Our Holiday!

Busy Busy Busy!

Dizzy  and Bear have made the most of the time off school with lots of activities!

Easter Baking and Easter Cards 🐥 Cheap
Rainy day play
We delivered our cards and baking to our our neighbours which delights Bear especially as he loves to share and he loves chatting to adults.

Garden Play 👢 🐛 Free
Wellies and coats on both children but especially 5 yo Bear have been out playing in the rain. They've collected and washed rocks, used the climbing frame, bug hunted and made ramps to launch the little tykes car off!

Wheely good fun ⛸ 🚲 Free
My two love being allowed 'out the front' in our quiet cul-de-sac to play. Bear likes to ride his go kart and fix it with real tools. Dizzy likes to roller skate. They pick up good social skills as they end up having lots of chats with our neighbours and road safety skills are practiced and observed by us.

Bowling 🎳 Costly
This is an expensive one but Dizzy has only been 3 times and Bear twice. We went to Hollywood bowl and they had colouring whilst you were waiting for your turn which was very useful!

Trip to London 🚍 moderate
Using our friends and family rail card 💳 (thank you Tesco points) we spent under £20 on rail fares and won free tickets to The Winnie-the-Pooh Exhibition at the V&A. A whole day of fun!

Cinema 🎭 costly
This was a birthday treat for me. Usually we do kids cinema for around £15 including the tickets and kids popcorn. We paid full price for Peter Rabbit as I used my birthday money from my grandmother!

Church Holiday Club ⛪ cheap
This happened to be at our church for 2 days but in other holidays other local churches run them also. My kids come back very energised from these sessions.

Rock Painting 🎨 cheap
We spent cold rainy days painting the rocks and then slightly better days hiding them in the local parks! I bought some Posca pens and we used rocks we found in our garden behind the shed!

Forest School 🌸 moderate
This was our favourite activity. We left the kids with their teacher who let them run around her woods digging holes with her dog and finding waist deep muddy puddles. This was a paid session but well worth the fun that was had.

Local Farm 🐽 cheap
We are lucky that a small farm near us opens Sundays and school holidays and does activities. This year they did an Easter Trail £1, feed the animals £1, rock painting £1 per rock and a watercolour workshop £1.50. They sell lovely cakes and their own fruit juices. Entry is free. We just did the watercolour workshop and visited the animals and walked through the countryside there and back.

Knitting 🐑 cheap
This cost me about £10 in wool. My son has wanted to learn to knit to make his teacher a scarf! I can't knit and can barely crochet but since both my children can make loom band bracelets I assumed they would pick up finger Knitting quite quickly. I've managed a scarf in less than an hour using a good chunky wool. Bear hasn't got quite so far but has made a good start and has got quite quick already. Dizzy is still going having not been keen to join in initially but she's enjoying how quickly her scarf is growing!

Annual Tickets 🎟 Free (sort of)
Every year we have an annual entry to something. This year we have it for another more touristy farm. They have a soft play which is great in itself as soft play places are expensive. They also had shows, Easter trails etc as holiday extras. We have made a couple of visits to Kent Life to see the baby animals (goats, pigs, sheep, chicks, ducks and guinea pigs!).

Play dates free 🏞 🏡
My kids will have had 2.5 weeks without their mates. Dizzy has had a few playdates (two here and one at a friend's house) and we have met one of Bear's friends at the park and had some family friends for lunch a couple of times. It's been nice for me to have some adult company too!

Spring Clean 🛏 free
We had a spring clean of the bedrooms. This took a couple of afternoons. Yes they are dumps again now but at least they were clean for a while and we found some hidden toys!

Siblings

There is almost three years between my children. Whilst I grew up very close to my cousins (a year and 4 years younger) I had no siblings until I was secondary school age.

Sibling fighting is something quite new to me. I never really had an option to complain, or physically attack my siblings. I was an adult. I went to university when the older of my siblings was the age my daughter is now. The other still a baby.

I'm led to believe the physical fighting, the he absolute foul way the bigger treats the little, and the way the little cries at the slightest thing for maximum impact and punishment of the big one, is normal.

I worry how I will explain the injuries they give each other to professionals. I had to explain a black eye at my daughter's first parents evening (brother threw doctors kit at her from height) and my daughter was in close proximity both times my son broke a bone.

This holiday has been a lot of "I hate him" "she hit me" "he's annoying" "she said this" "he touched that" over and over with the odd thud and slap of skin on skin.

All day long. Every, single day. We are only half way through the first week!

Bedtime is a different story. They are suddenly best friends and gang up on their terrible, strict and mean parents. They can't possibly be separated. They must play, read and sleep together.

Then the cycle starts again.

Easter bribery!

My kids have been horrors the last couple of days.

The 8 year old cannot help herself rolling her eyes and back chatting me ALL. THE. TIME. Really. I have come close to washing her mouth out, binning (read eating) her eggs and locking her in her room until she is 21.

The 5 year old is so crazy he forgets other people exist. She runs and jumps on people, shouts, jumps on my furniture and has developed at selective deafness which only applies to my voice.

I've had enough. It was close to selling them on ebay. My parenting has generally been sensitive, emotionally responsive, gentle, no bribery {never worked with daughter} etc.

Never threaten father Christmas or the easter bunny won't come because they are bad. No never. Bad choices, not bad people.

Well the Easter bunny was pushed to her limit yesterday so the eggs were hidden. The clues were chores which enabled the easter bunny to stay in bed on twitter and Facebook in the absence of adequate sedation. 

The Easter bunny required both children to get dressed, tidy dirty washing, feed the pets, feed mummy, eat fruit, write cards of love and Easter cheer to our neighbours etc.

Feeling like a wonderful mother I got up to see the carnage. Aware now that perhaps I hadn't gained a lot really. I comprised my parenting morals and the 5 year old is now sugar filled and ready to show me up at another family gathering.

At least they ate an apple.

Autism Awareness Week

Happy Autism Awareness Week

This week on twitter I have been sharing a little of what it means for us having Dizzy and her autism in our lives.

Dizzy is 8. Dizzy has autism. She is funny and sweet and naughty just like her brother. Sometimes life is hard for her because usually she doesn't look autistic. Sometimes she doesn't behave like she is autistic. This is because she works hard to hide it, she has learnt how to be a chameleon and also because she is a girl.

Girls frequently are diagnosed later and often misdiagnosed in the first instance. Girls are less likely to be disruptive at school, more likely to have speech and less likely to have a train obsession.

Dizzy loves to dance. She loves to spin. This is because she has low responsiveness to vestibular activity. When a neurotypical person sits they receive sensory feedback. You feel the chair pushing you upwards and your weight pushing down. You feel the same through your feet on the floor. You feel yourself sitting still and you know that you are still. You feel balanced.

To feel balanced Dizzy needs to spin or hang upside down. To feel her bottom on a chair rather than hovering in mid air she needs a bumpy, wobbly cushion. To feel anchored by gravity she sometimes needs weights on her shoulders. I try to imagine how I would feel living my life on a boat, in a stormy sea, upside down, tied to enough helium balloons to lift me off the floor a little.

Dizzy also is quite popular. She has lots of friends and often children run up and hug her, walk down the street holding hands or choose to work in a group with her. Daisy likes friends. Sometimes she needs to have one friend at a time. She finds socialising with different people at once quite challenging. Dizzy always has one special friend she uses as a template for behaviour. Unfortunately due to finding being around many people at once confusing and anxiety provoking,she can sometimes be rude to her friends. This is never because she wants to be unkind. She just needs space and we are encouraging her to sat that instead of "I just don't like your face!!

Dizzy is lucky that she has an auntie who has ASD too. They look the same, share a talent for art and a passion for a good story despite neither being confident readers.

I have loved telling you all about Dizzy during Autism Awareness Week. Life as her mum is hard. Life as Dizzy is hard. But Dizzy herself is amazing.

I'm not sure we will ever find her autism a blessing in this life. We trust there is a purpose for any suffering, even if we cannot understand. She is a blessing though. Just as our neurotypical son is.

Little Fant Farm review

Spring is in the air which means country walks are back. Farms are such fun in the spring. Blossom on the trees, lambs skipping through the fields.

There is a lovely little farm near us. It has a tea barn selling delicious homemade cakes, apple and pear juice from their orchard and gigantic sausage rolls from the resident pigs.

Sadly Little Fant Farm is only open for 3 hours on a Sunday and extra days during the school holidays.

Bear celebrated his 5th birthday at the farm. Unfortunately it was a very wet day. The children didn't seem to mind at all but the adults were huddled together in the barn. The rain also meant that the craft activities I had taken with me had to be done under the shelter of the barn rather than on the picnic tables in the farm yard so it was a little cramped.

Sonia did facepainting whilst the children did a scavenger hunt. The farm lunch was great. A small sandwich, a slice of sausage roll, veg sticks and a piece of cake. Sonia made my cousin a separate dairy free equivalent too.

At Easter we enjoyed the Easter trail around the farm with counting, obstacles and puzzles to solve.

Best bits:
It's free! There is a small parking charge if you park at the farm. There is on street parking a short walk away. It is also walking distance from the Maidstone Hospital bus route and East Farleigh train station.

The sausage rolls are AMAZING!!

What about the boys?

Following on from my post about inspiring girls I have been thinking about boys.

Whilst preparing for international women's day and Aspirations day at school I thought how women and girls are really encouraged to be whatever they like. The success of the England women's football team and improving numbers of women in engineering etc are examples of how much more choice girls now have.

Do boys have this freedom? At 5 years old Bear does. At 8 years old, with no conscious encouragement from her parents, Dizzy informs her brother he cannot wear pink, he shouldn't use a pink cup and he shouldn't want a Frozen Kinder Egg!

Bear is a dancer. He is the single male in both his ballet and tap classes. His friends are mainly girls but he has 2 close male friends. One at school and one at church.

He has always loved playing mums and dads and schools.  His comforter is a Fisher price soft doll called Baby George who was a 1st birthday present and has gone most places with us since. I have had to tie George to his 'daddy with a long scarf on numerous outings. One year I had to 'help' George make a Father's day card for him to give to Bear!!

My nephew is not allowed a doll. He's not allowed a dolls pushchair.  I have asked his parents if they are afraid of him turning into a good parent so they are preventing him from practicing.

Bear loves playing schools. Primary schools are still very female dominated, especially in the infants and nursery settings. Bear is lucky that he has an amazing year 1 teacher Mr H. Bear adores this man. All I hear about is how funny he is. Bear frequently wants to make him things. He's planning to learn to knit to make Mr H a scarf! There is a male PE teacher and a male TA in year 2. 3 male members of staff out of around 40. Again, men in the minority.

Mr H is young, silly, cheeky and over excitable. He's very much like Bear. Whilst Bear shys away from rough play and rough and tumble at school he is very boisterous and active and often described as a typical boy. Both appear to be 'typical' boys (sorry Mr H , I have kids  I babysat for older than you!) doing what appears to be a typically female role.

When Bear was unwell, I was too. His Daddy stayed in hospital with him until I was recovered enough to. Every one seemed surprised. Why wasn't his mother there? When my daughter was in hospital, nobody asked why her father wasn't at her bedside. Dad's aren't all incapable and only able to babysit their children. They are an important part of a parenting team.

Why shouldn't male our children learn to be good dads, to clean, to cook when we expect our little girls to grow up and work like men?

My boy is not 'camp' or girly. He is boisterous and he has the male brain of an engineer. He also likes dancing to exercise, enjoys reading and has compassion for other people.  He cries when he is sad.

Why don't we, as a society, expect our boys to aspire to be anything they want to be? Why when it is socially unacceptable to pigeonhole girls into being mums, nursery workers and pretty are we belittling a man's ability to look after his child?

Just as my girl can be anything, so can my boy (and he doesn't have to be gay to do it!)

Girls can do anything!

International Women's Day was last week, Mothering Sunday and Aspirations Day at Dizzy and Bear's school was this week. Lots of celebrations for women.

I was reflecting on how we treat our daughters.  100 years on from getting the vote we have come a long way.  Women are able to be financially independent, meaning they can escape abusive fathers and husbands. My grandmother says she married to get out from her father's controlling nature. Her name wasn't allowed on the mortgage of her first marital home. This was only 50 years ago.

Women now work. Most jobs will have women doing them, even if they are in the minority. The glass ceiling still exists, with women generally earning less than men and less likely to be in senior or leadership roles.

Has fighting for equality made us lose sight of some of the wonderful ways women are different to men? Of course women can be pilots, engineers, fire fighters and mechanics. What about the things that only women can do?

Women grow babies, make food. Their bodies are made to nourish and respond to their children. It's biology. Working women are great. Working mothers are amazing (I did it for 7 years).

Women and mothers are important in their own right though. It would be sad if we didn't teach our daughters that they can be anything, and that choosing to be a wife and a mother is just as important as being a chief executive or an astronaut.

So inspire your sisters, daughters and nieces to be who they want to be. They should be valued as much as men. Support them to break through that glass ceiling if they choose their path. Inspire them to be the best wives and mothers and to be proud of being a woman and enjoy the amazing way they are different to men.