familytastic!

If you've been a long-time Family Of Five subscriber, you'll have noticed some changes in the RSS feed and on the site recently.

First - we've changed the name (and the domain) to familytastic.com. The reason for this is that we wanted to reach out to other parents and bloggers. We wanted to create a community of mums and dads and a place where we could share experiences and advice and the ups and downs of parenthood and family life.

I spent a little bit of time tidying up the design redesigning this blog last night. The old design had never completely satisfied me, and I wanted to move toward something a bit prettier. Hopefully this hits the spot.

The design you see is the culmination of me avidly reading a site called PSDTuts, which gives some of the most detailed and inspiring Photoshop tutorials I've ever read. Feeling confident, I went over to SXC and downloaded a couple of stock images and began to play around with them.

I decided to reuse the logo image of the family of stick figures, but I converted them from black to white and gave them a funky rainbow-coloured outline, which I quite like. I then put them in the grassy meadow you see above and added a tree in the background and a tranquil turqouise sky, complete with fluffy clouds.

Widgets

The biggest challenge I came across while building this design was widgetizing the sidebars. The previous design must have been ancient! Anyway, I came across this helpful tutorial that sped up the process of making the sidebar widget compatible.

I probably have a little bit of work still to do to make the CSS a little tidier and maybe need to pay attention to lists and blockquotes - other XHTML elements that I'm leaving to the rendering graces of the individual browser. I may actually release this as my first ever WordPress theme as a result.

Finally, I decided to save a copy of the old blog design for posterity. Here it is.

Rachel started primary School this week. The sight of her in her 'big girls' uniform, walking into the classroom for the first time almost reduced me to tears. Worse was Jakes reaction to the situation, he wouldn't talk to me the whole way home and spent the  rest of the morning asking "Can we go get Rachel now?"

Typical of Rachel, she settled brilliantly and her only problem with the whole primary school thing is that her teacher asked her not to count in spanish.

i should explain that Gerard took a few spanish conversation classes last year, and ever since has been introducing the odd word and phrase to the children. With the help of her dad and of course Dora The Explorer, Rachel can count to ten, as well as add and subtract in Spanish.

On her first day her teacher must have been trying to gauge her capabilties and was asking her to count some objects. Rachel proceeded to do so in spanish and was most offended when her teacher asked her to do it again in English.

Other than that we have had no issues. Rachel seems to enjoy school, so much so that she declared today "I wish i could stay there forever and never go home." It doesn't say much for my parentig skills does it?

Over the last few weeks I have felt as though I am banging my head off a brick wall. Jake has always been more free with his hands than Rachel, but over the last six months or so, I have noticed that he rarely hits, kicks or pushes anymore.

Since summer holidays started though I have noticed a deterioration in both of the children's behaviour. They are hitting each other A LOT! To make things worse, a boy that often plays with Jake and Rachel came crying to us tonight that Jake had hit him on the head, and it turns out that Rachel, who thought the boy was being cheeky, had told Jake to do it.

I am trying to talk it out with them, explaining what they are doing is wrong and that it hurts other children. They have had stickers removed from their reward charts, they have been brought inside and not allowed out to play. None of it seems to be working. To be fair the majority of the problem lies with Rachel, Jake often just follows his big sister's lead.

I think that Rachel is bored, she misses school and it is very hard to stimulate her effectively while also trying to amuse the two younger boys. I am at my wits end, and don't like to see my usually very kind and considerate daughter turn into such a bad tempered little girl.  I am trying to practice positive discipline and not constantly tell her she is being bad, but sometimes my patience does wear thin. She is so quick to say sorry to avoid punishment, but I know she rarely means it.

Gerard is going to take some time off work within the next few weeks and we are going to try to occupy the childrens time a bit better. Hopefully a few day trips and some one to one time with Rachel will help cheer her up.

Up until recently there was very little differentiation in our home between the toys Rachel played with, and the toys that Jake chose.

If Rachel wanted to play with Barbies or My Little Ponies, then Jake was happy to join in. But in the last few weeks our wee boy has started to emerge. It all started with a Batman figure that my sister bought for him last month, and from then we have seen his interest in boys toys grow and grow.

I thought it was time to bring down all Gerard's old He-Man and Ghostbuster toys from the attic yesterday, and honestly you would have though that it was christmas in our house. Jake has played with the toys ever since, and its funny to imagine that 25 years ago his dad was playing with the same toys.

I can see Jakes gender really beginning to make a difference in other areas too. He is no longer content to watch Barbie Mermadia repeatedly, but is now asking for Power Rangers and Thunderbirds. When playing with other children he naturally gravitates towards the boys, and instead of playing on the swings, or see saws, Jake now wants to play sword fights.

Rachel is such a girly girl, who loves to pretend to be me in every way. Its nice to see Jake no longer following her every move, but beginning to make choices of his own.

I just came across a great post on the Digito Society blog, that references a study carried out to determine what dads like to receive on fathers day.

One third of fathers said that their number one gift preference would be a greeting card, and 14% would like a home cooked meal.

Thank God for that! Gerard has nothing to complain about then. He received not one but two cards. One store bought, one the children made themselves. His breakfast in bed was home cooked, it may have only been fruit and porridge, but it still counts.

In lieu of a huge gift, I would like instead to publicly (and belatedly)thank my husband for being the best dad I know. I appreciate you so much, our kids are going to grow up to be better people because you are so active in their life. One day they will realise how lucky they are!

My husband will often tell people that I don't allow him to have any money, or carry an ATM card to withdraw from our bank account. I resent this, as it makes me sound like a tyrant, while the real reason is that he is a pea -brain who loses absolutly everything!

Each time he gets a new ATM card he loses it within a matter of months, if not weeks. When this happens, both our cards have to be cancelled, leaving us with no access to our account for at least 7 days. It's a real hassle!

I have bought him a wallet, which he never uses, so in the end I just stopped ordering new cards. When he lost his, I kept mine and became the main administrator of our finances.

For the last year things have ran smoothly, until last night. I lent Gerard my card to get some petrol for his car, I then let him look after it while we went out for a meal for my dad's 50th birthday. When I asked Gerard for the card this morning to get some groceries, it was nowhere to be found! He is adamant that he didn't lose it, but it isn't anywhere in our house, so I don't know what other conclusion I can draw.

Once again all our cards have now been cancelled. We have no access to our bank account until we can get to the branch on Monday, so we are going to have to scrape by this weeked on the few pounds we have lying about the house and hope we don't starve.  Bang goes that takeaway I was hoping for tonight!

It is coming up to that time, when Rachel and Jake where 9 months old, my periods returned. Within another 3-4 months I was pregnant again. Daniel is now 9 months old and the feelings of panic are beginning to rise.

I have already explained my feelings on birth control and contraception, so at the minute we are relying on good old condoms. However we used them religiously after Jake, and I still got pregnant, so I don't have a hig level of faith in our chosen method.

Two weeks ago I began to get period cramps. I had been expecting them for a while, so i stocked up on sanitary products and waited for the inevitavble. But it didn't come.

Five days of cramps and mood swings later I began to panic. For the first few weeks of all my pregnancies I have suffered with cramps of this kind, so I began to suspect that I was pregnant once more.

At first I was relatively calm. "It must be meant to be" I thought, I was nervous when I was first pregnant with Daniel, but I wouldn't change him for the world, and after all didn't I want a sister for Rachel? However as the hours began to pass and I pondered the future I began to get frantic. Daniel wouldn't even be 18 months old when the baby was born. I would be bound to get severe SPD again, how would I cope without being able to walk and still look after 3 young children? I missed a whole nights sleep just worrying and worrying.

First thing last Monday I went to the pharmacy and got a pregnancy test, though I was sure what the result would be......Guess what, I was wrong. The test was negative.

I am still getting the cramps, but I am hoping that it is just my body's way of getting itself into gear once again. After all I haven't had a period since before I was pregnant a year and a half ago.

Gerard has been ordered to the GPs in a bid to get his vastectomy moved forward. I couldn't cope with this panic every month!

They say you can raise the perfect child, until they mix with other children. Over the last few weeks I have had some detailed insight into that topic.

Over the last month or so Rachel has been playing outside almost every hour that she isn't in nursery. She has become so sociable, and it is so funny to see her playing games like 'mummy and daddy' and hopscotch. She seems to have aged 4 years in just 4 short weeks.

I love seeing her interact in a large group, I love how confident she is, and how much she enjoys the company of other children, especially girls.

However not all the behaviour changes have been positive. Rachel has always been strong willed, but rarely cheeky. Yet when out playing she has started to really stand her ground, and refuse to come in when I call her, telling me " I will come in when I want to come in!"

We also heard her talking about boyfriends yesterday. To be fair the kids were playing 'mummy's' and Rachel asked one of the other girls to be her boyfriend, so she obviously doesn't get the concept, but still it's a word and a concept that she has never used or thought of before.

So you see nothing too bad has occured, and she hasn't been intorduced to hard drugs or anything, but slowly it is beginning to dawn on me that there is only so much I can protect her from, and only so much I can influence her, or stop other people influencing her. From here on in she will be exposed to things outside of my control.

I have never thought of myself as a control freak, but now I am beginning to wonder.........

I'm up late after watching Big Brother begin and all the housemates entering the Big Brother house for the summer.

I now have to muster some energy and finish my packing, as I am heading off to Liverpool tomorrow for my sisters Hen weekend.

I am really looking forward to the wee hoilday, though I am a bit nervous about leaving all three children for so long, especially the baby. He is cutting his top two teeth and has been grumpy and unsettled all week.  On top of that we are still breastfeeding quite a lot, and although he does get the odd bottle if I have to go out, he has never went without nursing for more than a few hours before.

In my head I know he'll be ok, and so will I, as long as I remember to pack my breast pump!

I am most looking forward to not having to worry about what time I go to bed at, as I don't have to get up early the next morning. I am also planning to have at least one afternoon nap, as I never get to sleep during the day anymore.

My other sister is the unofficial chief bridesmaid and is organising the whole affair. I don't want to go into too many details in case the bride to be happens upon this, but lets just say there will be lots of fun and laughs to be had, probably lots of embarrassment too!

Its hard to believe that six years ago I was a bride to be. Now three children later and I can hardly manage to remember my wedding anniversary!