Trying again ...

with the night-weaning thing! I've long regarded 2.5 as the target age for stopping Shannon feeding at night, as that's when we eventually managed to be successful with Jade, but have been feeling unable to face it for quite a while. There are several aspects of my life, though, that are simply not going to get any better until I am getting a decent night's sleep, so it must be done. One night down - who knows how many more to go?

Educational stuff over the past few days has included:-

- DH demonstrating levers and proving to Jade that she can lift him up with one hand as long as she's got a long enough lever to do it with!
- on request, sitting and reading the section on 'Matter' in the Berenstain Bears book of Science and Nature, covering solid, liquid and gas.
- a couple of Miquon maths sessions, with Jade again struggling with simple adding of number bonds up to 5
- making a pop-up card of an Egyptian Mummy, with hieroglyphs.
- various impromptu writing of stuff, usually with pretty good spelling.
- her first proper telling-the-time lesson, which I must follow up a bit more.
- painting/drawing
- singing/dancing
- lots of reading, as usual.

Must go - won't be getting much sleep tonight, I don't suppose!

Unusual...

for me to blog on a Wednesday, as it's my full work day, but I didn't manage it yesterday so need to catch up!

Yesterday, we went on an HE group trip to Compton Verney - art is so not my thing, in fact I am positively a Philistine about it, but we had quite a good time anyway. They do some lovely children's activity packs which are packed up into a quilted mat to sit on while you do the puzzles and activities, so the girls had a lovely time running round all the pictures and artefacts in the Folk Art gallery and even I appreciated some of it. We had a picnic lunch in the beautiful grounds by the lake, and then most of the rest of the group went off for a long walk. I didn't fancy tackling that with Shannon, who is very 2 and therefore insists on being carried a lot but weighs as much as my 5-year old! Instead we went for a walk round the 'wrong' side of the lake where the fishing sites are, and had a lovely time picking up sticks and pine cones and throwing them into the lake and watching them go 'splosh'. Shannon thought this was a particularly funny activity and it was lovely to watch her really enjoying it! Then we went back into the gallery to see some of the stuff we'd missed, and I was very glad we did as I discovered a children's room full of lovely books, puzzles and colouring stuff. Shannon sat at a little table doing some colouring while I read books with Jade who acted out the story with the puppets provided! The afternoon was only slightly marred at the end by one of those horrendous nappy stories that I guess all parents have at one time or another, due to the after-effects of the tummy bug Shannon had on Monday. Thankfully I had foreseen such a possibility and brought with me an entire change of clothes, so after washing down the buggy (!) and stripping her naked and cleaning her with half a packet of wipes, hygiene was restored!

Shannon fell asleep in the car on the way home, which boded ill for the evening! After getting home Jade wanted to have a go at the Reader Rabbit Maths CD-Rom that DH had brought home from work even though it is for Year 2 maths. She did quite well on some bits and had her first introduction to fractions beyond the simple talking about halves and fractions that we have done before. She seemed to get the hang of it quite well, including thirds and fifths and eighths, so I'm pleased about that. Not so pleased about her inability to answer "5 + 1" or any other "? + 1" questions .... she got very grumpy about having to do any more adding or subtracting and asked me to do those sections - must tread carefully so she doesn't get a complex about 'not being able to do maths'. We've put very little emphasis on it on the whole but I have been trying to do some simple adding and subtracting with her lately - at times she seems to 'get it' and at other times all previous knowledge completely leaves her brain! I'm not particularly worried about it as she's obviously bright enough and will get there in the end but it's just really interesting to see how different brains have their varying aptitudes - she's taken off with reading and doesn't look as though she's going to have any difficulty with spelling either (just like me) but maths is going to be an altogether slower skill to gain.

In the end, both girls stayed up till 10pm and still Shannon took ages to get to sleep as she didn't seem tired ... for the second night in a row I fell asleep with her, having lain there for so long, and spent all night sleeping in her bed in my clothes

Today, as mentioned, I've been at work all day. Jade has been to school and done swimming this afternoon but is still asking, "when I'm 6 can I stop going to school?". I asked her what she doesn't like about it, and she said, "P.E.". That seems to be the only problem! If I could see a way to get some childcare for my work hours on a Thursday I probably would just take her out, because the other 2 afternoons either me or DH are at home anyway and it's something of a pain to have to stop what we're doing to get her ready to go out. I still hanker after the dream of 2 or 3 half-days per week to myself to get stuff done, but realistically she's not going to be happy going to school more than she does, so the only other option in a year's time at the latest is to take her out.

I and my boss have interviewed 3 candidates for the other half of my job-share post, all of whom could do the job admirably so how we're going to choose I don't know. Maybe one of tomorrow's 3 will stand out as being even better.

And now, "The Apprentice"!

Er....

Can only think of boring titles like 'catching up' so can't be bothered to sit here for ages racking my brain ....

Shannon has a bit of a tummy bug - spectacular vomiting all over her bed last night, seemed pretty much OK today except didn't want to eat any solid food, and then threw up again in the doorway of Budgens just as we were about to go in .....(don't have an 'embarrassed' emoticon so this will have to do) - I'm just glad it wasn't 10 seconds later and inside, really! I'm gasping for a decent cup of tea, though, as I've run out of soya milk and that's what I was going to get .... plus some chocolate biscuits which are my staple diet.

So I am in my dreaded emetophobic state of wondering if I'm going to get it .....

Not much formal work has gone on here in the past week - I just can't seem to get organised to do much. This morning I did insist that we did at least one 'learning' thing so I got out the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia and asked Jade what she wanted to read about - she chose rainbows so we did a bit about weather, light, prisms, colours. Jade and Shannon both did some painting. Spent a fair bit of the morning trying to sort out clothes - last night I got the age 3-4 stuff out of the loft as I'm fed up of all Shannon's tops being too small for her .... but Jade got excessively emotional about almost every piece of clothing that came out that she recognised and wanted to wear them all again ... Still it's nice to have some stuff that fits Shannon a bit better now but I haven't quite come to terms with her needing stuff that's bigger than her age... Jade was always textbook age/clothes size matching.

Had a mega-clearout of junk toys and stuff at the weekend - got rid of 2 boxes of stuff to the charity shop and made a bit of space for Jade's approaching birthday.

I really can't think of anything else we've been up to. Must go and bath the girls.

Tired and Emotional ....

No, not the euphemism for pissed as a rat, but just genuinely tired and emotional ... We (the girls and I - DH stayed home to look after the dog) have been away at our annual church weekend away, had an absolutely fab but exhausting time and today has seen the fallout..... In fact I'm too tired to blog about it much, but suffice to say a complete tantrum from Jade at lunchtime resulted in her not going to school this afternoon because I thought she was just too tired to be able to cope (so why is she still awake at 10pm despite having been put to bed at 8?). We also had a failed attempt to teach her about tens and units this morning using the base ten blocks ... neither of us was in the best frame of mind for it so I abandoned that as a bad job and hope that another day it might click for her. I pretty much left them to it for the rest of the day. Jade didn't get changed out of her pyjamas until about 4pm when L from next door came round. Shannon has been mostly naked or just nappied today. Typically in her one half-hour nappy-free period she weed on our bed for the THIRD time in the past 5 days!!! GRRRRRRR!! There's been more TV and video watching than usual today plus lots of playing but also lots of pushing, shoving, hitting, arguing and crying ... (sigh...)

HE day in pictures

First pic is 8.45am when we arrived downstairs - dontcha just love not having to get up and rush in the mornings! Jade's got new wellies. She put them on as soon as she got up this morning!


We had breakfast while watching CBeebies. After eating, Jade played with Duplo while still watching TV. At 9.30am I went upstairs for a shower. At 10am I was dressed, but still chivvying Jade to do so. Shannon was still downstairs watching TV.

10.15 - at last she's getting dressed:


The post arrives, including this lovely item:



including a timely article about the perils of attempting mummification of a chicken - which as we are doing Ancient Egypt at the moment it had crossed my mind to try! I shake off the temptation to just sit down and read my magazine, despite the fact that the girls are happily occupied playing catch:


Then Jade requested that I sew up the hole in the toe of her tights, and when I sat down to do it straightaway (otherwise I knew it would never get done), she asked to be taught how to do it. I demonstrated, and she had a couple of goes, but then said it was quite hard, and gave up. She wandered off. I finished sewing up the hole.

Today's plan was to dress Jade up as an Egyptian Princess. The first part of the project was making an Egyptian 'necklace'. She drew round a big saucepan lid and then a small bowl and cut them out to make a wide cardboard collar.

11am - Then I had to tidy all the junk off the table so that we could do some painting - while I was busy tidying, the girls disappeared and started playing at being babies:



Eventually I dragged them back to the table and I told Jade what she needed to do, and I left 2 books in front of her to copy from. Shannon wanted glitter, to which I reluctantly agreed! I forgot to take a pic of them doing their 'art'.

Then followed a half-hour which is best skimmed over, when I got very bad-tempered with Jade for not painting her necklace 'properly' *rolls eyes at self*. Had to take some time out and get a grip!

11.45am - 12: Make-up and dressing-up as an Egyptian princess. Note how Jade gives her little sister a moustache!


































































12.30-1 Lunch

1-1.40pm: I read from and Jade enacted "How to be an Ancient Egyptian Princess", including sleeping and feasting. Meanwhile Shannon played on the computer.


































1.45pm - Jade decided to do some drawing, while Shannon played with her Fisher Price castle:


























































2.10 - 2.40pm: I suggest Jade might try some reasoning riddles out of a new book, Dr DooRiddles Associative Reasoning Activities which I picked up on Monday when I went to an Ichthus Resources display near Bicester. She loved them! I had thought we'd do a couple, and she ended up doing 33! And getting the vast majority of them correct.



At 2.40pm she started doing a jigsaw puzzle.


At 2.45 I went into the kitchen to start dinner - decided to do a quiche so started getting the stuff out to make pastry. Jade came and wanted to join in, and then Shannon did too. They both helped (!) me weigh out flour and butter and Jade started chopping and then mixing the butter in. After a while Jade disappeared (to do a bit more jigsaw puzzle, I think) and Shannon stayed in the kitchen playing with water in the sink.

At 3.15 my hairdresser arrived (a little earlier than expected) to cut all our hair.

At 3.45pm, L, the girl from next door, arrived and the girls all start playing with the leftover pastry. They are making 'cakes'.


4.10pm-4.30pm - I get to *sit down* with a cup of tea and my Home Ed magazine!!!!! Bliss!!! All the girls are playing upstairs.

4.30-5pm - The girls are still playing upstairs. I get the quiche in the oven, and then I tidy up a bit downstairs.


Yes, this is *after* the tidying up!!!!

5.20pm - I remind the girls that Numberjacks is on, and they race downstairs to watch that, followed by Nina & the Neurons. L. is called for by her brother to go home for dinner.

5.45pm - we eat our dinner. I am completely shattered.

6.15 - 6.45pm - Jade eventually finishes her jigsaw puzzle.

7pm - I get them in the bath and then into bed. We only have 3 chapters to go to the end of our bedtime reading book so I read it all - it takes till 8.30pm.

Jade comes down 3 more times before she eventually falls asleep at around 10pm.

And what was very interesting was to note how often Shannon had 'hungry' (breastmilk) from me through the day - I hadn't realised just how frequent it is. She had it upon waking (around 8am), 9.20am, 10.30am, 11.40am, 12.45pm straight after lunch, 1.50pm, 2.35pm, 4.15pm, 5.30pm, 6.15pm, 6.45pm and then bedtime at 7.30pm. When she asked, I frequently offered other food or drink instead but she totally refused it in favour of mummymilk. It's now 11.15pm and she's already woken twice and been fed back to sleep. No wonder I am so tired and I eat so much!