I’m often accused of cloning, which I find amusing now that they are growing up – Big’s hair has darkened and her blue eyes are now brown. Small is still blond and blue eyed, but they are so very obviously brother and sister. Stick their half sibling there as well and she’s very much from the same pod too and given that she’s no blood relation to me it all gets a bit confusing.

Character wise, on first glance they are very different. But they both display a startling level of intensity. For Small that makes him incredibly self-directed, and woe betide the adult that gets in the way. He has a turn of temper that he has absolutely no control over, and while it’s better than a year ago in that he’s more likely to take it out on inanimate objects like doors instead of soft ones like ppl, the force of it still takes me aback.

Big also has a hair trigger temper. Her’s comes out verbally and in attitude though – she’s been practising teenager style strops since she was about 3. I keep assuming she’ll grow out of them, but there’s little sign of it happening yet.

When it comes to learning though, that’s when they really differ. As I’ve blogged before, I was waiting through a long deschooling period and seeing no inclination to get on with anything. If it seemed vaguely educational I would get wails and tantrums – Big has a perfectionist streak that holds her back from trying a lot of the time.

So I imposed some loose structure. A requirement for a certain number of work items each morning, to include basic skills like maths, english and then history, science, languages, whatever. And we got into that routine, and OK, we still had a lot of strops but overall life was calmer.

In the last week, things have changed. Small suddenly started wanting to substitute his interests for the third work. Then for the second work. Maths is non optional – I’m not going to get to the point we’re at with Big where the basic skills are a real struggle. So now he has a geography book, and he’s looked up a variety of countries on wikipedia, printed off maps, drawn or coloured in flags, written bits of language in, learnt about population, area, density. I didn’t know that he could read numbers into the millions, but he can, and another side track took us off into large numbers, learning what comes after million and billion (some of which he’d come across in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Space)

Yesterday, for some reason, he dived off into dinosaurs. He’s spent nearly an hour looking them up this morning, and we’ve discussed how ppl know what dinosaurs were like, and which bits we don’t know, and how we know about their behaviour. He was quite agrieved to look up one and be told that it has very unusual teeth and therefore nobody knows what it ate, as they don’t fit the standard herbivore/ carnivore/ omnivore pattern. He’s looked up various other animals as well – came bouncing into the bedroom this morning to tell me that tigers eat crocodiles and boars. And then he looked up boars

There’s a vague interest in Albert Einstein coming through, and courtesy of Tim buying a 3-in-1 tuner from Lidl this week, his guitar is now out again and he’s working through his lesson book (Progressive Guitar Method for Young Beginners: Book 1) again.

It’s fantastic to watch him taking off like this, and it’s having an unexpected side effect this time around. First of all Big got very upset that Small didn’t have to do the defined three subjects. I pointed out that really all I want to see is them learning, and I don’t particularly mind what they are learning. And if she could come up with something that she wanted to do instead of something I suggested, she was very welcome to do it too. So she stopped stropping, and went off to find her myths and legends book, and spent a gratifying amount of time writing things up in a book for herself. She even went and got her spelling log, used it to write out words she knew she had in there, and put in words she wasn’t sure of.

She’s still doing maths every day, and we’ve agreed on a short amount of handwriting practice every day too. It’s paying off – we looked back to the beginning of her english exercise book and can easily see an improvement in legibility. She’s also starting to pay more attention to how she writes the things she’s writing, so we’re getting fewer spelling mistakes that are just missing letters. She wants to get back to playing the piano too, so we need to clear away the pile of clutter currently surrounding it that’s waiting a trip to the loft for storage.

So, tell me, can you teach autonomy? Is that what is going on here? Is it still autonomy if it’s externally encouraged? Thoughts in the usual place please

I’ve run out of patience

Maybe I don’t respond in the right way or quickly enough to expressed interests? Perhaps my purposive conversation is either not present enough or too purposive? Perhaps eight months isn’t a long enough deschooling time frame for three years of flexi school at Montessori?

Or perhaps my children just need a bit of structure and to be stretched every now and then. I’m so sold on autonomy and the theories of John Holt that I’ve felt terribly guilty this week – but not guilty enough to not impose a work requirement on the offspring.

So now, each morning, we do a bit of maths, a bit of english and something else. The something else varies from day to day, and I’ve tried to follow up on their interests. The TV is banned between the hours of 9 and 3 (would be 9 and 5, but realistically, that would mean that 3 days a week one or the other of them would see no TV and I can’t be that hard hearted). They each still have their two half hour computer slots, and if they are doing something educational/ work related, computer time extends.

And how has it worked this week?

Well, the first day Small did his work quickly and cheerfully. By the third day, he was resistant, thinking of anywhere he’d rather be and anything he’d rather be doing. Which is irritating, because when he does come in and get set to, it takes him minutes to do the amount of maths I’m asking of him, another few minutes to read a chapter of the book I bought for him as he couldn’t think what he’d like to read (The Thing from Knucker Hole (Young Hippo Adventure)), and then he tends to enjoy whatever the third part is. So he loved science, liked looking at maps, and had no problems listening to and discussing The Story of the World: Ancient Times v. 1.

Big is another story. Her maths will improve with steady practise, but we’ve discovered that her English needs work in a number of areas. And I think that is what is holding her back doing some of the other things she wants to do. So instead of doing a unit a week from Focus on Literacy: Pupil Textbook Bk.5 we’re going to do a unit every other week and concentrate on basics in between times. Handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar, that sort of thing. Most of the time she reads of her own accord, although she had been on strike waiting for the next book in the series she’s reading, Conspiracy (Lady Grace Mysteries). That’s arrived now, so she’s reading again on an evening.

I’d kind of assumed that a child who reads as voraciously as she does would pick up the other stuff, but she isn’t doing, so I need to target it more directly. Still really wish I could find Small’s english book so that we could do bits out of that as well. But wherever he’s put it, it’s staying hidden

She loved the experiment she did this week, out of Outer Space (Funstations) I’d found. Lit candles under varying sizes of jars so that we could see what happened when the oxygen ran out. And we’d been having conversations about first ppl during the week anyway, so nomads in story of the world worked well for her.

In and amongst there was Brownies, Beavers, swimming, a not back to school picnic afternoon on the beach (fabulous weather, kids were in the sea on and off all afternoon), Tim popped to old hosue and brought back all the baby stuff so the children washed it all in the garden yesterday, oh and some blokes came round and cut down one of the hedges. Small cried. Turned out he’d really liked that hedge, even though Tim and I loathed it, and though we’d discussed removing it several times, Small hadn’t picked up on the discussions.

I’ve processed yet more bags of stuff from old house and now have large piles of clothing to process into storing. Oh, and Small had another visit to the doctors, who said that he has chronic otitis and prescribed a months worth of penicillin just in case it’s bacterial. Which apparently it probably isn’t. So am still umming and ahing over what to do about that.

This afternoon Tim and Small are at a Beavers mini Olympics – looks like Small at least is having fun.

Anyway, with this weekend being Heritage Open Days weekend, and therefore Sutton Hoo being free rather than costing £15 for a family, we decided we’d go and see it.

Small slept in rather late (obviously tired from the night before!) but was reasonably obliging when he woke, and not averse to the idea of going out as long as he could watch WALL-E (borrowed from Big’s friend C the night before) when we got back. We looked up on our tourist attraction map how far it is and he thought maybe 7 miles, as it’s 3 1/2 miles to an inch, and it looked to be about 2 inches. When we got in the car the satnav said 8.8 miles, so we decided we had done quite well with the map

Journey is about quarter of an hour, which is perfectly acceptable, and the sun came out as we were on the way there.

There was lots going on as well as all the stuff that’s there all the time – there was a 1939 archaeologist about somewhere, an art exhibition and chance for the children to get involved and falconry displays, as well as the big exhibition hall, the shop, the cafe and the (small but well formed) adventure playground.

We started in the exhibition hall – the children were given clipboards with quizzes on them, and I discovered that this isn’t a particularly good idea now. Big got very stressed about finding the answers and was not taking in the exhibition in general at all. Small just handed me his clipboard and belted off to find a replica helmet to put on

Small in helmet

Once that was done we had a quick look at the special exhibition on feasting while trying to find Tim and Small, but didn’t spot them and wandered outside where the falconry was about to start. Tim caught us up when I texted our location, and we watched a Harris Hawk, a hybrid falcon, and my personal favourite, the eagle owl. He landed on a post right next to us, so we got to have a really good look at him, which was fantastic.

eagle owl at Sutton Hoo

Big was incredibly brave and when they called for volunteers, went into the display area and sat down so that the owl could fly close over her head, was very proud of her Unfortunately our angle wasn’t good for a picture, but she really enjoyed it. Small declined the opportunity.

Next thing we did was retire to the cafe for an excellent lunch. if we’d paid for entry I wouldn’t have felt happy about the £20 lunch bill, as it was, I thought it made the day a really good family treat And when we’d finished eating, Tim popped off and joined the National Trust – got a £20 or so discount for joining on the day, so we only need to make three more visits to Sutton Hoo as a family and we’ll be well up I can see that we might well do that during the year, particulary as I think we can take other children in with us, much as we did taking Scott and Princess in to Landguard and only paying for visiting adults.

We visited the shop as well, and Small impressed me by buying himself a cardboard press out version of the helmet which I think he’ll really enjoy making. Big bought herself a bookmark and pin to remember the day and we started a family postcard collection – we’ll try and get one of all these places that we visit, which will be a rather nice memento.

After the shop we went out to walk to the mounds. Turned out that this was rather more of a walk in the by now blazing sunshine than the kids and I were up to, so we retreated to the playground (I seem to have missed out the playground, we had already visited it though!) while Tim went for the walk. Big thoroughly enjoyed more time on the aerial runway, while I spent a lot of time waiting for Small outside the toilet (!) and then we had another look at the birds of prey.

And that pretty much did us for the day. We’d been there probably 4 and a bit hours, Small was getting more than a little antsy to get home to his DVD and the rest of us were just hot and tired. So we came home for screen time, Tim strolled out and picked up some reduced price food from the coop for tea and we all slumped for the evening.

But it was a really lovely family day out, and we’re looking forward to doing it all again

Monday was a mainly quiet day as is usually required after visitors for rest and recuperation, however restful the visitors have been. There was much television watched, some putering, possibly some reading and drawing, but that was about it. Until bedtime, when Big asked Tim something about coordinates, and he launched into a beautifully judged, eloquently explained description of how it all worked, complete with illustrations on the computer and use of google earth.

I was learning lots, but I did rather lose focus when Big said, a trifle impatiently “but is this going to answer the question I asked you?” Ah well. It did remind her of google earth, so that was a good thing. Not sure whether any of the rest of it went in, which is a bit of a shame, but rather the way it goes around here!

Monday afternoon I set to with my OU CMA (computer marked assignment as opposed to TMA, tutor marked assignment). It’s on probability and statistics, which ought to be a doddle given that I’ve covered the topic at uni level before. The drawback being that I really don’t get either of them, and Tim and I had an interesting debate over the aubergine parmegiana that I was making that implied he’s not much further on that I am. Oh well.

The aubergine thingy was lovely, and major breakthrough with Small – he tried a tiny piece of the onion in tomato sauce that was one of the ingredients and liked it! That really opens up a lot of possibilities of sneaking onions and tomato sauce into things, or even making my own pasta sauces for them. It probably took us about 20 minutes to talk him into putting it in his mouth, but we got there in the end.

Big tried it and said it was alright. She later told me that she didn’t like the flavour, but I could always try it again with different cheese. Both Tim and I enjoyed it, and what’s more, Tim had a second helping! Definitely calling that one a success, which is rather good as I’d no real idea what to do with aubergines before that.

He didn’t want to. We were heading for Framlingham, in search of our final Time Traveller Go stickers (It’s not the final event, and we are hoping to make it to the one next week as well, but our passports are now fully stickered up.) For some reason Small decided he didn’t want to go out, and it ended up with him being brought out by Tim. I hate having to get to that stage, but as I anticipated, once we were there, he had a great time. Apart from the part when I didn’t move fast enough and he screamed at me, right in the middle of the Victorian Policeman’s spiel

Big thoroughly enjoyed the Victorian bit – it is her favourite era. Small was kept occupied with the Framlingham murder trail – a set of clues dotted around with a map/ plan showing how to go from one to the next. Was surprised at how difficult he found it to follow the map, given that he draws them for himself from time to time. Then again, I suppose his follow a slightly different schema. Must ponder that one further.

Once he’d done that, Big moved on to the agility tests which involved running around in odd ways, then throwing and catching and that sort of thing. So I played big dominoes with Small. He got the hang of it fairly quickly and was very happy to win the game against me, and then the game he had with Big when she’d finished. We ate our fruit and then he was desperate to go around the wall walk, so I dragged myself up there. Think it’ll be the last time that I make it before the baby!

And by the time we’d done that, it was time to be heading off to the hospital for our planned growth scan. Tim met us there having taken the bus, which worked pretty well. We had the first appt of the afternoon, so naturally we were the fifth seen. Sigh. But we were seen within 10 minutes of appt time, which is pretty good going really.

Scan was very quick, and then we were passed through to see the registrar. He was ludicrously young and slightly nervous – happy with my scan results although when I mentioned homebirth he decided I’d need a presentation scan at 36 weeks as well. Doesn’t sound like a bad plan – I well remember the panicked weekend after a midwife decided Small was breech about two weeks before he was due. He wasn’t breech, and we had our homebirth Was quite surprised to have the scan booked in, but not displeased.

Babe it appears it slightly above average size – hopefully slightly above average is where it will stay Small was just under the boundary for me to have glucose tolerance tests, no idea what that’s about or what the symptoms might be. Did get the impression it would have been more needles though. And I’ve got a lovely bruise from the one on Tues already.

Think when we got home I went for a lie down, and the kids caught up on their screen time. Small signed himself up for a moshi monster – for some reason his arithmetic goes to pot under pressure. Daresay it will improve though.

Cauliflower cheese, new potatoes and carrots for tea, out of veg box three. Big helped prepare the veg – washed and peeled carrots, helped with potatoes. Am finding it slightly traumatic as Small is hugely resistant to new foods, but he does like both cauliflower cheese and raw carrot, so that wasn’t too bad. No idea why he’s gone off potato in all forms though.

Tim read to them, and that was their night almost over – Small got up very confused around 11 and didn’t quite make it to the bathroom, mainly as he didn’t seem to know where it was any more. Given that he never woke up properly it didn’t upset him though – Tim and I had to fight back laughter when we gave him clean PJ trousers and he tried to put them on his head. Bless.

Eventually got to the bottom of it with A the swimming lesson coordinator. Well, she opened up her list, discovered she already had the maximum 10 in that group without Small, took one look at my face and added him at number 11. This was after she’d checked on the puter and realised that we are paying for him, she just hadn’t processed the paperwork properly!

Hm. Not impressed. The lessons went well though – Big has now progressed to jumping into the large pool, at a level that must put her pretty much out of her depth. She’s coming on really well atm, and that’s without me taking her for any of the sessions she’s entitled to free.

Meandered home again via Smiths, where I discovered that they don’t do scrapbooks, or indeed much in the way of stationery any more. Quite a lot of nice arty stuff, discounted heavily in their summer sale, but still quite expensive, so I resisted temptation. Guess you can only to that once in a day

Afternoon seemed to vanish – managed to get this room mainly tidied up and saw the surface of this table briefly, though it does seem to have at least partially disappeared again since then. Then it was time to go out to pick up stuff from Freecyle – cloth nappies on offer Minor drawback – there is one decent road out of this town, and it was closed, due to a lorry inconsiderately parking on its side on the roundabout. So with the satnav screaming at me, I detoured around until I found the other road out and used that instead.

Similar difficulties in the next town with roads down to one lane or closed, and then the freecycler had neglected to mention that her road was permit parking only and though I drove around the block four times, I couldn’t find anywhere to park, and eventually temporarily abandoned the car nervously on some double yellow lines Grabbed the nappies and ran, after exchanging brief cloth nappy histories – Small as a poster boy for Derbyshire real nappies

Stopped off at the ridiculously huge Tesco on the way home in the hope that they would have scrapbooks – no, they don’t. Have they gone completely out of fashion? The type of books that children stick pictures in? Harumph.

However, did pick up some goodies, including a small magnetic calendar of the type where you put on the days, month, year etc, and a magnetic map of Europe with flags, country names and capital city labels. As expected, Tim fell on the map – he really does like them, and Small was thrilled with the calendar. Also bought two small corkboards thinking that they might do to get us started with some macrame (so Big wasn’t left out of the shopping spree) and of course some custard slices (thanks, Joanna )

Had to do the circuitous route home again, so I’m blaming the headache on all of that. Plus when I got home it was to an email from the freecycler saying she’d given me the wrong size nappies and would I take them back.

:headdesk: No, I don’t think so. Size 2s will do fine, thank you very much, if it’s anything like last time, size 1s will last us no time at all.

Headache was so bad that Tim’s done the reading, and I’m sitting here waiting for the paracetamol to kick in. Head hurts, and it’s not from headdesking before you say anything along those lines!

Ooh, our new veg box arrives tomorrow. The excitement is mounting…

This is not going to mean lessons to a timetable – I’m more of a seat of your pants person than that. I would hardly have a blog with this title otherwise But I do need an idea of what we need to cover and a shape to the week or Small will run wild as well. I’m going to get a planner up on the wall showing when we’re going away and stuff of interest like that – it helps him a lot to be able to count down to events he’s looking forward to. It will also help when he begins to understand what a week is and what a month is – I foresee lots of that type of work in his near future

So I’m looking at Nature detectives club – I like the idea of a weekly activity and of that being based around the natural world. Both the kids thrive on the outdoors, so the more we have planned that draws them outside the better. One way or another there will be gardening, although as there’s likely to be at least one and more likely two moves in the year, it may be small scale gardening to begin with.

For maths I’m looking at Stile for Small at least. He likes the system and he works at it independently, so it would be a good way to get him going. He’s pretty much unteachable a lot of the time, so it has to be something that he can learn from with minimal input, although he may let me extend it if he’s enjoying it.

Big is another story. Sometime over the last couple of years she’s lost her nerve with maths and although I’ve gone someway to repairing that, we’ve still a way to go. I think we’ll work Montessori style, I may be building manipulatives or buying a few in (note to self, must ask S, Tim’s s-i-l where she got the test tubes from that she used in a flower arrangement a while back). We need to nail basic maths facts, get a real grip on the decimal hierarchy and spin out into measuring, estimating and real world problems, which we should mainly be able to do with crafts and cooking.

Big got a fab cookbook from Tim’s family for christmas. Apparently it’s the one his nieces used to learn to cook, and having tasted their cooking, I’m more than pleased to follow their lead. I think that at least once a week she will be preparing us a meal from it (or other sources) and we should be trying to fit in some more baking as well.

Our first project is going to be based around the human body, nutrition and exercise. I need Small to understand that man cannot live on bananas alone and I also need him to understand how to work on a project. His work will involve plenty of labelled diagrams, he’s good at that sort of thing, and once he’s diagrammed something, he doesn’t seem to forget it.

For history and geography we may well make use of resources I already have. 120 Great History Projects strikes again. Actually one of the things that Big did when home education was first mentioned again was go and get it out and start daydreaming about what she could do from it, so I think it will go down pretty well.

Did I miss anything much out? They both read like there’s no tomorrow, I may try to persuade them to do some book reviews as I think it’s good to keep a list of what they’ve been perusing. I’ll try for some readalouds as well, they enjoy that kind of thing, and I got more into it at school. For science I’m planning on finally getting round to my Power House kit – I’m looking forward to it, dunno what the kids are going to think Exercise wise, well, there’s walking to the library and walking to the park, running around the park, walking back again (moaning because it’s uphill, you get the idea). I want to try to get them swimming a couple of times before Centerparcs, but we’ll see.

There will be piano playing on Big’s part, much crafting and drawing from both of them, continual fighting over the computer to improve their bearvilles and hopefully rather more calmness and happiness engendered all around.

I can hope, can’t I?

This was quite an adventure. While they quite often go on the steam trains, neither of them could remember going on a train to just go somewhere, although I assured them that we had when we were staying at the Portico once. So they were wonderfully excited to just ride through the rather dingy countryside and into Leeds, where we fought our way out through the excessive numbers of transport police (a couple on every platform and about 8 in the main entrance, I’ve no idea what was going on, but on our way back we did pass a cordoned off space on a platform with bunches of flowers all around ) and then grabbed a map from an information place and went off to find the OU.

We found it very quickly, and were directed around to the Faculty section for Maths and Computing. The computing guy got all excited until I said I had done all that and wanted maths instead, so the maths woman got very excited and told me all about it. She said I would be fine with the two starter courses together from February, that they budget for around 14 hours a week but it shouldn’t take me that long, but that it will still take 6 years to do a degree. Ah well. Better get started then – I need to go gather up all our clubcard tokens and send them off as you get four times the face value in tokens you can spend with the OU. Which seemed like a good idea.

When we’d done talking with the faculty and I’d been praised on my wonderfully well behaved children (who just found seats, sat down, and looked at brochures) we wandered around to see what else was on offer, and I found a woman who said there is a scheme, previously for gifted and talented children, but now open to all which allows children under the age of 18 and some under 16 to study with the OU. The schools version of it is called YASS, and she thought the non school version was YAP but I can’t find the latter on their website. I may mail in for further details as it sounded interesting.

After that we went off to see if we could find a camera screen protector for the new camera Big received yesterday (competition prize) but we couldn’t. We did find a pound shop and blew my recent resolution to buy less tat Hohum. And then we headed back to the railway station via the Smiths there to finally finish spending on my giftcard, by buying them each a comic.

Train was slightly delayed but not drastically and we came home via Sainsbury’s for a pizza, milk and tantrum session, children now fed and hopefully in bed. Think I’d probably better go and check.

Have struggled with my course tonight and eventually, through doing some hunting through the website of the provider, come to the conclusion that the questions I have don’t match the file I have. Which at least means that I haven’t completely taken leave of my senses, but also means that I’m not going to get it finished this weekend. Bother. Have mailed A to see if she has any more up to date version of the file at her house, as I don’t recall seeing another one at school.

Yesterday it rained. It rained rather a lot. Bizarrely the cellar here seemed to dry out slightly, perhaps the water inside felt lonely for the water outside. Today it’s been really rather nice and sunny right up until I went upstairs to study, when I suddenly realised that the sound I could hear was not the computer after all and ran back downstairs to discover the almost dry washing getting very wet indeed. Bother, again. Got more than slightly damp retrieving the bits I need most urgently – one positive side effect of moving to the elementary classroom is that I’m often making a pair of trousers last two days at work instead of only one

Took Small out this morning to look at guitars. Was not impressed by the attitude of the woman at the music shop who basically did herself out of a sale by being very sniffy with me. Ah well, daresay Amazon will be polite when they send us Encore ENC12OFT Natural Wood Half Size Classic Guitar Outfit which looks like it fits the bill and is cheaper than the one locally. Which is slightly irritating, as I would like to support local shops, but I can’t even find the guitar she had online, and it just didn’t feel nice to me. Obviously I haven’t felt this one either, but I’m hopeful, and Small is really desperate for one. I do think, with him even more so than other children, that it’s important to follow his interests at the moment he expresses them, not least so that you don’t have to deal with the extreme temper he can exhibit at times.

Next week is my week of late finishes, and then on Saturday we’ve an open day as well. Expect very little blogging as I will be reserving my energy to make it through a long week. Ah well. Must go and read up on Elementary files now. After I find a nice bottle of wine

ETA forgot to blog the geography moment! Small came up to the elementary classroom several times this week – he really wants to and is just about ready for it too. All the children were occupied colouring in some labels for their books that Big had got in a magazine – he took up a set and started colouring them too. He asked what Geography was, and I explained it was the study of the world around us, learning about the continents, and doing things like looking at the states in America (something he did extensively last term). Then I wandered off to do something else, and noticed a few minutes later that he was drawing in his new geography book. I went back and explained (again) that he mustn’t draw pictures in all of his books, we have plenty of drawing paper for that, and once I’d got him to stop crying discovered that it wasn’t just a picture, he’d drawn a diagram of half the world, complete with continents, and shown the core, put flames around it, and written Ouch at the top to show that it’s hot. The theory goes that he was in the room with a group studying the layers of the globe at one point, although no one remembers him actually taking part in any discussion – he doesn’t really do taking part. It would appear that he does do learning though. That’s my boy.

Getting an hour on my own with Small in the library (aw, he took his book to the counter himself, handed the card over and everything ) and buying myself some stuff.

Bad:
Tantrums, talk back, Small on the windowsill, the back of the couch, Small drawing on the back of the couch with felt tip (yarg!), Big being so rude and uncontrollable that I had to turn down an invitation to Barbara’s for a sleepover.

Spending money I don’t *have* on myself!

The downright ugly…that’d be this room then. Looks like a bomb hit it. Again. And the Bratz girl fashion design books that I found in Wilcos – yeuch.

So what am I going to do about it all? Well, for Big, more structure I think. It’s going to have to be – I don’t see any other way out. For the house, my state of mind and our finances, Ebay – must get some of the clutter onto Ebay. And book selling – I started writing down ISBNs, but it’s taking ages. Found some bar code readers on Ebay that don’t cost very much at all, so I’ve mailed to find out how much they’ll cost to ship.

We have a plan. Now all I need to do is work out where I put my energy so that I can get on with it…

Quite frankly, it was a bit of a waste of time. I think he only got them to swim two widths – most of the time was spent in a sort of circle time taking it in turns to float on their fronts or backs. Bit disappointing this close to the end of the course though. He did say though that it already says in the folder that she’s passed level two, so we’re definitely on for moving up in January.

Then back home, to race around madly and get ready to drive to Leeds for a christmas party with some feminist parents.

Now, I’ve been pondering this all day. So yesterday, I got in a car to drive for just over an hour (stopping to pick someone up on the way) and spend the afternoon and early evening with a group of ppl I’ve only met online before. Disregarding the fact that I could have been delivering myself and younger offspring into the clutches of a bunch of axe wielding maniacs , let’s move on to discuss how I can feel so comfortable with a group of ppl I’ve never met and such an alien on the phone to my sister this morning? Hm. I mean, there were a few moments when I didn’t have anything to say or anyone to say anything too yesterday, and if I hadn’t had Small to kind of hide behind when we first got there, I’d have been a lot less comfortable, but over all, it was OK. And for someone as chronically shy as I am (I am you know, I know it doesn’t always look that way ) that is saying rather a lot.

So there you go. I drove back in the car thinking about all of this, and realising that I am really rather happy in my skin these days. Yes, I’ve been very down recently, but it’s mainly been about external stuff – difficulties with Big, lack of funds, Tim’s injury. Not about who or what I am. Came as quite a shock to discover I appear to have grown to be comfortable with myself when I wasn’t paying attention. Most of this grew out of a discussion that most of the group was having – what are the things you haven’t done that you wish you had? And I couldn’t really think of anything…is that sad? Apart from getting a book published (so I guess I know what my New Year resolution ought to be!) and maybe travelling a bit more, I don’t feel that I’m lacking much in life experiences any more.

So that was fairly momentous. Has left me rather dazed for most of the day actually. Which is good, in a way.

I was having my official birthday today, courtesy of the fact that Tim got very confused with dates, and sent Big to bed convinced that today is my birthday. (It isn’t – don’t get older til Tues!) Seemed a shame to burst her bubble though, so I didn’t. I got flowers, and a lovely card, and a very large bar of chocolate….and I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted. (Well, the mortgage paid off and a house in Meltham would be nice… lol) We’ve had a lovely quiet day. Tim was recovering from his excesses of yesterday (I got home from the party to a clean and tidy kitchen – he even cleaned the oven and did all the washing up – I LOVE that man!) and we all had a long lie in. Big and I went into Christmas card production mode this afternoon – half way through making about 50 atm.

After tea my parents turned up with a bag of clothes for me and Tim, a chequebook for Christmas and some chocolates from their holiday. Must work out where I put the cheque! Big pinned mother to the sofa with a book on castles, part of our recent library haul, and I discovered an ethical dilemma – one of the books in the pile that the library sold to us wasn’t for sale. Nice one as well, an art reference book with lots of fabulous piccies. It was definitely in the crates, and the librarians didn’t check the books, just counted them and charged me for 12 books. Given it was their responsibility, what should I do now? I bought it in good faith… (I’ve already made my decision, but I’ll be interested to see what you all think).

Small was tired again tonight and after his short bath was desperate for his milk. Which was interesting – mother hadn’t known that I’m still feeding him, as the evening feed is the only one he still has. I like this – we still have the closeness, but I don’t feel hemmed in by feeding at all. Best of all worlds. But I did get the impression that mother thought it was rather weird.

Oh well. Not gonna stop me now! Right, as we’re off out and about tomorrow, I’d better clear off to bed.

Saturday afternoon was parents and a sister. We were a bit late going over as Small fell asleep on the living room floor (he can do that easily enough ) Always bizarre to discover how little I have in common with someone I grew up with – the children were a bit confused as well. Not nearly as confused as my sister when Small handed me his bowl with some chocolate left in it!

Saturday evening we went up to see Jan and Jonathan. They live at the end of a nice long bridle path, so I was fairly sure it would be a safe place to avoid trick or treaters. Plus, their eldest and Big get on fantastically well, and I hadn’t managed to chat with Jan for ages, so all in all, a good weekend in store.

We managed to chat, and I even got to drink a small amount of wine (hic!), and I do find it restful that there’s no tv there (makes me seriously consider (again) getting shot of ours – the kids don’t seem to miss it there, but the second they walk through the door here they both want it on…)

Sunday morning, we went to church. Bit weird, the bloke who takes the service knows my parents from way back when they lived in the village Jan lives in now. Last time we were there he didn’t clock who I was, but this time he did. Something about not having realised my “august parentage”. Hohum, not quite out of my parents shadow yet then, I guess.

Small loved church – they kept playing music. Big hadn’t realised it was about God, which was probably just as well, given that her reaction to any mention of God is to say “well *I* don’t believe in God” with a terribly teenage sneer in her voice. We ended up having an extremely bizarre discussion of that while I was sorting out Small in the bath that night – she went from not believing, to believing to not believing so fast that all that became apparent was that she doesn’t really know what it means to say you believe in God. Which isn’t surprising given that she’s 4, but gives me a starting place for further discussions.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Jan did us a full Sunday dinner, which was extremely enjoyable. I used to hate sit down dinners – reminded me far too much of rows when I was growing up. I didn’t even think of that when sat down at Jan’s, which says something incredibly positive about the atmosphere there I think.

After dinner, her girls had a party to go to, so I bundled my two up and we went to visit yet another of my sisters, who now lives just over the hill from Jan. Small obviously managed to fall asleep in the car, which was annoying. We went to help Kierston get the horses in (she has one, but takes it in turns with the other two at the stables to look after theirs as well). Discovered that Small takes after me in more than looks – he likes animals, and isn’t a bit scared of them. Kierston offered Big a sit on her horse, but Big didn’t want to know. Small thought about it for a moment, then nodded very seriously, and boy did he look cute up on the horse. So wish I’d had a camera with me.

He isn’t scared of Kierston’s dog either, which is something Big had to learn. Quite nice to have one of my children take after me a little Highly amusing to watch him eating marmite sandwiches while walking in a circle in the dining room, and stopping every so often to examine the dog (who just rolls on her back when he looks at her – wants her tummy tickled!)

Then we went back to Jan’s, with Big mumbling on throughout about *not* being scared of trick or treaters, but it isn’t a nice thing to do, and anyway they are only children dressed up…sigh.

Which brings us back to the time of the believing conversation above, and all the way up to Sunday night. Took Small up to bed and fell asleep with him, so that wiped out Sunday evening

Monday We started this morning with a leisurely breakfast, and then did some house excavation. Jan did Milly Molly Mandy school with the two girls while I did washing with Small and M pottered. Big thoroughly enjoyed working with C, which gave me more food for thought about the whole education process.

Late (huge!) lunch, and then more chance to chat while the children bounced around. Then we rounded them up and walked down the lane to feed the ducks. Big managed to stretch her length and remove the top layer of her knee (again! must be about the fourth time this year) which made the whole walk considerably noisier, but still quite pleasant. We found some more ponies for Small – it would appear he likes horses. He was a bit surprised when the pony tried to lick his head though

Sauntered back to the house for first aid for Big and a cup of tea for me, then finally time to round up our kit and come home. Got here in time for tea, bath and bed, although it took ages to persuade Small to sleep again. I really need to get that sorted – I need some adult time *before* I have to prop open my eyelids with matchsticks!

So there you go, the ins and outs of my weekend, in pretty much full gory detail. I’m pondering a lot on education, what it means and how best to achieve it while retaining my fragile grasp on sanity, so you can expect some more ramblings on that in the near future.

How did we fit so much in?

Up very early is one clue, as it was Big’s swimming lesson at 9.40 this morning. She and I fell out before and after, although she managed extremely well during (and I did make sure I told her so, even though I was cross with her other behaviour). She is coming along well in the lesson – jumping in today she was clearing the black line for the lane marker, so I’m not quite so worried about her braining herself on the side. Turns out that she managed that because she threw a ring in first and followed it, but she couldn’t work out how to do it normally until I suggested she use a pretend ring…

Anyway, because of the way she behaved while we were out I refused to take her with me to the library and went on my own with Small. He was adorable – got himself some books down and took them to the librarian! I was in stitches. We got a book for Big anyway, How Would You Survive as a Viking? which has gone down well. We also chose This is the Tree: A Story of the Baobab which I’m fairly sure we’ve read before, but is a nice book anyway.

While trying to tidy I came across a little booklet about York City Centre with a map in it, so Big and I looked at it to trace the path we walked between Jorvik and the National Railway Museum the other day. She seems to have a good grasp of how maps work, which I’m impressed with (Dora is good for something then ) While I’d been out she did a bit more of her phonic workbook with Tim as well, so they enjoyed some one to one time, which is good. Then after lunch, I cleared off for a nice long bath and he wrangled them from the sofa, which was even better.

I got out just in time to intercept him on the way to take Small to bed for a nap – no no no! We don’t let the child sleep during the day…and as a result, he’s in bed now. Definitely a result if you ask me.

Big sent an ecard to a young portico as with being away I’d completely forgotten to send a real card , but hey, it means I can cross off ICT for today!

And I’ve done lots of research into tablet weaving because I saw some at Jorvik and it looked rather interesting. Now I want one of these – it looks gorgeous! I do find it rather ludicrous that I can get a handmade one shipped from the states at practically the same price I can buy a mass produced one in this country though.