Spellbound.

This week is going so much better, i am thoroughly enjoying it 🙂 I think knowing a fresh start is nigh is just making such a difference. Once the cleaners (oh god, i love my cleaners) had been this week and all the crud had gone (i am just no good at cleaning, it never seems to look properly done!) it began to feel like home again. The first odds and sods of stock have moved out too, so we spend less time tripping over things. Am hoping it will all be operational by the end of next week, with luck and then phase 856 of life can start.

On Monday we had an afternoon out at Activity World with B, for his birthday and a variety of other people. I did better than i have been doing, so i felt relatively pleased when i got home. No tears. Gods, i’m pathetic. But, definitely no need to cry either, which really gave me a shot of confidence. Tomorrow i am going to sit down with my new calendar and mark in all the HE groups and get back to doing that routinely instead of when the long suffering and endlessly persistent and patient Hannah makes me go! (Love you Hannah!) Yesterday we bootled about, more planning etc and then Max and the girls went into town and today we’ve spent the day with Michelle and Chloe, played, gamed and been to the park. Thank you for having us 🙂
Josie was a complete delight today too, just extremely funny and cute in her grumpy, cheeky naughtiness. She has a fine sense of humour when she isn’t yelling or being a controlling little monster. Bless. Ams also being lovely, finally, i think, beginning to learn about not always kissing and grabbing at people. She actually spotted a back off signal from Chloe today, which i was proud of her for. And she has worked SO hard at Studydog all week, finishing games to complete her course so she and i can go out on a special cake buying expedition to celebrate. I have never seen her get so deeply determined to do something and do it well; it’s been adorable to watch, particularly as Josie has sat watchnig her and keeps yelling out “she got a green circle on another one, she did it!!!!” – such a cheerleader.

Amelie and i finally seem to be seeing each other with clear eyes and i am so happy about it; i’ve always found her my most challenging child and found it harder at times to see all the charm that others have found so easy to spot. But now we are undoubtedly the closest we have ever been and enjoying a really easy friendship and warmth that i adore having. She is flourishing under it too, growing minute by minute into her bigger self and blossoming into such a beautiful, intelligent and sparky little thing. It breaks my heart when i see her get misunderstood these days because more and more i can see that she is just full of love and goodness and effusion of spirit and i know i have been partly to blame for misrepresenting her nature. Still, think we are fixed, which is perfect.

This week we have had the opportunity to get some routine back into our lives; Fran has got a bit of a passion for spelling at the moment so i’ve been writing lists out for her and she has learned them and then we’ve tested her. 100% so far and the words haven’t been especially easy – today was friends, terrible, tremble, olive, monster and various others of similar lengths. She got them all right and did them all in rapidly improving joined up writing. Which only goes to prove that children will magically be able to do things in their own time, given the time to do it in their own time (she says, succinctly!). This is a bit of a relief! I was even more impressed the other day when we happened to get into the spellings of brought, bought, thought, caught, though, dough and so on the other day at dinner – she got them all right. That has just come about by reading really, we’ve never done anything formal on them.

Given they are asking for more structure, Max and i sat down the other night and chatted (or began chatting) about how we’ll manage to do something cohesive when we each have them half the week. Tentatively, no doubt expecting outrage, Max said something along the lines of “i’m not sure they 100% like your philosophy of erm.. can’t think of the word… errrrr… sitting back and letting it happen?”

Ah. That would be autonomy then. No dear, it’s been more like benign, well resourced, neglect and not because that was how we wanted it!!!! So funny to be accused of championing autonomy over structure in my own home! What larks… what irony!

Never mind, it worked okay 🙂

Moo is still cross because the maths book is too easy; i keep shuffling her along and i want her through it because 3A is a good ramp up and she needs to cover the bases really, so we are dashing through it and doing lots of mental maths at the same time. Fran is reading Moomins apparently, is half way through all her Revise books, likes doing punctuation exercises (?!?!?!?!!) and is completely obsessed with the Newsround website.
On the Winter/Water theme, we had a good moment at the dinner table the other night when i started hitting my glass with my pencil and we got experimenting with notes and water volumes in various glasses. It went on a while and was fun (once Fran stopped complaining about us using her juice!) and we are gonig to try and make an octave this week. So there, water, music and science at the dinner table. Perfick.

And i won’t mention the extreme hormonal outbursts and strops that a certain person is exhibiting (never mind the waist and hips that appear to be appearing.) No, i won’t; i may now be 34 (OMG, mid thirties), but i am MUCH too young to have a daughter with hips and a waist. *I* have never had a waist (you may have noticed the hips), i won’t allow her to have one!