This week.

An odd week.
I've been not ill really, just abit under the weather.  Delicate tum which always hits in the night and means I end with very little sleep owing to excessive bloating and, er, shall we just say the passage of wind; seems a bit of an after effect of the D&V bug from the other week.  Indeed friends keep having problems with the vomitting returning - seems this bug leaves one very susceptible to re-infection; while also being incredibly random.  My mindie, has not had the illness at all, inspite of Rye and myself being ill, although of course I did quarantine us and closed the setting; but she has been around children who then started puking mere hours later.  So yeah, a very random bug this year, which is keeping us all on our toes and feeling very wary!

Thus our letterland day on Wednesday was cancelled, as the family that hosts were not feeling too bright.  So a fair bit of home time this week; well with trips over the road to the park, or popping out to do some shopping, bit of tidying, attempting to visit friends, and then cancelling because of under the weatherness.  Add in the very distinct nip of winter, never mind autumn and well I am very pleased indeed I finished my granny square blanket; it is a very snuggly warm blanket!

Thursday was a day of both highs and lows.  Rye had is paeditrician appointment; which began with me suddenly leaping out of bed at 10.11am (another dodgy night with wind), and yelling at Rye to find his shoes and that we had to go NOW!  Considering that included  me getting dressed, having a wash, finding car keys, house keys, mobile, purse etc... I am astounded we arrived at the hospital at 10.35am.  Our appointment was for 10.25am, very relieved that the doctor still saw us, indeed no issue was made of our lateness at all.

The appointment, well mix bag.  On the one hand the nurse that weighted and measured Rye was fabulous at helping me to overcome his reluctance to let her neear him; and by the time we left he was smiling happily at her and engaging...and oh my gosh, my boy is 117cm tall!  I'm 167.5cm apparently... he's 50 cm shorter than I am at four years old!  That is just scary.

But anyway, I don't really want to go in too much depth about the appointment on here, suffice to say, Rye has been referred for assessment by the ASD team; however there could be complications because of his educational provision... I will tackle that as and when/ if and when it becomes an issue... I am however expecting to have to fight for my son's right to assessment.  But we'll see.

The highlight of the day though, was in the afternoon going over to a fellow home educators home for our home ed group meet up to make halloween decorations for the upcoming Halloween Party on the 3rd Nov (yes I know but we have Forest School on the 27th Oct).  The kids did me proud.  I showed them how to make spiders using egg boxes, black paint, googly eyes and pipe cleaners - which they had a marvellous time doing and gosh the mess was spectactular.  Then I showed the children how to make spider webs cutting into  paper - I learned how to do it from here:  and because I was so busy being involved in all this, I'venot been able to take photos.  We didn't spray the webs; I felt adding spray paint into the mixture was perhaps a wee bit tooooooooo risky; excited children and spray paint..hmmm, no.  LOL.

After that I cut out pumpkin shapes on orange card and the children decorated them with glitter and googly eyes.  One boy who had begun to loose interest found his forte making gruesome eyeballs out of tissue paper, glitter and large googly eyes.  And we also made some ghosts too.  A very, very simple craft designed with our very youngest members in mind... essentially some tissue paper is pushed up between thumb and fore finger and then twisted around to create the neck and head.  Then decorate with yet more glitter and googly eyes etc.

They really did do a grand job and we have losts of lovely decorations now for the party.  And as a seperate, do at home, craft I've suggested that some of the kids could make spider nests.  I saw that on a blog too; sadly I can't remember which one to link to it; so if anyone knows which it is, let me know please.  Very simple craft, blow up a balloon, wet strands of white yarn/string in pva/water mixture and then drape over the balloon neest fashion.  Leave to dry - pop the balloon and hey presto, a spider's nest.  I'll be doing this with Rye before the party, but not this weekend as he's at his dad's.

And I need the distraction too so I didn't brood too much on the earlier appointment at the hospital.
Today, bit of tidy up, and then a friend came over and the kids played for a bit, needed a fair bit of referring today; not really sure what got into Rye; he was very manic, and I spent a lot of time having to remind him to be gentle etc and indeed I had to remove him a few times and make him go upstairs just to cut through the fog he seemed to be in, so he'd actually hear me that his behaviour was not appropriate.Mind seemed epidemic too, my mindie was a tad challenging to day too; well no not challenging; just very dramatical and tinkerish, which I found challenging from a being patient stance.

So that's been the week so far.  A mixed bag for sure.

Tomorrow, Rye goes to his dad's for the weekend; I will attempt to plumb in a lent to me dishwasher... well, actually I'm hoping my friend's husband comes up tomorrow and does it for me... yeah, yeah I know I COULD do it myself, but why when there's a man willing?  That's about as far as I've got with weekend planning at the mo.

Have a good one :-)

Bobbling away.

A mixed bag of a day.  Woke up with sniffles, but felt ok, just really snotty.  Using the netti pot helped alot and so the morning was spent sorting out the toy/craft shelves while the kids played outside, ran inside, played outside, ran inside, played outside.... you know the deal.  lol.

Afternoon, I popped to Morrisons for a few supplies.  I'm juicing properly again and I need a few items.  Had a bit of a funny turn.  Seems the sniffles are affecting me a bit, felt hot, woozy and suddenly very tired.  Popped to a friend's house, her lovely mister loaded the dishwasher into the van and I came back and plonked myself on the sofa, while the kids did the running in and out thing again.  Read a few stories to them, and then I decided to begin the hat I promised to make a friend's little lad last week.

He'd been looking at a book with hat patterns in and wanted something with bobbles.  I fell back on my 'ole hat pattern of  basically a tube that is sewed at the top to create the hat, and tassles added.  And I added bobbles.  The photos don't really show the bobble that great, but I think, hope the new hat's intended owner will like it.  Rye certainly did, so I suspect I will be making him a similar hat.

I have some of this yarn left, so I may see if there's enough to make some mittens to go with too :-)
But now, I need my bed.  I need to be up early so I can drag the old dishwasher out of it's pit and attempt to manhandle the new one from the van into the kitchen... (I may just ask my nice nieghbour to do the manhandling for me, lol)

toodle pip.

Thumb twiddling.

Yesterday, a parent came to visit and discuss childcare for her son.  Floors were swept, again, shelves dusted, toys and books tidied, kitchen tidied, surfaces wiped down, floor mopped, garden tidied, toys put away.  Policies brochure etc printed out.  Yes, a lot of effort goes into making my setting look as attractive as possible.  The parent sounded very positive, queried if I would be able to start minding the boy from next week, spoke of her husband coming to visit me etc.   Yet I've heard nothing since, so I am assuming she's decided on a different childcare provider.

I am beginning to conclude that this house probably puts potential clients off.  Afterall, the lounge is very small, tiny in fact - not a lot of space for children to run and play - indeed I discourage running indoors, just because the lounge is that small.  Loosing the contract will not cause me any difficulties, just a little disheartening, and I confess I took a shine to the little boy immediately - he was lovely. 

The solution of course, is a bigger house.  I'll wait until next year and start looking in January, my preference is one of the lovely Victorian houses, that predominantly make up the housing down here.  The thought of packing does fill me with horror - we both have so much more stuff now, still, the ideal is to find a property I can bed down in and not having to worry about moving for a LONG time.

Anyhoos moving on.

Rye is very taken with his treeblocks recently and has been building lots of little towers and "castles".

Which he then knocks down;

The new myriad catalogue plopped onto my door mat this morning too.  There are some lovely new additions to their stock.  The Fairytale Castle is beautiful; pricey too at £229.95.   Then there's this lovely Fagus Excavator, which has had a re-design.  Again rather pricey at £89.95.  Rye adores contruction vehicles and I have looked at this and others in the Myriad range a number of times.   The prices have always given me pause, as I was never entirely sure how big these were.  £90 for a decent sized excavator, well, I don't mind too much - £90 for something that sits on my hand; I'd mind.  Particularly, as I've bought some things in the past and then been shocked how small they were for the price.

The catalogue has a large photo of a boy playing with the excavator and it looks a fair size, so I think I'm  set on this being Rye's birthday present. For Yule I think the Camphill Dumper Truck will be appreciated, and I'll ask my brother if he'll gift Rye with the Camphill Transporter.

Although given Rye's lingering love for castles and building of; I am tempted to buy the Kindergarten Play Set 1    and buy a couple of these castle wall sides  Add in the treeblocks we already own and Rye could make fabulous castles, without the £230 quid price tag.

Ahhhh, little consumerist me, eh.  I am not going to apologise - these days I am in a financial position where I can splash out now and again and while I enjoy hand making gifts for Rye, my skills do not extend to transporters, exacavators and beautifully carved pieces of wood... I feel a crochet exacavator may not quite hit the spot, too.

Well, there I go, off on a tangent - I meant only to mention the new catalogue and drool a little over the fairytale castle, before going on to write about yesterday afternoon.

Picking up my minded child from nursery - watching them run across the playing field, playing on the slides and swing - then back to mine for lunch and naps.  Rye isnt napping much at the moment, so he played with the treeblocks, trains and cars.  Then it was time for C to get up; and by now the rain was sillaging it down, and the washing I put out earlier - well rinsed.

I really didn't fancy taking the children out in torrential rain, so I needed an activity to distract them from running in and out of the lounge and kitchen, screeching.... this is what I decided on

Good 'ole aquamats.  And no mess, normally I don't mind mess; but after spending a lot of time making the house very spic and span for the interview with the parent, I really was not in the mood for mess.

Mess does follow me though, the dishwasher is having a moment.  So I need to emptied it and handwash the dishes.  (sigh)  I need to do it today too, as I left it for a couple of days hoping it would reset its self.  It did and turned back on; and then the programme got stuck again.  If I leave the dishes any longer they will go mouldy - yuck.

I suppose I better go and do that then.   Blah.

Proactive Mummy.

So, I have no idea when I will once again feel warmth, tl'u and I are starting to get use to been cold all the time - I expect my father would have said it's character building. Wimpishness has dogged me though, I've been feeling a tad sorry for myself and mighty miffed that the plumber hasn't at least popped round to do a temporary fix until a new boiler can be fitted. He just keeps wining that there's no point. The POINT is so I have some hot water so tl'u and I can have a bath!

The house is a tip; there is a mountain of laundry, dishwashing and cleaning and washing of floors and I admit, I've used the lack of heating and hot water as an excuse to let the place go to the pits. No more, Proactive Mummy to the rescue; the washing machine is cold fill anyway, and ok drying stuff will be a bit difficult, but it is a beautiful sunshiny morning, so the clothes horses can go out side and then I'll just have to finish the clothes off in the dryer later.

The dishwasher is poorly too, sigh. So, rather than waiting for the boiler to be fixed before doing any dishes I will just get my bum in gear and boil the kettle. I am very gutted about the dishwasher, I'd forgotton how wonderful they are..and I know its just me and tl'u, nontheless I go through a lot of dishes and pans because I cook and bake alot... I am very tempted to save up and buy a new one.

Thankfully, tl'u doesn't seem fussed by the lack of heating - he is bundled up in a vest, sweater, cardy and then another fleecy thick cardy, thick joggers and socks. I would prefer if he wore his slippers but he keeps kicking them off. I may attempt some booties with ties - shouldn't take long to crochet.