Mini has worn glasses since he was two years old. He has also been going to the swimming pool since he was 3 weeks old. He has always been a very water confident child, but we did encounter issues with him in large group situations at swimming lessons and that was when we learned about prescription swimming goggles for kids from his swimming tutor.
This was tidy 1 hour before I took this picture! Help, MiniMad’s bedroom resembles a bomb site I am in need of some help and advice people of the interweb. Mini Mad’s has an issue with keeping his bedroom tidy and I have to admit I am finding it exceedingly hard to deal with.
How can my baby be seven? All of a sudden he is starting to look like the man he is going to be. So in honor of my darling Mini, this is for you.
You give the best cuddles in the whole wide world, they are all encompassing and frequent. One of my favorite times of the day is that cuddle in my bed before we get up and face the day ahead. Oftren we each say five more minutes.
You have no pause button. You do everything at full speed.
You are extremely sensitive, although you often hide it under your bravado. You care about what other people think and say.
You have my temper! It is like looking into a mirror. I know this is something you are working hard to control, but baby it is going to be a challenge. I know, I have been there, however, it is part of your personality. We talk about being able to learn to read and write, so learning to control your temper will be something you can do too.
Your family mean everything to you. You love us all with a passion.
You are a reader. You love fact books and sleep with your Guinness Book of Records and 2013 Football fact book. Every morning I remove at least 4 books from your bed.
You put your clothes on back to front. When we tell you, you just shrug and say it is “your thing”!
You are still mad about anything London.
Whilst they were playing, Miss Frugal (who is the eldest of the bunch) taught the boys kiss, dare, truth or swear, which led to much hilarity in the car when Mini was picked truth and told me he had a girlfriend, but he had to share her with his friend at school too and that they took turns on which days they could kiss her on the cheek!
Now you might know that we have had ongoing issues with Mini about going to school since Preschool. He doesn’t like school. He doesnt want to go and we have been trying to get to the bottom of this for a long, long time and finding something like this in your five year old’s notebook, I can tell you is crushing.
I know that we can not always be happy all the time, but at five you should be happy most of the time and you should not be made to feel as though no body likes you. Initially when I tried to approach him about it, he just ripped the note up and started to cry. He explained that none of th
Mid January I blogged about Mini not going to bed and going to sleep and how it was really affecting our evenings and also making him really tired and grumpy in the morning. Well I thought it was time for an update and I am pleased to be able to tell ypu that our evenings have been transformed.
Mini now goes to bed between 7pm and 7.30pm and goes to sleep. He has even asked to go to bed and taken himself up at 6.45pm one evening. Even when were were moving his room he still went to bed and sleep in all the mess and chaos.
So how have we done it. Basically it has all been about consistency. We have a strict bedtime routine. No screen time after 6pm. Dinner, night clothes, books, cuddles and bed (with a bath a couple of times a week).
What do you do when you have a child that just refuses to go off to sleep? I wish I knew. Maxi has always gone to bed like a dream and when his head hits that pillow he is off in the land of Nod till six am ish. Mini, however, is another story. He needs his sleep and is a monster without it, as most children are, but he has this ability to fight going off to sleep.
It started when he was around 3 years old and I put a lot of it down to the fact that I had been in and out of hospital and made allowances for him and for me. But the fact is he is five and a half and still doesn’t want to go to bed on a night and will make every excuse under the sun to stay up or find a reason to get up. My tummy is hurting, I have earache, I am hold, I am hot, I need a drink, I am hungry, I am scared and so on and so on. The fact is that both me and MadDad had let it go on to long and we were tired. Tired of the relentless taking him back up to bed, tired of not having our evenings together, tired of one or the other giving in and cuddling Mini either upstairs or downstairs and just plain exhausted by it all.
We did it! No actually he did it. Mini diched his dummy last night, just like that. I asked him if he thought that it was time to go and he siad yes and off to bed without one he went and slept though the night. he is an utter star and I am so proud of him.
I used to be a control freak, a planner, an organiser and have always needed to be in charge. I am very good at planning and getting things done, hence the fact that I manage projects. However, over the years since I had my children and worked on my depression I have learnt that perfectionists are more likely to suffer with depression and that I have to let go.
Normally over the summer holidays I would make sure we had activities planned in for each day. I would make sure that we had a schedule and an itinerary to ensure that the boys were kept busy and I was kept in my comfort zone. However this year due to recovering from my operation and lots of other reasons I couldn’t make these plans, so we had to wing it and I had to learn to let go. It was such a hard learning curve, but has taught me some great life lessons.
hankfully things have moved on since we had the boys and now you can see video’s on you tube of how to bath your baby and Johnsons Baby have a whole youtube channel and a specific tutorial on bathing your baby. My top tip would be to get any prospective d
ow to describe Mini, well he is noise with muck on.
His emotions run close to the surface and some times get the better of him, but this means you always know where you stand.
He is a lover and a fighter.
He shows a talent for music and a passion for reading and literature.
He is my earth, wind, stars and moon.
have never made my admiration for the NHS a secret. I am one of the few who has seen them when a real emergency occurs. Who have seen them give their all when people where in life or death situations and watched as they provided amazing acute health care. Whats more this health care, which in other countries would costs tens of thousand of pounds is free.
nearly 12 years ago my wonderful dad was involved in an industrial accident, He was resuscitated at the scene by his work mates and the first responder (a paramedic in a car) and then blue lighted to hospital in an ambulance. Upon arrive to the A&E department he was provided with top notch trauma care, including x-rays, scans, pain relief, breathing assistance and medication. When my mum arrived at the hospital she was ushered in to the trauma department and keep pretty much informed and updated as the situation would allow.
We are going through a learning curve here in the mad house. I try to let my boys have freedom, I believe in letting them play outside and try to encourage them to be independent, but with two boys who are 15 months apart there is a fine line to walk. Mini wants to be out with Maxi and I want to encourage them to look out for each other. In order to help facilities this we have purchased a set of walkie talkies for the boys, which work really well when they remember to take them out! But yesterday things went wrong.
Maxi was born in Reading, so he has chosen Reading football team as his and was super excited this weekend by the fact that they were still in the FA cup, but also really upset to find out that he couldn’t watch them on TV (as they were not being shown playing), so we listened to the match on the radio. When Manchester City sored the goal, Maxi got pretty upset. So MadDad tried to explain the ranking system and said that Manchester City were in a higher league and were possibly the richest football club in England at the moment and this is the conversation that sprung from there. […]
The world seems to have had more than it’s fair share of disasters over the last couple of years, the floods in India, situation in Haiti, the earthquake in Christchurch and then overnight the massive earthquake in Japan. It seems to be a pretty scary time to live at the moment. I am all too aware of how tragedy can affect children, we have experienced enough in our family and my boys have been exposed to illness and death from an early age, but this does not mean that I no longer feel the need to shield them from the hardest realities of the news. I find the news footage shocking […]
My boys are LOUD. Which means that I have to shout to be herd over their noise. I didnt realise this until we stayed with friends this last week and it really brought it home to me just how much noise me and the boys make. So the fact that I woke up with no voice on Sunday morning, well I took that as an intervention from the universe. It is time for The Mad House, to become quieter. For us to regulate our volumes. Wish me luck!
I think that sometimes is is hard for Mini growing up in Maxi’s shadow. People often revel in the fact that Maxi is super clever and leave Mini out of the equation. The thing is both of the boys are bright, but Maxi’s shows his intelligence everyday, whilst Mini well he is just Mini, unique and special. However, this week Mini has excelled himself by being awarded the Headteachers award for creativity (something that Maxi has never had) and also a certificate from his teacher for independently writing a story about a superhero on the computer. When I asked him who his favorite superhero was on Sunday he responded by […]
Sometimes, I bite off more than I can chew. Sometimes, I have no option. But I am laughing through my tears. Today has been a challenge again. A day spent with my sister in law working on clearing out the house again. Mini’s glasses to pick up for the opticians and then parents evenings to go to. MadDad is sore and possibly overdoing this as his wound is weeping and I am tired to the core. But then we hear a voice with a guitar and we both sit and listen. Mini sings a song and I sit with tears in my eyes. For his song is about his grandma who […]
We had a pretty quiet weekend consisting of football practice and then a football party for the boys on Saturday and a Sunday which mainly included lots of comfort food and cuddles, which was fine by me. One of the plus point of buying the boys DSi’s for Christmas is that me and MadDad get a lie in on a weekend as the boys tend not to wake us at silly o clock. So this morning we were both lounging in bed and the boys came in for a cuddles with the DSi’s and we had a lazy, snugly morning. All was peaceful until Mini asked me to scratch his bum. […]
