Seems I've forgotten to blog for a while...

Only just realised that January passed with only 1 post from me, and I thought it was a quiet month! Guess I was just doing a lot of sewing - must have made about 12+ outfits/dresses, so I guess that explains where at least some of my time was going! With all the snow and bitterly cold weather, it's not so exciting to venture outdoors much!

Can't think of anything too exciting to report just now - just been doing the usual stuff mostly. Last Tuesday we had our monthly homeschool/Christian education get-together in Inverness. There were quite a lot of folk there again, as well as more new faces, so that was encouraging.

As for Benjamin's eczema, things continue to be encouraging in general, though we can have some rather difficult times with his hands. :-( But I think everything continues to point to enviromental factors, though I'm trying to be more careful about giving him an egg-free diet, as so far that seems to be the only food item that it appears to cause noticable flareups after eating. Now that his feet/behind knees are so much better, for the first time in 18 months, Benjamin is able to just wear trousers - without any cotton tights under them, for over 2 weeks now! :-) For some people, this might not sound like much - but it's a major step forward. The poor little boy has been wearing tights *every* day, *all* day long since he was 18 months (including in hot summer months), and he would scratch his legs/feet till they bled everytime they were off. So it's wonderful that he can dress like an ordinary child during the day. That's not to say I don't have to keep an eye on him - I do - but things have improved enough that he can be upstairs playing a lot of the time without getting up to any trouble in this regard. This also means there's hope for potty training, since he can survive in less secure clothes (yay!) which he's been making progress with, though not there yet by any means. The only downside has been, running around the house in less clothes leaves his legs exposed, and he's ending up with patches of eczema on his legs where it has never been before! It's not severe, and I try to get trousers back on him when this happens. But this indicates a clear connection with enviromental factors and his eczema. But what these are, I don't know! We've got laminate floors (well, apart from the stairs) and I try to hoover frequently to keep the dust down. And we don't use any harmful chemicals/cleaners around the house. But perhaps it's the beds/bedding he likes to play on! He's daily ending up on the bunkbed, on our bed, on Abigail's bed - hiding under duvets/pillows etc. And whilst I carefully regulate his bedding in his bedroom so it can be frequently washed at 60 degrees, I'm not so careful about our beds (esp with big/thick duvets which don't wash easily). So perhaps it's all down to dust/dustmites. But how to get him to understand that playing under duvets is dangerous, I don't know!

Here's the said Benjamin, pleased with his new fleece jacket! A charity shop bargain find of mine - brand new with tags, Hanna Anderson brand, for only 3 pounds! :-D

Clement loves his cloth nappies too - they even make great toys, or so he thinks!

And climbing in the drawer of the train table is fun too - he did it all by himself!

Anyone want to volunteer to clean this baby??! Clement is our messiest baby so far - food everywhere, often requiring multiple changes of clothes a day! He hates bibs and will do everything possible to remove one, not eating anything till it's gone!

Abigail and Benjamin with the flower necklaces they made, from a kit that Aunty Leah sent to Abigail for her birthday!

Enjoying his food again - he's *got* to have lots of big people food (fed to himself, all by himself!) to keep him happy! Sitting in his lovely Ikea high chair - another charity shop find of mine! ;-)

My fat little boy, showing off his new Bumgenius Flip nappy!

First haircut, at 9 months! Or at least a trim - afraid the back of his hair could have done with being shorter, but I found it hard enough to cut what I did (oops! lol) He was brilliant while I was doing it though - sitting so perfectly still.

My boys in their matching trouser sets that I made for them! I love Painting Red Rhinos fabrics, and was very excited to get this "London" one with red buses - Benjamin was very excited too!

Abigail! (her brothers spoiled the photo with odd faces/eyes closed, but I thought it was a nice one of her!)

My dear family - Peter, Abigail, Benjamin, and Clement!

Showing off another nappy! :-) GreenKids Minkytimes, in blue/brown retro dots (I love these nappies for Clement, esp as his skin doesn't tolerate very many kinds).

Visiting daddy's office/room of books! :-)

Abigail in a dress I made for her last week. Having done so much sewing for my online shop (and sold 5 dresses so far!) I thought it was time I did a bit of sewing for my own children, so they'd not feel left out!

Birds in the back garden

A happy Clement - still only 2 teeth! :-)

And to bed I shall go!

Already 2010??!

I guess it's time I was blogging again! I've got another large batch of photos from the past couple of weeks. The first two were taken in the last week of 09 and then the rest are this year. I still can't get used to it being 2010 - I seem to continue typing/writing 2009!


A cheeky looking Clement digging in a kitchen drawer! Seems there's hardly anything he can't get his hands on; and more often than not, everything goes in his mouth next. But he *can* be amazingly gentle with books. Peter was watching him the other night with a large 250+ page large format paperback book and he was fingering through the pages for about 20 minutes(!!) without tearing or eating any of the pages - amazing!

Clement and his mummy - nice and cosy on her back! He was feeling a bit grumpy with teething and was tired (yet refusing to go to sleep!) so I popped him on my back while I did a few things around the house. He really enjoyed it (even if his face isn't showing it there), though I didn't exactly enjoy him trying to extract my hair!

Before sunrise on New Year's Day (if there was a sunrise! LOL) - we had LOTS of snow fall that morning and through the rest of the day. Basically, we're nearly 4 weeks into having more than enough white stuff on the ground. It started melting yesterday morning (meaning when the water re-freezes, the ground is super dangerous with ice!), but it is rather nice to see the white going away again. But who knows how long it will take for the pavements to be clear - they're still rather piled with snow, just not the 6+ inches we've had for most of the 4 weeks, or the 10 inches we had for a good while either.

Benjamin with his bowl of breakfast - waiting for some milk!

Abigail and her baby brother (seems Abigail didn't get her hair sorted that morning!)

10 inches of snow, measured on New Year's Day - not a drift, but piled up on top the garden waste recycling bin, seen in photo below

Yes, snow!

Cruising along the furniture - and keeping warm with lovely wool trousers! They're just fantastic for keeping little legs warm on the cold floors.

1st of January again, Benjamin in the snow

And Abigail, when mummy finally came outside to "play" in the snow with them (the first and only time I've been out there to try and enjoy the snow! I've mainly been hiding inside for the past month!)

"hmmm, I wonder which book I should pick first?"

"If only I could fit inside!" ... and he actually near enough threw a tantrum a few minutes later, being super frustrated that he couldn't climb inside!

He's invented a new way to use a baby walker and ....

actually gets places too! :-)

My 3 adorable children (all eating something, of course)! And they grow up so quickly (probably from all the eating they do! lol)! Benjamin is only 2 months away from his 3rd birthday, and Clement will already be 1 in just under 3 months.

So, wonder if there's anything else I should be saying? oh yeah, Clement gave us a bit of grief with a tiny speck in his eye! I first saw it on Tuesday last week, couldn't remove it at all (or move it) and it was a bit red, so we took him to the GP the next day. He tried but Clement wouldn't let him really. So we had antibiotic drops for his eyes and were told to come back in 2 days. So we were back on Friday and he tried again but Clem just refused to cooperate. So the GP phoned the hospital's eye dept for advice and they told us to come, so we got an appointment for Monday. Of course, that meant a trip to Inverness (80 miles round trip). The consultant (as well as our GP) was concerned that he'd require an anesthetic so they'd be able to remove the speck. But thankfully the consultant was almost as backward to the idea as I was, so he said he'd try to do it without, and wrap Clement tightly in a blanket while I held him. He told me to be prepared for C to do lots of shouting and screaming, but I thought that was better than having him "put under". However, Clement was totally amazing - he didn't let out so much as a peep, and was very still indeed! The consultant did make "donald duck" quacking noises to make Clement look at him, but in a very short space of time, using tiny forceps, he had the speck out! He showed it to me under the microscope (a big huge, table sized one!) and he thought it looked like paper. Never knew (presumably) chewed paper could cause so much trouble! So I'm having to make sure Clement doesn't add any more paper to his diet! ;-)

As for Benjamin, last week his eczema got very severe on his hands (same day Clement got he speck in his eye), following Benjamin having a major scratch of them while at church 2 days previous, when he had blood dripping down one hand! :-( Thankfully the GP was able to look at his hands at the same time we first took Clement to see him about the eye problem. The doctor thought it looked almost like it could have been impetigo! Certainly, the infection was nasty and B just couldn't stop scratching them, no matter what. So he prescribed some Fucidic Acid Lipid Cream which did an amazing job at clearing his hands. We'd previously (several months back) had Fucidic Acid along with hydrocortisone, which I felt always had a drying affect on his skin (not something you want with eczema!) and the GP agreed with me and though the Lipid cream would help to moisturise the skin. It had a different kind of steroid in it too, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, by Monday this week his hands were lovely and as of tonight (Thursday) they're still very clear. I know the calm periods always go again and it comes back bad, but it's soooo nice to see his skin so free of eczema just now! I'll always remember what Benjamin told me last month when he had a previous few days of good skin. I was just "being slightly silly" one night at bedtime by telling him that his eczema had gone away and was hiding from him and was telling him how happy I was that it wasn't so bad. And Benjamin's reply was "That's what God does!" At first I was puzzled and wondered how that tied in to what I was saying - and then I realised, he was saying it was God who made his eczema better! Afterall, he always prays that God would help him to get better and help him to not scratch. How precious that he was seeing this as an answer to prayer!

And, Abigail who is always so perfectly healthy, developed some patches of dreaded eczema behind her knees! :-( She'd talked about her legs hurting a couple of times over the past few weeks, but always had tights/clothes over her legs, so I assumed she just meant muscle/growing pains. But I then discovered sore and almost bleeding areas behind her knees, and felt awful that I'd not noticed it sooner! But amazingly, a few applications of the manuka honey cream made it all heal up! So I was very pleased/relieved about that.

And as for me, I've been busy sewing - especially now that I've got a lovely Pfaff overlocker! I've decided to open an online shop on various wahm (work at home mum)/handmade good websites. I started on Folksy last week but then found something called DaWanda, which is laid out very nicely and easy to use. So I've got a shop there, which you can see here: http://en.dawanda.com/shop/rachelsews There are some other online places I hope to list on as well, so this is just a start. I'm making little girl's dresses (pinafore/jumpers) and managed to have my first sale last night for 3 dresses, which was encouraging! :) So I must keep sewing and stock the shop a bit more - got lots of lovely fabrics ready for turning into dresses! But I've also got lots of fabrics for making clothes for my own children, which I must not forget. I bought over 30 metres(!!) of fabrics last week - lovely Painting Red Rhinos ones! And since these are no longer produced, I think they're too special to use for the dresses I'm selling - these will be for my darling children! Benjamin is excited and has been going around the house with these lovely fabrics, so I better get him some clothes made before the fabrics get spoiled! LOL And he'll be needing bigger "mitten pyjamas" soon too, so I was very pleased to get cute & fun knit fabrics too.

Right, it's after midnight, and I'll be getting up fairly early in the morning - so I must go to bed. We've finally got Abigail's wall up in her room today, which she's soooo excited about! And the joiner is coming back tomorrow to finish it up and also start on flooring the attic, etc. So need to be up and about early in the morning!

One last photo:

Typical boy - loves things with wheels! He found pushchairs with wheels! :)

Snow, Snow, Snow!

This photo here shows child-led homeschooling! LOL

I was getting breakfast ready one morning last week and looked in the sitting room to find ALL 3 children with a spelling/counting flip-book! It was so cute that I had to grab the camera of course! It was just too funny that even Clement at only 8 months was doing the same as the others! :)

Playing in the kitchen!

This wooden parking garage seems to be a favourite of Clement's! I think it was a well spent 4 pounds (charity shop bargain, of course!).

Peek-a-boo! :-)

On Saturday it started snowing - with a white covering to the ground, the children were determined to make a snowman!

Even if he was a very tiny one! :-) If only they'd known what snow was coming over the next few days....

We woke up the next morning to LOTS of snow - perhaps the most I've ever seen in my life (but since I'm from Texas, that's not surprising! ;-) ) I think we had about 6 inches! Thankfully we were able to "dig" the car out and go to church without too much difficulty, partly thanks to a neighbour giving our car a push to get it through the snow in the carpark. We had been invited to the manse for lunch after the service, which was really nice. We had a lovely meal and enjoyed the fellowship.

Back garden, taken from kitchen window

back garden & shed

Front garden and our car in the background!

The snow was still there on Monday and the children finally got out to play in it that afternoon. They made a bigger snowman, but we didn't get a pic of him until today (Tuesday) as seen above, with some sunshine too! Still lots of snow though, and it was snowing again tonight! Brrrrr! On Monday we went to the shops and got a week's worth of food in the house in case it got worse. So I'm just staying home until it thaws! :-)

My big, fat, healthy, happy, always hungry, darling Clement! :-D And yes, I love him to pieces (as I do all my children, of course!). But Clement just gives the best of smiles and always cheers everyone up! :)

He *loves* to watch the washing machine and dryer going round & round - esp watching the bubbles! I was trying to get a photo of him grabbing at it and looking very interested, but as soon as he heard my camera, he came after me! He's now learned that the camera has a little screen with him on it and he begs to see it - so it might be more difficult now to get photos of him! :) He's just about got 2 teeth now too and is almost properly crawling, though he still moves faster by pulling himself along with one arm tucked under him - he almost looks like a crippled person trying to move!

Don't suppose there's much else to report here. Benjamin's eczema stays about the same as it's been for the past couple of months now. It goes back and forth in how severe it is. We probably are using Eumovate (moderate potency steroid) for a couple of days every 10-12 days or so. I try to go as long as possible without it, but sooner or later he's scratching too much to do anything else. But thankfully it's really his hands/arms/wrists that are actually severely affected with the eczema. He still had it behind his knees but nothing bad (probably mainly because it's always covered with clothes) and a patch on his foot has returned slightly. But it's just a wonderful blessing to see him so much better than he was 6 months ago. And the fact that he nearly always sleeps through the night is amazing in itself, as parents of eczema children often talk about their children who are 3 and 4 times his age, and who've never slept through the night. He does wake up on occasions, but 6 months ago he was waking sometimes nearly every hour, or being awake and scratching for 1-2 hours solid. So we have a lot to be thankful for in this regard! And I've started giving him some liquid vitamins to see if we can build up his immune system at all to reduce the colds/bugs he seems to catch!

OK, it's ever so late, I must get to sleep!

Cold and Frosty (er, Frozen!) December!

Yes, it's cold here! Most days it's quite frozen and icy outside. Not that I'm out there much to know about it, but it's often a white view out the window! Some days it thaws a bit when the sun shines but other times (like today) it stays white and looks bitterly cold. Benjamin was asking for summer this morning. The poor things are in the house a lot of the time, especially days like today where their noses are already streaming - not sure below freezing temperatures would benefit them!

But they do have fun indoors too, as seen in the above pic! Sitting on the stairs playing with teddy bears.

...while Clement likes to get up to mischief!

On Wednesday last week we went along with a group of other local homeschoolers for an afternoon in a forest about 7 miles north of here. I think they usually go there once a month and a man from the forestry commission comes and does various activities with the youngsters. It was quite good fun (even if it was very cold). We went on a walk along this path and eventually came to a loch - which was frozen over! Well, a thin layer of ice was across it. Unfortunately one of the little boys (thankfully not one of mine) fell into the icy water! He didn't seem to mind really! So we all headed back and made a "camp fire" and roasted smores! It was quite dark by the time we finished (as seen a couple of photos down).

Abigail, Benjamin and Peter as we were beginning the walk (children trying to eat sandwiches in pita bread while walking!).

Round the camp fire, though can't see any flames here!

All warm and cosy in his bear snowsuit.

Clement feeding himself. Some days it seems he's only happy if he's stuffing his face! He's always going across the floor in his baby walker with a biscuit or rice cake in one hand and crumbs and mess following him - or rolling back on top of the said crumbs! I'm just very glad that we've got lovely solid floors in this house - it would have been a real nightmare to have his messes on carpet!

Brothers playing together!

Cuddles too! :-)

Never seems possible to get a photo of the 3 of them all looking at me at the same time, but this one isn't toooo bad!

Isn't he big??!

And he's big too!

Another one with the 3 together, and they're all looking at me too! But not sure Clement wants to be held so tightly! ;-)

Playing with a wooden parking garage

which he thinks is lots of fun (tho it would be even better if his big brother hadn't taken all the cars away!).

Playing with his tongue

Feeding Clement some yoghurt - and not making a mess either!

But this occasion was different - they've both got yoghurt beards! LOL

My sweet little girl who doesn't seem very little! Holding her doll that I bought for her from eBay! My mom bought me the same doll for my first birthday and having seen some listed for sale, I just had to buy one for my daughter! :-)

Now, I was probably going to say more but since it's quite late already (or early!), I think I'll just leave it here with photos and think of something to say another time!