Well, the week is improving but i’ve got killer lurgy. I feel terrible, nearly as bad as with the terrible tonsils except i really don’t know what is up. Gungy throat yes, but not actually sore but achy, shivery, gruesomely horrid. I keep kneading my boobs feverishly trying to decide if i’ve got mastitis, but i’m sure i haven’t.

Anyway, dosed up on nurofen and codeine we’ve made it through. Fran made a world jigsaw ready to look at tomorrow (but Max has just packed it away!) and we found some pictures of Australian Animals and others of landmarks, and tomorrow we have half a hundred weight of National Geographics, a cd-rom or two and some stamps and stuff to look at. I think i’ve never quite recovered from the Tudors so i thought we’d try a series of very short projects, just a week unless it really grabs anyone. A week of Australia i can handle.

Then we got back to “the boxes” – today we started Getty Dubay, since i thought maybe Fran had lost confidence in her writing cos we have gone quite fast recently. Seemed to work, she liked the format of it anyway. Started with Book B since A really is very large and simple. The she read some Flying Boot and did brilliantly, some mental maths (easy) and then todays new thing… table tables!

We’ve sold out on sticker charts – 4 tables stuck into door panels and when she can tell me any sum, out of order, without having to work it out (which she is actually doing really well, so at least she’s “got” the patterns) she gets a sticker next to it. They are quite prominent too so hopefully it will prompt her to try and learn some of the ones that she hasn’t yet nailed. About to start on 3x tables now, bored of 5′s!

BeadMerrily has been busy which is fab, i’m so pleased with it. Posted 14 parcels tonight, just orders since saturday, so that is a big increase. Had to leg it out at 4.45 when i remembered i’d not taxed the car – ho hum. Maddy had got upset at nursery, someone wouldn’t play with her or something. Heigh ho again. Off to sit in my armchair before the nurofen wears off. Hope you are feeling better Alison.

Josie has a spot on her chin…hmmmmm….

The clouds seem to have lifted rather, not sure why although i think i’m less hormone-y. Strange though, i’m now really poorly, with some indefinable glands up, achy, shivery/gungy throat rubbish that’s gone on since saturday. Even leaving aside the Implanon/tonsilitis malarky of the other year, this is now the 3rd time recently i’ve been poorly with a burst of hormones. I’m really starting to wonder if i’m allergic to progesterone. Can one be allergic to ones own hormones i wonder?

Anyway, i’m going to have a better week, its a bit of a busy one actually, so we’ll get some education in today i think. Maddy’s already left for the day (grumble) and i’m dosed up so i’m going to hit clipart.com and make some Australia clipart for Fran to use in a lapbook.

Oh, we have a lovely postcard from Matilda – thank you :~) Must get Fran’s email working…

I need to add some films i want to see to my Amazon rental list. I watched The Last Samurai last night, i’ve watched Troy, Master and Commander and Cold mountain since i started it. Quite liked The Last Samurai, a touch over dramatic and self indulgent at times but good to look at anyway. Besides i like Tom Cruise. I’ve only admitted to liking it after checking MovieGazette hadn’t panned it of course.

I need some recommendations, i’m hopelessly un-filmy really and i’ve not seen anything really that is new in the last 4 years except LOTR and Harry Potter!

So can i have some i suggestions?

And while i’m at it, we’ve obviously done something to our dvd player as it automatically goes to the German version of films now and if the film has Deutsch on the language list, that is the one it defaults to. Any ideas?

Its okay, she’s still here. Only just, but still here. Dunno what was up with her last night but she narrowly avoided being battered, i’m not sure i’ve ever got so angry with her. Normally her sleeplessness is itch related; well you just can’t get angry at that but last night it was a “where is daddy, i hate yoooooou” type of thing. For 5 hours. I finally lost it and whipped back my arm to give her a smack (pushed to the limit by being screamed at, bitten, punched and kicked through to dawn) and smashed my hand backwards into the headboard of the bed. And thought better of it through the pain. Bruised knuckles, parenting credentials more-or-less intact. :~/ I dunno, Nic, you have my full understanding on this one.

So she fell asleep at 6.15, Josie woke at 6.20 – we all dozed till 9.30, my sleep only interupted by having a passionate affair with Wayne Rooney and getting pregnant by him. (He was a VERY caring person in “real life” :~/) Honestly i worry about myself. We didn’t even have our own house; we were living in centerparcs and sharing a bathroom with someone. Cheap skate.

Ammi and i have passed a pleasant day; lego, my friend Jennie and her daughter K (who looks a little like Lulah and thereby confuses Ammi somewhat), videos, Auntie Mabel, more lego, singing made up songs, gooze, cuddles and silly games. Yes, we had quality time i think. I even managed to clean out the kitchen so its spotless, degreased, washed up, reorganised and all the etcs – Khadijah, flylady would be proud ;~)

Max and the girls are back after a lovely night away with Grandpa; they’ve bought Buckaroo, so that’ll be more pieces lost by morning. Still not found the Downfall piece. Grumble grumble.

Just want to say a big thank you for all the emails, kind offers and thoughtful gestures i’ve had over the last few days. I needed it. There was something faintly reassuring about Jennie visiting today and saying within about 2 minutes (she’s known me a long time) “Oh, you’ve got depressed again, that’s a bit earlier than normal. Have you been to the doctors yet?” How lovely to have friends who care, know and don’t mind saying.

So – camping in the top field only? People still going? That is going to be unbearably hard, my lot will miss not being up against the playground terribly.

Oh just hold me back. I’ve got to stop reading that list. Endless rants about women who dare to have sections, then someone asks for help to avoid one and guess what? Silence. Please let me remember how this feels when i’m a midwife…

I think i’m teetering on the slightly depressed just at the moment, well, i’ve got spots, so maybe its just hormones. Certainly something is changing, lbs are falling off, Josie is feeding like a maniac (ALL night last night) and i can’t stop crying. Or rather, i CAN stop crying, by just not saying anything outloud. Clearly even Max has spotted there is something wrong because i said something innocuous last night about why i had to get up and go and find him in the night and he immediately looked expectantly at me as if i was about to reveal some inner feelings. Which i wasn’t, i was just cold. So if he’s noticed, it must be obvious. So excuse the verbal drivel, i’m just venting in small spurts. Its not really like me not to be able to talk about things, i used to be very good at venting emotion. I must be getting old, or turning into Max, or something. Do people get like their husbands? OMG, is Autistic Spectrum CATCHING????????

Todays hysterical ranting has revolved around the game of Downfall, which i bought yesterday. And today, less than one game after opening it, Amelie (may the gods save her) has lost one of the bits – AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE. And frankly that is driving me mad; i’ve already moved sofas, emptied toy boxes, cleaned out the rabbit looking for it- i found one in MY SLIPPER for gods sake. But she ran off with them, then ran back with some of them, so i don’t know where she went to lose it. And how angry am i????? I once spent ALL DAY looking for a block from a Plan Toys board thing, only to find it balanced in a picture frame i had stared at for much of the day. I CAN’T STAND missing bits of toys. ARGH.

Rant number two is a pair of trousers from Cotton Traders – they are a 16, they seem to fit round me, not too loose, not too tight but they walk down my legs all day – every 15 steps i have to haul them up or i look like Sarah’s gravatar. I swear its the pile on them, its pulling them down, i’ve even tried them on backwards to see if that helped (it didn’t). ARGH, GRRRR, BAH HUMBUG.

So – forced the children to do something worthy in-between Shrek-ing today. (22 hits on the Shrek related this last night btw).

Fran wrote out more in her healthy eating book and then did some writing and reading. Reading good, writing crap. Honestly, its getting worse, 50% of her letters seem to go backwards now, its virtually consistantly backwards too – wtf is going on????? 3 weeks off and she’s lost all the progress she had made, Maddy is doing better.

I’m in despair – if i’m brutally honest i’ve found myself seriously wondering if i can do this today. I really don’t know if i can face years of struggling to get the basics into smallish children. I really don’t know if i can face having to slog at having just one child who can read and write for much longer. I just don’t know if i can do this. I don’t think school has ever seemed so appealing as it does when i realize i’ve probably got another year before i can set Fran on at a project without having to spoonfeed her. And in the meantime Maddy waits, in the meantime along comes Josie and Amelie needing the same. I just don’t know if i can cope with carrying on taking all this on my shoulders. And don’t tell me i should just leave it. If i’ve convinced myself of anything, its that Fran isn’t going to get this without a lot of practise and effort and encouragement.

At least Fran was better at her maths, she did a page of the Yr 2 Exeter book (although one sum baffled me, some of them are so weirdly presented), she seemed to know her 2, 5 and 10 times tables okay. We are going to have to get back to our hour or so of structure a day. It made us all feel so much better.

Maddy did fabulously. I started her on the Yr 1 Exeter book and she loved it and did several pages straight off. She did nice writing and she wanted to do more but Amelie got disruptive. Tomorrow Max and the big girls are out all day so its me and the little ones; in our current state of National Emergency, Amelie may not last the day, so if any of you local lot (wittered on at girls/women there and copped out) fancy coming over, please do. You might just save someone’s (Amelie’s) life.