He is definately taking up a lot of time!
Last Sunday he started crawling forwards properly, and is now up to great speeds. If I come onto the computer, after a few moments I feel a little hand clutching at my ankle; it has done no good trying to barracade myself into the corner, as he is very good at crawling under the table and the chairs - managing NOT to bang his head at all which is amazing. I think the big blue glowing on/off switch on the pc is just TOO enticing for him.
As of yesterday afternoon, he can also pull himself upright using furniture or a large enough toy, and stand up. As of today, he thinks he can stand without holding on (he can't!). All at the grand age of 7 months and one week.
I bought some new recipe books last week. I'm probably the last person to get the AiA Gluten and Dairy Free Cookbook
, but I finally decided to go for it. I must say, I'm extremely impressed with the range and type of recipes. I also bought the Child-friendly Food Allergy Cookbook
, working on the theory that I need things that the kids will eat. However, whilst it is good, and I can use it, it is more the sort of book that I would use as inspiration rather than directly to take a recipe.Having said that, I tried their chocolate crispie cake recipe. I thought as I did it that it seemed an AWFUL lot of golden syrup and sugar, and sure enough it is very sweet - so sweet that I think I'll donate it to the boys, in very small chunks!
Talking of recipe books, I'm looking to buy some slow cooker ones. I've got two out of the library which are possibles -Slow Cooker: Over 70 of the Best Recipes (Pyramid Paperbacks)
and The Slow Cooker Cookbook
. Both appear to be quite good and have given me lots of new ideas.Still trying to work out why Jonathan is reacting to my food, I've been wondering if there is a way that he is reacting to a chemical I am producing, because I am reacting to something (rather than him, if you see what I mean). Ironically, in looking up something else today I came across this article. It talks about studies undertaken in South Africa, of a food sensitivity that can occur in breast feeding babies where they take in high levels of histamine from their mothers. The theory is that sometimes when the body floods with histamine it causes an allergic reaction but not everyone is aware that they are having one. But a baby's body, which is so much more sensitive, may react quite strongly to breast milk which contains histamine and this can often manifest itself in severe colic, congested nose, a rash or diarrhoea. Looking at the list of foods that either naturally produce histamine, or that cause histamine to be released in the body, I notice tomato and yeast extract - two of the thinigs that I'm convinced he's reacting to even though the nutritionist etc say he can't be.
Maybe my "mothers instinct" is right, after all.. I've emailed the site to try and find the full reference to the studies, so I can discuss it with the nutritionist and the paediatrician.
In the meantime, I'm going to watch my diet (hence another reason to avoid the chocolate crispie cake, as chocolate is on the list!). And I also took him to the osteopath again, who said she felt that his gut was twisted, so we're going to look at trying a few regular sessions.
William's reading is progressing, and I'm startin to notice him noticing words now, out of context of his reading with his Nan, which is encouraging as I know he is just memorising things really, rather than understanding the reading process.
Samuel is still stuck on long division, so is focusing more on his maths times table book, as well as finally getting around to blogging again.
Joshua has been playing Patrician III again, blogging, writing book reviews, and doing some more maths revision.
On Sunday Roarke went away on a short term contract, as a Trainer (one of the other things he does), and he won't be back until late Thursday night. Somewhat afeared on how I was going to cope, we spoke to our Community group at church, and asked if there was anything that any of them could do to help out, such as giving an hour or so of time, or helping out with a meal - just something to take one of the things of my mental "list" of things I have to do. Meals are a particular chore at the moment of course, trying to work out gluten free, dairy free, soya free, egg free and tomato free meals. These friends have really been supportive and I'm so very grateful for that.
A couple turned up yesterday with not just a dinner for us, but a pudding too for us to use today, which was definately above and beyond the call of duty, so today after a hectic day with my nephew here as well, I didn't have to face the "what can we have" issue.
I'm slowly putting together a meal plan, that I can start to implement, to take away the strain of mealtimes, but that really can't start properly till we can get hold of another freezer.
I've managed some baking. Asides from the over-sweet crispie cake, over the past 48 hours I've made gluten/dairy/soya/egg free chocolate cup cakes (courtsey of some egg replacer and other bits I got online), gluten free browines for the boys, and gluten free cheese scones for them too. Oh and some gf bread. I also made up a batch of "special fried rice" to freeze down in portions for me, for quick lunches (as I'm eating my "dinner" for either "breakfast" or "lunch" in an attempt to stop the screaming fits in the early hours of the morning. Its working - since doing that he now screams non-stop between about 9pm and 12am instead!).
With Roarke away, I really need to get on with some work for his business, but I'm not sure how that is going to work out. I don't want to rely on Mum to have Jonathan all the time, so that I can get on with stuff, but I don't really have many other people who are able to help out at the moment.
Last night I went up for an early night, as Roarke was away - 9.30pm (how sad!). However, 10 minutes after laying down Jonathan woke for a major screaming session. Settled him off finally at 10pm only to have him woken by the phone (which turned out to be Joshua's friend, who "pressed the button by accident" on his mobile phone...). By the time I got him off again, and got back to sleep, it was slightly later than my "usual" bedtime!
I've had lots of HE enquiries this week again - both new home educators and old. I met some via Freecycle, after offering some educational resources on there, which was ironic, but great!
Joshua has been out twice now with his mate. I'm glad he's got the chance to have a "best friend" but I'm struggling to get my head around being a mum of a teen! As he doesn't have to get a bus to and from school on his own, he/we haven't had to deal much with the issue of independence. So this is a shock! We had to sit down and have a chat about knives and guns - sadly there are so many deaths these days in London that I thought it necessary. It was hard not to scare him, but in the end we sorted it and came to an understanding.
I still worried myself sick every moment he was out!
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2 comments:
I'm not surprised he's struggling with long division; it is very hard. I went through it with Theo last Summer. The swinish bit for us was the multiplication part ie how do you know that it's 6 times something and then how much that 6 times IS...I think this was compounded by the fact that Theo absolutely refuses to memorise any multiplications and sticks to his own special system which has lots of separate steps in it, any of which could go wrong. And then when I came to check I would of course do it MY way which would make him angry that I thought his way was no good etc etc. Theo also mortally convinced that in "real life" you would always use a calculator so once you'd done an estimate, you had no further need of the mental maths in this area unless you had some long div questions to do. This again enraged him, because he thought it was a circus trick.
Fiona
Oh you never stop worrying you know when they go out alone .
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