NotSheep

YAWWWWWNNNNNNNNN

Sorry about that. I was out for more than twelve hours yesterday and drove well over 200 miles. Not the ideal thing to be doing at a time when driving three miles to spend five minutes in a small shop is usually enough to leave you tired - but for a good cause. Barney had the first portion of his French GCSE exam - the “speaking” component. We stopped by the home of friends who live (relatively) locally to the school first, where Barney had a snack and then he and I drove to the school. He was a little bit nervous, but okay. The teacher who has arranged all of this has been amazingly supportive - talking with Barney and telling him what he needed to work on, sending me text-messages to remind me of the date for the exam etc - and he greeted us in French and set about putting Barney at ease. He explained to both of us exactly what format the test would have, exactly how it would be conducted etc. Then Barney was given information about which role-play situation etc had been selected for him, and left for a few minutes to prepare.

Barney feels it all went well. There are three separate sections to the speaking test - a conversation on several topics, a role-play scenario, and a presentation on a subject of the candidate’s choice, which is followed by a discussion during which the examiner asks questions on the presentation material. Barney did his presentation on the book “Stormbreaker”; I’ve put up what he wrote and presented here - I think he hit all the requirements for using different tenses and a variety of sentence structures etc He felt he might have lost a mark or two because he hesitated once or twice in the conversation part - this would be his normal speaking-style, but could be interpreted by an examiner as due to uncertainty about French vocabulary or structure. But overall, he was happy with how he’d done, and glad to have it over.

So there’s another milestone: he’ll never have the first bit of his first GCSE exam ever again.

Since Barney was the final candidate of the day, the teacher chatted with us for a while afterwards - just general conversation, not about the exam itself or how Barney had done. I don’t think he’d have been allowed to give us any idea of how Barney had done anyway, and had mentioned to Barney that if the teacher didn’t offer any information about it, he shouldn’t ask. The examiners from the Board can always adjust marks anyway - the whole thing is recorded. We were planning to go pick up some fast food, then come back for my friends’ sons who are pupils at the school, but by the time we were ready to leave, it was only fifteen minutes before they were due to finish, so we thought we’d better just wait. The teacher, on hearing we were taking them home, offered to go and get them out early though, so he did that, and they didn’t object very strongly, and we all headed back to their house, where the boys played and talked for a few hours before we had to leave for home.

The next component is the “listening” bit, which consists of a tape-recording being played and the candidates writing the answers to the questions on the exam paper. I’m not at all concerned about this bit - Barney’s French is well above the standard required, and every time we’ve done a past-paper for this bit, he’s achieved full marks. We’ve a full month before that paper, so we’re going to take a break from studying for a few days now. After the listening component, we have another week, then two papers in one day: reading and writing. Reading is basically comprehension - they get a text in French and questions on the paper and they write the answers to the questions. The writing bit will be the challenge for Barney, because he writes very slowly, and also because it requires more organisation - he’ll need to go in, make a fast-but-good plan of what he’s going to write, and then get it all down on the paper in the time allowed.

There has been other stuff going on here in the last few days, of course - it’s just that the exam has been very much in our minds. On Saturday, we acquired a new set of bunk-beds from Freecycle - the kind with a double on the bottom and a single on the top. The idea was that Toby might sleep on the bottom - being wider, he’s less likely to fall off, plus if one of us ends up in with him, it won’t be so cramped. So far, that’s gone well: he’s started off in that bed on four nights and has stayed for the whole night twice. I’m not bothered about him coming in to us during the night at all, it’s just that when he insists on being in the middle of my bed (rather than in the bedside-cot), I do wonder if he’s going to flatten the new baby

Since that has replaced one of our sets of standard bunk-beds (i.e. two singles), I put them on Freecycle, and got a reply from someone I know through the home-ed group - very glad to hand them over to her!

On Monday we went to a birthday part for one of Jack’s best friends. It was very nice to be greeted at the door by this six-year-old spotting us and yelling “YES!” Barney stayed at home to revise, but the other boys all had a great time, and we arrived home hot and tired. Toby had slept in the car, so bounced about a bit longer than the others; I did laugh when Scratchy said to him, “Are you going to sleep or what!” and Toby replied, “What!”

And finally…for those who follow me on twitter and were wondering why I was chuckling at a billboard ad for the zoo - our local zoo has a monkey with a reputation for escaping. Their new billboard ads feature a big close-up of the monkey and the words, “Are you coming to see me, or do I have to go and see you?” Well it made me laugh. Maybe I don’t get out enough

Nothing to report here. Move along.

Well actually no, don’t move along. Not until after you’ve seen just how cool this two-year-old can be:

And this is George and Freddy doing history this morning - they’re learning about medieval castles. This is not a particularly surprising pose for the two of them; I often find them sharing the same space.

Not much else happening here. I got a Little Tykes house from Freecycle yesterday - we have one in Jack and Toby’s bedroom, but someone was giving away a couple that had been outside and I thought they’d have fun with one in the garden. So while everyone else charged about the street on bicycles, I went to collect that and we pressure-washered the algae off it. Toby likes playing outside; at one point yesterday, I heard the front door open and called, “Hello?” No reply. “Who’s there?” No reply. “Toby, is that you?” Toby, obviously figuring he’d been caught in the act of escaping, said “No!”

It’s been a quiet week. Ish. Because let’s face it, when you’ve five children, you don’t get much closer than ish to quiet without throwing them all out, and while I’ve sometimes been tempted, I haven’t really got the energy…

Mostly I’ve been parenting by remote control - that is, I’ve been sitting about and trying to keep tabs on what’s going on around the house without actually getting up and going to look. Freddy’s magnetic-rod episode resolved itself, to everyone’s relief (although I have to admit that a sizeable chunk of my relief was that my part of the process was over) - and that’s as much as I’m going to say on that subject. Toby realised that when counting to ten on his fingers, he didn’t have to take one hand at a time - that he could go right thumb, right pointer finger, left thumb, right middle finger, left pointer, etc. I love watching their faces as their minds figure these things out.

Before getting up on Wednesday, I sent various children to various rooms to ensure they were tidy. In some cases, I asked specific questions: Were there toys shoved in the corner between the two sofas in the living-room? Was there anything on the floor behind the door? - and so on. Assured that everything had been tidied, I emerged from upstairs, only to (re)discover that the children’s definition of “tidy” was very different to mine, and that “no” in response to “are there books under the table?” actually meant “yes, about 24 of them”. Hrm. We were expecting guests - them and us using the excuse that I needed a tiny bit of pink yarn for mice’s noses (and why on earth would I have any pink yarn here?) - so I felt obliged to at least provide a clear path from the front door to somewhere they could sit and have a cup of tea, so further orders were barked instructions were given. Shortly after receiving a text-message from the guests telling me they’d be here in about thirty minutes, I was informed by Barney that he’d been in the bathroom, throwing up. Lovely. He went on to spend most of the rest of the afternoon in the bathroom, repeating the performance. He did occasionally emerge - long enough to throw up on his bed, for example, and later, long enough to go into George and Freddy’s room and throw up in a corner there - and not say a word about it. I only discovered what had happened when I went into the room and thought “ew, it’s a bit whiffy in here”, headed for the window to open it and stood in something wet, which I am absolutely certain was only the spilled water from the cup he’d had (and the only reason I have for my certainty is that I want it, okay?) When asked why he hadn’t said anything, he told me that he thought that Freddy or George would tell me - they’d both been there at the time - but apparently neither of them had noticed a thing - either the act or the whiff

At one point I sent a text-message to twitter saying that Barney was sick - or rather, thanks to predictive phone-text, “pick” - and shortly received a twitter back from him telling me I meant “sick”. Not too sick to be pedantic then.

Despite the necessity for regular jaunts upstairs to check on Barney and the fact that I was already tired, I enjoyed seeing our guests - I hope they enjoyed it too. I realised, after they left at dinnertime, that they’d brought a bag containing food which I could have provided for them for dinner

By the time my own children had been fed, it was too late for Freddy and George to go to Cubs, and Barney was certainly in no fit state for Scouts, so they missed yet another week (they’ve missed the last few because we’ve been away). Not much we could do about it though.

On Thursday morning I took George for an appointment with an Occupational Therapist. The appointment was for a very specific reason, but of course, with the NHS operating the way it does, we had to waste an hour on a basic assessment of his motor skills - none of which has ever caused anyone concern. I could have told her this in the first ten seconds, of course, but that’s not the way the system works. I’ve come home with a “sensory questionnaire” to be completed and returned, which I will do, despite my lack of faith that we will actually get any help from that direction.

In the evening, Jack and Toby decided to settle the argument of who should get out of the bathtub first by playing rock-paper-scissors. They managed to get an extra ten minutes in the tub by doing this, as it was just too cute for any parent to have the heart to drag one of them out

Barney finally pulled out the molar that has been loose and annoying him for the last week or two, then mentioned that he’d a collection of teeth, all of which he was planning to leave under his pillow in order to make a small fortune from the tooth fairy last night…er, yeah, sure.

As for me…I’ve been making children of all ages happy (although admittedly none of them are my own). I’ve been knitting hats with skulls and crossbones for a friend who fell for those I’ve made my own children - two of the three she requested are now complete, and I should be able to get some orange yarn tomorrow for the third, so she should have them next week. And the biggest kid I’ve made happy this week was C, friend of Barney, son of my friend K, whose Pokemon website crashed in January and who has not been able to figure out what the problem was or how to fix it. It was a fairly straightforward fix - a corrupt portion of a database, but of course as with all such things, you have to be able to diagnose the problem first, and the host had disabled the tools which might have provided a button saying “fix this”, so it had to be done with text commands, which isn’t difficult, but you do need to know what the commands are! - and it took probably ten or fifteen minutes of my time to get it all up and running again - and he is now very happy. I’ve said I’ll put a shout-out to his site here, so those of you who have any interest in Pokemon (i.e. not me ) - please click on the image below to take you to his site - leave a comment and you’ll make him even happier.

When it comes to blogging every few days, all I can say is, “Thank goodness for Twitter”. Because my memory is, uh, what was I saying?

Monday morning was spent running from one errand to another, including stopping to see the midwives and get blood taken to check my B12 level - and proving, once again, that I have horrible veins. Neither the midwife nor the student midwife was able to get a cooperative vein, and in the end they called a nurse from the treatment room to have a go. She managed to get blood - and only poked me once with the needle, which is good, but left a great big bruise, which isn’t so good. By the time we were through, I was late for Toby’s speech therapy, but the therapist being in late pregnancy herself, she was understanding. I also took the bicycle with the puncture (the one that was Freddy’s but was about to be given to Jack) to the bike repair shop, but they weren’t able to fix it until Tuesday, which wasn’t a lot of use since we were planning on leaving straight from there for the caravan. So I went back home and collected yet another bicycle - Toby’s smaller one - just in case we weren’t able to get it repaired. We did get it sorted out though, in the same shop that fixed it on Saturday, and they didn’t even charge for fitting the new tube or tyre (because of the running back and forth we’d had to do).

We got to the caravan and spent the afternoon outdoors, as it was sunny and reasonably warm - not tee-shirt weather, but certainly pleasant. On starting dinner, I realised we were out of bread, and then I realised I was out of cash, so I couldn’t even send Barney to the shop - so cheese toasties were out. I also realised we’d left the toothbrushes at home - there’s always something. So Tuesday morning found us driving into the big town, because although there is a chemist’s shop in the village, it’s not exactly large or well-stocked (they didn’t have Band-Aids when I went looking for those). I went armed with a meal-plan for the week and bought everything we needed. Back to the caravan for lunch, then the boys spent the afternoon in and out, as the weather allowed. They made friends with E, a boy about Freddy’s age whose family also have a caravan, and he ended up staying for dinner - he was kind of left hovering on our deck when I called my own children in for food, so I guesstimated how much spag bol there was and figured I’d feed him too, if he wanted. The dinner-time conversation was quite amusing - many home-educators find that people quiz their children to see what they’re learning, but my kids turned the tables and quizzed E instead: things like, “What’s the name for a number multiplied by itself?”

E stayed after dinner too, while they watched the rest of their movie (Spiderman 3 - really, really bad - I was almost praying for it to end!) and finally left about 9.30. I must have twittered quite a bit about the wind and rain, because when I said I thought there was only one other family there, Merry messaged me to ask where we were and ask if it was purgatory I think the answer to that is provided in the replies I got from the boys this morning when I asked when they wanted to go back to the caravan. Toby yelled “Yes!”, two voices said “Soon!” and the remaining two said “As soon as possible!” - so now we’re trying to make plans for the weekend and next week…

I woke on Wednesday morning to a very strange sound: silence. No rain beating on the windows, no blasts of wind…the silence didn’t last long when children started to wake though, especially with George, who was in chittering mode. Not chattering - chittering has a whole extra element of irritating. Never was I more grateful for getting-them-outside weather! I tried and failed to put my watch on - it’s usually quite loose as I wear it quite far up my wrist, but it was too tight, and when I looked at my hands, I realised how swollen they were. I’ve also got tingly fingertips, and I’m hoping it’s not the knitting that’s doing it, because I’m really enjoying knitting again

During the day on Wednesday the staff from the caravan park removed the caravan opposite ours, using a "big digger truck", as Toby put it, and thus provided great entertainment for small boys. We also spent a while down on the beach with bicycles - which Chris disapproved of because of the potential damage to gears and chains, but really, if you had the opportunity to cycle in and out of the Atlantic, wouldn’t you? In the afternoon, Barney asked to be taught to knit - he’s not usually the good-with-his-hands kid, but surprised me in how quickly he picked it up and got quite good at it. He proclaimed it “pretty fun”, and at bedtime was disappointed to be sent to bed because he wanted to stay up and knit (”it’s kind of addictive”).

On Thursday morning I’d a call from a midwife to tell me my B12 was now normal - which leaves me searching for some other explanation for my fatigue We walked to the shop in the morning - which usually takes just a few minutes, but took forever because my pelvis was so sore, and left me exhausted. We expected our friends K & J to be using the caravan from Friday, so planned to leave then, but I decided to leave Friday rather than have to pack up the car in the rain forecast for Friday morning. I spent the rest of the morning tidying and packing what I could, in preparation for leaving in the afternoon, while the boys cycled, skateboarded and playgrounded. I got the bicycles onto the car at about 2.30 - with difficulty, given that I have a big bump in the way of lifting them and that the carrier is designed to carry three bicycles and I had five… The boys played for another hour or so before we left, and Barney knit on the way home in the car. We arrived home at about 5.30 and the first thing I did was put on the water-heater - and oh did that hot bath ever feel good! Shortly after I went to bed, I got a text-message from J to say they weren’t going to be at the caravan this weekend after all - and I’d left the power, water and gas on…probably not a big problem, although the milk I left in the fridge might not be so good by the middle of next week. We could end up back there over the weekend, when the forecast is snow - now that could be an adventure…I promise I’ll take some photos this time if we do.

By the time I got out of my bed this morning, Freddy had already discovered his tyre was flat again - argh! How annoying! I decided to take his bike home with me tomorrow, to the little bike shop in town (we’re home for the day because Toby has a speech therapy appointment) but our plans changed and we came home this evening instead of tomorrow morning - partly because it would mean less of a rushed morning on Monday, and partly because a full-sized bathtub full of water the temperature of lava was calling me…the caravan does have a bath, but it’s just one of those half-sized ones - fine for kids, fine for a shower, but not the kind of thing an achy pregnant woman needs. So I am writing this at home (unlike the previous few posts, which were written at the caravan and saved for posting when I got home - gotta love WordPress’s fake-the-date feature

The weather this morning was gloriously sunny, so everyone was out and about bright and early. They all went down to the beach again this morning, where they played noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) in the sand. Barney didn’t go with them at first, but when another kid came looking for everyone, I sent him off in search of Barney (who was riding around the park on his bike) and they decided to go down there together. The afternoon’s weather was changeable, so when it was dry, everyone went out to play, and when it was raining, they came in and I read Michael Morpurgo’s Alone on a Wide Wide Sea to them - very good, by the way, highly recommended George had a meltdown in the playground when some other boys took his “cool stick”; later Barney and Jack had an argument over another stick - I will never understand the appeal that sticks hold for boys. At one point I twittered that it was raining and everyone had come in except for Barney, and that I was mostly twittering this fact because it would go through to his mobile phone and annoy him - and he twittered back, “Am I bo-ther-ed?” George and Freddy found a “secret base” and declined to tell me where it was, but they did tell Barney, which was probably not a very clever thing to do, as he promptly told me

After dinner we sorted clothes into two piles - clean and laundry - and packed up the car to leave. We put Freddy’s bike on the back, as well as Jack’s, since I think everyone is about to move up a bike - except for Barney, who’s staying on his green one - but we have a red-and-white one in the garage that is about the same size as it, and which will, I hope, fit George well. We’ll have to try it out first thing in the morning to make sure, and then if we can get Freddy’s tyre fixed, that bicycle can become Jack’s. Toby, having slept most of the afternoon, stayed awake for the whole journey and spent the next hour or two bouncing around the house, but Jack fell asleep twenty minutes into the journey, barely woke up to stagger into the house, and never stirred when undressed and put to bed.

Tomorrow morning: see midwife to get blood taken (I don’t think the B12 is working - or rather that it’s sticking - I think it’s pushing my levels up but then something is depleting them again); see the speech therapist with Toby (she’s only got three weeks before she goes on maternity leave, so we didn’t want to miss any of the appointments); check out the bike we hope will work for George; attempt to get Freddy/Jack’s tyre/tube fixed properly; check the yarn-shop to see if they’ve had a delivery of black wool yet; put the dry (I hope) laundry in the car and drive back up the coast. See ya

Last night was windy again, though not nearly as bad as the previous one, and a few more people arrived this morning. An early night last night, however, meant an early start this morning - by 6.40 a.m., Toby was snuggled inside Barney’s sleeping bag in the living-room (with Barney still in there too), “helping” Barney with a book of logic puzzles. At about 7.30 I sent Barney off to the shop on his bicycle to refresh our supply of milk and washing-up liquid, both having been largely used up by the hot chocolate the previous evening. By 9, all were fed and dressed and out racing on their bicycles - Freddy borrowing wheels as and when he could - and I was wondering why energy seems to easy to find when you’re a kid…

Having checked the forecast yesterday evening, I knew to expect rain later today, so sent them all (including Scratchy, who arrived last night) off to the beach in the late morning. Well, I say “all”, but I don’t really mean it. George had decided he was too delicate for such capers and decided to stay here with me and practise his knitting - but didn’t wash his hands, so the scarf he is knitting for his beanie-teddy now consists of stripes of off-white and very-off-white. And about 45 minutes after the others had left, one of the bedroom doors opened and Barney emerged - I’d thought he was on the beach! “Did you know we didn’t know you were in there?” I asked, and he replied, “I kinda thought so!”

After lunch Scratchy took everyone but Barney into the big town to look for a bicycle-repair shop, and a new inner tube was purchased and fitted. Barney stayed here with me and did some French - something he wasn’t very pleased about, but he didn’t want to go to town either, and he needs to keep at the revising if he’s to do well in the GCSE. (Actually that’s probably not really true - even if he did nothing from now until June, he’d probably do well anyway, but if he’s to do the best he can, he needs to revise.) Given my lack of energy and the fact that my pubic bone feels ready to split into pieces at any minute, I spent most of the day trying to get into a comfortable seating position and knitting. I finished my lacy socks and the baby-hat I was making, and made a hat with a skull and crossbones motif for George - all the boys want one of these, but they all want different colours, and George’s was the only one I had all the colours for. I cast on at lunchtime and he was wearing it by 4 p.m., which muchly impressed one of my neighbours I was going to start another hat with dancing skeletons on it for Jack next, but discovered I hadn’t printed out the pattern to bring with me, so had to revert to my current mindless project - a very soft wool/soy mixture scarf for me. I like the yarn so much that I ordered more of it this week; I’m hoping the postman didn’t leave it sitting at the front door in the wind and rain…

Freddy and Toby were the only ones here when dinner was ready, so I asked Freddy to call his brothers. “Barney, George and Freddy!” he yelled at the door, before turning and realising he’d just called himself in At least when I mix up their names I don’t include my own Jack came in anyway, and asked of the pizza, “Is that home…home…caravan-made or bought?”

Yesterday afternoon’s sunny weather was promising, but never fulfilled that promise. The weather changed overnight: we had thunder and lightning, heavy rain and wild winds all night long. I didn’t know you could get sea-sick in a static caravan Several times I thought someone had climbed onto my bed, only to realise it wasn’t the bed that was moving, but the whole van. Slightly worrying! We made it through the night, however, and into the morning. I considered waiting for the weather to brighten before walking to the shop in the town, but when it got wild again, I decided to leave the boys here while I took the car. Since it was such a cold, wet and windy morning, they spent the morning studying - I’m a horrible mother, me. When the weather improved slightly (i.e. the rain stopped, though there were still gales blowing) and I told them to put the books away, I was still a horrible mother, because I made them go out to play - although their resentment didn’t last long when they met up with other children who had been turfed out of their respective caravans by their respective fed-up parents. We discovered that Freddy’s bicycle tyre was flat again, so I’ve had to promise to take him into the big town tomorrow to get a new inner tube. In the meantime, he’s been riding George’s bicycle, which looks like it fits him better than his own, and George has been riding Barney’s, which seems to fit him better than his own…and I’ve realised that Jack fits better on Freddy’s than on his, so it seems we’re ready for the trading-bicycles game again.

I twittered how quiet it was while the boys were at the playground (their voices were only faintly audible over the wind), but spoke too soon, for within minutes Jack had arrived back covered in mud. He got changed into his clean sweater (hah! I told them they needed to pack two sweaters each!) and went back out. A few minutes after that, George came in - to say he was “covered” in mud doesn’t really accurately describe the situation, because it suggests the mud was all on the outside, when in fact it was through every layer right to his skin (and in fact he said later, “I think I even sniffed some mud!” LOL) So he got stripped and re-dressed from his underwear out, and he too went back outside. I know he got muddy falling off the Flying Fox, but I’m not really sure what happened to Jack. Whatever it was, he didn’t learn - he arrived back muddy again, saying “This time only my trousers got muddy, but I’m okay with that”. Right.

Jack’s second sweater was soon muckier than his first, and he couldn’t find his first, so he borrowed one of Freddy’s, with Freddy’s permission - which was okay until Freddy got his own sweater wet and muddy and spent twenty minutes chasing Jack around the park (Freddy on foot, Jack on a bike, so fairly pointless!) yelling, “I want my sweater back!”

The park started to busy up a bit as the afternoon progressed, with the arrival of people who presumably have jobs to go to during the week, though it didn’t get particularly busy. I suspect last night’s gales have put a few people off! By the evening, my lot were more than ready to come in for cups of hot chocolate before bedtime.

Toby woke me at 3 a.m. to tell me “Daddy’s head broke!”. Uh-huh. Go back to sleep. It was a dream. Cue scrunched-up face and questioning: “A dream?” “”"Yes, a dream. It’s like pictures in your head when you’re asleep. It’s not real, it’s like playing, but once you wake up, it all goes away.”

In the morning, Toby stood at a safe distance to check out Scratchy’s head, and appeared confused that it appeared to be intact. That was not the last I heard about it however; I was repeatedly told, “Daddy’s head broke in my dream!” throughout the day.

The boys’ things had all been packed last night, so that just left me getting my own bag organised and gathering some books to take with us. We left the house shortly after 9, which I thought was a good start, but after leaving Scratchy at work and doubling back to go to buy yarn (I’m back knitting, can’t go to the caravan without yarn and the internet!) Barney realised he didn’t have his Hogwarts bag with him - the one containing his mobile phone and all the GameBoy power-packs. The thought of no GameBoys at the caravan didn’t warm my heart, because in their absence, it would have been a YuGiOh fest, and at least GBA is usually quiet and doesn’t spread itself across the entire room, so we went back home again. Barney disappeared inside and re-emerged a few minutes later to say he couldn’t find the bag. He was sure he’d left it in the hall. I knew I hadn’t put it in the car. But I wasn’t prepared to stay for the time it would take to hunt through all the places it could be, so we left anyway.

We drove up in lovely sunshine, a calm, warm day, and everyone helped unpack the car - including the Hogwarts bag I’m always surprised when we arrive - we take everything inside, fill the entire living-space with bags and backpacks and various other things, and it looks like we’ll never all fit in. And then we start putting things away, and I realise how much a caravan is like a Tardis: bigger on the inside. All except the refrigerator, that is, which is quite the opposite. We always spend our first couple of days eating the things that didn’t fit in the refrigerator.

Freddy’s bicycle had a flat tyre; we knew this before we left home, but unable to find a bicycle pump in the garage, we had to hope we’d be able to borrow one from someone when we arrived. No luck, however, until the guy who looks after the park arrived to do some woodwork around one of the caravans near us (building the slatted base that most people install so they can store things underneath their caravans). He had a compressor in his van, and very willingly inflated the tyre, so we just hoped it was a flat rather than an actual puncture. The boys scooted around the park through most of the evening; I think the little corner of the site where we stay is just the perfect spot for a family. The playground is within sight (and hearing) of the caravan, and it’s in a little loop which doesn’t go anywhere, so there’s very little traffic, which is nearly all considerate of the fact that there are children around, so moves very slowly and carefully. Toby’s the only one of mine without the sense to move out of the way of cars; he does a sort-of standoff on his tricycle in front of them: “Nope, I’m going this way, you move!”

When it got colder and darker, everyone came in and we realised we hadn’t brought any DVDs, but there are a few here, so one was chosen (Spiderman 2 - again) and everyone settled down to watch before bed

A week since I last blogged. You know what that means, of course: missing chunks - though on this occasion there wasn’t much to remember, and much of what I do remember I’d rather forget, so we’ll just gloss over those bits…

I know we went to the Transport Museum on Friday. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to go - I’d much rather have lazed about the house - but it was the last day of our membership, and since I don’t really expect to be feeling like traipsing around large outdoor museums (the Folk Museum bit) or large indoor museums (the Transport Museum bit) for the next while, I’m going to wait a few months before renewing it. I posted about us going on the local home-ed list at the last minute, having thought about doing so for a couple of days but not actually having made it around to it, so it wasn’t very surprising that there wasn’t a huge crowd. One other family did come though, and it was nice to see them. I took my little camera and let Barney run amok with it, which led to some, er, interesting pics. (I also realised, when uploading these, just how much better photos from my big camera are, so I think I might be handing the small one off to Barney more often in future.)

Toby was fascinated by the model horses attached to the carriages and some of the trams etc - “Mum! Look! Animals!” - as usual - although he was initially a bit wary of standing next to them to have his photo taken. I tried to explain that they weren’t real, that they were like big toys, but in the end I had to agree with his assertion that “Hoss dead!” - well, it wasn’t moving…

After the museum, we went off in search of lunch - initially intending to eat at the Ikea café (nearby and cheap) but I decided that I’d rather do a drive-through to save the energy it would take to get out of the car. (Yes, I do know how pathetic that sounds.) It took ages to find a bank machine and then a drive-through, but it was worth it when, after passing fast-food back to everyone behind me, I was thanked in four different languages (English, French, Japanese and German)!

When we got home I decided to do my fourth B12 injection (still not looking as it pierces the skin!) but I’d have been better to sit down with a cup of tea first, as all the energy expended throughout the day had taken its toll, and immediately after the injection, I felt faint. I lay down on the dining-room floor for a minute, having learned from experience that when feeling that way, it’s better to place myself on the floor than to find myself on the floor. Barney brought me a glass of water and once I was sure I wouldn’t pass out, I disposed of the needles etc and went and fell asleep on the sofa.

On Saturday, I got up and decided to go and buy paint. We’ve been in this house for nearly three years(!) and I’ve never liked the colour of the hall, stairs and landing - it’s a sort of orangey-rust, which I wouldn’t like even if it wasn’t too dark for that area, which it is. Not to mention that with five children and two dogs in the house, it wasn’t exactly clean… I still haven’t decided on a colour, but figured that a first coat of white would help cover up both the dark paint and the dirt, as well as being cheap, so that’s what I bought. I thought maybe I’d get the hall done on Saturday, then tackle the stairs and landing next weekend…but I reckoned without The Team. No sooner had I started than I had a queue of children beside me asking to help - so I phoned Scratchy (who was out doing errands) and told him to bring back more small rollers. I did big-roller bits up as far as I could reach, and various children came behind me filling in the bits around the edges (lots of edges: door-frames, stairway, chair-rail…)

Since we were getting on so well, I kept going - and despite taking a break for an hour or so when a friend came by in the afternoon, we managed to finish everything except the top bit of the wall by the stairs - which I thought best done when there were no small children around, as it required a step-ladder on the stairs themselves…

So now the hall is white(ish) and I need to get on with choosing a final colour. I’m thinking along the taupe spectrum, but things could still change.

And I managed to do it again this morning - second B12 shot, still a bit nervous and feeling sick beforehand, but not nearly as bad as Friday. A midwife came out to sit with me while I did it this morning, but from now on I’m on my own - which I think will actually make it easier, as I’ll have nobody watching me, plus I’ll be able to do it first thing in the morning so I won’t have the waiting-for-someone-to-arrive bit to handle. Up, cup of tea, inject, forget about it until the next one’s due.

Apart from my attempts to puncture myself… The boys have been continuing with their usual work, getting through quite a bit. George had a very good couple of days towards the end of last week, even making it through two entire days without any kind of meltdown - but a late night on Friday, followed by waking early on Saturday, with a 3 a.m. conversation with Freddy in between, resulted in a very shaky weekend for him. This morning didn’t start well when he went into wobbly mode before he got out of his room, but I managed to pull him back from the brink, and while there was still lots of room for improvement, it’s been a better day than the last two. I have to admit to a smile when I heard him getting mad at Barney around lunchtime; Barney was allegedly winding him up, but George’s response to his denial of this was “Barney, I can see the smile playing on your lips!”

Barney had his own tantrum on Thursday evening, storming out of the house and slamming the door behind him. Well, actually, he slammed the door in front of him, because he didn’t like the idea of being out in the dark on his own, so he stayed inside, locked the door, pocketed the key and went and hid in his room. He fooled us too! We gave him a few minutes to cool off, then Scratchy went to find him, while I phoned his mobile to see where he was (assuming he had it with him). When I heard it ringing in his room, I hung up - only to find him standing in front of me seconds later demanding, “What are you ringing me for?!!”

Barney and Scratchy went to a St John Ambulance competition on Saturday morning, leaving me at home with the others. A man came to service our boiler - at no charge. He’d posted on our local Freecycle list about two weeks ago asking for help with getting a website uploaded, and I’d offered to provide that help. He said that if I got it sorted for him, he’d service our boiler for nothing - that’s his business. It turned out his site was written in MS Publisher and it was easier to rewrite it in a different program than to fix the errors, so I did that. It probably took a couple of hours altogether, but he’s very pleased with it - and he spent a couple of hours on my boiler and I’m happy with that, so a good result all around

A bowl of cereal at bedtime yesterday bought me a night without heartburn, for which I was very grateful, as I really needed the sleep. After coping with George, as the others woke up and came into my room to greet Toby, it was like the Waltons in reverse: “Hello Toby!”, “Hello George!”, “Hello Toby!”, “Hello Jack!”, “Hello George!”, “Hello Barney” - well, you get the general idea

Apart from my ranty blog of yesterday evening, I haven’t written a proper blog-post in ages, so here is a rundown of the highlights/lowlights/midlights/whatever. I should note that in creating this post, my memory has been greatly aided by Twitter

We returned to the vet on Valentine’s Day so that Andie could also be spayed. We couldn’t book both dogs on the same day, as the practice only does one spay a day - that way they can do it first thing in the morning and keep a close eye on the dog all day in the office. We figured it was no bad thing to spay our two a few days apart anyway, to let us make a fuss of them individually, but both recovered very quickly so it wasn’t really necessary.

While Andie was at the vet, we went off to the shops. We’d a book-token to spend - given to one of the kids so long ago that I couldn’t even remember whose it was - so they shared it. It took a Very Long Time to make a selection, and in the end I spent the last bit of it on a book of my own choice: Michael Morpurgo’s Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. I also bought a long-reach stapler, an item about which I am sadly excited.

We also all had our eyes tested. Barney didn’t need a new prescription, but got new glasses anyway, given the state of his old ones. What the optician doesn’t know is that the new ones will be in just as bad a state as the old ones within a week. In fact in the car on the way home, he asked if his new ones were lopsided - he’s been wearing a lopsided pair for so long that “straight” feels wrong We talked about him getting contact lenses, as he would like to go back to fencing but doesn’t like doing it without his glasses, and you can’t wear glasses with the face-mask. He’s too young for wearing contacts all the time, but if it’s a couple of hours once or twice a week, it could be do-able. None of the others needs glasses, although Jack has a mild astigmatism. I’ve had perfect vision ever since having laser surgery about seven years ago, but now my age is showing, and I’m very slightly long-sighted. No reading-glasses needed yet, but I was pre-warned that I’d probably need them in another two or three years. Just what you need a couple of weeks before your 40th birthday: to be reminded that you’re getting old

Toby added Bananaphone to his repertoire.

And my friend whose heart surgery went all wrong a few weeks ago underwent the second attempt, which appears to have been very successful

On Friday we had someone come and look at the garden, figuring we probably couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it but we might as well ask and find out. We were right the first time. It looks like we’re sorting it out ourselves. Now we just need a few weeks without rain to allow it to dry out enough to dig and roll flat, before putting down turf. Seed would be cheaper, but would take a lot longer to establish, and we’d really like to be able to use it this summer. So Saturday found Scratchy out there in his wellies, accompanied by various children at different times, some of whom were more useful than others.

Monday was a crazy day, but I’ve already written about most of it here, so no real need to go over that again! One amusing moment (rather than hair-pulling-out moment) was when Toby was having lunch - pizza and bananas - and singing, “Hit me baby one more time”.

Toby continued his unbearable cutess on Tuesday morning, sitting on Barney’s lap while he did his French and repeating everything he said. Later he was heard yelling at Jack in the kitchen: “Jack! Open! Bananaaaaa!” Yes, I think he’s definitely turned into a talking child now.

Yesterday was another one of those up-and-out-early days, completely unnecessarily, as recounted here. After leaving the office and sitting in the car shouting and crying down the phone at a friend and Scratchy, I drove back across the city so that Barney could be fitted with contact lenses for fencing. Unfortunately it turns out he can’t put anything in his eyes. In fact, he can’t even open his eyes if he suspects there’s a finger anywhere near his eyelids, so contact lenses are a non-starter, for now at least. He’s going to practise poking himself in the eye for a few months before giving it another try.

While he was at the optician’s, I walked down the main shopping street of the town with the others. Now for this bit, you need a bit of back-story. We used to live in that town, and three of my children were born there. One of the reasons I started considering a homebirth when I was expecting George was that the local maternity unit was so completely, absolutely, dire. The local Supervisor of Midwives actively discourages homebirth - she spent three hours in my home trying to talk me out of it, mostly talking rubbish about the dangers and describing physiological processes that could not actually happen. She lied to the National Childbirth Trust about local homebirth rates, multiplying the true figure by 50 - yes, it’s that bad that it could be multiplied by 50 and still sound low. She tried to intimidate me by threatening to remove care. The local maternity unit, despite having no SCBU and therefore taking no high-risk cases, has a similar c-section rate to the next nearest unit, which takes the highest-risk cases from the entire population. The unit is old, dirty and insecure. I’ve witnessed a baby removed (by a visitor) from the nursery and the fact not even being noticed for more than two hours. Confidentiality is non-existent. And so on…

Yesterday morning it was announced that the unit is to close in about a year. As a result, there was a news journalist and cameraman out on the street, looking for people to give their reactions. Well, when they saw me coming - visibly pregnant and accompanied by four children - they probably thought they were in line for an early finish and a long lunch. Unfortunately my response was not of the “shocked, appalled that they’re taking this service away” kind that they were expecting. Instead it was of the “good riddance, it should have been closed years ago, it’s probably the worst unit in the country” type… Scratchy is well-aware of my feelings on this particular unit (and shares them) and when I phoned him to tell him about being stopped, he roared with laughter

After our errands and meeting up with Barney, we went to our usual all-you-can-eat pizza-and-pasta buffet for lunch, where we always get our money’s worth During the meal, Freddy and George educated me about the different kinds of knights in the Middle Ages and what the various protocols involved. Then they all inspected and discussed the restaurant’s fire safety system. But when Freddy started to pretend to unzip his forehead and announced, “I’m a Slitheen“, I decided that was as far as I was willing to let that particular discussion go

We’d a quick playground visit before collecting Scratchy, then I left everyone at home while I took Cassie back to the vet’s to get her stitches removed. Soon after getting home, I went to bed - but the day wasn’t over for George, who was part of the team at the County Cub Quiz. Our team came third and George arrived home very tired, but happy

I’m hiding in the dining-room; there are eight children here at the minute, several of whom are grumpy (all mine) which cannot be impressing the guest children, though all of them are being very polite about it. A friend had an appointment with one of her clients in this area this afternoon, and since her eldest is on half-term this week, she collected her other children from school and they all came here. My friend then left to go see her client and she will, I hope, be back soon, as dinner is almost ready to hit the table.

We spent most of the morning cleaning the conservatory, which has, for the last few months, been nothing but a holding pen for the dogs when they come in mucky from the garden, which is every time they come in, because the garden is like a field, but not as clean and tidy. To stop them from traipsing mud through the whole of downstairs, we’ve been leaving them in there until the mud dried up and/or fell off them. This has been a reasonably effective technique for keeping it out of the rest of the house, but another consequence was that the entire room - walls, windows, floor, furniture - became covered in a thick layer of mud, loose dirt and dog-hair. Four of us attacked it this morning with mops, large sponges and buckets of soapy water, and about three hours later, it was…well, cleaner. Not really what you’d call clean, but certainly a sight better than it had been. Everything will have to be washed again to get to that it to actually clean. The floor has been mopped seven times and still isn’t clean, but at least the colour is visible again. The vacuum cleaner had a nervous breakdown part-way through the process, but recovered later, and fortunately we’ve a smaller one upstairs, so I was able to use that in the meantime.

Barney spent the morning trying to work out what the tune in his head was; when he hummed it to me, I thought it sounded like the theme-tune to Star Wars, but when he figured it out, it turned out to be David Bowie’s “Starman”.

By lunchtime we were all wet, soapy and mucky, so I sent the boys upstairs to shower in turn in my bathroom (the family bathroom has a bath and a shower attachment but nothing to hang it on on the wall, and no shower-curtain). I went up to have a shower myself once they were done, and discovered that someone had been at bottles of moisturiser and make-up, and moisturised the toilet-seat. Then my shower was interrupted when Barney arrived to tell me he could sing Starman in French: Il y a un homme d’étoile, attendant dans le ciel… Hippy Hothousing Homeschoolers

The midwife rang with my blood-tests results. The good news: my iron-level is great. The bad news: my folate level is low. The good/bad news: my B12 is also low. The reason this is both good and bad news is that it means I have to have B12 injections, which hurt going in and then sting afterwards, but they are very effective and this will probably help my energy-levels a lot. The midwife annoyed me, though, when she said, “So with this, do you still want to go ahead with the homebirth?” - since she knows how I feel about hospital birth, I think this meant she really didn’t understand the results. She phoned the GP, who phoned me and emphasised how important it was that I get these levels up - she wants me in the treatment room at the practice three times a week for injections. When I asked if the community midwives could do it at home (as they did last time this was a problem), she wasn’t keen on the idea - largely, I think, because she doesn’t want to hand over something she sees as medical to the midwifery team. But the practice midwife, who will be the one giving me the injections in the treatment room, is off until next week, which means I won’t get started until then. So: urgent enough to take up a couple of hours of my time, three times a week, but not urgent enough to let the midwives get on with it at home (which would have allowed me to get the first injection tomorrow). And everything I’ve read says that when both B12 and folate are low, it’s important not to supplement folate without supplementing B12, so I won’t get started on that until next week either. Argh, I feel a treadmill slipping under me…

After Wickedly-busy Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were…slow. I can’t handle a day like that without taking a day or two to recover, so there was little more than the necessities done on those days - and even the necessities were largely done by people other than me. Cassie, on the other hand, made a remarkably quick recovery - after being fairly sleepy on Wednesday evening, she was up and raring to go on Thursday. Her crate is in the hall, and when its side door is open at 90 degrees, it blocks the hall - but on Thursday morning when she was on one side of that and I was on the other and she wanted to get to me, she didn’t let it stop her - she leapt right over it. One day maybe she’ll realise it’s on hinges and she can just nudge it with her nose or her paw

She did keep getting painkillers until Friday evening, and was supposed to get antibiotics until this morning, but I forgot to give her yesterday morning’s dose, and by the time I remembered it seemed a bit pointless. Her wound looks great, and she’s leaving her stitches alone, so I decided it was almost certainly fine not to finish the course.

I spent most of the day in the dining-room, tidying it (it was 7/10 on the tip-scale) while the boys dealt with the living-room (which was 9/10 on the tip-scale). Once it was tidy and all the bits of paper were in various piles (”deal with sometime”, “deal with this week”, “deal with soon” and “sort this out now” LOL), the boys sat around the table and did masses of studying. Scratchy took Jack out to get groceries - Jack in his “leather” (actually vinyl - and that kind of very vinyl-y vinyl) jacket, came up to me before they left and asked, “Isn’t this so cool?” - and it was, but it was the pose he struck and his facial expression that made it so, rather than the jacket They brought back dinner - Chinese food, in honour of Chinese New Year (which is a three-week festival in China, I’ll have you know, so were not at all late in celebrating it two days after New Year’s Day). Well - not genuine Chinese-Chinese food, but what we call Canadian-Chinese, although I suppose having lived here for over a decade, we should really be calling it British-Chinese or Euro-Chinese or something. The stuff you get from the take-away, anyway. We can get our mitts on Chinese-Chinese food, but it requires a trip to the Chinese supermarket, which is not somewhere any of us wants to be on a Saturday afternoon, and requires us to cook it ourselves, which neither of us was really up for yesterday. We were pleasantly surprised at how little it all actually cost from the take-away; we think they might have given Scratchy a discount. We know he got a discount when he took the boys to the Chinese New Year celebrations last weekend - they charged him for three people instead of six!

Anyway, our New Years dinner was very tasty, and I actually managed to stay upright long enough to sit at the table with the rest of the family until it was over, which isn’t something that’s been happening too often recently.

Toby was rather bouncy in the evening, having fallen asleep mid-afternoon and slept for two hours. I was ready for sleep long before him, but fought it, knowing that if I went to sleep at 9, I’d pay for it in wakefulness in the early hours. Unfortunately staying awake until later didn’t work, as I was awake from 1.30 until after 5 anyway. The combination of small people kicking me (from both inside and out) didn’t help, and nor did the snoring, but really it was mostly plain old insomnia.

I still managed to be awake at 9.45 this morning and got on with more sifting through the paperwork, getting to-do lists done, etc. I used to use an A5-sized filofax-type organiser thingy, and it kept me much more organised, so I’m going to work towards having everything in there again. I already feel much more organised - I know there’s nothing that needs done in the next week that I haven’t got on a list, and I have a plan for dealing with it all. There are still some more papers to deal with in the next few days, but now that it’s all organised in one place, I know I’ll get to it. I found a letter about an appointment on Wednesday that I’d forgotten about and that I was supposed to confirm, so I’ll do that tomorrow morning - I hope just in time. I also found a £10 voucher that we got from Argos that we got before Christmas - I was vaguely aware that we had it, but only discovered today that it expired on February 14th, so spent some time trying to figure out what we needed from Argos, and finally settled on a watch for Jack for his birthday next month and a pack of six rechargeable batteries. I also found a £25 voucher for Tesco, sent to me as a thank-you from the woman whose two Japanese Scouts we took on along with my own two last summer; I keep forgetting I’ve got it, but maybe now it’s in the front pocket of my organiser, I’ll remember to use it! And I discovered a book token, given to George for his eighth birthday, I believe (remember he’ll be 11 in June!) - I don’t even know if it’s still valid or not, though there’s no expiry date printed on it. And a cheque for £40 which is I’m pretty sure won’t be honoured now, since it’s nearly three years old - and I don’t have any memory at all of receiving it. You see why I want to get all this stuff sorted out?!

Again, I managed to stay upright throughout dinner, and even for a short period afterwards - which is more than poor Toby did. He fell forwards from the mattress of the bedside-cot and did a face-plant onto the side of it, giving himself a nosebleed

Another midwife visit yesterday, for her to take blood. I’ve declined most things but asked for hemoglobin (and other things necessary to calculate true iron level) to be done and also for a B12 check; part of me hopes one of those is abnormally low, as it would mean I could actually do something about the exhaustion. I have horrible veins; it takes an age to find one that looks half-decent and then they usually collapse seconds after the needle goes in. The first attempt yesterday resulted in less than half a millilitre in the bottom of a tube - that’s about one-tenth of a teaspooon. Second attempt didn’t get anything at all. L kept apologising but there was no need; I already know it’s me! She left me a bunch of booklets and leaflets, all of which went straight in the bin after a single glance, since I’d either a) read them before and knew they were useless, or b) opened them to a random page and discovered something which was evidence that they were useless.

I did a couple of very fast errands in the morning before she came, then came home and got the boys settled to some studying. They’ll be doing some more this afternoon; it probably sounds awful to be making them study on weekends, but there are things that work much better when there’s an extra adult around - to keep everyone out of the way when Barney’s doing past papers for GCSE, for example.

When we were at the science centre on Tuesday, a friend filled my car with boxes of things she’d been clearing out in preparation for moving overseas, so I got to those this morning. Books, jigsaw puzzles, toy animals (which led to a look of wonderment and delight on Toby’s face), and a marble-run which has already been packed into a box to be given to someone else. It had been out less than an hour and there had been several fights over it, and when Barney physically attacked Freddy to get him to hand over a marble, I decided enough was enough. Barney did not take well to this decision and stormed off (we don’t care about him, we don’t care about anything he wants…) including taking himself off outside in his (short-sleeved and short-legged) pyjamas. It’s cold enough that he was back indoors less than a minute later. He sulked for a while after that, but cheered up while eating lunch (he forgot he meant to be cross LOL)

Freddy sat down and did a KS2 science sats paper, but got very cross about one of the questions, and claimed it was “impossible to answer the question without breaking the rules!” It turned out that the question asked him to “draw a conclusion”, but there were line for him to write on, so he couldn’t draw anything…

The Toby-induced-smile-of-the-day came when he walked into the room on tiptoe; Barney missed it, so I said to Toby, “”how me how you can stand on your toes” and he did - one foot flat on the floor, the other foot on top of it

You all know how hopeless I am at reviewing what we’ve done, so instead of a day-by-day, here’s a series of random thoughts on the past week or two.

As I mentioned, we purchased, installed and decorated a Christmas tree. I must take some photos of it. I’m getting very lazy about taking photos. We made Christmas cookies on Sunday and they all got eaten before I had a chance to snap them for the blog. I think that’s a good reason to make some more, no?

Freddy chose which cookies we’d make, because he had worked hard on cleaning up the house on Sunday morning, and because he was the only one who was interested at that moment in time. He chose The Ultimate Sugar Cookies (he’ll go for anything called “ultimate”) and A Honey of A Cookie, as well as Chocolate Jam-Filled Thumbprints - I’ll put recipes at the end of this post. We made the sugar cookies first, then made and ate stinky pizza for lunch while the dough for them chilled. While they baked, we prepared the dough for the honey-cookies. Barney came in and looked most offended that we’d got on with the cookies without him, so he went ahead and made the chocolate-raspberry ones on his own. It was the first time he’d made cookies from start to finish without anyone helping, and they were very good (much better than they sounded in the recipe!)

In the meantime the dough for the honey-cookies was chilling in the refrigerator, but once my mother and step-father arrived, we never got around to taking it out again, so they didn’t get made until yesterday evening. The visit passed without incident; Toby proved (again) that small children who are not forced to allow themselves to be passed around and hugged by all and sundry do not, as a result, end up shy and reserved and clingy - well, he did cling, but he clung to my step-father - he even wanted to go home with him!

I have often mentioned how Jack knows everything and believes that everyone else knows nothing; this was proven once again when my mother was opening her gift from us. He was watching intently and she asked, “Do you know what’s in it?” Jack’s immediate reply: “Not yet!”

Yesterday was a lazy day; I needed one to recover. But Toby made me laugh when Jack called him to come and play with him and he shouted back “I busy!”

Oh, we spoke to Henry’s parents - well, I spoke to his maman, and Barney spoke to Henry and his maman. X has made an excellent recovery; he’s just returned to work - part-time for now, to see how he gets on - and is physically well. He has no sense of smell, and can only distinguish a few tastes; the doctors have said that might still come back but if it doesn’t do so soon, it probably won’t. They were told by the surgeon that there was so much blood and the source of it was so difficult to find, that he very nearly gave up. We’re very glad he didn’t.

We acquired, via Freecycle, four new bookcases of varying sizes and colours. They will be going into the boys’ bedrooms, in the hope that I can move some of the books from downstairs into them, which might mean we don’t have to double-stack the books on the bookcases downstairs. The situation here is ridiculous.

Oh, and I love my butcher. He has been giving us all his scraps and bits he can’t or doesn’t want to sell since we got the pups back in April. He keeps a big bucket in his walk-in refrigerator and we pick it up once a week. Once or twice we’ve supplemented what he gives us, but I think feeding C&A in the last eight months has cost us less than £10. He’s also, as well as the usual stuff, giving us all the bits left over from the meats he prepares for customers for Christmas, so we’ll be getting lots of turkey carcasses etc at the end of this week. you’ve heard the phrase “as healthy as a butcher’s dog”? Well, my dogs are butcher’s dogs by proxy. And yesterday he rang me to say that he had a bag of food a supplier had offered him for free, because its sell-by date was yesterday. It turned out to be two entire, huge, pork shoulders. I think there will be a very big tin of sweets and a couple of bottles of wine going that man’s way this week…

(I have to admit that chopping two entire pork shoulders into bits small enough to be daily rations for the pups - big pups, but still pups - isn’t really the activity of choice for a woman who is a) exhausted after a busy weekend; b) a vegetarian at heart; and c) still in the feels-like-barfing stage of pregnancy. But still.)

Speaking of dogs - these two are going to go into heat for the first time soon. At least, I hope they are, because the hormonal teenager act they’re doing is driving me nuts. They’re howly and whiny and not very cooperative - partly because they’ve been largely neglected while I’ve been ill, but also the pre-heat thing. Their sister, who is the now the companion of friends of ours, went into heat about three or four weeks ago, so fingers crossed ours will get it over with soon. And right after that, it will be off to the vet with them to ensure that they do not add to the number of pregnant females in this household.

George and Freddy had their last ju-jitsu class of the term last night; they came home having won a selection box each in the raffle. Barney went to the youth-club, where there were Roses free for the taking, so he brought me home three chocolates. And Scratchy came home from work with a mini-bar from Laura Secord, from his boss who was in Canada last week. So it shouldn’t be long before I gain back the weight I’d lost through feeling barfy for the last few weeks.

Cookie recipes below the fold.

(more…)

It’s been nearly a week since I posted anything here. The reasons? We haven’t been doing anything much, never mind anything interesting (because I’m sick). I haven’t been spending much time upright (because I’m sick). I didn’t want to turn the blog into a whinge-fest (about being sick). I haven’t been in the mood (because I’m sick). Are you noticing a theme here?

All right, a very quick whinge and then I’ll move on: I’ve barely been out of bed for the past week or so, and I’ve not been well since about October 27th, if this blog is to be believed. That’s way too long to be laid up without going out of your mind. I hope that I’m now on the road to recovery: the barking cough which shook my entire body has mutated into a loose (and very productive) cough which only hurts above the waist, and I’ve been fever-free for about 36 hours now, I think. And I’m sitting up for long enough to write this - all I’ve done in the last few days is read lying down and write a few brief comments and responses to emails when I’ve been able to sit up for five minutes.

Right, that’s enough.

So, let me think whether there’s been anything worth blogging. Mostly the boys have been entertaining themselves, with the older ones taking responsibility for doing lunches etc. Having older kids is very useful at times like this, although I do wonder about their priorities sometimes. They taught Toby a new line. His speech is gradually improving and his brothers have been delighted to hear actual words, so at lunchtime yesterday, they set about teaching him more. And what did they teach him to say? “How you doin’?” - à la Joey Tribbiani. Like he needed coaching in how to flirt

We hope we’ve found a place where Barney can sit a couple of GCSEs next year - French in June and probably Maths in November. It’s a private school; I’ll have to call them and talk to them once I get my voice back.

I’ve been cruising around teh internets for Christmas presents, and have managed to find most of what my children have asked for. Jack has just told me what he wants, so I’ll have to start on his list soon - though one item’s already purchased and the rest of it includes “my very own hairbrush” and “loads of rulers and new pencils” so I don’t think I’ll be up at 1.30 a.m. bidding on ebay items from Canada, as I was with some of George’s items. (I won the auction, and I hope my brother-in-law is going to collect the items for me today. Much relief, since we weren’t able to source these anywhere else but ebay, and even on the US site, they were going for two to three times what we were willing to pay. And no, it wasn’t good for a sick person to be doing that in the middle of the night. And yes, I do have a snipe program, but I woke about the time the auction was due to close and I’d only have been lying awake wondering if I hadn’t looked. And since I was up, it made sense to ping my sister-in-law on instant-messenger to see if they’d collect it for me.)

We’re back at Beavers tonight; I would skip it for myself but one of the other leaders “booked off” for tonight months ago, and the other one hasn’t got her warrant yet. It would be more effort to ring all the parents and cancel than it is to show up and hide in the corner for an hour. We’ve got a professional soccer coach coming in to do soccer skills with the boys, so once we’ve done the opening ceremony and collected subs, I can sit back and watch for the next fifty minutes, until it’s time to close and send them all home.

And that is enough of me being upright for now, so I will see you when I emerge from under the covers again - soon, I hope.

I have a cough and a sore throat. I’m achy, feverish, nauseous, whiny and completely uninspired to write anything interesting. So instead of moaning, I thought I’d show you the postcards we’ve received from Postcrossing so far.

Hello! Here is a little bit of Germany, Cologne for you! The city is very beautiful and always offers a pleasant atmosphere for foreign people. Take care and happy postcrossing. Ana Claudia.

Hello and greetings from rainy Finland. My name is Sari and I live in Mäntsälä, which is a county in the southern Finland. I work at the health central as a food service superior. Best wishes and happy postcrossing. Yours, Sari.

Hello! Greetings from Australia. Canberra has a population of around 300,000 people. It is currently Spring. During Spring, there is a festival called ‘Floriade’ where 1000s of flowers are planted in amazing patterns. From Claire.










I just heard Jack (5) asking George (10) to play chess with him, saying, “I’ll go easy on you.”

Last week, after our flat tyre was replaced, I noticed the car was making a strange noise. We tried to get it looked at on Friday, but the mechanic was too busy. By Monday, it was worse. The mechanic said it was a wheel joint (or something like that - I’m really not very good at car-mechanic type stuff) and it’s not going to be cheap - and the part he needs won’t be in until next week. In the meantime, he recommended that we not drive very far, because it might seize up.

So here I am, without a vehicle, for nearly a week.

I did risk driving to Beavers last night; the only other option was cancelling it and we had a visit to the library planned. The library is only about 300 metres from the Scout Hall, so we set a trail for the Beavers to follow, using stones and bits of twigs to create trail-signs, then gave them a sheet of what the signs meant - it went down very well Barney and George missed Scouts and Cubs tonight though, and we’re missing a home-ed outing that was planned for tomorrow And I have no idea how we’re going to get groceries. Public transport around here is very limited, and the only shop within walking/cycling-back-with-groceries is currently closed because it’s being rebuilt. Hm.

Apart from that, it’s been a fairly typical couple of days. Barney’s mood improved dramatically after a decent night’s sleep, and we’ve been doing lots of education-type stuff - well, with no car, it’s not like we can go anywhere anyway.

Otherwise, highlights of the last few days have included:

Four of our five Postcrossing postcards have been registered on the site as “received” - which means there should be some postcards on their way to us soon - and I’ve had a message from someone in Belarus who particularly wants a postcard from this area, so we’re going to exchange cards with her too.

George and Freddy spent some time following the links from the Usborne site, from their Internet-Linked Romans book. (Every time I say that, I have visions of centurions with laptops.) They landed on a quiz site in which every correct answer gave them a chance to score a goal against a famous person. They were in fits of giggles aiming the football at GWB’s head

I noticed Jack using his hands for emphasis - he’s been doing this for a while, but it was only yesterday that I realised who it reminded me of: Ali G. What’s that about then?

I had a look at Education City and considered whether it might be worth a subscription. I don’t think we’ll go for it though, as I’m not sure what’s available on the site justifies the cost of registering at least two and possibly three children.

Jack, trying to sound out the word “crisps” - which he calls “crips”, which complicated it slightly: “cuh, rr, ih, sss, puh, sss…” - then, under his breath, obviously trying to make the picture fit the word: “packet…”

Freddy, using “the words in the box” to “fill in the gaps in the paragraph”, wrote “The sun is… opaque.” Well, yes, I suppose it is. I think they might have been going for something else though

There was something at dinner tonight that made me think I must blog it, but I can’t remember what it was. I wouldn’t have remembered half of this post without my Twitter archive; I really must have another look at updating my Wordpress installation so I can use the Twitter plugin to stick my tweets in automagically.

Today I received a page from Freddy with the words, “things i,d like for christmas” at the top. Freddy’s not really bothered about punctuation

Barney perceived this to be a good idea, and I soon received a note from him (in remarkably good handwriting for Barney!), which began, “Dear Mr. S. Claus” He signed off with “Cheers” followed by his name and what looked like a row of horseshoes. When asked what they were about, he explained that they were hugs, but with Santa being so fat, it wouldn’t be possible to get your arms all the way around him, so he’d left a gap

I must admit I’m quite enjoying being the parent of a twelve-year-old today. (And I know that now I’ve written that, I’ll probably pay for it later!)

Cubs and Scouts tonight, and all the scarves are in such a state that even I, queen of the-creases-will-drop-out, feel they must be ironed. Bah!