Sam the Schoolboy

We were lucky enough to be offered a space for Sam at the nursery attached to Ethan's school before Christmas to start after the break. He went in for a practise session and was less than impressed with me stopping him playing with Postman Pat to get a picture. He also pretty much refused to leave after the hour when no one else was leaving and he'd just discovered a box of Thomas tracks.

He started afternoons just after the Christmas break and loved it, as you can see he was just a tad excited to be off. He's been having a blast and has finally accepted, on seeing it written down on his name card, that his name is Samuel, not just Sammy. He also shared a class with at least two other Sams, so points for originality, me!

Last week we were offered the chance to move him to mornings as I had asked if it would be possible in September when the rest of Nursery will move up to year one and he'll be staying on another year. I said yes and it was all arranged in a day and we swapped over. 

The first day we went in, and he hung up his coat and bag and grabbed his name from the board. Then he looked around, turned to me and said "Mummy, where is Sammy with the black glasses?" I had a horrible sinking feeling, and sure enough, when I explained that Sammy was in the afternoon class and he was now in the morning class, the lip came out.

I felt terrible, and he followed me to the door and asked to come home again. I convinced him to stay with the promise of Thomas trains from his teacher and a fudge from me on the way home. Fortunately he has settled back in fine and loves it again.

Now to the matter at hand, HOW is he old enough for a school uniform? He looks ridiculously cute in it, but he really loves school, even if he gets tired easier and is a bit of a grump in the afternoons. That's one of the benefits of mornings - he can nap after if necessary, and if he happens to nap at the same time as this lively fella...

Well, then the afternoon silence is absolutely miraculous.

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Diets and Weight and Hunger, Oh my!

I hate diets, totally and completely. I'm also not a fan of self loathing or obsession with weight or the size of one's own hips/bum/tum. Especially when it's me doing the self loathing.

However, having had a not so happy relationship with my thighs and belly for quite a while, something had to be done. I don't want to go on an on about it, but I need to write it down so I'm accountable.

First of all, I decided on no sweets or chocolate for a month. That also happened to be on the 14th so I'll get to have a treat on Valentine's Day. I thought it'd be awful as I am always picking at sweets left about for the kids or worse, buying something at the terribly convenient shop 4 minutes from our house that is a 30 second detour from the school run. And also Cadbury's keep bringing out new and delicious varieties of dairy milk mixed with awesome stuff. However I had a (rather unpleasant) epiphany a day or 2 ago. It went a little like this:

Chocolate is a treat, and therefore should be for occasional consumption. 

Mind-blowing right? It was less that though, than the thought that for pretty much the rest of forever, chocolate will now probably have to be a once a week small bar kind of thing. That makes me sad, I miss my 17/18 year old metabolism that let me eat a large bar for breakfast in the sixth form common room with a little pint carton of milk. Let's be honest, I'm lucky to not have type 2 diabetes by now. I actually haven't been craving chocolate or sweets yet, even with sweets in the house. I'm hoping it'll be easier than I thought, though there was an incident with a custard filled choux bun topped with chocolate sauce stuff where I was very very tempted.

Second of all, I'm back doing My Fitness Pal. I love it. It's only calorie counting (with an app), so while there is an irritating amount of packet reading and food weighing, I can still eat fun things in very very small amounts. It's really helping me re-learn correct portion sizes too, and let me tell you, they seem incredibly small. So far I have managed to stay under 1300 calories a day, though my goal is 1200. Any exercise done also earns you calories back to eat more, which is giving me that persistent poking in my conscience to get back to walking in the mornings while Sam is at nursery. So far I haven't but I think it's coming, ha.

So there it is, my rather babble-y written proof of commitment. I'm almost certain I won't mention it again until Valentine's day, and normal service will resume in the next post. Your boredom has been appreciated ;)

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

I'm sorry, December was a blur

Sorry folks. We had a mad December, with 5 rolls of wrapping, 4 batches of bread rolls, 3 excitable boys (plus us!), 2 Christmas days, and 1 chest infection. Doesn't quite roll of the tongue like a partridge in a pear tree but hey, it's what we had.

We also had a visit from the reindeer in town, which of course sent the excitement into a tailspin and yet I had no parachute.

 Why yes those are my boys hands reaching for the nose. We avoided any fingers in nostrils scenarios and the lucky reindeer was left unscathed. 

Time to decorate the tree!

 We got these white lights 2 years ago as a last resort, one of our old strings blew around the 19th of December and I went out to buy more and there were none anywhere. These were in Asda and I actually didn't really like them to start with, they're berry lights, so LED with little balls over, but now I love them. Oh and when I got home and took the old lights off to put them on, it turned out to be a loose connection and they were fine lol! Those now go around the window.

 Placing the star. sidenote - will you look at the legs on that boy?! He's part grasshopper I swear.

 New Christmas jumpers :) 

Not long after this we went down to my Mum and Dad's for first Christmas, where we received many fab presents including this canvas from Jess:

 And this scarf from Mum:

And oh my goodness, the most delicious homemade chocolate fudge ever from Amy. So good that I made it for Ethan's teachers' Christmas presents. I'll add the recipe to the blog soon.

Gingerbread in the hizzle!

 I had help from both boys this year and it was a lot of fun, almost no stress, the exception being those bleeping snowmen. We used cadbury snowballs and mini marshmallows glued together with royal icing. Balancing them was... fun...

More importantly it was delicious, though the boys spared no thought for structural integrity while picking at it over the course of a few days.

Apparently turning it around didn't occur to them and one evening there was a crash as it collapsed. The next morning I was confronted with "Mummy! What did you doooo?!" before the fell back to munching.

This year Ethan was a wise man in the nativity with his cousin Zach

The hat was a little big but he loved it.

Then it was time for Christmas number 2 (on Christmas day this time) at home and the Browns. Ethan was incredibly excited to get his bike, and a new Batcave and lego and allsorts, and Sam was more than happy with the plethora of trains he got!

We also got a soup maker which is totally fabulous and I got the boys to eat actual soup!

New Year's was pretty blah, We stayed up until midnight by accident and were underwhelmed by the London fireworks before getting off to bed, to round out 2013 in our usual lazy fashion!

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!