Baking with four little ladies…

Baking is something that my girls love. My son has loved it in a different way, for him its all about end gratification. Licking the bowl, eating the cakes. The decoration stuff is not really for him and he is getting good at making some basics in the kitchen. We are building up to him doing tea for everyone fairly soon!! The girls just have a different love of it.

If they hear the mixer they all come running into the kitchen eager to help. Which yes is lovely…but when you add four little girls on stools into our not very big kitchen it gets…well…stressful and usually some falling out occurs between someone or other.

So now that i have one little girl at home it is easy to work that out in school hours and last week she helped me make the cakes that my son asked me to make for him to take into school. She was happily able to do all the ‘bits’ herself without having to share with a sibling. It was a cute little time for just me and her.

 

We got some good cakes at the end too.

Even having five children and being so busy with after school stuff, exams, secondary school stress and the ups and downs of relationships between older siblings..I still remind myself that this littlest girl of mine is still experiencing her toddler hood for the first time. Yes i have been round this block four times before and feel a bit jaded sometimes by the things that toddlers like to do. But its her first time and so I’m trying to be a mummy to a new 3 year old when the others are at school to make up maybe a little bit for being in the shadows of some many older siblings for most of her babyhood. 🙂

This little window of time afforded me by school doesn’t help my other girls though and cooking with all four of them in the kitchen is a little too much mayhem. So this week we started a rota. 🙂

(they are always good!)

I generally bake on sunday, either a cake, sponge pudding or even flapjacks and this week i asked just one of the girls to come and help me. The others were indignant at first and offended until i explained to them that they would get their turn and the next time i was going to bake i would ask one of them to help and that would be THEIR time.

That way they get to do all the baking, they get to read the recipes and they get to proudly present them to everyone as their own at dinner time.

So…this is my plan.

Im hoping it works.

Just need to stick to the rota…

Now, where did i put it!!

😉

 

Motivational Monday 

www.mummydaddyandmemakesthree.co.uk.jpg

Follow:

Dear son….

This weekend it has been your birthday. You have had 11 whole years on this planet.

happy birthday.

Yes i know its crap that you have to take and exam on your birthday. I know how you have curled your lip numerous times when we have mentioned the fact that you have to first do the test before the presents. Thats not us being mean btw. There just isnt enough time in the morning for you to enjoy it without rushing off. believe us.

it sucks.

really.

There is no way around it. We know the reasons, the whys the what ifs, the crazy, looney school entry system that exists here. If i had my way then no-one would have to sit exams to get into school. But…you do and it has fallen on your 11th birthday.

Thats rubbish.

BUT you can do it. Face the miserable part of the day and then embrace the rest of the day with gusto and blow a huge raspberry at the pirates that put an exam on your special day.

Go on.

We won’t look.

I have been there. You are talking to a pro. My birthday is in June. Every single year of my secondary school life i sat exams if not on, around my birthday. I know how you feel, i know you want to shout and stamp and scream ‘but it is MY BIRTHDAY!”

you can do that. You can shout it.

Doesn’t change it though sadly.

This secondary school circus is just that my boy. A circus. The over-subscribed, results driven, tutored, schooled and preened test takers can whirl parents facing the year 7 changeover into some sort of crazed, frantic fools. Forgive us.

We want the best for you and essentially that doesn’t actually have to include going to the highest league table school (between me and you those league tables are not totally true anyhow!). But we are plagued with a million different options and changing systems in education. The people who run our country who make silly decisions with a flick of their ink pen that have a massive effect on you.

Ignore all that nonsense…thats what it is.

Dont forget that you are in the massively privileged percentage of kids in this world who can CHOOSE to go to school. Who will come out of  WHATEVER school you go to with the ability to earn a living. That puts you in SUCH a blessed and lucky group.  You don’t need to sit an exam to know that. It is your right and it is one that you should value regardless of all this jumping through hoops, exam, points system craziness that might make you feel like you somehow don’t make the grade.

Its good to not loose sight of that and dont forget that it might seem all very uncertain to you at the moment as you look into a new season but the one certain thing is that we are right there behind you. We have your back.

AND… We know you are going to be great, wherever you go..because you are a GREAT KID.

xx

Motivational Monday 

Follow:

Finding a new flow #motivationalmonday #whatsthestory #magicmoments

I was flicking through some images this evening and i came across this one which i took on one summery afternoon before the school run in the garden and i realised how different the afternoons are around here, not just because of the weather although that is a massive contributing factor. But i moan far too much about the weather so i wont go on…

But because not having my second youngest around in the afternoon is a little strange and taking me and the little one a bit of time to find a new way of doing the lunch, pre-school time and also how to do the ‘lets not fall asleep on the way to school in the buggy and be a nightmare going to bed in the evening’ thing 😉

and i realised that i miss her a bit. That sounds really bad, like im surprised that i do, which isnt the case at all.

But i am not a mum who laments when my kids move onto new adventures. Yes there is an element of sadness when you put the baby cot away for the last time, or you realise that the ‘baby aisle’ in the supermarket really holds nothing for you anymore save maybe the trusty packet of wipes.  There is most assuredly a time for fond memories and that whistfull and slightly rose coloured jaunt down the memory lane of new babies and pre-school years when your consciousness fools you and plays a heart-stirring soundtrack over your parenting past and tells you that it was ‘all so wonderful back then’ 😉

But I embrace the future, new adventures, new challenges, new lessons to learn and so im always cheering them on as they head off into new things.

With this little girl, she was so totally ready for school that she didnt need the cheerleader waving madly behind her telling her she was going to be great.

She just got on. did it. Embraced it.

thats my girl 🙂

 

Motivational Monday

Follow:

Where they are. right now. #motivationalmonday #themondayclub #whatsthestory

This months theme on motivational monday is children. Hey..guess what…

I have a few of those 😉

So i thought i would give a little run down of each of the little folk who dwell here in this dwelling.

So first up. My guy. My only one.

Yes..thats right he is the only boy..

yes he is surrounded by women, yes he has lots of sisters, no he isn’t henpecked…

blah blah blah…

you can tell i have heard those sort of comments LOTS before right?!

We all know a baby doesn’t come with a ‘tick the box’ option don’t we. *stares*

A-n-y-w-a-y  (thats a whole other blog post) 😉

My pioneering child. Breaking all those first boundaries of parenthood. He is the one that we have had to scale that steep learning curve with and i reckon that fact that him and us are still all alive and vaguely sane is the sign of a success!

Yes?

Anyway our not so little boy is now staring down the barrels of 11.

Sweet. mary. jo.

We are so close to teenager it could spin my head clear off my shoulders!

But right now he is 10.

and right now he is:

 

  • Very very much into Minecraft, which is a game that i cannot understand the attraction in. He is asking me to download all sorts of guides to it on the Kindle and then spending hours working out how to make houses. The graphics remind me of something that was around in the days of the ZX-81 😉
  • Finished year 5 this year and waved goodbye to one of his favourite teachers. The teacher is leaving the school as well so there is no chance that my girls will have him which is a shame. We liked him a lot

  • He loves formula one. You could talk to him for ages about cars. He knows so much about cars, their makes, models and how fast they can go. Largely fuelled by his father’s interest in formula one and all things a bit petrol head ish. 
  • He currently wants to work for Nintendo and has taken it quite personally that the Wii U has bombed slightly! 🙂
  • He is a great big brother to his sisters and is pretty balanced about being a big brother to a bunch of girls. He is especially close to our youngest girlie.
  • He loves movies, and scripts. He remembers dialogue and quotes it often! Currently we are all about dispicable me 2 and Monsters U.
  • He is after a phone…we are resisting..we might meet middle ground with some walkie talkies 😉
  • He still likes trains
  • He has no love for girlie pop groups such as one direction and the like. Usually a point of conflict in our house!!
  • He has never ever tasted tomato Ketchup, he used to tell people he was allergic to it. He now develops a big kinship with anyone who comes to our house who feels the same. 😉
  • He is a natural musician and plays by ear, which sometimes frustrates his music teacher. He isnt, however, a natural practicer (is that a word?) so we have to use increasingly inventive ways to get him to practice!
  • He can be a bit ‘chickin lickin’ Which we laugh about but we sometimes have to have very serious conversations about how the wind outside is not going to turn into a tornedo!
  • He is, to date, the only one of my children who has had to endure a general anesthestic. (thank God). He fell onto a coffee table when he was 2 and has to have surgery as it had gone across the line of his lip. He now has a cute Indiana Jones type scar.

He is also turning into a little bit of a photographer and this weekend asked me to help him take this sort of shot. I think he did a pretty good job.

cthemondayclubMotivational Monday

Giveaway this month is for a fabulous luxury box of cosmetics from LUSH, that shop you can smell from all the way down the street. Just follow the rafflecopter instructions. Good LUCK

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
Follow:

my girls #motivationalmonday #mondayclub


Dedicated to my little girls.

Who will become women who live in this nonsense of a world.

Who are so incredibly beautiful.  Wonderfully and fearfully made. Passionate, feisty, creative and sometimes hard bloody work. But these ladies are so precious and one thing that makes me so angry is the pressure that they come under as little girls. I want them to be a thousand other great and fabulous things before they care about being ‘thin’

 

I have totally stolen this quote image from my fabulous friend at City girl at heart. Another mama to some incredible little women. 🙂

themondayclub

Motivational Monday


Follow: