Blustery day

So today is the first day we have left the house since Rowan got poorly on Thursday, the sun had gone and the wind was howling.  So we went to the beach.  I love the beach on blowy days, its just so refreshing.  We were hoping to see big waves but they weren't that big so we went cave hunting instead. 

Rowan has always been afraid of going too far into caves, but today he seemed to have swallowed his fear and loved it, marching into them saying he was a cave explorer, then crawling into small gaps to see what was through them (at this point I was silently panicking!).

It appears that he has just worked his way through some major change or something, maybe resulting in the illness or because of it, who knows but the boy on the beach today was fun, spritely and adventerous.

Don't know what these are but there were 3 on one side of the entrance to the cave and there should have been 3 on the other side, maybe for boats to be tied up to, but there is a harbour at this beach and has been for a long long time

Rowan has suddenly started to want to write numbers and letters, as long as its not just with a pencil and paper, here is numbers and his name with stone and sand.

 

 

FoR ThE lOvE oF FuNgUs FriDaY

Every Friday I will be posting a single photo of some lovely fungi in conjunction with this lovely blog.  Tris is a mad fungi lover and it is so nice to be sharing his love with others...

Another one of those weeks!

So this week started with my birthday, I had a lovely day, the puppet show was fun, then I went down to the beach with some lovely friends and sat around eating cake whilst the children all played hide and seek and found a big dead fish!  We then went for some food in the local surfy bar on the beach, the staff's faces dropped when on Saturday evening about 10 adults and 10 kids (all under 5) came in to the bar, they opened up the side room for us!  It was a lovely day with lovely people and to top it off a huge double rainbow came out over the pub, beautiful!

Sunday is now family swimming day, as for some reason Rowan is freaking out about his swimming lessons that he has been having.  But when he goes with us he is fine, so we went for a lovely swim in the morning.

Then we were back to Monday, our theme for this week was Autumn, we read some appley stories and did a big apple print banner...

We had a few deliveries this week so the boxes have provided the boys with a lot of their enterainment, ending up as Robot pants!

However this weeks rhythm didn't flow as well as I'd wished, Rowan seemed a bit unsettled.  He had not really returned to his usual self after his illness a couple of weeks before.  On Tuesdays he usually goes to his preschool, which he loves but he really didn't want to go this week, or to his swimming lessons on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday he woke up with really fast breathing again, not wanting to drink or eat or even talk.  He sat on the sofa and watched DVDs all day.  I would occasionally come in and he would be curled up in a ball on the floor saying his insides hurt!  I thought he just had a tuumy ache but by late afternoon I thought something was really wrong, well I thought it was his asthma again, so we went to the docs.
This time instead of saying he is having an asthma attack, to which they usually just stick him straight on the nebuliser, I said I didn't know (something was telling me that he needed to be seen by a doc this time).  The doctor we saw was great, she took a good amount of time listening to his lungs and asking questions, to which she then diagnosed pnuemonia!  Well my heart nearly dropped out of my bottom!  I glady accepted the prescription for antibiotics (Rowan has only had them once before)and took my poorly boy home trying to not let him see my real feelings of 's**t this is really serious!'  I slept with him that night to keep an eye on his breathing.
The next morning he woke up a bit better, but didn't have the energy to get out bed, so Reuben came into his bedroom and did a little comedy act for him to try and make him laugh, it was so sweet!
Over the day he improved and also had a visit from his homeopath who seems to have nailed the remedy on the head as over the last day he has become so chirpy and full of life (he still has a horrible cough and fast breathing).
So now we are waiting for a visit to the doctor on Monday to reasses him, and to talk asthma (does he have it or not?)  I know the doctor will be reluctant to go against what previous gp's have said but I could see no difference between this breathing and the previous 'attacks'.  The thing with Rowan is he hardly gets ill, but when he does he really gets ill.  Lots of questions going on at the mo, just need to think them through properly before we go to the gp's on Monday otherwise I will get tangled up in my thoughts and not get the answers I am looking for.
Anyway, other photos from the week, before the poorly days,
Fun in the garden, Reuben has a new shopping basket (or washing basket as he likes to call it!)

 And the pretty Mallow flowers still going strong, the last splash of colour in our garden

Me!

Today is my birthday, just thought I would share this.  As it is me who writes this blog, I would feel a bit egocentric writing a special birthday post for me, but I thought I would just share some of my cards.

The boys and Tris have made me a lovely card titled ' A travelling card - Dreaming'

and the boys also made me  a lovely card with the help of my mum, of photos of me blowing out my candles over the years!

So far, I have lay in bed with my two beautiful children reading stories whilst Tristan cooked me  lovely breakfast, then they all went out and I have had a lovely quiet morning to myself.  They have just returned bringing me an ice cream, the sun is shining and soon we are going out to see this.

Lovely day x

FoR ThE lOvE oF FuNgUs FriDaY

Every Friday I will be posting a single photo of some lovely fungi in conjunction with this lovely blog.  Tris is a mad fungi lover and it is so nice to be sharing his love with others...

Autmunal rhythm

After last week we decided that we had to try and regain some rhythm into our week to get some control over the chaos!  

So I prinited up an idea of our daily rhythm to put on the fridge and to guide us through the week.  

We have by no means stuck to it, but the thing that has stuck the most is circle time and a weekly theme.  This week to introduce the idea I went with a volcano theme, as I knew Rowan loves volcanoes and it would capture his interest.  I hope to do more seasonal themes as time goes on, but I also want Rowans home education journey to lead by his interests, so I thought volcanoes would be a great place to start.

We started with circle time, a time for all 3 of us to choose a story (mine will always be the same each day and the theme will be taken from that book), we sing songs and read books, then talk about the story and the theme.

So my book for the week was Boy, where a cave boy wants to find somwhere warm to sleep, amongst them is an exploding volcano.  This then lead to reading up about volcanos (whoever come into our house now gets the entire volcano book read to them by Rowan) and doing a variety of activities.

We made exploding volcanoes with vinegar and bicarb.

Examining their dormant volcanoes...

Making up the bicarb bombs to start the eruption

Reuben was quietly amazed

Rowan was very excited (he had to repeat it again and again!)

I have been a bit slack with the photo taking this week, so not many more photos, but we have made volcano meatloaves on our baking day and lava lamps on our art day.

Rowan has loved the weekly theme idea, by the end of the week he was asking what volcano activity can we do today? 

Rowan reading the volcano book to Reuben

So this week has been a bit smoother than the previous, Rowan is still a bit unsettled from being ill.  It seems whenever his asthma comes around it takes him a good month to get fully back into the way he was before.  The seems to be natures way, most children regress a little when they are poorly, but I think Rowan gets scared by the asthma and seems to seek reassurance for quite while afterwards and becomes very dependant on me. Having the theme/rhythm has been a good focus for us all to help with this, especially as Rowan is finding Reuben quite difficult to deal with at the moment.

However Rowan has been full of amazing four year old questions this week;

What is in the centre of the earth?

Do airplanes have windscreen wipers?

And the best one.....

Can giants surf on a tsunami?

Some more photos of the week

 A new park has opened in the village next to ours, it has a track going around the outside!  It has now been declared the favourite place to go, we have been there 3 times in the last week!

And we went for a very, very wet walk in the woods yesterday. 

So everyone is loving the new rhythm, it is just a gentle reminder of a direction for the week, instead of desecnding into the chaos!

Next week  is our Autumn week

What a month!

Summer was great, lots of fun family time.

Then came September which I can only decribe as manic!  I know we still have a week left, but as from today things are changing here, hopefully.

After Rowans birthday life seemed to gather momentum and snowball out of control.......

The house was/is a mess, the kids are bickering all the time, Tris has work coming out of his ears and pops in for tea before having to go back out to look at someones trees, we are struggling to find our feet in the flowing rhythm we had going before the summer.

Then things kind of came to a head....

Rowan lost the plot with Reuben and shouted that he just doesn't want to see him, this prompted a bedroom shifty round as all space in the house was shared space.  Now both boys have their own space which they can share if they wish but also they can shut their door if they wish!

Then bedtimes became a real battle, where it would all end in arguements and me not sitting down until 8.30-9pm.  So now we have a new bedtime ritual, which so far is going really well and has transformed bedtimes (more on this another time)

Then Reuben fell off his bike in the garden, whilst carrying a fishing net in his mouth ( as you do!?) and cut up his lip really bad....

Then last week, Rowan got a throat infection, which triggered his asthma, so over the space of 24 hours we had 2 hospital trips, to be told each time something different.  Part of me believes that Rowans body is strong enough to deal with these infections but then I panic when his breathing is fast and doctors use terms like 'life threatening', but then each doctor has a different idea on what 'life threatening' is, so we are no clearer on when his breathing really is an asthma attack.  Fortunatley his homeopath saw him at short notice and helped us out with some remedies.

Then me and Reuben came down with the throat lurgy, feeling rotten.  We have watched lots of DVDs this week and not gotten much else done.

Then to top it all off Tristan groundworker put all his weight onto a dead branch in a tree and it snapped resulting in a big fall and a broken arm.  So now Tris has 6 weeks full of work and no one to work with!

Autumn equinox kind of passed us by in a blur, so this morning when Rowan woke us up to cries of 'the sun is rising and the sky has turned pink' we decided that today is the start of our autumn, lets start afresh.  and so far its been a lovely day, Tris went to an archery competition this morning and was winning, but we had to leave to go for my nans 87th birthday dinner, which was a lovely afternoon too.

Other good things from the last couple of weeks;

Rowan saw his first sunrise on the way to hospital and now wakes up eager each morning to look through the living room window to watch it.
Rowan learning to ride his bike a bit more.
Reuben letting Daddy put him to bed.


I now feel like I need a good de-clutter and then I think we will be dancing along to our rhythm again..