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"!