Sunday, September 24, 2006

aah bless

Hafsah's fallen asleep in front of the Tarawih prayers, so shall rapidly escape to bed, night wa salamoaleykum

errrr my brain is imitating cotton wool

to join in my computer is also being v slow so not much is getting done, slowly. Have had some bad nights with Hafsah. I'm tryingnot to feed her every 2 hours /as she's demanding) I was not bothering to check the time before and just feeding her, but I decided enough is enough. She does fall asleep without feeding in the day quite well so I don't know why it's sucha problem at night. Basically I'm finding it hard to say/write much coherently. Have fiddled arounf with comments settings recently and must have disabled them or something, but hopefully things are back to normal. I don't really know what I'm doing technically withthis blog, like do I have time to read all the stuff about it ? MashAllah Hafsah's watching Taraweeh prayers on the tv. Ihaven't fasted I feel dizzy from exhaustion. Poor kids are getting the brunt of my tiredness as hub is away. Did try out the 'story bag' idea which M enjoyed and did get them quite excited.
That's it, I may start dribbling over the keyboard withtiredness..

Monday, September 18, 2006

Seemingly endless colds.

Every morning I’m waking, hoping to find my cold symptoms, and the kids’, to have disappeared. But no, the sniffs and coughs still persist, so I don’t know if it’s some post-viral infection or something, or maybe just the consequence of the children coming into contact with so many different children combined with my immune system being less than adequate due to sleep deprivation. I think I’ve been like this since M was born, every winter getting an ongoing cold. I remember asking my GP if she thought I had anything wrong with my immune system but she almost laughed it off, and after seeing that documentary about the boy in the bubble who had NO immunity, I realise I must have something working , Alhamdulillah, but not as much as pre-children when a cold would last a week tops.
H’s still very excited by initial letter names of family members’s names, he asked me today ‘What’s Dadi Hazoor’s (grandmother) colour?’ I was baffled for a few moments and then realised he was referring to the painting he’d done with me last week of the different letters in different colours. He also got v excited by ‘Countdown’ today which I switched on at a point where I just had to collapse on the sofa (throbbing head etc) and it was quite a productive time, H spotting all the letters he knows, M doing some exercise, running up and down until the clock stops ticking and doing a funny pose at the v. end, and S managed to spell a few words. In fact it was the first time I managed to think of a word that was the same as one of the contestant's ! (they must have been having an off day too with only a 6 letter word !)
M and S almost spurring each other on with Surah learning (and me as they are doing the ones I don’t know) I think S may be a bit concerned M will overtake him so InshAllah it will encourage him to practise.

Bits from the last blur of a week (Alhamdulillah for tillfällig föräldrepenning)

Have had some pretty bad nights with Hafsah, waking too often plus H also waking before crack of dawn, so DH able to take day off (one benefit of Swedish social security system) so I could sleep, as I also still have a bad cold. If the normal carer of the child is ill then the other parent can get 75% pay if they take the day off to care for him/ her. It was so strange to wake up at lunchtime, like the whole day had gone past.
The sun was out and Hafsah enjoyed sitting on the balcony (for a little while).
H taking away anything Hafsah may have in her hand and be interested in. A shame as her attention span for these things is so short any way. As Libby Purves wrote, she discards toys like a newspaper editor discarding lost cat stories. That is apart from bank statement envelopes which she loves, its that crackly plastic window I think. She does like to attempt to destroy any form of paperwork to hand, a new excuse for S if he forgets his homework maybe?! Everything is now going into the mouth, and also she’s in the habit of poking her tongue out a lot nowadays. H is getting used to his 3 min punishments on his bed, (Supernanny style). I mean get used to, as in he stays on the bed, and he does actually change his behaviour if threatened (oh ! should I have said ‘warned’)with this (sometimes).

Friday, September 08, 2006

Voices can’t be breaking surely?

8 Sep 2006

The boys and Hafsah are all still ill, although H is pretty much over his cough. S and M have funny squeaky voices which sound as if they’re going through puberty, but of course they just have an infection of some kind. I still have this general feeling of malaise, and probably the same thing as them overcast by tiredness. However Alhamdulillah she’s slept better these last two days. The older two both had v high temperatures for about 24 hours, but now they’re back in form, cajoling each other, just with strange voices. Hafsah has a slight cough, but otherwise OK.
She now enjoys ‘peek-a boo’ type games and her legs move rapidly back and forth when she’s excited about something. I was also pleased to see she’s a bit ahead according to the *what to expect in the first 12 months’ book. She turns to a voice very readily, when I’m replaying the video clips on my phone (sometimes breastfeeding gets a bit tedious) she pulls away when she hears DH’s voice come out of the phone. She’s normal motor wise, as one of the boys (I can’t remember which) wanted to see if she could sit up alone, and of course, no, she just flopped to the side. (I did catch her, don’t worry).
Yes, it’s just as well their voices are a little quieter than usual as DH had a chat with the Housing Association rep last night, and got out of him that there have been more moans about the noise eminating from our house. Well my ears' nerve cells have certainly been exposed to above- the safety- limit levels of noise on numerous occasions. I tell the boys, don’t be surprised if I’m saying ‘What?’ all the time when I’m old and they’ve grown up. They should use my sons screaming ability as a form of weaponry in the army, or as a torture device. No, a less aggressive use could be to crack all the glass in the recycling plant. I am exaggerating but my ears feel v strange after their screams, similar to having been on the mobile phone too long.
S had his first ‘hemspråk’ lesson. When I went to drop him off I expected to hear the familiar tones of English being spoken by the people waiting, but all I could hear was Swedish. Afterwards S said it was v v easy, just doing the alphabet, including ‘zee’ and seeing if they know the days of the week (?!). All the children seem to speak American English,as does the teacher. I doubt if all are fluent, as S said some didn’t know the days. S was one of the youngest as well. Well it remains to be seen if this will be of any use to him.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Back to school, then back to home..

Nope, I haven’t started home educating, as much as I would like to, if I had the Swedish linguistic ability and enough patience. H has been home the last few days with cold/ croup and now S has been home with a high temperature and headache. M, the immune system king remains fine but it is difficult to persuade him to go to school if his brothers aren’t. Alhamdulillah it isn’t compulsory for his age (6) so I didn’t even bother to debate it with him, and just told the teachers he’s not coming.
So these past few days continue to be a blur due to Hafsah’s twice a night wakings, with a late 11 pm bedtime and early morning (6- 7 am) I make that waking less than every 4 hours which is just not on ! However tend to give in and feed her as her weight needs to go up a bit, but the words rod and back spring to mind.
H continues with his difficult phase, reminding me of the phrase from the children's book‘If you love a bear’ ‘ it’s not easy loving bears when they’re like that’ (when feeling cross). When I say to DH, if only he’d learn Swedish, I would take him out of nursery, he replies, probably correctly, ‘I don’t think you cope with that’ I think it’s the whole jealously, attention seeking business. Learning the concept of ‘no’ or ‘wait’ is just taking too long for me. He showed his true feelings the other day saying ‘I want Hafsah to died’ Then he and M went on to have a counter argument ‘I want YOU to die’, it was all a bit negative, with the strange thing that probably both of them esp. H have no real concept of death.

Other sort of educational stuff, M was very happy to write out the alphabet and then wanted to do the numbers. We had done undercase and caps in letters and then he wanted to know if there were big and little numbers too ! I said no, but I suppose you do have to write them a bit smaller in fractions, but not really relevant at this age.
Otherwise have been trying to sort out our wills, and learning how to get a bargain on eBay. (Always check Amazon first, it can be cheaper and much less hassle (shopping, not wills, although it wouldn't surprise me if you could get one done from there too!)