Playing along with Yay for Home! today, here's what I know this week; short and staccato, because I am a bit wrung out, but here it is anyway!
- I know that solo parenting is hard, unrelenting and exhausting even in short to medium bursts (having just ended a 5-day bout of it, this is fresh in my mind).
- I know that every time my partner is away, I gain a renewed awe for single parents who do this by themselves all the time. Nothing but props for you, people - I salute you all.
- I know that I am still processing my thoughts from Blogopolis, but that it's already clear that the greatest benefit for me is going to be the rethinking of purpose, goals and ideas about blogging that it's prompted, rather the technical information (useful as it was).
- I know that a certain soon-to-be-8-year-old girl is super-dooper excited about her slumber party tomorrow night.
- I know that her 6-year-old sister is almost as excited as she is!
- I know that I sleep better when the kids are all in the same room as me, but not the same bed. Room-sharing FTW, bed-sharing with three wriggly blanket thieves, notsomuch.
- I know that lumbar back pain sucks, and when it's accompanied by sciatic leg pain, it sucks even worse.
- And finally, I know that it's far too early in the term to be pining longingly for school holidays already, but with only three weeks down, I am :-(
Hop over to Shae's to see what other people know this week.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Cake decorating time again
Being as how my first born baby, A, will be 8 next Monday (8 years!! What happened there ...) and has a slumber party coming up on Saturday night, it was time again for us to enlist the help of our cake-decorating, cooking extraordinaire friend @ktaines to help make a pretty flower-themed cake.
K was relieved to hear that A wasn't looking to repeat last year's Periodic Table of the Elements cupcakes extravaganza (although that was fun, and looked awesome, it was exhausting work). A didn't even want a shaped cake, like E's 6th birthday butterflies-lovehearts-and-roses effort.
A wanted a layered round butter cake, with her favourite shade of blue for the fondant icing, and an assortment of flowers to make it pretty. For K, kick-arse cook and cake maven that she is, this was easy-peasy! It made for a great afternoon / evening, as we could take time to do things slowly, enjoy dinner together, and have a nice long chat without having to work nonstop.
So we started by slathering the two cakes I'd made and frozen earlier with vanilla buttercream.
Next up was colouring the fondant for the base with K's colour gels. Both the big girls adore this phase of the process! Finished, the base looked quite understated, almost a pale violet colour.
On to decorations, which were made mostly with shaped and coloured fondant. I had no part in this stage, being engaged with bathing and entertaining the toddler, but K and A created some beautiful little roses, daisies and other flowers. Then K wrote A's name on with coloured buttercream. (How I covet K's piping set ... One day.)
The finished cake looks lovely. The big trick, so far accomplished, is to keep toddler C, and possibly 6-year-old E, from getting at it before Saturday. They're not quite as single-minded as Allie of Hyperbole and a Half (if you have not yet read this, do so now, and don't blame me if you spit tea all over your keyboard) but they are certainly eyeing it off interestedly.
Because the birthday cake was so relatively straightforward, we even had ample time for K to help E ice and decorate some baby cupcakes that she needed to take to school on Tuesdays for a class party. E was thrilled with them, and very proud of her efforts.
I would still in no way describe myself as a natural baker or cake decorator, but I am really starting to enjoy it (with K's help, natch). Many more birthdays ahead for practice!
K was relieved to hear that A wasn't looking to repeat last year's Periodic Table of the Elements cupcakes extravaganza (although that was fun, and looked awesome, it was exhausting work). A didn't even want a shaped cake, like E's 6th birthday butterflies-lovehearts-and-roses effort.
A wanted a layered round butter cake, with her favourite shade of blue for the fondant icing, and an assortment of flowers to make it pretty. For K, kick-arse cook and cake maven that she is, this was easy-peasy! It made for a great afternoon / evening, as we could take time to do things slowly, enjoy dinner together, and have a nice long chat without having to work nonstop.
So we started by slathering the two cakes I'd made and frozen earlier with vanilla buttercream.
Next up was colouring the fondant for the base with K's colour gels. Both the big girls adore this phase of the process! Finished, the base looked quite understated, almost a pale violet colour.
On to decorations, which were made mostly with shaped and coloured fondant. I had no part in this stage, being engaged with bathing and entertaining the toddler, but K and A created some beautiful little roses, daisies and other flowers. Then K wrote A's name on with coloured buttercream. (How I covet K's piping set ... One day.)
The finished cake looks lovely. The big trick, so far accomplished, is to keep toddler C, and possibly 6-year-old E, from getting at it before Saturday. They're not quite as single-minded as Allie of Hyperbole and a Half (if you have not yet read this, do so now, and don't blame me if you spit tea all over your keyboard) but they are certainly eyeing it off interestedly.
Because the birthday cake was so relatively straightforward, we even had ample time for K to help E ice and decorate some baby cupcakes that she needed to take to school on Tuesdays for a class party. E was thrilled with them, and very proud of her efforts.
I would still in no way describe myself as a natural baker or cake decorator, but I am really starting to enjoy it (with K's help, natch). Many more birthdays ahead for practice!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Playing outside: Winter beach in the sunshine
Really, I feel like I should have titled this post "spring beach in the sunshine". It might be 1 August today (technically, by the calendar, still neck-deep in winter) but hola! the sun! the warmth! the washing away of the greyness!All my children have always loved the beach, and we're very lucky that we live within easy reach of several, being located in a suburb once-removed from the Melbourne bayside shoreline. (On the less-flash side, FYI :-)
Although I know many people with kids are intrepid enough to visit the beach year-round - rugging up against the biting winds, buckets & spades in hand, ready for winter flotsam adventures - I am, myself, fairly cold-averse, especially if getting cold also carries the 70-90% chance of at least one child getting wet (which, if I take all three kids to the beach, is basically my odds). So I've never seen the beach as a May-October activity before.
Today, though, after dropping the big kids to school and my partner to work, I turned to the toddler on a whim and asked if she'd like to try a different library and park today. We usually visit our local library and then stop at a park on the way home on Monday mornings, but I'm usually on foot, whereas today I had the use of the family car.
Amenable as usual to a new experience, toddler enthusiastically assented, so we went to the library near the beach. Going to a new library was in itself an excitement for her, as was the morning tea in a beachside cafe, which occupied us with hot chocolate & meringue (her) and latte (me) for a blissful 20 minutes. We then progressed to the park, opposite the shoreline, for some play.
C liked the park. It had swings, slides, bridges, tunnels, etcetera and et al. Even while playing, though, her gaze kept turning to the beach opposite, wistfully, longingly.
Finally, I said, "Do you want to walk along the pier, honey?""YESSSSSSS!" she carolled and took off with me in hot pursuit.
After we'd paced out the pier, C tugged me down onto the sand. "Too hot fo' socks, Mummy!" she declared, de-sockifying herself rapidly, before proceeding to chase seagulls, dig sand with found shells, run around laughing, and boat-watch for a sunny, happy, half-hour.
We drove home for lunch completely satisfied with our morning, the both of us. Who would've thunk that some time by the bay would do us so much good.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Blogopolis, rainbows, sunsets and all that good stuff
The Nuffnang Blogopolis conference today was wonderful, full-on and tiring. It's provided me with much food for thought and loads of things to follow up, and a few posts to come will touch on this in various ways. I had a beautiful and restful lunch at MoVida Next Door with Veronica and Kim, I caught up with a few friends and made the in-person acquaintance of people I'd only met online before, and I was part of the largest Mexican wave perpetrated by bloggers in the southern hemisphere (dubious claim to fame, but hey!)
I'm not much of a one for recap posts but I will do a round-up in a few days with links to some of the brilliant versions that I'm sure will be out there. I'll just say that it was well worthwhile, a great use of My One and Only Full Day Out (2011 Edition), and that, in common with much of the audience, I think, I found almost all the speakers incredibly knowledgeable, interesting, generous and warm. (Personal soft spot reserved for Christie and Nicole, but that's no disrespect to the others ;-)
I had to leave early - at afternoon tea - due to toddler-type iss-ews at home and a rising headache. However, I was well compensated with kisses, cuddles, and the most gorgeous sky imaginable - a double rainbow, followed by a sunset to fill you with longing and happiness all together. (The photos don't do it real justice, unfortunately).
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Reading Notes - Reading Aloud to Literate Children
My eldest two daughters are both proficient readers. A, at almost 8, spends long swathes of time tucked up on the couch with her pink fluffy blanket, absorbed in a novel, ignoring the world. E, 6, has just recently mastered the art of reading in her head and is obsessed with reading all the novels her big sister has read in the past and enjoyed. At the moment she's working her way through Wendy Harmer's Pearlie books, and has tagged the Magic Treehouse books as her next project. If anything, she's more of a natural reader than A in that reading is her go-to indoor leisure activity. Much like her mother, she sinks without trace into her books, becoming vague and uncommunicative while reading, and is much more contented after an extended reading session.
So, now that they are both able to read well and enjoy doing so, you might think that my days of reading aloud to them would be over. In fact, while it's certainly the case that I read more to my 2.5 year old, I still read aloud regularly to the big girls, at their enthusiastic request, and they read aloud to me and to each other, as well as taking their turn at reading picture books to the little one. We are working our way through the Trixie Belden books at the moment; I read a chapter at dinnertime and another before bed, with extra time on the weekends if we're not too frantic. They also often come clustering around if I'm reading a particularly loved picture book to the toddler.
Talking it over with other mums at school recently, it seems there is a diversity of views about the benefits of reading aloud to literate children. Some feel that it's better to get out of the light, as it were, once the kids can read to themselves, and let them interpret the stories in their own way. Others, like me, feel that kids of any age get something valuable from being read to, regardless of how "unnecessary" it is when they are literate.
The teaching website Literary Connections has this to say about older children's desire to be read to:
"Your children will probably want you to continue reading to them long after they are capable of doing it independently - because reading aloud isn't just about reading. It's a warm, loving experience that we hope that you'll continue for as long as your child desires." http://www.literacyconnections.com/LiteracyBeginsAtHome.php
Time spent together, pleasurable time, non-frenetic time, is clearly one motivation for continuing a tradition of reading aloud to literate children. There is nothing like curling up together with a story to bring the often madly rushing elements of a family to one place of stillness. Even if there was nothing more to it than this - we enjoy it, and it brings us together - no further justification would be needed.
As well than that, though, I intuit that there is an ongoing literacy and educational value in reading aloud. Brain research indicates that people are capable of understanding a higher order of language when spoken than what they only receive via reading. Having a text with higher-order concepts read aloud can help the listener make sense of and understand a text that they would otherwise struggle with, or miss the subtleties of - the intonation, body language and interpolations of the reader can fill in the gaps in a seamless way.
Jim Trelease, in his book The Read-Aloud Handbook, points out that reading aloud creates knowledge, understanding, and vocabulary, but it also is a powerful conditioner - essentially, the more we read aloud (and enjoy it), the more our children's brains associate reading with pleasure, excitement and learning. Less reading aloud, for many children, will eventually translate to less reading, full stop:
"One factor hidden in the decline of students' recreational reading is that it coincides with a decline in the amount of time adults read to them. By middle school, almost no one is reading aloud to students. If each read-aloud is a commercial for the pleasures of reading, then a decline in advertising would naturally be reflected in a decline in students recreational reading."
Reading well - that is, more than competently, more than adequately, but skillfully, swiftly, and with delight - was one of the three gifts I most wanted to give my children in the skills-transfer part of my parenting. (The other two were physical dexterity, or at least capacity, and a love of, understanding of, and capability to prepare a wide range of food). Reading is such a keynote of who *I* am that it was inevitable that I would seek to share this with my children, that my pleasure and immersion in text would communicate to them.
I've always been a true believer in Mem Fox's Ten Read-Aloud Commandments. While some of them are targeted at carers of pre-reading children, one in particular leaps out at me as encapsulating the way in which I want to continue to read to all my children:
4. Read with joy and enjoyment: real enjoyment for yourself and great joy for the listeners.
Great joy, pleasure, relaxation, togetherness, warmth, bonding, language strengthening, knowledge acquisition ... these are all pretty strong motivations, if I needed any, to keep reading aloud to my older children.
So, now that they are both able to read well and enjoy doing so, you might think that my days of reading aloud to them would be over. In fact, while it's certainly the case that I read more to my 2.5 year old, I still read aloud regularly to the big girls, at their enthusiastic request, and they read aloud to me and to each other, as well as taking their turn at reading picture books to the little one. We are working our way through the Trixie Belden books at the moment; I read a chapter at dinnertime and another before bed, with extra time on the weekends if we're not too frantic. They also often come clustering around if I'm reading a particularly loved picture book to the toddler.
Talking it over with other mums at school recently, it seems there is a diversity of views about the benefits of reading aloud to literate children. Some feel that it's better to get out of the light, as it were, once the kids can read to themselves, and let them interpret the stories in their own way. Others, like me, feel that kids of any age get something valuable from being read to, regardless of how "unnecessary" it is when they are literate.
The teaching website Literary Connections has this to say about older children's desire to be read to:
"Your children will probably want you to continue reading to them long after they are capable of doing it independently - because reading aloud isn't just about reading. It's a warm, loving experience that we hope that you'll continue for as long as your child desires." http://www.literacyconnections.com/LiteracyBeginsAtHome.php
Time spent together, pleasurable time, non-frenetic time, is clearly one motivation for continuing a tradition of reading aloud to literate children. There is nothing like curling up together with a story to bring the often madly rushing elements of a family to one place of stillness. Even if there was nothing more to it than this - we enjoy it, and it brings us together - no further justification would be needed.
As well than that, though, I intuit that there is an ongoing literacy and educational value in reading aloud. Brain research indicates that people are capable of understanding a higher order of language when spoken than what they only receive via reading. Having a text with higher-order concepts read aloud can help the listener make sense of and understand a text that they would otherwise struggle with, or miss the subtleties of - the intonation, body language and interpolations of the reader can fill in the gaps in a seamless way.
Jim Trelease, in his book The Read-Aloud Handbook, points out that reading aloud creates knowledge, understanding, and vocabulary, but it also is a powerful conditioner - essentially, the more we read aloud (and enjoy it), the more our children's brains associate reading with pleasure, excitement and learning. Less reading aloud, for many children, will eventually translate to less reading, full stop:
"One factor hidden in the decline of students' recreational reading is that it coincides with a decline in the amount of time adults read to them. By middle school, almost no one is reading aloud to students. If each read-aloud is a commercial for the pleasures of reading, then a decline in advertising would naturally be reflected in a decline in students recreational reading."
Reading well - that is, more than competently, more than adequately, but skillfully, swiftly, and with delight - was one of the three gifts I most wanted to give my children in the skills-transfer part of my parenting. (The other two were physical dexterity, or at least capacity, and a love of, understanding of, and capability to prepare a wide range of food). Reading is such a keynote of who *I* am that it was inevitable that I would seek to share this with my children, that my pleasure and immersion in text would communicate to them.
I've always been a true believer in Mem Fox's Ten Read-Aloud Commandments. While some of them are targeted at carers of pre-reading children, one in particular leaps out at me as encapsulating the way in which I want to continue to read to all my children:
4. Read with joy and enjoyment: real enjoyment for yourself and great joy for the listeners.
Great joy, pleasure, relaxation, togetherness, warmth, bonding, language strengthening, knowledge acquisition ... these are all pretty strong motivations, if I needed any, to keep reading aloud to my older children.
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