The Kids Part Two: CassCass

In seeing how different the girls are, it is great to see how unique each individual is but challenging as a parent to learn not to make comparisons or have unhelpful expectations. Not to mention striking the balance between treating each one fairly and equally, whilst allowing for their character differences when interacting with them.

I have even more difficulty believing that CassCass is now three (at her next birthday she will be the age LissaLou was at the beginning of this year!!) but it is lovely to see how she is growing.

I really notice it in her speech, which is very fluent and clear in both languages. It is interesting to see how she automatically adjusts her language according to whether she is speaking to me or Bertie, and also just observing her language choice in different circumstances. She has started translating things to me, so she has obviously got the two languages differentiated. She does copy LissaLou though, mistakes included, so they both say "je vas" and "nhuit"!

CassCass is a ball of energy, and very agile which is lovely to watch. She loves climbing and jumping and, oh anything that involves moving! She can sit at the dinner table longer now, but she doesn't always! Sitting down activities are still limited with her, but she likes reading now a lot more.

Ah, but one time she is happy to be still is when she snuggles up beside mummy on her bed, a lock of mummy's hair in her hand and her thumb in her mouth! She loves this time and asks for it regularly, and she is quite happy to just lie, or to read, and occasionally chat.

CassCass still loves playing with Happyland, either on her own or with others. I think she is perfectly happy with her own company. She is still very wary of people, even those she knows well, and there are a few people (loud men!) of whom she is a bit scared. She has also developed a real phobia of people seeing her body, which I think stems from getting told off for going downstairs with no clothes on when we first arrived! At the beach on Sunday she made her daddy change her in the car with me standing blocking the window! She was most distraught at LissaLou just getting changed outside.

CassCass is a sensitive soul, and it is somthing I am praying about understanding better so that we can help and encourage her. She doesn't like being looked at sometimes, and gets upset if she thinks you are laughing at her, and she is still easily reduced to tears. She is also very specific about what you can or can't do with her, often being very independent. Some people are a bit insensitive or impatient with her, and I am working on how to handle this - avoid them? tell them to not say this or that? Sometimes we can intrude on another person's personal space (either verbally or physically), without giving thought to if they are comfortable with that, and I think this is what happens with CassCass. It is a helpful lesson to me that we are not all the same and so we shouldn't presume everyone will appreciate be treated in a particular way.

But equally she can be so full of joy and laughter and merriment! Some cousins of Bertie's have just arrived and it has been great to see how well she has taken to them, snuggling up and playing with them.

Her "obeying straight away" is definitely improving but depends entirely on how consistent we are! She will regularly push the boundaries deliberately, and it is very tempting to just let it go, so I have to pay attention to what I ask her to do or not do, to make sure that I really mean it and will follow it up. She will obey immediately if I mention the consequences if she doesn't! She also knows that she is not to shout or hit or push. I was struck by a story I read ecently on the importance of obedience, which told of a pastor's first funeral being for a three year old girl whose parents let her get away with disobeying whenever they told her to do something, and who was killed running in front of a car when she had been told to come back. It is hard work, but I believe so very important.

Often CassCass picks things up with little input from me (the joy of a second and subsequent child!). We began on the alphabet recently, learning the a b c song, but hadn't done anything for a few weeks, and suddenly she knows pretty much the whole song! She really enjoys reading the a b c book her Grandma made her (CassCass est adorable, CassCass est belle, CassCass est courageouse....) and recognises probably 16-20 letters. She enjoys counting too, and is often accurately counting objects around the place or in pictures.

CassCass and JoJo still get on really well, she plays very well with him, being gentle and sitting beside him with a toy or book. She will often steal his toy away though! When he wakes from his siesta, she goes in and opens the windows and entertains him till I come!

CassCass doesn't eat particularly well at the moment, but I suspect it is a mixture of too many biscuits in the diet (!), the heat, and not needing too much. I keep forgetting to serve child size portions, as mum helpfully advised! Perhaps I should serve food on saucers?! Eating when she is tired is a lost cause so that encourages me to have meals for midday and 6pm. If she has a siesta she will not go to sleep until 9 or 10 pm but otherwise is fast asleep within minutes around 7pm, then wide awake and raring to go at 6am. She does have night wakings regularly but I'm not sure what that's due to.

As with LissaLou, I am really looking forward to having CassCass at home for another year, as I feel that there is so much to learn about her and for me to understand in how to interact with her. I also quite simply enjoy the girls' company! The main challenge will be sharing my attention between her and LissaLou. As LissaLou is so much more vocal, it is easier for her to get my attention and to forget about CassCass who just gets on quietly with her own thing. I am hoping to find activities that will be able to involve them both, especially as CassCass is able to sit for longer periods.

The Kids Part One: LissaLou

LissaLou is now five and a half, amazing! She will be a six year old before you know it! She is a great little girl, sorry, I mean big girl!

I have noticed that as I think about and record the younger children's development, it is all about what they can do now, whereas with LissaLou it is a lot more focused on her attitude and shaping her character.

You'll remember from this post that obeying straight away has been our recent priority and she has got the hang of it very well. We try and chat and pray about it each morning with the girls as it seems to help remind them, and now that LissaLou has (generally but not absolutely) mastered that step, her daily challenge is to obey with a smile (as opposed to the constant "yeah but" that became her mantra, only to be replaced with kissing her teeth!!). Her other one is to come to me about any problems with CassCass (usually) or someone else, rather than hitting/pushing/screaming at the other person... She is so pleased when she has done a good job! (As am I!).

I think she has found it strange not being at school or having a routine over the last few weeks, as she has constantly been coming and asking "what can I do now?". I look forward to getting back into a routine with them and having all our toys and things back!

LissaLou is still deeply devoted to Hamie ("I love Hamie SO much mummy...) and will often retreat to her bed and suck her thumb whilst holding him. He has a very dinky house bag from mum which she loves carrying around with her too.

Reading is coming on bit by bit, and I think she might actually be better in french than in english right now. As for writing, her big dream is to write en attaché (the very impressive cursive style so beloved of all French people) which we have started on. But she gets very frustrated when she can't get things straight away - I can't tell you how much we struggled with k!

She adores JoJo (rather too violently at times!) and has a more love-hate relationship with CassCass. They will play beautifully for hours (always in french!) then end up fighting over something or another. I like the idea that shaping a child's heart is more important than shaping their external behaviour, but it is a challenge to know how to do so. However, it is really easy to chat with LissaLou about issues like this, for example today we discussed that it was more important to love CassCass (by being patient) than to have her play in a particular way.

LissaLou is a chatterbox. Oh boy. But (like her mother before her!) she is apparently very quiet at school, as the maitresse wouldn't like it otherwise. (Oh yes? and what about her poor mother?!)

She loves counting, particularly in french. I pity anyone learning to count in french, having to cope with their forty-twenty-seventeen, that is in fact 97!

One thing I have loved recently is every morning that we get up early and find ourselves on the balcony as a family, she will come along with her French Bible and get Bertie to read to us! A great example to us all!

The girls haven't really developed the same relationship with their Mamie as with their Grandma, as she, in common with parents and grandparents in general here, doesn't spend one to one time with them doing activities and involving them. So I have been pleased to see LissaLou joining Mamie in her sewing room and watching Mamie as she makes her a dress. Hey, perhaps I won't need to learn to sew after all....!

Oh, I stopped the pocket money (she hasn't noticed!) as inexplicably, the money kept going missing, wherever I hid it.... She didn't really enjoy doing her daily tasks so we will work on that in the autumn. She loves washing up with me though, so we can do that more often when we are away from fizz sinks!

LissaLou is looking forward to coming home and seeing her family and playing with her BF! I am looking forward to homeschooling with her and getting to know her and appreciate her even more.

Activities

I have been trying to do at least a couple of activities each day with the girls - as most of their toys have disappeared with the shipping, they have been a bit more at a loss as to what to do with themselves!

Lots of my ideas come from Trish Kuffner's Busy Books which I really would heartily recommend. I have the Toddler and PreSchooler ones and they have ideas that have been great from 2/3 year old CassCass through to her 10 year old cousin.

A few months back I spent a while cutting out photos of familiar folk (yes Grandma, Grandpa, Tatie Evie, Uncle Malc, you are all there!) and different scenes/objects then sticking them on cardboard. I could cover them in sticky back plastic but haven't got round to it. Then I wrote out cards with the name in french on one side and english on the other. We have used these cards in a variety of ways (mostly with LissaLou for the moment):
*matching the picture with the word in different games
*playing a version of Guess Who, where we each select a card and the other person asks questions to find out which card it is - not only did LissaLou manage to read each card by herself, but we also learned about different categories (man-made is our newest one)
*I tried a game where we guessed the card from clues, but that was a bit challenging
*with CassCass we played shout out a card and run and collect it
*when I run out of inspiration we make up stories involving the different pictures!

Recently we also had a session on bird's eye views (which funnily enough was a phrase that even Bertie, the English expert, didn't know!) - thanks to Mum for this idea. We matched objects with their shape and then drew a plan of the verandah and placed an object according to where it was on the plan. I think we are still grasping this one! However, it made for a lovely treasure hunt, where Stella had proper clues, CassCass had drawings with a cross, and LissaLou had a bird's eye view plan of the room with a cross for the position of the clue. They also got a tamarind with each clue. That went down really well!

We tried north south east and west this week. Once I explained which was which, LissaLou was supposed to run to the right side when I shouted it out. She claimed to be too tired, so I gave her a passion fruit to chuck in the right direction instead, which she then ended up running cheerfully after!! I would like to do a treasure hunt with directions ie walk three steps north but that will have to wait!

What else.... the girls had great fun cutting out scraps of paper and sticking them onto sticky back plastic today and it made for beautiful pictures. In fact, anything involving sticking goes down very well, but they have used up all the glue and lost all the pritt stick now!

Ah, and thanks to Tatie Evie for this popular one - we each cut out a postcard of Guadeloupe stuck on a piece of cardboard in jigsaw style then had fun putting them together again, then getting the other family members to do so! Last time we did this was Christmas 2007 and CassCass had a two piece jigsaw - she has sinced moved on!!

When we have had enough of all this creativity, we have been enjoying the computer by singing along to Cedarmonkees (!) on youtube or watching Balamory and Charlie and Lola. It's a fine life!

I shall go into more details about the kids in upcoming posts, for those interested...

Activities

We have now been on strike here for three weeks! Can you believe it! I am beginning to wonder if we will see work again before we leave...

There are lots of nice things about being on strike and one of those is having LissaLou and Bertie home. To keep LissaLou and CassCass occupied, I have started organising activities which start at 9am (when Baby JoJo goes to sleep) downstairs on the big table.

So far we have done lots of jigsaws - we have one where you put a sequence of three pictures together to tell a story and I got LissaLou to tell me the story in english and french which was fun to hear. We have worked a bit on numbers, particularly the teen ones and I was amazed to hear CassCass do all of the numbers from 1-10 and some from 11-20, in both languages! She has also grasped counting objects and can get it right sometimes.

Using the above mentioned jigsaw, we pkayed with Stella and Wilson the memory game where we had to find the matching pieces. It was hard! Having to remember the location of three cards rather than two during the turns of three other people was tough, but Stella managed splendidly. The rest of us depended on working out if they matched from the shape of the pieces!

One morning was a baking time - we have made several batches of scones now (no eggs!!) and they have all come out completely unscone like! Still, very tasty with some jam. We have also made lots of delicious bread since flour and yeast is something we have been able to buy. CassCass loves stirring and eating the dough, but LissaLou helps with most of the baking now. I keep trying to remember - it's all about PROCESS not PRODUCT. But I can't help intervening when the spoon goes in the mouth and then back in the bowl....!
One day I decided to hand over to Bertie and he got them painting leaves which produced some beautiful pictures and not a little boasting from him over his talent at activity organising! He used rainwater as apparently it creates a better effect. I was pleased at having the time to write one of my several overdue letters.

As the strike shows no sign of ending, I shall keep browsing through my Busy Books for more ideas of fun activities!

This Week's Activities

With LissaLou at home, I decided to do a bit of reading and writing which we haven't done in a while. Yesterday we worked on at and ate words, then today we have moved on to ee and ea and ch words. It is good fun working with her and seeing her get things, though she is very easily distracted! We played a game I read about online (see the photo I took above) - I wrote out various words and we each had a keyring. If she read the word correctly it went on to her ring and if not it went on mine! I wasn't sure what words to use but now I have a better idea relating to the sounds we did today. She was very chuffed at how many she had anyway! I also found out that she has learnt the ou and oi sound at school.

CassCass is a bit harder to get to sit down for long, but we did an activity to do with circles and triangles - she knows both words but kept mixing the concept of shape up with that of colour.

We made some delicious buns for our day out, but I forgot to take a photo and they are all gone! We put cream cheese and icing sugar on the top then finished them off with hundreds and thousands and smarties, yum!

Yesterday I attacked a BIG project I have had in mind for months - sorting through Mamie's photos! It is such fun seeing all the family from years back but I needed a lot of help in correctly classing them. Now I am going to try and put them in date order and then I have to work out how to put them in albums. So Mum and Evs should be able to enjoy them when they arrive!

Another project I have in mind is writing a family tree - I sat down with Papy to do this in December but didn't get very far...some I didn't understand, others he had forgotten the names of. As he pointed out, he has been far too busy bringing up his own family to worry about the names of his nieces and nephews! I shall try Mamie instead. In fact I should have known to try her first of all, as isn't it always the woman who has the best grasp of such details....!

Now I am off to eat a sinobol that Bertie has kindly made.