So, in the past few days, F has been:
playing with her Leapster again - after ignoring it for a good few weeks, she is back into it again, which has brought up such concepts as 'minus' and 'sums' and 'pentagon' (or as she originally said 'pentagob' - could be some 5-mouthed Dr Who monster) and 'parallelogram' among others
making and project managing makes of various items for the My Little Mutants to enjoy, swings, roundabouts, etc.
drawing and using stickers including making a space picture, half sounding out the word Mars, drawing C3PO and R2D2 standing on a planet, telling a story of a baddie's space ship and a goodie's space ship and a space battle.
socializing with Ria and Belle yesterday - more parallel play than cooperative/group stuff until right at the end when they all seemed of one mind in wanting to pour water all over the conservatory floor and paddle in it. F played more with Belle (3) than with Ria really, this time.
socializing more today with baby Rowena from 2 doors down, 1-yr old, just about walking. F was very good again, just like with T and S the twins last week. I'm delighted to see her doing so well with younger children, that area of her character has really been developing and it's lovely to see.
fiddling with water and ice in various ways, entailing practice in carrying various receptacles filled with water, spilling various quantities of water in various places, observing mummy doing emergency plumbing operation of toilet unblocking (on with the rubber glove, out with the old toothbrushes, toy 'wands' and bubble blowers, pipe cleaners, etc.) after F put too much paper down and it backed up in that scary way, water rising up and up (I was impressed, despite being decidedly grumpy by this point, by her comment that the shape of the toilet meant that as the water rose its surface got bigger).
loving bath bombs - think we should get one of those kits for making them
I have been:
not working at all since I last blogged. Tonight is my 5th day in a row of drinking wine and not working. Back to it tomorrow.
socializing with my writing group, out for drink and pizza, enjoyed a lovely evening
socializing with Katya yesterday, having a good laugh and chat, she's not entirely happy about the lack of choice in school for Ria but making the best of it
socializing with Ariane from 2 doors down, about to start work this week, came in for cuppa this morning
watching a bit of BB and reading updates on BBGossip, not quite immersed yet...
pissed off about assumptions that some parents make, if their children have 'always' gone to nursery/pre-school, that all children can't entertain themselves, because theirs have pretty much been taught not to. My child is absolutely excellent at amusing herself, using all the resources available to her. A friend came out with a few generalizations: 'they don't know what to do with themselves when the weather's bad, do they?', etc. and I was left unable to phrase a response quickly enough. If I had blurted something out quickly it would have sounded smug and/or defensive: 'Actually F has loads of ideas for things to do whatever the weather, etc.' Annoying though, because she does.
Still, I can blog it.
Tonight we have had a takeaway and wine and it feels somehow like Friday on a Tuesday. On Saturday it will be our anniversary - 12 years without a change of name or a piece of paper to prove it. I've never wanted to get married, but I know many people who have done for all sorts of reasons. For me, it is simple - we want to be together and our being together is the proof of that. It is ongoing, new every day, not something crystallized at some point in the past, but something continuing. I know that, for some people, living together means nothing like as much as marriage or civil partnership, but for us it's the commitment we make every day. 12 years means a lot. 19 years of friendship means a lot too. The next 19 will probably mean even more.
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5 comments:
I like being married. I specifically wanted to get married because A) I wanted the party
B) I wanted to be able to refer to A as 'my husband' - I hate 'other half', 'partner' never sounded right, 'boyfriend' sounds so teenage particularly when he was well over 30, 'lover' sounds illicit as though they may belong to someone else and so he ended up being 'bloke'.
C) You had a better choice of greetings cards available for Husband that for 'one I love'
D) I quite liked the proving people wrong - I know it doesn't mean we're any more likely to stay together but six years after lots of people said we'd never last I quite liked watching then dance at my wedding.
E) We were debating having children and I wanted me, Ady and any children to all have the same last name.
Glad we did it, cos it achieved all of the above and was a lovely day / week but over and above that it made difference whatsover to us and it is our anniversary of being a couple that we celebrate far more than becoming Mr & Mrs.
So Happy Anniversary Ali and J :-)
Totally with you on the 'rainy day syndrome' suffered by schooled children. I heard an ad on the radio yesterday (presumably in preparation for half term next week and shudder, summer holidays soon) with a parent clearly being driven insane by their kids home and not knowing what to do with them so suggesting you visit their website for details of holiday clubs to take them back off your hands!!! It stands to reason that if you take away a child's freedom to decide how to spend their time by dictating their activities then it is only a short while before they are dependant on being directed - bit like long term prisoners who struggle to readjust to freedom after release ;-).
You should get F to draw a pentagob monster :-)
I bet George Bush has had to have a lot of help over the years with the word pentagon...
Interesting and amusing reasons for getting married! Other than Christians doing it for religious reasons, most people I know seem to have done it at least partly as an excuse for a party. I never quite understand why they couldn't just have a party anyway, if they wanted one. Maybe it's a way of getting your parents to pay for a party?
I think it's a bit of a mystery to me. I do look at it very much as a thing that the State has always encouraged and endorsed, and originally coming from economic/fiscal motivations to do with heirs and ownership, which seems extremely unromantic and clinical and puts me right off too.
Totally with you on the marriage thing, and somewhat p***ed off that never having wanted to do it, the fact that we now have the right to has cost us several thousand pounds a year in lost tax credits.
Happy anniversary - looking forward to seeing you next week.
Happy Anniversary!
We can't really complain about losing the tax credits as you and J would never have had them. It was a supremely enjoyable and financially beneficial bit of prejudice while it lasted.
I loved it that the state that told us we had a 'pretended family relationship' was subsidising it so heavily.
I never wanted to marry, even as a child. I nearly killed my grandmother by announcing, at the age of six, that I'd just live with people rather than marry - because then you didn't have to bother getting divorced!
Public ritual bit would embarrass me terribly - and I'd have to buy clothes - nightmare!
We arranged ours in less than 3 weeks - and paid for it ourselves! More seriously though we did it because as much as being together and staying together was proof enough of our comittment it was nice to be decadent and selfish and have an occassion specifically to mark that commitment too. If we weren't already married I'd probably not justify it now and I can think of nothing worse than a traditional big white wedding (we got married in Las Vegas in a wedding chapel followed by a helicopter flight to the Grand Canyon over Hoover Dam, landing on the Canyon floor for champagne lunch and then back over the Vegas strip).
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