Pancakes and a few updates

Yesterday was Pancake Day, the traditional UK Shrove Tuesday celebration (the idea is you're using up the things you can't eat during Lent). Obviously, we're quite keen on keeping up with UK holidays, and this particular tradition is one of our favourites. At least, it is for me and my husband. Our children don't appear to like pancakes. Bah, humbug.

Still, we made them each eat one and after they went to bed, we and a couple of friends fried up the rest of the batter and used up vast amounts of lemon juice and sugar. Mmmm. Maybe next year the children will like them.

 I wanted to follow up on a couple of earlier posts: the one about discipline and the one on de-cluttering. My 'consequences without anger' line is working very well. I'm a lot calmer and feeling more on top of the situation, and my son is a lot more responsive. He still seems to be going through a difficult phase, and I'm still not sure how much of that is my own intolerance, but general behaviour is back to a functional level. I've also been trying to stay aware of when I'm cross with him just because he's irritating me rather than because he's doing anything wrong per se.

As far as de-cluttering, I haven't been able to follow through on that as much as I'd hoped, but I did put a bunch of toys up in the attic, which has helped immeasurably. I wanted to do some more one on one play with the kids, but I'm struggling to find the right opportunities to do it, so that's an ongoing project. On the occasions that I have managed to sit down with them, it's been rewarding though. I could observe my daughter practising her fine motor skills, while my son and I did some colouring and tracing. I still worry a little about the attention span, but at least they've both proved themselves able to get absorbed in an activity.