Thursday's Mum is still making an effort.

Although as an aside, i really love this picture of Fran.

And this one of Josie with “dizzy hair” is lovely too, except it blurred – but never mind.

Another decent day; maths round the table first thing; Amelie grapsed hundreds and what to do if there are no tens, i was ever so proud of her. Lots of reading, i couldn’t get Maddy’s nose out of the book she was engrossed in and when she finished it, she moved on to a Rainbow Fairy book. Really do love seeing her grasping this now, though i think she still employs the “guess it” technique a fair bit. Hopefully carying on with ETC (which she loves!) and doing this new GP English book will be beneficial to her. Fran was happy with Verbal Reasoning, slightly less happy with decimals and played some lovely cello.

I’m making a massive effort to reconnect and focus on cramming days with interaction; i’ve been terribly zoned out recently and reading too much. These last few days have been much better again. So we’d crammed lots in by the time Kate and Madison arrived and all 7 of us had lunch around the table together. Madison is a treasure, i do adore having her as a god-daughter, though the timing of her conception is still a tiny bit raw. But being so pleased she exists and having such a tangible piece of her makes that okay – and makes me make it okay – which is good for me.

Long gossips, much garden play and copious amounts of showing Kate their stretching exercises; Amelie is astonishingly flexible. Josie and Madison have a real connection and loved being out in the sandpit. Then it got heavy and thundery and showery and yuck – so they went home. But it cooled off a while later.

We all tidied – i’m (re)trying a new technique of being supermum and having the house ordered, controlled, tidied and marvellous by the time Max gets home in the hope that either i will grow to like that, or he’ll realise we could squeeze a little more space into our lives. By the time he got home, teac was half cooked, the house was tidy-ish and the kids were educated out and tucked up on the sofa watching a film on the laptop and all huddled into the old sofa together, due to our telly insisting on giving us a black screen half the time; you have to hit it in the right place with the first thump for it to come back – or it stays black and you have to turn it off for half an hour. Very annoying.

I’m now being driven insane by the singing from the camp out the back; i don’t know what it is but it makes me very uncomfortable. It has a mesmeric, brainwashy sound to it, a sort of “by the end of the week you’ll know the words and we’ll have you absorbed” feel that brings out all my worst prejudices from my several highly unpleasant  experiences of churches that exerted just that kind of power. I’m sure i am being very unfair – but chanty, happy clappy, endless drumming and yowling just makes my skin creep.