*Note to self*
When sending 5 year old out to veg patch to collect more broccoli leaves for ever more “tremor”-like caterpillars, it is important to suggest one or two leaves from each plant… as opposed to stripping two plants completely bare……
My word, the balls of poo are getting big……
We had a really nice day today. First i dropped the kids off at the playgroup summer club - they are going two days this week, two next and two the week after. The i took Bubba into town and got her her first shoes - i hadn’t intended actually buying any - i was just going to try some on then come home and sift through the offcasts - but the pair she tried on were blue with pink flowers and when we tried to remove them she had hysterics and clung to them!!!! Giggle… third child tenacity!
Then i picked up the big girls and drove up to Burghley House
This fab Elizabethan House is free to go around the gardens in the week, so we had a picnic, although i seemed to do more eating while they climbed….
then we went into the sculpture garden…
the_gardens
where we played Dora Explorer in a maze….
climbed on some sculptures while feeling others and doing rubbings of others…. (note the start of the word education here!)
and were frankly awe-inspired by others.
The boxing hares were a big hit…
But Bubba preferred a beer… i mean juice!
The girls in front of the house….
…and stood next to a very big toadstool/mushroom.
Pud is very into Weeping Willow trees at the mo and points out every single one we see so we took a tree book and brought back some leaves to look at too. The house was home to an advisor to Elizabeth 1, William Cecil, which made it just fine by her and she bought a couple of postcards to add to her little book of him and the house - and counted out the money and paid! Thats all come from a reader rabbit maths game which makes you pay to release a character with proper GB coins. it was a pretty big deal for her to be brave enough too!
We sat for ages at what was probably an old drained lake, near the big face, which was studded with big carved cones. It was slightly sureal because it was exactly the same shape and size, and the view down into it was also the same, as the “bottom lawn” at my junior school, its was like gonig to it after hundred of years and seeing it all reclaimed by nature. A bit like that bit in Prince Caspian, where they gradually realize they are sitting in the ruined Cair Paravel…. made me feel quite odd!
Well - its been a lovely weekend.. although some sleep wouldn’t go amiss! We’ve seen great gran, been slidy dancing (ice skating), been to our town park which is gorgeous and full of beautiful trees, done some “stuff” and i pulled up everything in the front garden.
One of the things Pud and I did was make this….
which is a copy of an tudor costume made on to a little felt doll. We used this site to build up a proper layering of clothes
Tudor Doll for Sale from Crafts Unlimited
which consists of white felt body for “underclothes”, a blue felt wrap around skirt, a “stomacher” top, an over skirt and top (would be a bit like a fitted coat but we cheated by doing the two bits separately, and then a french hood headdress, complete with beads to trim it.
It was great fun - if i can refine the doll a bit so its easier to do, we might make this something we do with projects… she wants to do the rest of the wives and a full scale one for her! GULP!
Also - for posterity… the most beautiful Hama bead elephant, which is completely her own with no help at all…. i just love it.
Identifying caterpillars. What sort of caterpillar is this?
Oh yes… we have caterpillars… we don’t know WHAT caterpillars… but we have them. We have two types, one is velvety green and a cabbage white, the other i don’t know… its lime green with a yellow stripe on its back and black spots. AND my goodness do they grow! I reckon they have grown 10x in a week Now they are nearly an inch long and significantly broad… i’m fascinated…
I do sometimes wonder if Home Ed is a chance for adults to reclaim the education they wish they had had!
Some photos…
These are the new batch… tiny weeny.. thats a 5p
And our week old ones who were only a little bigger than the others when we found them
This is a “new broccoli leaf” feeding frenzy!
And this is i think, a cabbage white caterpillar :~) I could be wrong….
I’ve decided to give a comments box ago….
Bit of a rambling post this i suspect… but there is a point, sort of, to it!
A couple of weeks ago i had an email from a very good school friend who i went on to drama school with and shared a flat with for a year. Drama school didn’t really work out for me, but it seems to have done for him, because he has just started “calling the show” for the National Tour of Miss Saigon. Its one of those shows that was very big before and while we were at Central, so we got to see it, or its contemporary shows, a fair bit. Its one i particularly loved but the last time i saw it was the day i waved my best friend off to India for a gap year. So a long time…
It is, for anyone who doesn’t know, a modern day Madam Butterfly, based on the fall of Saigon and the very brief love affair of a local orphaned young woman and an American GI, who leaves in the evacuation unable to rescue her in time to take her too. Three years later, she is found with his three year old son, still waiting for him to rescue her. But by now he has married another woman. Devastated, knowing he has come to Bangkok to see her and lay the ghost to rest/help her, she kills herself, knowing he wil take their son back to the US and give him a better life than she ever can.
Anyway, i dug out the cd to play in the car and inevitably Fran started asking questions… so we covered the vietnam war, civil war, communism, racism, love, adultery, marriage, betrayal, theatre and real versus drama, love of a child by the mother, suicide… all on 5 year old terms! Its been a rollercoaster, not least because its an emotive storyline at best, but after last week, and coming to well loved music from my past, with the adult trappings of motherhood on top, i keep starting to cry while trying to explain it all! Even Fran looked a bit choked as the shot that kills Kim sounded out at the end.
Anyway, she asked to have the cd in her room to listen too and its been playing every night… somehow i fear that my theatrical inclinations were genetic! I feel bad in a way that maybe i introduced something with such adult themes.. .but i don’t really believe in coddling children, just presenting info in a “copeable with” format - and i guess music is…. Anyway, the site above has really lovely photos and video clips in it which we have been looking at today.
Things are better today.
Bubba was awake most of the night but is asleep right now so we are “doing stuff” - currently we are constructing a pictorial family tree of Henry VIII which we are enjoying and Pud is sat on the floor copying the names of all the wives and children on to sugar paper. She finds writing hard and tedious, so its good to see her enjoying working at it :~)
All this is using our matching cards we created - we have spent ages on these today - will post the link later as i don’t think its active on MP yet…
We also spent a lot of time planning and creating a hama bead tudor rose and doing our own family tree. We have more family than Henry did!
Majority of this is from a post to the mudpud list - its too much to type it all again - makes me cry :~(
Thought our experience over the last 24 hours was worth a cautionary tale. Obviously it rare, but after talkingto the nurses today, its not THAT rare and i would hate anyone to go through what i have just been through.
Obviously Bubba (14 months) had chicken pox - the spots started coming out on Tuesday - and appeared more and more over the next couple of days. She had had impetigo but it was under control, although it had been coming back but it was not active during the pox spots coming out - she did have some patches of eczema that had got quite sore which, because of the impetigo, we had not been able to use steroid cream on for ages. (thank god) So her legs were very sore and dry.
On Thursday night the spots started to join up and her throat sounded very raw - i got a bit nervous and called a doc out who was really good, gave us an instant antibiotic, which unfortunately we just could not get down her, and rang first thing to check how she was. We had had a terrible night and i was very bleary - i thought she seemed better and said so so he rang off. But when i woke up a bit i realized she really was not too good at all; very hot, not particularly aware of what was going on, drifting between being awake and asleep and just even spottier; by now her legs were completely red and raised, boiling hot - her face barely had any space between spots either.
I called the doc back, who rang straight for a place on the childrens ward. By the time i got there Bubba was hysterical - she had had every painkiller going and i still could not hold her, her temp was soaring so that i took her in naked, she could hardly bear to be touched. They sedated her straight away which was such a relief for her cos she had barely slept in 48 hours and she just zonked - but i knew from the speed they got the antibiotics and anti-virals into her arm that we were not messing about. Then they checked her over for meningitis and banned anyone from going in or out of the room. They said that she might get worse very very fast but they would do all they could to stop it getting worse. It was NOT a good moment.
When she woke i couldn’t hold her - she just could not bear anything to touch her - she ended up lying on the floor screaming, and so it went on till about 3am, when they gave her a different sedative, the first of the evening having failed to get her off. She eventually dropped off in my arms just before 4 and slept till 8am. But in the middle of the night i asked if it was developing into septaecemia or encephalitis but all they would say was that if anything COULD prevent that, the drugs she was getting would. Nobody could say “no” 
I cannot begin to describe the experience of sitting alone in that ward in the middle of the night wondering if the next few hours would be the start of losing my baby (
Anyway - by this morning she was clearly a little better - there was less red around the spots and her eyes were more alert, although she was, and still is, very hot and grumpy and still getting more new spots. She had a bath, and fell asleep sat up in it! and then slept for several more hours, and woke up more alert still and able to drink and eat chocolate 
And as the day wore on she started to sit up, do some baby chat and make an attempt at playing. So we have come home - mainly cos she pointed at a pic of fran and moo and started to wail - she was much happier to be around them at home.
I tried to take some photos but the camera only takes black photos now (ggrrrr…) but my god this was a shock. i could never have believed it could be so vile - but the nurses said they almost always have one bad chicken pox case on the ward. One of the nurses had cared for Pud at addenbrookes and was our special today - she told me about the little girl opposite us who had started to recover from chicken pox but got exposed to the … hmmm… strep or staph bug - and currently has welts deeper than a third degree burn that look like raw steak over most of her body
I am just so horrified by our experience - another 24 hours at home and i am not sure she would have got out of it alive at all. Although Pud having ops was scary, its always been us worried and nurses/doctors being reassuring - it was very strange to not have people around me who could just allay my fears because they believed it would just all be fine.
Anyway - i give up - i’ve tried really hard to be more radical about my girls healthcare but i can’t do it anymore - if that had been measles doing that to her i think i would have died of guilt. I’m just going to have to give up and be conventional about it and hope for the best. I won’t have a seconds peace now till i know Ams has got absolutely no chance of getting anything so horrible again that i can prevent I seem destined to have the scary “rare occurences”: prolapsed cords, ruptured uteruses, complications of chicken pox….
Addendum
She is quite a lot better today - she slept through the night and woke hot but after calpol and nurofen the temp did not return although she has been grumpy at times. She loved a bath with bicarb in it and has gone naked for most of the day. Tonight the spots are mainly scabbed over and the red from around them is largely gone - her bottom and knees are the worst now. She is a bit sensitive to bright light and very very wobbly but otherwise much brighter - i think she is gonig to take a while to recover though…
Sigh….Chicken Pox Complications
Chicken Pox in your baby: What you need to know
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The Cast & Crew
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Fran 9 |
Maddy 8
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Amelie 5
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Josie 3
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