Social whirl and doughnuts

Can't remember which morning: F had a sudden painting binge - I helped her to get the easel out and supplied the ready-mixed paints and a great rainbow and sun and sky picture appeared, followed by some splashy wet abstract items. I really like to see her paint. We're going to my mum's for a few days next week and she will probably have the chance to use proper paints there, which is always lovely. Geomags have also been generally in evidence, and more Barbie Horse Adventure, of course.

It was our last Music and Movement on Tuesday - have had the occasional wobble about it but the more I have discussed it with my mum and a couple of friends the more I do think it is the right time for us to finish. F made a special effort to concentrate but even then there were a couple of times I could see she just wanted to do her own thing and I could see no benefit in her not being able to. For example, they do a section with scarves, but they have to keep their feet planted on the floor and just twirl or wave scarves in whatever way they are supposed to do it that week, using their upper body and arms only. F always ends up moving around, instead of keeping feet planted in one place - I'm convinced that this is only partly due to her inherent right-side balance issues - it's got far more to do with wanting to skip around with a scarf. So there are a few other sections where I find similar problems - basically absence of self-expression/free expression/creativity. For me, art (as opposed to craft), whether visual, performance or other, is all about those things, not about recreating/copying etc. so... no more Music and Movement.

Wednesday:
Yoga lady Harmony came and F concentrated beautifully, going over the positions she has already done and a couple of new ones. It's so lovely to see that F can be symmetrical if reminded and helped to do so. Just to see her do a simple star, tree or butterfly position is great. Also these positions are giving her body and brain reference points for normal activity, her body and brain have something symmetrical to remember. Hope that makes sense to someone besides me. Here, obviously, there is a reason to do things exactly as the person 'teaching' tells you to do them, to watch and copy and concentrate. It's not about self-expression and doesn't pretend to be. F is getting so much from it and seems to love it.

After yoga, Katya came over with Ria and Belle - she and I managed a conversation entirely disjointedly - think we were interrupted every 2 or 3 sentences, so that was fun. I made pesto bread and us grown-ups had salad with tons of ingredients - the children weren't very interested and ate a few bites of bread and the odd carrot. She is feeling a bit more relaxed with her job, 6 months in, and is going ahead with teacher training in September. F, Ria and Belle played fairly nicely and very loudly, but good-humouredly on the whole. Belle is seeming quite a bit older and different now that she is 3 and she and F found enough common ground to play together a bit. Ria and F also played on the XBox a bit, taking turns on Wallace and Gromit and doing a bit of Barbie horse racing. They have the odd conversation too!

Thursday:
We went over to Brighton to visit Anya and Louis and baby Ian - we did the train instead of the bus, as they live nearer a station than a bus stop from here, so we had some nice train ed conversations. We both got on better with Louis this time (last time he didn't really talk to us and glared a lot) although he took offence at a few things. Still, he and F did manage to play with some animals, once she had worked through her enthusiasm for his light and sound garage thing with lots of cars and helicopters and things. It was nice to see Anya, quite nice to hold and cuddle Ian, who is not so bad for a baby and anyway 9 months is when they are starting to get a bit more interesting. Also very nice to hand him back. Jack came round too and F and Louis vied for his attention a bit. I thought Anya might want to have an HE conversation but it didn't seem to be the right timing again. I know she has a slight interest, so I think that will come up again some time. Generally it was a nice visit, though we didn't manage very much conversation.

Today:
The MonsterTeenies came over - and brought cakes! Quite unwittingly Mrs MT had chosen for me and F the cake most likely to be vegan and likely to be least unvegan - jam doughnuts!! (I guess she injected them with lard just before getting out of the car to be on the safe side though) I love jam doughnuts and haven't had one for a long time for some reason - Tesco's are vegan I think, and Marks and Spencer's and a few others, can't remember, but know we used to have some regularly. Mrs MT and I had lots of excellent conversations, many covering Home Ed in various aspects, particularly autonomy and where it stops, compromises, how to fit in paid work at home, and all sorts of other things.

Now what did the children do? As with Wednesday's visitors, they were certainly loud and lively, but again overall very good-humoured, not much whingeing or deliberate annoyingness, for instance. They did tons of different things including: drawing/painting, stencils (D); various imaginary and exploratory games involving improvised fishing rods (D caught a boot in fine comedy tradition) and other items; conversations about weight, material composition (indirectlytouching on 'density' I guess), relativity of size (3 different contexts - spacehoppers feeling smaller because D had got used to using a bigger one since, perspective in drawings, F using binoculars), colours, being gentle with a woodlouse (S being very cute); spacehoppering (clothed!), bouncy ball throwing and an F and S invented game of chase involving the ball which quickly got out of hand (sorry S) after initially being quite fun; film ed with 2 Wallace and Gromit films, leading to other discussions and activities. At some point I set up 'Rumble in the Jungle' at someone's request - there was much experimentation and investigation there, largely but not solely led by D, of the 'what happens if this bit isn't there?' type, for instance. At some point F wrote her name and for the first time asked for help to spell her middle name and her surname too, so the resulting pink name picture is one to be kept for posterity. D made a great robot using the giant plastic Brio set. S did a great picture of Mrs MT in her green spaceship and also was very chatty with me about toast and kettle preferences and made a neat gadget for serving pretend ice-cream using several handy toy items in the conservatory.
F had an early wobbly about how untidy her room was getting - it turned out this was because the red box full of assorted items had been tipped up over the floor - she's probably 'forgotten' that she used to do that kind of thing herself frequently up to about 4 months ago or so! She has changed though, it made me notice that all over again. Not to say that she'll never tip toys all over her floor ever again, but she is more aware of that and negative aspects of it now.

Other stuff:
Done my invoices for March - it was as good as January, and that was pretty good, so that's cool. I already have a reasonable-sized job lined up for April too! Tonight I'm not working at all, will drink wine and watch Green Wing and relax. Weekend is so far unplanned and spacious - all I want is to have a good long soak in the bath at some point, and get a start on this next bit of work, maybe watch a film or two.