The week that was (May 13-19)

Astute observers may have noticed that I am not getting to blog as frequently as I once was. I'm missing it. I enjoy blogging. It is an opportunity for me to process thoughts and reflections (and hear from others who think the same, or differently), a way to record some of our family memories and a means of communication with friends online.

I suppose that the lack of blogging can serve as some sort of family record in itself - a record of the fact that I get very little time to myself these days. Or I should say, very little time to myself when I am coherent enough to string 3 words together. Having 4 small children, including a 6 month old who dislikes sleep has to take its toll on some things.

I am struggling with the parenting gig at the moment. Lack of sleep is never fun. I'm trying to make time getting to know each of my kids individually. With multiple children, it can be easy to fall into 'crowd-control' rather than parenting. All the while I'm feeling guilty that I don't have more of me to offer my kids. It is easy to forget that God is over all these things.

I'm reading a fantastic book on parenting and communication. My one qualm is that I'd like to say; "now, can you rewrite that section for dealing with 4 preschoolers?". I love the principles in the book, but find it emotionally exhausting to implement with 4 children. Sometimes I just want to scream; "get over it" instead of; "that must be frustrating for you", or "I don't have time for this right now" in place of; "It would be great if we could eat as many biscuits as we wanted wouldn't it?".

Last week I had my 4th car accident in about 18 months. God is so good, and none of us has been hurt in anyway. (Every accident has revolved around parking!). There are a few factors at play - a larger car, more driving and parking than I've ever done before (e.g. park at grocery store, then library, then preschool etc), and having kids to distract me from what I should be doing.  But, for the first time, following the accident, I really felt down. For the first time I started to think maybe I really can't do 4 kids.

Having said all that, there are just too many precious moments with 4 small kids. These break up the hard moments. I sometimes try to write the precise moments on my mind - trying to remember the cute pronunciations of words, the exact intonation that made a particular turn of phrase so funny or endearing, the earnest or cheeky facial expressions that accompany particular actions. The moments are fleeting. Capturing what I can in photo and video doesn't really do them justice.

Nevertheless, here are some of our moments from the week that was:

Mother's Day prettiness

Homemade fruit roll-ups. (The kids made these with Nan. We will make them again. I hope to blog the instructions soon).

Getting our 'Montessori' on using natural play materials.

Miss 5 challenges Matt to a word search.

Getting out and about - a frequent necessity these days. Fresh air and 'exercise' do us all good.

Developing a love of books

A Saturday morning game of 'Snap'

How was your 'week that was'?

Tweet

All the stuff I don't know

A funny thing is happening in my life, as I get older. All the stuff I don't know.

The more I know, the less I know.

The more I apply the rules, the more I see the exceptions.

The more experience I have, the more I still need.

The more people turn to me for advice, the less advice I have to offer.

The more I try to make sense of things, the less sense there seems to be.

I used to know everything. You know, as a teenager. I don't know all that much anymore.

I used to know everything about parenting. You know, when I had only a small baby. I knew everything about how I would raise that baby to adulthood. I knew which parenting book I wanted to follow. I knew how to avoid the pitfalls that "other parents" didn't avoid.

Now, as a parent of 4 children, I don't always avoid the pitfalls. I suddenly don't know how to deal with every situation. What works with one child does not work with another. Even the parenting books don't have the answers. I have a 6.5 month old waking multiple times a night. You'd think I should know what to do by the 4th time around. I don't know much about parenting anymore.

I used to know a lot about Speech Pathology. I could answer your questions. I knew the best practice and I had confidence in my knowledge. I knew how to be a great clinician. But 13 years later x,y,z doesn't always work. People don't always respond like textbook case studies. The exceptions sear into my memory and make me doubt the 'rules'. I don't know everything about Speech Pathology anymore.

I used to know how blogging worked. I figured that bloggers with something interesting to say, with thought-provoking arguments, with great advice, and with accurate spelling and grammar would attract readers and interesting comments. It doesn't seem to work this way. I don't know much about blogging anymore.

I used to know how to live to please God. I used to think the way I lived could please him. But now,  every time I stand up straight, I fall down again quickly. Every feeble attempt only seems to highlight my own pride, my selfishness and my absolute need of  a saviour.

It seems strange that I should be getting wiser, but instead I know less and less.

Or, maybe true wisdom is to be found in all the stuff I don't know. 

What did you know in the past, but don't know now?

Linking with Jess

Tweet

"The Faraway Tree" 5th Birthday Party

*Warning: long post*

We celebrated Miss 5's birthday over the weekend, with a party I've been really looking forward to. Our theme was "The Faraway Tree", based on the books by Enid Blyton. I think I had more fun organising the party than the birthday girl had at the party (though she had a great time too!)Here is how it all went down:

1) Invitations:

I blogged about these invitations back here. We used scanned images from the old illustrated version of "The Enchanted Wood" (the first book in the Faraway Tree series). I put the images together into a Snapfish card and added party details. 20 invitations were printed for about $21 (on 50% off sale). I was able to use spare invitations to create food tags for the party table.

 

2) Set-up and decorations:

Although (or perhaps, because) our house backs onto the bush, we only have one decent tree in our backyard. Obviously we needed to set-up the party under that tree! The food table was on one side of the tree, and the kids' eating table on the other.

I decorated the tree with bunting (The bunting I made for Miss 2's teddy bear picnic party last year), and with white, red and green paper lanterns (from a local $2 shop). My mother-in-law (who is a great op-shopper) gave us the large lace tablecloth a couple of weeks ago, suggesting it might tie in with the Faraway tree theme. (The tablecloth has some holes in it, and cost $3). It turned out to be a perfect backdrop, hiding our garden shed and storage area, and preventing little explorers from going to that area of the yard.

You might notice the mushroom-style garden table alongside the main food table. This was another $2 shop purchase, and was used for drinks - "Acorn-ade" (one of the drinks of choice for the Folk of the Faraway Tree).

The food table was covered with hessian (or burlap, as it is known overseas), wood pieces, pine cones and stones, as well as our $2 shop ceramic mushrooms. My husband cut slots into some small wood pieces to hold the food labels. (He rolls his eyes at my party-planning antics, but is still happy to help. Isn't he lovely?)

The food tags were made with a piece of packaging cardboard, part of some paper doilies and a picture from the original party invitation. You can see some close-up later in this post.

I set the kids' table with white plates, paper doilies, glass bottles and paper straws (the latter 2 were left from the Teddy Bears' Picnic). The centrepiece was a combination of logs, pine cones, stones and mushrooms. The kids sat on tree stump pieces, which I went far and wide to acquire (long story!). I covered these with hemmed fabric pieces I had done for the Teddy Bears' Picnic, and tied them with string. If these had been made for the purpose, I would have made them bigger. You can see that some are struggling to cover the top of the stump.

The Faraway Tree painting (mentioned here) provided a backdrop for the kids' table.

3) Food:  

Of course, a Faraway Tree party would not be complete without Pop Biscuits, Google Buns and Toffee Shocks. These were not made strictly to Faraway Tree standards or recipes! Our Pop Biscuits were simply shortbread-style cookies, covered with melted white chocolate and 100s and 1000s. Our Google Buns were home-made hot cross buns with "g" on them instead of crosses. I had a disaster trying to make toffee! After 5 (yes, 5!) failed batches (one burnt, 2 with sugar crystals, 1 that set too quickly, and one that, for some reason, only made 3 toffees), I decided to use lollipops as toffee shocks. These lollipops have a sherbet centre, so make some sense.

To complement our genuine Faraway Tree food, we served Fruit Wands, Wooden Logs (chocolate biscuits) and Forest Berries (berry lollies). Then, my friend Thora turned up with some gorgeous mushroom cupcakes which were perfect, and just completed the table!

(Sorry, the shadows are a bit of a pain in these photos).

 

Our guests took a small box of lollies home with them, along with a Faraway Tree drawing done by Miss 5 (that was Miss 5's idea, too cute).

4) Costumes:

Guess what I was doing while watching "The Voice" over the past week? Making Saucepan Hats (a la, the Saucepan Man in the Faraway Tree). We called them "Saucepan man's Sensational Sombreros". (I'm a dork, I know.) You can see some of the party guests wearing them in the photos above. I also have a gorgeous little person modelling them below.

5) Games:

Again, fitting with the Faraway Tree theme, we played:

*Silky's Sweet Search (a treasure hunt)

*Moonface's Musical Cushions (aka musical chairs)

*Dame Washalot's Washing Relay

*Pixie's Pass-the-Parcel

6) Cake:

The cake was a mushroom, made using a square tin cake (with quarters stacked and trimmed) and  pudding dish cake. The icing cover is butter cream, with ready-to-roll icing for decorating bits.

7) Gifts:

I wanted to include this, because it was my one regret about the party. My experience might be helpful for other party hosting parents!

Being undecided about what we wanted to do with gifts, we ended up letting Miss 5 open them as her guests arrived. That was a mistake! For one thing, I didn't really see what came from who and had to do some guesswork later. But worse than that was that 2 of the guests (who are more familiar with our family and are used to being at our house), and Miss 5, were quite keen on particular gifts and were running inside several times (leaving 3 other guests outside) to find and play with certain gifts.

Gifts are pretty exciting for a 5-year-old, and Miss 5 had been talking about them all week leading up to the party. We kept emphasising to her that "People are more important than presents", and that while gifts are exciting, seeing our friends is more exciting. (Neither Matt nor I are big on gifts, so this is easy for us to say honestly!) Opening the gifts up-front provided way too much temptation to make "presents more important than people". We won't be using that strategy again.

I'm happy to provide more information about where I sourced things for the party and websites for more ideas. Let me know in the comments, or drop me an email if you'd like more information.

And, if you have older preschool or primary aged kids and haven't discovered Enid Blyton, or the Faraway Tree, we highly recommend you check out The Enchanted Wood, The Folk of the Faraway Tree and The Magic Faraway Tree.

Tweet