So here is for the detailed post.
Centerparcs yesterday, meeting up with my school friend that dd is named after. We did lunch in a french cafe, which was wonderful. There was a playhouse there, and dd made friends with a couple of other little girls playing in there. Who’s worried about socialisation? Not me – dd is the most sociable little person I think I’ve ever met. She doesn’t seem to have any problems – although I do wonder when I’m supposed to tell her about not talking to strangers. A thin line – she is so sensitive that I could very easily end up scaring her silly while trying to protect her.
But that is a worry for another day. After lunch we went into the swimming pool. It’s really well set up for small ppl – there are baby areas, toddler areas, areas for young children right the way up to slides that they are ok with children and adults going down together. It was ds’s first swimming trip – I think he thought I’d gone completely barking mad! After dunking him in the water a couple of times, me and my mate sat on the side of the small slide area while dd played and I fed ds (hopefully discreetly, although to be frank, I don’t really care all that much) and talked and talked. Well, I talked and she listened mainly.
Then dd decided she’d like to go in the big pool, so they went off together and I lost sight of them while settling ds. Finally found them coming down one of the big slides together – they must have done it half a dozen times in the end, and dd was so proud of herself. She’s barely been swimming since we went to Oasis a year ago, and to be frank, she was a bit of a wimp then. So it was a surprise to discover that with no effort put in, she’s over that and ready to be a lot more adventurous. Good to see though, and makes me think that swimming lessons that don’t need me there might be a possibility. I have bought a mesh sling for carting ds into the pool from ukp as well though 😉
Last night I prepared pva embossing plates for the words “Thank you” (tip from team mudpud blog!) meaning to do some card making with dd. What with one thing and another (the best nights sleep I’ve had in about two months!) we didn’t really get started on anything til this afternoon, and then there was a distinct sealife theme to the single card we made. Dd didn’t want to use the rubbings plates (they do work – I tried them myself) but she did want to write the cards, so we’ve had her name, her friends name and the words “thank you” written out. She does want to do writing – lots of it, but she does it by copying what I write – at the moment it seems that she doesn’t connect the letters and sounds particularly. Lots of I spy, writing, I think I’d better get the magnetic letters out again, and draft myself up a good deal of patience. I do get frustrated when she is so capable in so many areas, and then just doesn’t seem to be co-operating in others. Weird – I used to work in social work with adults with learning difficulties, and I never got impatient or frustrated, just looked for as many different ways to do the things they wanted to do, explain the things they wanted to learn and so on (except for with the guy who hoarded nearly empty bottles of shampoo…got really frustrated with him! 😉 ) – so why can’t I show the same level of patience with my own daughter?
Been thinking about a lot of other things as well. My introductory pack from the Quakers has arrived (was told that they support a humanist approach, so thought it was a good idea to look into the Quaker approach for a community point of view) haven’t had chance to look into it yet though.
Gotta go – small is awake and screeching again. More later. Possibly.
