Quick Quick!!!
Stunningly simple. Played with Auntie Kate and S this morning and with little HE’d friend E this afternoon. All fell asleep shattered shortly after mummy departed for lovely reflexology appointment. Ammi marginally better but still wheezy and grumpy. Didn’t stop her flooding the bathroom though.
House is a bit messy, hope the Raine Drops don’t mind.
I know its not remotely funny really but i have to say that the news reports of “Hurricane Frances” brought a smile to my face. I do hope its not as devastating as our own personal one….
Perfectly Pants.
Oh dear. (That is twice in one day, so i think it must have been a tough one!) Its all been a bit rubbish today, Ammi is feeling grotty, although i expect it will improve now, i’m whacked and the girls are grumpy. We really didn’t manage to make anything of our Bank Holiday at all, heigh ho.
I’m feeling a trifle baffled by Maddy, who has spent most of the day staring blankly at me for the simplest of things - like “can you pick up those beads so i can vacuum clean” resulting in her trying to pick up the rubbish not the beads and just not getting it after about 20 attempts to make her understand. :~( Plus she is wetting her knickers and staying in them, whgich is odd for Maddy ot say the least. Something else to bother about.
Everyone has done loads of jigsaws, made lots of necklaces, read some books, done some wordsearches (Maddy worked really hard at hers and found them all) and we gave their rooms a good clear out, de-clutter and clean so it all feel nice and fresh. Plus we finished the Ark tonight and read a couple of good Aesops - The Lion and the Mouse and The Shepherd and the Wolf, so it ended nicely. I love our story times now, it really lifts the day and Ammi gets one from Max too so i feel like we put everyone to bed really loved.
Looking forward to our visitors now :~)
Books to read.
We’ve nearly finished the Ark for now and i need afew more “complete story in a chapter” type books to read until i can afford my next Amazon order. Fran has asked for Lion,Witch and Wardrobe but i think if we move straight on to that we are going to lose Maddy because she has a real tendency to twitter at the moment and i’m going to get annoyed if she spoils the experience by doing that. So i’m just hunting the shelves and some booklists for something appropriate. When i am up at mums i shall have to look in the one remaining book box they have and see if i can salvage anything from that.
I’ve found
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf
Teddy Robinson Himself
Stories (and More Stories) from Grandma’s Attic
Mr Meddle’s Mischief
Tales from the Trojan War (might have to check that first, it looks a bit bloodthirsty!)
which all have short stories.
I’ve got recollections of
Mrs Pepperpot
My Naughty little Sister
Ramona
Moomins
which might be worth looking for in the library of charity shops
and then i guess i have
The Sheep Pig
Heidi
Charlottes Web
The Wizard of Oz
all ready to be read on the shelf plus the Narnia ones which i think are probably all well within Fran’s grasp now, but like i say, i don’t want to spoil them for us by getting irate and upsetting Maddy. peter Pan didn’t work too well because we have the unabridged version (although i think i also have the version for small people somewhere) and the long one was just shockingly wordy! Dad has the complete Winnie the Pooh too which i might be able to borrow. I think we have a “stories from” version of it. I’m wondering about asking for a Beatrix Potter set and a Mr Man set for Xmas for them. I know lots of people have issues with BP but i don’t really… lol. Nothing like a good thrashing of a rabbit to knock sense into you ;~) Anyone read any Brer Rabbit? What is that like? I’m not at all sure i am psychologically up to reading The Velveteen Rabbit unless i buy the dumbed down version, which seems a cop out really. (Although traumatised children i can do without too i guess!)
Any other offers on the short story types? I’m a complete Enid Blyton numpty, never read any of her small people books so are any of those worth getting? (Trip to fave old book shop coming up!)
Oh Ouch :~(
Oh dear, now we have done asthma properly :~( Well not properly in an HRH or rush someone to hospital in an ambulance fashion, but quite well enough thank you very much. I sat up with Ammi all night and she only drifted off to sleep between 2 and 3.30ish. When she woke up again she was far worse and for the first time the cough out was accompanied by a wheeze in as well. 8 doses of ventolin and some piriton later and things didn’t seem to be improving at all, so i gave in and took her to the all-night walk in place (a small advantage of living in a city!)
I’ll never quite understand the rule that means that this ALWAYS effects a 50% recovery in said child but she definitely was a good bit better by the time we got there. But i guess nurses and so on see that all the time and were very nice about it, had a good listen and agreed a doctor needed to see her. Who duly came along and said that as things seemed to be improving they wouldn’t do a nebuliser but gave me some soluble steroids for her if it got worse. Which it duly did the moment we got home again. Still, she seems to be on the up now… honestly, KIDS!
Netsky nonsense.
Grrr.. bah humbug. last night my computer started to behave rather oddly; as soon as it was running it would be using 100% of the processor power and nothing would work. Somehow i felt it might be prudent to leave it doing a virus scan overnight and came down at some point to discover 185 viruses on the system. Hm. I thought. Odd really, given the email protection is switched on and my scanner keeps telling me things are being removed. Twaddled endlessly with it only to discover that NOTHING in the instructions in fact made any sense and there didn’t appear to be any place i could get rid of said 185 viruses. Sulked some more than stormed out and spent £40 on Norton, which has spent all day running and has found a further 5 viruses, of which 2 were uncleanable and so it killed them. And taa-daa!!!! i have a running computer again. Grrrr bah humbug. Last time i USE those other people - so glad that when i got Max’s version last night i only signed up for the free trial for him. I’ve got a nasty feeling it might have had something to do with my IM programme - i got a couple of firewall alerts last week tellnig me that it was trying to send emails, which seemed odd and it had started to load very slowly too. So beware….
Anyway, the 6 hours of computerless time have been useful; i’ve managed to sort most of my business paperwork into order so geting my accounts done should now be a sinch (lol…).
Kids have amused themselves today although we have started a Sylavannian Families Magazine project to make hot air balloons - so its been papier mache at 50 paces all day. I’ve even put a layer on for them this evening, i’m too nice!
Amelie was horribly poorly all night; woke at midnight coughing on every breath and wouldn’t you know it, her inhaler ran out. Job 456 last week was to get repeat prescriptions.. i only made it to job 455 :~( So i sat up with her in my arms all night, coughing away (breathing okay i hasten to add, just coughing a lot too) while she dozed and i rubbed cream into her very itchy body. Poor wee girl :~( Its a rotten thing, it really is. nice pharmacist gave me emergency supplies today till i can get to the doctor for a repeat prescription. (Made me laugh actually, you can almost bet my mum taught him! DEFINITE accent i recognise!)
And that is it i’m afraid - no educational input at all….. will they make it do you think? Oh well, i did read the Story of St Alban and The Doves Tale (BOTH made me cry!)
Mainly marvellous!
Yet again, i could do with being on a different day - today would have been a good “n” day! Noah, nettles, narrations,, you name it. I could also have found a few “l” ones! But still.
Day started fairly inauspiciously with everyone in a grumpy mood but luckily it improved. Fran particularly was in a real whinge, so i sent her out with Max while he had his hair cut, she got a bit of one-to-one time and was much happier. While they were out Maddy, Ammi and i cuddled up on the bed and had a real giggle and a cuddle so i thoroughly enjoyed that. By the time the others got back Maddy was much more with it, having been a bit low first thing and Fran was very cheerful, so she and i sat and did a bit of reading, writing and maths together while i sorted out a few bits and pieces next to her. She started on some time telling today, some Roman numerals and quite a lot more adding and subtracting; the 5-7 workbooks i have are really a bit easy for her now but she seems to be quite enjoying them.
Then she and Maddy tried some more stencils and some monster drawings, they didn’t get far mainly because i wasn’t really helping much but at least they gave it a go. Ammi and i were playing some counting games - she can do 1,2,3 (as in counting a sequence of things) then 4,7,8,9 and 8,9,10 but she can’t string them together and although i know she doesn’t know the values or anything, its sort of fun to hear her playing with the words! Maddy was busy making a lovely bead pattern too, she LOVES doing that!
I’m not quite sure where we would had gone next had i not suddenly needed to lie down - i had awful hip and leg trouble last night, it felt like my legs were running without me and i woke up this morning with a real ache (and a big “crack!” from my pelvis too!) so i was feeling a tad miserable. I invited Fran up for a story and read her Moses in the Bullrushes and then she spotted the picture to the story of Solomon and the Baby, so i read that too. And then she asked for more (Maddy having joined us) so i read Why the Sea is Salt which seemed to be a variation on the magic cooking pot type story, but was very enjoyable. I really might get those Red and Blue Fairy books from Tanglewood i think, i love folk/fairy tales. i used to have a set of books called “Stories for 3 (or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7) year olds and loved them all. I wonder if they are still around? if anyone has any other recommendations for that sort of thing i would like them. And THEN we read another Ark story. We have nearly finished this now and i am definitely going to get the big volume with all the stories in it, so if anyone would like to borrow the version i have, they are welcome to.
By that time i was feeling better so i came down with the intention of getting out a Moses craft i have stashed away since last year. I was looking for a sticker book on him for Fran to do while i was getting it ready but it turned out to be one we had completed last year. However, i found 2 copies of the Noah one and they have used those on and off all afternoon, doing stickers, colouring, wordsearches, and other puzzles based on the story.
The other thing they did, which was their idea, was make paper calenders so that they could mark off each day like Noah does in the Tales. So we printed out a calender and they decorated those on a big sheet of sugar paper and then we wrote all the things on to it that we have planned for the next 4 weeks. (Which is quite a lot really!) That was good fun! Maddy was very pleased to be putting nursery on there; i’ve got mixed emotions about that really, she has clearly missed it but in actual fact she is far more relaxed and far more involved with the family activities in the last few weeks. I’m not going to say “no” but i wish she wasn’t looking forward to it really, would make it easier. Still, Fran was the same at the beginning of the last year of playgroup and the enjoyment did fade.
So while all that was going on, i planted out our Lavender border, with some help from Fran and weeded the flower beds again. Maddy and Ammi were very excited about worms and held loads and i am now charged with looking into a wormery setup. Fran HATES bugs, its very funny! And then they all played a very amusing chase game with Max and the gym ball thingy.
Nice days, you can’t beat them. Oh and i am going to have to watch myself now, Max finally has an internet connection and this page is bookmarked!
Gulp.
I almost feel a little guilty posting such a thing, given the very raw emotions other pregnant women must produce for some people… but..
If i am now 32 weeks, then this baby is 4lbs, which means its likely to roughly double in size over the next 8 weeks. Now, if you don’t mind me asking, where is THAT going to go? I’m HUGE!!!
I met someone from Max’s work today, expecting her first next week, and i’m bigger than her. And incidentally, i got right annoyed with feeling like i’m some kind of over-indulgent trollop for being on my fourth - i dunno why people keep feeling the need to say things like “well of course YOU are just used to it” as if i should have been polite and stopped at 2 for common decencies sake. Its not like i expect “experienced mother deference” or anything but outside the HE world there is a sort of smug “don’t you know about the pill?” type aura to some people. Its almost like i should be hiding my “condition” away because its just not seemly to have had sex that many times!
Rant over, lol.. it must be the night for it!!!!
Limpet Limbs.
Is what my children seemed to have today :~( We went to our HE group, for the first time in ages and the dynamics seemed to have changed a bit. For whatever reason it made Fran feel a bit insecure and she didn’t really join in much. Maddy didn’t seem too worried, i think group dynamics seem to go over her head pretty much and actually my three did play nicely together but it took Fran especially most of the session to settle in and go and find her normal friends and feel part of things. Ah well, i don’t suppose we have been since May, so its perhaps not surprising. Ammi was being quite horrible, the result as it always is, of being constipated, which she has since sorted out! It always takes me by surprise but its always the same reason, it seems to happen whenever her routine is upset and occasionally at other times too. Think Melrose really! (And yes, i’m on the case of that now, i felt psychologically unable to deal with it beofre the summer was over!)
Apart from that though we did manage to have quite a nice day. The girls had some exceptionally pleasing pirate game going on first thing, so i lazed while they played. I needed it because Ammi was itchy and wheezy for a lot of last night and sleep was a bit on the thin side.
Then Fran asked to “earn some 20ps” so while the other two coloured, she and i did a vast quantity of maths, including some fairly effortless mixed addition and subtraction sums, more money ones, some 5x tables and a wordsearch. We finished off with an new addition to the repetoire, and i was really pleased with this. She copied a sentence from a Bob book, really nicely, worked hard at keeping letters on the line and then we practised “a”s and “g”s to finish off. The difference this summer is fabulous, as much in attitude to trying as skill but the skills are coming brilliantly now. She does actually seem to enjoy this approach but mostly its going to be possible to let her self direct this now, she won’t really need me for much longer.
Edited in: On the way to our HE group passed Thorney Abbey and Fran asked about it. So the next twenty minutes was spent in deep conversation about middle ages religious policy, Henry and the Pope, Monks, Nuns, Catholicism v Protestantism, the financial gain of the dissolution of the monestries and so on. Honestly, that girl doesn’t know when to give it a rest! ;~) Its pretty odd really, in so many ways she is such a babe still but when it comes to things like that, she doesn’t even need it simplified really. Just the questions she asked proved she had understood everything i told her, and to be honest, i gave it all i had got, its not like i kept it simple for her and i don’t even KNOW any more than i told her!!! *Looks hunted*
Managed to give everyone a bath and hairwash too, which was a slight “over-requirement” shall we say, tidied up a bit and that is it. Day done. Going to finish with a mammoth story telling session tonight though.
Oh and i finished The Secret History, so i am up to 42 now.
Keep kneading!
Its a shame it wasn’t M today, i could have found loads for that! As it is, a spurious link to the salt dough will have to do! We did bake and make again today and for a first effort the girls ones have turned out quite well. They need painting over the weekend and i daresay we’ll do some more, but it was fun.
However, that was far from the main events of the day really and in fact today was a rather fabulous illustration of just how well children do if left to themselves.
It all started with our cylinder blocks - now for one reason or another i haven’t really got round to using these yet but they are on the shelf and get played with periodically. Today they had one set out and were alternately fiddling with them. Then one or other of them got out our knobless boxed cylinders and they started to build towers. Half way through doing this, i wandered past and pointed out that if they got all four sets of each out, they would find certain ones matched other ones. Now in fact our knobless ones are proper Montessori ones but the blocks aren’t and only have 7/8 cylinders and are not in the same colours. But they spent a really happy length of times going through various processes to work out which set did the same thing (bigger and wider, smaller but not thinner etc) as another. Very enjoyable to watch and i was completely hands off, doing houseworky stuff, so useful from all points of view. Even better, they tidied up when they were done!
After that, almost immediately, Fran found a little tape measure that came on a magazine the other week. She and Moo settled straight into a period of measuring EVERYTHING, body parts, tables, toys etc etc and she and i had a short conversation about centimetres, which was all very interesting. Its one of the things on my list, weighing, measuring and volume but i’ve not really got into it much although when they are up at my mums in a few weeks, she apparently has plans to do some project or other with them on all that stuff. Very her thing so i shall leave them too it!!! However, the game then progressed into a shop where you paid by length (an interesting economic idea in all sorts of ways!) and so they spent a very happy morning measuring, counting out money, putting things in bags, role playing, turn taking and all sorts of other terribly National Curriculum type ideas. Still, given that none of it remotely concerned me, i was rather chuffed for them!!! I was really pleased to hear Fran doing her 2x table to work out how to get near 7p from 2p pieces; that is not something i have suggested to her so although its not neurosurgery by any means, i had a huge grin on my face to hear her applying something we have “done together” in a really practical way.
While all that was going on, i thoroughly decluttered the dining room, put away washing, scrubbed the bathroom and bunged out a load of videos! That was EXTREMELY enjoyable!!! Its all now looking very clean and tidy but i have decided i need a little dustbuster thing for going round edges. Upright Dysons are severly crap when i comes to edges and so i never do them. (Yes, yes, i KNOW life is too short but i’m nesting, okay???!!!)
Towards the end of the day the girls chilled out with a video of Mulan while i did bits and bobs. Then while i did parcels, Fran came and asked to earn some 20ps - i happened to have on hand some sheets i made where you add up pictures of coins, 3 or 4 at a time so i offered those and she did loads of them. And she got them all right, and she independently worked out it made sense to start with the biggest coin and that crossing out a coin as she added it made sense too. She also sat and thought out how to write 120 and 110 today - she knows them when she sees them but seems to find it hard to get them from her head to the paper but today i could hear “one in the hundred column…” as she did it. Good on that girl i say!!! It felt like a nice mixture of the practical and theoretical :~) and its such a relief for me because of all the things that panicked me when we decided to HE, maths was it. Her reading is just blossoming too, she is sounding out new words all the time now.
Finished off with another “Tale” (about Spiders!) and a couple of Aesops Fables.. so, an upbeat day i have to say!
I’ve got a couple of things i want to do and if i list them here i will:
*Make crib card for Monte materials we have.
*Laminate and prepare some Miquon sheets.
*Put together a few “craft packs” so i can just get them out and get going at a suitable time.
Here’s an odd thing… shouldn’t the order of my html and so on determine the order things are on my page. Every so often lately i have loaded this page and my blogring box has hopped off down the page. The blogs are taking on life of their own.. oh no.. run for the hills!
Jitters and Japes.
Well the japes section is dealt with easily enough - we all hama-ed together all morning with the girls producing these (maddys at the top and Fran’s at the bottom.)
while i worked on the first bit of a huge Noahs Ark for their room. I’m doing the Ark then they are going to do the animals. So far its 2 rectangles big, its either going to end up as 6 or 12, I’m not sure - i’m making it up as i go along! I enjoyed it anyway, first time i have tried something so big.
In the afternoon i got out the salt dough i made last night and Fran especially played all afternoon with that, really trying to get the pieces to look nice. My plan is to let her experiment for a bit, then maybe try some projects together and then move on to clay and fimo sometime. I don’t think she is ready for either of those yet and me fretting about waste would just get her upset so its best done with something cheap for now.
Here’s a few pictures from recent times….
Maddy having a Happy Street moment. Slightly odd scenario, wedding carriage surrounded by police, but there you go.
The ONLY way to show off jigsaws!!!
Absorbed. (She will hate me for that all right!!!)
Awwww….
Brio is Ammi and Moo’s favourite atm, they play together really nicely with it.
As for jitters, well the whole baby birthing thing is starting to loom up a bit now. Its horrible to be caught between a rock and a hard place with regard to it all. I just don’t know what choices to make for the best really; it would be lovely to have the confidence that it was all just a natural process but i have no confidence in that at all - its never been better than a fear-filled medical process where i have diced with death. I have this unpleasant “bad taste in my mouth” that ticker is counting down to some morbid tragedy instead of a happy baby birthing moment :~( Its a bit difficult to overcome really; oh for the naiveity of the first time and only having to worry about how i would cope with pain. Sigh. I’d like to believe it was all going to work out for the best but… well just “but” really.
Its sad that people are feeling sort of negative about the blogring right now. I never have, its always been a source of inspiration to me. To me my blog is a record of days that i looked forward to all through 5 years of working and are passing too quickly; i do it in public because i quite like to think that someone might read it and say “i could do that” and it might save some child going through the hell i went through at junior school, its important to me for those two reasons (and to keep a record to make writing that educational report easy) and its seemed for a while pointless to separate my life journey from my day to day life because they are so intertwined. I want to look back and say “oh yes, that is why i began to feel like that” or “that is why i changed the way i did that” because there might be clues for me there in the future. I don’t feel obliged to keep it upbeat, its just that this last year has been a good one so it has been upbeat; i suppose my personal thoughts have just had time to come out because i haven’t been worrying about operations, or PND, or having no money or baffling, frightening children so much. This year has really been the first relaxed one (even including 2 house moves!) since i was 24 - that’s a long time *sigh*I kept a private diary throughout my teenage years, every day till i had been with Max for a few months, i guess i just picked up the habit again. but perhaps i over-indulged. Perhaps i should move over to wordpress and have a secret area for private mumbles!
*Moan over*
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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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