Of course…

… the minute i say i’m laying off education AND guilt for a few weeks, they all go and get industrious, which is great, though it makes me feel simultaneous irrelevant AND out of touch 😉

Fran has finally (i think this really IS finally) learned the art of reading for pleasure and knowledge. Her reading ability has leapt forwards, she pronounces and understands a whole new level of words now, well enough that i don’t feel any inclination to do a reading age test on her anyway 😉 In the last week or so, she’s devoured several Usborne books on “stuff” (her words, i declined to delve since she was being secretive), the Time Traveller book, a pile of mini encyclopedias and several of the Lemony Snicket books, which she professes to understand (which could mean anything, i’m not sure i understood them!) She’s rarely got her nose out of a book, and when she has it’s only because she’s unside down. I doubt it’ll be long before i see her cartwheeling and reading simultaneously 🙄

Maddy is seeming at a loose end but she’s doing loads of crafts and lots of geomags, playing in the garden and “looking at books” – not reading, obviously 🙄 She’s back into her guitar and practises a fair bit and has been doing a good bit of drawing.

Amelie has gone letter-mental. SHe writes, spells, sounds out and reads all the time and with anyone who’ll do it with her. She collared Alison for a fair bit of time one day, spends an hour or so most days getting me to write stuff for her to copy and spots words she knows all the time. It’s lovely -she has great writing too, really small and neat. She loves the alphabet and got HUGELY annoyed when she realised the letters on the back of a prescription were not in order. She spends ages spelling things out with scrabble tiles and so on. She’s very into her maths books too and does “sums” whenever she can; adding and subtracting up to about 15 doesn’t seem to be a problem at all and she can count to 100. I know Fran couldn’t do that at her age, because i remember having a conversation with Gwenny about it at the first Kessie camp! She’s spending a lot of time processing Grans’s death at the moment; the other day she suddenly said that hse felt sad that Aunty Sue was the only person left in her family now. When Max and i said she wasn’t, she has all of us and her own children, Amelie pointed out that Sue no longer had her parents or her sister and that that must make her very sad. I think we both felt rather mortified that neither of us had really computed that fact at all 🙁

Josie is Josie; she’s more or less sorted out her colours out, likes counting, drawing, “writing” and looking at books. Current favourite is filling boards with midi hama beads and geomags. She challenged Alison and i to make a geomag dalek and was extremely exacting about the design. Several models had to be offered up before she was finally satisfied (and then i wouldn’t let her play with it!) She wormed her way pretty thoroughly into the Amelie/Buttercup lovenest and adores Ernest ernestly 😉 Sadly, she’s become clearly more andm ore affected by milk in her diet since giving up breastmilk. The eczema on her arms is dreadful this week and she has awful panda eyes and dry skin on her face; she’s also craving cheese, not a good sign at all. Yesterday’s trip to the doctor concluded that we needed to take it out of her diet but it’s going to be harder than with Amelie, she’s very angry about it and today she sneaked 1/4lb of cheese out of the fridge and up to her room 🙄

So, last week ended with a visit from the Portico…

Playing chess with Ernest. (Fran beat Ernest, Gwenny beat Fran)

Much Doctor Who was watched, VERY late nights but all mostly without bothering me and Alison, a fair bit of Gamecube and DS, gamecubing probably heralding one of 2 of the most outstanding Amelie/Buttercup fights i’ve ever seen (the other following outside shortly afterwards over a cardboard box… i think they were a ‘little’ tired 🙄 ) and generally a lovely time was had. They do seem to be 8 exceptionally compatible children, all told. This time Fran and Gwenny seemed to really pal up and Maddy and Ernest but it never seems like anyone is left out. It was all just lovely.

Maddy wants to make domino runs when she grows up 😉

Just before they left, i dropped some boxes on the power switch of the computer; it went off, refused to come back on and when i finally did coax it back to life, it reformatted the entire drive and lost everything on it. Pah. Talk about being over-sensitive, i didn’t even swear at it. So poor Max spent saturday redoing my company accounts while we went to CASTLE DAY!

Too many nice things to talk about, but possibly my favourite ever party. Thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected (to me) attendednce of FROOP and SOD

and got to spend copious amounts of time with a variety of people, but mainly Nic and Em. Nic let me photograph her cleavage…

…but i like this photo better…

…and Em showed us her bum. 😯

Tim was a bit of a chopper

(cheap shot but so worth it 😉 )

FROOP appears to have a Rapunzel complex…

Em took a half decent photo of me

(try to remain calm)

Ady taught me bits of my new camera (such a nice man!)

Maddy was lovely; at least i assume she was, i barely saw her all day.

Fran stopped looking little (again).

And Josie was cute too.

More later… just so you don’t get overwhelmed 😉