Guinness – aka ‘Demon Cat’ (look at the picture larger, check out the eyes.), shows off his bald patch from his op. Had his stitches out today, walking pretty well, little bit of limp. But he can’t run yet, if he tries it, three legs work and the last one can’t keep up, rather comical.
Posted in General
I should really be blogging about today and Kirsty’s arrival etc. But I’m going to bed. (in short, we had nice morning, library, sun etc. K and gang arrived, ran around outside and in, with LOTS of screaming, children did not all manage to get to sleep in the same room were moslty still on the go at 10.30. Only one glass of Archers Aqua stuff (odd stuff, bit like peachy, alochoklic lemonade…) was consumed, obviously pacing herself – she’s got two bottles 
So I leave you with the latest quiz from the BBC, this one on Physics.
Luckily, to save on any embarassment for me I did get 10/10, though I had a wobble on one question when I had bit of mental blank.
Posted in General
‘Sun is shining in the sky…’
It’s lovely October day, I should be inside doing some (more) tidying, pending arrival of the Barthlomews
But………
Only just noticed it, though it was announced on 21 Sept.
They’ve added the facility to sort sets by date order. Open a set and look at the top for a link saying ‘change the order of photos ‘
Well, half of the 2 sets anyway.
Main event of the day was the moving of my parents. They have moved house from over 200 miles away to less than 20 (not coincidence of course, it was to be nearer us – well grandchildren really I suspect) It’s been a longish term plan of theirs, they’ve just been waiting for us to settle on where we would be living.
Nearest I lived since leaving home is about 70 miles, but for the last 10 + years it’s been about 250, so a bit of change there, kind of weird really. Stringbean is of course excited. I’m sure that there will be time of adjustment, but I’m pleased that they are nearer. My Dad has found long drives incressingly difficult in recent years. Now as well as us they are much nearer other relatives, so much less travelling for them. And it’s quite likley that he may have to give up driving at some point , so they are much better situated for coping with that (my mum doesn’t drive, though she once rode an orange moped). So me and SB were waiting today to pop over and visit them, but it was bit later than planned.
SB not been entirely well today, complained of painful throat when eating and didn’t have much breakfast or lunch, though seemed ok otherwise, though not keen on normally ‘keen on things’ such as baking cakes, so didn’t do that. Did make card for Nanny and Grandad for their new house, and we remade the Happy Street track (yep, still there Jax) that ‘Butterbean the Marbeliser’ had demolished last night like a mini Godzilla, and read few books before trying to entice her into breakfast. Me and BB had breakfast whilst SB fiddled about and ate half a small Petits Filou. She disappeared off to ‘Happyland’ and played for a quite bit by herself, so me and BB grabed the opportunity to have bit of one to one time playing. Always fun, as she is such smiley chuckly girl. She also enjoys a bit of rootling about on the floor, so she did bit of that whilst I did few a domestic chores, her baby grow distubingly grubby afterwards though (I hate kitchen floors, they just get to dirty too quickly….).
SB moved onto a Muzzy CDROM on the computer, and then onto the CBeebies website, BB had some milk and went off to sleep, so then I sat and helped SB with the above. After a bit, we went outside and poked around in the garden, looking for beasties, talking about Autumn and winter, where the weeds come from, what we are going to grow where etc. She was now flagging bit, so inside for some lunch, of which she ate little. So dosed up on Calpol, she settled down under a duvet on the sofa for an afternoon of vids and DVD’s.
When Helen came home later, she had perked up a bit, esp. as mum came bearing gifts of magazines, and Playdough 
(And Mmmmm, it was real Playdo, there is nothing like the smell of the real thing) Eventually my mum rang to say they were in their new house, so I got ready to go over (I had to collect some goldfish they had brouight up from their pond) SB had been goign to come, then said she was goign to stay, then decided at the last minute to come. She did a really good job of trying to stay a wake in the car in the way – just dozed off near the end. Saw the new house, sorted out a couple of simple things for them, had litle bit of chat etc. popped to the chippy for tea, SB ws trying to eat her chips, but was really tired by now, she was almost falling alseep over them – ‘can we go home now’…I think she fell asleep in the car in about 2 minutes.
House seems quite nice if you ignore the decor in some (most?) places. a bungalow would ahve been the sensible choice, but they could find one suitable in their price range. My dad has got his ‘bionic leg’ as we joke about it- nothign quite so grand really. He is paralysed down one side, and for many years now has had to wear a leg caliper to support his foot, but this is heavy and awkward. His been fitted with pretty new thing they are trying out, which basically stimulates the muslces in the duff leg to lift the front of the foot as he walks, which stops him tripping, and means he doesn’t need the caliper. He only got it this week, so early days but seems to be working well.
We are now getting to the stage where I am more likley to be popping to them to sort something out, rather than them helping us to do stuff, which feels a little poignant, though my Dad is disabled he was always active, and in my head is still the person who was up on the roof fixing it when I was teenager, or helping us fix rotten windows and build brickwalls in the garden in the old house. Though he’ll not be doing that now (though they did help us with the fixing up of the old one before we sold it). It’s Helen’s Aunty Peggy’s funeral tomorrow, what with this, and all the things happening for Little Nanny thisd year, there is a bit of a sense of the generational baton gradually being passed on here I feel.
BB looking very grown up today (though not as much as josie, not enough hair), pulled out a load of next size clothes to sort out for her. I put her in one of the favouritist pairs iof dungarees we had for SB, still looking cute Bit of a tear in my eye though as I remembered SB wearing them, was she really so young not so long ago – less than 2 months to BB’s first birthday – excited, sad? I’m not sure.
Posted in Butterbean, moving house, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Bwahh! just shut the wrong window – goodbye post….. Luckily it wasn’t too much written.
Took the tandem out with the trailer as well for it’s first run as a full rig – ‘The Beanmobile’ To nursery and to ballet class – a few car-replacement miles to justify it’s purchase.Stringbean thought it was great having Butterbean as well. Lovely Autumn morning to be pottling along. SB seems much happier now about going off on her own into things. She’s happy now to run off to get cuddle from ‘her’ nursery nurse, always used to like me to stay for bit first, and goes off into ballet without a second thought. Good to see, as she was always happy to do this, but the move left her seemingly much less confident. Excited to have all the gear for her ballet class, though ‘Bad Daddy’ forgot to sew the little bits of elastic onto her shoes, but they stayed on fine. Quite why the teacher wants skirts above the knee when the skirts in the shop all seem to be longer than that I don’t know….. bit more sewing to be done eventually I guess. Supposed to have little basket as well. Outfit is mostly in blue though, I’m sure there are ploenty of disappointed little girls who would have preferred all pink
She of course looks just so cute in the outfit. Piccies will soon be on Flickr.
That’s about it for interesting things from today, a bit of mising catchup from Tuesday:
Morning started unsually with bit of TV – she asked to watch some TV, and had managed to pick the time when CBeebies starts on BBC2, so got to watch a bit of that first, prised her away for breakfast by promising to video a bit.
Breakfast was followed by finding library books, getting dressed etc. – always seems to be plaver when we want to get out, then she wants to take her dolly pushchair as we almost ready to go out 
, Amble round to library, drop off the books for checking back in, settle down for story time – BB seemed quite attentive as well. Then probably SB’s favourite bit of the colouring and glueing and sticking – it was a mermaid so she was happy with that. She is always the last to finish as she always wants to do two…..
Bit of a chat afterwards about HE and stuff, given pointer to a dance shop in local town, so planned a visit to finish kitting SB out with her ballet kit. home to give BB some milk whence she promptly fell asleep and slept for about 3 hours – she had had very bad night – a lot of crying – I’d ended up taking her into another room, but she still continued for bit. So me and SB had peaceful time, reading some of her library books, having lunch, watching the bit of recorded Cbeebies – Balamory, hanging out washing, whilst SB ‘helps’ – eventually decided she would be the ‘peg giver girl’ and clambers on the climbing frame – latest trick seem to be to climb along the top of the ‘jungle run’ handlebars with a foot on each one.
Main thing is that we finally started on doing something with the ‘Muddlepuddle postcards’ (a bunch of children on the Muddlepuddle email list sent postcards to each other) Pinned the map to the board, joined postacrds to location with some red wool. It’s looking very good, but still not finished as we ran out of pins – ands while we must have loads, they haven’t surfaced from the boxes yet. SB got very good at stringing the wool, tying knots and cutting it. Will do a piccie when it’s finished. However the list contained 28 other families we only seem to have 20 recieved – is it time to ‘name and shame’…?
Somewhere onong the way, SB disappeared upstairs to play with her dollies for bit, while I was on the telephone, so I left her to it to grab a bit of valuable ‘me’ time for a bit of quiet reading of the Grauniad and drinking of tea. Helen was due back from work pretty late, and a bit of kid free time is very good for keeping things on an even keel later on.
Once BB (eventually) woke it was some quick late lunch and then we whizzed off to do some shopping. Dance shop was tedious, becuase all the new classes have started and we caught the after school ‘rush’ – well it’s atiny shop, so only afew customers, but only one salesperson, so it wasn’t goign very quickly. So we had to wait what seemed like forever. SB – and BB were good though waiting so long. SB pleased to have the gear now. Popped into closing down baby shop and bought a couple of fleecy winter hats for the girls each for ?1.50 each – SB talked me into buying this fluffy plastic Tiara thing as well……
Time for quick hit on Waitrose and then home for dinner. SB was fine really, but did come out rather to often with ‘can we have’, ‘I want these not those’ etc. I was flaggin g a bit, so came out with the old chestnut ‘ I’ve just spent loads buying you your dance stuff, I don’t want to hear anymore I want’s or we will take it back’ – one of those ‘did I really say that’ moments…… Ok empty threat , but it had the desired effect
Home for dinner, a bit later than normal, and BB seemed starving, she wolfed it down and was making a fuss > Helen didn’t get home until about 8 – 8.30, so SB pleased to still be up when she got home, so she had bit of late bed time. BB of course was just happy for some proper nosh. Spagehtti and sauce from a jar (Lloyd Grossman, rather nice actually) was just about all I could manage to get for tea for us by then.
Posted in Books, Dance/drama, geography, literacy, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Had phone call from the vets this morning, yep he has dislocated his hip. Vet tried to put it back but it kept popping out (probably becuase of ruptured tissue flapping around and getting in the way). Apparently the recommended solution is to chop of the end of the Femur so that it doesn’t have to go back in the socket ! It seems that the ligaments and the cats muscles are enough to hold it in place and that they adapt to it quite quickly and are fine.
Sounds quite bizarre, but he’s the expert. Hopefully will get done today, though one of the vets is off so depends on emergencies etc. We will need to keep him indoors for a bit (we’ll try….) but at least we don’t have to keep him in small cage like we did when Whiskey broke her leg – she absolutley hated that.
Not cheap, but not dreadful either , and it’s the first time he has needed to see a vet, so amortised over his life time it’s ok. At least he was back home when it happend . If it had happened when he was still awol, who knows what would have been the result?
Edited
He’s had his op, all seems well, should come home tomorrow – then we have to just keep him indoors, with another cat and with the weekends visitors, extra children etc. Ah well we’ll try.
Posted in General
Nursery day today. Increasingly find us getting to Thursday and thinking that it is getting in the way of all the other things we could be doing. Though of course the plan is that I am at work on those days, hasn’t quite worked out like that yet though.
Afterwards took Stringbean to her first Ballet class lesson. It’s in the village which is nice, as often for us now things are elsewhere and need travelling to.
She has wanted to do ballet for it seems like ever (she said to me on the way there that she had wanted to do it in Mummies tummy). most of the other girls going there already had there leotards and their little skirts.and shoes, so she was a bit disappointed that she doesn’t have hers yet, but they had a leotard that she could borrow. Didn’t get to watch it sadly, but they did all look so cute
Seemed to enjoy it, though seemed a little disappointed as ‘they didn’t do any ballet’, which I assume means they didn’t do any twirling around, dancing etc. – more simple movement stuff. did enjoy telling us how they all got to pretend to be a ballon going pop.
We are continuing with Stagecoach for bit, but will drop it, maybe after Christmas as more things come on stream – she has enjoyed it, and it’s an area that is diffcult/impossible to cover well at home, but it’s expensive and it really messes up the weekend as it takes out Saturday morning every week (it’s a 20 mile round trip). I think it is maybe something to come back to when she is older if she really shows an interest in this area. But once she is 5 in Feb she can start proper swimming lessons – she has managed to swim a width of the pool now and that was the deal They do do stuff for under 5′s but it seems more playing, confidence stuff etc. and she is well beyond that, also Rainbows, and if I can find one a Gymnastics class (there is special Gymnastics place , but nearer would eb nice – and there is a fair waiting list for the proper classes it seems.. plus various HE stuff as well. It should keep us all busy.
On return from Ballet, I gave the kids their tea and heaed straight for the bath as Helen is normally back later today. Once out of the bath she was home and BB could feed (priorities…) and SB could play with her. Not entirely sure what was going on all the time, SB mostly scampering around with no clothes on as far as I could see. She did play a nice ‘Hide something under the cups’ game with BB.
A few future thoughts are forming. We have accquired quite a bit of stuff now – esp. books (moslty thanks to a bit of an Ebay frenzy on Helen’s part, plus a bit of Barefoot books, Redhouse, Sonlight) We could open a DK/Usborne library I think – as well as general history/science/geography type things, we have Singapore/Miquon maths, Explode the Code, various phonics reading stuff, Getty & Dubay handwriting, Sonlight Timeline stuff. We want to put together a box of sciency stuff we looked at so that when something comes up we can have a go at it there and then. a lot is general household stuff, but somethings will need buying. We were looking at the science kits Sarah has mentioned before I seem to remember. And I’ve got a couple of years worth of Krampf emails stashed away.
So plenty of things. I need to spend sometime sat down looking at and thinking a bit about it, and I sense a plan for aiming at a modicum of mild structure coming over me. Nothing to intense – one of the reason for HE is that I think school starts being too academic too early, and I am a bit Charlotte Mason-y at times. But there are areas SB enjoys such as the maths ‘match and sort’ workbooks and related mathsy stuff in general, she is gradually getting a grasp of reading, she loves trying to write things down, she loves looking at books about various periods in history. I’d like to organise things so that we can easily do bits of stuff, do Getty & Dubay regularly, try to bring bit of structure to the way we approach the maths (the ‘pick a page, any page’ approach of SB is falling down more frequently as she progresses and the concepts get a little ‘harder’.
An area I think is suffering is that of ‘nature study’ – we do do various of bits of this as it comes up., looking at beasties etc. But I was concious when down in Somerset when out walking together that we don’t seem to have done much of that recently, since we moved. When in Leeds we had Country park we used to visit, and some local woods that we often used to walk round – with some excellent big rocks for SB to clamber on. Don’t seem to ahve done much of that, TBH, though we live in village now, I don’t think I fihdn the countryside very inspiring round here to get out exploring. Must make more effort. Though even our garden itself is a good resource.
And ther are things like churches and graveyards, that SB seems very interested in for some reason, and maps – which she seems to have really got the hang of conceptually which are jsut asking to be picked up on whille the iron is hot.
So a bit of a plan is needed me thinks. There are also domestic aspects to this, as too often the house gets to much of a tip, esp. the kitchen – I find it hard to concentrate on playing/doing HE stuff wetc. witht he kids when it is too much of disaster zone. Need to work on it staying tidier. more organised.
Haven’t Flickr-ered for a few days, something very amiss there……
Posted in Books, Butterbean, Dance/drama, Out and About, Ponderings, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Suffering from ‘Bloggers Brain’ – as in I can’t remember what we did yesterday to blog it …..
I know we went shopping in the afternoon, Stringbean was very good, went to couple of shops and got some veggies from a market stall (3 caulis for 50p – bargain….) – helps out by counting out the requiste number of lemons or whatever – she always wants to buy lemons for some reason. Excellent help in Waitrose, they have small kiddie trolleys (proper trolleys, not those stupid ride in car type things), she pushed this around carefully while I had Butterbean in the buggy, carefully stacked everything in there as we went round, didn’t crash into anyone. This was quick in and out shop so not enough time to get bored and grumpy for either of them. Came home to find H home so of course BB had good munch, SB wanted to play with mum, while I did housey things (cook dinner etc. Cauliflower cheese of course, which pleased SB as it’s one of her current favourites.). Roughly put up the Kyham to air has it was wet when we packed (disadvantage with something like the Kyham, can’t just hang it up to dry) and I remembered it was still in the roofbox festering.
The main thing I rememeber about the morning is that BB went to sleep about 3 times, but woke up after about 10 minutes or so each time so got quite grumpy and so spent a fair while cuddling her, some ‘matching and sorting’ went on as did some more colouring at some point, and we didn’t fiddle about with the tandem to attach the trailer so couldn’t try out that to go to the shops in (and in fact went about 2-3 hours later than intended….) All in all it was bit of bitty unsatisfying day, to much mess around from the holiday still etc.
Today (Tuesday)
Read a chunk of the Osburne TimeTraveller Omnibus on Romans with SB over breakfast time, along with the associated little diversions of conversation that crop up. after getting dressed, pottering about erc. then found the library books (now I can look them up on the ‘puter to see which ones we have out I’m nuch better at getting them all back). Ambled round to the library, ‘Storytime’ has started up again so we sat and listened to that, did a bit of colouring and sticking to make sea horse for the undersea display before getting out some more books. Had couple of ‘going to school’ type conversations as of course various parenst kids have headed off this week. Responses to ‘We are home Edcucating’ were boringly uninterested
Had the though that things are bit like some sort of bad ’50s sci-fi, all the children once they reach a certain age, suddenly disappear from view – creepy
Home again, home again to sit down to give BB some milk and settle her down for snoooze and the a good read with SB. After lunch she found the magnetic Jiglets from when we moved and we played with them on the fridge. A slight confusion with the way words go. On the Zebra the word ran from the animals tail to it’s head, when she did fox it was the other way round, but she still did the word the same way so it was back to front , took a bit of convincing that words always go left to right A bit more dot-to-dotting and colouring (she is really into both at the moment) and maths workbooky stuff – she has a great collection of felt tips, most of which were cheap or free and are frankly rubbish, they run out in no time and clutter the place up, so finally convinced her to throw away any that have dried up and we will by a set or two of decent ones. (There are couple of Berol ones around whihc have been around for ages and are still going strong) while we played with BB then headed outside into the garden.
SB got most of the washing off the line for me (she stands on her little trampoline ), played in the still up tent, rolled around with BB, then when BB had another nap we went in and cooked tea. SB did a really good job of cutting up the tofu, carrots and cauliflower. H came home bit late as she was on call but just as were having dinner, so got to have it with us. Tidied up the playroom while dinner cooked, SB insisted I hoover soo that I could put the rug back down (wouldn’t countenance putting it back over the grub…) so it was softer for he ‘exercises’ – much jumping and twirling about, and seemi headover heels and handstands. Wa shoping to get her into soem sort of proper Gymnastics class, but haven’t managed to yet
After bath time was chatting with SB about HE and school, what she thought HE was, and what she thought school was like – no idea of course really – she did suggest we should ask M her cousin as he goes to school. Not sure what she thinks about it, but she is happy with telling everyone who asks she is not going to school and is being home educated, so we leave it at that, we don’t really mention school very often anyway, we don’t make big deal about it, just ignore it really. It’s just not part of our life.
We travelled a long way mentally in 2 years.
Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE