Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Brag brag!

Did my Halloween Design for BeadMerrily so please go have a look if conventional, cutesy, stereotypical witch and ghost stuff won’t offend you!!!

Plus i really want to brag about the fact that MuddlePuddle was the busiest this week it has ever been with over 21000 page views (i think that is right!) it always seems to be busy at this time of year because i have an Autumn section, which to be brutally honest leaves a huge amount to be desired and badly needs actual content and a revamp, but its remarkably popular even so! Anyway, the new stuff i have added elsewhere this year seems to have really bumped it up as well, castles, Romans etc, so i am feeling quite pleased about that.

Mother from hell.

Is what i am. I am suddenly SO much more uncomfortable. I can’t bend :~(( And this baby is NEVER coming out, in fact, right now i feel like doing what rabbits do and just reabsorbing it. Nobody so much as breathe a word about enjoying the last days of pregnancy. Otherwise i shall “do a Joyce” - Pah pah pah.

I’ve been a total cow most of the day so its mildly remarkable that the girls managed to have an okay day really, thanks to superdad.

Now this is Conwy Castle, a la the book we got from our honeymoon with the exception of a “tallest tower” in order to satisfy the small girl requirement for “highest room in the tallest tower” type princesses. Rather good i thought. Might start that Castle project then. I thought he did really well, because i lay in bed sulking this morning and i could hear him really having to work hard at the whole “keep three children plodding along while we do this” thing (which lets face it is hard and i get much more practise than he does!) and Ams was being a ratbag but he made it happen. Enormous Brownie points i say. (Ticks History)

By the time i came down Fran had entered into the “twitter constantly and ask completely stupid and irritating questions constantly” thingy (it must be nearly full moon) and i was completely ready to lump her. She NEVER EVER shuts up! She even knows it!!!!! So Max chucked her outside and when he heard her playing Cinderella with the sweeping brush (poor child!) he capitalised on the game by giving her the Window Polish and kept her quiet for a couple of hours! What a result! We can see out again. (Ticks Practical Life.)

Maddy is asking loads of really interesting questions at the moment, what words mean, how things work and happen; she is really waking up. Today she set herself up with beads (completely without help!) and produced this. (Ticks Design and Art!)

She is incredibly image conscious atm and dresses herself for maximum impact. She quotes the “Clickits” advert the whole time and says “I’m a very stylish girl!” for most outfits - thing is she is - totally different to chuck-anything-on-Fran! I like both versions - Fran looked like Sporty Spice today - lovely in her own way but Moo is quite obviously going to be like Max was as a teenager, image all the way! (Ticks Fashion Studies)

Deciding we all had cabin fever, we went to the park and had a lovely autumnal walk; was SEVERELY pissed off to get a poo faced “look” from an old woman as i walked past with my 3 rather gorgeous children; turned round to look at her to see her saying “I can’t believe some young people are ALLOWED to have 4!” PISS OFF!!!!!!!!!!!! I nearly went and smacked her! But i suppose its a slightly random compliment! (I think!) (Ticks not lumping members of public)

Should have taken the camera as the girls were climbing trees and looking terribly charming. But i forgot it. Hm. And then we topped the end of the day by Fran launching herself at monkey bars, having decided that she could do it without me (i was helping Moo on the tallest slidy pole). Fran missed the second bar, dangled for a second and then crunched to the ground in a highly sickening manner on one arm. *Rolls eyes* Now, i have the most active children and i employ the “don’t look” method mostly, or i would have a heart attack on a regular basis (in fact at HESFES i just don’t look at all!) I get a bit stressed cos Ammi wants to follow them and she is so much littler (and scared of heights once she gets to them!), but i think generally i am quite calm about my children and their athletic daredevilness. But this one looked like an arm breaker. And in fact, she was carried sobbing from the park, didn’t move her arm for some time and has gone to bed Nurofened, although i am 99% sure its fine. Must have been a wallop though, given the croppers she comes when skating without a murmur. (Ticks PE)

However, we finished the day with a family watch of A Bugs Life (ticks Biology) a family dinner of Fajitas (ticks Geography and Home Economics) and more stories. Fran ADORES Amelia Jane (we are now on to the second book) but i loved her remarks about her the other day. She said that Amelia Jane really was BAD and that was quite different to Mr Meddle who just got into messes without meaning harm. Amelia Jane MEANS to hurt people and that is horrid. (Ticks Morals, Ethics and Literature Analysis)

Anyway, i’ll end with a few more pictures from the week just to make myself feel better.

This is the girls painting their salt dough. A faintly weird exercise all round but they had a nice time with it!

Amelie looking her cheekiest, most cute self.

And these were the results - everything together and the ones inspired by Van Gogh. We enjoyed all that very much.

And this is Fran’s Roman Bath - we have a whole Roman city upstairs now. She still prefers Duplo to anything else!

Apparently my brother is coming down Tuesday now, so that will help loads. Especially because i can’t wittle to him about labour anxieties so it will take my mind off it nicely!

Pah.

A pox on Lilypie counters.

I’ll just wait then shall i?

Grin… ah well.

Today has really been quite okay. I’m not sure quite how it happened but Max was certainly doing something very educational with Fran this morning. It started with her building a lego Roman Bath, evolved into a website search on Romans (thereby managing to impress him by my Roman page coming up quite high on google!) turned into a discussion on Parliaments and the Story of London and eventually evolved into a look at Castles. Which meant dragging out honeymoon pictures which have us taking a six week old Fran to Harlech, Conway and one other castle. I popped out and when i came back he had got out paint and they were busy painting the component parts of a castle model they had cut out from cereal packets. Way to go, Max i say!

Fran has since continued with the Roman building and Maddy was busy with bricks too; Ammi spent ages with a marble run so all in all its been a very “construction orientated” sort of a day. I’m sure there is room to put that in an educational category somewhere. Plus i have plans for all those topics for the winter so it should lead nicely into some of our books shortly.

Maddy and i went out together and bought a nappy bucket as well as taking more parcels to the PO. I’m trying not to shut BM if i can possibly manage it so i’m keeping really up to date so i’m not fretting about parcels while in the labour ward! And since then i have been BeadingMerrily to try and get a Halloween page together for BM before the end of the night.

I’m not holding out any hope of a baby before Monday that is for sure but i can aim for both Max’s brother’s and my brother’s birthdays next week, so that will be a challenge!

I am delighted to announce…

That Tesco sent a profuse apology and a £5 gift voucher.

What do you mean that wasn’t what you wanted from that heading??? ;~)

Oh who cares anymore!!!

I could quite happily have slept all day today, i feel so snoozy!!!!!

However, i did manage to drag myself out of bed and we had a fairly productive day. Fran was happy to sit and practise some writing with me and Maddy did the same; the jP books are going down fairly well (in fact i may get a set for Moo!) but i am limiting it to a page a day “AND NO MORE EVEN IF YOU BEG!!!” I like them okay but they are a bit boring and i don’t want her to burn out, so she is doing some of it and then doing some free writing, still copying the sentences from completed Bob Books. She and i looked at a Flying Boot book today which she enjoyed okay but got a bit upset at so many unfamiliar words in them so we took that pretty easily really. And that was enough, i wasn’t up for a major attack of motivation and neither of them were at their most receptive.

So then Kate came round and did some DWN with them which they really enjoyed again. kate draws beautifully so she sits and helps them and they just seem to love it. Its nice not to be the one doing that really although i hope eventually art will be something we really do enjoy together.

After that it was ballet; Ammi particularly seemed very happy there today and is really getting the idea of watching “Miss Danni” and copying.

And since then its been e numbers and Nick Jr.

Thanks for all the moral support everyone - its definitely keeping me smiling. it seems so weird that in a few days i will know who this little person is, i just can’t believe it really.

Much less wobbly.

After a bit of a bad start to the day (woke up feeling like i needed a good cry type thing!) it seemed to get a lot better generally. Zoe arrived so soon after i woke up that i just had to pull myself together a bit really and actually we managed a nice busy-ish day that made everyone feel good.

Started off by the girls varnishing their salt dough creations (which i suspect will largely make it straight to the bin but its been fun!) and then i made up some halloween versions ready as an “activity” sometime next week. Those Lakeland cutters are so great!

Midwife came so she and i chatted while Zoe fed and entertained the kids. have to confess to having a bit of a weep when she tried to get me to agree to a section in 12 days time but in the end i just said there was absolutely no point in me doing so because i simply was too much of a coward to turn up for it. So there! I’ve never gone 12 days over yet anyway so why get stressed about it? Even if it has to be a section, i prefer to let the baby decide the date, i’m too pathetic to go for a filling so i have NO chance of turning up for a section. Me and baby are in outrageously good health so she isn’t coming back for 10 days anyway by which time i imagine it will be here one way or the other. In fact the baby has dropped further and is about half engaged and on discussion about that we decided that unless it goes into reverse, if its cord was trapped in any way, it would already be dead, so hopefully that isn’t going to be an issue this time. Just have to try and avoid swelling up now. But i’m only 41cm at 40 weeks which is about 3cm smaller than i was with Amelie and 7cm smaller than with Fran , so *fingers crossed* She did have a go at doing a sweep so we shall see. I can handle the overdue thing better now i know the head is well down i think, really what i want to avoid most of all is all that “well the placenta stops working so well at 40+ whatever” type stress if i get close to +10 days.

Fran did some lovely writing, read well to me (finished the 3rd Bob box properly now) and did some good maths. Maddy sat with us and did an alphabet letter book and knew quite a lot of letters. Actually her writing isn’t far off Frans really! I’m going to try some Flying Boot next in a very relaxed fashion and also start re-inforcing some sounding out with spelling games. I can’t be bothered to type what i mean now, but i will later!

After that we went out to Activity World and the kids charged around like loonies for 2 hours. Ams was fearlessly swinging from great heights and they all really burned off some steam. Then Fran had Rainbows too, so a nice busy day.

Not bad, not bad.

Feeling a bit more positive today. Today is the day i had in my head that i had to deliver by (the day Maddy came) or i would end up having a section. And clearly i am not going to. And oddly enough i’m so convinced by that omen that i now feel less freaked out by the “how will it happen?” conundrum. I’m clearly insane *:~D at self!* Plus i didn’t have a huge round of fake contractions last night so i don’t feel so exhausted and sore and even if Ammi, i mean Amelie, was up 5 times in the night i just feel slightly more reasonable. Off for another reflexology in a bit so who knows if that will hit the odd button.

Anyway, we have had Zoe here today and all has been very smooth really. Fran went skating, then we all did Snowbabies. Then we came home, flopped, had lunch, i baked more pies.

Zoe and the kidlets painted all the recent salt dough creations and some pictures and then played some enormous game. its all been very pleasant.

Plus i am feeling good because i have been giving my sister the best breastfeeding support i can manage via late night texts and last night she got her wee small going with the aid of a nipple shield and suddenly its all working a bit more for them. So i am not a complete failure after all; i have KNOWLEDGE!!!!!

Oh there is nothing like the last 3-13 days of pregnancy…

What can i say about today? You know that advert? “Tense… nervous headache? You need panadol!!!” Nope, what i need is to be hit over the head and wake up in 2 weeks time. I’ve had 8 phone calls today, more than i normally get in a month! *rolls eyes*

Anyway, it could have been worse. Moo went to nursery, but when i collected her she hurled herself at me with exclamations of relief. So that makes life interesting.

Fran did several hours of Jump Ahead yr 2 and seemed to be loving it. Then she and i did several hours of hama patterns. And then E came round to play and they all had a ball. And then i sent out a few parcels. And now i am going to curl up in a ball and rub clary sage on my tummy!

Oh yes - i got this gem from Ams today “No mummy, NOT Ammi… my name AMELIE!!!!!!!”
*Open mouthed horror*

Hmmmmmm…..

Feeling most odd this evening. Having gone to bed at 8.30 last night for no good reason except i wanted to be snuggled up, tonight i have felt very shaky and sicky and my boobs are hurting under my arms. The BHs are certainly gearing up a notch but its harder to work out where the baby is exactly. Can’t be that long now i guess.

Zoe was supposed to be here today; she turned up but looked awful, so i took her home and told her to get some sleep. I admired the effort of getting here though, she was not a well girl. (Hope your internet is back on tonight Zoe!) Ammi was delighted to see her today though, even briefly.

Fran and i did a quick bit of reading and writing first (but it was very quick) and then we went to Tesco; i handed in my letter of complaint and then shopped for bits and bobs in general. Spent a lot of money for not really buying anything. We did look at, and buy, some JP workbooks as Fran liked the look of them (writing is her favourite atm apparently) and she was taken with the idea that a couple of her friends like them.

Then we popped in for tea with Auntie Kate, exchanged numerous feeding texts with my sister and came home. Where Fran promptly refused to do any of the new books, stropped, sulked and behaved horribly till i gave up and sent her away. So its been early beds all round tonight. Moo was fine at nursery but is just shattered. Ammi did a high pitched squeal for a lot of the day but the steroid inhaler seems to have helped, she looks better and is sleeping marginally better too.

I’ve been designing hama halloween patterns for BM, any contributions gratefully received! Oooh - and there goes another big BH too… oh come on baby - i want to meet you NOW!!!!