I hate titles!

But apart from that, there are some nice things to blog. All out of order, just as they occur to me.

This morning started, by Tamsin's request, with Studydog, when she saw the icon on my computer desktop. (It's not very often she gets to the computer before me in the morning!!) I discouraged her from starting with the letters of the alphabet, as it was rather tedious and she knows all her letter sounds, so we went straight to 'beginning letter sounds', where she did reasonably well when she could pay enough attention to actually listen to the instructions. However, I don't like the way they use letter names rather than sounds, as it seems to me that's just unnecessarily confusing the situation. When she moved on to rhyming sounds and then the consonants with two different sounds, she didn't do too well. I got rather irritated by her not listening properly to the instructions, or maybe they were just too complicated for her, and suggested she switch it off, which she was happy to do.

We also did some train track, which hasn't happened for a few days (I think her Thomas obsession is beginning to flag a little, to be replaced by a Dora obsession). I managed to make the living room look relatively respectable while she watched a bit of Nick Jr. I know a better way would be to engage her in helping to clear up with me, but she hates loud noises and always wants to stay well away from the vacuum cleaner.

I can't think what else happened this morning, but after lunch we went out. Tamsin requested a trip to the toyshop, but as the one in town is closed on a Tuesday I suggested we went to the next town. However after a trip to one shop, Isabelle wanted feeding, so we went back to the car and then a sag of energy on my part made me feel I wanted some adult company rather than continuing to only engage with a 3-year old all afternoon, so I called in to a friend's house and Tamsin played happily with her kids while I had some welcome intelligent chat!

Yesterday I decided not to take a trip to the Cotswold Farm Park due to the bad weather forecast, but when by lunchtime, the anticipated rain had not arrived, I changed my mind and we went anyway. We had a lovely time, with a very educational view of a lamb being born!!! Tamsin also held a chick, and enjoyed the pigs, calves, goat kids, rabbits, guinea pigs and riding round on both the pedal tractors and electric tractors. She really impressed me on the latter 'ride' as she stopped at the lines on the painted roads and looked each way before moving on!

I can't remember much about the weekend except that Bill took up the grotty carpet and lino in our kitchen in preparation for a new wooden floor. I'm planning to paint the walls, and maybe even the cabinets as well.

Oh, and there was also the phone call from my mum, complete with hysterical sobbing. This is maybe only the beginning of the fallout from my brother's recent divorce. My ex-SIL had written mum a letter in response to receiving a birthday card from my Mum. My Mum read it out to me, and to me it sounded incredibly thoughtful, well-balanced and truthful, but my Mum took great offence to a phrase which included a reference to my parents' "bad divorce" ... I didn't quite get to the bottom of why she was offended at the time, as she put the phone down on me in floods of tears, but spoke to her later and could hardly believe my ears. Over the years the relationship between my Mum and my brother and SIL has been touchy and difficult at times, but now the divorce has happened I think the knives are out. But to hear my Mum spitting out critical comments on my SIL's character in an almost exact description of her *own* character was almost unbelievable, and quite funny! I guess we're all quite blind to our own faults, but it was hard to believe she couldn't see what she was saying. I did point it out to her..... Ugh, I could blog about this whole situation for hours, but suffice to say I would rather spend time in my SIL's company than my mum's, and also that situations like this leave me feeling tense and unsettled, as I am *so* not good at conflict.

Anyway, gotta go now and try and catch the end of Ebay's 5p listing day to sell some baby clothes.