Author Archives: HHaricot

Whirl of a weekend

katy and B arrived for the weekend friday lunchtime, which was great. we were disorganised as usual and grabbed the little beans from nursery. Cue the girls disappearing smartish! SB gave a guided tour which involved redressng both of them as princesses and off they went. Much, much later on the resurfaced to listen to the twelfth night story from while the bear sleeps and some apple tree farm books.

A few other standoffs were eased with colouring,games: hungry hippos and don’t wake dad, but actually they got on extremely well, and the standoffs were low key affairs. What amazed me totally was that after an exceptionally rowdy baths they had fallen asleep by 9.30 – what a result! It gave me and Katy plenty of time to natter, discuss wish lists etc etc.

Next day – to our shame, Katy was up first to accept a parcel before either of us had surfaced. In our defence it was cos BB had been absolutely appalling at sleeping! however, it was our seed order = hooray! SB and I pored over the packets, and she decided which were her favourites – in particular the popcorn sweetcorn!

big girls ran around, and BB pootled at our side being adorable. She is definately saying an approximation of look -ook, and pointing at the same time. SHe is a very inquisitve girl, and loves pressing buttons, and also the wacky wiggler cogs. her dancing also improving, with bobs down as well as wiggles, swaying and head shakes! quite the mover and groover. She was also doing lots of drawing – at one point joining in with the big girls – and this was great! Funnily, B kept calling BB ‘Small’ [from making it up] for the first evening.

After lunch the big girls made carrot cake with me, with all the labour absolutely divided equally – I do love using cups! Amazingly it rose as well!!! i must finally be getting this cake making busines [Merry, I need a prairie muffin badge before I ruin it!]. They did some Hama whilst it was cooking and then iced the cake [rofl - would you like some cake with that icing?] and ‘decorated’ it with sprinklies. At some point the playdough came out too.

What else? well, more demonstration of their imaginations, a start at a wacky wigglers robot, hide and seek, excellent 10 number bonds with hungry hippos [ha ha] and some attempt at the 5 times table using all the hands available [maths then!], a show performed by the light of some of the wackly wigglers for us too. Lots of singing of christmas carols in particular.

they went to bed eaily enough but not straight to sleep, they weren’t particularly noisy, but certainly shattered the next day. BB not quite so awful at night – thankfully. Poor katy, spending her weekend with zombies in a shambolic chateau!

Next day SB voluntarily got out explode the code – amazing!! Though she did tell B it was boring. We finished the wacky wiggler, and then did Yoga for children – as Katy had brought the DVD. Thanks Katy, just what i was after! Lunch, some violin playing and the home time. SB was gutted when they left to go home, and wished they lived next door. A few melting moments due to extreme shatteredness! I had a great time nattering as well, so a succesful visit, and looking forward to seeing katy and family in feb.

After they had gone we unwound, did some explode the code, lots and lots of painting, read loads of books together – SB remembered she hadn’t had her 12th night present, so we did today as 12th night read the story again, and got the little token present to go with the story. [another dressing up dress 2nd hand from ebay]

she has had lots of bumps and accidents, so ether drop down exhausted or expecting a growth spurt. BB ecstatic that SB playing with her again, especially when she read BB 2 of her books. Both have been lovely and cuddly this evening. BB coughing at rattling a lot though, so have given her some ventolin that gp gave us a while back but wasn’t sure whether to or not. hmm, wait and see.

you dont need to flickr for back-up

oh, no thaty why we have lost some photos – lucklilly taken care of by back flickering!

Katy arrived

children having a great time splashing in the bath at the mo.

Welcome, O great and masterful one, Helen

that’s better!

[chris sniggering in background!]

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howdy helen

honestly, this is the new wordpress and so far dont like all the blue, and the howdy helen nonsense – grumble grumble!

well after the great tax news the beans came back from nursery.

SB got stuck straight in with the wacky wigglers to make something for BB. My friend Liz from work popped by on her way home and stayed for tea – very nice – so SB enticed her into playing don’t wake dad. She also wrote Liz a thankyou letter and gave her a picture. Also made us giggle by her sp-ell -in-g t-al-k, a bit like a dalek on an off day! BB doing her very noisy giggle and just being adorable.

Went to bed with no fuss. We are looking at getting her a few more story cd’s as she is prob a bit bored with hers. There are some young classics greek myths, and also perhaps the barefoot story tree one. I also wondered about the E Nesbit ‘however many children and it’. In my dim recollection it seems to be spanning the faraway tree to the secret 7 gap? Are you the expert here Merry?

Also, Mistakenly, looked at the book people and caved in to buy angelina ballerina set for her birthday. she wanted it every time she saw the catalogue, and books are good value here. And a readers series. oops.

Think we will opt for john lewis pans as they are essentially free as we have vouchers, and after seeds and book people order…

Looking forward to blogbumping tomorrow- i am afraid Katy that decs likely to stay up past twelfth night at this rate.

Oh, and rather annoyingly, I have my first kakuro failure! I finished grid, and last number entered is wrong – ie a 7 for the across or a 6 for the down. So i chased it back, but haven’t found out where to change to get it right. So annoyingly will have to wait for the guardian answer for number 080 to see where I went wrong

what we should grow'exeter maths'SB's card for usBB's card for us

RESULT!!!!

woohoo, i have just rung the tax office about who I send it too. She said I had been sihned off tax returns as I earn under 100,000 unless my circs changed. I said they had, but i still [unfortuntately] earn less than 100,000 so don’t need to do it.
I explained I usually did them to update my subscruption costs to have that put in tax code. She says fine, jsut write us a letter with new costs and it will be done – magic genies stuff!!

dancing with joy, just a letter!!!

so why is it

that my bloody month 12 and p60 are the only things missing??? bollox.
have rung for month 12 to cobble, but can’t get new p60. bloody hell.
so no tax return today then.

Started late as BB and Sb went to sleep at 5.30 and BB woke at 6.30, so I then slept til 12.30!!

found some more writing…

…this time on the doors of her newly painted bedroom wardrobe.
The riot act has been read, story time tonight docked and stickers for bedroom delayed!
What makes it worse, was that she pretended her cousin had done it!
It says SB predictably.

double trouble!

I still have migraine, but chris doesn’t like to be left out, so got a caustic soda burn on forearm and hand from finally unblocking the drain – full of animal fat crud -yukkety yuk. Obviously a present from previous owners! Anyway i dressed it, and it should be OK. told him if he gets compartment syndrome I get to slice open forearm – wicked gleam!!

We obviously had a rather shite night, as BB didn’t settle, and SB then joined us in bed, so a Mummy sandwich as 2 little beans had a competition on who get the closest!

So a slow start to the day. Infact, I may have to come back to the beginning – rofl! [Edited to add – SB shrugged and sid mostly Sindy’s and doing mazes] Anyway, slightly later SB cut out piccies of fruit and veg from the catalogues that she would like to grow, and stuck them on some paper for her file!! [i like self directed] She did 4 pages of exeter maths – first 2 she did some of the writing, but the second 2 she just gave the answers. this is once we got past the problem of 2 less being the same as takeaway 2. Once translated into sweetie maths she was away!

She then had a haircut – much needed! And Chris bought a tool for the drains to attatch to pressure washer. We read the Ulysses story from our usbourne greek heroes and perseus from ladybird famous legends. The ladybird one has a handy map of greece, so wee had a peek where places were – including Tiryns! I have been to lots of these places interrailing as a student, and really recommend the pelopponnese for the equally ruin addicted – and cret for that matter! mycenae was stunning. Anyway, I digress! following on from this, we jumped ahead in the story of the world to read the crete bit, as I had been talking about bull dancers. We have read the theseus story before, but SB loves them, so not unhappy to hear it again. Susan Wise Bauer doesn’t abandon Ariadne. I think part of the greek mythness of these stories is the casual dropping of women and children, and also the casual attitude towards cruelty and homily free status. BB feeding and the napping for this marathon!

After this she had a bit of a bike ride, but soon abandoned as I wouldn’t come outside with her, and instead worried over Chris, who had just had caustic soda incident. SO a smidgen of fresh air! We did a bit of recap on the piano - she had pretty much forgotten, but did find D. she enjoyed the ‘lesson’ – all of 5 mins and then pootled around again doing her own thing. I’m going at this in the ‘you want to make music, is this useful?’ Approach for now.

Sb and BB played together a bit with the shape sorters and the hammer shape toys, SB abandoning this in favour of the leap pad for a bit, until BB’s interest got too great to be distracted by Mummy reading books and playing! SB read to me a whole red nose reader – trying hard to sound the words and doing very well. She seems very keen on Maddy’s word flower thing, so maybe try that out.

She was also very good assistant at dressing Chris’s burns [made him go to the chemist!] so we had a discussion on being careful with chemicals even though they don’t look very dangerous – she could clearly see why! Also on dressings and bandages – minimal obviously! So red cross ticked too.

Whilst cooking tea she wanted to write the names of everyone who was here over Xmas, so with some spellings prompted she has done just that. Chris is supervising tea as BB a bit fretful, and if she sees me she will just want to bf. We will play a game or 2 of whatever takes her fancy before bath as well.

Re Merry’s chore thing, and we have also been gradually introducing chores – SB has to tidy her things away before lunch and tea, and if requested without a fuss, including BB’s things. She also lays the table for us. Not too onerous, but having a blank canvass after the meal frees the mind! We are also going to try and keep the main living bits tidier as a rule, so that we can actually not feel there are loads of jobs weighing us down every evening.

Mind you, I feel weighed down today, as this evening I am collecting together everything needed for a tax return, and will do it tomorrow, sigh!

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