I love Freecycle!

Two nights ago, our tumble dryer (received from Freecycle about 2 years ago) went BANG. Yesterday, I saw a tumble dryer offered on Freecycle, was the first to respond, and Bill picked it up on his way home from work this evening! Amazing! Especially since our monthly budget, previously a pretty tight squeeze anyway, has just become impossibly so since I think the Child Tax Credits have just reduced by £100 per month, due to reclaiming an overpayment last year. So we would have had to do without buying a new tumble dryer if it had come to that. Great stuff! Last weekend I also picked up a child's trailer bike, so that as and when my bike becomes roadworthy again, I can tow Jade along behind me and know that she is (relatively) safe.

Anyway, this morning began in the usual relaxed fashion, or in fact even more so as a miracle occurred last night! I decided on the spur of the moment to put Shannon to sleep in her own bed, instead of ours, having left her to Bill's tender ministrations during the night for the past 3 weeks or so to stop her feeding at night. She fell asleep at about 8.30pm, woke once at about 4am and came to find me, so I returned her straight to her own bed and got in with her. She thought she could have 'hungry', but I said it wasn't morning yet, and she wailed in protest. I braced myself for it to go on for quite a while, but in fact it was just one quick grumble, grumpily took herself off to lie on my feet, and fell straight back to sleep. Then we didn't hear her again till 7am. I THINK WE MAY HAVE DONE IT!!!!!!!!! The girl who has woken 4-6+ times per night for the last 2.5 years only woke up once!!!!!! I'll probably bring champagne to camp to celebrate!!!!

'Scuse me, getting carried away there, but the prospect of regular full nights sleep after 6 years without (Jade was just the same till she was about 3) is getting me a little giddy!

So, this morning began happily, and after a little tidying and vacuuming, I started Jade on "Beyond the Code", which I got a couple of months ago but hadn't used yet. She did about 8 pages quite happily. I did seize the opportunity to try and clarify the use of capital letters and lower case letters, as she tends to mix them up rather. I wrote out the whole alphabet each way and she copied underneath. I don't know if that will be the final look we need to have at that, but at least it moved her a bit further on. Then we did some more "Dr Dooriddles Associative Reasoning Activities" which I linked to a couple of months back and can't be bothered to go looking for the link right now, so sorry! While we were doing both these things, Shannon was playing with the Cuisenaire rods.

After those, we sat down on the floor to look through our pile of library books. Shannon had a lovely time looking through the ones I'd got out for her, and Jade chose to look through the Rainforest book she'd brought home. However she was hungry, and had earlier requested to make milkshakes (seen on CBeebies, I think), and fortunately we had some strawberries so at this point we stopped and went and made a fresh strawberry milkshake for her and a strawberry and banana smoothie for me. Gorgeous! Then we went back to the Rainforest book for a time.

A bit later we had lunch outside in the garden, which was lovely, and then, despite my good night's sleep, I set the girls up with a Tom & Jerry DVD while I went for a nap. My excuse is that I'd stayed up late doing the ironing! A very rare event indeed.

Got up, took them swimming, went to visit my Usborne recruit to lend some bookracks and receive some leaflets. We saw their sheep being sheared on their farm. Ended up staying there for the girls' tea (with her 2 boys) and meanwhile Jade in particular was thrilled to spend some time playing with their Hornby railway set in the loft!

Shannon fell asleep on the way home (at 6.20pm) so was transported straight to bed. Jade stayed up with me while I had my own dinner and then watched Trinny & Susannah and then went to bed. Had to have words with her about her attitude - when she gets angry about something she tries to hurt whoever she is angry with, and then will not accept any reprimand or comeback for it - she puts her fingers in her ears, or blows raspberries, or shouts. In the middle of that little talk, Shannon woke up but was fairly easily settled back to sleep, and then I spoke quietly and calmly to Jade about treating other people with respect and how her behaviour is not acceptable. Let's hope some of that sinks in!