I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I've caught up on my sleep, had a shower this morning, the sun is shining and though cool, it's a gorgeous spring day today, and I managed to get the prescriptions to the doctors, the filled scripts to the chemists, done the shopping, bought birthday cards for relatives whose birthdays are this week, went to the library, and made a cheats giant mince pie with DD1 today. Cheat's because I bought a sweet pastry case, filled it from a jar and stuck it into the oven for 30min. I will make some icing to put on top in a minute, though, so there is a little work there.
DH was talking to his mum, and she (and therefore he) is starting to come round to the idea of HEing the girls. It helps that we've been talking about joining DD1 up to a gymnastics class, as like most people she's most worried about the socialisation side of things. Truly, that is the least of my worries. But DH also explained some of our concerns about school, and she actually agreed with them - or at least the bits he told me about. In particular, as my mum said about me, apparently DH was also held back and told to wait for everyone else to catch up to his academic level in primary school, so MIL can see why we'd be concerned about that. These are really big steps forward.
And lots of little things show me that HE is the right direction, and that it doesn't have to be the big scary thing that some people make it out to be. Today, DD1 totally out of the blue said, "Quatorze. [pause] That's 14 in French!" "Yes, it is" I replied. There are kids studying for their GCSEs who can't count in French, and yet my three year old, says it casually over breakfast. And then there's the cooking, gardening (which she wants to get more involved with. I'm thinking of maybe growing one/some sunflowers too), cycling, dancing, singing, squash etc that she wants to do. And, as I mentioned before, gymnastics we actually are making steps towards. And DD1 has been taking the magnetic words off the fridge, bringing them to DH or I and stating "this says xxxxxx". 90% of the time she is absolutely correct, and the rest, you can see where/why she has made the mistake. For example, she came in the other day and said "this says 'toop'." I congratulated her, said well done, it looks like it could say 'toop' because 'to' says 'too' but this word is actually pronounced 'top'.
I've probably said before, but one of the reasons why I started this blog was to help document our HE efforts (as many other people do, and I've copied) and also so our family can see what's going on. Of course, at the moment, none of our family (except my sister) even know I'm keeping a blog, so that would have to change if I'm expected them to keep up to date with our activities via it. If we do HE, though, we will have to be careful, as I'm sure many other parents do who don't HE, not to compare DD1 and DD2. Growing up in someone else's shadow, or someone else's potential shadow as an older child, isn't very nice. But as parent's we're only human and we do the best we can do.
As I'm here, I might as well update about a couple of other things too. I think DD1 is pretty much potty trained now. She does have the very occasional accident (usually when she hasn't pulled her trousers down far enough, so got them wet) but that is getting rarer, and she always asks/takes herself to the toilet. It's probably helped by having bare-bum days most of the time at home, but that's not a problem at all. She is also waking up some nights to go to the toilet, or waking in the morning with a dry nappy. I'm definitely not ready to risk her being nappiless at night yet, but these are all steps in the right direction.
DD2's weaning is going very well too. She is having breakfast and lunch most days (she only doesn't when I/DH forget), having plenty of BFs during the day too. Her hand-eye coordination is getting very good so she is much better at feeding herself now. Soups/porridge I will still give her on a spoon, but toast and things she will happily hold herself, which means I can eat at the same time! We've rearranged our living room, and put the high chair next to the table, and DD2 really enjoys being the same height and eating with us at the same time.
Yes, today (at least!) life is good.
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