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!

Word of the Day

Not that I've ever had a 'word-of-the-day' before, but anyway, today's is 'pejorative'. I heard it on Radio 4 this morning, as I have done before, and somehow managed to remember to look it up. It means "depreciatory, disparaging". So I shall attempt to use that sometime in the next day or so!

It's been a fairly laid-back day today. We got up not too early, the girls watched a little CBeebies while I had breakfast, and then I was attempting to browse through recipe books to make a new spring/summer monthly menu plan. As always when I sit down with a book, Shannon came over and tried to take over, turning the pages and looking through the book. It's great that she loves books, but I wish she didn't mostly love the one I'm trying to look at! Then Jade joined in too, and in the end, the two of them arguing over turning a page made it tear, and I threw a bit of a wobbly, snatched all the books away from them and stomped upstairs alone to go and get dressed in peace. Amazingly neither of them followed me!

Once I'd recovered a little equilibrium, I came back down, just in time for my friendly Fair Shares gardener to come along for a little more jungle-taming. I mostly left him to it this time, while I got a nappy wash on the go, and other sundry chores. The girls were playing nicely with some toys by then and did a little drawing and painting.

I eventually persuaded Jade to sit with me while I read her a little more Story of the World, still on Ancient Egypt. We also had a look through a couple of other books on the same subject that we have out of the library. She then sat down at the table with a book open at the page on hieroglyphics. I got her to write her name in hieroglyphics and then to translate the word that was shown in the book. She did both beautifully! I'll try and post a pic later.

Then it was time to make her lunch and get her ready for her afternoon at school. She was quite happy about going this time, and let me leave without any fuss or clinging at all. I went in to work to do a few bits and pieces, taking Shannon with me, and then we came back home. We played some lovely games together, having a lot of fun!

Went to fetch Jade from school, took all the plastic bottles to the recycling bank on the way home, and since getting home L from next door has come round as usual and they've all had a lovely time splashing in the paddling pool and similar rowdy games! As I type they are putting make-up on each other!

Later this week we hope to do more Egyptian stuff, like dressing Jade up as an Egyptian princess and maybe a craft or two.

Birthday boy

Happy Birthday Benjamin - 8 years ago today. Still missing you.

I am an Echinacea What Flower Are You?

Good morning everyone! I have been away from the computer for 36+ hours and am trying to get a quick fix in before launching into another busy day with the girls and work.

On Tuesday morning we had an early start, needing to get up, dressed, make a packed lunch and walk to the train station in time for the 9.03 train to Oxford. Made it in good time, met the other local HE family there (with 8y.o. twins and a 6y.o. - all girls .... my girls love being with them) and waited for our 3rd HE friend to join us with her Family Railcard which she said we could all get cheaper tickets with ... and waited... and waited.... and at 9.00 we decided we'd better give up and get our tickets without her. Then of course there was a delay with the man in front of us, and the train pulled into the station while I was in the middle of buying my tickets, so we all had to *run* up over the footbridge to the other platform .... the rest of them went up over the steps and were well ahead of me while I sprinted pushing Shannon in the buggy up the ramp ... felt rather sick at such exertion but had to keep going ... and managed to leap on while the conductor held the train up for me .. . I don't think I really recovered from that all day! I really must do a little exercise every now and then ....

The train was jam-packed so we all had to scatter and sit in separate seats, ruining my fantasy of us all sitting round a table and the kids entertaining each other while T and I chatted ... Instead I had Shannon on my knee needing something to do so I pulled out a sticker book which she is really into at the moment, but unfortunately having to look at that instead of out of the window made me feel a bit travel-sick which I am horribly prone to since having children, strangely.

So not the best start to the day, but once we got to Oxford, and walked from the train station to the Natural History Museum (more exercise!) we were very pleased to meet with the rest of the HE group and sit down for 45 minutes to listen to a talk and hands-on session about insects. It was really good although Jade was very grumpy and just sat in the buggy with my cardigan over her head - she wanted to just go and look round the museum instead but I needed a sit-down! We were introduced to a giant hissing cockroach (again - memories of Kessingland!) and a giant millipede which had some other name which I can't remember. When the session finished we went for a look round, and saw loads of stuffed specimens including a shetland pony, cheetah, fox, badger, beaver, dinosaur skeletons, fossils, fossilised dinosaur eggs and much, much more. We particularly noticed the Nile Crocodile as we have just started our Egypt section of Story of the World.

We went outside on the grass for lunch, and Jade was delighted to realise that the lumps of stone we had to step over were casts of real dinosaur footprints! After lunch we went back inside, through the Nat Hist Museum into the Pitt Rivers Museum, which I had no idea about and didn't know what was there, but it was absolutely fabulous. We didn't have much time to look round and the girls just wanted to rush around looking from one thing to another whereas I would have liked to have time to linger, but they have the most amazing clothing and artefacts from other cultures and times - we headed straight for the real genuine Egyptian Mummy which we spent a fair amount of time looking at, along with the canopic jars and other Egyptian stuff, but we also saw Inuit clothing, dug-out wooden canoes, charms and amulets to ward off the evil eye and various shamanic bits and bobs, a lovely Chinese children's outfit which would have been just perfect for Jade if only it wasn't in a glass case, and there was just so much other stuff there which I didn't get a chance to look at (kids were getting fed up) that I'll have to go back another time.

Headed back into town after that, and spent a happy 45 minutes in Borders browsing, mostly through the parenting books and children's books. Bought some sticker books for the girls plus a Rainbow Fairies stencil book thingy which I am putting away for Jade's birthday. Met up with T and her girls there so that was lovely, and then we all walked back to the train station and home again by about 3.30pm.

I was really tired, so was very glad that Bill was home (off sick with his bad cough) and I just lay on the sofa and dozed a bit for about an hour, I think. Got up to find that my back was rather hurting, which it has continued to do ever since, urgh! I was very glad for a quiet evening and an early night after that.

I had been looking forward to Wednesday as a lovely jolly day out with K, my job-share partner, going down to Glastonbury for the day for a South-West Regional Time Banks meeting, but she's gone and left, hasn't she, so I went on my own , but still had a great time anyway. It was fab being on my own in the car for 2 hours each way, and having my *own* music on all the time *really loud*! How wonderful to be driving without having to listen to "The Wheels on the Bus" and the like! It was a really good day, especially as J, who used to be the project manager when we first started the Time Bank in the North Cotswolds, is now doing the same in Glastonbury so it was lovely to see him again and the day was really useful in terms of sharing experiences and networking. Stayed on after the end to chat with J and see his g/f again (she worked with me for 6 months while K was on maternity leave about 3.5 years ago) and ended up having a lovely meal out in Glastonbury, and leaving at about 7.45pm.

I congratulated Bill on coping all day while I was out for such a long time, and then realised it was only what I do every day while he's at work!

Today the job advert comes out for K's replacement, so I will be at work from 12-3 and getting ready for the trickle or flood of applications, and my Mum is visiting for a couple of days so she'll be here shortly. And now I've blogged as much in one morning as I usually do in a week, I don't know how long it will be till the next one!

Oh, but must remember to blog about Jade's swimming later!

Quick catch-up

I suppose I ought to start with Thursday and Bill's unscheduled overnight stay in hospital! He felt unwell at work in the afternoon, had a suspicion and checked his pulse to find it seemed extremely odd. He came home, went to our little local hospital who did an ECG and faxed it to the GP, who said "put him on an ambulance and send him to Gloucester Hospital!". In the end, I was the ambulance - we dropped off the girls with a friend and then I drove him to Gloucester. As usual when going into a hospital we were left sitting for a while not knowing what was going on, and more ECGs were done, and blood taken and other stuff, and in the end they decided he had atrial fibrillation and a heart rate of 140 and needed drugs to sort him out. I ended up leaving at 9pm, and he stayed in overnight. Apparently everything went back to approximately normal at 2am! I went and picked him up at round lunchtime on Friday. All rather strange, and worrying, but they said it could have been caused by an infection ... he's got a nasty cough which has in fact kept him off work today.

So we had a very quiet weekend. I was supposed to be helping out at the Stratford NCT sale (and thereby getting privileged pre-sale purchasing opportunities!) but Bill wasn't up to having the kids on his own all day so I skipped that. I did however do my Rural Cinema duties and we showed Casino Royale, which was much better than I expected and I really enjoyed it.

As reported below, we've today finally got back into doing a bit of work after the Easter break. Tomorrow we're going on a home-ed group trip to the Oxford Natural History Museum. Jade is most thrilled about the fact that we're going on a train - she's just about beside herself with excitement and has been counting down the days for over a week!

Must go now - ER is about to start .... (drool, Dr. Kovac.....)

Today's activity

Started with gardening first thing, as somebody was coming to help me weed the jungle, er... flowerbeds. Helped him for 45 mins and then left him to do some more on his own.

Came in and did some quick maths with Jade - quick-fire adding and subtracting questions with numbers to 10.

Then moved on to Story of the World - ancient Egyptians. Revised some of the chapter we did previously (over 2 weeks ago!) and then read 'Croco-Nile', a lovely picture book/poem about some Ancient Egyptian children.

Then food and she requested to watch the DK Eyewitness Human Body video while she ate.

Now she's getting changed for her afternoon at school.

Later this afternoon I go to see the Dr to discuss Selective Mutism with him - I've never brought it to his attention before and want to know what the options are for help outside of school.

Mid-green

Your Life is 64% Green

You live a very green life, and you're aware of how your actions help the earth. Of course, it's hard to be totally green. But when you make a tradeoff, you know why you're making it.

How Green Is Your Life?

I have much else to blog, but little time or energy. Will try later, honestly!

Here comes the sun.....

I'm LOVIN' the sunshine! It's been a lovely Easter weekend from the spiritual and weather points of view! We didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (I'd had vague hopes of getting some decorating done) but just mostly hung around at home. I did get some potatoes planted but need to put a lot more in.

Anyway, thank you Alison for prompting me to blog! I just seem to be completely stuck over the school issue. If I felt I was doing HE well, and could see a way to getting a couple of half-days per week on my own at home, then I think I would just take her out of school. The trouble is, I don't feel I am doing the first and can't see a way to the second on top of the hours I already spend out at work. One thing I forgot to blog is that my job-share partner (of 5 years!) is moving on to a new job, so my energy and input there are having to go up massively as I basically take it all on myself for a few weeks (not extra time, just doing it all alone) and then still take the lion's share as a new person gradually becomes trained and integrated into how things happen at work. And the idea of someone else taking responsibility for the education side of things for a while is attractive! But I still feel it will be very hard on her to go 5 mornings, or full-time. It does seem tough that I as a confirmed introvert, who needs to recharge my energy by being alone, should have a daughter who is particularly needy of my presence and attention. If I had even a penny for every time Jade said "Look, Mummy" in a day, I'd be a very rich person in no time at all. She is constantly asking me to "look" at her, while she pulls a funny face, or jumps up and down, or draws a picture, or plays with her toys - she wants me to watch what she is doing nearly all the time and it drives me mental! I honestly barely ever get the chance to complete a single thought in my head. And while staying with my friend last weekend, I asked if her daughter was the same, and she said no. So it's not just an 'age' thing. Sometimes I can't stop looking at her because I love her so much and she is very precious to me, of course, but I really can't bear being called out of the kitchen every 10 seconds while I'm trying to prepare a meal, or some such. But then I think of what might happen, with all her anxieties and stress over social situations, if I were to just send her to school full-time and I simply don't think I can do it.

So, what I need is:

• Shannon to sleep through the night and stop waking me 5-6 times, leaving me exhausted in the daytime
• Enough money (for a childminder) or some other solution to enable me to have two half-days per week on my own in the house to feel like I'm keeping on top of all my own stuff and to just have some me-time.

Apart from all that stuff, we've just been operating on 'holiday' status - the girl next door is round here most of the time so much raucous playing goes on with lots of time spent out in the garden. Shannon tends to get a bit left out sometimes, but I guess that's inevitable. We did a bit of Story of the World yesterday so we are now just launching on 'Ancient Egypt' stuff so I think there will be a lot of that in the next couple of weeks or so.

Tomorrow is my Dad's last regular day for coming over every week to look after the girls. He is approaching 75 and has been coming here weekly for over 8 years to help me in one way or another, starting when I was pregnant with Benjamin. He has been absolutely fabulous in every way possible and deserves some rest! From next week I shall change my work hours so that I work while Jade is at school from 12-3, instead of during the morning. Tomorrow, I will be taking my Dad out to lunch as a small thank-you for all he has done and all the love and support he gives me.

Quick blog

I've had a lovely few days away - firstly staying overnight with the Beans on Sunday night (thanks to them for their willingness to take me in at short notice!) and then on to visit my lovely friend A near Cambridge. Both stays were delightful, and have refreshed me noticeably although I am still undecided in the middle of the educational 'wobble'. One thing I have realised is that my mental 'scatteredness' is not helped and may be exacerbated by the 1001 e-mails I am subscribed to about all sorts of subjects under the sun. Each time I receive one, I want to get more involved in whatever it is talking about (paid surveys, children's food campaign, HE campaigns, online sales, decluttering methods etc etc) and am just whizzing from one thing to another and there is no way I have time for it all. I think 'simplicity' needs to be my new mantra. Yes, all these things are interesting and valuable, but I just can't do it all. I have unsubscribed from a lot, and will be continuing to simplify more as I see better what I really want and what is just 'good but not essential'.

Major wobbles

*Big brain-drain alert!* This stuff is just going round and round in my head and getting nowhere, so I thought getting it out here might help me sort through it a bit. Also it's kind of my duty to blog it as it is all about flexi-schooling issues and the troubles associated with it!!

So, we had our usual termly review meeting at Jade's school on Wednesday afternoon to have a chat about how she's getting on and if anything needs changing or dealing with. For the benefit of newer readers (if any), Jade goes to school 3 afternoons per week. This was originally envisaged as necessary childcare to cover some of my working hours - I thought she might be able to go one full day and a couple of half days. I also thought it would be nice for her to make some friends that she could see regularly. We wrote to the school setting out what we were thinking about and they asked us in for a meeting to discuss it. They seemed keen, enthusiastic even, and very open to understanding what HE was all about and the benefits of Jade having a little time in a different environment to do PE and group work and stuff. In the end, it seemed to work out best that she go 3 afternoons to avoid getting embroiled in their literacy and numeracy hours and the other more formal stuff that goes on in the mornings. It avoided me having to liaise with them about what work they were doing the rest of the week so that I could replicate it at home, which would have been a bit pointless!

I went to the meeting on Wednesday expecting that all was fine and just to ask them to put a bit more simple intervention in place to help her overcome her anxiety about speaking to adults. She does not speak to the adults, although she did do so once or twice at the beginning. What we got (DH came too) was a full-length exposition of why this is not going to work for very much longer, and how I need to decide whether we are working towards her going in full-time or not.

In brief, part-time school in Year 1 has been fine. They are very informal in the afternoons and she has been able to dip in and out without any trouble. In Year 2, they will all be working towards getting ready for SATs at the end of the year (rolls eyes) and the other children will gradually be spending more time doing papers and getting used to what's required which obviously will be harder to dip into part-time. In Years 3-6 (Key Stage 2), the whole timetable changes, things are no longer so easily split into formal and informal work and there will be no chance of her being there part-time. Now excuse me for being a bit pissed off that this was not clearly explained when we went for our first meeting! Or at least, I don't have a memory of this being said or hinted at, but with the general state of my memory that doesn't mean that nothing was mentioned. Maybe it was, and I just ignored it as being too far in the future.

As it has turned out, only one of her times at school has coincided with my work (now that I have changed my hours on a Thursday), so there's only one half-day that she 'needs' to be at school for my sake. However I have racked my brains to try and find another way of getting some sort of childcare for while I work that time but nothing seems to be available without spending money, which simply isn't possible. I can't afford not to work, I can't afford to pay for any extra childcare. Once Isabelle starts getting nursery vouchers next January, that will ease the budget noticeably and something else may be possible, but not for now.

Anyway, in the hope of leaving her there for at least the coming term and getting some help for her with the selective mutism, I asked whether it wouldn't be possible to get some extra strategies/intervention put into place to give her gradual exposure to speaking situations which she finds difficult so that she can gradually build up her capacity to speak to adults. Then I got this explanation of why that is difficult while she is not at the school full-time because there aren't the staff available to leave the classroom and work with her outside. If she was there full-time, she would be assessed as having special educational needs and the school would get some extra funding to get her some extra help. And the SENCO also asked what would be the point of helping her in the current circumstances if she is not going to stay at the school, i.e. why help her to get used to speaking in a school situation if she is not going to stay there. I was hoping that any progress in speaking in school would be built upon so that we could generalise it to other situations, but I can sort of see his point.

I said I didn't think Jade would thrive full-time in school at the moment, and they asked why not. Well as mentioned in my previous post she has been particularly clingy at the moment and hates leaving me under any circumstances. But I could see them almost thinking that it would be 'good for her' to be made to be apart from me more often, then, to help her get over that feeling. And I'm not absolutely confident of my ground arguing about that one. As DH said, I guess it's similar to people arguing on the "cry-it-out method" of getting little ones to sleep. And I could never do that either. But I suppose it could reasonably be asked, who has the separation anxiety here - the child or the mother?

Anyway the situation has been left that we will think about whether we want to work towards transitioning her to full-time school over the next 12 - 18 months or not. If we do, then they will of course be delighted to work with her to make her more comfortable in speaking to adults. If not, well we might as well take her out straightaway.

The problem is, the idea of sending her to school is not completely unattractive! Especially on a day like today, when I had another appalling night's sleep thanks to Shannon's waking and feeding habits, and I'm absolutely exhausted. I have been grumpy, irritable, lethargic, not wanting to do anything with the girls and really just wishing they weren't there so that I could rest or get on with things quietly. And I have days like that more often than I like to admit. The archaeology thing is the only overtly educational stuff that we have done this week. I seriously wonder whether the work would be more interesting at school, because although I have bursts of enthusiasm and energy for stuff, more often than not I feel uninspired and too tired to do anything very interesting. I wonder whether our relationship wouldn't be better in some ways because if I had space at home to do my thing during the day, when she came home I could really focus on her and be happy to give that time to her completely, rather than wishing I was doing something else. I really, really crave time on my own at home, and am simply not getting any at all. And I've always thought that late primary age is probably a fairly reasonable time for kids to go to school if they're going to. I don't like early primary because I feel they simply start too young and secondary school is too horrendous to contemplate mostly, but late primary seems fairly innocuous. And I also have to take into account that we're not just talking about sending her to 'school' as a general principle, but to this particular school, which has about 4o pupils max., about 6 or 7 children in Jade's current year, a mixed class of Reception, Y1 and Y2 which I like because then they're not all simply the same age; and a staff of 2-3 people in that classroom of about 15-18 children.

Over the past couple of days my thoughts and feelings have veered wildly between, "let's just take her out right now and I can take her to work with me on Thursdays and we'll just manage without any school hassle at all," to "oh it would be really nice not to have to have all this education burden on myself and it would be fantastic to have some quiet me-time at home sometimes (assuming Shannon went to nursery or playschool as well) and let's just send her to school full-time".

And then I wonder what happens if the best interests of the child (to stay at home with her family where she feels safe, loved and confident) conflict with the best interests of the mother (to be able to have some space to get things done, sleep, just be alone as necessary). And then I think I shouldn't be thinking about such things on a day when i'm so tired. And then I think, but that is the reality of many of my days.

So there, let's see if getting that out of my head and onto the blog gives me any more clarity!

Archaeology

We've done some work today that has satisfied a bit of my personality that I didn't know I had! Having read the first bit of 'Story of the World' a couple of weeks ago, I've been planning on doing a bit of 'archaeology' with Jade - all I needed was the chance to surreptitiously bury some stuff in the as-yet-unplanted vegetable patch and then set her up for an archaeological dig. I managed to bury the stuff last week, but then it got freezing cold, so we didn't do anything about it until yesterday. When she got home after her afternoon at school, and with me feeling frustrated because we'd just frittered away the morning without doing anything 'proper', I tempted her out into the garden with the promise of lots of mud and mess. She went at it with great enthusiasm, which I had to temper slightly for fear of damaging the 'artefacts'! But she was thrilled whenever she came across anything. I am slightly disconcerted that there are 2 things I buried that we never discovered, so who knows how long they will remain there now! We took great care, once we found something, to brush the mud carefully away so as not to damage it, and to mark on a plan of the area where we had found something. Before long, L from next door came round and joined in too.
















Shannon was happy to help by washing the 'ancient objects' that we found:

















And, yesterday, that was that.

This morning we had planned to go to HE group, where science experiments were planned. But despite looking through a few books last night, I couldn't find anything I was interested enough in to take with us to demonstrate, and I wanted to finish off our 'dig' project as I feel I can't go on with SOTW until we've finished this bit (I know me .... if I move on, I will never go back and finish off what I've left undone). And Jade was begging to go swimming and as HE group lasts most of the day (10.30 - 3pm) there wouldn't have been time to go. So we decided to abandon the group, finish off stuff at home this morning and go swimming this afternoon.

So, once we were up and dressed (mostly - Shannon wanted to remain naked for a good portion of the morning) I set Jade to taking photos of all the objects she had dug up, which included a few bits and pieces of broken stuff that I hadn't put there! I then started to show her how to get the pictures from the camera onto the computer, but hit a strange technical hitch which slowed everything up a great deal and she got bored and wandered off to play. I eventually sorted that out, uploaded the pics, chose a few and printed them off. I then retrieved her from her playing, sat her down at the table and persuaded her to make the pics into a booklet with a front and back cover, which she illustrated with a lovely drawing of a skeleton and a garden fork, and then wrote 'ARCHAEOLOGY' for the title. What has surprised me is how satisfied I feel at having got her to produce a 'proper' written piece of work (rolling eyes emoticon!!). Help, somebody stop me, I'm coming over all teacher-y!

We've also put stickers on the world map that those lovely people at the Guardian newspaper have given away free (courtesy of my Dad). We have placed stickers showing the 7 wonders of the ancient world (noting how they are all in the same area) and the 7 wonders of the natural world. She's had lunch while listening to a couple of the Rainbow Fairies stories which we've borrowed from the library on CD (well, it saves me having to read them to her) and then she sat on the sofa reading several books to Shannon (toddler books) while I listed a couple of items on Ebay.

After that we went swimming. By accident I slightly under-inflated Jade's arm-bands and tried to persuade her to keep them like that. Despite the fact that she could swim in them, she insisted I blew them up more. Meanwhile Shannon only wanted to hop onto my back and be towed around hanging onto my shoulder straps!

Tonight I am particularly concerned about Jade's apparently growing distress at ever being separated from me. She was saying this evening how she hates Wednesdays when DH is at home and I go to work, and she asked if it could be the other way round tomorrow. She hates me leaving her in bed to fall asleep, and always begs and pleads with me to stay. She has also been more reluctant to go to school recently, despite apparently having a lovely time when she is there. She's been clinging to me and not wanting me to leave. She really does settle down and play happily with the other children, and appears to do just fine while she's there. She won't talk to the adults, though. And that is another aspect of what is bothering me. Selective mutism, which she does have although on the milder end of the spectrum as she will at least talk to other children, is an anxiety-related condition, and obviously so is separation anxiety. She's such a fabulous girl in so many ways, and yet she is so anxious in these various situations. Everything I've done with her since she was a baby was supposed to develop self-confidence in a child - co-sleeping, carrying, long-term breastfeeding. And I wonder whether in fact it's done the exact opposite. Or maybe she's just genetically like that and would have been no matter what we'd done with her. She does after all remind me of me :-) I get so cross with myself for being anxious in other people's presence, fearing I'm not interesting or fun enough for anybody to want to be with me, and no matter what pep-talks I give myself I don't seem to be able to rid myself of this particular trait. But knowing what agonies that having an anxious personality has put me through, I'm longing to find a way to help her become confident within herself and deal with her worries.

To completely change tack, and just so that this is recorded for our own purposes and not to brag at all (I don't even know what's supposed to be 'normal' at this age), Shannon is completely confident at counting from 1-12, recognises the shapes square, circle, triangle, rectangle, heart and star, and is 'getting there' with colours.

Bits and pieces

Well, another couple of weeks have flown by. There have been various interesting things going on, but I can't remember when or in what order so I'll just do bullet points.

• Shannon astonished me by taking over Reader Rabbit 1 that Jade had left, and not only did I see her competently using the mouse and clicking on stuff for the first time ever, I realised that she was actually properly playing the pairs game and matching up sets of 2 pictures! Astonishing!!!
• Jade and I have been playing lots of Farmyard Bingo which Shannon's enjoyed joining in with and doing quite well too.
• Jade went to school all day on Monday. They were having a 'medieval day', making food, dressing up in costumes, dancing etc. She enjoyed it, but said it was too long to be away from me. I agree! It felt very strange not having her here for that long, and I just can't imagine what it would do to family relationships if she was there full-time.
• She's going all day tomorrow, too - for a trip out to Warwick Castle. I'm rather surprised she's so enthusiastic about going, actually, for one who's fairly anxious being without me, but she seems keen so I am happily going along with it.
• DH took the girls out to see Kenilworth Castle last Wednesday when I was at work all day. They loved it.
• This morning, we've done the story of Isaac from the Bible. On the way I explained about primogeniture, inheritance, cultural differences and lots more.
• Then we did some Miquon maths. She's still at the simple adding up stage, and using her fingers for 1+2 and other such sums!
• Then we pulled out the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia, and she wanted to look at the page about having babies, so we read about fertilisation, where babies grow, how long for and how they are born. Then we went onto the web to follow up the Usborne Internet Links and searched for some others too. So we saw short videos of fertilisation, implantation, and foetal development. Then we found a nice video of some women giving birth, gently and naturally, which may well have robbed me of the opportunity of ever having grandchildren, as she really does not like the look of that AT ALL! She says she's quite scared ....
  
• Also on the subject of birth, we visited a friend's farm last Friday for a tour round the lambing sheds. We saw the orphans that were being fed from bottles, the ones that had been put with another ewe to try and get her to adopt them, and then were fortunate to find one ewe who had just delivered one lamb, and my friend got the big shoulder-length glove on and stuck her arm in to find that there was another one on the way. This one was breech, though, and she couldn't manage to get it into a good position for delivery, so her husband came along and he managed to get the lamb born. It was touch and go for a minute or so but fortunately the lamb managed to get going and eventually we saw it struggle to its feet and have its first feed.
• The same day, I went to a funeral for a local woman whom I knew reasonably well, so that was sad. Birth and death in one day. The girls went to play with another HE family in town.
• This afternoon we've been swimming. Neither of them are swimming independently yet but Jade is showing a little progress each time we go and as she does so much better without any pressure I'll just let her take it at her own speed.
• There are of course tons of other books and stuff we've looked at over the past couple of weeks, but nothing else is springing to my memory at the moment.
  

The black hole of time

.... slips away with another few days! Wednesday was my work-all-day day, plus Thursday morning. Got a bit despondent on Thursday afternoon after collecting Jade from school, as I asked her teacher whether she thought it would be manageable for Jade to go in all day on a Thursday, and she was quite negative about it. My Dad has been looking after Jade on a Thursday morning while I work for a long time now, and as he approaches 75 in May he wants to 'retire'! So I desperately need Thursday morning childcare but have no money to pay for any. So I thought maybe we could work out for her to be at school all day on a Thursday, but as I say her teacher is really not keen on the idea, and as she is the one who would have to implement it then if she's not on-side then it's not going to work well anyway. I don't want to be liaising every week with someone who thinks we're just wasting her time. So ... don't know what I'm going to do about that yet. She's not negative about Jade's abilities, but simply about us working together so that I can, for example, finish up any work on a Friday that they've started on Thursday etc. "What about if we're using equipment in the classroom that we need to continue with on the Friday?", she says.

Can't remember at all what happened on Friday.

Saturday was lovely - Bill got up with the girls (voluntarily!) and I had a lie-in! And then after a general morning's playing, I took Jade to dancing and went off to do a bit of supermarket shopping while she was there. After collecting her, we all went swimming. Yes, all of us! For 5.5 years I've been taking Jade swimming, and this is the first time ever (except maybe once on holiday) that Bill has come along too. Whatever it is that's come over him, I like it! And as we were driving home, he said how it was too nice to go straight home and let's go for a walk, so we did drop in and pick up the dog and then went up to one of the Cotswolds high spots and had a lovely half-hour walk. So that was a lovely family day. There was much lunar eclipse viewing in the evening but although Jade asked to be woken up to have a look, she was in too deep a sleep and wouldn't even stir.

Today I took the girls to church this morning, got home by 1pm just in time to receive our monthly Tesco delivery, and then Bill and I took it in turns to have an hour's nap. Shannon is being really terrible at night lately and seems to want to be permanently latched on. Needless to say I'm not letting her but it's disturbing us all.

Tomorrow morning I'm not going to answer the phone if it rings, in the hope of actually getting some work done here!

I simply do not have time ....

..... to educate my children. They're just going to have to do it themselves!

Honestly, I just lose the time to all sorts of stuff and we just don't seem to be getting on with much at all. Yesterday, I was just getting started on an Lent chart (along the lines of this and this) with the girls when the phone rang, and there I was for an hour on the phone to a friend who was feeling rather down. When we finished I just had time to make a quick lunch for Jade, get her changed and rush her off for her afternoon at school.

Today I slept late, as I had a stinking headache, and had just staggered downstairs at about 9.30am when the phone rang, and it was my Mum needing advice about broadband. 55 minutes later I eventually got free and got myself some breakfast, and a second breakfast for Jade and Shannon. What with sorting out food, washing, a couple more vital phone calls and fighting terminal exhaustion we only managed to do a small amount of reading on the human body which Jade requested. I tried to set her up with an old DK CD-Rom on The Amazing Human Body but I couldn't load it on either the desktop or the laptop so that wasted half-an-hour. I eventually found a couple of interactive websites for her, so we heard some narrated clips about the brain and skeleton, built our own skeleton and that was about it. Then it was lunchtime, after which we went out swimming.

Swimming was good, though. Jade is now fairly confident swimming with her arm-bands, so I'll have to start gradually reducing the amount of air in them. She also took them off and swam holding one float in front of her. She was resistant at first because she didn't like how far down she went in the water, but when I showed her that when I did it, the tip of my chin was in the water but no further, she agreed to have another go and did it! Shannon discovered that she can get her feet on the bottom of the pool, so voluntarily let go of me for the first time ever and took a few steps here and there! It won't be long before she realises she can pick her feet up and not sink, and she'll be off with her armbands on too. And Jade actually let me wash and rinse her hair in the shower, which was a major, major achievement!! We've never managed hairwashing without major hysterics before, so I usually don't bother. She gets it wet in the bath and that manages to keep it OK, but I was relieved to give it a good wash for a change.

Anyway, head is still pounding and pizza and chips are just about ready in the oven (yes, terrible food I know but all I could manage feeling the way I do) so must go.

So.....

So, none of you except Helen gives a monkeys that I've been at death's door then Honestly, what does a girl have to do round here to get a little attention, huh? Ah well, at least now I know who my friends are ;-)

For the benefit of the few who are interested, I'll just reassure you all that I am definitely on the mend. I did go to the Dr in the end but he diagnosed pharyngitis which is viral so no antibiotics required for which I was grateful. I did suggest ice-cream, though, so I wasted no time at all in going to the next-door supermarket for a big tub of Ben & Jerry's! And I'm NOT SHARING IT!

On top of all this, on Friday we had the trauma of taking the dog for surgery. She'd had a large lump appear in her groin, and they weren't sure what it was so it had to be removed. She's fine, though - it turned out to be a fatty lump which popped out with no trouble and apart from the 6 stitches to be taken out, she requires no further treatment. Can't say the same about our finances though which are going to need CPR any time now .......

Anyway, as I've mostly been in bed for the past 3 days I can't tell you much about what the girls have been up to, apart from running riot! DH is looking ragged, the house is..... erm.... a tip and Shannon has been distraught about being kept away from me while I've languished in bed so she's particularly clingy. Could somebody send in the cavalry, please?