though will no doubt get back into the flow. SB did some maths and handwriting first thing, watched magic school bus and raven, bB wailed about her lost dinodoors [she has only had them 2 seconds!], did a bit of earlybird maths and watched the same things. was going to do some music practice, but my parents arrived after my mothers hosp appt. chatted, sb played games, bb wailed about lost dinodoors, and wanting to paint her volcano.

so we started to paint her volcano, and SB started to do some brainbox electronics. 5 mins later, bb wailing as wants to do the electronics - do you see a pattern? anyway, i negotiated a settlement and we did lots of the whirring one until the batteries ran out, then a wild run about outside. read about the rainforest to BB. most of the rest of the day was spent outside, but we did do some messing about with a science kit on magnets and compasses. have left it out to have a bit more of a look at tomorrow. SB has changed all her box books to ones about explorers, and a couple of the new books.

we did actually have a lot of fun running about in the garden, and rescued the day really. BB and SB ‘helped’ chris by making manure cupcastles but ots of swinging, dipping feet into v green pond water etc. We refilled the bird feeders, and played games.

I took SB to swimming - her new speedo goggles far better [thanks all], and also i can see a v definite improvement in her stroke, she doesn’t appear to be drowning half so often.

well i had too, this was our marriage music! I love the whole symphony. it was also the piece i played a couple of years back with the High Wycombe Symphonia - with my mum and sister also in the orchestra. prob the last time we will all play together properly like that. It will always give me good memories. this is not the best recording obviously, as it is youtube!

added more to the set, including a fair number of SB. aargh, just so not sure!

but its not been to bad as i have been home by mid-aft. today was so sunny, we had a lot of fun outside. the girls were making friends again with our playhouse.

i pruned and trained the fruit trees, played a few games with them in the house, and we all sowed some peas in trays that were so cheap they are already falling apart without being used once - humph!

thats about it i think? bb fractious today, then sick at tea, hopefully not coming down with anything. she was quite surprised by it.

well, SB reading loads- we got given some animal arks, and she has loved them, and read loads of them. also she has read the sonlight third grade detectives, all the magic tree houses, and all the magic school bus chapter books i had so far, and also horrid henry. these are all nice easy reading books for her. she has stretched herself with reading ballet shoes again, but 21 balloons was a bit difficult [well, its language is quite ornate!]. so i have bought some more 3rd grade detectives and magic school bus from amazon, as well as a couple of other things…

SB has done an enchanted learning booklet about african animals, [nearly a lapbook!!] and continued to read the ‘box books‘ about them [she chooses something to be interested in and we together find books around that and stick in the box for her to find and read as and when she fancies] she also wanted some explorer stuff, so a couple of explorer books threw themselves into the amazon basket too [all that disappointment from non-tent buying as we can’t find a khyam ridgipod porch, and geting the rest without doesn’t make sense for us]. She has regularly done her maths, still a fair bit of webkinz. oh, and although short we have done a lot of violin practice together, and she has done piano independently, and some with today. i think she prefers the piano at the mo, well, there is no setting up to do.

BB has continued her dinodor fest, and with chris has started to make a papier mache landscape for them to live in, she got 2 more from Merry as part of my bonus spending. SB bought herself castle keep, so we have played that every evening, and she is getting very good at it. in fact, if you click on the links, you can see my order at the mo! SB and BB have obviously got a bit more of a surprise coming! BB also been entirely fixated by watching magic school bus, though have persuaded her to let me read her lots of dinosaur themed books [katie and dinosaurs, picturepedia dinosaurs, various dinosaur fact books]

they went on an egg hunt today - as chris twittered, it wasn’t entirely successful…

Ok, that’s not exactly an unusual occurence…

But we were fully expecting much wailing from BB over her loss of night time milk, but  she has been fine about it.

I explained that we were going to be stopping and she seemed happy about it, the first couple of times she did ask for some milk, but when I said there was none she was pretty happy with that.

However there has been a knock on effect.  Typically if she woke say around 5-6 am she would have some more milk,  and then doze back off again. But now she is waking up and basically staying awake

See Michelle, all that talk of tents started us looking on the web, now we are off thinking again about replacing our existing Kyham with Rigipod one (like Merry’s) - old remaining stock is being sold  off much cheaper

I do wonder if there was some flaw (not that I can see anything major in the ones I’ve seen) with them though as they stopped them after a year and went back to the more normal designs, or maybe they just weren’t popular enough with customers, or too expensive to make?

Yesterday

After a late-ish return home on Monday it was a bit of a slow start on Tuesday. Kids started off on a bit of a Magic School Bus fest since I managed to finish acquiring all the rest of the episodes over Easter. The girls love them and they have decent science content.
They spent ages decorating the eggs they got in a ‘decorate your own Easter egg’ thing at Easter. Well SB spent some time. BB wasn’t so interested, she’d rather just eat them

What else? SB did a fair bit of maths, and piano practice. BB playdoughed. I was looking up somethings for SB on African Animals as she had said a couple of weeks back that she wanted to learn some stuff on that. BB wanted me to find somethings for her, so I printed off a few Dinosaur pictures from Enchanted Learning. She painted one of those and did a bit of colouring on another.

On the African theme, I sat down with SB and looked at the the globe, the nice big atlas we have, as well as the DK book on the Earth. We looked at where Africa was, the names of some of the countries, what was a Continent, what the other Continents are. SB was able to say that it would be hot in Africa because of it’s place on the globe.

Whilst looking at the Atlas Sb noticed that some of the maps had curved edges, rather than being just a rectangle. so we wandered off onto a chat about how you have to change the shape/size of things when you translate a from a globe to a flat map. Demonstrated by trying to convert a rectangle of paper into a globe and comparing Greenland on the map with globe. I would have gone and looked up some different projections on the web, but by then we had had a powercut so couldn’t . wondered where my Peters Projection map is, but haven’t seen that for ages.

We looked at some of the different maps in the atlas - showing countries,communications physical geography etc. We looked at a good map of Africa which showed the different types vegetation cover - rainforest, savannah, grasslands, deserts etc. and looked at some of the pictures in the DK book to see what these areas looked like.

Was just about to go and sort out camping lamps, torches and candles before it started getting dark when the power came back on - which pleased the kids as they could watch some more Magic School Bus

Chippy was busy though with lots of people who decided not to cook dinner (power came back on at about 5.30)

after a really lovely, but emotionally challenging easter, i have found relaxing and sleeping difficult, so having overslept this am, i declared duvet day.

[oh, just in case chris doesn’t blog, he and sb did loads of map related things yesterday, as well as library and a power cut]

so, when i got up, they were breakfasting [and SB was reading at the same time] BB and i did jigsaws, read books [with a bit of alphabet and number recognition] and tickled. SB did some maths and made and wrote in a birthday card for my dad using paintshop. crafts was a clear request from BB, so i got out an easter craft we hadn’t got round to at my parents, and painted easter window decs. still having glass paint, we then painted some of our takeaway boxes - bb plans to put dinodoors in hers!

BB and i read about birds [another fascination of her is eggs], and SB read a ‘box book’ about why tigers have stripes. SB and i played about with violin practice, and then a viola that mum has given me so that i can play a lower line than before. i realised that although i have messed about with a cello, i have never played the viola before. BB baked scones with chris, and we enjoyed them as a snack afterwards.

we all looked at our science growing experiments. the ones in the dark had grown very tall to try and find light, and had pale leaves [but still tasted ok], the ones in the fridge had only just started to sprout, the dry ones hadn’t done anything, and we have topsy turvied the bean, and discussed the effect of gravity. we also started our grow your own mushroom kit. they decided the spore and straw smelled yukky. chris and i rather liked it! lets see if it works [our previous mushroom forays in leeds failed totally]

since it was duvet day, we then watched numerous episodes of magic school bus back to back [thanks to some friends oop north]. i really recommend them. yep, they are in the all pervasive american, but there is a lot of science in there, they use the proper words, and it is still enjoyable rather than worthy. i had BB trying to tell me all about the crabbity zooey ones [zooplankton] following one about food chains in the sea. and i learned something in the how hens eggs are made one!

SB did a bit of education city, and then a lot of webkinz, which she has really got into and enjoys. we also did a good tidy up. so, all in all a very productive duvet day i think! [oh, and we did lots of my favourtie things - like snuggling, cuddling, tickling and laughing]. oh, and chris set fire to the rubber seal on our pressure cooker, as he lit the wrong gas rig - sigh!!! [also cue much choking and spluttering]

Start as you mean to go on. Developing that essential male skill of sleeping on through when the baby wakes in the night.

Told Butterbean tonight that there is no be no more milk from a bottle (or otherwise) if she wakes in the night /early morn. Most nights she wakes up - anytime between about 1 and about 6 potters through (or down if we are still up….) climbs into our bed and has a bottle or two of milk and goes off to sleep again. This isn’t in itself any great problem, I take milk up when I go to bed, it’s not that disturbing (less so than having to take her back to her room) and we have a nice big superking bed

Problem is, she doesn’t need the milk, it’s just a habit/comfort thing. If she doesn’t go back to sleep soon enough, then after a bit  she starts making a fuss, rapidly escalating most times to a supersize BB fuss wanting more milk - requiring trip down stairs etc. It also means she wees for England during the night, esp. if she has extra bottles (she already has a 10 fl oz bottle at bed time. - Extra bottle can mean another 15 fl oz or more during the night) - she’ll never get dry at this rate. So it can all get a bit silly really.

We hoped that she would gradually drop them, but isn’t really showing any desire to do so, so we are going to try cold turkeying from tonight. But I have bad memories of when we did the same thing for her night time breastfeeding - I used to take her off to a room 3 closed doors away from our bedroom, but sometimes she would just scream and scream and scream.

Here’s hoping.

Rainbows leader rung tonight just as SB was going to bed to say another girl had decided she didn’t want to go and so their was a place and did SB want to go.

Cue much excited jumping up and down from Stringbean, and much excited chattering about the sleepover when putting her to bed She is so pleased to be going

was lovely and difficult at the same time.

loveliness: children playing together, easter eggs, family, weirdness of snow, dad taking children out to loose energy!

the first day we went to the park and got hailed on! then realised bb had gone out in slippers!!! lots of games playing, rummy, dominoes, ludo, word yahtzee [with some help!] landlocked, and hiss. also built a lot of things with k’nex and my nephew fell in love with both it and the maze ball!!

the children enjoyed the chocolatey goodnes that is easter, and i had bought yellow moon crafts [remember!] that we did a lot of whenever the moment required it. i think it went well, and kept everything ticking along, and hopefully all the kids will remember it as fun. the dinosaur eggs were particularly cherished.

difficulties: my sister’s diagnosis, and the effect is it has had on her and her family already. She was just tired btw, nothing dreadful in the end on her emergency admission, and thanks for all the well wishes. she had plenty of rest this easter anyway. magic wands would be nice.

here is cavalleria rusticana by mascagni. I won’t tend to link dates and music! but i love opera, and this is a particular tear jerker [aren’t all operas??] so thought I would do a topical monday link!

[and as an easter bonus, a second composer!]

should have gone to nots and tots, girls nocturnal messings = far too tired

SB - maths, card design and printing, handwriting, hama beading, violin, reading council leaflet about being safe [bullies and strangers and touching], magic school bus, dora
BB - hama, magic school bus, dora , feeding birds, cuddlng, pre-expplode the code, counting, first reading books, poisson rouge.

packing!

i think i must be tired. have found today v difficult. want to wrap in a duvet a hibernate!

chris took sb to drama, which she loved, bb and i played with bricks and blocks, went into garden for a run around, recovered the veg patch where wind had blown off mulch, looked at spring plants and played hide and seek. we watered our seeds in the propagator and looked at how our science seeds were doing.

chris’s parents popped by to drop of easter eggs, and stayed for lunch and afternoon until sb off at rainbows. we did do some violin in that time, and bb did some of her ‘match and sort’ both girls looked at a road safety thing.

i cooked nasi goreng for tea, and realised i was temper challenged when bb wouldn’t eat it as she doesn’t eat rice - since when! so i have taken myself off to the naughty couch, and will eat chocolate and have an early night

musical mondays was written on sat and the timestamp editied so it posted today!

i certainly didn’t have time to blog yesterday - leaving the house at 9:30 and returning at midnight! it was a wildlife walk day with the people over at the manor born. we went specially early this time, as last time the carpark was full, and it was busy when we got there. needn’t have worried, the blustery rain had put off all but the hardy and foolish…

So we all met up, and set out. Marcus and I doing that couple thing of wearing the same [and it is!] waterproofs, and michelle and chris looked v fetching in their matching trews!! [yep, michelle went a la daddybean!] . girls togged in their muddypuddles [fab waterproofs!] and i need some new wellies.

both girls decided sensibly that they didn’t want to take pictures in the rain, so marcus and I took a minimal number for the seasonal changes thing we plan to do at the end of the year, Jaffa cakes and choc bikkies helped keep the sprits going - but actually it was v enjoyable, i like blustery, and the drizzle cleared. Marcus won the choc bikkie race - which he was v happy with.

the girls played and raced and generally very happy with the 0 birdwatching. i did insist that they look at the daffodils and the cherry blossom - rofl, and we were all a bit deflated by the plantation pond. BB thought it a puddle. these walks are such a fab idea - thanks michelle.

back to there house for yummy lunch [thankyou v much!], and lots of games, the girls, the adults , everyone with a board game and other game fun filled afternoon and evening - finishing at 10.30 when it became apparent that the children were officially tired, so we went home! before tht, numerous games of blokus, yahtzee [which chloe won! - SB and I enjoyed, and we made the girls tot up and multiply themselves - so education too!], really enjoyed carcassonne, cluedo for the kids.

i’ve taken so long to blog, that michelle has beaten me to it, so she has a great pic of BB on blog!

I love them all, but have to say my first love will be my favourite. I first played this at the county string orchestra -? was i about 11? Anyway, this is number 3. I can still play a fair wack of it without music! tell me when we have enough home-edders to do this? I suppose number 2 a close favourite, and with our current recorders,violins and continuo set up [Jade had better keep up with cello!!] mix, could be the one for the future [sort of!]. for the other movts, can we find a trumpet? Actually, maybe number 5… did i say i love all 6??
And feel free to join in on the music meme - Sarah and Jax have. doesn’t have to be classical, doesn’t have to have a theme, just what you are liking, thinking about, singing now.