The last few days.

The pictures are from the last couple of days. On Sunday afternoon, we went on a lovely walk across the vally near our house. The kids had fun climbing trees.

Today I planned a 'capacity' lesson for Honor-May. She has been keeping me informed as to what the current maths topics are in school and I do my best to organise some activities to support her understanding of the subject. I know that she finds it difficult to work out on a measuring jug what the unmarked increments of measure are. So we started with a written diagram. She knew how to identify the 100's no problem. She could also work out which lines read as 50, but then struggled a little with 25 and 75ml. Once we had done this, she could easily measure out the amounts of liquid that I had prepared earlier!

I used food colouring in the water to a) make the activity prettier! and b) make it easier to read.

Then she matched up the correct labels to the containers of liquid.

This would have been fun only she was dying to get it over with so she could go and help her Dad with a bonfire at the bottom of the garden.

Yesterday, after school, my Mum took the older two to see Alice in Wonderland at the cinema.
I'm told it is very, very good!

Whizz, bang, pop!

Last week Honor-May bought a chemistry set. The kids have been dying to try it out. I think I said that as soon as she got it home she had it out in her bedroom and had pretty much mixed up the ingredients. So I promised I'd sort out a place to keep this stuff in the study and help them with the experiments. Well, I found myself a little challenged this morning to go through any serious lessons with them but allowed them to do their own kind of free play with a variety of ingredients from the kitchen. Hubby quickly pointed out that they'd be better doing this outdoors. I knew there was a good reason for putting up the gazebo - it makes an ideal science lab! So, here they are having a great time mixing up bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, lemon juice, gelatine crystals and food colouring! Meanwhile Hubby tried to get the microscope working. It's not ideal. In hindsight, we would have been better off investing in a decent microscope and then providing all the other bits and pieces separately. Not sure where you can get things like litmus paper cheaply and easily, though.

I'm looking through some websites now that have good ideas for home experiments that we can do next time. Here is one website I like:

http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/index.php

It ain't heavy....

I'm not long back from Mass tonight. So far the new routine of going on a Saturday night is going well. It is nice and quiet (and short!) and Honor and Henry, being the only kids, get a nice little dose of attention and have so far been asked to do the Offertory Procession every week. I have, however, found myself battling with a well-meaning white haired lady as we go to collect the rather heavy decanter of wine who is always extremely concerned that my Honor will drop it! I reassure her that it will be fine and then pray heavily as we make our way down the aisle! They are getting better at it, but I think this lady's fussing makes Honor more nervous than she needs to be. Oh well. Henry enjoys having something to do, but, by golly, he was a terrible fidget tonight. I need to look up some strategies to keep them engaged.



The Gospel tonight was very apt for everyone (especially women?) The old 'you who is without sin cast the first stone' story. There I go. Being very 'judgmental' about women. Probably because I cannot think of a time when I get together with the girls when we don't say "oh, you know what so-n-so is doing..." I think women are very hard on each other. And I think the men do it rather a lot too.
I'm not going to give a sermon here. This post is merely about my little mind questioning the natural and the supernatural. It certainly seems that it is a natural part of humanity to judge others. Last night Hubby and I watched the very harrowing, yet compelling film 'The Magdalene Sisters'. It seemed unbelievable to us that these young women were judged and punished in such an appalling way... in the name of Jesus. How natural it was for us to condemn the cruelty of these nuns in the Irish laundries and the behaviour of the trusted clergy who abused vulnerable young women.

I'm becoming wary that this is turning into some massive theological essay. Oh, why not, I do this every now and then, anyway! It just seems to go like that, that these things all crop up at the same time - like you are meant to take notice? So. There was this film. Then there was the Gospel and in the newsletter was a notice about the forthcoming Papal visit to the UK. It invited us to sign a petition in favour because, apparently a secular group has been petitioning against it and had received 20,000 signatures. Well. When I got home I did a wee bit of research. It turns out that the group were actually campaigning for the Catholic Church to pay for the visit rather than it coming out of our taxes. I'm not saying if this is right or wrong. I did sign the petition in favour of Pope Benedict's visit. I then read through some of the comments. One person had answered the question I had been pondering... that apparently our Government finances visits from all kind of world/religious ambassadors and therefore the Pope's visit deserves the same respect. All I am saying is, it is difficult to make fair judgements when we are not in possession of the full facts. Only God is and that is why John reminds us to leave it to him.

On a much lighter note, James Bond has just started on TV. And I hope God will agree (of course he does!) that Daniel Craig is a very very cool 007!

Yesterday I had a bit of time to make these little cubby hole curtains for the kitchen from my new 'wobble stripe' material. They are very cheerful. (Just like me!!!)

The children decorated biscuits again, from the rest of the kit I bought last week, but I did add some extra colours this time. (Natural, of course) . There is so much stuff you can buy now for this kind of thing compared to when we were young.

This morning, as I shopped in Morrissons, I bumped into the ambulance lady who respond to our emergency the other week. It was nice to go and thank her and to explain the outcome of it all. She is in the St John's Ambulance. I used to belong to that when I was young and Honor has expressed an interest in it too. So I shall be looking into that for her.

CRIKEY! SNAKES EVERYWHERE!!!

Nah. Not an hommage to Steve Irwin. I am, of course, referring to St Patrick's Day. Everyone knows that today is the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland and, according to Facebook, they also seem to know that it is Hubby's birthday! So we have fun celebrating both. For the children, I told them the story of St Patrick and how it is believed that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. Then I told them that they were hiding in our garden! They were sent outside to find eleven snakes that I had hidden earlier. A couple of them I had found amoung the kids toys but most of them were rather crudely made from things like socks, scarves, skipping ropes and plasticine.

This is just an old sock stuffed with tissue, tied to a scarf. The kids didn't mind, though. They had great fun!

Henry's sword is also homemade. Daddy made it for him the other day from the junk modelling box.

This is Honor's snake. It is called 'Beauty'!!!!

And this one is called 'Emerald'.

This one is well camouflaged. (Read in Aussie accent!) Careful, it could give you a nasty nip, the little blighter!

After the snake hunt they did some other related colouring and handwriting activities that I found on the 'Catholic Icing' website. They enjoyed this online colouring page.

http://www.thecolor.com/Coloring/St%20Patrick.aspx

As I said, it is Hubby's birthday. His employers sent him a bottle of champagne. They also sent me this lovely flower arrangement last week after hearing about our little scare with baby Hope. How thoughtful. Bet there aren't many bosses that would do that.

These are the flowers I got for Mother's Day....

along with this Cath Kidston tablecloth which arrived in the post today. I love Cath Kidston stuff. The picture above this one is of her 'wobble stripe' fabric. That also arrived today. I bought it to put in the kitchen. It's so colourful. I had a look round some other fabric shops to try and find something similar, but cheaper, but couldn't find anything so I went for it.

I thought I knew what I was doing!

The past ten days has been especially challenging to our role as parents and there is no doubt that I take these, more negative aspects more to heart than Hubby. Not that he isn't affected. But he has other things going on to balance out all this stuff. He has a successful career. It is at times like this that being a full time Mum can really make you feel inadequate.

I very recently reported that Hope was rushed to hospital as a result of not breathing. The doctors, at the time, seemed to believe that this was a breath-holding incident and likely to recurr. Well, they were right. And alarmingly frequently. She hasn't gone unconscious, probably because we blew in her face as recommended. But she has turned blue again, a couple of times, and it is very hard not to panic!

Something else that has happened - and I was going to keep this private, but it may be useful to anyone else reading this - is that on the very day that I arrived home from hospital, tired and oh, whatever.... there was a letter waiting for me from the NHS. Previously they had been into Henry's school and had weighed and measured all the children, then plotted their precious data on their precious charts! The letter was sent to inform me that Henry was nearly off the scale, indicating that he may be overweight/obese!!!! (Hmmmmm. I was just a little bit upset by this).

Then, today, the health visitor came to do Hope's one year check. She also plotted her charts and came up with... well, poor Hope is barely on the chart. She is starved, the poor thing. Maybe Henry has been nicking all her food???? So she has arranged to come back in a month to check her weight again. Meanwhile, I have to feed her as much Weetabix as possible. The confusing part of this is that the HV admitted she was in perfect proportion regarding her length and weight. So I'm not sure why she needs to be fatter. (And I'm certain that Henry's extra weight comes from his massive brain!)

Anyway. It's all food for thought (groan!). Ironically (or maybe not -it's all a conspiracy, innit?), I was watching 'Jo Frost - Extreme Parenting' last week. (She is the Supernanny.) Her programme focussed on obesity in children because, apparently the rates of childhood obesity have soared. She demonstrated how much a portion of ice-cream was acceptable for these young kids. She showed us that one small tablespoon was all they could have. Now. How should one interpret this information. Who on earth has a bowl of ice-cream with just one small tablespoon in it? Is this really common sense? If the kid was having it every day then, well, maybe. I'm being totally honest here. Ice-cream in our house is not a regular occurance and is often a bit like Jo Frost says but on the side of some fruit pudding. But if it was going to be just a bowl of ice-cream, there'd be more than just one small tablespoon. Or else I'd say 'what's the point?'

I have written a letter to the health team that classed Henry as overweight and invited them to come and take a proper look at him and give proper feedback. After all, I could be kidding myself. This new initiative to combat childhood obesity may have the right goal in mind but I'm not at all convinced that they are going about it the right way. They sent me a leaflet advising me to walk to school and watch less tv. (We already walk to school, play outdoors, only watch Little House...).

I suspect, that these charts/info that's on telly needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and a dose of common sense and that medical professionals could be confident enough to tell it like it is... to those who really need it.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY.

I'd like to wish all mothers out there, but especially my own, mother-in-law and sister-in-law, a very happy mother's day.
God bless. XXXXX