Tuesday tantrums

Tooth traumas continued this morning ... thankfully I had been forewarned by several other bloggers that sometimes, little girls get quite emotional about their teeth falling out and don't want to lose them. Unfortunately, it seems I had failed to warn Jade that the 'tooth fairy' (she knows it's me) takes the tooth away when the money is left!!! So she was completely traumatised when it was gone this morning. She wailed hysterically at me "Where is my tooth?" and when I told her it was in my jewellery box (phew!) she went and got it and then threw it and the £1 down the stairs at me and sobbed that she didn't want them! She went off and cried in her room for a couple of minutes, and then came down sobbing even more because now she'd lost the tooth. Oh dear, it's hard to be 6!! Thankfully she did find it on the stairs and eventually peace was restored, and she decided she did want both the tooth and the money. Thankfully I managed to remain calm throughout her storm of emotions.

Despite the rocky start, the rest of the day went OK. While upstairs getting dressed Shannon found my jewellery box open on the bed (left there by Jade), investigated several items in it, and discovered a little locket with a teeny tiny picture of Benjamin inside that somebody gave me when he died. Jade then drew her attention to the other picture of Benjamin that we have in our bedroom, and Shannon said she wanted to see "Benjamim's book". So downstairs we came and got out the as yet unfinished scrapbook I had done for Ben, and all spent some time looking through that. This prompted discussions about intensive care, what the word "intensive" means, family relationships, the heart, fetal life and how babies don't have air in their lungs while in utero, but have 'water' instead, so they can't cry, but they do wake and sleep; dying, heaven and eternal life! Didn't plan that into this morning's curriculum!!!!

After having read the myth about Gilgamesh from Story of the World yesterday, I gave her the choice of drawing a 'half-man, half-animal' or creating a fairy-tale/myth of her own which I would write down. Strangely, for a girl with such a gift for reading/words and all things literacy-related, she seems unconfident about writing a story herself and so chose to do the pic. I sat with her to do one as well, so she drew a half-horse/half-man (of course!) and called it "Skewbald-Man" and accompanied it by other unrealities, such as the moon inside the sun, a half-bush/half-tree, a bird with one wing and one arm, and the ground with half-grass, half-mud. I did a "spider-man". I did get the camera and pics together at one point with the intention of blogging the pics, but got distracted and it never happened.

I then received a phone call, so the girls wandered off and started playing something or other which required Jade to go outside and cut the grass with a pair of scissors and bring the grass inside to put onto trays. After she had brought it in and started playing she discovered she didn't have enough and I offered (phone call ended by then) to get her some more. So I found myself in the slightly surreal position of being outside in the garden cutting our grass with scissors, and hoping fervently that the neighbours couldn't see me and think I was a complete nutter! Needless to say before long there was grass all over the living room carpet, so cleaning instructions were issued and to her credit she did a reasonable job of clearing it all up. Meanwhile I was getting lunch. After lunch I read a bit of bible, and she urged me on and on and I ended up doing about the next 3 weeks' worth of Sonlight bible readings all in one go. Then I quickly threw together a cheese & sweetcorn flan, cooked it, and then we went off swimming. We met 2 other HE families at the pool so the girls were mostly happily occupied playing and splashing around and I got more chance than usual to actually get a bit of exercise. Then out of the pool, a quick visit to a friend's house, and home for tea.