Project Prayer Beads

(Or as Maddy called them, Beads of Pray, which i  rather liked) 😆

Very enjoyable morning, with a house filled with an assortment of people. Mummy Flower was here with Baby Flower, who is beginning to like me and smiles at me now, an infinite improvement on howling with horror. She’s adorably clingy to her mum really, in the way that speaks of a really positive relationship between 2 people; MF and i were discussing it and as she remarked “but she sees lots of people, i just don’t know why…” i thought (again) what a disservice we have done ourselves as a nation to have unpicked close family relations, constant familial contact and a basic confidence in our mothering. How odd (not of MF, of us as a people) that we have so undermined our parenting that people have begun to feel that an 8 month old might be behaving oddly if it just loves to be held and cuddled by its mum. My parenting has changed a lot over the years – i was no attachment parent at all to F or M, but i’ve loved my closer relationship with A and J and it has reflected back very positively on the older ones too. I’m glad that the mummy model they will remember will be one who hugs, cuddles, kisses, loves and is happy to be close all the time. So the conversation with MF was great in lots of ways; lovely to be able to say “you are doing great, it’s normal” as a voice of experience too 😉

Plus i’ve adopted two more people who call me Aunty Merry – bringing the count to a speaking/’not yet speaking but think it 6 girls’ 😆 There is SUCH a girl thing in this family!

Emma was here, playing, fielding small children, making lunches, reading with people and generally being about 8 pairs of hands and Sue turned up with Mini-Violet too, so it really was a handful. And actually, i could just about have own all of them, if i’d got pregnant when Josie was about 6 weeks old so it felt a bit of a cautionary tale as to what 6 small children COULD feel like! 😯 (No, no, no, no, no! Just SO much mess! So much FOOD! SO MUCH NOISE!!!!)

The most exciting news was the Mini-Violet’s mummy, therefore Mummy Flower’s sister and Sue’s daughter, Max’s cousin and Baby Flower’s Aunty (confused yet? 😉 ) has just signed a lease on a riding stables fairly near by 😀 Exciting on a million levels; great for her, good for their whole family as they all love to ride and with luck, fabulously good for us too as a place to leanr to ride and get outside doing stuff. Woohoo! (Hannah, it’s in a small town north-east of you 🙂 )

If anyone local is interested, they are having an open day on Easter Monday, so let me know if you want details 🙂

After that, i looked up some stuff on Islamic prayer beads and the girls made fimo beads, then threaded them on. I have to say we ran out  of energy and string before everyone had threaded 100 beads, but it was fun and we tried out using them properly. 99 words for Allah? Eeek, i’d never remember them all. This afternoon we’ve sat and read the Islam section of “What i Believe” and made some more learning plans, talked about Ramadan, Halal food, pilgrimage, Islamic dress (Maddy: “Do Muslims still exist then?” Merry: *batters child over head* ) washing at the Mosque (Maddy: “I remember watching the man washing for us; he sat down and did a poo while he washed his feet!” Merry: “Erm.. no Maddy, he was just sat down on a marble seat” 🙄 )

Otherwise, normals, playing and nice ordinary stuff. Plus Fran has discovered how to read for fun and last night i caught her still up reading at 11pm! 😯 🙄