T-Bird Anni Rides Again

We were out late on Tuesday (Red Cross stuff) so Aprilia slept late yesterday and was droopy.  She’s got a bit of a cough and although she’s not *poorly* she’s not really *well* either, it’s probably a growth spurt, it ususally is…..  Anyway.  I left her to droop for the morning, mainly listening to HP5 on audio book (gotta love Mr Fry)  and playing DS games and was just about to start trying to chivvy her up when she strode into the room fully dressed.  Aparently she had realised that "if Monster arrived by surprise and saw me like that he wouldn’t be impressed"    She also tidied up her bedroom sufficiently that if said paragon of home educated cuteness should happen to arrive they would have space to play.

And in case anyone is wondering…… Monster lives about 6 hours away from us…… so yeh, his mum could just happen to be passing really couldn’t she????  Sigh, I think we can officially confirm she has one huge crush on that boy.  

Not sure what happened to the last year, we dont’ seem to have done much except Brownie badges!  WEll, no, that’s not fair, she has learned that sleeping in the dark means she sleeps deeper and better and thus wakes up feeling much refreshed. 

She has discovered that if she listens to a book whilst following it she can then read it much easier

She has grown ridiculously tall

She has become a much loved "mini helper" at Rainbows, doing a great job of keeping an eye out for our smaller girls.

She has passed her yellow belt for Kung Fu and grown in confidence there.

She has learned to wash her own hair, and brush it so it shines.  It really is lovely hair when she brushes it, hair like I used to wish for when I was younger - all glossy and smooth with just a gently rippling wave to it.

She earned her pocket money (once, but it’s a start!)

She spent 4 days away from me, although on the same field, with a group of strangers.  And spent the rest of teh week just "visiting" for cuddles,m eals and bedtime, spending the rest of the time with her friend.

She knitted several rows without making or losing any stitches.

She learned to cook eggy bread, pancakes and chocolate cake.  Not a balanced diet maybe but a good starting place

She is still as lovely and as loving as ever, loyal to her friends, generous with her cuddles and equally generous with her possessions.  I love her to pieces and cannot imagine a life any different to the one we have now, and yet I know that one day she is going to grow out of snuggling on her bed with me whilst I read to her.  But not yet!

Backyard camping is perfectly acceptable aparently.  Which is handy cos taht’s cheap!  Plenty of stories etc going on today.  We have started teh next SL book, Mrs PiggleWiggle which I’ve so far read 4 chapters of so that’s not going to last much longer, good job I’m past the point of getting stressed when my story book, history book and science book aren’t all perfectly aligned on the schedule!  We also spent some time doing Stile, aparently Big gave it her seal of aproval and thus she now wants to do it, right Jax, can Big come again please, regularly and place seals of aproval on visible bedroom floors, flushing the loo and going to bed   Actually, on a sensible note Jax, where did you get the knitting looms from?  I’ve looked around and can’t find anything remotely like them in the craft shops.

I really thought she had grown out of being afraid of the dark but the last few nights she’s been terrible!  She’s been so worked up about the shaddows making scary shapes and so on that she’s given herself bad dreams then ending up coming in to me and giving ME a total lack of dreams!!!  It’s hard to sleep when you have a 7 year old taking up one half of the bed and a husband taking up the other half and you in a wafer thin bit of space inbetween two snoring, wriggling forms….thankfully she only stays about an hour but still, an hour is a long time when you are being snored at in stereo!

I’m a bit at a loss for what to do.  Is it normal to still be afraid of the darkness inside a nice safe house when you are 7?  Have I inadvertently traumatised her as a toddler by insisting she slept in the dark so her eyes got a proper rest (seems that study has since been discredited, it doesn’t cause eye problems if you never sleep in the dark after all)?  Is she just a big wuss?  Is she doing it for a good excuse for a middle of the night cuddle?  Will I ever get an undisturbed nights sleep ever again?????  Sigh, life was so much easier pre-child you know.  Boring, but easy!

well, the houseguest entertainment is going swimmingly.  Duke putting up the swing frame yesterday, meaning that I could whip up a swing today and fit this rather funky bag seat in the gap where the broken swing boat had been, allowed for much outdoor busyness.  The sky also brightened sufficiently to allow for the planned BBQ tea featuring Em’s first experience of toasting marshmallows - how exactly she has managed to reach 11 without ever toasting a marshmallow let alone making it into a s’more is beyond me!  She seemed to enjoy the experience……  they have just showered and are now "top to tail" in Aprilia’s bed playing DS games with the instruction that I expect them to be quiet enough to make me assume they are asleep, otherwise I will remove DSs from the room……

There have been a couple of moments today when I really did feel for Em though. 

Bearing in mind she only sees Aprilia every few months, she counts her as her best friend rather than any of the multitude of girls she sees day in day out.  Seems sad really when she has all those social oportunities of school and associated clubs and yet her best friend is a cousin 4 years younger  that she sees only when 2 sets of parents can manage to co-ordinate a play date.  Makes me realise that actually school really isn’t the be all and end all for making buddies after all which is quite a relief really as i do sometimes wonder if it’s HE that makes Aprilia like she is rather than her personality being what makes HE the perfect thing for her (did that make any sense?)  

And then there were multiple comments about how she wishes that she lived with us so she didn’t have to go to High School next month, I get the impression that she is slightly on the outside of the "in crowd" and is genuinely worried that if the one girl who links her to the "right" people falls out with her then she will be friendless.  How horrible to be starting a new school with that hanging over you! 

Plus several comments on how her mum (who is a teacher by the way) would not be clever enough to home educate her because she can’t do maths and can only "do" the packages on the PC that she has to know which I find alarming in an ICT teacher! 

And that her mum isn’t a great mum because she leaved Em to look after her "baby sister" who is a year older than Aprilia but has multiple, severe physical and developmental disabilities whilst she plays on her laptop upstairs.  And whilst I KNOW that ALL teenagers (and 11 is close enough) are misunderstood, unloved and parented by hopeless cases I do feel for her because I know from other sources that she does indeed leave Ceri alone at the other end of the house but then again I also know that Ceri was born desperately prem, that her mum nearly died and that she had PND for a long time afterwards (she didn’t bother going to antinatal apointments because she was too busy at work so pre-eclampsia was missed until she collapsed on the way to work, critically ill) and I do wonder if she even really registers C as hers so I wonder if it’s just a not coping thing and she "deals" with it by just ignoring that side of her life completely.  Sad though.

Anyway she’s had a riot today, being a little girl, not trying to be a pseudo grown up, and it’s lovely to see, is a bit scary though to think that it’s only 3 or 4 years til Aprilia hits the spots and curves stage! 

but no, the little one is currently pitched in the garden and "tent ed" has been in full swing for a few days.  Which of course, is due to the fact that I’d declared it Summer Holidays and no more education was going to be offered!  We’ve finished Follow My Leader which, after a grim start, she really enjoyed.  We have also plodded on with the History bit of Core 1, we’ve drifted off from the plan now and I’m just limping through it a bit at a time.  Some days she’s really interested in it, others she really, really isn’t and having been turned off history as a child I don’t want to do the same to her by pushing it, it’s taken me years to find out how interesting it all is and I can’t help but feel I’ve missed out all these years!

She has a cousin coming tomorrow for a sleep over, the pair of them get along so well, Em is 4 years older than Aprilia but she’s great with her, like the sort of Older Sister I would have loved (not like the Older Brother I got….. who I loved dearly but who was a bit of a monster at times!)  She has the whole thing planned out…… it had better not rain on her parade (or her bbq for that matter!)   and has even done some tidying up in honour of the visit!

well, at the time this was declared by my very generous offspring, I was in fact beyond cool and had dipped into down right chilly cos the sun had gone in, the wind had got up and I was still in my cossie the paddling pool with Aprilia watering the garden by the simple expedient of flailing around to see who could splash highest and fastest.  The next door kids thought this was somehow not apropriate behaviour for a mother!  I feel it is entirely apropriate as it was either that or do the housework, and whilst housework my win the attentions of neighbour mum, I find you start to not notice mess a lot faster than you start to not notice your child!

I bought a paddling pool yesterday to celebrate the fact taht we now have a garden fit to use one in!  It’s whale shaped with a tail that curves up over the top of it which provide endless oportunities for bouncing, leaping and sliding.  At one point there were 5 little girls in it which really was several too many!  There was also pre-camp shopping and a small ammount of packing done, mainly to ensure that she doens’t get any camp clothing grubby between now and Saturday morning.  I need to nip to the Guide shop this evening to get her First Aid badge as she has now passed that after a very light hearted but thorough testing by Lola and of course that has to be sewn on before weekend!  Then the gilet can be packed too.

Day was slightly spoilt by me being struck down with a migraine at tea time and needing to retire to bed with a succession of cold wet flannels over my face whilst waiting for the coctail of drugs provided by Duke to start working.  Mind you, I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t the thunder storm finally breaking that cured me!

when Aprilia started Brownies, she looked at all the options and decided what she liked.  She chose the smart-looking sash for putting her badges on rather than the more functional bodywarmer (or "gilet" as they insist on calling it) which is the other option for putting them on - you aren’t supposed to sew them on any other bits of uniform.   Her choice, not swayed by me cos actually I had no preference over "smart" vs "functional" but aparently she is deeply offended by randomly arranged badges on the gilets as displayed by most of the girls in her pack!!!!  (somewhat rich really coming from the girl wtih the randomly arranged bedroom but there you go!)

However, now she has 6 interest badges it’s occured to her that you can only fit about 14 onto a sash before it’s full, front and back!  Which, considering she is on a mission to get the lot (eep!), is a bit of a problem   Now obviously you can then start hanging them over the edges of the sash for a serated effect but that then makes things like special badges hard to jigsaw in.  And then, horror of horrors, she found out taht she can’t take the sash to Brownie Camp.  So now we have the gilet after all and I’ve got some sewing to do!