Hideous!

That is the word for today;  Hideous.

It started quite well playing with the new tea set,

It's the set from Green toys and recycled from milk bottles.  It really is quite nifty.  I had planned on a tin set I saw, but was informed the tinned sets get bent and damaged very quickly, so bearing in mind Rye and minded children that will play with a tea set, I decided to go for something more robust, and this so far, is ticking the boxes.

However chaos soon descended as Rye tried to control the play and my mindie was not of a disposition to be controlled...

Rye: nooooo, you don't have cake in coffee Clare.
Snatches cake, cue much yelling.
Me: give her the cake back, If she wants to pretend to mix cake into her coffee she can.
Rye: no but.....
Me: give it back
Rye: no but.....
Me:Ryan give her the cake, Clare is not your slave or toy, you cannot tell her what to do. You can ask or make suggestions, but she can still say no.
Rye, sulkily: I only wanted to make you a birthday cake.

FAIL

The day continued to deteriorate.  Mindie bent one of the tea set spoons (thankfully it did bend back), but I was so miffed I banned her from playing with the set for the rest of the day.. so she sulked, then the children played dens.....

 Except Rye kept telling her that it was not ready and she wasn't allowed in it... so blanket was taken back upstairs and I decided to take the kids into town instead......and it was simply hideous.

School holidays +  Fireman Sam visiting the town centre meant the place was heaving and the children were simply manic.  Mindie kept disappearing into the crowds because she'd spy a little boy and she'd just follow him - arrgh.  Rye kept winding her up or suggesting she did things that just were not appropriate for being in town........ and omg in the Works I ended up yelling, "Out, out, both of you get OUT now!" after a barrage of  "Can we have...." and "I want".

Utterly frazzled and frankly pissed off, I hussled the children back to the lifts and out walks Fireman Sam.  Admittedly, their faces were a picture; and Rye keeps telling me, in utter wonderment, that Fireman Sam is actually real!    I briefly considered taking them back to where Fireman Sam was doing, well, whatever he was going to do to entertain the children..but after just hurrying my two through the hoardes, I quickly dismissed the idea and bundled them into the lift and virtually ran for the car!

Popped round to a friend's house for a few hours, bit of a mistake as all the children just fed off the weird manic energy of today.  I have to say, today I was insanely glad to hand mindie back to her mum and yes, I insisted Rye go upstairs to his bedroom and listen to the new story cds on his new cd player.  I sat down with a cuppa and wished it was whiskey with a nice menthol fag! 

Rye actually fell asleep, so I did enjoy an hour of peace before calling him downstairs because I wanted to nip through to sorting office to pick up a parcel.....

And the parcel turned out to be the clothes I bought in the Muddy Puddles sale... and I'd also picked up the camouflage.... cue a very happy Rye.  He's sat in there at the mo with the tea set, pretending to make our friend M, a coffee.

And, yes of course, the reduced, but still expensive snowsuit I bought Rye for next winter........... fits him now.  Typical.  Gah.  Not sure I can return something bought in the sale either.....

Roll on tomorrow.

Want to run away.

Today has not been a good day.
Rye has alwasy been a very active little boy; as he gets older I'm beginning to wonder if its something more.  Rye is not overly great at empathy either - actually that's an under statement, it's not that he doeesn't see when someone is upet or happy, he just doesn't seem to care.  I am constantly intervening between  him and the little girl I mind.  Now, ok, he ignores her crying in large part because she's a wee bit of a drama queen and will cry at the slightest thing, so when he does actually hurt her, he doesn't take any notice of her crying.  Still, he ignores when she tells him she doesn't like something he's doing, or asks him to stop.  He just keeps on, so it becomes pestering and tormenting.  Frankly it's driving me batty and the only time he stops is if I get really angry and shout.

I don't want to spend my life shouting at him though, there has got to be a better way.  I've read how to talk to kids.... and I try to use it as much as possible, but he just doesn't listen.  Having a simply conversation is hard enough, having to keep pulling him back on topic as he randomly starts talking about other things........ so when trying to talk to him about his behaviour is neigh on impossible.

I am wondering if maybe nicking an idea from the Sonlight programme, might help him?  I'm tired so I can't think what it's called at the moment; basically it's a ring binder with lots of pictures in it.  Rye is a visual learner and while he can follow fairly complex instructions, it can take repeating a few times before he's successful.  I wonder if making up a ring binder with different pictures of emotions, our rhythm etc will help him to listen effectively.

Shouting and being angry is just not helping; sure in the short term I get his cooperation, or the very least a temproary respite of whichever behaviour is beginning to really piss me off.  But he is coping my tone when angry..and hearing it parroted back to me.. well its cringeworthy and very shaming.  So long term I'm simply adding to the problem of his behaviour.

Rhythm, again this helps so I need to be more mindful of keeping our rhythm a bit more in place... I'm a lackadaisical type of person, and while Rye can be adaptable.. I am beginning to wonder if some of his manic behaviour is a response to that.

Although to be fair too, the past few days has been sugar fest of the highest order... and yes I know, I've always said I have never noticed much of a difference in his behaviour in relation to what he's eaten....... but he has been so awful today that maybe it does.  Worth investigating anyway.

I wrote on a forum I use earlier that there's time I don't like him, that I worry he's turning into a bully, or will end up being abusive like his dad has been in the past.....I love him, absolute no doubt about that...... but oh my, I do have such fears for him.  However, he's now sat on my bedroom floor, looking at some Cars cards, chattering away to himself and I can't help but smile and chide myself... how can I not like and love this boy; he's delightful............. but wow he's hard work and wow he really makes me examine myself and how I parent him... and at the moment, I loathe the way I'm parenting him, it's not often I feel tearful, but tonight I could cry my heart out.    Tonight single parenthood seems the pits. 

But lets try and end with some positivity; a few things to implement that hopefully will help me to parent in a much more "gentle" way:

1. change diet
2. use rhythm much more
3. create pictorial folder of emotions, actions, behaviours etc.

And I sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo need to meditate more!  I find it helps enormously with controlling my temper!

A day at the beach.

I love how much a bit of sand can amuse a certain little boy.
I love how quickly he makes friends and also how completely unaware he is when he's annoying older little girls who are trying to make themselves a paddling hole in the sand. Of course, he is only testing out their design....
















she did some wonderful rolling of the eyes and huffing and puffing. I did try to get Rye to leave her alone; but he clearly thought she was the hole for his paddling pleasure, and the little girl's mum overrode me trying to get Rye interested in something else and instructed her daughter to leave him be. Cue many dirty looks at her mum.
















So, if he was going to enjoy the fruits of the lass's labour, then I thought it only fair he joined in with fetching the water; this is him telling me vehemently, "Noooooooo".
He did find his brave regarding the sea and I managed to get him to enjoy having his toes in a couple of times and jumping on very small waves and then running away with me. He wouldn't go in the sea on his own, but he was getting much, much closer and treating it as a game, instead of the huge panic inducing fear of previous visits.
















We shared "our" enclave with another mum and her 17 month old little boy. Rye and the little lad played lovely together, sharing and taking turns really quite well, all things considered. The woman seemed very nice; but toward the end of her stay she did manage to shock the hell out of me. She put her son back in the ginormous buggy and I don't know, he must have been rocking or something and one of the wheels ran out her foot, startling me and Rye with her suddenly very aggressive snarling and use of the f word to her son. Fine, we all loose it sometimes and she was clearly fed up of trying to get her boy to eat some lunch (chicken thigh and a doughnut) and him just getting it covered in sand and being far more interested in playing and toddling off exploring.

However, I find it rather unforgivable that she changed the boy's nappy once she had him in the buggy and to my utter disgust threw his dirty nappy at the back of the enclave. These enclaves get filled with incoming tide so that nappy would be washed out to sea and do untold damage to the poor creatures. And there is a bin at the top of the slipway, that she walked past, I was just so flabberghast at the littering, but also that she would throw it at the back of an enclave that I was still sat in with Rye! (I did pick it up and put it in the bin when I left)

I wasn't best pleased either to discover that the half chewed bits of chicken and doughnut, covered in sand had been left too - and ok gulls would have made tidy work of the scraps had she thrown them onto the sand; but she just left them, right where Rye was playing. I just found it incredibly bad manners and thoughtless.
















Rye, of course, was completely oblivious, so long there were large holes dug by other children, for him to jump in and I bowed to his demands for sandcastles, so he could squish them by jumping on with his bum, he was perfectly happy.

And even the woman's bad manners couldn't spoil what was overall, a very lovely day all for the pricely sum of £2.40 for the return bus ticket.