Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

I have no idea what this forum is, nor why it is in my PoP site stats, unless i haven’t read far enough andf i’m hated. I wonder if it is any of you?

However, it made me laugh. A lot. And that is good.

My favourite bit of today was the solid 90 minutes that Fran sat on the sofa, reading to Maddy and Amelie from “Puzzle World” an Usborne compendium of stories, while they leant over her shoulders, taking it in turns to answer the questions in the book. It was lovely.

My second favourite bit of the day was Fran and Maddy reverently using new pouches of pencils and creating really lovely pictures of fairyland and rainbows. Both of them took ages over them and they were great.

My third favourite bit of the day was lying on my bed, surrounded by washing and underneath my two youngest, who both decided to come and play. We lay in a heap for ages, singing songs, tickling and being silly. Josie has always got a spare kiss and giggle for me and Amelie is easily my most empathic child; she can newver be fobbed off and she always knows if i’m too fragile to take silliness from her. She never fails to come up with the goods if it is really necessary.

My fourth favourite bit was listening to 2 old ladies in the doctors waiting room discussing how nice my children are.

My fifth favourite is about to happen; i’m off to play computer games with Max.

my sixth favourite was getting 12 pages of perfect maths handed to me by Fran and playing a mental maths test with her while she ate paella with me and Max and seeing her get all her 3x and / by 3 sums right. She learned those all herself.

This isn’t even very long ago really but now Maddy is older than she was there!

We move one week tomorrow. Maddy is marking the days off on the calender This is really quite an achievement for her as change can be such an issue but she seems genuinely excited. No doubt i’ll find her under a bunk bed in a day or two though.

Anyway, the removals are booked and i’ve spent the day clearing shelves and packing boxes in desultory fashion, in between taking painkillers and wishing Max was still off work. I hate being ill. Still, i’ve managed to move random crud from half of one room, so that is a start. Hoping that tomorrow i’ll feel slightly more inspired to do a bit more. Am wondering where everything will go in the new house as i’m not really sure we’ve thought it through well enough to actually have homes for a lot of our books and educational things. Still, we are planning on using our garage as a sort of extra room/playroom type place, so i hope that will solve the issue. The girls are going to like having a computer upstairs anyway as they’ve been asking for one for ages.

What was good today was that both big girls were really motivated workwise, which pleased me lots as i wasn’t feeling hugely like pushing them. Fran has completely got the hang of division (did i blog that my explanation largely consisted of “divide cakes on to plates, the answer is always smaller than the first number”?) This appears to have been enough and she did 6 pages of them without any trouble. Oh i am pleased. Then after that i asked her to read 3 double pages in any of the little Usborne Mini Encyclopedias and she picked on on oceans, read about waves, currents and coasts, decided to do a project, drew and wrote up a page on waves and narrated all the most interesting things back to me. She was really excited to be able to execute all that for herself. I think she read a book about an island too, having scoured what was left of the shelves for relevant stuff.

Maddy meanwhile was working on some JP handwriting and spent ages on that. She wrote her name in writing that wouldn’t have disgraced a 10 year old I can’t actually think what else she did, i know she has been drawing lots of dolphins and mermaids lately. Amelie was moping and playing on a Tweenies cd-rom, having been up half the night and Josie (who had also been up) was doing similar.

Everyone played in the garden a good bit, managing to avoid nettles this time. yesterday Fran fell in some and was stung horribly; i think she must have had 30-40 bumps I got treated to another rendition of Maddy’s mermaid song performance Oh she is so gorgeous.

Kate came over and we planned our new garden, which her dh is going to do for us. It’ll be nice, a stagger patio down one side and a lawn that curves to mirror the curved wall too, with some screens for shade on 2 spots. It’s south facing, so needs breaking up a bit or it will be boiling. I’m going to plant a Schumacher tree against the back; it’s mine and Max’s tree, as by a strange co-incidence, there has been one in the garden of all the houses we have ever felt were really home. And the rabbits get a new home too; we’ve been entertaining ourselves with online window shopping for rabbit mansions. Well, fresh start for everyone

Really must do something meaningful business-wise soon, BM is still busy, though obligingly slightly fewer customers have been buying but buying lots since the end of the easter holidays. Got some new products arriving tomorrow, so must get those on.

Girls started their swimming lessons tonight. Don’t think Level 1 will stretch them really, but they were so excited. Bless.

There was enough money! We don’t have to grab a bag and make for the hills after all!

Tomorrow the last bit of house moving stress, short of the actual MOVING *shudder*, will either resolve or come to a head. Let’s hope that this one bit of April gets to be simple, because so far it has been a rather complex and difficult month. I really hope May is better, because i’d prefer not to do April again for at least another 12 months.

So today feels like the start of something very new, which i have to make the best of and get going with. I’ve been awed by a lot of things this month, the friendships i’ve called on, the strength of my marriage and the astonishing commitment and love that binds us together, nevermind the strength of our immediate and wider family. It is something remarkable and i’m almost glad to have discovered it afresh. But um… well. I also like a simple life. (And no, no-one had an affair hahaha… you’d get points for achievement round here!)

The girls have done a remarkable job of getting on with stuff while we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing. Maddy has resumed her interest in Egypt and has been making stuff from her Egypt kits; bracelets, papyrus scrolls, necklaces and other bits and bobs; Fran has done lots of computing, lots of reading, some maths from her Singapore book that she flew through without any support (hurrah for forced breaks, they always work!) and quite a bit of “finding out”. Maddy draws a lot and amazed my parents by ‘inventing’ a “thing that sucks in stars” and drawing a blackhole. On questioning, she’s never heard of one or seen a picture of one but her picture is really like one! They’ve asked to do a space project when we move.

Amelie is better; her eczema was dreadful but we worked out it was infected and cured that and she is sleeping nights through. Maddy and Fran have parted night-time company and moved into separate beds - legs were finally getting too long to top and tail! So now we finally have all our beds occupied! Amelie has asked to learn to read and is writing and drawing with increasing control. She and Maddy have been making jewellery with scoubis (sp?) and plastic beads.

Josie still has horrid ears, a Dora fetish and has finally broken one molar through a gum. She has done her first solo visit to someones house and survived, though did apparently utter the phrase “Daddy gone away door” - she also does a good line in “I want that” and “Ammi hit me!” (which is normally not true, so she is learning fast!)

We’ve lost our copy of Danny shortly before the end, but have read a good few stories and even read the Tanglewood version of George and the Dragon yesterday. And i have 60 things on ebay too. Can’t believe someone bid on a Laurel and Hardy video.

The house is in boxes but i’m sure we’ll get unpacked again sometime - we aren’t quite at the point where you find yourself filling 10 large boxes with random crud you don’t need but can’t chuck, but i daresay we’ll get there. Oh for Ros, Joyce, SIL and Sarah to descend and clean it. Right now i could do with some sort of army of portable clean freaks , but i think i may have used up my quota of such favours for some time to come. nevermind i have my new Dustbuster….

Hannah, thanks for my leeks. I feel quite inspired to get going now, especially as I’ve just opened Poledragon’s Patented Parcelled Plot Planting Plan But um… maybe i’ll give it another week! Kris, you are a star you know

I just read this supposed explanation on Carbon Trading. I think i’m even more in the smelly, overheated dark than before. Am i just completely dim?

Because you really need to know my BIL and SIL to know how funny this is. And i love my BIL and SIL and i aspire to their standards, but it won’t happen this side of 2015

However, to give you a clue, where we wear cheap from Tesco, they often wear designer, where we have scruffy kids in H&M’s, their kids are ironed, clean and prettily dressed, where we have clutter, they have clean lines and carefully designed and thought about rooms. Nothing is ever on the floor, unwashed, left for later or needing something doing to tidy up. There is NEVER dinner under the table. There are nice ornaments, gorgeous flowers and NO DUST. WHAT. SO. EVER. I doubt Joyce or Ros could do better. SIL makes Sarah look slovenly They are very stylish really, though absolutely lovely with it and they give lots of dinner parties with well thought out food and nicely decorated tables.

Which makes this present, delivered late from Great Gran, extremely funny indeed

… currently has 4 different postcodes and 3 different addresses, including one in a different county