Amelie was itchy and woke me up and now i can’t sleep plus i got a lie in this morning after trying to stay up to keep Max and the cricket company and therefore deny myself my full 4 1/2 hours Cricket… the perfect portrayal of the major differences between most men and most women. How is standing around for 5 days and eventually ending in a draw something that can be described as a game, for ***** sake? I can deal with an afternoon round the village green for a bit of local japery, i can deal with sports like football that last a reasonably comprehendable 90 minutes, i can handle rugby (less comprehendable but redeems itself with lasting only 80 minutes) and i’ll sit through motor-racing of various sorts, entertaining myself with shaking my head in bewilderment at men going round in circles and cheating death… but 5 sodding days of cricket? I ask you. And if you must do it, don’t make a world cup last 7 weeks and DON’T wear flipping pyjamas! At least be a bit colonial about it, wear white and take tiffin at 4 – at best, cricket really ought to be regarded as some sort of national oldy-worldy treaure

*Mildly fragile state of mind leap over it alert*

Oooops – ranted. Mind you, i was only looking through my rants the other day and came across my post Josie’s-birth rant. Oh well, i seem to have got over that. Obviously i just need a major, all-encompassing life crisis every 2 years or so. i have learned something new over the last year, something i never understood before, could only see from what i imagined i would feel. This time last year, there was a sort of tacit agreement that if life got sorted and i wasn’t emotionally able to recover without a baby, we’d at least talk it through. To have a baby with a not too huge gap, before i’m 35, i’d really need to get pregnant this autumn. What shocks me is to discover that i’d be ABSOLUTELY NO WAY emotionally ready to do that; i’m a million years away from being that healed. I don’t think i ever will be. So now i understand a new side of the coin; i understand needing time in a way that i never have. I’m a girl who never waits for anything, but now i know what it is to need to wait. Weird.

Anyway, weekend. Lovely sun filled couple of days in the garden; Fiver has been lovely and is all settled in. He’s enjoying cuddles, very patient about the girls, comes and sits on the sofa with me in the evenings and has grown already, i’m sure. Max made a wire screen to go into the main run and we thought we’d pop him into one half and let them get aquainted without endangering anyone. We both thought Smartie was so soft that it would be just fine.

Lucky really didn’t just try to introduce them face to face. Fiver was fine, went over and sniffed amicably but Smartie went UTTERLY wild and started attempting to saw through the wire with his teeth, frantically snapping at Fiver as best he could. So we erm.. removed him. Clearly Smartie still has enough hormones left to smell that Fiver is a threat to his status. (Hahahaha Smartie, we’ll fix you… what you gonna do if we let him **** your girlfriend, huh?) I’m kidding.. kidding…

Anyway, Max and i did more to the garage, then i took Fran to dancing (she’s doing some polka step or other and she’s looking so graceful, i can hardly believe that is my little girl. She’s loving the grade 1 stuff and clearly getting it very quickly.) On the way back she and i wnet to our favourite sewing shop which specialises in quilting, got some needles and a few sale fat quarters. Now i’m wrestling with the maths of the design she is doing and trying to work out how to make it fit. I’ve got sucked in too and have done a cushion front tonight. Like i need cushions

Lovely evening watched Dr Who and that meant i dreamt a VERY post watershed episode, with an excellent plot, and even more excellent action MUST get out more… at least as far as somewhere selling David Tennant fan posters

Today we’ve gardened and gone to E’s birthday party. Thhis evening Max put trellises up on the wall of the garage that makes one side of our garden up and planted roses along it. The children potted up a huge number of tiny plant kits that i dug out of the garge and we’ve begun hunting through our craft boxes and preparing for much craftiness next week. All good stuff.

And this…

… has made me very proud. 41 individual sales on Amazon in a week, so around 55 items in all. Given that an average week in April/May (my quiet months) does 60-65 (by projection from last year) this is a major extra source of custom and i’m REALLY proud of it. Onwards and upwards.

PLus i’ve been making pretties.

Get this bit done first, as it really was the crowning glory of both the last two days for me and Maddy.

When Moo and i had our school/no school talk the other night, she asked me to make sure we followed up on all the topics that caught our attention. One thing she has been really into recently is Mythical Creatures, mainly from a jigsaw book that Tammy and Sam gave her last year. She wanted to learn about Phoenixs, but has mislaid the book in their hellhole pit bedroom, so yesterday i printed out a load of stuff from the web and we read through it all before we went out. That was interesting, especially seeing how many regions the bird has popped up into the mythology of. I love all that stuff (and i’ve just thought of a book i have she’ll love) so we had a nice time discussing it.

Being an arty girl, she got into the idea of using several art media to make phoenixes in and made a start today, using a variety of extra pictures that i printed for her, plus a printable “stain glassed window effect” one that she liked.

(Yes, school dress!)

I just love the shapes she has created in these two, she has a real eye for making what she wants come out of the clay.

The finished article.

And a couple of drawings.

In an effort to create total emersion, i downloaded The Phoenix and the Carpet as well and they all listened to that and got quite misty eyed when they realised it was the same children as the ’5 &i t’ stories. (I didn’t realised that either.)

Maddy is a happy girl and i feel i’ve done what she needed for a change

Right. Yesterday  i marched them all through normals and then headed off to Stanwick Lakes, after seeing it on Elle’s blog. REALLY lovely time there with Claire and Charlie; for a £2 parking fee it is fab, we happily stayed 3 hours 9and the kids could have stayed longer!) it’s got a warden there so it is clean and safe and looked after and the balance of equipment is just right for a good range of ages. They REALLY liked the water pumps….

I liked the wood stuff.

Amelie enjoyed posing for photos.

Maddy didn’t pose but looked lovely as usual….

And Josie perfected her “butter wouldn’t melt…” look.

Got everyone home and flumped. Can’t remember anything else except that Josie felt ill again and fell asleep on the sofa and frightened the life out of me by opening her eyes and staring blankly at the ceiling while still fast asleep. I yelped LOUDLY and shook her, which scared her too

Today Max had to go to germany and back in a day, which meant leaving at 4am and taking the car; he’s on his way home now (looooong day.) Unfortunately Josie was at that “not ill anymore, at least, not ill enough to lie on the sofa but DEFINITELY ill enough to want to scream all day, be carried, shove her hands down my top and scratch, rummage, pinch and squelch while poking me in the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and life blood.” All of which was enough to send me running down the road screaming in an effort to get away from her She probably gave me my hardest day EVER from her, it was like being back in the “one child and it feels tough by 5pm” days. So, i was VERY glad at 8pm when she conked out.

The rest of the day was okay in some respects; Amelie was similarly whingy first thing but then i found her asleep in my bed; whatever this bug has been it has wiped the pair of them out and she was a good bit happier when she woke up. She’s done various bits of workbooks (she adores them), playing, colouring, sorting of washing, reading and flopping in front of the tv.

Fran learned to iron and did all the placemats for me, plus all the seams on her quilting. Travel irons are brilliant for kids learning to iron. She’s probably ironed more fabric today than i have in the last 4 years She’s started Harry Potter 1 but i won’t hold my breath as she dots through books at a huge rate still and rarely finishes anything unless i make her and done some French, some EC and some handwriting practise. TBH, i think it is me that needs to do that, i can hardly remember how to anymore!

Maddy did guitar and is finally getting the idea about holding her fingers in a useful place all the time rather than waiting till she needs them, EC, maths in a workbook, read more P&J5b and was just generally happy all day and towards the end of the day i cracked open a couple of these window mosaic kits for them and they were both completely absorbed by them. I love these and i’m really surprised by how slowly they’ve sold. having had a go at them today i shall have to do a better sales pitch because they really are fantastic, very therapeutic and easy to do and the feel of the gel plastic you use, the look of the colours and the simplicity of use are fantastic. Can’t recommend them enough.

Can’t think what else except that i’ve tidied like mad, employed a cleaning agency to do a top to bottom clean once a fortnight to try and keep the house decent, sorted washing like it is going out of fashion, fended off the bank trying to give loan me money and done a Sonlight order for 3rd edition Singapore Maths as i have officially fallen out of love with MPH and won’t be buying it again. I think thry are pants by comparion; stupid monsters all over the place and not enough practise. 3rd edition has too much, but at least you can skip it and the progression makes more sense. I don’t like MPH at all.

That’s it.