Oh pleeease, grow for me!

The perfect home ed kitchen windowsill… daffodils, 3 grassheads, un-ironed hama and a side-order of dirt 🙂

The big three had a lovely time with my parents. I don’t doubt that one day i’ll perfectly understand the appeal of spending your weekend with a bunch of noisy, marauding kids after you’ve had a busy week with noisy marauding journalists or students, but right now i’m bemused by their enthusiam, but not ungrateful 😆 They seem to find it a treat to have such mayhem unleashed; long may that continue!

Josie milked her time with us to the max and thoroughly enjoyed unfettered access to cuddles and attention. was great to see her enjoy us, lovely to watch her perfecting belly flops on beds, sofas and piles of cushions. She has developed a passion for shoes too which is highly endearing and looks like she is fast growing out of the size 5 Doodles she’s wearing.

I spent the weekend reading (A Town Like Alice, great book) and playing on Maddy’s DS (Zoo Keeper, very addictive.) I had loads to do but for once i vegged out with no enthusiasm for anything. And now i know why; the cold has returned with avengence and i’m absolutely thick with it. Max and i went out for a 4 or 5 mile walk which was lovely – managed my 10000 steps for the day but can now see part of my problem – i don’t suppose i do more that 1500 tops most days – how on earth would i fit a 90 minute walk into every day? With kids in tow, 10000 steps would take me about 4 hours and end with my murdering them all. We also watched Ocean’s 12 (ridiculous film, never leave plot in the charge of a load of over indulgent actors), treated ourselves with wine and a small amount of plain chocolate and spent time together. Max tried to teach me poker – i lost all my money quick enough to be very glad i hadn’t been playing for my trousers 🙄 But i was glad of the treats; by the end of last week i was getting physically impossible to ignore cravings for something naughty. 5 weeks of very strict living is tough.

We did Maddy’s birthday last night; she loves her DS, so that is good and was chuffed to bits with her cake and bits from other people. She’s been very composed about having one present only from us – she is getting big and grown up now. She has been so good at thanking people for things too; she really learned her lesson from Xmas.

Fran is on the tail end of her second set of 7 fairy books now. She reads with really nice expression too; far more than i might expect from a child so young and new to “real” reading.

I’m probably too poorly to do much more with them today but i doubt it will matter. Everyone has had a stint on Rainbow Rock and Amelie is now using a Pooh bear game and learning her letters. Maddy has read me all 12 of the Roger Red-Hat pre-readers and is very excited by the big stack of them i have here. Thanks for sorting them Sarah, finally got me motivated. She did really well with them. Lots of colour words and some simple stories by the end and she was managing well, and pulling words across from the Ladybird books we’ve done too which is a big improvement. Fran also did a few sums with me; i’m making up a few things on a daily basis from the SATs book and she’s really responding to it well. Nice to see her tackling a different format with more confidence now and to see her motivated to get the skills under her belt.

I’m going to try and do a bit of China stuff before gym, but might end up not doing. I’d like to read another story from our MP Curriculum too though, it is going down really well, alhough we aren’t always managing to follow up the topics at the moment, due to the busy-ness of the last few weeks. Love the 12 Wild Swans story we did last night though; slightly different to previous versions but quite exciting for it.