Monthly Archives: January 2007

crosspatch

i knew i was being one all day, and though very contrite, had the tolerance level of kamikaze on acid. Mainly I think with worry that this is not going to be a weird one of joint thing, but…

Anyway, SB did lots more education city – she does really enjoy it, and getting there to the french without so much help [i nearly bought rosetta stone though Deb!]. She has also done some singapore maths MPH 1B – and as we are 2/3 through, have bought 2 series from half moon books – well, nearly, I have sent them an email! – so they are across in resources bit. I had bought the original 2a and b textbooks half price from sonlight when they went to the us ed, so though i had better have matching workbooks – so we will be doing a not MPH year – shouldn’t matter!

My mum and dad popped in on the way back from Little Nanny’s, and were a bit shocked at my cronkiness. Anyway, they played with the girls a bit and had a bite to eat before carrying on.

BB had a look at toddler cd – though prefers still just to irritate SB! we read some apple tree farm, she played ‘yego’, and had great fun with a magnetic break apart ball that SB also loved at that age from ikea. we all stopped for a ‘yup-a-tea’

SB and I finished the marco polo jigsaw in our explorers book and discussed that a little bit, before moving on to story of the world, where we got a bit stuck with the punic wars – cos unlike my usual ask very little questions, and minimal narration back, i got fixated on her remembering carthage! [why i don't know, as i hardly expect that telling her today will give her instant recall in 30 years time!!]. however, we made up over the Hannibal and the elephants story. She read me 1/3 of a level 8 ORT book – the magic carpet – and she is def getting more fluid. Apparently, whilst at Jax’s, she had a go at one of Big’s fairy books, but they are too difficult.

I got grumpy so left her and BB to play, and looked at sonlight core 1, rosetta stone and worried that we dip around a lot and aren’t organised, and maybe should be sonlighters etc etc [usual panic there]

BB wanted to play a game, so we got out the marble run, and SB made her runs and it all went predictably pear shaped, but they kept trying. eventually giving up to play bouncy ball games.

My sister rang to commiserate – well I think that was what for, but in a jovial way she said i have got it too, and it is worse than yours and yours will get far worse, so I pretty near hung up. tea really was ready, but I was rude, and feel bad as I just took it the wrong way rather than her meaning to make me even more grumpy. [she is a much lovelier person all round than me] I will ring tomorrow if I am less grumpy.

Ah well. the girls had a bath whilst I grumped. SB came down and saw big’s castle. she def wants a castle for her birthday, but no longer tower of doom, but perhaps the pintoys mediaeval one – which I also like. SO I guess that is on. She then got stuff ready for tomorrow, as BB goes to a toddler gym session first one, and SB will have to sit at edge as quiet as a mouse – fingers crossed for chris there, as it will be difficult for SB who will be desperate to join in.
I have now eaten loads of chocolate – which I had banned from my diet – sigh.

rashes

well, that rash seems to have been the start of a reactive polyarthropathy caused by an infection caught from children – viral or bacterial. seen a consultant rheumatologist today as just couldn’t hold pen properly – sigh.

luckilly no need to do anything overwhelmingly important with my hands till next tues, and he thinks it should be better by then.

monday

The beans went to local group this morning all about favourite things. SB took heaps of jacket potatoes – and we had some of them for tea!
in the afternoon, when we had all got home, she did some education city – enjoying it, and I have stared with the easiest bits doing a my city. She wanted to do the spanish, but that doesn’t seem an option at her level. i might email and ask if we can have access to it. she did like the french though. i helped identify the sounds the first time and thenn left her to carry on so I could read apple tree farm to BB.
BB did some oogly googly gears and playdoughing, and SB looked at a DK history book with me – rather lovely – and we did early people in it, picking up the theme at bedtime by reading about otzi the ice mummy. She also did some letter formation with getty and dubay – they’re big letters, but I guess she needs to start in the right place, as she otherwise chooses bottom up. we all playdoughed for a bit.
tea of jacket pots, and then watched some more trials of life before bed.

The value of money

This was from last week – Thursday I think, somehow it got left as a draft and dnot posted, so here it is.

Yesterday SB emptied out her purse and counted up all the money. She did very well, did it pretty much all herself. Got bit lost with lots of 2p’s, until I showed her how to sort out the money into piles of 10p each and then count them all up. She had the grand total of ?19.01 (there was ?10 of xmas money in there). WSo she was quite excited by that :-)

She has just sat down with a Vertbaudet catalogue looking at all the kiddy furniture, bedding and stuff, deciding what is too much, what she can afford, and whether or not it would be really owrth it spending all her money on it. :-)

How to fill up your Gogglemail account.

So, you thought 2+ whatever GB was plenty eh? Well apparently 220,000 +spam is enough to fill it up 80 – as found out when emails were bouncing from it.

I’ve got an account that I use for redirecting email sent to our main email domain that doesn’t have specified account (yes I could just not collect it, but I find it useful to do so). It then gets collected via that onto or email system at home. G’mails spam filter is pretty effective without grabbing loads of real emails as well. The spam does get deleted after 30 days – so obviously it comes in quicker than it was getting deleted

weekend away – link to piccies now

we had a lovely weekend living otherwise with Jax and co. Big and Sb loved each other, and BB and small were also getting on well – even if they did like the same toys!

lovely bowling party on the sat for the birthday girls. SB has never been bowling, and really enjoyed it. I loved how SB, Big and C had a secondary game going on all about handing each other the balls etc, and cheered each other on. They did lining up, parallels and angles with each other to see if they could knock them all down. Really fab. BB wasn’t in the best of moods, but perked up. Will be flickring! Minor panic when Merry arrived, she pushed fran at me whilst she whisked off with maddy, and I suddenly couldn’t see Josie or amelie, or whether I should be seeing them – luckilly fran could tell me they were at home – phew!

IMG_1851_edited-1?IMG_1833
Back to jax’s for cake with Jan and family and Kirsty and family. Not as much mayhem as you would anticipate, though finding SB, Big and Small’s beds that night proved difficult – tick archaeology there.

Next day we adults had a lie in, then a hurried getting up when we thought Merry was iminent – luckilly she got lost, so we were ready for her! Went home also, and had aching wrists – maybe a response to weird rash I got on the sun am. so early bed for me, but got up by SB to tell her stories, and ended up watching bones after that [found dad!] and a late beditme

IMG_1856_edited-1?IMG_1881_edited-1 IMG_1884_edited-1

Out of the habit.

Seem to ahev lost the muse when it comes to blogging, I’ve managed to not really blog all week Including fun science-y things we did last week. Hmm, anyway this is for now, cos going to bed soon. Also behind with Flickr as well…
My brother and his youngest son O are over on their way back over to France from Ireland (mother and son live in France, Dad in Ireland, makes life complicated…)? They came round yesterday, lots of playing, mostly happily :-)? BB splits her tiem between chasing the bigger ones about and? hanging around with the grownups.

Today me and the girls went over to my Mum and Dads were they are staying, mostly happy playing again. A bit of? split when O wanted to play with his video game football game thing(some cheapo thing, not a flash thing like a DS …) so she played with the Dolly. Eventually compromised, she was the Mummy, and he was the Daddy who was a computer programmer :-) And an argument over the crackers (used up soem old xmas ones) over who had how many and which cheapo-plastic-toys-we-will-lose-or-forget-about-by-tomorrow-anyway :roll:

Did have a few interesting conversations in the car though. Had one about the reality of imaginary people like Santa Claus/tooth faeries/’this character made up by one of her granddads, who seems to be some sort of satellite/alien thing. Not fairies though – ‘I know they are real , I’ve seen them‘. Got a bit metaphysical? when we talked about the idea of liking things things to be? real in our imaginations even if we don’t believe them to be true in reality. We watched ‘The Snowman’ a few times this Xmas. BB likes it. So I mentioned that I liked to imagine that somewhere, Snowmen were really flying off in the midnight air, even though I didn’t really believe it. – just the same as I want to believe that there really is? town and inhabitants like those in Northern Exposure. I think she decided that she sort of didn’t believe, but wanted to so was going to anyway.

We also had one on the way back, after listening to a travel report on the radio about all the various roads closed in relation to the strong winds ‘ Ohh, there is lots of places closed, must be very windy‘. So we got talking about strong winds and hurricanes and tornadoes, she was taking with the idea of Tornadoes picking things up. So she mused on people being picked up, ‘They’d probably be dropped on a cloud, so then they would fall back down, so they would probably die I think, then the tornado might pick them up and then drop them again, up down , up down. Might be be a bit of mess at the end‘. Errr.. yes, quite :roll: :roll: :-)

On that note, off to bed

Party time.

IMG_1747_edited-1 IMG_1748

Stringbean has had this Jump Ahead Starting Maths CD-ROM for ages – 3 years? dunno, but she was doing it in our old house anyway. She’s done it on and off in spurts, probably redone it at least a couple of times, so? a little bit of a fan fare when she finally completed the last bit tonight tonight, had got the 100 candles and had the party :-)

education city

we have a tell a friend code if anyone else wants to buy it which gives both the person who already has it, and the person buying it a free extra 3 months.

Your unique Tell a Friend code is C8A26B9D.feel free to use it!

education city = fab!! ?20 for 12 months, and 3 more free – go on!

She’s so tiny……

Saw a piccie of my cousins new baby today at my Mum and Dad’s (didn’t email me one -? hmph!! :-) ). But OMG she is so tiny !!!!! The head seems to be only about the same diameter as the length her Dads index finger.
Oh well they will get plenty of wear out of the first baby clothes.