The Busiest Weekend Ever?

Despite spending the whole weekend at home, it might have been one of the busiest on record for us. We had Mother’s Day, dance classes and birthday parties and Lisa’s teenage brother staying.

Saturday

Saturday started things off properly. I knew it was going to be a struggle to keep everybody busy, so a bit of forward planning was necessary. I got up a little bit earlier with the kids and got them fed and cleaned, then made a spot of breakfast for Lisa when she got up.

Once I’d done that, I took Heid (my nickname for Lisa’s brother) up the street on the bikes to pick up some goodies from the bakery. We stopped off en route for a coffee and chatted for a while. It was all very leisurely, I must say. We did the bakery visit and then cycled around the outskirts of town back to the house.

After a short mid morning snack, we went outside and did a bit more work to the Trail-gator we were installing on the bike for Daniel. This finally proved successful, and Daniel stopped falling off the bike, making it a more pleasant experience for everyone concerned. At the same time, Heid was badgering me to do some elaborate cooking for dinner, so we decided on omelettes for Saturday and a home-made pizza for Sunday. This was a good excuse to race out to Sainsbury’s and pick up the ingredients and get a few Mother’s Day bits for Lisa. So, we picked up a bunch of flowers, a couple of cards and some treats for a mini-party that night for us and the kids. (All of this was aided by an excellent 2 for £2 offer, thanks Sainsburys).

So, back at the ranch, I busily threw together my first ever omelette, which was well received by me and the boys. Lisa and Rachel have a deep aversion to egg-based eating, so they had something else. Heid, being a sheltered child and not used to pushing his culinary experience, rejected his omelette after a mouthful, and the rest was rabidly scoffed by my team of starving boys.

After dinner, team boy cycled up to the school where there’s a big football pitch and we had a kick around for a little while. And as the sun set behind the goalposts, we had our first bits of friction – Jake’s pal wasn’t a fan of sharing the ball, and Daniel threw a strop virtually every time the ball moved in a direction that wasn’t toward him. Still, we persevered, had a good time and cycled home for Coke and treats.

When the kids went to bed, I finally got the first chance of the day to sit on my ass. Watched a couple of TV shows and went to bed.

Sunday

Not so pressured today. Did a cooked breakfast for Mother’s Day, then went out for a newspaper and a cycle around the same route as yesterday. The cycling’s getting easier with perseverance, I can actually feel my legs getting stronger each time I go out on the bike.

Took about an hour to make a pizza this afternoon (getting better at those, although the base is still too doughy), but had a break in the middle where we went out into the country on the bikes. I was hoping to get totally lost in those little country roads, but my couch potato companion was clearly getting jittery about the distance, so we turned back. But it was a great ride – the air whizzing past my face, and the sun breaking through the clouds and casting a silver light off Lough Neagh were amazing.

So, there ya go. Perhaps the busiest weekend of pure fun and frivolity I’ve had in a long time. Got no real work done, but I’m thoroughly chilled out now, looking forward to the week ahead.

Bicycle season has begun

As the weather here improves, plans are afoot get a little more exercise into our routines. And possibly a slighty better diet, but more on that later.

It started as an effort to get the kids to school quicker – letting them take their scooters and bikes in the morning. Then last week, we gave the shed a clear out, dusted off the adult bikes, reinflated the tyres and headed back out on the road again.

Cycling is such a low-impact form of exercise. For me, after I’ve been running for a while, my leg starts to hurt terribly from the thudding about. Cycling avoids that.

Also, since Dan is still too small to keep up with the pack, he gets to ride along with me. We’ve been using the old mounted seat, but his weight means that it regularly bumps off the back tyre. So…today we’re fitting a crazy gizmo that connects my bike to Daniel’s little bike and makes a tandem. It’s called a trailgator, and sounds like a bit of fun.

The best bit is not having to use the car to go for little errands around town. Want to go up to the park? Jump on the bike. Need to pick up a DVD, bread and milk, some essentials? Jump on the bike. After dropping the kids off to school this morning, Lisa and I did a round trip to the town, picked up some packages and got a few goodies for breakfast. It was a blue sky morning, nice temperature, and we were back home roughly ten minutes after we normally would have been.

I reckon by doing a bit more cycling and making use of the bike part of our routine, it should help in dealing with this premature middle-age spread I’m suffering from! I also want to get the kids out for a few cycles on the country roads, and I might even get to try a few of the cycle routes around Lough Neagh one of these days.

On a related note…a webfriend of mine, Ben Ayers, is involved a couple of social networking sites for cyclists: Cycle Social and meandmybicycle which may be worth a look if you want to get a bit deeper into cycling!

Being Jake

Jake, you are one of the most precious people in my world. Your chatter and your passion for drawing and your sheer energy stop me in my tracks at least five times each day. You know this, you often catch me gazing fondly at you as you play.

At the moment though, you’re having a tough time, and it all stems from your shyness. For some reason, particularly with adults that you don’t know well, you freeze up. You totally withdraw into yourself and refuse to interact, take instruction or even acknowledge the presence of those adults.

Typically, they’re the people who’re trying to help you out in some way: a football coach, your swimming instructor, even your teacher on occassions.

To make matters worse, you just won’t talk about why you’re so shy. When your mum and I try to talk about it, you become sullen and grumpy, returning to your usual self after we give up and leave you alone. We don’t know what to do about the shyness. That’s not the first or last time you’ll hear us saying we (as parents) didn’t have the answer. For instance, your sister swims confidently and because the teacher can assess her ability, she’ll soon move on to a more advanced group.

You are a physical specimen: wiry, agile and strong. You could easily match your sister, despite being a couple of years younger. If you applied yourself and showed your teacher how well you could swim, you’d be moved along too. The same goes for showing your teacher how well you can read. At home, your delight in sounding out words is obvious. But you refuse to read for your teacher.

On one hand, we don’t know what to do. Do we continue to take you along to football, swimming and other classes and grimace as you stand frozen in the midst of your peers, or do we admit defeat and withdraw you from these classes altogether? Is it better to keep putting you in these situations until you get used to them? Or should we take our cues from your awkwardness and embarrassment?

I don’t know. We don’t know. But we keep trying. We love you so much and know how much ability and energy you have at home. We just wish you could show some of that energy to the other adults in your life.

Me? A parenting hero? Little moi?

I got a nice email this afternoon from Amy over at Earnest Parenting to tell me I made her radar of parenting heroes with my last blog post about being the eldest child.

As I said to Amy when I responded to her, it’s an ill-deserved award, considering how sporadically I post here, but I’m thankful anyway. It’s a great idea what she’s doing, so go and check out her blog and the other bloggers on her Heroes list.

The perks of being the eldest child

Lisa and I are both the eldest children in our respective families. Both of us can remember that there are special perks associated with being the eldest.

In my case, every Saturday night, my Dad would slip out of the house and bring back fish suppers for him and my Mother, then they’d call me down as well for my share. My two sisters would be innocently sleeping upstairs while I, the eldest, was able to munch away on junk food. And I don’t think they ever found out!

Lisa remembers similar benefits of being the oldest daughter in her house. The getting to stay up late, special treats, and an extra special bond with her Mother were some of the perks she had.

We find the tradition is continuing into our time as parents. We’re sitting in the house tonight, watching TV and drinking a nice bottle of red wine. At one point, the munchies hit us, and I fired up the chip pan to make a quick, unhealthy snack. As I was making it, I could hear a bit of bumping about upstairs and surmised that Rachel was still awake. She’s been reading herself to sleep lately, but tonight she was obviously still wide awake and messing around in her room.

So, I hissed up the stairs “…are you still awake? Come out here now!” She wasn’t even remotely worried about being in trouble, so I asked her if she fancied some chips. She bolted down the stairs in case I changed my mind, and I presented her with a small plate already libarally sprinkled in vinegar. She dashed into the living room and nestled herself between Lisa and I and munched away while Lisa caught up on Dancing On Ice.

The whole time, she wittered away, chatting about the show. She loves Dancing On Ice, and she was happy to babble and talk away. Sitting there in her stripy pajamas, Rach was in her element, all smiles and giggles until it was time for bed again, then she disappeared again without too much fuss.

Isn’t it great being the eldest? Do you have any memories of times your parents gave you a treat?

A Walk With Rachel

It seems I hardly spend much time with Rachel. If I’m going out somewhere, it’s usually the boys who come with me, and mostly Daniel.

So, how surprised was I when I suggested she come out for a walk with me, and she didn’t go absolutely nuts. Normally, such an innocuous request would be met with a fit of hysterics, making it pointless to even bother dragging her out the front door. But on Sunday, she placidly nodded her head and said, “Yeah, it’d be nice to get some fresh air.” Then wandered off to get her coat.

Normally, I take a fairly long walk out round the fields where we live, so I took her in that direction. We rambled down the road, intermittently chatting and sometimes falling into silence. Rach was busily inspecting the changes in the countryside because of the impending winter – I showed her the apple trees where the crab apples were rotting on the ground where they’d fallen weeks ago.

She spent an inordinate amount of time ripping ivy leaves from the trees and chucking them at me, but was a little more intrigued when we took a walk down to the old railway tracks. We had a nosey around underneath the bridge and she spent some time craning her neck to see further up the tracks.

Later, when we were walking back into town, she sweet-talked me into an impromptu trip to the park, where she played until the threat of rain became too great. Watching her play in the park reminded me of the times I took her to the park as a baby, pushing her on the swings and counting to 10 each time, her giggling all the time. And now, she’s more than half my height, looking up at me with smiling brown eyes and chatting away easily.

I like to try and spend a little one-on-one time with each of the kids now and again. Sometimes when they’re all together, they’re frenzied, noisy and it’s impossible to get them to sit still long enough to chat to. When you get them seperated from the pack, you get a chance to get to know them, and it’s surprising some of the stuff they’ll chat about – friends, school, things that are going on within the family.

Does anybody else do this kind of thing?

Does Jake have an eye for the ladies?

Do you ever wonder what your children are thinking at any given time? I bet you do.

I had one of those moments at the weekend – I took Dan and Jake into Belfast to take the bus home for a change. You know, have a little adventure on the bus with the boys.

But we had about an hour to wait for the next bus home, so I took them across the road to Subway for a quickie snack and a drink of juice. The Subway in Great Victoria Street is a busy place. There’s a lot of pedestrian traffic, and people coming and going from the shop itself.

We ordered and sat a table that was too close to the next table for comfort. It didn’t matter though, because the three people beside us soon got up to leave. All in their late teens/early 20′s, they edged out past us and it was then that I noticed.

As soon as the girl in the group got up, Jake started looking at her. And his gaze followed her as she walked past the table and out the door. Then he craned his neck to see where she was going.

“Jakey!” I called at him incredulously. This broke his trance.

“What’s going on, buddy? Do you know that girl?” I asked. He just grinned and said nothing.

I’m still befuddled about the whole thing. It’s not like Jakey to pay too much attention to what’s going on around him, but I’m still wondering if her recognized the girl or what captivated him about her for that brief moment. It really was funny to watch him totally unaware of anything else except this stranger who was walking past him in Subway.

Do you think he’s going to have a roving eye?

A family relationships question

We’re getting a little tired recently of friends who ask for favours and never offer help in return. A favour here, a favour there. It all adds up.

As a couple, we take the same attitude to asking favours as we do to borrowing or lending money. We never ask. We don’t depend on anybody but ourselves. But conversely, people rely on us and ask for favours on a regular basis. They never seem to factor in that we’re trying to build a business and could do with a break ourselves. And the idea of offering to help us out every once in a while seems to be a foreign concept.

I guess you could say we’re getting quite annoyed about it.

I think we should say “no” more. Lisa disagrees. She’s worried that she’d be criticised behind her back for not helping out when asked. But she’s always been the dependable one in her circle. If they need something, it’s her who gets called first. Friends and neighbours need someone to look after their children for an hour or two, they leave them in our house. In fact, they spend most of their time in our house anyway.

Is it right to expect people to offer to reciprocate? Should we ask for favours all the time too? Or should we start to say no?

How would you deal with this situation?

An evening walk with Jake

Of all our children, Jake is a wiry young fellow. Something about him is wildly energetic, and I’ve always felt that when he becomes grumpy at home, it’s because he’s bored and needs to stretch his legs.

Last night, after his friend had gone home for the evening, I noticed Jake looking grumpy and lost. Rather than allow him to wallow in his bad mood, I told him to put on his coat and we’d go for a walk. We live on the edge of town, and as we leave our street, there’s a little loop road that leads us out of town and back in again. A short walk of about an hour in total.

After finally, after wrestling the reluctant youngster into his coat, we left the house. There was a moment of near-mutiny when he realised we weren’t taking the car, but Jake’s generally quite pliable and we started off on our walk.

It’s funny how good a short walk is. Within minutes of leaving our street, Jake was holding my hand and walking at a brisk pace, all the time jabbering away about any topic that came into his head. He was amused at the fading light, as it got darker the further we walked.

There’s an especially treacherous spot on the way back into town where there’s no footpath and oncoming cars appear quickly. A few times, we had to jump up onto a muddy verge to avoid the traffic, getting our boots filthy. eventually, less than an hour later, we arrived home. It was nice to take that bit of alone time with Jake and get some fresh air together. This is something I’m hoping to build into my routine with all of the children over time, because I think it’s important to get away from all of the distractions around the house – TV, games consoles, friends and family and just send some time relaxing and getting exercise.

7 Habits and our family

I stumbled across this post over on Ririan Project today about the 7 habits of highly successful fathers.

Funnily enough, when we first started a family, I picked up that book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families. While it was an interesting read, I never got to the end of it. It’s on my to-do list for when I start working from home.

Ririan’s post borrows heavily from the Covey formula, and it’s an inspiring read. However, I do disagree with his first point, keeping stress to yourself. OK, it’s one thing to not let your mood impact your family, but I try to talk to our children about what’s going on in my life.

I came home quite tired from work the other day and explained that I’d had a hard day at work. We briefly chatted about why my day had been so difficult. While it’s important to let the children get on with the business of being kids, part of being in a family is sharing your emotions, and I’d like to think the kids can come back to me and talk about their lives too.

The entire list of 7 habits is as follows:

1. Keeping stress to yourself
2. Leading by example
3. Being consistent
4. Staying involved
5. Scheduling family recreation
6. Teaching
7. Creating family rituals

Tell me, do you think they’re the ‘right’ habits or are there other things to focus on with your family?