Thankfully the week did improve. I had work all day on Wednesday which gave me a break and time to re-group a bit, and then a massive tantrum from Jade on Wednesday evening gave further food for thought. From then on I was careful to remain extremely calm with her, even in response to difficult behaviour, and feel much better about myself as a result!

We've also done some nice learning stuff. I can't remember it all, but there's been a breakthrough on mental addition and subtraction while we were in the car; reading about her favourite subject - trains; a brief conversation and demo taught her about syllables; we visited a Victorian Farm Museum last week so lots of conversations about how things were done 100+ years ago; and in response to her playing one evening saying she was in 'Jadeland', she has drawn a map of Jadeland, designed a flag for it and I intend to pursue this every now and then by suggesting she designs the clothes they wear in Jadeland, we make up the laws for the country, discuss the weather, etc etc!

Shannon's sleeping is better than it was but still not great. We've moved her to share the bedroom with Jade, because proximity to me was making things worse. She now usually wakes about twice per night and if it's in the small hours, she will go back to sleep without feeding quite readily, but once we get to 4 or 5am she's harder to soothe. If not fed, she keeps re-awakening repeatedly so I usually give in at some point. We soldier on.