Quickish bloggish

J is really ill with a bad chest infection. He was sent home from work on Monday and has spent most of the time since then sleeping or lying down. I felt terrible on Tuesday/Wednesday, but don't seem to have got the same as him. He has missed his work Xmas curry, which is a real shame. He feels fed up, having had plans for all sorts of Xmas preparations that now have to wait. Fortunately though he had already done quite a bit of online shopping and organization, so all is not lost. Today he managed to eat a bit, so hopefully is on the mend.
Amazon and other parcels have been arriving every day, haven't done my wrapping yet, but getting there!
Today F and I made cards, an amicable glitterfest. I had already braced myself not to go 'control freak' on her and actually managed it. The result was that she did about 3 cards and I did about 20, in a faux-naif pseudo-F style. At least we both had fun and no shouting though. I let her use up the entire gold glitter on her 3 cards pretty much, after half-heartedly attempting to stop her and then deciding that was futile and silly. The glitter was for her to use, so let her use it.
The big news here for me is that F wrote the word 'Christmas' yesterday (copying letters into spaces in a puzzle in a comic), and today she asked me to write the word 'Mummy' and copied that. Both words were pretty much legible, and I was so excited about it, and got a bit teary.
What else?
Had a nice afternoon up at my friend Katya's, where F played pretty well with her two, Ria and Belle, despite a couple of times when she found them a bit too shouty and shouted back at them that she wanted some peace and quiet! She's not very used to that level of shoutiness. I remember as a child being a bit freaked out by other children shouting a lot for no apparent reason. Not that she doesn't have her moments. It was still a great visit though, K and I laughed and laughed and nattered away, and most of the time F played happily with R and B all over their big house. On the way back F seemed mainly to humour me by pretending to be as enthralled as I was by the Xmas lights and decorations we saw outside people's houses (minimal at the posh end of the hill, gradually increasing in colour, quantity, flashingness and saturation as we descended down, peaking in our street at the very bottom, where about 30% of the houses have lights on display, with plenty of variation in flashing sequences and colours).