Maybe it's Giants...

When I dropped Jacob off at nursery this morning, he went in with his customary shoegazing reluctance, where I have to drop a kiss on his head and leave before I persuade myself that we should really just go home again (I don't need very much persuasion).  I know that he's fine as soon as I've gone, he's always happy about going to nursery, happy while he's there, and reports happily upon his day; but those few seconds from me ringing the doorbell to him finding his best friends and diving headlong into whatever they're doing just tugs at my heartstrings, and make me wish more than anything that I could be a stay-at-home-mum.

This morning, the nursery manager laid her hand kindly on my arm (really, people shouldn't be allowed to do that, the gesture alone is enough to set me off) and reassured me by saying "Don't worry, he'll be singing happily to himself in a couple of minutes".

He loves music.  He gets into the car, and says "I want to listen to something please Mummy!", or we'll be driving along and he'll say "I loved that song.  What's it called?".  Although strangely, he's not at all keen on listening to music in the house, he does like to sing all the time.  He often sings in his sleep, and we have to wait to get him out of bed until he's been through his whole repertoire of songs.

Of course he loves nursery rhymes and theme songs for annoying CBeebies programmes, but he's also good at using snippets of songs he's heard in appropriate situations - for instance the "What's going to work, teeeeeeam-work" refrain from Wonder Pets gets sung all the time when he's helping us with a job.  He shunned most Christmas music except for the Glee Christmas album (the first one only, he wasn't having anything to do with the second one) and all he really wanted to hear off that was their reworking of Jingle Bells.

We've done a good job at forcing our musical tastes upon him, but we're trying to be remotely responsible about it and avoid songs with too much inappropriate content - of course Jamie likes to model himself on Adam Buxton and do volume control censoring - if you haven't seen this video then watch it, it's hilarious:

(And in a timely fashion, Jamie has just pointed me in the direction of this amazing site which reworks classic album covers using clipart and comic sans - it's awesome).

So Jacob's current favourites include Art Brut, and there's nothing funnier than being in another room and hearing the boy sing quietly to himself "Bang, bang, rock and roll / I can't stand the sound / of the Velvet Underground" in a very serious voice.  He also likes it when I play Scissor Sisters in the car, he thinks 'Take Your Mama Out' is funny because it has the word 'Mama' in it, and he generally loves Jake Shears' falsetto - "Listen to the girl songs Mummy, this your favourite song cos it's a girl song".

But top of Jacob's list of favourite bands for the last several months is undoubtedly They Might Be Giants.  It took us ages to work out what he was talking about when he kept asking for the "Little blue bird house song", but he's got the hang of most of the song titles now.  Our current difficulty is explaining the difference between band names and song names, he doesn't totally get it.  He can never remember how to say 'They Might Be Giants', so he refers to them in adorable fashion as 'Maybe it's Giants' ;)

When Santa got stuck up the chimney...

I know that technically, Christmas is over, but it's very difficult to convey that to a toddler.  Jacob's favourite topics of conversation are still mainly centred around Santa and Christmas, and he sings Christmas songs all the time.  He's developed a delightful habit of using the first line of a song to kick off a conversation, and to say each line of the song as though it were a question, while you prompt and question him about it.  It is hilarious.  And hasn't got old, even after the eleventy-millionth run through.

Prepare to melt at the utter adorableness:




For those of you who don't speak fluent Jacob, here's a translation:

"When Santa stuck up the chimney...
He began to shout...
The girls and boys won't have any toys...
No. My sack is... my beard is black, there's soot in my sack, yes, my nose is tickling too...
When Santa stuck up a chimney, he began to shout, achoo, achoo, achoo, and Santa's happy."

Holy comfort, Batman!

A friend referred to the week between Christmas and New Year as 'Chrimbo Limbo' - hitting the nail right on the head (although I had my sister to stay, so it wasn't all bad).  The week since New Year has been more of the same.  Working right up until Christmas was a nightmare, and now having these two empty weeks with little to do has left us being too lazy for words - sitting around in our pyjamas all day playing with Jacob's new toys (not that that's a bad thing).

The daft thing is that I've got a million jobs that need doing around the house - I feel like the weight of all the clutter and mess everywhere is going to topple down on me at any moment.  And yet, being a perfectionist (and a perfectionist who doesn't like to expend any energy to achieve perfection, at that), I can't actually start any jobs, because then the reality of how much there is left to do will crush me.  At just the critical moment, I read this post on the lovely Whozat's blog, which suggested that you should pick the one most annoying/in-need-of-addressing thing in your house, and Just Do It.

Easy.  The springs on our sofa went about 3 years ago.  With a creak and a ping, poor Jamie was sitting in a hole.  The rest of it was saggy and stained and uncomfortable, and we slowly built up the cushions with more cushions to try and ease the pain in our aching backs, until we were essentially sitting on a pile of cushions.  (I'd like to emphasise that Jamie fell head-over-heels-top-to-bottom down the stairs during this time, and I'm sure the lack of seated support contributed to how long it took his back to heal.

For Christmas 2010, my parents gave us a contribution towards a new sofa, but over the last 12 months we haven't been able to scrape together the remaining funds to buy a new one, however cheap it was.  On Thursday this week, we went to visit Jacob's girlfriend in Cardiff, and stopped off at Ikea on our way to Jamie's hospital appointment.  For the first time, Jacob cottoned on to the concept of 'trying out sofas', and he merrily ran this way and that, clambering into chairs and onto sofas, sitting still for half a second, before shrieking "Now that one!" and running off to the next.  This meant that we could actually try some sofas properly, and have a chat about finance and colours etc.  And, we chose one.  But being the indecisive people we are, we had to go home first to talk about it ... until we passed the clearance corner on our way out and spied the very sofa we'd just decided on, reduced by £150.  Better still, they would deliver it and remove the old one, for the same price our council would charge to collect the old one, and they donate the used sofas to charity.  Sold.

We then had a day to clear enough space to get the old sofa out, and the new sofa in.  Did I mention that we hadn't put away any Christmas presents, and the decorations were still up?  In one day we: 

- took all the Christmas decorations down and packed them away.

- made a 'November Box' of things to get out of the loft pre-Christmas time - things like Advent calendars and Christmas crafts.

- dragged all of Jacob's toys out of their boxes, got rid of all the ones he doesn't play with, reorganised the ones he does and added in the new Christmas presents.

- labelled all his toy boxes (we have Trofast, and found that using the tray sized ones for things like Playmobil, animals etc with stickers on the side to denote what's in there means Jacob can tidy by himself - woop!).

- culled half his jigsaws to live in his bedroom, then they can rotate down here and we won't end up with 21 open boxes of jigsaws at the end of each day.

- cut open the back of the old sofa and found loads of hairbands and phones and disgusting tissues   

- emptied the hallway of everything, to aid the moving men, and actually cleaned the carpets and skirting boards.

And just 36 hours after we paid for the sofa, we had a sparkling clean living room and hallway, and a beautiful, comfortable, supportive new sofa.  Which Jacob has given his seal of approval to...

Thanks, Whozat, for the inspiration (I know you wrote an additional post decrying your organisational skills, but take the kudos, because you kicked our arses into gear and we're very thankful).

Victrola

Happy New Year - health and happiness to all xxxx

A Happy Christmas

My two loves

Jacob loved his main present from us - a robot which was a last minute cheap purchase from ebay, when I realised I wasn't going to be able to finish the blanket I had been making for him

Skyping with family.  Technical issues meant we had to use the landline for audio ;)

My second head

Watching The Snowman before bed.  My favourite time of the day - Jacob loved it

Christmas dinner (eaten on Boxing Day) - Jacob carefully inspecting the components

Midweek - staving off the cabin fever (the weather here is terrible) at soft play with my sister

Quiet, peaceful, happy - Christmas 2011

Nadolig Llawen i bawb

I picked up these wooden reindeer thingies in the hobbycraft sale (yes, already), and wanted to do something with them quickly.  I had a sheet of midnight blue felt and a load of star buttons, so I shoved them all on together, blanket stitched the edge, and embroidered 'Nadolig Llawen' (Merry Christmas in Welsh).  I suck at embroidery, and this is just backstitched over paper (I used a scrap of wrapping paper, as it's so thin) which is then carefully torn away.  I was really pleased with it.

Nadolig Llawen i bawb ;) xxxx

The stockings were hung...

Today, Christmas took on a whole new meaning.  We spent the morning playing elaborate train tracks and ransacking the entire house in a search for the remote control for the train (which I eventually found in the one toybox I deemed it wouldn't be in, so had left til last), only to realise that actually, it's far more fun to just push the trains around with your hands.

After a nap, Jacob and I burnt gingerbread (hey, at least he won't be hyped up on sugar all day...) and made a yule log in lieu of a proper Christmas cake, which only I would eat.

Jacob was so excited about the presents under the tree, and kept asking to give us one ("Just one for you Mummy").  After dinner, we wrote a letter to Santa, rolled it up and stuffed it in his stocking, which he hung by himself from the mantel [no chimney] with care.  So different from last year, when he really had no idea what was going on, and was a bit overwhelmed by it all (a feeling I seem to be sharing this year); and the year before, when he was a baby of 9 months and we were all struggling through a horrendous gastric bug.

We're going through some tough challenges at the moment, behaviour-wise, which seems especially hard at this time of year.  But when he's nice, he is such a wonderful person.  "I luff yew Mummy", he says, grabbing my face with both hands and pulling me in for a kiss.  He's so utterly charming, and cheeky, and wonderful, and I'm so blessed to have him.  He went to bed late, but I'm wagering he'll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to tell us that he heard Santa "Doing STOMP, STOMP, STOMP on the roof Mummy".  He's been talking about it all day.

 My heart.