A bit like pulling teeth.

Late nights are seriously catching up with me, i think i might have to leave serious novelling till my children don’t require my input at all! For reasons best known to my inner soul (who is not speaking to me), it has become a point of honour to finish it. I really don’t know why; i’ve got a billion other things i need to do before i get sued/jailed/blacklisted and another billion i could usefully do to the miriad of websites i own. But no; a novel makes far more sense, especially one that, even if it was a good one, i won’t get round to editing or rewriting inside the next 10 years 🙄 Having a lovely time doing it though and very much feeling the benefit of it. It’s good to spend sometime playing with words again. I don’t know; i’m a person who is motivated by things which will make money or do something visual as a general rule, i was making pocket money for myself out of Fimo models and car boot finds at 13, but i’m curiously satisfied by this particular frivolous and pointless exercise. It’s nice to be creative purely for the sake of it.

Dentist wasn’t too bad; was feeling pretty fragile, thanks to some sort of (probably dentist induced) low level panic/anxiety attack through most of yesterday. I asked him to only do work on one at the front and he was fine with that and since it was the infamous “side fell off at Centerparcs” one, most of the drilling was done and it just needed white stuff to build it up, Not too bad, though the dental nurse was new and didn’t seem to gel too well with the dentist. Surprising what a difference it makes to how you feel if you are nervous; people working as a team can really help. Was saying much the same last night about Josie’s section – somehow everyone there felt a bit disjointed and it was much less calming than with Amelie’s when i felt they were really working together as a well practised team.

Since i’ve been home i’ve been a bit woozy and the kids aren’t much better. Amelie had a raging temp in the night and was up a lot. She was having bad dreams and coughing and itching. Today she is white, tired and grumpy. (Was tempted to send her to nursery to escape her but resisted. Or even, perhaps, offer to go in her place?) She has watched tv, played with Josie (now walking backwards!) and played on the CBeebies website. She has spent the day begging to do maths with me, so about to oblige, although currently walking her through a DWN elephant. (EDIT: She did quite well really!)

Maddy and i dragged ourselves through some Singapore maths, mainly because she has almost finished the first half of the Grade1 stuff now and all that is left is some incredibly basic shape stuff. So we went through that, because it sets up some more interesting things in a few pages time and Maddy finds following instructions so hard that the set up is necessary. I find it immensely irritating that the only helpful thing i have ever got out of an HP over Maddy came from the one i truly and passionately hated: that her verbal understanding is hugely behind her visual understanding. Case in point today; i careful read out the instructions, explained again what it was asking her to do (look at pattern, choose correct shape for next step of pattern, colour it in from a panel to select from) and she promptly circled the correct one. Answer right, comprehension seriously lacking 🙄 And of course, it doesn’t matter as such, except that it’s the same in every walk of life she meanders through. Still, i was impressed that she got through it all, most impressed by the fact that in the middle of a page of repeating shape patterns they threw in one which was just ever-decreasing sizes and she didn’t so much as blink. I can imagine the sort of hissy fit Fran would have thrown over that (still would probably!) Oh i do love how different they all are – i could child watch forever!

After that i got her out a sketch pad and she started drawing; after a while i noticed she wasa trying to do a camel so got out DWN and she worked really hard at copying one. Then she drew 2, 10 picture Egypt stories and dictated captions to me to write on them. 😆 They are called “The Fed Up Queen” and “The Fed Up Camel.” 😆 We talked a bit about the habits and varieties of camels and desert life.

Fran meanwhile, having tired of Cbeebies, was doing a DWN platypus. Looked one up on google too; oh i do love the internet… She also printed out and made a CBEEBIES 0’s and x’s game, which quite impressed me and read a book.

Then she and i finished off with some more area stuff, using tables and addition to work out different ways of covering a particular shape. Seemed to all be going in nicely. Bit of a maths question; is there a difference in the symantics of saying cm squared or square cm? I’m assuming there is: but yesterday i could think of ways of using them differently and now i can’t. I think it was something to do with regular and irregular shapes… oh dear…

I think i need to collapse in a heap – it’s all been a bit too much like hard work. I woulldn’t have minded if they hadn’t wanted to do anything, but it has been more like them having to coerce me 😆

(EDIT: Max has taken the big two out and Fran and i have just managed to knock a couple more things off the to do list: reread and done a picture of Beowulf (the short version!) and decided on Agility, Artist, Cook, Craft and Cyclist for Brownie Badges. So now i have list closure!)