Making it up

Thought I’d start with the high points of the day for a change

In fact the day started with a high point - got three of us organised, dressed, and fed and went over to see Barbara. It had been a while since we’d been over, and dd decided to do the clinging thing as we arrived which surprised me rather. She came round fairly quickly and departed upstairs with E and that was the last I saw of her until lunchtime. B came downstairs and played with Small - first time that he’s realised Small is a person worth bothering with I think. And Barbara and I had a nice time catching up and just chatting - like I said, it’s been a while.

Had lunch there, and then popped over to the large shopping mall to spend the ELC tokens I’d finally found. Bargains in the bookshop - dd had a £5 book token left from her birthday and the cheap bookshop takes them, and had a stand of children’s books labelled 5 for £5 or £1.50 each. Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it? So we came away with:
Girl Talk (Book of Me and My World)
Barbie Adorable Animals Activity Fun Book
100 things to do with The Hoobs
Ready to Read with Winnie-the-Pooh
and finally My Cat’s Weird

Now that list probably doesn’t read like the kind of thing we usually get for those of you who have perused our bookshelves previously, but dd chose them all. I think there is something going on in her head - she’s decided she wants to learn to read, and she’s aware that I’ve discussed with various ppl various things that might help her. I’m quite happy to give it a go, and very happy to have anything about that might even slightly diminish our tv viewing. In fact the other day in the works I picked up a book called 501 TV free activities for kids in the hope that it might have some stuff that she would enjoy. I also hope that doing things like that together might give us some opportunities to get a bit closer too.

Unfortunately the end of the time in the bookshop marked the end of dd’s good behaviour at the shops. We did a quick trip to ELC and came away with a keyboard for ds’s birthday but didn’t get to finish the rest of the shopping - I ended up marching out of the mall, pushing the buggy with one hand and dragging dd with the other, close to tears and trying to avoid the accusatory glares of passers by. So I’m not going to take her shopping with me the next couple of times I have to go, and we’ll see if that makes a difference.

Quick round up of the rest of the day - went to dd’s ballet class and came back with a slip of paper detailing the time of her first exam. But no other details - which I thought was a bit poor, personally. I’m in two minds about it - now that’ll surprise you all On the one hand I don’t want her to get stressed about it, on the other I think doing exams that don’t really matter but she gets a nice rosette and ribbon for could set her up to be rather less stressed about the whole process in the long run. I’ve told her that an exam is when she shows someone how good she is, and that’s it. Anyone else any hints and tips?

Got home and dd asked for pasta. So I whipped up a cheese sauce and they both ate it! Result. So we’ll end there.

(No I haven’t finished the End Of Story thing yet, I figure that I’m going to do it tonight and put it in the post in the morning and if it gets there in time, it does, and if it doesn’t, well, at least I’ve written something. Finding it difficult as none of the stories really light me up - in fact most of them leave me snoring gently…)