I nearly met Joyce...

No it's true I tell you, I really nearly did, honest!
But since I didn't, due to my and F's 'tummy troubles', let's get on with it, shall we?

HE: Some casual mathematical observations of the 'well there's two here and three there, so there's five' type variety. Also, she just started singing a made-up song yesterday that went: one and one is two, two and two is four, four and four is... at which point she stopped to ask us what four and four made, then continued. Some other maths that came up with dominoes. More study dog, including taking quite an interest in the ways that the letters are formed. She drew an 'S' sometime last week, and I think she could do more but I'm letting her take it as and when she likes. She got me to write a sign for two stones that she put on the windowsill. I wanted to write something HEish, i.e. an informative nature table kind of sign, saying something like 'these two stones are similar' but she dictated so our eventual sign read something more on the lines of 'don't touch these stones or take them away'. Poor thwarted educational mum.
Conversations have touched on: skeletons, humming-birds, lighthouses, superheroes, how sharks have sad mouths because they wish they were dolphins. Have also been watching Discovery Kids now and then and that has triggered a couple of good conversations about lungs and yawning.

Life:
Is good. Hayfever is on the way out and the bout of D&V is now over. It was a real shame that it stopped us joining the South Coast HE Joyce-fest, typical bad timing. But there we go. Nic, Davies and Scarlett visited today, and after they went I looked around at the house which I hadn't really done for a while, and rapidly spotted 50 different kinds of filth that surely must have made her think 'Phew, that was a lucky escape, I was nearly the person who introduced Joyce to Ali!'
HE moment of the day was awesomely Scarlett's. Nic and I were chatting away, and Scarlett said quite casually 'Freya and Davies and Ady all have the 'ay' sound in, don't they?' or words to that effect! Gobsmacked mums looked at the 2yr old blonde phonics genius in astonishment. Wow!
It was another good visit, there were phases when Nic and I could not get more than 5 words chatted in a row, but plenty of times when we really did get a chance to talk. So we covered: how we became really us, which was somewhat similar for both of us and also involved schooldays; home-ed; children; social skills; character types; life, the universe and sandwiches.

J had a whole week off around F's birthday and guess where we went?
Nowhere!
And it was brilliant! By the 4th day or so, family life was so harmonious and relaxed, I felt we could have lived like that forever... Bliss. Family of homebirds really. And at F's age, she gets so much just from having us both around, pootling and pottering in our home environment, chatting and accompanying and observing and asking. And she played 2 games of draughts with me, almost 'properly' before insisting her way was better (rolling the draughts on their edges across the board, but at least there was some idea of turntaking involved).

What else: more birthday prezzies, including a clockmaking kit, makes a simple transparent clock, so you can see the cogs. F and I put it together this morning, it's rather nice. But it did mean that when Nic arrived I hadn't even got as far as breakfast! She's very nice about my eternal disorganization though! Lots of lego, and we've just made lots of patterns of holes in a small cardboard box, to put her glow balls in, so that will be something pretty to look at as part of bedtime which should be starting about...Now!