Usual Goings On

Jenna enjoyed playing with quilling papers right up until Rowan got hold of them and scrunched them all up. Jenna took it in better-than-usual humour. Rowan is full of tricks like that at the moment.

My biggest girly made her own land art on the park, too.

She is super-creative at the moment. It's lovely to see. So many ideas, all off the top of her head.
Like the granny-square bonnet? *grin*



This pixie-witch wears us all out. And herself, too. Well. We are just taking deep breaths, keeping a sense of humour, and reminding ourselves that all these phases come and go so quickly.  Sometimes I have to hide in the kitchen to stop myself losing it with her.  I can't remember what to do, when something she says or does is like fingernails on a blackboard to me, and I am panicking and walking away fairly often.  And also making stupid threats.  I can do better than this.  Kick up backside for mama!

Something amazing has been happening to us recently. We have gone from barely knowing any local home-ed families, to finding them everywhere! When we found the museum we wanted to visit all shut up earlier this week, we decided to just go find pizza for dinner instead. We sat next to a mama with her little girl, and the children got chatting (shy reserved unsociable home-schoolers who are practically kept in a box don't you know?) and now we have each others' details to meet up another time because *they* are educating otherwise too.

We spent half of yesterday on the park by the swimming baths with the family we met last week at the pool! It's wonderful, bumping into unschoolers and home educators everywhere we go. The mama we spent the afternoon on the play area with has links with a local Waldorf school, too.

It was sunny but bitterly cold. Rowan ended up wrapped up in my coat, eating a crispie cake and telling me her ears hurt. (Rowan quote of the week, swimming up to a stranger in the pool clutching a water toy, "Hello, I am called Rowan, and this is a whale!")

The doll house has a new kitchen, and all three of those little wild things have been playing for hours. I love finding their little set-ups. Here you can see Jenna has "borrowed" a glass candle holder of mine as a baby bath!


Rowan found a packet of biscuits in Martin's work bag and came downstairs covered in chocolate.
Me: "Rowan, Daddy would have liked some of those biscuits, you know?"
Rowan: "I didn't have any biscuits at all.  And I am still your baby, anyway."

Today is one of those really lovely days when everyone is just doing their own thing.  Jenna has voluntarily done handwriting sheets, and watched Narnia, and made her own fishing rod from a bent paperclip.  Morgan has made sand-pies and mud-pies in the garden for hours and hours.  Rowan has emptied out every jigsaw we own and tried to put them together in the wrong order, and played on the swing dressed as a fairy.  Martin and I have even managed to put away a bit of laundry, though he's now on a looong shift followed by a meeting so won't be home until 10pm.

I made a huge batch of peanut butter bars, which are delicious (something about salt and sugar together, haha) and I have already eaten several.  (I don't like things *very* sweet, so I substituted one cup of sugar for an extra cup of biscuit crumbs, and it worked fine.)

While I was looking up the recipe, I saw a link to some really gorgeous puzzle pieces.  So I searched for them in the UK and found this shop.  I am a little bit in love.  They sell white wooden geometry solids, and wooden atom sets.  It's a good job I don't have any money, or I would just have wasted every penny on retro school supplies...

And, three exciting parcels arrived.  Playsilks from Beneath the Rowan Tree (which I dare not open with the children around!) and some deliciously coloured yarn and fibres for meee!  :)