Twins Take Over the Kitchen

So this was supposed to be posted last week, but we had a mad time trying to finish decorating our bedroom before our new HUGE bed arrived and basically life just got in the way, but hey better late than never right?

On wednesday night I was cooking our tea when the girls came in offering to help, stir and taste test of course.  I must be honest here, our kitchen is very small and feels quite crowded when there are more people than just me in there so I will admit when I’m rushing and flustered I am often guilty of ushering the kids out and getting them to do boring things like setting the table and buttering bread instead.

I do feel bad when I do this so on Wednesday E&Ff came in and as I was in no rush I let them stay.  After a few questions about gravy, like why I use corn flour instead of normal flour, one of them (I’m afraid I can’t remember which) suggested that they should do all the cooking right from breakfast to supper the next day.

I was quite taken aback by this offer but thought it was a great idea.  They love cooking and can make simple meals and cakes. Expecting a barrage of question I was surprised to soon find myself alone again as they squirreled themselves away making plans, searching for recipes and writing a shopping list!

Our menu for the next day was:

Breakfast – crumpets and cup of tea

Lunch – beans on toast

Tea – Spaghetti Bolognese followed by chocolate cupcakes

Breakfast and lunch went swimmingly (lets be honest not much could have gone wrong there) and then it was time to take their list and buy the ingredients that we didn’t already have for tea.  They did really well in the supermarket.  They must have learnt something from my obsessive reading of labels and checked all the “price per 100g” on the bottoms of the price labels and picked up the types I usually buy *disclaimer here, I usually buy the value range on the majority of items but there are some sneaky things that they remembered.

After buying some much needed school shoes and our groceries we made our way home and the girls set about following my spag bol recipe.  They have peeled and chopped before but onions were a new one to them yet after a quick masterclass (don’t chop the root bit off) they were set. Many tears later, luckily from the onions not the loss of fingers, we had onions in the pan cooking.  They made a fab team as they took it in turns stirring the pan and chopping the mushrooms.  E gets a little freaked out by raw meat(this is something we are working on) so Ff quite happily put that in the pan and between the two of them managed to get the whole lot of ingredients in and bubbling.

Next they started on the cupcakes, now this is where they got adventurous. They weren’t interested in using my boring recipe that they always make, they wanted something special and fair play they managed to find the most scrummy moist chocolate cake recipe I have ever tasted.  This is the recipe they used here.

Did they need my help? Apart from draining the spaghetti because our pans are sooooo big? Nope, they asked advice of course but I didn’t physically lift a finger!

Did anything go wrong? Only some small issues, like the spaghetti was overcooked, but lets be honest that easy to do even if you have been cooking it for years.  we ended up eating quite late, but I foresaw that and fed the baby something earlier. The only other issue was that the cupcake recipe called for only 15 minutes in the oven but they took 25 minutes and went a little flat because they had to open the oven to find that out.

So did I learn anything from this? Yes! I learnt that my two 12 year olds are more capable than I give them credit for, they can be safe in the kitchen, follow recipes, go shopping in a supermarket not just the local shops.  I also learnt that when I am stressed and rushing to do 13 things at once in the kitchen that I have two sous chefs willing to step in and do something.  Just last night I had one keeping an eye on the fajita filling in the pan while the other was making the pancake mix at the table while I managed to console a screaming baby.

If you’d like my spaghetti Bolognese recipe I’d be happy to post it.  It’s very simple, even a 12 year old could follow it!

Waiting For Spring to Set Us Free

Over the winter our house can get a little stressful, a lot messy and really, really noisy with our four older children stuck in close confinement for months on end. Lot’s of games are played, books read and TV is watched. Teasing is rife and levels of sarcasm are at their highest.

Come this time of year we are all so grateful for the first signs of spring and the weather staying dry for more than five minutes at a time. They are always rubbing each other up the wrong way and even the nicest of games often end in tears and they are bursting to get out of the house to run free and visit their friends.

This year has been even harder having a young baby in the house. We have been less able to just get out of the house whenever, even to go for a simple walk. Just seeing daylight has been a luxury, they go to school and it’s dark, they come home from school and it’s dark. The weekends always seem to have the worst weather making it impossible to find somewhere suitable for all of them without spending a fortune.

Over the years we have learnt to let the noise drown into the background. So much so that it has gotten to the point that the kids have to make sure I’m actually looking at them know I have heard them 100%. I know, bad, bad mami. But seriously,  have you ever sat in a room filled with kids trying to be quiet? The room is far from silent. One child is quiet, the sniffing is almost inaudible, as is the pencil on paper, the turning of pages, the whispering under their breath as they read. Times that by four and you get a hell of a noisy room. One will start tapping their pencil on the table or humming a song and within moments we are having a full blown rendition of the Frozen soundtrack, or the latest One Direction song.

Its lucky we have never been the type of family to be overly quiet when a baby is asleep.  Yes we try to avoid loud bangs and shouting but if they happen its not normally an issue.  The best thing to be in this house is a heavy sleeper, we have one light sleeper and she rarely gets a decent night poor thing!

So now we wait for spring.  Our spring cleaning has started, we are decorating and we wait to throw open the windows and let all the mustiness out and the fresh air in.  We wait to be able to go out and enjoy the beautiful nature that we are so lucky to be surrounded by and introduce it all to the newest member of our family.

Mostly we wait for the chance to be more than six feet from another human being.

How about you? Have you about had enough of winter now and are excited for spring to arrive?  Let me know below.

 

Our Reflux Story – part 1

So we are still going through the hell that is infant reflux but I would be here all day typing our journey so far. I have decided instead to break it down into smaller more manageable chunks so this is the first part of the story:

With all of the other issues we dealt with during the first few weeks of O’s life, vomiting was one thing that happened very rarely. Now let me tell you that I have had some really sicky babies in the past and it was pleasant not to have to change him 3 times before breakfast or to need a never ending supply of bibs/muslin cloths.

But alas at 9 weeks out lives took on a more sicky smelling aroma when out of the blue, one day he started to be sick. All. The. Time. Now a lot of reflux babies projectile vomit but this wasn’t how it was with O. It would literally dribble out of his mouth continuously. I remember sitting waiting in baby clinic for an hour and I went through 3 muslin cloths drenched in foul, cheesy smelling liquid before he even got weighed.

He started doing the usual spitting up that babies get when they are winded but we also had feeds where he was still attached to my boob and he would be getting sick just because he fidgeted a little.  It would come pumping out around his mouth and we would both get drenched.  He would then get hungry quickly as he’d lost most of his feed and so the vicious circle would continue.

It was after he had been vomiting for a few days that the crying started. It wasn’t colic, even though the doctors insisted that it was. If you have never had a colicky baby you should really count your blessings.  Babies with colic will scream, for hours on end (usually in the early evening) it doesn’t matter what you do, you can hold them, change them, sing to them, lay them down in their bed alone. Nothing will soothe them.  But this child could be distracted, even if only for a few moments sometimes.  He was consolable.

We had tried many things help ease his pain including:

Infacol, this is an orange flavour liquid that helps all of the little bubbles in baby’s tummy collect into one big bubble which is easier to burp up

Gripe Water, which is a clear liquid made with dill and fennel among other ingredients which warms a baby’s tummy and is quite soothing.

Colief, with is a really expensive yet teeny tiny bottle containing the enzyme lactase.  This is sometimes given to colicky babies who may be suffering a temporary form of lactose intolerance.  It helps them break down the lactose until their immature tummy can take over, this is usually around 3 months old.  LV was lactose intolerant until he was 5 or 6 years old, so it made sense that his brother may be getting it too.

We had positive results for a few days with each of these products, the crying and writhing pain eased but the vomiting continued) but they soon came back with a vengeance. The only thing we introduced that really helped us all a lot? A dummy (pacifier).  I had been adamant that he wasn’t going to have a dummy, we hadn’t needed one on LV, we wouldn’t need one now.  But after 3 weeks of what felt like constant crying we were all willing to try anything.

He was 12 weeks old and he never had anything other than boob in his mouth so at first he would gag on it, but it kept him distracted trying to figure out what the hell this thing was.  after a week or so he got the hang of it and if nothing else it helped us to get him to sleep a little easier.

I will carry on our story soon but have you and your family dealt with reflux?  I would love to hear from others who are going through this problem.  Also has your loved one grown out of reflux? What helps/helped you deal with it or what tips do you have?

6 months old, how time flies

This is being posted a bit late due to O going through a growth spurt and life just generally getting in the way. It was supposed to be posted on Thursday 9th.

Today is a very happy day for us as O reaches his 6 month mark. He has gone from a tiny, pale 5lb 3oz baby struggling to breathe to a big bouncing boy who loves to gently caress your face before trying to pull your nose off!

We have had our struggles, he was a month early, birth was a bit traumatic for us both, special care, shallow latch, extended jaundice, weight loss, tongue tie, failure to thrive, early weaning, reflux, increased liver enzymes and possibly some other things that have slipped my mind but you get the picture. There was nothing major, but enough to keep our lives slightly stressful!

But now most of those struggles are over, his latch is still useless but we cope. All the other issues have or are slowly resolving themselves. Now we have days filled with giggles and hugs instead of blood tests and weigh ins.

O can’t quite sit up unaided for more than a few seconds yet but he is almost there and just yesterday he started holding his hands up for us to pick him up. He loves playing peekaboo and bouncing on a knee singing ‘mynd ar y ceffyl’ a Welsh nursery rhyme which literally translates to ‘going on the horse’.

This is the first time we got to see him a few hours after birth

And here is our big boy now on a family walk all bundled up in a sling with mami

I wonder what the next 6 months will bring…

Christmas Traditions

So tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Baby O is completely oblivious to it all of course but the other four are so excited. They have written their lists, made their gingerbread houses and are now eagerly awaiting tomorrow so we can put up the tree!

Yes that is right, in a world where people are packing away the Halloween decorations and dragging out the Christmas ones at the same time my poor children have to wait until Christmas Eve to get theirs. Aren’t I an evil!

Actually if I’m honest, this is a tradition that we just happened upon, very unpleasantly, about nine years ago and it stuck. I even offer them every year to put it up earlier and they refuse, saying that this is the way they like it.

So how did it all start? Well….
I had the bright idea, in about November, that I wanted to rip all the wallpaper off in our living room and then redecorate. Of course we didn’t take into account that Christmas was fast approaching, things didn’t go quite as smoothly as they should have and with 3 little girls under 3 it wasn’t going to happen as fast as it necessarily should. So, it was literally Christmas eve when we were finally putting on the finishing touches.

Now for the unpleasant part. At around 5pm (after ALL the shops were closed) I went up to the attic to fetch the tree. Knowing it was right next to the hatch I only popped my head up and stuck my hand out to grab the box, luckily I grabbed the tree first as when I moved a piece of cloth about 3 dead rats went toppling out, it still sends shivers down my spine even thinking about it.

Let me tell you I nearly fell down that ladder with a screech! I slammed the hatch down and refused to go back for the decorations and so did hubby. It looked like a rat massacre with blood and bodies everywhere. Yuck. Now we do live in a 150 year old house in a valley surrounded by mountains and our back garden is the same level as our upstairs so rats and mice are always in people’s attics, unless they have been renovated. But never in my life had I seen anything like this. Even the rentokil guy was astounded at the sight!

Any who, onto the nice christmas tradition. We now had a tree, but no lights, no decorations and three little ones expecting Santa, so where was he going to put the gifts? After much ringing around I managed to beg and borrow some lights, tinsel and a few baubles. The girls woke on Christmas morning thinking the Elves had put up the tree, while Santa delivered the gifts. It was lovely. E&Ff had made their minds up that’s what had happened and who were we to spoil their fun?

It took quite a few years for me to tell them it wasn’t the elves but it had to be done, it was getting so hard and time consuming on Christmas eve waiting for them to go to sleep before I could start. But they were fine with it, they loved playing elves helping me decorate the tree. So now that is how we spend Christmas eve afternoon. But now I always check IN THE MORNING if everything is there and the lights work just in case lol.

Our other tradition is new pj’s. They love unwrapping them on Christmas Eve so we can all snuggle up with hot chocolate and a Christmas film.

Do you have any Christmas traditions? How did they start? I’d love to hear about them.

Life with twins. Who’s the big sister?

Life with 12 year old twin girls is a very melodramatic life indeed.  Things can never go easy, one of them always feels they are missing out on something or has done a millisecond extra of chores than the other one. They are always comparing grades and lengths of written work.

Don’t get me wrong, they get on great most of the time. if one is home from school, I’m continually asked how long it will be before the other is home.  They still sleep tangled together and truly do depend on each other.

But their life has always been a competition right from little, my hair is curlier than yours, but mine is longer, my feet are bigger, but I’m a cm taller than you.  Seriously they have been competing like this since they could talk!

When they were small it was easier to minimise the arguments, making sure they had identical toys, even books!  they had the same clothes, even if they chose to dress differently.  We made sure the plates looked the same, I didn’t go as far as counting peas, but it wasn’t far off!

Yes all parents compare, we (and you!) would be lying if we said we never have but we did try to make a conscious effort to not do it earshot of any of the kids.  But when we realised quite how argumentative they were we made on thing secret.  One tiny piece of information that now they are getting older and I hate to say it more quick-witted than us is getting harder to conceal.

what is this simple little piece of information they are so desperate to glean from us?

They don’t know who is the oldest!  there are a few choice adults who are in the know, like grandparents, aunts etc but it has been a secret for so long I’m sure not even all of them remember!

Why did we do this?  Because in all the arguments they have had over the years neither has been able to pull rank on the other.  Neither can say ‘I’m the big sister so I’m in charge, I’m right, or you have to listen to me… you know how it goes with siblings.

Over the last few years they have actually been conspiring together to get us to slip up. Even though it means that I now have to really think every time I get asked an obscure question by any of my kids, because they have drafted the younger two in as well, I think it is a great thing that they are learning teamwork!

When will we tell them the truth?  Probably on their 18th birthday.  I have been trying to conceive of a cute way to let them know rather than just blurting it out but I haven’t settled on anything yet.

do you think we are cruel, or mad, or even ingenious to have done this?  Are you a parent of twins? let me know how you deal with the twin rivalry thing.

Hello out there

So I have deleted this post more than once already and I’m still not sure of what I want to say!  Hello, would be a good place to start, so….. Hi!*wave*

I’m Katie and if you hadn’t sort of guessed from the name of the blog am a stay at home Mami of five.  Yes, I know our family is a bit bigger than the norm but it was our decision to have this many and it has been a manic, fun filled twelve years since we had our first, and second. Thats right, we had twins first and still decided to have more!

So a little about us. We are a bilingual family, myself and the kids all speak Welsh and English.  Hubby only speaks English, but understands more Welsh than he realises most days.  Having read a few blogs, I think I would be classed as ever so slightly crunchy.  I wear my babies, use cloth nappies, have breastfed all my children and would prefer to eat real food than processed.  However, in reality I will admit that I used a double buggy when e&ff were babies, a combination of sling/double/single buggy/buggy board when the three girls were little, only managed to breastfeed the twins until they were 12days old, only used cloth on the two youngest and processed food is my failing most days when the time goes by so fast – but it is something I am working on.

Hubby is an HGV mechanic and totally into his gaming, he even has a YouTube channel  where he uploads videos, mostly of minecraft.

The Kids

We have E&Ff first, they are 12 and every bit tween girls as they could possibly get, from complete silliness one moment to full on teenage strops the next. I’m sure one teenage girl is bad, but two?  Give me tantruming toddlers anyday!

Next we have LM our ten year old, she is about as daft as they come, the phrase sillier than a box of frogs comes to mind. I have been instructed by her to tell you that she is actually a sophisticated, smart and intelligent young lady 😉

LV, our first son, is seven, named after his dadi and determined to be just as tall one day although he would rather be an evil scientist when he’s older.

Finally we come to our last little bundle of joy, O is now four months old and full of very cheeky grins.  He is the object of the three girls obsessions and loves getting passed from one pair of open arms to another. 

So that is us in a nutshell.  What about you? What is your family like?  I would love to hear off you. If you have any questions or if there is a subject you would like me to post about let me know.