Or some such.
I’ve come back down to blog because i’m being kept awake by an owl. And owl. I ask you… i live slap bang in the middle of a sodding city 🙄
Todays HE keyword for you all is “flexibility” or “how to roll with it when your orgo-planning turns out to have been done on the wrong day to suit life.” We’ll gloss over todays eo list conversation where Mrs TCS informed us all that “Learning is not observable” and i’ll just meander through my own cheerful, but undoubtedly deeply damaging to my children, diary of today. See if we spot any “learning” in there. 🙄 (Just how intolerant am i feeling today i wonder. And i’m not even due to have a period.)
Came downstairs to find Fran coaching Maddy through the early parts of Animal Crossing, reading it out to her, showing her how to do this, that and the other. At various points a few other things seemed to be going on too, but i can’t remember what now.
Maddy had expressed an interest in doing a money box like Fran did, so i got her going on a panel and she sewed faultlessly and happily for quite a while. I had some kind of weird, inner power struggle when she decided to deviate from the going round in squares pattern but then remembered i was the adult and let her get on with doing sky and a hill as she wanted. Ahem. Ammi also did a square around a panel too, almost without any help, which is amazing considering Fran only got the hang of it fairly recently! lol. Fran finished the cottage part of her house, so now just needs to do the roof. While all this was going on, i was trying to haul the downstairs rooms back from the filthy abyss that they seemed to have become but of course this was completely impossible due to the constant uyn-pickling/rethreading needles requirements. Somewhere along the line i managed to totally alienate Ammi by getting cross with her for not being better at keeping the needle on. Hm. Oops.
By this time it was time for my dentist appointment, which Tammy very kindly babysat for. What a nightmare. The tooth that needed doing first (i need 4 fillings) turned out to need a double root canal treatment (should have had the bloody thing pulled out) but i didn’t know that till they’d injected my face and rootled about. For some unknown reason, the anesthetic made me go incredibly lightheaded and faint and i have no idea why at all. It felt like it was too high in my head. Cue, naturally, a complete panic as i started to fade away and feel sick, calling up horrid memories of Josie’s extraction – suddenly all the bright lights, people round my head and everything else were just too much and all i could think of was the anesthetist i had for Josie saying “if we give you any more anesthetic, we might have to have to ventilate you.” (And that was before it got really nasty.) I felt like i was falling off the back of the chair and just all these dreadful “i’m dying, i’m dying” thoughts started rushing round my head. Next thing i know, i’m crying, the dentist is taking my pulse and the nurse is holding my hand and offering me lucozade. Still can’t quite fathom it out – i’ve had 4 lots of dental treatment since i had Josie and not physically panicked at any of them; this felt much more like an anesthetic issue; it was just like the feeling that i got when the epidural made my blood pressure dip. Treatment was horrid, i was in pain for hours after, they could only do half of it so i have to go back next week and even worse, some stupid nhs glitch means that i now have to have a grey filling as i can’t have private treatment on an nhs’d tooth for 6 months. So if i want it white, and i do, its a big one, my poor little tooth will have to be all drilled out and refilled in 6 months time. Grrr.
Anyway, girls had had a lovely time with Sam (sorry i didn’t have a toy treat for you Sam!) and thank you Tammy for looking after them. I was very dopey when i got back i know, apologies for that.
Fran finished the 3rd Scotland poster and we laminated them, they look gorgeous and will make great pin ups. Then she carried on with Animal Crossing. Maddy was drawing pictures of people, people now have clothes shaped bodies and she is branching out into colour! Amelie was playing on Dora’s Backpack, a cd-rom i got her yesterday. She loves it and has got all the way to Level 3 already. On a quick box ticking check for the sheer hell of it, i reckon she already has the majority of the Reception Numeracy and Literacy targets met, not bad for a girl starting NURSERY class in September. I wonder what she’ll make of it (and them of her!) So far as i can tell, she recognises a few words, can count to 15 in English and has concept of number, to ten in Spanish and knows most colours in English and Spanish, all the shapes i can offer her and a smattering of letters. Sisters are excellent learning tools 😀
Josie has mainly been toothy and grumpy today, as well as very milk hungry. She does now have locomotion down to a room crossing, cup of tea grabbing art and is working on climbing over peoples legs. More worryingly (!) she has already spotted she can get onto her knee and get one foot under her and be semi-upright. ARGH.
Auntie Kate and Summer came over and rather a lot of lolling commenced from Fran and Maddy. After asking them politely to find something meaningful to do, i eventually lost patience with Fran and took her off to do some Explode the Code – cue an almighty, and if i may say it Violet-esque, leg kicker of a paddy but in point of fact, she enjoyed it and was much happier after she’d sat down and worked out a few pages of the puzzles. She then picked out a couple of Mad Max books and read those.
Highlight of the day though was the new gym class, which we got an email about the other night. Its a new, lottery funded facility in a popular school and it was just great – £3 for an hour of “proper” gym instruction, in small groups with 4 coaches between about 20 of them. Fran and Maddy went and both loved it – they had goes on a springboard, the beam (bean as Maddy calls it) and the Asymmetric bars (gulp) – Fran was great and clearly just buzzing to be there and Maddy has been very positve too. I brielfy told the chap that she found verbal instructions a bit tricky at times and i have to say he was fab with her – gave her lots of clear instructions and took her back for second goes to re-inforce what he had told her. I was impressed. The only thing she wobbled at was having the chalk on her hands but they let her go straight out to wash them as it was clearly maknig her uncomfortable.
So, given they’ve talked about nothing else since, we’ve decided to let Maddy take it up and see if she wants to give dancing a miss when it comes to it and Fran has decided to give Musical Theatre up and do gym instead.
The thing i worry about least of all, when it comes to HE, is the “socialisation” thing – i bother about it not a whit. Doesn’t stop me feeling smug when i see them throw themselves happily into a new group and be totally comfortable with new friends within minutes though. They may not be the absolute most outgoing of all children, but they are a damn sight more socially comfortable than i was at their age, so i think i can tick that particular box for good.
PS – thanks for all the insightful stuff below, i’ve appreciated and been interested by every single comment. I won’t reply in the comments box because i’d like to think further about some of what has been said and do another ramble at some point.
