... and another makes six

I want to say about the last few days, but soon. First, just a little of the other children around hear that I really am not neglecting while I watch Samuel grow, although it might seem that way from the lack of photos of them on here, especially without Samuel being with them. Admittedly there are fewer than normal, but here are a few:

There has been a lot more dressing up going on around here lately (and so also play acting on the human scale rather than the small world scale). Here is Rebekah dressing up I think as a queen. She is often to be found dressing up, and looks more beautiful every time. She is more confident by the day it seems, in many ways. Samuel is clearly in awe of her in this photo!



As we have been using a sling more and more, and very rarely if at all a pushchair, the girls have started doing the same with their own babies. Of course the babies have come out to play again. Isn't it fun how children it seems will always play in their games what is happening in real life around them. A way of digesting it all, and trying it out for themselves to see what it is like. Settling it in their minds that this is how it is done. So some days there are lots of little Mums around, and the funny thing is, they always play SO happily together when they are doing that. Motherhood is just GREAT! It changes you before you've even got that far. :o) Here are Hannah and Rebekah sporting their home-made slings. It's so much more fun carrying your baby up close. :o)





Here is little Mum Sarah and her lovely little baby.




I thought this was from before those last pictures, but the camera thinks not! No, I just checked when this was - already 3 weeks ago, at the end of July, and the camera was right of course! Shelling a few peas in our back garden. Peter really liked to eat them raw. We're seeing how these few keep dried - the ones that remained that is - and we'll plant some next year if I remember.




These next few are from our family home evening a couple of Sundays ago. I had realised that Peter didn't know very many scriptures stories very well. Of course when Rachel and Hannah were small, everything was at their level, and Peter takes in a n awful lot, but I have to remember to do things at his level too, even with the whole family. We acted out the story of God telling Noah to build an ark, building it (out of sofa cushions in the middle of the floor), and all eight people and a lot of cuddly toys getting on board. Then the rain, and the flooding, and the birds being sent out to find dry land, right up to the rainbow at the end. It was fun for everyone and the older ones also got more from it afterwards by reading through the story from the Bible, rather from a story book as we more often do! Peter and Rebekah played with a little wooden Noah's ark and a load of toy animals while we did so. I remember doing the same thing when Rachel and Hannah were little for one of our first Sunday family home evenings (we changed from the normal Monday evenings when they were about 3 and 2 as special time together in an evening just never worked out well.)

The cast of Noah and the Ark are:
Noah = Peter K.
Noah's wife = Sarah K.
Shem = Michael K.
Shem's wife = Rebekah K.
Ham = Samuel K. (nobody else would be someone by that name - too silly!)
Ham's wife = Ceri K. (because I was sticking with Samuel)
Japheth = Hannah K.
Japheth's wife = Rachel K.




WATERmelon for our refreshments. Yum. :o)



Peter understood the story really well, and it cemented it for the others. He clearly enjoyed it too, as he wanted to play it all over again afterwards, and the next day he wanted to be Noah again. Family home evening was FUN!

They have been playing being missionaries a lot recently too. We had a really good discussion one lunchtime - Sarah and Rachel as companions had knocked on my door. :o)
We normally have a Sister Kruger, an Elder Kruger, a Sister Stockholm (badge left in a coat we inherited!) and Rachel has made a Sister Mills badge, so we have one of those sometimes too. :o)



Just before bed one night in August...



Samuel is not asleep in this picture, although he looks it - he never could have been. It was loud!



It worked a lot better without baby! Nobody was calm enough to let Peter sit up and manage to hold Samuel in anything like a comfortable way.



It was fun while it lasted, and within in minutes we had a crying chaos as people started to get too tired. Ah well. :o) Still, it's fun to be five together, and sometimes six. Samuel loves to join in when he's allowed to, and just wants to be up and playing! He gets so animated, and who wouldn't want to with such fun siblings around? For now, he is often relegated to playing with his mobile that's now fixed to our bed, but then he gets just as excited and totally animated when he spends time with his friends the cuddly insects on there - very sweet. True friends they are. They could talk, and sing, and play for hours!

Here's our sweet little Samuel

Well Samuel has finally arrived!!

I woke up at 5am on Monday morning, the day Samuel was due, as my waters started to go, and they continued to the rest of the day. I had finally bought a gym ball for £5 from Tesco last week, while still attempting to turn Samuel from a very uncomfortable back-to-back position. It was very comfortable to sit on, and on Monday it came into good use while in early labour. Hannah took this picture because I spent a while playing the piano to stay relaxed, and ended up playing "Come, Come Ye Saints" which was a perfect tempo to bounce to! It was quite funny as I bounced my way through the song.



Later on on Monday afternoon, enjoying a cooling ice lolly in between 10 minute contractions with most of the children, soon joined by all of them. I really liked these pictures. Rachel got SO excited at this point to hear the contractions had gone from 30 to 10 minutes apart. Hard to deal with at the time, but fairly relaxed in between - I wasn't totally exhausted from no sleep at this point!




The last picture of "Bump", taken almost exactly 6 hours before he was finally born, just before going out for another walk with Michael to get things moving a bit faster. We'd just been for a longish walk and had to come back as I was soaked by the rest of the waters coming away!



Oh, and having gone to bed as we thought, Sarah was soon up and about and very excited because her first tooth ever finally came out, so we had to have a picture of that too - too exciting to pass up even though it was getting late!



Once I really managed to work with the contractions it got extremely fast and furious. An hour after calling the hospital there was still no sign of a midwife. Too late though, as we were committed. All of the extra learning and preparation I had done this time round though meant I knew what to do even if I happened to be on my own (and gratefully wasn't!) Michael was great. He left helping me to deliver Samuel, and did a great job. It was just a very special experience. By the time the midwife came in I was holding Samuel, wrapped in a towel to dry him off, and she said "Well done!", asked a few questions about how he'd been straight after birth, and got on with helping us have the rest just how we'd like it to be. The midwife on call that night happened to be the senior midwife that had come out to see us a few weeks before about having a homebirth, so she already knew what we wanted to have happen, having already discussed it with her. She was so respectful of our wishes. It was perfect really.

So here is Samuel David Kruger shortly after being born. His face was very red to start with.




Can you see how tired Rachel and Sarah were, and how excited Rebekah is?! Hannah and Rebekah had heard me scream as he was born, so they were already wide awake, and their excitement and enthusiasm could not be contained. Hannah just couldn't stay away!



Michael brought them in about 10 minutes after he was born, which was about 5 minutes after the midwife arrived! So they had a first brief look and came back later after the third stage was over, ready to be amazed by how much he loved to feed from the very beginning.



Hannah was the first lucky sister to get a cuddle.



He was weighed as 8lb 4oz, and then we got him dressed to keep him nice and warm.





Getting to know Daddy the stand-in midwife.




My body experienced a bit of shock, as I recall happening after Rebekah was born too, so I was wrapped up warm, fed some warm food, and went to have a bath once I could stop shaking. Which gave Rachel a chance for a cuddle. He went to sleep being cuddled by her in the end which she loved. :o)


Somewhere in there Rebekah got a very happy cuddle too.


Then after just a few hours sleep for Michael and me (amazingly refreshing though being able to rest a whole lot more other than during the afterpains) Peter was wide awake and ready to meet his new brother. He watched him from on my lap (I have one of those again now!) and just gradually too him in in a happily interested and very definately hands-off kind of a way. He checked my tummy too to make sure there was no baby still inside. :o)Sarah got a more wide awake look at him too - she was so tired in the night she had barely woken up and very quickly gone back to sleep.





More photos coming soon...

Science Experiments

Peter and Sarah have been doing a couple of experiments lately. Michael said that he noticed Peter during tea one day a week or so ago doing something with his peas. He was taking them one by one and watching them carefully as they dropped to the floor. The same with his couscous. When he came to sweep the floor later on, Michael called me in to see, amused at quite how much experimenting with his free-falling food Peter had been doing. It's amazing he got anything inside him!




He got quite into our family home evening lesson this last Sunday - about people's buckets being emptied (self-esteem) through things we say, do, things that happen, etc., and how we can fill each other's buckets if they're running low or on empty. Everyone filled the empty bucket up a little at a time as they thought of things they/we could do to lift someone. Peter and Rebekah got very into it (a little too hyper after refreshments partly) and Peter didn't just like to pour the water from one bucket to the other, he liked to near-enough throw it it the end, hence the floor, and his clothes. It went away in the end, but only after he'd had a good play and got everything nicely soaked. :o) Good job I'd moved it onto the plain floor before we started. We had a towel in the end to help contain it a little.





Sarah loves speed. She has always loved running fast, and up to a couple of years she would often be trying to go so fast her legs couldn't always keep up and down she'd go. Today Michael took them all out to ride their bikes for an hour or so (Peter had a ride on the back of Michael's so they could go a bit faster). Not far from the house they had gone up a hill and stopped for a snack. Then as they set off down the road (not a public road) it sounds like Sarah was going quite fast starting off down the hill. There is quite a nasty speed bump near the top there (it's not at all smooth taking it slowly in the car) and while going over that, Sarah flew off her bike. She's lucky to just have bruises and grazes (head, nose, both knees, shoulder, leg and one hand), and a hole in her trousers. The hole and dents, and the cracks right through her helmet left us feeling grateful that we always use them. She'll have to have a new one of those as it's now useless, but rather that than a hole in her head. Without the kind we use (the ones that stick out a little to give more protection rather than the climbing-helmet style) she'd have had no protection to her face even if her head survived.



Hopefully that'll be all experiments over with for this week at least, although most of them clearly are a lot of fun.

Michael's birthday week

Michael's birthday was last week. His Mum came to stay for a couple of days over that time, and the children were SO excited to see her again. The first day Michael and I spent going away, and they were all so absorbed in doing things with Nanny that they didn't care less about us leaving! We went to see my cousin Helen and some of her friends and acquaintances sing/play in a concert/recital in a church in London. It took us about 2 hours to get there by car and tube, and we stayed over in Clapham that night to save traveling home really late. We were so glad we had decided to do that. It was a lovely evening with wonderful music, including Irish harp music which I was so excited about! Helen's playing was so lovely to hear, along with her companion who sang soprano. We hadn't seen her in six years either, so just seeing her, and meeting her boyfriend (who also sang brilliantly) was great. A really nice evening.

That was the evening before Michael's birthday. We had a slow morning, and didn't get back home until Michael was due at Uni in the afternoon, so the children didn't see him until tea time. We had planned to do something as a family on Saturday anyway though to celebrate his birthday. So we had a nice birthday tea, and the young women activity that evening was canceled because nobody could come, so I got to stay home too.







Saturday didn't really go according to plan as Michael went off to pick something up for a friend just after we got to where we were going and didn't come back for 2 hours when the sun was starting to go down! We were all very hungry by that point as he had the food with him, but the children had enjoyed playing in a park we found while he was gone. We managed to get a late game of miniature golf down by the sea, which was lots of fun until it got to tea time and some in the family were fading fast. It was a new experience for all the children though, and although we were trying to beat the sunset a bit, we were the only ones playing at the time, so could take as many hits as we needed to get the ball in. Peter wandered around with his own ball and club, not really playing but having a go. He liked it a lot though and did not want to part with them for anything when it was time to go. He especially liked popping his ball in a choice of holes on the last hole and watching it come out on the green below. He had a little while to do that as it was a bit of a frustrating hole unless you had luck on your side. Something we'll definately do again when we get the chance to, especially as it's not so expensive per person. There was a nice sunset behind Rachel in the picture below, but I guess the flash blocked it out...





We went swimming together for the first time in too many months on the Monday and had fish and chips in town for tea as it got so late. We ate in a restaurant rather than getting a take-away. That must have been the first time in about 3 years that we have eaten out somewhere other than something like KFC. It was a lovely thing to do, despite the cost which Michael decided had better come from his birthday money.

Well as we got back so late on the Saturday and the Monday, we didn't give Michael the present we had saved for him until yesterday. So he had his birthday last across nearly a week in all. Probably more fun that way though! It wasn't all for his birthday really, but the only time we've properly had together since moving here so it felt like a birthday kind of treat because of that. Peter was sad he didn't have a present to open too, but happily helped Daddy open his. (Although he did ask me later why he couldn't have a present too! I said he would on his birthday - unfortunately he's last in the year of all of us!)



I wondered if Michael would think we were silly, but he was truly excited. :o) You can see him trying his present out in one of the videos below. Peter really wanted one too though ("Where's mine?") so we got the little one out of the shed. It's too big for him really, but not if you have a Daddy around to help you out!