A day of deliveries, outings and swimming.

Am attempting to drag myself out of bed slightly earlier in a morning, which is working in terms of less friction between the children, but isn’t doing my energy levels much good. I’m really tired all the time! But there you go.

Anyway, got up to find that the parcel from Amazon had arrived, containing Tim’s California Dreamin’ – The Best of The Mamas & The Papas, Big’s ACE Spelling Dictionary and Small’s KS1 Success Workbook: English. All seemed very happy with their offerings 🙂

Big showed Tim how the dictionary works – she looked up aardvark 😉 Small took a look in his workbook – the first topic was alliteration. I explained what this meant in a couple of sentences, and he then whipped through the two pages of revision exercises on it. I do sometimes feel like maybe I ought to spend lesson length time on these things, then I remember that we’re doing this one to one, he’s pretty bright anyway, and if he’s got it, he’s got it. No need to belabour the point for 30 minutes just to make a point iyswim 🙂 I was impressed that he immediately understood the difference between alliteration and rhyming – some of the examples were of the latter rather than the former, and they didn’t trick him for a second. Tim came out and we told him what we were doing and he said “smart Small” and Small got that immediately too 🙂

After our English lesson (I think, it could have been before. Really ought to blog on the day!) Small and I had a GP appt. This was to follow up the one last week where I went on my own to talk about Small and I think to prove that he exists and that I’m neurotic, at least in the GP’s eyes. Our only slight hitch was in providing the sample – Small was quite firm that such things were only meant to be done in the toilet. Took about 20 minutes to talk him round, and I thought later I shouldn’t have bothered and should have let the GP encounter this type of resistance. Ah well.

Obviously once at the appt, Small behaved impeccably and was given a clean physical bill of health. Apart from the fact that his ears are slightly inflamed, which could be causing depressed hearing, which could in turn lead to awkward behaviour. There’s that solved, I just need to repeat myself more often and everything will be find. *headdesk*.

Hm. Back home, and the children had a quick lunch while Tim showered, then he and Big nipped out to pick up a swimming hat and cycling helmet for her. Must make sure she doesn’t mix the two up 😉

Then the children and I had an afternoon tea invitation at S’s Aunt P’s just in the next village along. The weather was kind – it had looked slightly grey but as we arrived the sun came out and blazed down and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours in her beautiful cottage garden. I even took pictures, and you never know, one of these days some might make them to the blog! Children spent some time playing a rather older version of Tell Me Quiz – Aunt P didn’t think Small would be able to manage, but you won’t be surprised to hear that he was perfectly capable of reading out the questions for us, if not quite as capable of answering them. At least he knew what a member of parliament was – the topic had cropped up in conversation earlier on.

Afternoon tea itself was very pleasant – Small polished off a whole plate of banana sandwiches. Then it was time to dash for Big’s first swimming lesson, dropping S near home on the way back.

There’s a new system at the pool where parents have to accompany their child onto pool side. Many of the parents seemed to think this was rather silly, couldn’t say that it surprised me particularly. Apparently they used to just have the children sit on mats in their areas – changeover time is changeover time for I think up to 6 groups of swimmers, it’s a quite incredible place. We found Big’s group and I was slightly dismayed, apart from her friend C, I think the next oldest child was about 5. She towered over them all, including C, slightly embarassing. And then they were led off to swim in the shallow bit of the fun pool, which barely comes up to her waist.

Small and I sat in the cafe and tried to watch, but it’s difficult to do that because of a wall in the way. The parts I could see she was obviously doing well at, heard the teacher applauding her several times, and also saw her being asked to demonstrate. So that was a real boost to her self-confidence, much needed in the swimming arena. Got talking to the two parent substitutes sitting next to me (grandparents I think) and one of them was very vocal in her response to the home education review. She’d already heard of it even though they don’t home educate, and she wasn’t impressed with the child abuse slurs. I do think the government may underestimate public opinion on this one. Which would be good for us.

Big came out of her lesson with a big grin on her face, and told me I should expect a phone call during the week for her to move up. That’ll be a new swim hat then – they colour code them per group. Not a big problem though, they are only 70p. Her friend C isn’t quite ready, so we compared notes with her mother and are going to try to organise a practise session before next week so that she can move up rapidly. I don’t want Big to hang back so that C can keep up, so I’m perfectly prepared to take the two of them as often as it takes so that C can improve rapidly instead.

And then home, with a hot tired boy, who miraculously found an extra supply of energy when he realised his Spiderman 3 – Webworld Playset had arrived. I ended up sitting them down with boiled eggs while I spent the best part of an hour assembling it – I’ve rarely come across anything with as poor and confusing instructions! But it’s assembled, and it’s going down very well with them. So a slightly delayed bedtime while they got a little playing time with that, then they were quiet quite quickly, and I shouldn’t have been far behind, but I was.

So I’m tired again today.