Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Today i was suppose to get a nice long day at work, taking proper control of all the things that got out of control in the last 3 weeks while i couldn’t give it all the attention it needed. My plan was to start at one end of the office and work soldily round until all the new stuff was in place and everything that needed a place to go, or needed listing for sale, was done.

Unfortunately i only managed 2/24 bays of shelves

While i was on a call to a customer, Max rang to summon me home. Maddy had been blending the soup they had cooked and had taken the blender out of the saucepan without taking her finger off the button. Boiling soup splashed everywhere (cleaners came fortunately and did a sort of “The Assasin” style ‘cleaners’ job on the kitchen later.) Max wanted me to pick up some dressings and come home; i was dubious about the detour but he assured me it was fine. Told him to stop using flannels and put the worst bits back under running water and headed home.

Poor Maddy. She had 4 largish raw spots on her face, top layer of skin, like a blister that had lost it’s top, 10 or so down her arm and a patch about 2 inches square on her upper arm that had skin hanging off it. I saw that underwater and thought “hmmm… casualty” and then decided that getting a panicking Maddy to casualty on my own, with no easy parking and no spare adult was not going to be much fun. So decided i would call an ambulance instead. It wasn’t that i thoguht she was in any danger but i didn’t think we could manage to get her anywhere without much more distress and she was grey and shaking with shock (and cold!) too. All the scalds were in places that were going to be hard to dress myself, or clothe her around and it seemed the simplest answer.

Ambulance blokes were lovely and patched her up, agreed to avoid casualty and told us to get her calm and then take her off for proper dressings later. The patch that had freaked me turned out to be more blister skin filled with the running water than anything else ( i confess to taking one look and then retching and deciding not to investigate further). Took a long time to stop shaking but after some trifle and Nanny MacPhee she began to warm to sickness like a man…. “i think i feel too sore to hold the Wii controller…..”

Took Fran to cello. Her teacher (am i the kind of person to go on about my kids like they are geniuses? I try not to but i may be about to do it now!) is very pleased with her and is giving her sets of 8-10 tunes per week to do. She’s bowing really nicely, hearing the notes nicely, reading the music well and already able to find notes without looking down. Today the teacher spent quite a while doing theory with her and played a duet with her that apparently lots of 11 year old starters find very difficult. She got Fran to sing a tune and congratulated her on how accurate her ‘ear’ is. I’d say she’s got quite a natural aptitude for it, which is great and i can kind of tell from the way the teacher is reacting to her and pushing her to try new things that Fran is proving able. There is something about the way Fran holds the cello and her assurance with it; for someone who has only been learning for 3 weeks she quite stuns me. She is certainly much more able than i was at that stage.

This week she has got to learn to use her first finger on every string, learn to find the octave up for each note and get her written note recognition as perfect as possible. Her timing is good, i think it is the dancing (and probably the decent grip on maths) that helps there; 4 years of dancing is bound to have given her a good start on listening to rhythm and so on. She is so excited by it; i can see her finding it such a challenge.

Her lessons happen to be in the maths department; we’ve been looking at some of the optical illusions on the walls (that was ART in my day!) and today we happened to be waiting in the “Levels” area… aside from factoring (not done yet as i don’t know what it means so i’m evading it till i get that far in my course!) she appeared to be able to do all the examples on the board.

She’s never seen an equation until today…

“Fran, what do you think the answer to k -20 = 40 is?”

“60. Duh.”

I’ll shut up then. Just the sight of a letter in a sum was still throwing me at 16!!!!

On the way home we got talking about the Elizabeth Chadwick novels i have just read my way through. As we were leaving Huntingdon i started talking to her about Waltheof of Huntingdon, a Saxon Earl in the days immediately after the Norman Conquest. Was very interesting. We talked about some of the Chroniclers of the time, historians/storytellers who made records of the events of the age and how their accounts of the era have to be viewed in a circumspect manner. Interesting to be able to discuss the validity of source material with her now and particularly good when our area has so many of them. Crowland and Thorney Abbey both have chronicles attributed to them and much of the source material of the time is very um… questionable. It depended very much on the who, how and why’s of the writer; how much time they spent at court, how devout they were, what their agenda was (how lacking in sanity they were) and how much they liked a good yarn. Some of them were known to pad out a dull area of a characters real life with a bit of dragon fighting, just to liven it up!

Waltheof was buried at Crowland and became a place of pilgrimage where miracles were said to occur; i’m not sure if his tomb was destroyed during the reformation, but apparently there is no mention of it there now. Must take a visit. Have been meaning to for 10 years!

We also chatted about how language and understanding would change over the years, how old Saxon/English mutated, through Norman French, into our current language. Trying to explain a gradual alteration, i’ve found, is tricky with children; i suppose they just find long spaces of time difficult to comprehend. We settled on using Opal Fruits as an explanation; I used to call them Opal Fruits and so did Daddy, they haven’t been called Opal Fruits for a long time, but if i ask Daddy to buy me Opal Fruits he will know what i mean and come home with Starbursts. Likewise there is every chance that Fran will always know them by both names, even though they haven’t been Opal Fruits in her life time. We talked a bit out inches and cms and old money denominations being the same, how it takes a long time for an inherited but “defunct” knoweldge to die out from our collective memory.

Interesting stuff.

I only took 24 hours off….

Another Life Logo.

I particualrly like the line in the article about getting a firm grip on things….
Thanks Uncle Rich.

I finally got Sage working again. I shall be wandering blogs and RSSing - if i don’t comment in places i used to over the next few days, please poke me with your URL!

So then we got to Thursday, with a certain amount of effort, it has to be said. Mario Kart helped and distracting people with packing, tidying, stories and stuff. Mum and Dad came and took the littler 3 away and we called the hospital to check her bed, only to be told they didn’t actually have one and could we not come till tomorrow. Mostly this was good of course, less nights in hospital is always good, but “standing down” always feels a bit weird. Max stayed at work, Fran and i had a nice afternoon together, i went to work for a bit and then we took Fran out to dinner.

Couldn’t go to our normal favourite pub as it was full of the occupants of the 8000 (or so) motorhomes which has descended on the showground were in there. Why, i don’t know, surely the point of a mass convergence of motorhomes is to show people how cleverly you can pretend to be still at home in one? ANyway, so we went down the road to a pub we used to love but turns out to have gone badly downhill

I got breaded plaice, which was little more than deep friend fish skin served with small green bullets that was supposed to be mushy peas. Eventually i decided picking at it was pointless so went off to complain. The barman sniggered at me and called Adam, Adam wandered off past me to look for the landlady who eventually appeared, told me that plaice was supposed to have barely 2mm of white fish on it and when i pointed out the peas she asked “did you actually request mushy peas?” and when i said that it said “plaice, chips and mushy peas” on the menu, she gave me a look of disbelief and stomped off to get an menu and check i wasn’t lying. I wasn’t so she said “well, that IS what plaice looks like madam” and stomped off. No replacement meal, no apology, no offer of refund. I was horrified. Bloody awful.

Fortunately Fran and Max got good meals so i ate bits of theirs and then we left. We shan’t be going back to the Boltoph Arms Pub in Orton Longueville in Peterborough ever again on account of their shoddy food and the dreadful customer service offered by landlady downwards. And i sincerely hope that comes up on the search engines good and quick.

Friday.

Up early to feed Fran her last meal at 6am (argh) and then got organised as quick as we could (not very quick). I had totally failed to sleep so was wibbly from the word go. Fran was completely calm and relaxed. Got to the hospital (multistorey carpark WITH more than enough spaces… amazing. I’ve done every hospital in a 40 mile radius Peterborough, fairly repeatedly, over the last 10 years and never seen that many carparking spaces before!) Went to the ward… immediately realised i wasn’t really gonig to be able to cope with the smell or sound of a hospital and had to manufacture a reason to go back to the car to regain equilibrium.

Fran remained totally calm. We all played Horse Show, drew Fashion Angels, played magnetic Fashion Angels, read, shopped, ate and drank behind Fran’s back and did al lthe boring hospital things that nurses always insist on asking “mum” - one of them even called me “Fran’s mum” - like i don’t have a name of my own. Tried to shirk all responsibility and get them to talk to Max but to no avail.

Max and Fran played giant Chess in the garden and she managed to draw with him a couple of times. She’s quite good! She had a bit of a strop over the magic cream on her hands (never has liked that, not even when she was 1!) but was mainly only irritated by being hungry. Luckily the operating list finally appeared and she was first (first being at 1.30pm on account of management meetings!) so then it was just a quick shuffle into a HUGE operating gown and straight off to theatre. Still not a flicker of concern.

(Amidst all this i tried and failed to take a picture of the anti germ notice for Alison… “Wash your hands. Here. Now.” It amused me.)

Max and i flipped coins for who went into the anaesthetic room and i…um… won. Again. Fran didn’t so much at flinch at the cannula (sp?) being put in although she said after that it stung and then drifted (slowly) off to sleep rabbiting on about black horses with stars on their noses. She totally undid me by turning over and pulling her arm tightly around Sam the Bear as she went, just like when she falls asleep.

I made it as far as the public area of Addenbrookes before bursting into tears just as Max was buying drinks and had to run outside and have a good weep in front of all the people on oxygen and drips having a fag outside. Probably did me good though, i’ve needed a good cry for a few months and it just doesn’t come Finally got triggered by the tables in the cafe area being the same as the ones Max and i sat at for a very long time in another hospital though; stupid the things that can just be a final very small straw and whoops… there goes the camel

They’d told us it would be a good 3 hours, so we retreated to the smallest corner we could find (outside dialysis unit )and drank neat caffeine while both of us realised that while Fran was clearly completely prepared and ready, we were both a VERY long way from properly ready for it all. Which unfortunately meant that when they bleeped us after only 90 minutes we weren’t nearby enough and Fran had been awake and howling for us for 2-3 very long minutes.

I, of course, was convinced in that 2 minute walk back that we were being bleeped early because she’d died. I keep looking for that there retribution

Poor Fran was terribly upset; she’d woken up very violently and they’d had to hold her down and she was desperate for us to be there. She was in a lot of pain, mainly because her nose had bled quite a lot and had enormous amounts of packing in it which completely infuriated her. She couldn’t get her breath, she says now, and they were giving her oxygen because her SATS kept dropping (always we worry about SATS results!) She wasn’t in any danger, but she was distressed, both physically and mentally and it was a bit unnerving to see how closely they watched her. After a short while they decided to give her morphine, which then took ages to get and then it made the skin in her hand come up red and itchy. All a bit traumatic for her.

I think, because they just couldn’t get on top of her pain levels quick enough, she hasn’t really got over it yet. It has stuck in her mind (i have sympathies, she has been reminding me of myself post her and Josie’s birth) and so it hasn’t faded. She was in recovery for 2 hours and ended up going back to the ward still half needing oxygen, though she picked up enough right at the swap back so that she never had any once back there. But she was upset for a good while and took a long time to sleep.

Once she did, Max shooed me off to the Beans for much needed TLC which was doled out in almost equal quantities by Helen, Chris and SB (perhaps not so much by BB unless you could the sucked chocolate fish!) Darling SB had picked flowers for me and bought us all ice-cream. After much tea, sympathy and lasagne, i got some sleep - and some people didn’t.

Max rang to ask me to come back earlyish as Fran was weepy but once i got there she began to pick up and gradually got mobile (”bone harvest” really sounds so unpleasant). She played a lot of chess, beat a 12 year old boy which pleased her) and we took her for a wheel about, some lunch and some distraction therapy. I got a bit cross when her drug chart got lost between the ward and pharmacy and she had to wait an hour for painkillers that she needed because no one had a chart to tick. I don’t think, even though i understand the reasoning, that a 9 year old should have to wait an hour less than 24 hours after surgery, for a dose of calpol that both parents can categorically say she hadn’t had any of for at least 4 hours but in fact closer to 7

Bless her, i felt really sorry for the nurse, who gave me some meds to give Fran myself. It was that or leave and get some from Waitrose. Totally understand her difficulty… probably didn’t help that the lobby was full of papers saying “Addenbrookes loses 1000 patient records!!!!” that day!

Eventually escaped, after waiting for the meds, which turned out to be wrong and totally inappropriate for a 9 year old anyway so we abandoned them and just used Calpol and baby Nurofen - Fran is nowhere near ready to swallow Voltarol tablets and i wasn’t exactly reassured by the scribbled out doses on the side of the soluble paracetamol!

We got her home by putting her in Josie’s carseat so she could droop and snooze and settled her down on the sofa but hse just didn’t seem to pick up at all. We couldn’t get a smile out of her at all, nor even conversation. She barely wanted cuddles (she did eat for England though!) and just didn’t seem to engage. Not surprising i know, i felt very disconnected just with a black eye, so i can completely understand, but she was so ‘not Fran’ that we started to get a bit anxious. She and i snuggled up for The Secret Garden in bed and slept in our bed and had girly chat, but even then, she just seemed really low.

Thankfully, the return of the sisters the next day did do the trick and the sparkle has started to come back. I don’t think she’ll ever approach an op so blithely again though, i think this one has left it’s mark on her soul a bit
Still… she is quite pleased to be having nosebleeds not mouth bleeds now and is getting used to her new mouth. It must be a blooming weird feeling. Looking forward to her being a bit less bashed looking though, so we can all see the difference it has really made I think that will make it worth it for her.

Hence i have a new “life logo”

I think it suits me perfectly!

Now here is a post with a large number of potential names… blood, sweat and tears…. nurofen, paracetamol and mouth wash…. stress, stress and more stress??

What a couple of weeks; we’ve had worse (ironically aroundabout exactly 2 years ago) but this was pretty tough too.

So… before it got especially tricky we did have the first gymnastics session, which went down very well with all of the big three and the next door neighbour too. All the girls did well and they all seemed to settle in fast. They were most upset not to have leotards, but we’ve trawled ebay this week and come up with some. Fran isn’t fit for gym tonight, which she is annoyed about, because she has a very lovely leotard that she is delighted by!

Got to say though, i’ve been driven to irritation twice in the last week by people who send stuff out stinking of cigarette smoke. It is just horrible, especially people who claim to be sending out from a professional outfit. I think ebay need a “smoke free” icon that people can add to their listings!

Monday was the start of Max having an intensely stressful week at work, probably the most stressed out i have ever seen him; he said it has been like being in The Apprentice. I phoned him during a meeting and although he answered, he didn’t speak and i could hear it. It sounded like a large number of people in need of ‘Kalms’. That kind of left me and the girls fending for ourselves for the week, which was far from ideal; Fran was fine but the other girls were really quite anxious, i was behind at work with no opportunities for going there, a relative of Max, Auntie Sue and MF’s had died, which left both me and MF temporarily childminder free and therefore me staff free. It all added up to STRESS… and then the funeral was planned for Friday, the same day as Fran’s op, which just added layers to the entire thing. Fortunately (tricky to find a word that actually applies adequately to it really, so fortunately will have to do) it was not actually a person Max was close to, so it didn’t affect him as much as his Gran dying, but it is never nice to know other people are sad.

Oh, and then Tuesday/Wednesday was the second anniversary of me ‘choosing’ to turn my life into a permanent living hell for the rest of my lifetime. I’m REALLY not good with anniversaries; they shouldn’t be any different, but to me they are. I can’t help it. As Max and i have now reached a state of being incapable of discussing it at all anymore, as i’ve simply run out of tears to cry and as i’ve reached a point of feeling that i must surely have bored every friend to tears with my own folly by now, i rather choked to death on the whole thing

Cheered (ahem) ourselves up with “I Am Legend” - not one for Helen i think… and i played with Fimo for a bit to distract myself.

Through the week, the girls did quite a bit of work. ETC is doing Amelie and Maddy good and Amelie is now managing to read the instructions in a Charlie and Lola drawing book while Maddy is continuing a slow and steady progress through simple reader types. Fran got through a lot of Meleto - i should have put her on Yr 6 i think - and she and i also did decimals in Singapore 4B. Maddy is whipping through book 3 and seems to be gaining confidence now. Good to see her having the courage to read it now and write what she thinks is right. Everyone used EC and we signed up to Brainpop again as Fran and i started on GCSE Biology and we wanted some computer back up.

The GCSE thing has come about purely because everything up to that level seems insultingly simple and Fran is already bored by it. She’s keen to do more science and has gone passed the basics in KS2/3 type books, so a GCSE Revise type textbook is giving us access to a little more depth. I’ve not got the passion to make it up out of my head, nor even just follow up as things come up, so the book is a help.

We started on cells, plant and animal ones and then types of cell and how they work. It’s been interesting and well within what we can both manage. I daresay for now we’ll skip over 40% of it totally and only dabble in 20% of the rest but it gives us something to work at. She’s also loving Horrible Geography currently, which is offering lots of topics up.

Maddy and i have been reading about Cleopatra and finally agreeing that an Egypt project might actually be acceptable! Currently she is scavenging the house and finding the last few pennies to by this elf to add to her collection of fantasy creatures. She’s managed to find the best part of £7 (our haggled price) just lying around the house!

Anyway…. i think i might do the hospital visit in a separate post. This one has got long enough. Besides, i think it might be time to play Wii Mario Kart and make some lunch. I’ve got to be on hand later while some upgrades are put into BM - i’m very excited about them as they are going to make it much easier to do special offers etc. Right now every little would help; toys and crafts seem to be very slow all over just now and i need to pay the VAT man!

We’ve had a lovely day today with Em and her 2 girls who kindly popped over to visit us. Seemed to go very well, with Amelie and R getting on particularly well but general happy play/gossip/cake eating for much of the day. Was a good reward for my girls who had had to spend from 8-11 at work with me; they took work and toys and got on very well, so i got to catch up a bit. Busy this week though, with issues for both MF and i which made normal working hours tricky; i try to avoid taking them in at all but it is good to know i can and certainly our little side room makes that much easier to do. Need a BIG tidy up tomorrow though.

Favourite new things of the week are the Anamalz though… (not done big image or descriptions yet though!)

Totally gorgeous, i’ve had the whole range on the desk this week and the chap who works opposite came in for a gossip (as you do!) and bought the whole lot!

We also played Settlers of Catan with Fran and E (till the lure of the garden game became too much) and Em played duets with Fran and showed me how to alter a base part to a treble one so i can play along on the flute. Seems like it would be a good way to start, making it something that can be a group activity without any parents taking over a child’s instrument I have no ability to read the base clef, i might as well be looking at the word bonjour and suddenly be told i have to say guten tag so i thought i better learn. I’m looking for some printable flashcards to pin up round the house but in the meantime we came across this little music game which is rather nifty.

Fran and i spent some time talking about flooding the other day as it was the part of her rivers book that interested her the most. I got her to draw and annotate a ‘dora’ style  backpack of what she would pack if she suddenly had to evacuate because the waters were coming; she did a really good job, very old-style ‘be prepared’ Guide-like! So then she had a go at imagining trying to move our most important stuff to the top floor of the house if we had some warning and then talked through what it would be like when we came back, if the floods had made it to our middle floor. It was really interesting to just walk ourselves through the immediate needs (cleaning, food, warmth, washing, drinking) and see what we’d forgotten. So then we chatted about moving our electricals upstairs, at which point it occurred to us that the house would be shorted out anyway. So we decided to go to Granny’s…. they live on a hill!!!

Fran did remember to move the rabbits in though, which is more than i did! :blush:

On the way home from music yesterday we discussed the concept of money and how what we have in our hands is more of a counter than an actual thing of worth. We talked about the wealth of a country, how money is valued and created and discussed why just printing more money doesn’t work. We talked about the early medieval notion of clipping coins (which made them worthless effectively) the times when coinage had precious metals in them and how they were sometimes collected in, melted down and bulked out with more base metals to “raise more money” and why that was really not an effective way of doing so. Interesting stuff. She’s always been great to have that sort of conversation with, but these days she has her own life experience to bring to it too. Love it. Love car ed

On Tuesday i got a call from a cello teacher who was expecting Fran to start lessons the next day. This was quite interesting, as i knew nothing about it. I’d given our details to a lady at www.soundsamazing.org and apparently it was all organised! (Hurrah for NattyEm for the link, fantastic, thank you!) So today, we trotted off to a school down the A1 (which Fran really liked, it has to be said, though whether there is any chance of her going there, i have no idea) and met her teacher.

I warmed to her straight away and so did Fran and she was funny, interesting and very encouraging. She really made an effort to let Fran see how pleased she was with the basics she already understood and congratulated her on the stuff she had work on on her own. I think Fran was a bit shy of saying she’d already worked at the book we bought but eventually when i realised Fran wasn’t going to say, i told her and then she asked Fran to show what she could do. By the end of the lesson Fran had plucked a simple part to a duet (perfectly, bless her) and had been given 9 tunes to practise through the week along with some things to work on for her bow hold.

I loved being part of the lesson and getting to see how much she was enjoying it and it will be good to be able to absorb and help Fran practise. I really admired the teacher for not putting down Fran for starting on her own and maybe “learning bad habits” - she was nothing but positive about her enthusiasm and also really upbeat about Granny being a cellist and wanting to take part in helping Fran. I liked that, because i can imagine a teacher being a bit protective of being the “only one” working with a child. It was an excellent start and made even better by the co-ordinator meeting me and telling me they have violin and guitar lessons set up for the other 2 at the same time (almost the same time actually, i should get to be in every lesson.)

Max and i have had a talk about the cost (£150 a term each) and decided that as my parents have offered to pay for one and as we plan to move in a couple of years and we might not get the opportunity for such an easy set up again, so we’ll go for it. Gulp.

Fran had her hospital pre-op meeting today and got through it just fine; darling girl, she is just so chilled out about it. I asked her if she was worried about the op and she just said “no; probably i will be on the day though!”

And i’ve been working at odd times today… busy, busy…

It isn’t that there isn’t anything to blog, nor even lack of time to blog (lack of time to READ blogs seems to be more of a problem though!) - it isn’t even a lack of interest in blogging. I just haven’t. I’ve hibernated a bit, muddled along a bit and mainly just BEEN. Twitter keeps me in touch for half the week, till my 250 text tweets run out, then i’m hidden away for 4 days till i get them back. I think i need to get a life. Or at least get the half of my life that keeps going missing

So what have we been up to? Josie has played a game on the windowsill for approximately a week. It involves K’nex, dinosaurs, My Jungle Animals and PlayMobil in equal measures and would amuse my sister very much. Josie is an actual carbon copy of me, i think. Amelie is being a smart alec but lovely with it. Her reading and writing is coming along very fast and she is busy renegotiating a role within the slightly altered dynamics of the current sisterhood structure. Fran is a bit more of an “older loner” at the moment and so the younger 3 play together more. It’s good for Maddy, interesting for Amelie and slightly less good for Josie, who isn’t given the same quarter by the middle 2 as she gets from big sister Fran. This may have something to do with why she is playing on her own!!!!

Fran is absorbed in Harry Potter, now on to The Goblet of Fire and her cello and is very excited about starting lessons tonight. She is becoming much more studious, much more ready to work at things and farm ore bookish. She is enjoying Horrible Geography and spends a good bit of time Googling and reading Newsround. They’ve all been fairly upset by the new of Mark Speight’s death this week as they were real fans of his programme and art. As a piece of social development news, it certainly covers all bases… drugs, alcohol, relationships, depression, guilt, suicide. We’ve had some thoughtful discussions. It’s been very sad, i think and a very telling reminder of how quickly things can go from roses to ashes Couldn’t totally decide if i approved of how Newsround covered it; bit coy i thought, but then i suppose there must be issues with covering suicide for children given the recent stories of teenage suicide. Tricky.

Maddy and Amelie have been enjoying Explode the Code and coming on very fast. We’re doing less written maths but more ordinary life maths and mental maths skills and lots of art and story reading. Maddy has started to really read for pleasure now and tucks herself into corners with a book a fair bit. Current favourites are Amelia Bedilia’s, Usborne Readers and she has been working through Ruby the Red Fairy. I’m not convinced Fairy books are Maddy’s thing but i have a feeling she thinks they are some sort of ‘Rite of Passage’ series that you HAVE to read before you read anything else!

We’ve been playing a fair bit of recorder, maracas and anything else that comes to hand. Must sort out the rest of the lessons out. Have also found gym lessons for the big 3 and we’ve decided to stop one ballet lesson (out of 3 and out of anywhere from 4-6 dancing lessons a week for the big ones!) to fit it in. I’m quite keen to widen their experience a bit as i think dancing is in danger of becoming frustrating; there seem to be people there who will always get the top slot and i’d rather they had an option to do other stuff and not either get fixated on being noticed or bitter if they feel ignored.

I’ve been looking into summer schools; there is a week long day camp at Pboro High School and a Youth Theatre too so i’m going to enquire about those. Better hope for another wet summer so people buy craft stuff!!!!!!

We’ve finished the Borrowers (”What do you think Borrowers take in our house?” “HAIRBOBBLES!!!!!”) and i’ve had to move straight on to The Borrowers Afield as they all enjoyed it so much. I love older books with ambiguous endings instead of the modern obsession with closure at the end of a film. I love that the books leave it very much up to you to decide what to believe. I was hoping to go on to The Hobbit - maybe next time. It is great to have the slot for bedtime reading back - i had missed it so much when work was taking over so totally. It has become a real feature of the day again.

Right… trying to avoid thinking about Fran having blood test and ward visits but it isn’t working so i shall go and tidy the dining room. Younger 3 are playing PlayMobil now the normals are done; just asked Amelie while she was standing in the middle of the game singing while Maddy went to the toilet - apparently Maddy had asked her to “pause the game.”

A very happy little girl Annoyed the flash didn’t come on for this one, because it was the nicest, but i’m sure there will be more opportunities!

I can’t remember why, but the other night we got caught talking about Lowry at the dinner table. I think it had something to do with happening to start talking about how we all have our own preferences of artistic expression. Maddy said she liked to do black and white because colouring covered up her ideas and she prefers to see what is going on in her pictures, while Fran said she preferred to colour. I have no artisitic abilities with a pen at all, but can express myself acceptably in clay. Maddy does do very detailed little pictures, often with pop out boxes to show a close up of an area and there is always a lot going on. It is very rare for her to do a conventional picture, though when she does, it is lovely. Fran likes, as a rule, to draw fast and put lots of colour into things, mainly to fill up space fast i think. They are extremely different in style. Amelie seems to be a cross between them, detailed and colourful, while Josie is so far the only one to show any interest in “colouring” for its own sake. She likes to neatly colour in outlines and has a lovely, methodical style for it. Her pen control and concentration is far beyond what the other had for such things at 3.

I gave myself the day off today, because i really wanted to spend some time with them. They were busy last week and away at the weekend and i was busy the week before. We were ALL tired and grumpy this weekend and i had some things i simply HAD to do at the ofiice, which ate into my time. They normally spend some of Monday with Sue and LF but today seemed a good opportunity to just hunker down and do something different.

I printed off some Lowry pictures and we did a little bit about them, talking about the colours, subject matter, style etc I’m keen to do more of this but today i mostly just wanted fun, so fairly quickly we got out the pens and they just got going. Maddy did a village scene which i’ll have to find and photograph tomorrow and Fran started using some Ed Emberley art books that i bought ages ago thinking Maddy would like them. But she didn’t.

Fran however, adored them. They break everything into the SIMPLEST of ideas, really, REALLY simple, sticks, letters, dots and blocks and then you just go on from there. Rather than a good drawing that you end up not being able to replicate, these are stick men and stick houses, Lowry-esque and so almost anything you do will actually be an improvement. She had such fun and drew all day, making up stories in her head, writing in speech. It was great to see her enjoy it so much.

I read some of “Mill Girl” to them through this and then strewed bits of info about the industrial revolution at them… they bore it with remarkable fortitude Funnily enough, one of the things that seemed to improve their creativity, was a considerably lack of paper. They knew we hardly had any and so they seemed to cram far more on to the page.

I can’t find Maddy’s pic but here are bits of the rest.

And especially for Auntie Greer… who… and where?