Making It Up

as we go along

It's life Jim

Internet romance?

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It’s not an inner circle joke as such, although I suppose ppl who know us better will know that Tim and I originally met on an email list, got to know each other by IM and phone, before meeting on my doorstep at dawn, nearly 7 years ago now.

Awww…..

two children later ;), we’re still going strong.

Anyway, the weekend. Went over to C’s party yesterday, with the mermaid costume I’d frantically sewn in the space of about two hours in the morning. I was quite pleased with it. Will try to get a piccie at some point. Big was a bit overwhelmed by the party, especially, bizarrely, by the game of sleeping flat fish! Although I can remember being terribly upset many years ago when I didn’t win a game of sleeping lions because they said I’d gone to sleep (I hadn’t!). Hm, that obviously smarted.

Staying over afterwards gave Big chance to spend some quality time with her friend C, and also Tim and I chance to spend some quality time with our friends Jan and Jonathon. Lovely take out (I never get to eat curries any more!) and a glass or two of wine, and nice chatting too. Would have been even better if Small had gone to bed, instead of sleeping on my knee!

Went to church this morning, late as usual, although not helped by the roadworks that had mysteriously appeared since the day before. Small got through the door into the main church hall, and didn’t even look back as he headed for the children’s table! He got someone to take off his coat, help him into the creche room…and even when he fell and hit his head, he was OK with the complete stranger who picked him up to soothe him. Must have been best part of half an hour before he decided to come back to me 🙂

Big managed pretty well, although did get a bit antsy towards the end of the service.

Back to Jan’s for lunch (more of the curry, yum!) and more chatting, before going off to meet my family for a meal. Hohum.

And home late, and Small had slept…and now it’s time that I went off to sleep too.

Small's finally asleep

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he nearly weaned himself this evening. I don’t think he meant to wean himself, but I’m afraid that I take being kicked in the eye as a sign that we may not be doing this for much longer. 🙁 Why can’t he just lie still?

Anyway, some blogworthy educational moments, in no particular order.

Lots of number discussions, some to do with the walk-o-meter, which has unfortunately now gone missing. Beautiful conversation where Big for some reason started doubling numbers – 2+2 is 4, 4+4 is 8, 8+8 is…I’m stuck….16 supplies helpful mummy, and so she dashes upstairs to tell Tim, who says very good – so what is 16+16? Wish I could have seen the look on her face just then, bet withering wasn’t in it.

Religion is getting a bit of a look in, due to the season. We keep bashing away at the different ppl believe different things. Atm she believes God created the world, but doesn’t believe in God. Which is interesting. We tried to cover the nativity, but I realised I got it wrong when I said something about the “Lord Christ” and she said “what’s a Christ? Come to think of it, what’s a Lord?” Hohum. Tim read her the nativity that night, but she wasn’t impressed – there weren’t any pictures. Told him he should have used the version from the Children’s Treasury.

Had one of those cringeworthy why-did-I-just-do-that moments when opening the advent calendar earlier. She knows perfectly well that 15 comes after 14, but could she work out what 15 looks like? So why didn’t I just let it go and tell her? Reminded me of your elephant-starts-with-e moment, Joyce – but then again, I was rereading your article on mp yesterday.

Tim and I have had many discussions about education, we’re pretty much heading the autonomous route I think, but we’re going to have a low key discussion with Big and see what she wants to do. I’m desperate to order Draw Write Now as mother gave me some money to spend on resources for them as part of Christmas, but I figure perhaps I ought to wait until we’ve had our discussion. 😉

Small is coming along nicely – got a lovely piercing scream and had his first throw himself to the floor outside tantrum today. Also said “Grandma” yesterday, several times in fact. Hasn’t really said anything intelligible today though. He reminds me of Max from Max and Ruby, with the one word per episode approach 😉

I’m sure I’ve missed loads of stuff out, but I’m going to shutdown the machine now, and now I’m off to do some more Barbie clothes crocheting.

Swimming – and one of *those* conversations

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Back in my own bed last night, but Small must be feeling a lot better, as he pretty much stayed in his cot, only headbutting me once. So a reasonable night’s sleep, although I didn’t think of it that way when the alarm went off at 8am. I’ve never been a morning person – seems grossly unfair that my children are.

Anyway, had prearranged with Tim that I would leave Small here this morning – it’s quite literally freezing and I didn’t want to drag him and his cold out in it. We were still late – I’d forgotten that the car hadn’t been cleared off snow yesterday, so even with the heated windscreen (I was taking Tim’s) it still took 5 minutes to clear. Grr…

Big did wonderfully again today. One of the other mothers sat down with me and chatted, which was actually rather pleasant (at ballet I find it horrendous, but it seems to be a very different crowd at swimming) so I missed why Big was swimming on her own backwards and forwards, I can only assume she was being shown off again. At least the others didn’t have to get out and stand in the cold this time.

While chatting, we got the “how old is she? Gosh she’s tall” bit, then “so what school does she go to?” I felt myself kind of pause, but I smiled and said “she doesn’t, she’s home educated” and the response was “by yourself or your partner? Oh that’s nice then.” Which kind of floored me for a bit. Turned out she’d worked with a home educated adult, and her experience was that this person had done GCSEs, A levels and university a little early, and reached management grade at whatever at age 21, and was very normal – not a hippy at all.

Hohum. Makes me think that we should all be being just a little more matter of factly out there – I’ve considered doing little leaflets to carry with me, would that be too freaky? But atm, what with the Children Act just sailing through without so much as a whimper in the media (what is that about? *Why* is no one talking about it?????) I feel that anything we can do to raise our profile positively has got to be of benefit. Sarah has done her bit, Katy is doing hers, Merry just is 😉 – what can I do?

Well, it seemed like a quiet day

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until I got around to ticking the category list!

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.