Ouch. I think my tolerance levels deserted me rather today I’ve managed to get well and truly narked, and embarrassingly sarcastic, with someone being pissy on eo because their messages didn’t get released immediately. I really didn’t do well and June and Jacqui will doubtless shoot me. Ho hum.

And then i lost my temper with an old lady. She used to live 3 doors away, long before we ever lived here and arrived to visit the other old lady 2 doors away, today. Now we live almost opposite a nasty junction and we’ve recently had double yellow lines painted with good cause. There have been several bad accidents here since we’ve lived here. I was outside and pointed out the lines and said that they did come and check now too. “Oh it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve got a blue disabled badge. Besides, i’m not here long.”

4 hours later i arrived back, dodged around her car against the flow of traffic to get in my drive and went and knocked on old lady number 2′s door. I made my point, politely, that her car was an obstruction and dangerous. “Well, i’m disabled” she said (she walks perfectly well) “where else can i park.” “Hmmm… how about this nice free drive your friend has, or 20 yards down the road where it is double yellow lines?”

She was really rude and dismissive and shut the door in my face, having said she didn’t live here so my issues with her parking were not her problem.

I know you can park on double yellows if you have a blue badge, but surely you are expected to still park safely and use better parking if it is available? I think it stinks; what a bloody horrid attitude, no one elses safety or convenience matters if i have a blue badge. Horrid woman.

Oh well.

Maddy has spent the day making museums, doing sums and being industrious, Fran did touch typing, Amelie and Josie played beautifully and looked at books, Fran read books to them.

We all got our hair cut.

We all went out to Ferry Meadows and got blown away with Tammy and Sam, but it was fun and warm enough to be out in, which helped!

I joined Freecycle and got rid of our garden toys.

Maddy and Fran had Rainbows/Brownies and Fran went bowling with them.

I posted MORE parcels, but am now up to date :cheer:

Maddy has created a birdwatching kit for herslef and wants to learn about birds and animals of the world. So i’m gonig to support her in that

I’m zonked, had bad dreams all night that i woke up believing and need to go and collapse on the sofa. Tomorrow my brother is visiting and i can’t wait

Well we did And so much better than having a bad one. Amelie shows no signs of tiring of that particular song, but it always makes me grin that as soon as we get in the car she says “Can i have A Bad Day?” Dear girl

Started off with some lovely parent-daughters time. It’s so easy to get caught up in making everything educationally valuable and forget that i’m doing this to spend more time with my children than i would if they were in school. So this morning, while the big two were off doing something, me, Josie and Amelie were cuddled up in bed playing silly games and enjoying some dolly play with breakfast bowls to feed them. None of Amelie’s babies can drink milk, which is interesting to hear. Interesting to watch is how she is coaching Josie into being a playmate, getting her toys and showing her games (like feeding dolly breakfast) that she can mimic. It is quite breathtaking to see her so adeptly socialising her smaller sister. I particularly liked that only Amelie had spotted that Josie had mastered the word “baby” (“bibby”) and so Amelie calls Josie’s doll that. They play some very cute mummy games together.

Increasingly i see myself as having a big two and a little two, something i didn’t think would work due to the age splits, but it is beginning to. In fact, i was considering wiping their names from the blog the other day and thinking i could call them, BigBig, LittleBig, BigLittle and LittleLittle… what do you think? Catchy?

When we got up, maddy and i spent quite a bit of time working with geomags; i helped her to construct a cube and we discussed why it wasn’t sturdy and how panels would help it. So she did that and then opened a museum, with labels and tickets and we all came to visit. Then she did a load more handwriting stuff and finished off with pages and pages of sums. I didn’t mean her to do anything like what she did; recently i ripped a few test pages out of the back of a CGP book and i just gave them to her, thinking in “Fran-time” and imagining she’d do half a dozen. Came back to find she was on her third A4 side of them!!! ROFL! Anyway, i think we can safely say she can do basic addition and subtraction with 2 or 3 numbers up to 10. I think it has helped her confidence loads though; she is actually way beyond that but often says “I can’t” and then is surprised when she can so seeing a huge page of ticks was good for her. I’ll have to get something more taxing out for her for tomorrow.

Obviously proves Max’s point, when i once said that i was never going to use workbooks with my children; he said that he’d loved doing pages of sums and shouldn’t i give them the opportunity to enjoy that kind of stuff. Clearly i should!

Fran meanwhile had run herself a bath and was wallowing, but got out and did some fantastic work on her spelling book; today her writing was great and her thought processes were too – she came up with huge lists of words using certain sounds all on her own. Well done that girl. Her writing looked about like i would say a 7 year olds should too, which is not bad for just a few weeks effort. She wants to do the touch typing course that jan linked to next; i should do it too. I think it was Sarah who said i was the fastest two fingered typist she’d ever seen! Don’t know what my dad was thinking of not teaching me; as a journalist he is a fantastic typist.

And then it was off to the bank and then off to see Kath and M and L at a big play place near us.

We had a really great time; we barely saw Fran, Maddy and M and they seemed to really get on. Kath and i got a great gossip and it is really fab to have them near. Looking forward to much more playing

Home to more parcels, i’ve nearly caught up (£250 on postage this week!) and now flop to The Apprentice.

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Your outgoing nature, understanding of others, and directness make you ENCOURAGING.
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You want others to do well for themselves, and you generally believe in their abilities.
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You often know what’s good for people because of your caring nature and your worldview.
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When you care about someone, you don’t keep it to yourself: you are good at letting people know that you’re thinking of them.
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Because you trust people, you take violations of that trust very seriously.
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You thrive in social situations, and even though you know who you like and who you don’t like, you can interact well with many different types of people.
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You have a healthy respect for people who have earned what they have, and you strive to be similar to successful others.
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You are a loyal friend and a good listener.

Pirate Dora Mania has been undivertable today, so i haven’t exactly tried. Amelie has had some really poor nights sleep and disolves into tears at the least thing and Josie can’t bear to be away from Dora if it is on, so it has been a Dora fest. Oh well, it’ll pass.

So i kept the big two away from it, as much as possible and occupied them. I wish we were feeling more inspired, but we aren’t, so i think we’ll just bumble along till we’ve moved. We have a habit of working fairly consistantly through the summer, so i’ll assume this is just one of those fallow periods.

On the other hand, the skills they are working on at the moment will open up a very new world to them and it is probably worth really putting our backs into it for a while; Fran is on the edge of being able to write her thoughts now, gradually her concept of building words up from her head is coming. I find it odd that is is so far behind her reading, but there you go. What do i know? The spelling book is really suiting her, because it is focusing on middles of words and probably the next step is to just do spelling lists or something for a while. Actually, i could get her to make wordsearches for Maddy; she’s like that! In the meantime she’s getting better at her joined up writing and we’re managing to find places it needs work as she goes along, which i think she sort of prefers to a book of exercises. So everytime a new letter join pops up that she isn’t sure of, we just practise it together a bit. I’m really enjoying watching a work through a process where the drive to do it comes from within. By the end of this year she is going to be such a different girl to the one that started the year. She’ll be a reader and writer and on her way to independence in learning. I’m looking forward to that.

Maddy did more writing too, happily learning all her caqpital letter formations; it’s a synch for her… remarkable that at 5 she didn’t know the names or sounds of any letters and yet now her day is predominantly driven by using them. And she loves Illustration Friday, so she’s doing a lot of drawing again. Sometimes the language to describe things still escapes her, especially if she is under stress and then she can draw something for me instead. Today she spent a long time creating a bear family from her favourite cuddlies (Spudge, Snow White, Teddy White and Peggy) and got upset becasue she had lost someone. So she drew it for me, so i’d remember it. Which i did, but unfortunately he went to Charity Shop Heaven (a little star came and took him!)

Anyway, they also did lots of EC, it hasn’t stopped being popular so i will have to sub to it i think, some beading, some drawing and quite a bit of playing. I’d have taken some nice photos, only Max took the camera to work to video tractor smoke or something

Tomorrow we have a day out, which Fran will be thrilled with as she has a bit of a soft spot for Kath’s M.

The big girls have a musical theatre week next week, which is going to be a challenge as i’ll have to entertain the smalls without their assistance (gulp!) – the musical is The Little Mermaid and i wanted to get them it on dvd so they’d know the songs a bit. Searched the shops today but couldn’t find one and i’m not over-anxious to increase our Disney collection anyway. Does anyone have a copy they would consider posting to us for a lend? I’d be awfully grateful I’m deeply dubious of the ones on ebay and i don’t know if the new dvd player i ran out and bought on Saturday night so i could watch HP4 is multi-region anyway. Speaking of HP4 – why did Dumbledore keep breaking out in random snippets of irish accent? He appeared to have had quite a personality change since the last one too! Otherwise, i liked it and i laughed at the occasional shots of Harry and Ron with their tops off to titilate the young girls!

Today has been quite acceptable, although it is very wet and rainy here. Warm though, the temps have been up in double figures since Friday, which is nice

We started off by getting out all the jigsaws in the house and the big girls made them all, sat up at the new table. It is lovely to have some decent table space, out of reach of Josie the Destroyer. Josie is at “that stage” and in particular, slightly getting on her sisters nerves by walloping them over the head with things Still, she makes me laugh because she persistantly calls “Mummy….?” in an imperious get querying way, convincing enough for me to say “Yes?” expecting something of sense to come somewhere and then she realises she can’t talk, a look of consternation crosses her face and she hedges with some gibberish. It is very funny

Once we’d worked out which jigsaws were incomplete and binned them, done some handwriting and spelling, talked about a variety of interesting things which now completely escape me but i know i felt “proper HE mum” when we were talking, it was lunch time. Which took forever as Amelie is currently on some form of hunger/workrate strike. I think she is a bit hung up on milk products and it worries her; she is suffering terribly this week as we accidentally gave her super noodles which had milk in them She writhed and scratched all night last night, at one point sobbing in her sleep about it. She panics over everything i offer and it is hardly helping that we keep messing it up and giving her things which cause the reaction. BAD mummy and daddy. Wah.

After that everyone Zoombini’d, Rainbow Rock’d and Studydog’d for a while and Amelie and i had a long conversation about why she came from my tummy not my bottom and why would she have died if she had come out of my bottom? So we did a demo, using hand, fist and a length of cable, talked about umbilical cords and so on and then she said “my babies are going to come out of my tummy so i don’t make them die.” Hm. Excellent, thanks for the guilt there, dear! She is asking so many questions atm, though she is mainly pre-occupied with death. I thought “if you die are you dead forever or do you come back” showed some depth of thought though. Maddy piped up with “a star comes down and takes you up to live with God” which is apparently the after life courtesy of HCA and The Little Match Girl. Oh well.

Oh dear, must do a project, this all feels a bit dull atm. Still, after that we had a family trip to tescos, bought slippers for all and sundry and Amelie and Josie managed to con the new Dora dvd out of me, Amelie with winsome pleading and Josie by shouting “DOR-WA!” every time we went past it! Still, Dora dvd’s are good value in this house and they sat enraptured to Dora’s Gerry Springer stylee kitcsh musical pirate adventure! Finished with gym and more parcels and now i really must finish off the billion things i need to do for BM.

Woke up this morning to the sounds of Max and the children dismantling our bookshelves. We’ve had these particular shelves for all of our house owning life, donated by my aunt who had them in her house from when i was 5. Well, today they went They’ve done very well but they could no longer take the strain! So all our books are neatly stashed in Tesco crates and Max is browsing ebay for new shelves, while i make panic-stricken remarks about waiting till we’ve moved so i know we have enough money. Now he’s looking at engine , me having exclaimed long and loud about the long list on MG Midgets on my watch list :wall: Granted his impulse buys are normally impecable, but i’ve been there before with old cars. They aren’t value for money! (And no amount of claiming that not having to pay road tax constitutes a saving will do ) )

One long tip run later, we started moving the new table and chairs in (£100 absolutely gorgeous, can’t believe how nice and solid it is ) only to discover that it wouldn’t go into the dining room by half an inch or so. For a month or so, it was hardly worth taking it apart, so we’ve spent the afternoon bunging out all the stuff from down the side of our living room, dusting (a lot) and moving things about so most of the toys and pooters are in the dining room and we now have living room and dining room combined. Oh well, it isn’t for long. It’ll probably make boxing stuff up easier anyway, as we’ve got a room to pile boxes in now.

During all this the kids helped, used stencils, spent ages working together designing table mats for us all (Maddy wrote out names, Fran decorated with considerable effort to make them look good, so i was impressed ) They worked for ages on that. I also pulled out a load of stashed magasines and they looked at those, lots of co-operative Zoombinis got done and well, it was nice. Maddy, Fran and i had a quick trip out too but mainly we just worked on the house.

My SIL and BIL visit in a couple of weeks which will be a good opportunity make sure the house is clean and tidy for (they are VERY tidy people!) and the more packing done the better. Must ebay some more stuff; tonights auctions look like they are going well, so hurrah for less clutter and more cash. Deeply pleased too to find Fun Blox on BM are at the top of google so i’m selling a good few that way; have started on tentative new stock enquiries today. Baby steps are still exciting ones

Isn’t it addictive to be able to see how many watchers you’ve got?

Anyway, tolerably please to have made £26 from 10 books tonight, especially since most of the decent stuff sells tomorrow night.

Today has been mostly very pleasant; Maddy has burned through a heap of her handwriting book, Fran has played Zoombinis, we all went out to the park after i had parcelled and Max had been for a haircut. I’m selling a fair few Fun Blox and for every boxful i sell, i put £70 to the moving fund, so it is making me feel meaningful I do love those blox, the girls have played with them again today. I’ve also managed to upgrade all the thumbnails of bead colours on BM so they look more professional, so i am pleased with myself for that.

Late this afternoon Max and Fran went off to pick up a table and chairs that Max impulse bought on ebay last night and this evening i have had an early Mothers Day of flowers, 3 beanies (aw!) the HP4 film and a lovely tea. Now the girls are up illustrating their new fairies

Tomorrow, we pack :wall: