August Nine-Year-Old Birthdaying

I do have to say just how quickly it comes around, again, and how surprising it feels with this first child to be the mother of a nine year old already....


Favourite present: time turner.


Birthday morning, breakfast table set with rainbow candle and her favourite family photograph.


A party for a whole host of friends. This is the first time she has really specified a themed birthday party, and I got sort of carried away. Just a little bit. But it was amazing (and shockingly organised, for saying I don't usually work well with deadlines). ;)

(The awesome bunting is by Aisling Designs. The painting is the one that usually hangs there, a picture of Alice and her sister reading in the meadow, which Jenna made when she was five.)




Are you *sure* you don't want an olive? Quite sure? (Yes, they face painted each other. All the parents already knew me well enough to expect children to be returned home filthy with a combination of garden potion-making, glittery crafts, face paint, and cake... But still, particular apology must go to Kirsty, whose daughter attended wearing white...)






The penguins have become a tradition. I wasn't allowed to leave them off, even after complaining that they weren't very Alice in Wonderland.


Hand-decorated mad top hats were a (belatedly remembered) hit just before home-time. :)

This was the first birthday Martin has ever had to work in Jenna's life, so the first not spent together as a family. Strange to think that were our children not home educated Jenna would usually be the only one to not have school on her birthday. Anyway, to help with the disappointment of missing Daddy's presence at her celebrations, we carried birthdaying over into today and took her out to spend her birthday money, and all went swimming as a family.

To be entirely honest today was a little stressful, as the children were all extremely tired from partying (especially Talia, who had an incredible hour long screaming fit right in the middle of town, including attempting to strip all her clothes off, and two attempts to bite me). Well, Jenna had a wonderful two-day birthday, anyway, and that was the main aim. The rest of us might just want to sleep all day tomorrow!!

Weekending: Wollaton

We have weekends at the weekend now. The strangeness of a new routine again, and figuring out how we organise our days. Old rhythms creep back, a kind of normal reasserts itself. We spend weekends exploring, together as a family (and of course, these days, frequently ferrying Jenna to and from rehearsals for another show).



The summer heat has changed to breezy fresh days again, sun and shadows, blue skies and grey. It's good for me to be getting so much time outside. I so easily forget that the cure for most of our bad days is simply to take our lives into the garden.



It's going to be a while til Martin gets his first pay packet, but perhaps that too is good for us. Right when I have to choose between making life easier by throwing money at it until everything settles down, or working on creating a positive atmosphere at home and setting everything up to be simple and frugal day to day, there is no money to throw at it.

I am left with changing how I think about what we need, finding things to do for free, making up picnics and snacks from scratch, and making home as good a place to be as I can. Not being able to run away (or, for example, get a taxi in to town and buy stuff we don't need), I am instead making it nicer to be here.



Simple is just fine, right now.

Getting There

What a strange week!

I think I'm getting used to Martin being out of the house so very much, in spite of the amount of mess and chaos at home the adjustment hasn't been too difficult so far. None of the little ups and downs have thrown me, the children have settled and are relaxed and happy and getting on with various interesting little projects. It's really... normal - for here, anyway.

Yesterday wasn't the most fun day, what with Talia doing a crazy all-night-feed for no reason I can fathom. But we got through it gracefully, with lots of time out in the sunny garden, bread baking, the painting of the kitchen, and The Sword in the Stone with a big bowl of popcorn. There are worse things than chaotic days on too little sleep, and it was really reassuring that the miserable/panicky/shouty mama didn't make an appearance.

I don't know what I expected. This isn't the first huge shake up we've managed to get through, one way or another. Sometimes I imagine this seamless transition and then what we actually live is months of aimless frustration and unexpected misery. Sometimes I imagine this huge impossible hurdle and then what we actually live is barely a bump in the road.

I'm not sure I can tell yet how it will be this time, with the added complications of finishing off work on the house and my business going well and Talia still refusing to walk in the same direction as everyone else when I try to take them out. (Will this be the first child I need a pushchair for?!)

At least my kitchen is getting there, eh? :)

Seeing it as an Adventure

Town to meet Grandad Roland seemed like the best idea this morning. The kitchen refit has sort of stalled since they couldn't contact the guy who is meant to fit the floor, and he seems to have ordered the wrong size. (On the other hand, the electrician changed where he was going to fit sockets to suit how we use the room, and the plasterer has also kindly skimmed three areas of old and wonky plaster work that he didn't technically have to do at all just because I asked him if he would mind!)

Anyway, you know, buckets of wet plaster and boxes of wiring and screws seemed like a really terrible combination of things to be trying to keep Talia out of. So we went out. Waiting for grandad is fun when there are steel drums and The Ram to climb. (I used to freak out at them for climbing this, even though I certainly did as a teenager, but I'm doing pretty well on the chilled-out-mama side of things right now. It's a huge great lump of concrete, what exactly do I think they're going to do to it? I'm hardly freaking out over the height of the thing. Anyway, no freak-outs today - or recently.)

We had hot chocolate at Thorntons and played I-spy. Rowan said she could see something beginning with C ("see"). We tried some hard c sounds, and then some s sounds too just to be sure, and eventually Martin thought to try "chair". Yup, she meant chair. And told him how the "ch" sound is written.

A trip to the charity shops ended up with us buying a couple of children's books and a packet of post-it notes which I imagine will be stuck all over the house on Monday when Martin starts his new job and I am casting around for something fun and new. This will be the first time in several years that the Mister will have a *very* full time job. I'm a bit scared of the sheer full-on-ness of four mostly at home mostly on my own (to begin with anyway, because the kitchen refit will still be unfinished and I'm waiting for the children to develop chicken pox since they were exposed a week ago). I'm mostly happy and excited though, I like change and the chance to grow new rhythms. :)

Heading back home, there was a busker playing a Hang, and the children were mesmerised. He kindly let them try it out (brave of him, given how expensive and rare they are) and after about half an hour we reluctantly left for our house (happily with his CD duly purchased).

The kitchen fitters are now done for the weekend, leaving us with a cooker, a very plaster-y sink, and one plug in point. Camp dinners are the order of the day, and lots of one-pot food with minimal chopping of ingredients! It's another adventure, I guess!

Daybook with Hama beads, cupcake chaos, and a broken washing machine

Outside my window the children are playing in the garden. Two are dressed as superheroes, and one is a mermaid. The garden is in its usual disarray, with children's hand tools, toys, and empty flower pots around the place. I have just recycled an old toy box into another raised bed and weeded all the areas of my garden soon to receive the tender little seedlings from my kitchen window sill. 

It's a warm bright day in spite of the clouds, and the willow tree is almost fluorescent yellow with catkins. The hint of pink frills at the tip of one or two buds on the apple tree promise a shower of blossom any day now.

I am thinking that I will miss the warm heavy weight of this baby on my arm when she no longer falls asleep on me. :)

I am thankful for the warm fresh earth, dirty finger nails and naughty toddler footprints in the middle of my vegetable bed, the deep resonance of the wind chimes in the kitchen, the fuzzy blonde fluff of this baby's hair, and the chaos and peace of family life.

In the kitchen the floor has an array of muddy footprints, and the surfaces show evidence of an eight year old having made chocolate cup cakes all by herself - I can see dirty pans stacked up, a bowl with traces of luminescent yellow icing, and a good sprinkling of pink edible glitter. 

I have a pan of boiled eggs cooling to make sandwiches, as the children are still apparently hungry after their lunch of vegetable soup. All of this fresh air is not helping the food budget!

I have the ingredients for mixed pepper veggie fajitas and I am SO looking forwards to it - I finally found a way my children like to eat peppers cooked. :)

I am wearing my favourite yellow tshirt, and unfortunately, pink PJ bottoms with lace around the hems. I have four pairs of trousers, and all of them have been child-ed, and our washing machine is broken. We have had to go four days without doing any laundry (except what we can carry over to my brother's house to use his machine) because it took us that long to get money together and find a machine within budget. My brother is helping us pick the new one up tonight hopefully, and I will have clean trousers, yay!

I am creating a huge cream shawl (for me), a small ribbed beanie (for the gorgeous Jo of Journey's Way Photography), and a yellow bonnet for my shop. Oh, and the children have had the Hama beads out today, though I'm not so much creating with those as constantly finding stray beads and picking them up...

I am wondering what Rowan is saying, talking in a funny voice to her Octonauts in the big wooden dolls house. Her sweet chatter is rather endearing when not directed at me in a stream of requests for more food (she is definitely having a growth spurt again)!

I am reading Mirror Dreams by Catherine Webb - written when she was just fourteen and really very inventive and fun, but unfortunately I am just not getting anywhere with it as I've only had reading time this week very late at night when I'm too tired to concentrate!

I am hoping for good news from one or more of the applications Martin has been feverishly filling in. He is struggling with rejection and not feeling useful. (Prayers welcome!)

I am looking forward to getting a backdated payment from working tax credits from the short period when both Martin and I were working long hours. I have no idea how much it will be, but it will be something, and when you have broken appliances and close to zero income, the prospect of a one off payment for *anything* is a relief.

I am learning how to make easy skirts from large tshirts, how to properly clean beeswax crayons, more lace knitting skills, and as usual I am learning how much easier it is to manage the garden if I work it all year round rather than April to September. ;)

Around the house I have a lot of laundry. Four days without a washing machine will do that when there are six in the house and one in cloth nappies and one who still veery occasionally wets the bed (and of course did so, on the day the machine broke). *sigh*
Oh, on the other hand, I did finally manage to hang (in my bedroom) the beautiful shell garland I made when Talia was born - from shells sent to me all the way from the very far North.

One of my favourite things is the joyful creativity of a group of children with a cardboard box.

A few plans for the rest of the week: well I will hopefully have some new shop yarn arrive soon for dyeing. And we'll be at the museum session on Friday. And that's about it. Next week it's Martin's birthday. :)

A peek into my day...





Simple Woman's Daybook

Smiling, anyway

We're in that funny place again where it's suddenly hitting us that Martin might not find work right away. And then where does the money come from, and how do we balance everything, and how do we keep working at creating a warm, safe, peaceful home when all the grown-up stuff is stressful and confusing?

I'm working away, trying to make sales and build my little dye business. And I'm smiling, and anchoring myself to the future in which we're thriving and I'm thriving and creating beautiful things and actually getting paid for it. He's searching away, and writing letters, and applying for courses. And he's smiling, and enjoying the precious extra time with his children, and cleaning out the kitchen cupboards and putting laundry through and other things that are usually my special privilege what with being at home more...

And she, well, she's always smiling.


I long for a more self-sufficient lifestyle. I long for the feeling that I am on top of the household chaos. I long for a glimpse of certainty that I'm not messing everything up for my children, and the silencing of the constant chatter of self-doubt and self-criticism in my head. And so we believe, and we work, and we plan, and we strive, and we wait. And smile in spite of everything threatening to overwhelm us.

Yarn Along - a trying-not-to-wallow post

My biggest baby is away this week, and I'm missing her company very much.  We have settled back in to friendship after some months of uneasy boundary-pushing, figuring out how we relate as she gets more independent, working out our roles as we dance the give-and-take of learning together.  It's strange not having her here suddenly, just for a week though it feels longer.  We're not used to being apart much and I think it's good for us now and again.  Before she left I quickly crocheted her up a cowl as defence against the coastal breezes, in yarn that she dyed with me.  :)

This week my knitting has mostly been whipping up two of these leafy hats (which I really will write down the pattern for, some day) for the shop; I love these hats, but getting Talia to sit still for one second to get a good photograph is just asking too much!







Look at that cheeky little creature!  She finally has four teeth on the bottom row now, I noticed this morning. She's the only one of us not stressed out about the Mister losing his job (and the attendant despair over our finances just as we were finally back in control of our money).  We don't even know how my little fledgeling business will impact on welfare payments and how that is all going to work under the ill-explained new system.  Somehow, we'll figure things out.  I don't want to apply for outside work, but at least Talia doesn't much mind me being away from her if I do need to.

Not much time for reading in all of that, but I did finish the Percy Jackson series (annoying) and read another of The Mysterious Benedict Society books (nerdy and awesome) which I was checking out for Jenna.  I have some Kate Griffin novels (the Matthew Swift series) which I'm enjoying but finding slow going and slightly self-absorbed but not *entirely* undeserving of the comparison with Neverwhere (which is high praise, so perhaps almost cancels out my complaints about them)!

Joining in with Ginny and friends.

Still here...

Updates are lacking not because anything is terribly horribly wrong, but only because we are in that plateau state in between disaster and recovery.  There is no way to bounce back yet, as we still have no further information, so we are stuck with that crazy-making sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And when it does - if it does - we'll deal with it.  I hate being cryptic, but I don't really have any choice and I *can't* not talk and I *can't* not write.  We are here in this... odd, flat, precarious safe place where nothing drastic is happening and we are just carrying on as if everything were normal.

It's Rowan's birthday next week.  Jenna is going away with my mum just before.  I haven't even started making the required birthday gift for the little person who will be four, nor begun the task of packing for the eldest one.  We're also right in the middle of Passover and Easter stuff.  With the usual craziness that comes from my merrily keeping two sets of feasts that often fall at the same times.  The festival preparations are so grounding and normal and filled with colour and joy, I can't help but be cheered and uplifted.  Perhaps this is part of what the wheel of the year is for, all those little celebrations marked off around the journey to remind us...  Things are changing, we are not stuck, and that there is always reason to glory in the season of life right here and now.

I could really put all of this into far fewer words.  We are all OK.  Really really OK.

More thoughts from the storm

The snow is still falling, and I am still low.  Every time I look outside I see more flurries of snow, more white skies, every time I step outside and the biting wind cuts through all layers I feel resentful.  I don't *want* the pretty white cold stuff.  I'm ready for Spring and warm earth and planting and light and green.

The ceiling isn't leaking any more.  I'm counting that as a major improvement on the situation.  The work men coming and going laughed to be followed pied-piper-like by a string of small children wanting to see what they were doing.

Yesterday Rowan asked me why I was crying, and I told her it was because I feel like I get everything wrong.  She patted me gently and said, "You don't, mummy."  Sweet as she is, I don't believe her.  I really feel like everything that could have gone wrong this month did, and I'm still waiting for worse news.  If it could possibly be extrapolated as my fault, it is.

Lemon yoghurt muffins are in the oven as I procrastinate about making lunch.

The living room still looks like a disaster zone.  I have been trying to tidy it, unsuccessfully, all morning.  I'm so easily distracted - by muffins, by music, by just going to check the dye pot one more time, by a snippet of something floating through my head that I have to check *right now*.  I am not getting very far.  Procrastination is pretty much the main thing I have got done today.

I can't remember the last time I really felt like me, and it was a long time before that when I last felt like I knew what I was doing.

Jenna is sitting scraping the last bits out of the bottom of the yoghurt pot with a long spoon, reading a recipe book - she is planning to cook for us again and can't decide what to make.

Sweet children, curious and lively and bright.  Still, after all this long Winter, the snow is just more magic and another adventure.  The lack of transport and money are irrelevant, life is just fine in a house full of books with the park so close and friends who drop in to visit.

Without saying a word to me, they somehow creep in to this miserable overwhelmed posting of mine and make it lighter.  The way little blonde naked baby edges her way up to the stool to sit down, not yet quite confident to judge distances; the way she shouts "HIYA" at me in outrage because she wants my phone.  Morgan with a hippy flowered headband, lots of sparkly rings, and rainbow owl socks.  Ack, they are perfectly lovely people.

Spaces

When Talia moves out of our bed, it will be straight into a bedroom with her three sisters.

Straight into a bunk bed in fact, in a teeny bedroom containing four beds.  Whilst I really don't worry about them sharing a room, them each being able to get time away from the others is a concern - more or less, much of the time.  They also really have nowhere to put their things where the others can't get at them.

We are trying to get shelves up for each of them beside their beds.  And they have art and things on the walls marking out their special space, their retreat from each other.

We do everything we can to defend those bed spaces, helping to remove sisters who don't respect property rules.  Oh it is only going to get harder as they get older and seek out space from each other more often!

There is a small spare room here.  Right now it is a guest room /play space, and they take it in turns to sleep on the floor in here if and when they request an escape from the shared space.

I do wonder if this will be enough, whilst knowing that we are unlikely to ever move.  In many ways, we have chosen to be poor - at least, we have chosen to pursue our dreams and what we wanted for our children even knowing that the compromise would likely be money.  :)

I love their little room spaces, the things they have chosen to display.  And I really am going to get around to sorting out shelves for them all.  Before Talia moves in.  ;)

PS: can you guess which bed belongs to which girl?  :)

Saturday Thoughts

Outside my window... the hedge is bare and newly cut.  The sky is grey, and the reddish tiles of the terraces across the road are oppressively close.

I am thinking... about how very blessed I am to have these wild free beautiful children.  I am dreaming in fairy tale archetypes.  And planning new ways to work the tiny space of this house into a restful place I actually like to be.

I am thankful... for baby smiles and the colour yellow.  For cups of hot tea, goodbye kisses, picture books and cotton yarn.  For spiritual encouragement and cold wet grass under my feet as I run to the washing line in the early morning.  That Morgan's trip to the dentist went so well and easily, and she felt so very confident and calm.


In the kitchen... the dishes are piled rather high, and all of the food plans are in disarray, and lunch ended up being rice crackers, cheese, boiled eggs, mince pies (my first this year!) and strawberries.

I am wearing... stripy pyjamas!  Comfy and warm.  :)  It's just not a getting dressed kind of a day.

I am creating... I just cast off the last of some little collecting pouches, and some toddler welly socks are next on the list.  I just finished some more custom dyeing, and I have a list of Christmas knitting barely started.  I hand-sewed a kit bag for Jenna's new dance class, but it isn't quite done yet.

I am wondering... what goes through this funny little baby head.  She seems to have forgotten that her tongue is hanging out again...

I am hoping... we find the document for the car key code so that we can get a new key.  The alarm goes off every time we open the car at the moment (yes, this IS the new one!) and it's grating on my nerves.

I am looking forward to... some fun outings for the kidlets hopefully, this month.  But mostly I am SO looking forward to Martin getting home this evening, and beyond that, Martin having a few days off.  We planned for him to take holiday this week, but now it looks likely to be at least another week before he can.

I am learning... all over again the slow steady dragging crawl out of depression, how to cling to the good, and how important it is to remember to meet my own needs in the tug of small hands and chorus of small voices.

Around the house... I have one less child for a while, as she walks around the reservoir with my mum.  Morgan is drawing while she listens to some classical music, and Rowan is running around rescuing sea creatures with the help of some small plastic Octonauts.  Talia is crawling around with a crayon in one hand and an expression of determination.  Where she is taking that crayon is anyone's guess.

A few plans for the rest of the week... going to visit friends further away (just for a day trip).  I think a fairly normal week this week.  Library, swim, that sort of thing.  Next weekend should be fun, as it's Derby Feste and the Woodland Festival at Elvaston Castle, all rolled into one mad weekend.  :)

A peek into my day...



Simple Woman's Daybook

Today's Goings On

The children woke up this morning clamouring to do some maths puzzles.  Where are our workbooks?  We want to do multiplication!  (You WHAT?!  Um.  OK.  Whatever you want, kids!)  It's a Saturday.  I cannot break myself of the habit of thinking that maths is a chore I would never volunteer for, *especially* on a Saturday.

At the moment Martin is working from breakfast to bedtime on a Saturday.  I'm not getting used to it.  Saturday has felt, my whole life, like the one day that should not have claims on my time.  Since we started haphazardly and imperfectly keeping Saturday as holy time, working on a Saturday has felt like an especially huge compromise.

Perhaps it's the familiar pattern of our past days, that I am at home and Daddy is out all day, but the girls see Saturday as the best of times to do school-looking stuff from the moment they rise.

(If anyone stops by and sees them sitting at a desk with work books and pencils, discussing the differences between animal cells and plant cells, I am not the controlling home-school mama forcing them to work weekends.  Honestly.  If they are doing multiplication at 7am on a Saturday, there is NO WAY it could have anything to do with me, and my maths teachers over the years would cite numerous failures to complete homework as evidence.)

After their maths-hunger was sated, they helped put some laundry away (from the Laundry Pile of Doom, which is still eating my kitchen doorway).  Jenna wished for a cream cake during circle time.  We decided to take a slow meander to the village to visit the bakers.  I am determined that Martin's work schedule will not keep us confined to the house, although venturing out with sole responsibility for the four of them still scares me!

While I was attempting to get clothes on to the two younger ones, and to at least persuade Rowan to wear *something* other than pyjamas, Jenna and Morgan watched some of the Paralympics; cycling and swimming.  They engaged in some wrestling which they assured me was play, until Jenna told Morgan to "get off [her] bladder!"  They then had to look up what and where the bladder is using the human body encyclopaedia.  They are making a life size human body model.  I am guessing I will have to help them add a bladder to it any day now.

Just before we left, Jenna remembered that we didn't do any painting yesterday, and for once I stopped myself rushing them out of the door and pulled out their journals quickly instead.  Partly I wanted to remember to go at their pace and that it isn't a race to get things done.  Mostly I wanted the painting to have an empty house to dry in.  ;)

When we got back from our jaunt we were all pretty tired, and Morgan had impressive grazes on all four limbs from tripping over her own feet (at speed).  We played the new space board game we found in a charity shop, and spent a while discussing why Pluto is no longer classed as a planet.  I did some work on a batik playsilk, with small "helpers" in and out of the kitchen.  They watched a couple of episodes of Avatar.  I separated warring factions after some "earthbending" turned into a contact sport...  And Jenna read a couple of Rowan's favourite books to her.

They took it in turns to use the computer.  Jenna wanted to play on a geometry site, and use the 3D model solar system.  Morgan did some number games on Sesame Street.  Rowan played on Poisson Rouge, and the others hung over her shoulder offering suggestions and trying to remember words in French.  They had a contest to see who could remember all the parts of the body, and Morgan won.  I made nachos for them to coax them away from the game, which was getting push-and-shove competitive.  The fighting is pretty intense at the moment, but today was actually fairly calm - probably because they had so many other things they wanted to do!

More Paralympics were the background noise to a long stint with the human body book, a lift-the-flap book about the Solar System, and old Atlas, a few board books, and a baby sign book.  This week Jenna and Morgan have both done more reading than in the previous month.  Books are *everywhere* right now, and trying to corral them back on their shelves is a fruitless effort.

Jenna came and made the tomato sauce for dinner, and Rowan kept going back and forth and leaving the gate open for Talia to attempt Operation Eat Cat Food.  They are not done yet.  Jenna has another book out and is talking about the atmosphere.  Morgan and Rowan are semi-bickering (as close as it gets to co-operating at the moment) over the dolls house and Sylvanians.  Talia is banging a spoon on an empty mug with great enthusiasm.  Avatar is queued up on Netflix but isn't playing right now (and pretty soon it's getting turned over to Doctor Who - whoop)!  The Jenna-size body model they are making is still out, though every time Talia shows an interest in it I get palpitations.

This is what unschooling is like for us.  And yet, at the same time, it isn't.  Today is so ordinary, so typical, in many ways.  In other ways it is like no day we have ever had.  Things seem to cycle here - looking like nothing at all, then a few weeks later looking like a full time 24/7 education and a half.  Jenna will voluntarily read a chapter book a day for a week, gorging an entire series, and then will resist reading so much as a product label for a few days more.  The interests that carry them through project after project, some barely surface research and some lasting months and years, change as quickly as do these four marvellous little explorers.

I didn't set out to say anything in particular today, so I'll leave it there, just a flavour of our lives together, a glimpse into the best just as you often get to see my worst.  And a picture of Morgan at the museum yesterday, pondering seriously the importance of getting the right crayon for the job!

Sunday on a Tuesday

How is it that the week keeps on getting away from me almost before I've had time to notice it?  This week has gone by very quickly so far, even though each day has felt pretty long.  Martin has been working hard again, and it's strange to go for weeks with him working minimal hours and mostly afternoons to suddenly a week of being on my own with the girls almost all of the time.

Sunday afternoon on the park is a favourite tradition now.  As the summer wears on, the sprinklers in the water park get turned on, although there is no earthly way I will be coming down here like this in the school holidays!  Anyhow, the water means that baby and I are left totally alone for a while - her to sleep, me to knit.





Look!  Something for me!  :)  It's nearly half way done now too.

Mum came to meet us for a coffee in the community cafe.  Tali was keen on Em dog right up until she got "kissed".

Evening snuggles, both at once successfully for the first time ever (Tali is a jealous baby, and usually won't let Rowan feed at the same time!) - Rowan has felt a bit headachey and sleepy this week.  I have so few nursing pictures from the past year or so...  But yes, my littlest two are still tandem nursing.  :)

So far this week, we have done boring food shopping, I have worked on crafting projects to sell, Jenna has read a heck of a lot of many different books (and also watched quite a bit of Avatar: The Last Airbender).  I have totally failed to tidy up at all, and my laundry pile is out of control.  But we are rubbing along wonderfully well, and *pleasantly* busy, and very much looking forwards to Martin having a day off!

More Outings

Those middle of the week days when Martin has his days off from work, we go further afield rain or shine.  This week it was definitely rain.  We took ourselves to Sudbury, and had a swampy walk around the lake.

Rowan found some rainbows to admire in the puddles near the hall.

The new woodland play area is fabulous!

The Museum of Childhood is so popular with the children we somehow always end up leaving at closing time.  The staff are so great with the kids, and very patient.  Rowan made a particular friend of one volunteer, and she walked around the top floor with her helping to name all the dolls and animals.  A frog called Kermit ("I got Kermit on my television!") and a crocodile called Emily later, Roo slipped and tumbled on the stairs and the volunteer lady got to her first and picked her up.  So very kind and caring.

Jenna was eager to fill in a comments card:

As usual, Wednesday is swim day.  (We popped in to the sling meet at soft play first, and it was lovely to catch up with folks but soft play was a horrendous headache!)  Three little girls outside swimming:

And the play area afterwards was sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy, crazy.  Half of the time, baby and I were under the umbrella to keep us fairly dry - the other half of the time the umbrella was needed to keep her from getting burned by the blazing sun!

Little rained-on baby nursling.

I worked the first two repeats of my leafy scarf, in that gorgeous squishy alpaca and silk yarn.  Emma worked on another amigurumi dragon.  :)

Really, overall, we have had a great week.  Towards the start of the week, goodness, being indoors most of the time hiding out from the crazy weather, well it was starting to grate on my nerves.  The girls were all being fairly nice to each other, but I was still feeling that indefinable need to get away from them.  I reckon it's 50% noise intolerance, 25% lacking adult company, and 25% being in a confined space together for too long.  Anyway, a good walk and two days mostly out of the house cured me of my restless impatience.  

So today is a home-y garden-y day.  Right this moment, Jenna is watching West Side Story.  Morgan is dressed as a flamenco dancer, writing notes in her new journal.  Rowan is stark naked (as usual), counting up to thirty (impressive but unfathomable - why?), and running up and down the stairs holding a toy turtle and a wooden fairy.  I am recovering from a 4am start dyeing some yarn.  Look: fox colours!