NotSheep

It hasn’t been the easiest of weeks around here.

Barney is still stressing about going to France. He’s been snappy with everyone, and doing that “oh yeah I have to do everything and nobody else cares and I never get anything I want and everybody else always gets their way” thing - which is kind of a teen thing too, so maybe that’s part of it too. Either way, it’s not fun to live with.

Henry seems to have fallen asleep for a couple of weeks. By this I mean, he admits to having slept through much of school for a while, and to not having followed what he’s been taught in maths for two or three years. I’ve worked hard with him and he’s now much stronger on many basic concepts than he was. But in the last two weeks, there have been numerous occasions when he has simply shut down and not even tried when we’ve been working. After having had a concept explained three or four times, and having shown me that he understands it and can use it each of those times, he would come back and act as though he’d never heard of it. At one point this week I shouted at him and told him that I wasn’t willing to put in this much time and effort for anyone who wasn’t willing to make any effort themselves, and he wasn’t to bother me until he was ready to show up with his brain engaged. He went and sulked in the bathroom for a while, then came back and re-did all of the questions he’d got wrong (which was 11 out of 12 of them), and got every single one right. Today was a lot better, so I’m hoping he’s switched his brain back on permanently. I’m not proud of how I handled it though.

He was complaining of a slightly sore throat this morning and didn’t want to swim this afternoon, so we left him at home - he was a bit surprised that we’d leave him here alone, but heck, what did he think I thought he was going to do He skipped basketball this evening too. Barney went to fencing and George went off to a Cub Quiz, which meant plenty of taxi-ing went on. All home safe and sound now though

George has been really, really hard work this week. He’s been freaking out at just about everything. Any minor change has him going before I even finish the first sentence. Usually I can figure out what’s bothering him; this time I have a couple of ideas about what might be behind this, but I’m not sure.

Freddy has been Freddy, though every time I look at him I want to yell at him to stop licking his lips and the skin around them, as he’s got a great big oval red rash where he’s been sucking and biting on it.

Jack and Toby have been fine. Well, Toby managed to get through yesterday with only twenty minutes of sleep all day, so that was fun (not). And Jack has been Jack; he’s lovely but he’s very very four (if you have a four-year-old boy, you’ll know what I mean!) Today at the swimming pool one of the guards was laughing at him and said to me, “He’s always smiling” - and I thought, yeah, he is a very cheery little guy. He’s just so… determined. About everything. Nothing sways him. He’ll either rule the world or blow it up.

As for me, I’m finally almost back to normal health, though I’m still coughing a bit. Being sick hasn’t helped me manage any of the above, and I’m sure my not-coping hasn’t improved any of the things I’m not coping with. I don’t think I’ve ever meant it more when I said TGIF.