On Saturday, my 1st born, my son, my little munchkin boy turned 4.
FOUR!!!!!
We had an absolute blast at his party yesterday and today was his birthday ring at playschool (the last one there, next one will be at nursery school).
Here are some pics from this morning 🙂
This morning I found a baby bird lying in our driveway. It must have fallen/been pushed out the nest last night. It was dead and the ants had found it.
I told Aaron to be careful and to walk around it and he refused to move (I think he has my ‘ick’ gene). I called Paul to come and remove the baby.
This all led to a discussion with Aaron about the fact that the baby bird was dead and that we would have to bury it. He had lots of questions.
He wanted to know what happened to the bird. He wanted to know what would happen to it after it was buried. He wanted to know why it died and where its mommy and daddy were.
In Aarons short life two of his great grandparents have passed away. We explained to him that they were in heaven with Gd and left it at that. He was fine with that.
The difference here is that he actually saw the dead bird. He wanted to know what we were going to do with it (bury it).
How do you explain to a 4 year old about death?
Aaron is loving his swimming lessons and he is doing so well that we have graduated from the small pool to the shallow end of the big pool.
In order to help Aaron transition and to minimise any anxiety we were asked to stay with the same teacher (there are three different teachers at the school) which was fine with us as Aaron adores teacher L.
In order to move to the big pool we had to change lesson times. This was fine with me, once we had rescheduled Kindermusik lessons.
What I didnt bank on was not liking the parents at our new lesson time. I loved the parents at the old time. They were friendly and welcomed me with open arms and a ready smile.
The new parents barely even looked up from their discussion the first time we came to that lesson. Since then (4 lessons in) they still have not even smiled in my direction let alone introduced themselves or even said hello. And its not for lack of trying on my part. I always arrive with a smile and make eye contact (or try to) but they never reciprocate.
Not only have they not welcomed me but they are rather bitchy when they talk. About other people or situations. They are obviously all friends and move in the same social circles. I cannot stand how cliquey they are and how nasty they can be. So much so that I asked the teachers if there is another time that we can move to with teacher L.
I dont think moving the time will effect Aaron as he doesnt know the kids in his class now on a personal level and the only requirement is that we stay with teacher L.
I know Im not guaranteed a better group of parents but anything has to be better than wanting to smack them with a shovel.
I spotted this on Cat’s blog, Jenty’s blog and Tanya’s blog and I thought what a wonderful way to remember the kids childhoods.
Im starting with Aaron…
TV programme: You love anything on Disney Jnr, especially Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Mickey Mouse Club House. You have also discovered Sponge Bob Square Pants…
iPhone App: You love Angry Birds and the Incy Wincy Spider game on my your iPod Touch
Meal: Pizza! With black olives.
Fruit: Red apples.
Vegetable: Ummmm whats that? Is an olive a vegetable?
Breakfast: Coco Pops.
Drink: Cream Soda.
Toy: Hmmm, you love your new dragon that Cheryl and Raymond gave you for your birthday.
You love: Your sister, drawing, playing outside, school and your nanny, Aletta.
Round about this time last year we started taking Aaron to swimming classes. We took him to a teacher who had a few kids in the class and was a little kooky and crazy. Aaron loved him. The swimming? Not so much.
Aaron and I spent about 2 months, one lesson a week arguing negotiating how much of Aarons body he would allow to get wet. By the end of the year we were sitting on the step but only during the last 10 minutes of the class.
In December the teacher went on holiday and told me that he would call me when he was back. He never did. I think he just didnt want to deal with Aaron and his water issues. I then had Faith and I never followed up with lessons in the new year.
Ah yes, water issues. Lets go back a few years to bathing a new born Aaron. He screamed. He cried. He really did not like bathing. He especially did not like getting his head wet and to this day washing Aarons hair is a trauma akin to bathing 10 cats in one go.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago.
With summer upon us, swimming lessons became a topic of conversation once again. Paul got the number of a swimming school from one of the moms at Aarons play school and I gave them a call. We arranged to have two 20 minute lessons a week. There are three instructors and each instructor has no more than 4 children at a time.
The first lesson was a disaster. Aaron screamed blue murder. We left.
The next lesson he agreed to sit on the side of the step with his feet in the water. Half way through his ‘lesson’, the one instructor from the ‘baby’ class came to sit on the step with him. She chatted to him and got him to throw some toys onto the step and then get up and walk to pick them up, she even got him to sit on her lap in the water before getting out the pool.
The next week the same teacher asked Aaron if he would like to come sit on the step in the baby pool with her. (There are two pools, a large regular pool and a smaller baby pool with two steps and a shallow end, no deep end). He agreed. He threw toys on the steps and sat on the top step for most of the lesson.
The 4th lesson was amazing. He blew bubbles with his face in the water and even let the teacher hold him and take him into the water.
Yesterdays lesson made me cry with pride for my big boy. He not only got onto the pool noodle (which he had point blank refused to even touch before) but he ducked his whole head under the water. He even let me go sit in the car instead of by the side of the pool.
I think he is learning to love swimming 🙂 I cannot wait for tomorrows lesson!
My little boy is growing up!
He has a school friend over today for a play date. They are having an absolute blast!
My baby girl has a tooth!
Thats right, a tooth, on the bottom left side. I can just see it poking out. It came out of nowhere.
I cannot believe how fast the last year has gone by!
A few days before mothers day last year we found out that after a year of trying we were finally pregnant with Faith. I was about 4 weeks along.
On mothers day last year we had our first family shoot with Jenty.
Look how much Aaron has grown…
From this:
To this:
From 3:
To 4:
I truly cannot describe how blessed I am.
Today was my first day back at work. I took 4 months maternity leave as well as 2 weeks of annual leave before Faith was due. So all in all I have been away from work for about 17/18 weeks.
The first day was ok, a bit long for someone not used to sitting behind a desk all day. I came back to a small crisis but that is being handled and I have stayed out of the details of it and am just helping where I can.
Tomorrow is a half day for me (Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays by default as we finish at 2pm anyway) so that makes it a bit easier to be motivated.
Onto the guilt…
I dont feel guilty about leaving Faith to go back to work. I know I have to work and I know if I dont do something during the day I will go nuts. Im glad that I work 3 half days, it definitely makes going back to work easier.
In order to explain my guilt I have to give you a little back story. As you may or may not know I suffered from PND after having Aaron. When my 4 months maternity leave was over I could not wait to get back to work. It wasnt that I didnt love my baby, I did. It was more about getting away from a place that I was not in control of and going to a place that I was in control of, a place I felt was ‘safe’ I suppose.
*Please note that its only now, almost 3 years later that I can articulate these feelings, at the time I just felt a fantastic sense of relief at being at work and not at home*
My guilt back then wasnt that I was leaving baby at home, it was about the fact that I didnt feel guilty for leaving him. The fact that I felt I was running away from him to go to work.
This time I am not running away, yes I miss Faith but I know she is happy and well looked after and that its not full day every day. This time there is no guilt that I am not feeling quilty.
This time the guilt comes from the fact that I am petrified that the difference in how I have handled going back to work after Aaron and after Faith will effect my relationship with them in the future, especially with Aaron.
I know that it wasnt my fault, I know that even though I was depressed it wasnt for lack of love for my son. But the cold hard truth is that it took me a long time to bond with Aaron, a long time for me to not want to run away to work. I just hope that as he grows older and more aware he doesn’t feel like I love him less than his sister. I hope he understands, even if its never said, that it wasnt really him I was running away from. That it was my own demons.
I hope that even though it wasnt ‘me’ that one day I can forgive myself.
Aaron has been asking to make a cake the whole week so I looked into the cupboard and found that I didnt have my trusty Moirs cake mix, I did have flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and milk so I figured I would try making a cake from scratch. Aaron wanted a chocolate cake so I found some cocoa powder too.
I found a recipe for a chocolate butter sponge in an old International Goodwill Cookbook (7th edition). I made a few small adjustments but it turned out really well.
Ingredients:
Method:
For the icing I decided to make a ganache. Mainly because I had some bitter sweet chocolate from Pesach and I wanted a really chocolaty icing. Unfortunately I didnt have any cream so I used margarine (purist dont hate me, I know its not even BUTTER!!!) instead.
Ingredients:
Method:
Eat and enjoy!
