We popped in to see a friend (full disclosure: she phoned from my doorstep in the freezing fog while I was at the shop, because she was a little early and I was a little late, so she went home again) and invited them around for dinner.

So I made my first pumpkin pie the opposite of The American Way; I used real pumpkin for the filling, and packet pastry. My understanding is that people use canned pumpkin and save their effort for the pastry. It was good; I was going to use apples for pectin to make the pie gel, but a friend looked up an actual recipe (oh! what an idea!) and I used some eggs and oat-based cream-substitute instead. We also used agave syrup instead of muscovado sugar, because we had some.

And we had a three-course meal with neighbours, and very briefly discussed harvest, celebration, gratitude, and America. At least they can find it on a map now.

Today, we cleaned the house - it actually looks pretty good now - and read the book again. Then we made an airplane from boxes; it will never get off the ground, but they did study the various illustrations of Bleriot's machines before deciding they needed one which would hold TWO girls and have decorated wings, and aerodynamics came slightly into the discussion of wing-shapes (scallopped front edges wouldn't help, right?) and we had a heated discussion about propellers.

They really, really like the idea of an airplane which flaps its wings. Really, really, really.

Then we listened to a CD of children's classics my aunt saved for us from the RTE Guide. My favourite is Anderson's "The Typewriter," because it was so cool when they brought the typewriter onto the stage at the concert hall when we went on school trips when I was at primary school.

Oh, and Linnea read to me from a Monster And Frog book. She's very good but finds it very very tiring, though that might just be reading aloud; she can read much more privately. I think the stress of my knowing whether she gets it right or wrong is exhausting.

To top the day off, the four-year-old pinched the baby. But apart from that, today went well.

(We made chicken, potato and leek soup, to use up dinner leftovers; the children were not impressed. Pumpkin pie on the second day was still popular though).