‘When can we chat about Layla’s literacy?’

Yesterday I got a summons from my daughter’s teacher. ‘When would be a good time to chat to you about Layla’s literacy and a few things we can do to help her along?’

I could joke about all the four letter words I wanted to say to express my outrage at how the extra work is going to eat into my evenings spent drinking prosecco with my mummy friends but this is a serious post.

So this afternoon at 3.15pm I was sat next to a teacher who looks half my age in a miniature chair looking at Layla’s books. She only started at the school this year but I feel I know Miss Green quite well. I chat to her every term time Wednesday morning in the staff room when I make the tea for toddler group and she is on her planning time. She’s lovely and I am very happy with her. She is a newly qualified teacher, without the wealth of experience of some of her colleagues but super enthusiastic and hard working. Plus she has just the right balance of nurturing and professionalism for Layla’s age group (yr 1 and 2). We have chatted about Layla a lot, chatted about Miss Green’s own progress in her first teaching post, chatted about the school, the curriculum and a little of life outside school.

Despite all this I feel like a naughty kid! It’s not what she is saying, or how she is saying it. She delivers the news that Layla is still some way from reaching some of her literacy goals very sensitively. She asks me extremely politely to try and work with Layla to complete some handwriting practice sheets. There is no hint of disapproval, of irritation, of anger in her tone whatsoever. She also shares my opinion that the national curriculum is now too demanding and we find a common enemy in this which gives us some rapport. It also means she can ‘blame’ the national curriculum for making these difficult demands of my daughter. I am very cooperative of course and thank Miss Green for keeping us informed. It all makes for the most uneventful parent- teacher meeting you could wish for. Zero confrontation and a very amicable atmosphere. We also have a brief chat about the things Layla is doing well with and how she is always smiley and well-behaved. Lovely.

But I reiterate, I feel like a naughty kid. Like a failure as a mother; I must have done a bad job. Like a failure compared to the young successful career person who is telling me what to do. Like a fraud; I pose as an involved and supportive mother and I obviously can’t be. Like a nutcase; I am already analysing these huge negative feelings over a relatively small problem and the result is I am clearly bonkers. (I quite often feel like Carla from scrubs in the image where she spills out all the crazy!)

But it’s only natural isn’t it? To feel like it’s a massive deal when your child is struggling with any aspect of life. Back me up… I am normal, right? It’s like when your child has a cough. You worry disproportionately about it don’t you? Another child, maybe one you read of in the paper, or one you know through school can be diagnosed with something awful and of course you feel sad and sorry for them. But it doesn’t compare to your own child having a cold. It’s built into a mother to worry profusely. It’s what makes our kids survive.

I guess all I can do is remember that. My brain and my heart is overreacting because it’s what it needs to do to make me help her. I would love to get parents to rally together and support a petition to the government to simplify the curriculum. But until then we will just have to do our best to support her. Hopefully we can help her to catch up with the the kids nearly a year older than her who can write a perfect ‘n’ on the line that isn’t bigger than a ‘d.’ Luckily she is too young to worry about it herself!

It does say something when a happy, healthy, well looked-after, supported child in an affluent area, in a small rural school with small class sizes simply can’t keep up with the demands of the curriculum. Layla’s teacher has had to move on to equilateral triangles and conjunctions and split vowels before Layla is able to write a short sentence neatly and correctly. In a lot countries they are still just playing in the sand at age five. Think I might go and draft that petition….

I’m bored jar ideas

February half term ‘I’m bored jar’ ideas tailored to my nearly 6-yr old Layla. All indoor activities as we can’t really hope for much with the weather and Layla is quite sensitive to the the cold or wet or wind lol. She’s quite creative so a lot of these activities reflect that. Let me know your ideas!

Ten sums
Ten take-always
Read a story
Exercises: 10 star jumps, 10 sit ups, 10 second plank, 10 second stand on 1 leg
Write a story about a flying horse
Write a story about a fairy and a bird
Write a story about a holiday
Do some polishing
Do some tidying up
Do some brushing or hoovering up
Make your bed
Do the recycling
Put some washing or drying on
Do an activity in one of your magazines, annuals or activity books
Draw a picture of a character from TV
Draw a picture of a made up animal or monster
Draw a picture of an interesting place
Draw a picture with the wrong hand
Practice a song to sing or play to mummy
Design something to sew next time we get the sewing machine out
Design something you could make with playdoh or clay
Compose a tune on the piano that makes you think of rain
Compose a tune on the piano that makes you think of an elephant
Water play in the sink
Help to prepare the next meal
Make a handmade card or present
Make a bookmark
Make a video
Play on your tablet
Play with cards
Make something from Lego
Play with something you haven’t played with lately

 

My mediocre Valentine’s Day and why I loved it

In the school yard this morning I heard two mums discuss their romantic Valentine’s Day. One had been to a posh Italian by the river in Chester. The other had 2 dozen red roses delivered at work and then had the afternoon off to have a husband and wife spa session. 😒 Anyone retching yet? I don’t begrudge them their romance, that’s great for them if that’s what makes them happy.

We never go too mad on ‘Hallmark’ days on our household. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are celebrated with a kid-made card usually. Hubby and I exchange very small birthday presents. Valentine’s Day is even less of an event as a rule. This year was perhaps even more … Low key let’s say.

We both worked all day and had the usual chaotic family dinner (watching your husband wipe up your sons deliberately spilt drink whilst picking out the carrot from your daughter’s noodles is so romantic).

After I had been back out to teach a couple of piano lessons the kids were settled in bed and the fire lit though so we had the rest of the evening to relax and enjoy rah other’s company. The rest of the night consisted of watching the latest episode of Taboo and eating Lindor chocolates (my one luxury purchase for the event.) (I had to get a bit of a Tom Hardy fix since I missed the CBeebies bedtime story!) We sat on separate seats because I wanted to be near the fire. No passionate lovemaking because it’s time of the month. Then we went to bed about 9.30. That’s it! Perfect right?

There’s actually genuinely no sarcasm there. It was a lovely evening, just like a lot of our evenings together and the fact that it wasn’t more out of the ordinary and we both didn’t have much time to make any further effort for a date in February which really doesn’t mean much to us doesn’t matter at all.

Romace is far more…. Romantic when it’s spontaneous isn’t it? That last minute getaway you book that turns out to be the best holiday ever or a spontaneous, random walk together that seems magical because it wasn’t planned and the things just converged right that day to make it wonderful.

Of course we have to put on some effort and make time for romance. That’s especially true when you jane been together a long while. But do we have to do that on the same evening that the rest of the country does it? Romance is personal and that doesn’t seem very personal to me. So I say don’t sweat it if your Valentine’s Day wasn’t something out of a love song, there are 364 other days in a year.

 

5 ways to improve your career prospects when you are a full time Mummy

After having Lalya in 2011 I didn’t return to my career of classroom music teaching, quite happy to be a full time time Mummy. I have loved the early years with my children, and it is what has worked best for us as a family. But now that they are 5.5 and nearly 3 years old and, as you may have read in my recent post, we need to save some more money, I am pleased to be getting back to some part time work to make a financial contribution, and to just get myself out there a bit again.

I have been grateful to be pretty successful in getting back into the world of work (part time and low paid I must admit)  without too much bother so I thought I would share my advice for buoying up your CV and therefore improving your career prospects whilst full-time mummying!

1. Work a tiny bit. I know I just said this is aimed at FULL TIME  parents and I know if you are a full time Mum or Dad you might not have the opportunity to find childcare to allow you to work at all but if it is possible to find a couple of hours a week or a month it will pay dividends in the future. Use what you have and do it on a small scale. To elaborate… I used to be a music teacher, so the obvious thing for me to do was start a couple of casual piano pupils. Another of my stay-at-home mum friends, was a cleaner at a business park, so she found just two private clients to work for just three hours each, every other week. A third friend was an interior designer with a big company and  started doing a couple of one-off private consultations for private local clients. And an old colleague of mine who was a drama teacher helped out at her daugter’s school and her sons nursery doing drama workshops and helping with the nativity plays (unpaid, but still using her profession to keep her hand in).  The big advantages of this are it is something to go on your CV and you might also get a recent reference out of it.

2. Volunteer – help with the running of the toddler group you attend, arrange a fundraising event for them, do a Macmillan coffee morning, join the PTA, even become a trustee of a local charity. It is another something nice to put on your CV and it can open doors. I became a member of the my daughter’s preschool committee and helped with fundraising and marketing and taking minutes at meetings, so when the old admin assistant left I was in a good position to take up the job.

3. Believe in yourself – it’s easy to lose confidence in your professional abilities when you have been out of the work place a while but parenting teaches you a lot and it’s not an easy gig (I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted) so the chances are you can cope with work when the time comes that you feel like getting back to it.

4. Keep up to date/ read up/ train up – if you are going back to the same profession keep in touch with it – read the right newspapers to keep up to date with the news. Have colleagues keep you informed about new training etc. If you are changing career as I am doing, that period of time when you are staying at home is ideal to re-train yourself. Just reading a few books on your new career is a great start. It’s what I did so I knew what to talk about when I went for an informal interview a few months ago.

5. Keep your CV updated with all these little bits of work and good deeds you have been doing. You don’t need to add that you have only been doing them for two hours per month. Most workplaces have managers with families and they understand the pressures. It’s no shame to have a gap on your CV to raise your children. I have a pretty big one, and really I achieved more in those few years than in any of my career, and I certainly found them the most difficult but most rewarding of my life thus far. But if you are looking to get back to work when the kids start school perhaps then I can highly recommend doing these things and showing them off on your CV.

Income slightly improved now I have a few more hours work, so this year’s £1500 saving mission might be more achievable!

Things I halved our usage of and how much we are saving

This week on the saving mission we have (well I have – the family haven’t really noticed) reduced our usage of some household things by about half and I’m dead chuffed with the results

Shampoo, hand soap, shower gel and bubble bath – just lather it up on your hands first and then I can use about half of what I was using. I only buy a cheap shampoo costing a pound anyway but I do get through at least a bottle per month so halving that saves me £6 a year (‘Oh god that’s not worth getting out of bed for!’ But keep going – it all adds up). Savings in the shower gel and bubble bath department equal another £6 at least I reckon. (The hand wash we do by diluting it by the way) I can’t seem to make it work for conditioner we still need a ton weight of it to ensure we can get a brush through mine and Layla’s hair.

Butter – we eat a lot of sandwiches in our household especially in the packed lunches. (No healthy salads and smoothies or low-carb diets for us!) I have started only buttering one piece – nobody has noticed! I will concede that we still use a bit more on toast and a few other cooking uses but I think we are down from around 375g (a container and a half of the spreadable Lurpak we use) per week to 250g (one pack). Saving there is at least £1 per week =£52 per year!

Sweet treats – they have all noticed his one but it’s highly justifiable to cut down on biscuits, chocolate, cake – especially for me who was probably the worst offender. We were spending at least £3 on this sort of thing each week, now I’m being very strict and sticking to £1 – saving = £104 – happy with that. And when I desperately need some fat and sugar, jam on toast is

Wet wipes – I think I was destroying the planet with my usage of wet wipe to be honest, and I did feel guilty about it but it is money that has been the motivator to get me to change. I still keep one pack in the bathroom for obvious reasons but there are none kept around the rest of the house for wiping hands and faces any more or mopping little spills and accidents in clothes etc. A damp cloth or an actual wash of the hands and face is cheaper! (Don’t know if I could have achieved this when the kids were tiny though to be honest, always needed five wet wipes to do the initial wipe down of Liam before he came out of the high chair! And obviously nappy changes demand them) It’s hard to gauge how many fewer wipes we are using but I have at least halved usage from 1 pack to half a pack per week = 30p saving each week/ £15.60 each year. Every little helps.

Clothes detergent and fabric softener – this is a well known one. After getting the calculator out and accounting for our at least 5 washes per week and halving the amount of powder it tells me to use on the box I worked out this saves us £29 per year. I never used much fabric softener anyway, and only in some loads but if you use loads, maybe hair think twice – it really adds up and it really is a non-essential.

Grand total??? £212.60 per year we should be able to save on the shopping. It remains to be seen whether or not we will actually see any of it!

December and January in a nutshell and late New Year’s resolution!

I hope the festive season brought you lots of happiness and not too much stress. Seems like a life time ago now but here was ours in a nutshell and where we are up to now….

1st December – hmm let’s not be materialistic and clutter the house and spoil the kids at Christmas. We’ll buy zoo membership because experiences are more important than stuff. 1 small thing from Father Christmas and 1 small thing from us will do. We’ll put the word out to the family that they can help us with the cost of the zoo membership.

24th December – go to church crib service, watch Liam do a cool dance routine and backing vocals in the style of the Backstreet Boys to all the carols.

25th December – family buy the kids a gazillion presents and selection boxes, totally undermining us. Deftly avoid seeing the family members we don’t wanna see next door at the in-laws. Ultimately have a lovely relaxing day. Really blessed, if a little cramped with too much new stuff in our shoebox.

27th December – nip the supermarket for milk, bread and kitchen tongs which recently broke. Find out that Liam would have been just as happy with kitchen tongs for Christmas!

Next few days, some lovely family time at the zoo and panto and round the house and garden, mediate lots of arguments about the new toys. Nurse husband and kids though colds and coughs and fevers that ultimately keep them home so I am the only single sad person at my friend’s New Year’s Eve party.

New Year’s Day – nurse family again and nurse hangover.

January – struggle to get the kids back into the routine of getting dressed for school and pre school after a couple of weeks of spending far to much time in PJs. Feel the January blues mainly because we started looking at finances and are annoyed we will never afford a house deposit. Result…. Slightly late and very unoriginal New Years resolution…. Save some bloody money!

I’m not going to cut us off completely from… Well anything really… (Bit of a cop out maybe is it?) but I am determined that we can sacrifice something for a week or a month and still be happy. We already have a low income and a tight budget and it’s not like we are frivolous so we’ll see if I can really make any difference at all, but I’m committing to thrifting to the max so we can save hopefully £1500 to £2000 of our roughly £22000 annual household income.

Wish us luck!

 

It’s a wonderful life😒

After a lovely 24 hours away last weekend for my birthday I thought I would come home with all the patience in the world and be the world’s best Supermum. Then, it was back down to earth with a bump.

After getting away with murder at nan’s the previous night they came home and tried their luck with us at bed time. Next day the boiler broke… Again. Day after that the weather was stinking and the garden turned into a mud bath and Liam slipped and got coated in it from waist down just as we left for the school run. For some reason he blamed his sister entirely for this.  The rest of the week included tripping out the electrics regularly with electric heaters, the light fitting in the kitchen started emitting water instead of light, a leak in the kids room, lots of clashes between the kids, copious shouting from us (queue revolting feelings of self-loathing) and more time outs than we have had in the last two months.

Hou catch my drift – it wasn’t the best week!

Then illness strikes this weekend. Layla came down with a water infection which didn’t seem too bad until 11pm on Sunday wwhen she woke up screaming in pain. Ridden with guilt about the awful week we had all had I forgot that Layla’s complaints need to be taken with a pinch of salt! After calling 111 and getting and appointment at the out of hours docs she was perfectly fine and bouncing around the waiting room on he middle of the night making a fool of me! The doctor did find an infection but it could have waited until Monday morning really.

Now me and the kids have all developed the first of the proper November colds. I feel like a zombie. Kids are mostly fine except far to snotty and to send to school and preschool.  Looking after kids when you are ill yourself! Wtf!!! I remember when this first happened to me when Layla was born. Biggest shock of my life! They particularly enjoy asking me for food and a different TV programme every time I close my eyes today. Shouldn’t it be them bringing me wine and cough medicine!

I’m with stupid

Today was a particularly idiot day for me…

Woke up by a 5am alarm – no I haven’t suddenly decided I am going for early morning runs or something stupid – I’m guessing one of the kids set this alarm on my phone yesterday somehow.

Potty training Liam at the moment so I thought we would wait until just after he had done a wee to go out to town for Layla’s new wellies she needs. Waited 2 hours! Didn’t bother doing anything productive during this time, telling myself ‘it will only be another 5 minutes.’ Stupid!

Went to town and listened to the kids rendition of jingle bells all the way. (How to make a 15 minute journey last a lifetime). Chose the worst parking space imaginable. Tried 5 times to get into said space whilst holding up a pretty decent line of traffic. Eventually gave up and found and easier space. Idiot!

Promised Liam he could sit in the pram to get to the shop then realised I had forgotten it. Resulting in massive tantrum when I told him to walk. Stupid stupid! Felt so guilty that I had confused him so much.

Travlelled home listening to another alarm going off on my phone all the way – how did they manage to do that! (Method two of making a 15 minute journey last a lifetime!). Fed kids some lunch without too much incident -result!

Tried to get the kitten back inside before we had to leave the house again. Chased her around for a few minutes looking like an idiot then had he great idea of letting the dogs out of the kennel to scare her in. Success. Then she tried to sneak back out as I shut the door on her. Cue the painful cat shriek! Felt horribly guilty and idiotic again.

Took Layla to a play date at her friends house. Driving on autopilot I completely went past the turning and drove to the next village then did an awesome 8 point turn in the road to correct myself, only held up three cars this time. Idiot!

My kids certainly don’t need an ‘I’m with stupid’ t-shirt!

 

Things kids say when they don’t want to sleep

I can’t really complain too much. My two do sleep pretty well on the whole nowadays and I do have huge sympathy for families dealing with kids that won’t sleep until midnight. Looking back on those rough patches we have had I can laugh now – and I usually manage to when we have the odd difficult evening now and then still… Usually.

Here’s out list of things the kids say and do when they are stalling at betime, usually after I have left the room and have to walk all the way back upstairs…How many more can you add?

I need a drink

I need a wee

I need a wee… Oh no I just thought I needed a wee but now I don’t… Oh yes I do… I definitely need a wee

I am burning hot

I am so frozed I’m more freezinger than an icecube

Mummy, I said a prayer to God and to Jesus for all the poor people in the world (can’t exactly punish her for that on can I! And she know’s it! 😇😏)

My quilt is untucked

My quilt is tucked in too much

My pyjamas are too hot/too cold/too uncomfy

I took off my top because it is too hard to take off and now I can’t find another pyjama top

It’s too dark

It’s too bright

I can hear Liam breathing

Mummy mummy, something made a big noise downstairs. (Yes I know sweetie it was me that made the noise)

Mummy… Erm… I forgot

Can I sing to myself?

Mummy, my do-dos gone down dere

I’ve lost my teddy/dog/doll/frog/bunny/kitty (or whichever other tatty, grubby soft toy is flavour of the month

Mummy today at school Beth didn’t want to play all together with me and Sadie

Today at school Sadie did want to play all together but I didn’t

Village Show Success!

If you haven’t taken part in a village show before, you’re missing a trick! Last weekend the village show which Layla and me took part in ours and it was one of the best days of our whole summer, if not the highlight of the year in fact!

If you haven’t experienced a quaint British village show with locals showing off the very best of their growing skills in various vegetable and flower classes, art, handicrafts, baking etc you have never lived! Our local one has classes for children in various age brackets to show off their creative skills.

Last year we had a nice day but didn’t win anything at all despite entering various things. This year… What a turn around! We had six winners between us! Whoop! I’m not really a very competitive person but I must say it’s brilliant to win something! Layla’s proudest moment I think was her first prize for the biggest sunflower head! She got so many comments and admirers! It really is impressive isn’t it?

I’m kind of glad we had no winners last year so Layla knows not to take it for granted and it makes these wins all the more sweet!

Get growing, creating, baking with your little one for a nearby one next year!