One of Me, Three of You

I have been looking forward to the summer holidays - I don't work so I don't have to worry about childcare, I really hate the clock-watching round the school run and I like having my children at home. However, I would be lying if I said it didn't feel a little bit daunting now they have arrived. Days spent at home are not always very successful for us so my default has always been to get everyone out once or twice a day. That seems a lot more challenging this year with a small baby thrown into the mix who is nowhere near any kind of feeding and napping routine. On his sleepy days when he is happy to nap in the buggy for a three hour stretch it should be fine. But when he decides he is having a feeding day it gets a lot harder to keep an eye on the other three when I'm stuck under a hungry baby. I got stuck feeding in the park the other day and had to across with E still attached when A managed to get his foot wedged in something designed for much older children! ...

I'm having a bit of a crisis of confidence with my blog at the moment, and have been pondering why and what to do about it. I feel like there are many reasons why I am struggling to find the will and the time to write at the moment, not all of which I need to beat myself up about - some of them are temporary (like approaching 'heavy' pregnancy) and some are positive. Without trying to tempt fate, one reason why I am writing less is that life is ticking along fairly well. I find it easier to write about the boys and parenting when I'm finding it all a challenge - it's definitely cathartic and stops me dwelling on things quite so much if I get it down on paper. And at the moment we are trundling along pretty well. Don't get me wrong, we still have plenty of challenges (T is doing a good impression of the awkward middle child, W is moving us into a whole new world of parenting challenges as he gets older, and A has suddenly developed his own opinion on things ...

Despite being my eldest, this is the birth story it has taken me the longest to write. I have finally got round to doing it, partly because I wrote it on my blog plan and partly because it has been on my mind again as I start to think about birth number four. It's fair to say W's birth was not the birth I had hoped for and I still put a lot of that down to my lack of confidence in my ability to have a baby. The early stage of labour was very long - a weekend of twinges which may or may not have been early contractions and generally feeling a bit uncertain about what was going on. We had a trip to hospital on Sunday night because I thought my waters might have broken (not the gush I experienced with my second son, just a slow trickle) but nobody was really sure. We went back again on Monday night as my contractions were much closer together. We stayed in for a couple of hours as they worried about whether or not I had pre-eclampsia but were cleared of that and told to com...

Eldest son is a conundrum at the moment. In some ways he is so grown up and in other ways I feel like he is going backwards. He is absolutely loving school and learning - we keep being surprised by how many things in the real world he can now read and he is doing lots of writing and pictures at home to take back in to share with his class. He is pretty self sufficient in many ways as well - always gets himself dressed and ready to go out the door and he can sort himself out at mealtimes. Set against this really grown up chap, we are back to lots of shouting and tears when things aren't going his way and we are battling his eczema again. When he was three and four he used to be completely against leaving the house - I have never been one for staying at home all day and once we got out he was normally fine but we used to have lots of shouting and screaming beforehand. I got into the habit of telling him we were going out well ahead of time to give him five minutes to have his ta...

Middle son turned four last weekend and, to celebrate, we had our first go at a soft play party. A January birthday means that parties at home have to be mostly inside and it often gets a little mad - we hired soft play equipment for his first birthday that was far too big for our sitting room and it was chaos! This year he was adamant that he didn't want a party at home and he wanted to invite his nursery friends for the first time. I must admit I was less than keen on handing over my money and signing up to the list of terms and conditions but it went surprisingly well. We tried out a couple of soft play places that host parties back in November to see what they were like and settled on the local leisure centre (even though it is strangely tucked away in the corner of the shopping centre). I'm really glad we went for somewhere that gave us the place to ourselves. Even though not all the children knew each other beforehand (we had nursery friends, family friends and cousi...

My smallest man is getting big - 17 months today! He is turning into a bit of a character, he definitely likes getting a laugh from everyone, and is starting to know his own mind. When we set off for the school run now he optimistically heads off down the drive in the hope that I will let him walk rather than forcing him into the buggy. One of the reasons I started blogging was to help me remember more of the boys' childhoods and this post is definitely one to tick that box. I've picked a few of my favourite recent photos of him to remind me what he's been up to. "Just stealing my bigger brother's chair for second breakfast while he's at nursery" "Anyone for tea?" (Not sure where he has got the idea from but he spends a lot of time at the moment setting up his cups and pouring pretend tea into them with his teapot!) "Just chillin' with a bowl on my head" (I went upstairs to grab something and came back down to fi...

We've just come out of the other side of 10 days of ill children (fingers crossed!) and I thought I should share our experiences for others struggling with poorly children and the challenges of virtual house arrest - you are not alone! I should say upfront that I'm not very good with illness - I am rarely ill which probably means I am not very sympathetic as a parent until it becomes apparent that things are really bad. A came down with it first - it started fairly well for me as I got to potter round at home while he slept for 2.5 hours and Mark took the bigger two swimming. I never feel I make the most of his long naps as they are a bit unexpected but I can't remember the last time I managed to do some knitting during the day! We had a couple of broken nights, the first of which was quite companionable as he and I curled up in the spare bed together. I am a bit more sympathetic towards A on nights like that as I know it won't be long before he is happy with his o...

My husband has been hard at work the last couple of weeks and hasn't been making it home in time for bath and bed. I must admit I'm finding it hard going after several weeks of him being around a fair bit. It culminated on Thursday evening in a bit of a set-to at bath time (caused by the bigger two trying to poke each other's bottoms, something I probably have an irrational dislike of). Once everyone was out the bath I took myself off downstairs for a couple of minutes' timeout and left three boys clutching the stair gate and W wailing 'I want my daddy'. Once I returned in a slightly more mature frame of mind, they grudgingly let me read them their stories and tuck them in. There was no mention of their favourite thing of today, something which has become a bit of a tradition in the family and T in particular likes to share every night. The following day Mark was home so I left them to it at bath time and went to have a shower. 15 minutes of separation later a...

Life with my middle child is pretty tricky at the moment. There seems to be an awful lot going on inside this little chap and it's difficult to understand it and know how to help him. A is bearing much of the brunt of it - some days every time he walks into the same room as T he comes out crying about 10 seconds later. T is definitely making everything just a bit more effort than it needs to be. This evening the other two are happily tucking into seconds of their tea and T is busy going through the cutlery pot seeing which forks and spoons will fit in the top of his water bottle.  These phases creep up on me. We'll be bumping along fine and then I'm realise that I've spent the last few days nagging incessantly and am back to doing quite a lot of shouting. I have to take myself to one side and psych myself up for some decent parenting! This used to happen with my eldest but he has definitely calmed down in the last year. Don't get me wrong, he still has his shout...

Don't get me wrong, we had a really lovely time last week on our half term holiday in North Norfolk, but holidaying with three small children is never quite as relaxing as I hope it will be. I realised it's the first time we've been away for a week since having A - we had a few camping trips over the summer and various trips to Devon to see my family but no proper holidays. It's also the first time in a while that we haven't stayed in a Baby Friendly Bolthole, complete with all sorts of child-related equipment. I was a little worried about the packing, particularly having to do it with two small boys round my feet, but it was fine, not too much to fit in, and I even managed to pack the roof box myself (although I wasn't tall enough to do the straps!). I guess A, at 15 months, is old enough now to not need much in the way of equipment. And there's no need to take too many toys because all the older two want to do is draw pictures and cut up pieces of paper...

I'm pleased to say that this week has involved significantly less poo than last week and long may it continue. T wasn't very well last week - over the previous weekend we had some pretty challenging trips to the toilet and he fell asleep on the sofa on Sunday morning for a couple of hours, unheard of for him. So nursery on Tuesday was out but I thought we were going to be alright for Thursday - oh, how wrong I was. We picked W up from school on Wednesday as usual then headed for the park - we've been making the most of the autumn sunshine before it gets too cold and dark to do things after school. For once I had managed to persuade them to walk a different way home - it is slightly longer but the normal school run gets pretty monotonous so I like the change. We got out the back of the park and T announced he needed a poo. Bother, I had been carrying the portapotty under the buggy since the weekend but must have taken it out when I put the buggy back in the car. Never mind...

A home birth as desired for child number two, not quite to plan with the midwives arriving shortly after my son!  I have a guest writer this week - my husband! He wrote up T's birth story a couple of years ago when I was producing our NCT branch newsletter and it seemed silly not to use it.  As I cycled through Charlton, I checked my watch. I’d left work later than planned and the journey home had been slow due to the wind. It was well past six which meant Laura will have had to do bath time alone – normally not an issue, but as she was now 39 weeks pregnant, the physical aspects made it much harder – not to mention the fact that she’d be tired by the combination of pregnancy and looking after an excitable 18 month old.  As the road bent round past the car boot sale field on the left, I remembered that it was also the first day of my London marathon training plan, and I was due to run 6 miles this evening. Although I’d rather have not gone out, I knew that I co...

Third time round, the straightforward home birth that I wanted, with child number 3 arriving in the early hours of the morning before his brothers woke up.  By way of background... - I had two very different births with my first two (that I will get add to the blog) - my eldest was born in theatre with the help of forceps after a very long labour and my middle son was born in our sitting room with my husband acting as midwife.  - Just to add to the normal worry of having a baby and adding another person into your family, we moved house when I was 37 weeks pregnant. - I did Lazy Daisy classes during each pregnancy and found them really valuable. It was good to spend an hour each week focusing on my bump (particularly with numbers two and three) and I found the breathing techniques really helpful during labour. - I gave hypnobirthing a go this round (thanks to a friend who had recently trained as a hypnobirthing instructor) but I don't think I gave it the time ...

1. Permanently filthy - he is still bum shuffling and crawling rather than walking so he is grubby all the time and wearing away the bums of his shorts and trousers. 2. A right blondie, like W was at this age, with his flyaway hair that I have no intention of cutting for at least another year. 3. A menace - T has taken to calling him Dennis as he is into everything and desperate to join in with (and destroy) anything the other two are doing. 4. A human hoover - he spends a lot of time under the kitchen table hoovering up dried cereal from breakfast and any food he's thrown on the floor during the day. 5. Very keen on stairs, both climbing up them and slowly shuffling his bum off the edge of each one to make his way down. 6. An absolute poppet - definitely one of the best ages when he has bags of personality and is still incredibly laid back. I am doing my best to make the most of this stage before he turns as stroppy and shouty as his older brothers.

I thought I would share our experience of the August bank holiday in a field in Oxfordshire! We have been going to Towersey Festival since I was a child - I've been with my parents, I volunteered as a steward with my best mate during our uni years and now I'm taking my own children (with extended family and best mate!). At the moment it is up there as one of the boys' favourite weekends of the year, rivalled only by Christmas and any trips to Center Parcs. We have managed to go every year since W was one, including last year when A was only six weeks old. As usual, we had a great weekend. The weather wasn't quite as good as time round - last year I sent Mark home on Saturday morning to pick up more summer clothes for everyone as we were roasting, this year we were very glad we had invested in a posh gazebo that everyone could huddle under, particularly in the pouring rain on Sunday. There are always a few niggly things that go on our feedback form each year but eve...

One of the many things I would have done differently if I had known what life is like once you have children would have been to go on more holidays and chill out more when I was on them. There is nothing restful about a holiday with three small boys! Our camping trip to Dorset a couple of weeks ago was our first holiday on our own with the three of them - apart from a couple of shorter trips with family we haven’t been away since A was born.  If I’m honest, quite a lot of things are a lot more effort when we’re away, we are definitely creatures of habit and routine at home. We struggled without the reusable nappies and wipes this time - A decided to poo five or six times a day and the disposable wipes and nappies were not up to the job! There’s no regular online food delivery and, as we were camping, no fridge to keep everything cool and provide a ready supply of houmous. And whatever toys I pack I’ve always brought the wrong ones.  I spent a lot of the first couple o...

I'm catching up on here after a quiet few weeks as I've been spending most of my time planning and preparing for W's birthday. We decided a few months back that having a party at a soft play or village hall and inviting the whole class wasn't what we wanted to do. He's not really into big groups and I think there is a fair chunk of his class who he doesn't play with so it didn't feel like the right approach for him. We also deliberately kept school and family separate - I don't know how W would react to the two sides of his life mixing but was pretty sure that one of them would come out on top and he would completely ignore the other side.

We had a practice camping trip last weekend, mainly to check that everything will fit in the car and that camping with three small boys isn't too horrendous ahead of a week long trip in the summer holidays! We went last summer when A was 6 weeks old but that was with one side of my family so there was a lot of help at hand. Things that I learnt:

On the eve of W's birthday I feel like I am approaching a bit of a milestone as I will no longer have three under-5s. I don't know why 5 seems like a notable age - he has already been at school for nearly a year and I am not expecting parenting to magically become easier from tomorrow. But I feel like I will be able to complain a little less about the trials of looking after the three of them as they get older. It is easy to forget how challenging it is having several children close together because it has very quickly become our normal.

I'm new to blogging. So far my mum and my husband have read my blog so I thought I would have a go at increasing my readership by taking part in this month's Living Linky on Getting Active Outdoors with tots100. As usual I have left it right until the end of the month to write this, partly because life with three boys is pretty busy but mainly because I am a little nervous about putting myself out there.  Our new favourite hangout we have discovered this month is Blackbushe Airport. The first time