Late night ramblings

It's funny how things pop into your head when you're meant to be sleeping! I've just been looking at Street view for a friend who's looking for a house but I ended up looking up my old house where I grew up! 

A huge surge of nostalgia washed over me when I saw it. I could feel myself being transported back there. My lovely house - half of it (the garage and my old room above, along with half of the kitchen on the back of the house) is what my builder father built almost single handedly with his own bare hands. The front garden which no longer has our pink blossomed cherry tree, the bumpy slope leading from the main road down to ours which we spent many a day rattling down on our metal skates or our rickety old scooters and skateboards. I even “walked” via Street view to the local streets where my friends lived, where we used to zoom round corners on our bikes not even considering if there would be any pedestrians in our path! Once round the corner I spied the back view of our house. Of the extension my dad build pretty much on his own of my brand new bedroom. Of the flat roof of the garage which was directly outside one of my bedroom windows where a smoker boyfriend used to be banished to if he wanted a sneaky fag!
The dual carriageway adjacent to our road which we used to dash across at warp speed when we were far too young to collect our football that we'd kicked by accident over the fence and into the path of oncoming cars and lorries!! 

The same dual carriageway that my dog pelted across to get home when she'd been attacked by another dog in the field opposite, into the path of a lorry that hit her so she tumbled over and over but still managed to get up and run home and was actually miraculously fine!
The dual carriageway I’d walk along on many a Saturday night at 3am with a friend to get back from a night club in town. The dual carriageway I crossed daily even though I didn't need to just so I could catch a glimpse (and sometime an exciting snog) with the builder who had worked across the road for several months and who made my tummy full of butterflies whenever I saw him.

Perfect memories.

I need sleep!

Devices are a curse! I love and hate my tablet all at the same time!

Our house is device filled and school holidays often result in an overuse of them by all of us. The older children have ipads and I have a tablet and a laptop.

My youngest, who is nearly 4 and naturally wants to do everything the rest of us do, now frequently asks to borrow my tablet and if the rest of us are using ours, I have no right to say no really.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm not anti device for him. He rarely watches tv and so his screen use is in the form of educational games and you tube videos about trains! Both of which have taught him a huge amount about letters, sounds and numbers. He could tell me more about trains, tracks and models than I have ever known in my whole lifetime and he’s adamant he wants to be a train builder when he’s grown up (this seems to flit between being a model train builder and a real train builder!)

However, despite this, I still have a constant battle with myself as to whether their usage (or should I say OUR usage) is excessive or not.

Ok, so back to what I was saying about me and my sleepless nights (I do have a habit of going off on a tangent – forgive me!) You know how it is, when things that feel ok in the day time feel like the worst things in the world during the small hours.  This is what keeps happening to me. In the day, we do our “thing”, we go out together, the children play together, I look forward to July when we will kiss goodbye to the school system once and for all and we can enjoy learning and being together. Then at 10pm when I’m thinking I should be heading off to bed I decided to take my tablet to bed with me just so I can check that educational website I heard about the other day. Or while I’m there I’ll just plan a quick timetable of what our days will look like (seeing as it’s only April and I’m thinking ahead to September it’s really not something that needs to be done NOW!). Oh and then I’ll decide to start looking up interesting documentaries on You Tube that we can all watch to start off a topic of some sort! (Incidentally, I found one that I think my 11yr old will like – not watched it all the way through yet so you might want to check it first but it’s here:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pENq1ml2haA&index=3&list=PLVTv4RMdgii62-hIU6OBtNECbSn6VNy7b

So, there I carry on… watching, reading, researching, planning… until I realise it’s 1am and I’ still not asleep! But not only that, but I'm not even tired any more! My brain is whizzing with the “what ifs”. What if I fail them? What if they’re all together far too much and they end up hating each other? What if I don’t push them enough socially? (I'm incredibly shy sometimes and am totally out of my comfort zone in a group situation). What if they struggle to make friends because of this? And a million other “what if’s” that float around my head at 1 am!

So I lie in bed thinking of all of these things until it’s closer to 3 am when I finally drift off to sleep. At 7am when my son wakes me I feel like I've been out on a wild night out, dancing until dawn. I groan and roll over and hope he goes somewhere else to play for a while. But having been a parent to a young child for the past 13 years, I've learnt by now that that is highly unlikely. So I haul myself out of bed, bleary eyed, to go downstairs to make myself a very strong much needed coffee.

While I drink said coffee, I sit and ponder about the “what if’s” I had the night before. I tell myself that I won’t fail them. They are in charge of their own destiny, so if they want something enough I will make sure I help them to achieve it. They will be together all of the time but this will only make their relationships stronger. I have already seen T’s (13) and F’s (3) relationship blossom and me and T are now closer than ever before. I’ll make sure I encourage time apart through socialising with their own respective friends, working privately if they need their own space and having time just to myself and one of them at the weekends when G is home.

I think they’ll be OK socially. We’re all sociable in our own ways. This may not be in a large social group as such but we all like to get involved in group “lessons” as well as socialising with people daily on a more one-to-one basis. We already see people daily either as informal meets with friends or organised dance and gym classes and have plans for more things in the future. So in the light of day, my worries and “what ifs” don’t feel so worrying after all.

Random acts of perfectness

Today my perfect moments have been:

HE with my 13 yr old went really well. We met up with another HE family for the first time which made her feel really good. She came back and really concentrated on some work she'd been struggling with. She's been through so much recently that she really needed today.

The sun was shining (at least for part of the day!)

I did a big blitz of the kitchen, cleaned the guinea pigs AND the hamster out and did 2 loads of washing today! (Ok, I know it's not the most exciting thing to have got done, but seeing as we were out all morning and our "day" ends when I have to go and get my 10yr old from school at 3pm, it did feel like quite an achievement!

What were your perfect moments today? x

New year, new start

It's funny how in January many people either start a new blog or try and revamp their old one, start a diary, a new fitness regime, a diet, or something else that they will most definitely keep up with... until mid January when it all falls apart! Well, we have a new start in our house.. a few really.

As I've mentioned previously, we decided when my youngest was a baby that we would probably Home Educate him until the age of 7. I'm early years trained with a degree in early childhood and health and I couldn't shift my view that a young child shouldn't be in formal education until at least age 7. Children learn through uninterrupted play. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti - school, but when you've spent all your adult life watching young children learn (including your own), and you've researched the whole subject extensively for various university essays, you pick up the pros and cons of various settings and for me, a school or nursery setting just isn't appropriate for a young child. They need to be able to make their own choices on what to learn, play with and do. They need to have time to get fully immersed in what they are doing without the need to stop for the register or story time, or outdoor play time or because it's assembly or home time. Yes, there is a need to learn how to share and play cooperatively together, but I don't believe that needs to be all day every day from the age of 2 or 3 or 4 or even 5. They can learn those types of social skills from siblings, playing in the park with other children or playing at friend's house. If school was for 2 or 3 sessions a week of a couple of hours at a time of totally free play, I would certainly consider it. But not for 6 hours a day and 5 days a week at such a tiny age. So HE it will be until age 7. And once we get there, we will review the situation.

To add to that, due to various reasons, we have also de-registered our 13 yr old to be HE. This may be a temporary thing, it may be permanent. Who knows. All we know is that is is the right thing to do NOW. For her. If an adult were in a job that they hated, the sensible thing to do would be to start looking for another job. No one would tell you you have to stay there for the next 4 or 6 years. It would be up to you to choose to make a change, and so we decided it was no different for one of our children.

It is very early days and we are all adjusting to this new way of learning, but I know deep in my heart it was the right decision. The start of a new adventure in our lives.

Talking of adventure, after going through a tough time over the past few months, we have decided as a family that life is far too short to put off the kind of life we would love to have.  We also realise that having a family of five ranging in ages from 3 up to 39, we will obviously all have different interests. "Perfectionist" me has always been the one to insist on family time at the weekends but this has got increasingly harder when someone really doesn't enjoy what they others want to do. It's taken me a while, but I have finally accepted that it doesn't matter! We don't ALL have to be together ALL weekend! We always have meals together, we live in the same house and we sit around and talk A LOT, so if we don't go for a walk in the country as a family every weekend - so what!  C (aged 10) and I love swimming but G, N and F aren't keen. So C and I will start going swimming sometimes on our own (shock horror!) A couple of years ago I would NOT have accepted that. I would have made everyone go which meant we only went sporadically as it was too much like hard work to make them go regularly. N (aged 13) and G (aged 39!) love cycling but the rest of us aren't great cyclists really, however much I want to be. So he had she will be having some hacks in the country sometimes without us (or while we're playing in the park!) 

You see, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that everyone is enjoying their own life and not living someone else's. 

Random Acts of Pefectness!

I've recently been working on something that I'm hoping will help other people keep on top of their perfectionism. As I worked on it, it got me thinking that to feel like you have reached "perfection" it may be worth jotting down some random perfectness from our days.

For example, I've been trying to teach my 3yr old to jump off an object. He can jump on the spot but he won't jump off anything. It's always been something he struggles with so over the half term holiday we concentrated a lot on it. Jumping off steps on to the beach etc. And Wednesday, he jumped off (on numerous occasions) the horse and the beam at his gymnastics class! Very proud mummy moment and a little bit of smug perfectness that I was part of him learning that.

Yesterday, we spent the morning at the beach with a "perfect" blue sky. We enjoyed it so much we almost forgot to go home for lunch!

Today, I wrote an article from beginning to end and was actually happy with it! Another tiny bit of perfectness from my day!

What have been your perfect moments today? (Anything from cleaning the bathroom to show home standards, to having a perfect meal with your loved one). xx

Update on me! Shops and education and various other things!

Wow! What a few months I've had! Such exciting news! I have my crafts stocked in two shops locally to me and I am making sales! Not a huge amount at the moment, but enough to pay the shelf rental so right now that is good enough for me. I am still getting orders trickling in from my facebook pages and my etsy shop so again, all good. I have written several articles and am currently working on a book - details of which will be revealed at a later date!

So all in all I am a happy bunny!

My baby boy is now 3 (yes, THREE!! How did that time go so fast!?) and we are just about embarking on our Early Years Home Educating journey. I know, for some, this is a bit superficial until he turns 5, but to us it is a big deal. Our older children went to school as per "norm" and are still there and him not starting nursery in September is the start of our next chapter and an exciting one at that!

Again, being a perfectionist means that I am constantly battling with myself as to whether our home environment is enriched enough for him to be able to learn properly. However, thankfully, my perfectionism hasn't rubbed off on him and he just plods along in his own way doing what he does without worrying if it's good enough. I am grateful that when I am in "mum" mode, I let go of the perfectionism and allow them to just be themselves - something that I am getting better at every day - so much so that I don't even always THINK perfect thoughts any more, never mind suggest them!

So, you can view my shop at rubysatticuk.etsy.com or on facebook.com/rubysattic  so if you fancy, pop over and say hi! x

Exciting times

So, I opened my shops at the end of 2014 and have actually made some sales on and offline so that's really exciting. I'm now officially a self employed writer, artist and crafter - yes I know - all or nothing with me - I've told you that before!  I couldn't just settle with being a writer (I have spent the last 4yrs on and off completing a comprehensive writing course with the writers bureau which has been hard work, wonderful, educational and lots more besides. The feedback from my tutor was brilliant and I am so glad I struggled on, despite varying things happening in my life over that time, including my youngest (now 2yrs9mths) coming along. But it is now completed and I hope to get going with my various writing projects I have in my mind now I don't have to be completing assignments.) - The artist side of me has been desperate to get out for a long time. I was a very keen artist at school but didn't do so well in my final exam which totally zapped my confidence. I still doodled here and there, and was the main artist for the many wall displays we had in my workplace (nurseries and pre-schools) but it never really occurred to me to take it any further. Well, that is about to change. I hope to put some of my work in my Etys and Folksy shops. I have already started painting gift plates, but I hope to put some more unique artwork up there too...watch this space!

Right now, the "crafter" part of my self employment has been a couple of crochet items, the plates and plaques, however, I am currently in the process of making some gemstone/crystal and silver plated costume jewellery which you can view over on my other blog Catherine Creates but I am such an all round crafter no doubt I will find other things I want to do too. Catherine Creates has lots of my past work/gifts/swap presents so you may see some of those things popping up on my shop at some point... again... watch this space!

In my last post I spoke about having more family time. Well, last weekend, as a family, we went by train to a town about half an hour's train ride away. F, who is nearly 3, was SO excited by this that I suddenly felt guilty that he doesn't get to do it more often... and then I thought that actually, it's probably better that he DOESN'T do it more often so that when we do he will bounce for joy like he did last weekend and talk non stop about all the things he could see out of the window!  We got to the town and had a lovely walk along the river.

We were only there for a couple of hours in the end but we all had such a lovely time. Despite it being a city centre, it was very peaceful and such a lovely sunny (if cold) day. Edited to add... those photos make the river look very brown and murky but in reality it really wasn't like that at all! Might need to photo shop it!! Ha ha! x