How does having no interest in althletics coaching mean it ends up on the list?

… anyone with a BM account who feels inclined to leave me some nice product reviews would be very popular and stands a chance of winning some nice £5 kits during June

Also, normal stuff for camp (which i have now booked!) – anyone want beads or fun blox, feel free to ask and i will bring. I’m stocking a load of new colour bags of beads as of next week.

Chapter Two: In which the Snork Maidens get a pink slip, Fran-kin discovers maths is fun and Itch outgrows Dora.

Fran and Maddy have made it out of Level One in their swimming lessons; no surprise given their ages, but good anyway. They were both delighted. odd system; they now do 3 more weeks in Level One before moving up. Why????

We’re working towards a morning routine where i get up early and work, then finish off stuff while everyone does their normals. On an average day i have something like 10 parcels to do, which i can do in an uninterupted hour, plus a few minutes sat at the computer. I’ve got Fran working nicely at the moment and Maddy working on EC quite happily. It isn’t perfect but it makes a good start. Now i just have to figure out the little two; Dora enthusiasm has waned, so that doesn’t cut it and most of their toys are still packed. But i can fix that next week

Anyway, Fran got through a load more maths, english and florence, Maddy EC’d for England. This afternoon they made the most of the weather while i blubbed and fumed over cleft palate blogs/newstories. Then we went swimming and then we came back.

Lol. Life in the fast lane

In Chapter 2 of Finn Family Moomintroll Moomintroll climbs under the Hobgoblin’s Hat and suffers something of a seachange, turning all his fat bits thin (sounds like a plan actually) and all his cute bits ugly (in fact, if that works in reverse, i’m starting to think i could use a Hobgoblins hat!) To his distress, his friends don’t know who he is and based on his looks, take a terrible dislike to him.

The following short passage was one i liked all my childhood and particularly recall talking to my mum once and asking her if she would recognise me out of a line-up of fake Merry’s or if my face got changed by something. At the time we were (briefly) considering plastic surgery of a sort on my toes because they were causing me such distress and i think perhaps this passage spoke to me because of that process.

***
“Isn’t there anyone who believes me?” Moomintroll pleaded. “Look carefully at me, mother. You must know your own Moomintroll.”
Moominmamma looked carefully. She looked into his frightened eyes for a very long time, and then she said quietly: “Yes, you are my Moomintroll.”

And at that moment he began to change. His ears, eyes and tail began to shrink and his nose and tummy grew, until at last he was his old self again.

“It’s all right now, my dear,” said Moominmamma. “You see, i shall always know you whatever happens.”

***

We read this last night and of course it made me blub, because it so happens that i thought about this particular little passage a lot at one other important part of my life; in the few days i knew Fran before her lip was repaired. I can recall worrying, as is common to cleft mothers i believe, that i wouldn’t know her when she was changed and when they gave her back i wouldn’t recognise her.

But of course, i did know her and i did recognise her. A mother ALWAYS knows her own Moomintroll.

I’ve had 900 in the last few minutes, making that three lots of 800+ i’ve cleared out since 8.30.

I can’t go throguh them so if anyone was in there, i missed you, sorry

AND… i’ve added words like slots and spray to my blacklist, so those are disappearing without me ever seeing them. So you might have to word comments carefully – because the way it’s going, i’ll be blacklisting the word “and” soon

7.00am – Max brings me a cup of tea, i spent 20 minutes on my AC town waking up, a sleeping Maddy on one side of me.

7.30am – go and make a start on the parcels from the weekend (printed off last night), stop occasionally to look at blogs, list stuff on ebay, do banking, mark up my order sheet for the next stock order. No one wakes up till gone 8am, and then it is only Fran, who AC’s while we chat about Victorians.

9am – Chivvy everyone downstairs. Maddy makes everyone breakfast, while i keep packing; Fran reads a couple of chapters about Florence, i finish parcels. Fran teaches Josie “wind the bobbin up.”

10am – girls start some strange baby making game where they are all different garden bugs. Decide this is botany and commence protracted and slightly bewidering conversation with bead supplier, ending in eventual customer delight and excitement! Feed Josie biscuits and juice while doing so, then quickly weigh and stamp parcels with Amelie’s help as porter.

10.30am – Amelie carries on helping me, Josie poddles and Fran and maddy work at the table. Fran is doing some Singapore on 3 and 4 times tables, Maddy is working from Getty Dubay Book 3. Spending quality time with Amelie just doing jobs still works really well and she loves helping me. her current job is sticking return address labels on to parcels for me.

11.45am – Parcelling turned out to be huge fun, with Josie and Amelie being a production line of moving stamped parcels to the postal bag; collaborative effort gets the two large postal sacks full downstairs ready to be collected. It’s been a weekend of steady, medium sized orders and it’s good to get them out of the house. Set Maddy up on EC, using a set of games i prepared for her on Friday night. Spend a few minutes with Fran, drawing plates of cakes in 4s to remind her of the connection between multiply and divide and how to count back from 10x’s for larger numbers. Leave her finishing them and with another chapter to read on Florence. Listen in on Maddy doing EC, watch Jo and Amelie playing Barbies, get dressed find some towels, sort out two loads of washing and put the first on and explain the term “hell on earth” to Fran, with suitable Biblical concepts thrown in for good measure.

12.15pm – Parcels have been collected, Fran has done 4 quick english (7-8) tests, Maddy has pronounced her EC “all done and easy.” I’ve done a quick sort of clean washing, put mine and Max’s away, taken the kids stuff up to Josie’s room to do later, tidied up rubbish in our room and got Maddy to do a quick dustbust in there. Resisted temptation to go mental at Fran’s short cut to avoid writing in one of the tests, agreed to Josie’s demand for nappiless knickers and regretted it 2 minutes later as a puddle lands from little Puddle at The Puddle. Stick “Springwatch” on for the girls while i make lunch, having sent them up to do a 10 minute room tidy.

12.45pm – girls are eating tuna and cheese (delete as appropriate!) sandwiches out on the patio and i’m wolfing tuna and nut roast upstairs to finish off leftovers. Off to unpack/repack dishwasher now, then the afternoon should just involve playing, reading and swapping over laundry.

1.30pm – Load dishwasher; inexplicably start to reload it before fully emptying bottom half, thus tipping hot chocolate all over my clean mixing bowls and stuff Also tip hot chocolate on floor, legs etc etc. Changed Josie (again), spoken to friend on phone, looked nerrvously at number of orders that have appeared since sending out parcels, spent a bit of time trading fruit with Fran and exchanging messages on screen. Impressed by what she can in fact write, when she doesn’t realise she is writing! “let’s go and fly a kite!” being a notable one this session. Set Maddy up with some drawing, given Ams a cuddle, made Josie some milk. Time to swap washing over.

1.45pm – T and her dad arrive to spend the afternoon (it’s half term here so T isn’t in school) – this is pretty much the last i see of the children, who spend the afternoon on bikes, in the garden, consuming apples, playing on the multiple DS network (T brings one too) and doing kid stuff while T’s dad and i chat and drink tea.

5pm – near as dammit; carry on swapping over loads of washing (3rd of the day now) clear the decks in the kitchen ready to make dinner and receive the load of shopping Max will be bring home now work is finished. There isn’t any dancing tonight, so he’s taken the car and can go on his way home, which will lighten the evening rushing about by quite a lot. Looks like i could be spending the evening in my office. Roll on good business

6.30pm – the kids got freezer food, i’m no saint. Actually, better evening meals are on my to do list, now evenings are better organised. T is still here, giggling has persisted all day really. Max is home and putting away the shopping, i’ve put away a few more bits, looked at some customer emails and now i’m taking 10 and ACing. I really ought to sort out Joey’s room and do something meaningful, but i’m pooped!
To be continued….

In which Raymondpappa nearly gets his head blown up, Frankin meets a toad and Itch learns all about Swiss neutrality.

(Yes, we’re still reading the Moomins!)

Lovely couple of days; spent yesterday replanting lots of the things we brought from the last house into the garden (how i love having topsoil without weed seeds in it!) so the garden is looking like the beginning of something lived in. The pinks are out, my rose bush is about to flower, the foxgloves managed to get buds despite being sat in a bucket and the delphiniums are recovering nicely. The girls played out there all day really, a variety of games involving real money play, babies, Victorian history and stories they know. Max’s gran came for the afternoon, for lunch and to learn about the internet and they behaved delightfully, which was nice as she more often sees them out at other houses or in restaurants, where they are nice, but not really themselves. She seemed to enjoy their company and we all sat on the patio and enjoyed watching the birds flying around us. Birds are something of a novelty for us as our inner city living had really meant we hadn’t seen any garden birds at all, which was very sad. Here we have either House Martins or Swifts darting about, so we all sat out watching them and trying to ID them from a book.

Found it fascinating to sit talking to her about the way mothers were “instructed” during the war and how she holds it responsible for the nature of her eldest daughter. Gran was talking about the “crying baby in the garden in pram regardless” stuff, how she was made to keep breastfeeding despite plummetting mental health, a constant crying and losing weight baby and utter distress for them both. Eventually she went against what she was being “allowed” and got some formula, so solving the problem but was told she was a “bad mother” by the nurse. Now, whatever the real cause of whatever going on for them, it was astonishing to listen to a woman i know as incredibly strong and well, rather bolshy, certainly someone who has baulked tradition often, taking about being so browbeaten and distressed by medical “help.” She was living with her parents, during the war, not daring to co-sleep and all alone and it really must have been hell. Anyway, she was describing Max’s mum and i found it incredible as she really could have been describing Fran – so either Fran’s nature is genetic, or we both ruined our eldests nerves by not doing what we new they needed because we were too busy listening to “help”

Fran and i also spent some time AC:WWing together, though i am getting a bit irritated that all my townspeople go on about Sarah and how nice she is, all the time! Still, we beachcombed, bug caught, fished and bred flowers together and generally did some mum/daughter bonding. I’m happy because i’ve paid off my next mortgage level, bred a pink flower and returned a lost kitten to her home town!

Fran is feeling a bit fragile and is somewhat spotty too; we’ve had to have one of those chats, mainly about taking care of her skin with decent washing off of the food she still plasters herself in. She didn’t seem at all happy about some of the info she got really, but it worries me that even if all that stuff is someway off for her probably, given she still weighs 3stone 4lbs, she is likely to start hearing about puberty-related stuff from friends fairly soon and i don’t want her to feel embarrassed or confused. Anyway, today we blew off the cobwebs by going to the allotment. It is a shocking mess and i left it too long while hoping for an easy way out, but we didn’t do badly. The card we put down last week had made some of the stuff easy to get up, so we cleared that and planted a bag of potatoes and put more card down i two more places. Think we’ll have to just go slowly and try to prepare one bit each week with card, then properly clear it and plant it the week after. That way, we’ll be through in about 8 weeks!!!!! Oh well… i’ve applied for an allotment nearer to where we live now, but it won’t be available till next year, so we’re making the best of it for now. Fran had a lovely time with two little girls down there, which was nice. While we were there we watched toads of various sizes, made friends with a Robin a la The Secret Garden and talked about lots of stuff, including putting down salt to destroy land of enemies, lifecycles and more. In fact, it’s been a real HE conversation weekend.

This afternoon we curled up with The Sound of Music and had an ALMIGHTY thunderstorm. Now, scared of them as i am in the open, i’m not scared inside, but we had hail and one flash of lightning then thunder that were SO close that everything in the house went off. Max had just stuck his head out the door at the time!!!! Anyway, it passed really quickly (hence getting caught in a storm with the tv on!) and we finished watching the film, covering the invasion of Austria, the Nazis and Swiss neutrality via an atlas while we were at it.

And now i have 23 parcels to pack, so i better go.