249 Posts Later

This day last year I published my first post on this blog. I'm still blogging, I'm still at home, I'm still happy. 

It has been a great year (more on that here) and I am very glad that I gave blogging another go, having set up a cookery blog in 2008 and only posting periodically. Since setting up Three Sons Later I have found that I have quite a lot to say on quite a lot of topics. 

Some days I am really pleased at the quality of my writing. Other days I am more focussed on the topic than on the writing and it irriates me when I can't put my thoughs onto the screen exactly as I would like to. 

My writing isn't as good as I would like it to be. Practice probably won't make it perfect, but it has improved it, and I hope it will continue to improve. 

As for the content, I have tried to write what I know about and what interests me and not be steered by what others are doing or want me to do. 

I don't feel I have veered off course too much. My original idea was for this blog to be a reflection of me and our life. So, here's to many more years of Three Sons Later. May it grow and develop, just as my boys do. 

Cheers!

Fionnuala x

When Your Small Child Swears

I swear too much. Not as much as if I still lived in Ireland, but too much. I don't like the children to hear it, but they have at times.

Parenting books will tell you that if your small child swears, you should not laugh. I agree and I managed that for a long time, putting on my serious face and getting cross, explaining that that is not language for children to use and promising to not swear in front of the children ever again.

But then one day I laughed. I had to. There was nothing else I could do.

We were in the car, Number Two and I. A woman drove towards us incredibly slowly, blocking our way and not indicating when she should have, thereby delaying us unnecessarily. 

I was about to mutter under my breath, as usual, when from the back seat came the words "F**k almighty! She was a bad driver!" followed by "Why are you laughing Mammy? She was a bad driver".

What Children See

This photo was taken in December 2010 when my then 28 month old son asked my why there was a picture of a man with a suitcase and a ball on the door of the baby changing room. 

The experience reminded me that in June 2002 I bought a book  called Ways of Seeing by John Berger. The topic of the book is not necessarily how children see the world, but it does eging with the point that one sees before one speaks. 

A child can see and reconise images long before he is ever able to describe what he has seen. Even once we can speak, we see the images around us before we open our mouths to comment on them.

The book goes on to discuss art, adverts and photographs and what message the images convey to us. It is a highly interesting read and I would recommend it if you are in any way interested in the subject. 

But back to the world through the eyes of a child. Since the episode with the man with the suitcase and the ball, there have been countless reminders of how different a child's view of things is to an adult's. 

Like this time, when the box we'd just received a parcel in became a fantastic plaything.

Or when Number Two came downstairs with the newborn insert from a car seat on his head and told me it was the hat of a soldier in the old days.

Or on the regular occasions when the sofa becomes a trampoline or a Viking ship.

Or when the bunk beds become pirate ship and my box of red candles gets confiscated as dynamite.

I showed Number One the top photo again recently and asked him what it was. "The sign for a baby changing room", he said, looking at me as if I had lost my mind. He's obviously growing up.