*Laminate mixing charts.
*Print off colour colouring charts.
*Make playdough.
Buy food colouring, milk, washing up liquid.
*DON’T forget crayons….
*Pack crafty stuff for collages.
*Plastic laces.
*Montessori colour things.
*Hama beads in 6 shades and circle boards – ironing paper, DON’T forget iron.
Lined paper – i like this because…..
(PENCILS!)
*Paper circles for hopping.
*Paint.
*Dominoes.

Also
Snacks/drinks.
Baby toys, fleece.
Book for names.

Okay…

2 times Montessori colour boxes.
Playdough in 3 primary colours.
Milk fireworks.
Paint handshakes and hand prints.
Montessori colour charts.
Hama bead colour wheels.
Pom pom rainbow necklaces.
My favourite colour collages.
Play traffic lights.
Play “Twister”
Play “Colour corners”.

That should do it….

“Um…. well, sums is maths… maths is short for mathematical, so it means sums, like Fran is short for Frances…”

“Oh, so its sums with a ‘mathical’ added on the end?”

I love my Fran

Well, today was okay. Started off with shocked daughters on waking and discovering that Max and i had removed half their possessions overnight. We’ve been threatening it for a week because there room has just been a trashed heap of crud every night and they’ve ignored requests to tidy up. So this morning it was all gone. Its in my room in bags and coming back one thing at a time when they earn them back. I know its harsh, but i’m simply not prepared to see things get trashed and i’m absolutely not interested in having the same conversations/arguments about it every day. I don’t mind played-with mess, i loath trashed crud and i really loath going up at 8pm after asking them to do it at 7pm and finding nothing has been sorted out at all. It just annoys me.

Anyway, after that they watched a couple of episodes of The Blue Planet; Fran wanted to know about Penguins. Then she read The Emperor’s Egg, with minimal help (did i mention she can read now????) and Maddy and i did about 400 pages of Exeter maths. Ammi tootled, played dominos, listened to Fran read her stories etc etc.

Then we had lunch, with Auntie Kate and S who is doing even more amazingly. Played at the playground etc and then i came home to find 10 large bead orders to do and Max was 90 minutes late home. So the evening has been slightly hectic!

Bedroom is spotless though! lol.

Oh yes, i was quite pleased yesterday when Fran caught sight of the van gogh google logo and recognised the painting style. I must be doing something right!

Girls were great about me being poorly today and largely entertained themselves. I was about but not really functioning early on although lots of scratchy toast and hot chocolate helped a lot – mid morning the throat started to subside a bit – i’m actually wondering if my ear drum has burst though as its behaving rather “oddly” – hmmm…

Anyway, it was lovely to see Tammy and Sam and very briefly Khadijah too; i think we are all looking forward to getting in to our new venue this week for our group.

Can’t think of much else today – mountains of parcels done andm ore still to do, paperwork piling up, kits being designed in my head but not yet on paper, Fran read lots, Maddy was counting odd numbers and terribly pleased with herself. Must do more tomorrow.

Questions by Alison.

1. If I said “I bet Fran would be reading today whatever you did last summer”, would you hit me?
No, i wouldn’t hit you but i wouldn’t believe you. I think that she was capable of learning this time last year, and would have been just as capable this year but i’ve seen her build up skills and build up a realization that it’s achieveable in such a particular way that i do think she needed help to unlock the concept that she could do it. My instinct tells me that if i hadn’t helped her with regular practise, she might have got it next year, or by the time she was 9 on her own but by that time she would have been angry that Maddy and Amelie were right up on top of her and we’d all have been angry that she couldn’t entertain herself. To be honest, i think that another year of a non-reader might have pushed me into “I can’t face HEing at this level of intensity” territory – i’ve been feeling really hamstrung and frustrated by her not being able to find things out herself when she is so inquisitive and so keen to know things. So, almost regardless of whether it was essential, the actual process has been useful for us both – i know i can teach her something complex, she knows i can teach her something complex and she knows she can learn something complex. Win, win, win…

1a. Reading? Really? Is she???
Did i mention that?????

2. Where would you like to see youselves in 5 years’ time?
NOT living in Peterborough, probably minus my tonsils, hopefully still HEing, hopefully working with Max in our own book/toy/resource business. Up North or down South would be good. I’d quite like to live abroad but i’m not sure where that would fit in now really.

I’d also like to be 2 stone lighter, i’m reasonably sure this morning i could achieve that by having my tonsils taken out.

3. Do you think that the You of 5 years ago would be happy with where you are now?
Ah… you know i was only saying the other day that when i left Drama School my goals were to have 4 girls by the time i was in my 30′s and to have my own business. So basically, i’ve achieved that goal. 5 years ago we were just selling up as a temporary measure though, so i wouldn’t have been too pleased to know we were still renting. I probably wouldn’t have been too impressed to know how much i was going to weigh either but on balance, those are piddly things. I’d have been delighted to know that MuddlePuddle was going to exist and that i wasn’t going to have to put my kids through the hell that school was for me. This time 5 years ago, i was “just about” to find out about HE.

4. Are there 3 books or films or TV programmes that have really changed the way you think?
Well (can i have a whole series?) The Chalet School books can probably be quoted as a major part of the person i am if i’m honest. They had a thread of do-to-others-as-you-would-be-done-by running through them that really struck a chord with the young me and moulded me a lot. Bit old fashioned and not very impressive as an admission but true nonetheless. Plus Joey was my “mother of a large family” role model and genuinely is responsible for me always thinking a large family (although perhaps not 13) would be nice.

Three in a Bed was on my shelf from when i was a really little girl because it arrived in a bundle of books for the Book Magazine that my Dad edited. I read it when Fran was about 20 months old and it was like a weight of stress about “being the right sort of mother” just dropped off my shoulders. It was too late for Fran, who had been put through sleeping separate, sleep training and horrible, horrible nights of us all being miserable, but i read it just in time for Maddy, who was in my bed from day 1. (Odd, it was published in 1989 so i can’t have had it as long as i thought i did. But look, one of her children is called Frances!)

There is a scene in Charlotte Gray which has stuck with me since i read it; the mother is having her children taken from her to go to a concentration camp at a train station and she is glaring angrily at them, Charlotte can’t understand why. Then she realizes that the mother is frantically trying to fix the image into her head because she knows they are going away to unimaginable horrors and she has no way of protecting them or staying with them. I’d just had Maddy and i suddenly, in one dreadful moment, realized that the mothers of babies crying in famines and world disasters, were mums like me. I suddenly realized that when they have weeping, hungry babies they are tired and worn out like i get and have no way of changing anything. It made me dreadfully grateful that i am who i am, where i am.

5. What would your dream holiday be? (And let us know when you book it so we can come too )

lol… HESFES… no, not really. My dream holiday would be on the Mediterranean coast of France, just with Max and perfect weather, where i was slim and money was not an issue. I’m a girl of simple tastes – that is the holiday we had when i was just pregnant with Fran.

I’d quite like to see the Northern Lights too.

If YOU want to be interviewed:

1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions (not the same as you see here).
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. (If you don’t have a blog, let this inspire you to begin one!!)
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Don’t forget we are puddling on friday…..

Anyone want to come round to mine tomorrow? Or meet anywhere else? K and A have my phone number….

ARGGGGGGGGGH.

Fran has more snot than i’ve ever seen, Josie is doing lime green poo and i have one tonsil roughly the size of Wembley which is making my ear feel like it might explode outwards at any second. Ammi is coughing, in fact, only Maddy is really “well”. I’m just going mental over the whole throat thing, its going to make this year impossible to plan again. I’m going to be ill for every camp going, you just watch

That aside, its been a fairly good day. Fran did some lovely stuff earlier in the day – she discovered white crayons and experimented with various rubbings and felt tip coatings, then made a collage with her favourites. For a while she had both the other two sat at the table with her, all before 9am!

Fran and Maddy spent quite a bit of time doing the latest free designs to hit BeadMerrily which they really like. Must make some more actually, round ones would be easy to do. Ammi and Maddy played with TT a lot, Maddy did some Hama, i tidied, Fran read. In fact, i nearly collapsed laughuing when i had to tell her off for tripping me up because she was trying to get ready and leave the house with her nose in a book. How quickly have things changed! What esle… hmmm… oh, board games and stuff too.

Most of the house is done, so is a fair bit of BeadMerrily stuff; last week i resolutely ignored the housework after Monday and we had a good week, so it seems to be working.

Nipped out to buy seed onions and potatoes then on to Tesco to get Fran a heap of Ladybird books, including these factual varieties of the Read It Yourself type. I’ve no idea if these are reprints of older ones. She seems to really click with the LadyBird format though so i guess we can take a trip up to Peakirk Books and get her some old copies of the info variety if she wishes. They have about 5 million up there, so it shouldn’t be too hard. can’t believe how quickly she has got it all of a sudden; from nowhere to independant reading in a few days.

Did i mention Fran can read now?

By the time we got home i was feeling dreadful, too ill to even post my parcels, so i’m off to do that now before the Nurofen wears off.

Gallery

Not much else to report really, girls went out to Burghley house and jumped on their Uncle all day, i have a sore throat again of the enormous lump on one side variety and feel slightly depressed.

On the other hand i have improved BM, nursed my bubba, had a lovely weekend and got a daughter who can read. Did i mention that ?