In a Victor Meldrew style, I’ve spent the last day or two exclaiming, “I don’t BELIEVE it”. How is it possible that Nairn is turning four already? How did that happen?

I’ve always said that Findlay’s first four years felt like the longest of my life, but Nairn’s have flown past. I feel like we’ve only just had him so how can he possibly be this age already? How can the baby I brought home from the hospital just a short while ago be preparing for his preschool year at nursery? It’s just unfathomable. For all of you out there with young children: Cherish this time, no matter how hard it is. It’s over far too quickly.

For the fact fans out there:
Nairn weighed 9lb 3oz at birth.
I was induced at 14 days post-dates.
Nairn was due on 18th February but due to his late arrival has missed the cut-off for starting school this year.
Nairn is the animal lover out of our children
His nickname is “George” (… of the jungle) because he’s so large and lumbering but generally kind
He is probably the most loving of our children
He loves to read and his current favourite book is Stick Man by Julia Donaldson
He carries about a really revolting quilt that has fallen apart inside. He won’t sleep without it.
He wants to marry Rachel, one of his ‘Ladies’ at nursery. Or his best friend, N.
I hope he never changes.

Happy birthday my sweet, sweet boy and thank you for bringing four years of light and love to our family.

Meeting his big brother for the first time

Six months

One year, earning the “Destroyer” nickname

Fourteen months, with a new sister

Two

Three

Four

Posted under family

Readers I have a terrible admission to make. Terrible. There’s a bit of a backstory to this one so you might want to go get yourself a cup of cha and a nice biscuit. Okay, ready?

I’d like to take you back to July 2008. We – Bob, Findlay, Nairn, Erica and I – were staying on a campsite in Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, Northern France. The weather was beautiful, the site was peaceful and I was bored rigid so of course I latched onto an idea. Nairn’s hair was a tad overgrown and I thought, “Hey! I can trim it!”

Up until that point I had regularly cut the boys’ hair with a set of trimmers – never with scissors – and the only scissors I had access to were the kitchen scissors supplied in our tent. Still this didn’t deter me and I trimmed the nape of Nairn’s neck, his sideys and his fringe. It looked excellent! For reference, this is a ‘before’ picture:

Flushed with success, I decided that actually cutting hair couldn’t be that difficult. I mean, you don’t need a degree or anything for it and it looks fairly straightforward. Right? Right?!!

Wrong.

I started at his crown and worked round in circles, until I got to his fringe. I turned him round and honestly he looked like he had a crop circle on his head. Panicked, I tried to even out the longer bits by cutting them even shorter until I gave up, burst into tears and put a hat on him to hide my shame until Bob got back from the site shop. When he came back I admitted in horrified tones what I’d done and made it clear that the situation would need to be remedied. And here comes the terrible admission. We went to the office of the site staff and chatted to the English liason chap who had been very helpful when we’d arrived and I said,

“Oh I desperately need your help. You won’t believe what my eldest son has done to his brother with a pair of kitchen scissors.”

Yes. I blamed it on poor, unwitting Findlay. A child who would never DREAM of touching scissors without parental guidance never mind attack his brother’s hair with them. Luckily my tale of woe seemed to strike a cord with the site staff and they lent me a pair of clippers to tidy up the mess…

… except the tale of woe ploughs on. Because you see, I was used to British clippers with British guard measurements on them. I was used to the #2 or #3 guard and so I used the guard marked 2mm, except that since it was a European set 2mm was MUCH SHORTER than a #2 or #3. Regardez!

The moral of the story? NEVER assume that you can do something just because you’ve watched someone else do it and it looked easy. It rarely will be. Thankfully Nairn was more forgiving than my Mother, who refused to display this lovely photo of my children taken on the Somme Bay Railway:

With this saga in mind, I have never since cut the kids’ hair. I was too worried about making a mess of it so they have been treated to the salon experience instead, but I have been trying to get Erica’s hair cut for months and been foiled at every attempt. After visiting Bron yesterday for a playdate I marvelled at Miss Small’s gorgeous hair and Bron told me she cut it herself, reassuring me that, “A bob is very forgiving” and I decided that perhaps I could make one final attempt to salvage my reputation as a demon with scissors. So – ta daaa!

I’m rather proud of myself I have to say! I wonder if this means the boys will let me cut their hair again. Hmmm…

Posted under family

I posted recently about how I’d lost my crafting mojo and I know loads of my friends were feeling similarly, so it made my heart really happy to see that my Saviour Amanda has come up with a productive way to beat the blues.

If you want to join in you’ll need to acquire this book which costs a tenner (inclusive of delivery) from Amazon with the first project being a skirt. You have until 20th March to finish the skirt and upload pictures to the flickr group.

If you fancy joining in, let me know! But please do also pop over to Amanda’s blog and let her know that you’re intrigued because we all know that comments are a blogger’s desire

For a wee injection of cute I need to share this awesome video of Nairn. Voila!

Posted under general crafty updates

It occurs to me that I have loads of blog fodder but I hold back on posting it for reasons known only to myself. What daunts me slightly is the aspect of permission – I have Bob’s permission to blog about him, I’m capable of making decisions for myself about what I’m comfortable blogging but a large proportion of my life revolves around the children who are not capable of providing informed consent. Part of me thinks that worrying about this is being hugely self-indulgent because nobody is going to remember what I’ve posted in five, ten or twenty years time. But. And it is a big but – is it fair to them that I make their moments so public? The kind of moments which are filed away by parents and brought out at 18th birthday parties or meeting-the-boy/girlfriend-for-the-first-time are the kind of moments that I could (and have) shared with the world without their permission.

So it’s something I’m working through because honestly they’ve provided me with some real fodder over the last few days. Plus I can’t blog about anything I’m crafting right now because it’s all for Christmas!

Posted under family

It’s Greer’s six month birthday today, and I swear with each child these milestones come faster and faster. I can’t believe that she has been in our lives for such a short period of time and yet we’d be so lost without her. She’s suddenly gone from the newborn stage to being a little person with a big personality, big smiles, big love and a big voice! Not sure who she could possibly have taken that from!

So to celebrate we got a lovely picture of the children all together.

and of course five seconds later got this beauty which I think I might actually prefer

Posted under family

I can remember being thrilled when I got my very own personal cassette player. I think I was maybe 9? And it took me ages to work out how to work the damn thing.

So how is it that Nairn (3y7m) knows how to switch on the TV, how to put on a DVD (*I* don’t even know how to do that!) and how to use my phone?! The result of the latter is that I flick through my phone only to discover photos like this:

Three years old and he’s already posting myspace-style close up self portraits complete with chocolate make up. *sigh* they grow up so fast…

Posted under family

LOOK!!

I posted a photo in my “A day in the life” stream, showing a project I haven’t quite finished yet and it was picked up and posted on OhDeeDoh which is one of my favourite blogs, ever. I am so honoured – thank you for featuring me!

The project featured is this table which I’ve découpaged for Findlay and Nairn’s bedroom. The kids’ Godfather, Dave, is moving out of his flat and has given me a few bits of furniture that he was going to throw out. He and I are hoarding kindred spirits, can’t see any crap thrown out ANYWAY, one of the things he gave me was an Ikea Lack table which had seen better days but which I decided could be given new life!

I used a vintage annual (the 1991 Bash Street Kids annual, for reference!) and a LOT of PVA glue to stick it down and then seal the top. I had a bit of a disaster with the top which I am hoping to resolve this week – I wanted a hard, clear varnish so that the paper would be safe if the kids were to spill something on it and when I asked someone in B&Q for clear acrylic varnish they gave me Ronseal. I didn’t think anything of it but when I applied it, it cracked the PVA. Disaster! I’ve now got some plastikote clear enamel but it’s been raining here today and I haven’t been able to get the table out to spray it.

I have also left one leg uncovered just now until I decide if I like the legs découpaged or not. What do you think?

Posted under interior decorating, me, site stuff

So I mentioned in my last post that Erica fell sick on Wednesday night. She was violently ill and didn’t perk up until yesterday (Saturday) morning and I jokingly remarked that this was the start of the September-April Sandlan sickness schedule. I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

Last night just after 11pm (when I’d already been sleeping for a while!) I woke up to hear what I thought was Nairn coughing. I strained to listen and discovered that actually he was struggling to draw breath so of course LEAPT out of bed with my broken toe* and ran through to find him just hanging off the side of his bed and burning up. Bob was downstairs so I shouted on him and asked him to bring up some calpol. We got Nairn sat up and medicated when he asked to go to the loo and as soon as I saw him in the light I decided not to even bother calling NHS24 and off to A&E we went.

My backside barely touched the seat before we were taken through to the resus department. I think turning up with a small grey child with bright red cheeks who has breathing difficulties tends to be taken pretty seriously. Unfortunately, we were taken right through to the exact same bed that Bob was in after his heart problems so that added another dimension to my worry. Anyway, bearing in mind this was 20-25 minutes after he’d had his calpol his temperature was 39.8C (103.6F) so he was immediately stripped down and dosed with ibuprofen. Half an hour later his temp was down to 38.1C (100.6F) but he’d developed a barking cough. The Doctor examined him and decided to give him a dose of steroids to try and help his airways open up a little then we were moved to a side room so he could get to sleep. After singing our way through such classics as ‘The Quartermaster’s store’ ‘Little bunny fou fou’ and ‘On top of spaghetti’ he finally conked out only to get the fright of his life when I raised the side bar on his bed. I settled him back down and asked a nurse to keep an eye on him so I could run out and get my phone from the car.
I’d just phoned Bob to update him when the Doctor came in to check on him, confirming that he has croup. His breathing had settled and he wasn’t squeaking anymore so we were allowed to go home. There was another little girl in with croup at the same time and a twitter friend who lives locally was telling me that her friend’s little boy has it too so it’s obviously doing the rounds.

It’s funny – I always worry when I take the kids to A&E or the GP out of hours service that perhaps I’m overreacting, and even last night I did until his temperature registered so high. I guess it just shows that instinct is the way forward?

*Nairn was playing postman yesterday and brought a 2 litre bottle of sparkling water up to me in the bath yesterday. Our neighbour has a wasp nest in her garden so our house has been full of wasps and I’ve had all the windows wide open to make sure they get out as easily as they get in. I went to get out the bath and realised the window was open so wide that all my neighbours would be able to see me so I pulled the plug out the bath, wrapped a towel round me, leant over to close the window and knocked the bottle of water onto my toe which broke with a very loud CRACK. It’s rather ouchy, to say the least.

Posted under family

So, dear reader, I have a dilemma. I have been baking and cooking away lately but haven’t managed to blog it because SOMEONE had misplaced the memory card for the camera…

Findlay says, “It wasn’t me…”

Nairn denies all knowledge

Erica looks at the camera and shouts, “CHEEEEESE”

Whilst Greer looks cute

So in the meantime I’m afraid you’ll need to make do with photos from my phone. Luckily we have now located said memory card so when I’ve blogged up the camera photos we should be back to normal service. Well, I say normal because knowing my terrible children and messy house I don’t doubt that something else will go missing soon!

Anyway. Today I’m going to show you another wee taste of my childhood. My Nana and Grampa are children of the war era and so had a fantastic ability to eke dinner out on a budget. As classic Scottish weans* we’d get mince an’ tatties and if we ate all that, we might get bread an’ butter pudding after. What a treat that was! As I was the eldest grandchild it was my job to help my Nana and I can remember standing on a stool at her kitchen sink when I was probably about Findlay’s age, peeling potatoes and turnips and being allowed to help bake in return.

Thus, I decided last week that my kids should have some bread an’ butter pudding. Admittedly this was influenced in part because we were skint and had very little food in the house, and in part because I had about 20 million eggs needing used up! Nana always told me to use bread that was a little past it’s best, but bread doesn’t get a chance to go stale in my house so I used an outsider on the bottom layer.

You will need:
6 slices of bread
Butter
Raisins
Cinnamon and/or nutmeg to taste
2 egg yolks
2 tbsps sugar
3/4 pint milk (or more if it’s not enough to cover your bread)

Preheat your oven to gas mark 5 (375F). Butter the dish you’re using to make your pudding in, then butter the slices of bread and cut them diagonally in half. Cover the bottom of the dish with bread slices then sprinkle over a small handful of raisins. I really like cinnamon so at this point I sprinkle a teaspoonful of cinnamon over the top but I know my Nana prefers nutmeg – do whichever suits best or leave it out altogether. Repeat this layering again before topping off the dish with bread. Do NOT put raisins on the top of your dish because they’ll burn in the oven, and nobody likes a burnt raisin.
In a saucepan, mix your milk and sugar together and heat until the milk mixture is bubbling. Make sure you stir regularly to help the sugar dissolve and ensure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan but be careful not to let the milk boil. Beat the egg yolk quickly in a jug then add the milk, whisking gently to combine. Pour the mixture back into the pan through a sieve and simmer for five minutes, stirring regularly. Pour over the bread slices and leave for at least half an hour, gently pushing the bread into the custard occasionally before sprinkling the top with the brown sugar and cinnamon. Pop in the oven for half an hour until the top is a golden brown colour. Serve with custard or vanilla ice cream.

*Wean means child, literally “wee ‘ane” or “wee yin” meaning “little one”. You’re a wean until yir Granny tells ye itherwise!

Posted under baking, family, recipes

Summer holidays here in Scotland started at the end of June, so I’ve had to come up with entertainment not only for Haud it and Daud it* but for Findlay too. LUCKILY Cbeebies has been repeating ‘Dick & Dom in da Bungalow’ over the last few weeks, a major feature of which is their sublime highbrow feature, “Bogies“.

This is the result after one day of watching the aforementioned programme.

Most excellent. This is day two – excuse the sofa missing a cover, that’s a story for later**

To be fair, they actually seem dramatically better behaved whilst playing, ‘Bogies’ than they were the other day when we were stuck inside due to the rubbish weather. People ask me, “How do you do it with four kids?” Simple, my friends. I leave the house otherwise my living room ends up like this:

*Haud it and Daud it – a very Scottish way of saying, “Those two eejits”

**Erica decided she wanted pants on the other day and kept sitting on her potty. Unfortunately she decided to pee standing on my sofa so the cover was in the washing machine. Why didn’t I buy a wipe-clean sofa?

Posted under family