Achievements

By 11.30 today I had had a shower and washed my hair, thoroughly cleaned the bathroom - including the floor, hoovered the entire upstairs of the house, put C down for his nap, dressed E (usually an after lunch affair in the hols if she has her way), got the meat out of the freezer for tea tonight, hung out the washing (like why did I bother - it's wetter than ever now!) and put another load on, put the wash-baskets back in their proper places and the overflow in them (!) and tidied up the study in case Jake wants to sleep in their tonight when D takes over his bed. WOW - that was impressive. Even I couldn't believe it was only 11.30 (and I didn't get up until almost 9!). In that time the kids had played well together - even turned off the TV and quietly absorbed themselves in Hama creations (boy, do I love that stuff :) ). P was attempting to follow a pattern almost entirely by herself for the first time - Merry's blue butterfly - and doing a lovely job with only a very little bit of intermittent help from me and Jacob. She did over half before she ran out of steam, which is very good and leaves a project for tommorrow morning :) Following that Jacob set about doing some more drawing. He wants to send something into Smart. For some reason he was really struggling with drawing circles today so he couldn't get the wheels of his cars right. So he jumped ship and started to draw some sea creatures instead. He did struggle a bit with that too today, but eventually produced a very nice shark and a sting ray. He is intending to do a couple more different fish and then create a underwater background - cut out the fish and superimpose them (effectively) with sticky dots onto the backdrop, hopefully creating a 3D sort of effect (it can't be real 3D for Smart apparently). The cut and stick idea was mine, the rest was his. I'll blog a pic when it's done before he posts it - providing he does actually finish it. He's not too hot on completing projects :(

This afternoon was filled with more cleaning and hoovering (trying to get around the house at least once a week atm). I can keep up with it fairly well when I'm not schooling - why is that I wonder? It does prove to me though that I can do the house-wife and mother thing, it's just adding in the 'teacher' bit that throws the balance a little! Good thing is though that if I take a week off every 3/4 this year the house should not get that bad that a quick blitz won't sort it in that week off. I can keep on top of the day-to-day muddle & keep the kitchen clean. It's the deep cleaning everywhere else that's a trouble - or any kind of general cleaning for that matter!!

Other stuff - Jacob has been promoted a lane at swim club tonight. At last, and not without a little nudge from me to the coach. I've been puzzled as to why he hasn't been leveled up before. He's faster than all the other kids in his lane (50m in 50 secs average speed in all strokes) and has a good distance record too, but for some reason the guy didn't seem to want to promote him. I think it's because he is under 10. Anyway - he's up now and that's a good thing because J was beginning to loose motivation (seeing his hard work unrewarded) and wanting to give up. He said he did enjoy it in the end tonight, despite not wanting to go this evening, but this has given him new drive - and I think the extra challenge is a good thing for him. He needs a challenge to rise to or else he will happily coast and acheive very little, whereas I think he has real potential to be a competitive swimmer, so I really don't want to see him give this up too easily.

That'll do tonight. I need an early night - and 12.30 is early for me! It's been nearer 3am most mornings this week!