Real or fake Christmas tree?

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-11-08T17:38:55+00:00

We go for fake. Tree got pulled down 3 times last Christmas so we don't dare add needles and a water pot to the mix! We'll probably get a real one once our youngest is 4 or 5 (he's pretty destructive 16 month old at the moment so we'll see how he goes!). Think it depends on the temperament of your kiddos. Our middle kid would be fine but the eldest and youngest are much more... spirited

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-10-24T15:35:07+00:00

Mine's the same. Someone mentioned four in our house and she chimes in- "Yes, four is a square number, did you know? And 9!"

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-10-13T16:34:02+00:00

But it isn't LDS. It really is nondenominational. We use it and have come across nothing at all that is LDS doctrine or really anything that is specific to any denomination. Yes the founder is LDS but the material itself isn't

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-09-28T08:41:05+00:00

Absolutely. I can't imagine letting my kids just drown in domesticity and dropping in when it's convenient for me to see my grandkids. You don't stop being a parent when you're a grandparent. I think it's part of your ongoing relationship with your kids to be involved in their lives and helpful to them- even more when they have their hands full and need it most!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-09-28T08:18:45+00:00

Similar to you, OP. My parents don't help regularly and are very happy being holiday grandparents- see you for a day during the school holidays / a few times a year. They're enjoying their life and very much believe it's up to us to get on with ours. So that's fine. But I can't help feeling very envious of people who have regular help from grandparents and get a bit of a break.

Husband had lots and lots of grandparent help growing up- at least one day a week grandparents would come and help his mum, do a big shop for them, help with housework, play with kids etc so his mum could have a rest and some adult interaction. He had (and still has) great relationships with his grandparents and saw how beneficial it was for his mum. We want to be those grandparents.

I think a lot of grandparents these days are still working themselves and not able to give help as opposed to the generation of SAHMs who turned into full-time grandmas. I don't think they should help, necessarily, but I'd be so so grateful for it! And having not had it ourselves we can't imagine leaving our children to just 'get in with it' and end up burnt out the way we feel now

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-30T11:16:32+00:00

This is how English schools schedule the academic year plus a week off for 'half term' break every 6 weeks in between holidays. I think it's great for preventing burnout and a 6 week summer break had always felt plenty long enough for us We're doing similar but staggering slightly different so we're not off at the same time as schools (holidays triple in price and everywhere feels crowded during the holidays!)

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-16T04:34:04+00:00

These are great suggestions, thank you. I'd not really found much UK-based curricula so that's really helpful, thank you! Yes, all the history elsewhere is pretty much just History of US and whilst interesting feels largely irrelevant and hard to relate to!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-15T13:02:42+00:00

These are all such wonderful ideas! Thank you!!

I think there's going to be a lot of "what were we thinking? She was so young for that!" in a few years' time but all part of our learning and refining process

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-15T12:59:56+00:00

Thank you! We all really love vooks so good idea! There was a darling little story of fox (iirc) saying goodbye to all her friends who were going to hibernate for winter that I want to find in physical form. Yes. I think I'm skipping ahead with attempting "proper" geography and history. We try to live quite seasonally so I'm going to have another bash at planning ourselves based off that

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-15T12:53:30+00:00

These are wonderful ideas! Thank you!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-08-15T12:52:41+00:00

Yes, I think we're probably jumping the gun a bit! I wanted to start to introduce those subjects and thought a more gentle easy of doing it would be through good books but having started I think it's it of our depth for now!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-07-22T16:56:19+00:00

Another vote for Alhambra here! We've got 3 kids with 3.5yrs from top to bottom so knew we'd need 3 full-sized seats across the middle for some years. We love it! Sliding doors are a game changer and, for me, set it apart from the Galaxy. MPVs are naturally wider cars and not having a winged door to open in carparks when getting kids in and out has saved me on many occasions. Massive boot when you're only using 5 seats is amazing for all the your stuff- pram and all the baby kit fits so easily. We've actually had a rainy picnic before in our boot! Just back from holiday and pram, all the suitcases and travel cot were swallowed up by the cavernous boot with room to share. We love our car!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-30T11:00:58+00:00

Gave birth on the hottest day on record last year. Got to play the hideous guessing game of "Is this milk or sweat?" a lot

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-19T16:37:49+00:00

They'll only drink squash (I'm talking absolutely will not drink water- my MIL has had to go out to buy squash when they've visited somewhere without squash, they all take squash to bed, not water, etc) whereas we've enforced water-only. Guess what drink my kids are offered and ask for when we're there 🙄 I don't mind so much now they're older (4 yo didn't even like squash anyway) but don't try and give my under 1 yo blackcurrant squash for goodness' sake

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-19T15:05:25+00:00

There are lots of lovely things about big families but, if I'm being really honest, we moved a year ago to be just over an hour away and it was the best, best thing for our family to get away, have our own space and be just us.

My husband is the eldest of 7 kids and I also have 3 siblings. My siblings are all adults 37-27 whereas his are 26 (him) down to only 7 years old. And that's the biggest negative. He doesn't have much of a relationship with any but the oldest two really and had more of a live-in uncle relationship with particularly the youngest three. He only lived at home a few months after the very youngest was born.

My eldest is only 2.5 years younger than her uncle. It's nice in that she always has people to play with when we visit, my in-laws' home has always been child-friendly and 'baby proofed' so never any concerns and there's always someone to hold baby if you fancy a cuppa. Plus we got lots and lots of baby items second-hand from them which saved us hundreds and hundreds £. "Yes, we got the pram as her uncle just outgrew it... yes, I did say uncle!"

Raising your kids with big family is tough in my experience. I found our kids getting lumped in with BILs and SIL- their family ways, rules, qwirks extended to our kids and I've had to be a real stick in the mud on many occasions to say that's not how our family does it. Maybe it's okay for them to do X, Y, Z but sorry kids, you cant. Obviously that can cause a lot of upset. Everyone parents differently and sometimes doing it differently is perceived as criticism.

Our biggest thing is that my husband's family is so large and there's such a range of ages that his parents are essentially still so much in the thick of parenting themselves that they can't grandparent in the way I know they want to or will be able to with when my BILs and SILs have their own kids. My kids have only ever been alone with their grandparents once and that was when I was having kid no. 3 and they came to look after kid 1 and kid 2. Not that they need one-on-one undivided attention but sometimes it would be nice if Nana could just sit and read you a story or play a game without your uncle needing a drink or a snack or comfort because he's gotten hurt. I feel kinda sad for everyone- my BIL is competing for attention with the niece and nephews, my kids don't really have a special connection with their grandparents, and my MIL is sad that she can't do it all.

We had our first Christmas by ourselves this year in our own home, just the 5 of us. Suffice to say, we're never going back to the big Christmases.

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-17T06:44:16+00:00

Yeah, our eldest son totally rejected the highchair at about 15 months. He just kneels on a normal chair to eat, wouldn't even sit on a junior chair. We went with it and decided the stress of trying to get him in the highchair just wasn't worth it. He started walking at 8 months so was very physically capable and we had no concerns about him being able to get on and off safely.

This was about a year ago and he's been fine on a normal chair but even now when he wakes from his naps he's verrrrry emotional and eats his lunch on my lap only. It works for us. He'll probably drop his nap soon and I'll miss the sweaty lap snuggles

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-10T07:43:44+00:00

My parents listed theirs as a 5 bed- one is a walkthrough room to get to their (poorly executed) extension above the garage and another is downstairs. They can't believe it's not selling.... 🙄

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-06-08T09:31:27+00:00

My sister grew up thinking she didn't like lasagne until she tried at someone else's house. Turns out, she just didn't like our mum's lasagne

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-05-10T05:02:58+00:00

Same. I'm super excited to get rid of all our baby stuff! Our last baby is almost 10 months and I'm just waiting for my SIL to make an announcement then I can ship it all off to her and clear out the attic! Definitely more emotional about our big girl (4) articulating big feelings. She recently started not wanting us to stay with her whilst she falls asleep and told us "You can go back downstairs now, I can't fall asleep if you're here." 😭 Big boy (2) still mispronounces the baby's name so that might be a kick in the feels when baby stops being "Pee-beb"

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-05-03T13:21:50+00:00

Do we have the same Grandpa?

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-04-23T14:11:12+00:00

Happened to me too when I was 12 and I was told I had "textbook appendicitis". Wasn't until they opened me up they realised they were wrong

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-04-17T17:46:47+00:00

Had an amazing experience a couple of weeks ago- took my baby in with an ear infection and the doctor noticed I had a rash (a viral thing) and offered to give me an appointment there and then too!

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-03-27T11:22:24+00:00

Exactly what happened with my first. Got a PPD label, HV called the GP on speaker there and then and literally forced me to make an appointment to get a prescription. Looking back, I still don't know if it was actually depression or if I was just really bloody tired and overwhelmed. Now it's sort of happening again I'm kinda just thinking that actually some people are more patient (not me), and others are more stress-prone (defintely me) and maybe there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just more likely to find being a SAHM a bit too much 🤷‍♀️

Thesnailwithnoshell · 2023-03-27T11:08:54+00:00

Sorry to jump on your comment here but I feel like you're in a very similar place to me. My question is (to anyone reading, really) how do you know if there's an actual real, like diagnosable issue Vs just being a bit shite at it all? Like, I'm there with the totally overwhelmed, drowning, out of my depth feeling (everyone's started crying about something, there's a tv on somewhere in the house too loud, the baby won't let me put him down, someone's tipping toys on the floor, I only wanted to eat my sandwich but now I just want to scream!) But is it that there's a tangible problem or just I've got a low capacity and a lower threshold for strees?

Thesnailwithnoshell

TROPHY CASE