The Brick House

Considering that the weather forecast for the rest of the week is for pretty much unadulterated gloom and chill, punctuated with rain, it’s probably just as well we got the things which require nice weather, like trips to the park and Federation Square, out of the way so early this week. Tomorrow will probably involve supermarket shopping, and then a library visit in the afternoon.

This afternoon, K swam for over an hour again despite the lack of nap, and somehow failed to go to sleep in the car or lying down propped on a pillow in front of the TV after we got home, although she looked very dopey for an hour or so. But she recovered, and after she got bored with the TV we had a nice time playing at having a party, which apparently required me to wear a red clown’s wig. We played pass the parcel and drank lots of fizzy water, and then played with the toy animals for a while. It seems that lions and triceratopses bite your face off, but elephants kiss it better again. Who knew?

She played by herself fairly happily with her rice basket and then a bowl of suds while I did a humungous load of washing up. She even scooped almost all of the rice back into the bowl and piled the cups and funnels etc away neatly when she had finished playing. Are we sure she is related to B?! She got a bit cross when I wouldn’t let her do any glueing without me, but was happy enough sitting at the table with pencils and paper instead. Eventually Rollercoaster finished recording and she could watch a Play School episode, which finished just as Daddy came home. She got to play with him a bit, but since he was busy she ended up watching another Play School show while I cooked dinner, then after we’d eaten she played with me again while E desperately wrestled his website into submission. We played mostly with Duplo and the magnetic fishing game. After that she was happy to play by herself again until E came back from the shops and took over. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for her to go clunk when he took her up to bed!

B walked the dog up to the shops and got herself a horrible pie, then came back to eat it. She played Chicktionary while I was in the shower, then I diverted her into the dining room and we played Maths War. She was pleased to actually win today! After that we discussed the various different card games I had squirrelled away in the cupboard, and she got excited by the Junior Scrabble game. At which she whupped my ass 105 to 85. Scrub. I was particularly impressed with her last move – I had put down my favourite Scrabble word, “quire” (which is one of those specialised words which only exists in Scrabble games), and quick as a flash she put down “re-” in front of it. She seems to have that strategic instinct for Scrabble which I lack!

We didn’t quite finish the game as BTN came on and B wanted to watch that. She came in to tell me about a segment on BTN, in which they profiled a school which hunts for spiders and one class which has found 40 new species. No prizes for guessing what her suggestion for the rest of the day was *g* After BTN was Science Clips, on rocks and soils. Then we spent a little while on the multiplication book, but B’s concentration was getting ragged and K was getting cross that she wasn’t getting any attention (she was sitting up at the table with her colouring-in book and a puzzle), so I sent them off to play in the garden. In between all this I’ve managed to put two loads of laundry through my fortunately not-yet-extinct washing machine, and pick up the Duplo which was pissing me off strewn all over the playroom. I am also recording a science program for B, although I am not really keen on her watching it this morning as we are meeting Nannie at the pool at 1:30, we haven’t done any English, and we still need to eat lunch – plus I promised a trip to Federation Square to feed the fish and visit the Lolly Shop. Hmm, I may have to get her back inside soon!

[Later] Neither of them put up much resistance at coming inside at about 11:20 when bribed with the trip to the Lolly Shop. B wrote most of a page on her story, then read a chapter of Tai’s Penguin, and did it all so quickly that we left earlier than I had planned. The fish were disappointing – K can’t really feed the ones which have to be fed from the bank rather than the bridge, and the pond with the bridges is so chockful of algae that all the fish appear to have died off. K was pleased with her loot (a lollipop and one of those horrible plastic-looking hotdog things), and so was B. Lunch is being had, and we are about to leave for the swimming pool. K has not had a nap, unlike last week, so I’m not sure how long she will last. We will see…

Ah yes, this blogging thing again… Can’t remember what we did last week, so meh.

This morning B was very focused and we got some good work done before pottery. We managed to sit down by 9am, and played Maths War (revising addition and subtraction facts). That went pretty quickly and was a fun way to start out, so I think we’ll try to start out with that every morning and see if we can get her up to speed a bit more. When addition/subtraction are becoming a bit more automatic we’ll move on to practising multiplication.

After that, she happily wrote another page in her story, then had a quick break while I fed chickens and bunnies. Then she read another chapter in Tai’s Penguin, with very few mistakes, and without losing patience or her temper. She really is getting better! We dropped her off at pottery, then K and I went to the John Knight Memorial Park and had a (mostly) lovely time. The only bit I didn’t enjoy was taking her up to the snake park. I won’t do that again without B around, as my vertigo got a serious workout climbing in the towers. Although by the end of it K was definitely getting the hang of going down ladders safely backwards, which was good to see – she’d started out just trying to step forwards into space. A bit nerve-wracking to watch!

We were lucky enough to be able to watch a bobcat moving piles of mulch about, then follow it down to its truck and see that too. K was sufficiently hungry that she didn’t object to going home, so we went back and made ourselves lunch. I didn’t have a jumper for her so she was a bit chilly, and enchanted me by asking for “hand-socks” when I asked her if she was cold! She was not impressed when I mentioned that they are actually called gloves – hand-socks it is, then…

B was off at the swimming pool with Nannie until 3pm. It was nice to have some time to have fun with K without having to worry about dashing off again to pick up B. K and I were planning to go to the library after lunch, but I didn’t know how long Nannie was going to be, so we decided not to. Tomorrow or Wednesday will do. Instead, she did some colouring in and played with her rice basket while I wrote my monthly shopping list, and we also read books together and played Tummy Ache! I got some laundry done, although I’m afraid that the washing machine may have exploded a little bit while spin-drying the towels. At least, it made a hideous noise, a suspicious smell, and stopped working very quickly. The pump still seems to be working, but not the spin. When B walked (an hour afterwards) in the first thing she said was, “What have you been burning this time?”, and I have a horrible feeling that it is the motor…

This morning got off to another slow start. I think I should just resign myself to the idea that I’m
not functional before about 10am, and stop beating myself up over it and vowing to do better. It don’t work…

B watched ABC Kids, had a shower, then tuned into BTN (some interesting stuff on cow burps, and allergies – once again I got to proclaim that I’m not really a slob, I just keep my house dirty to help build strong immune systems in my kids *g*) and Science Clips, while K and I played with blocks. The TV stayed on for a while after that but I don’t think B was watching it as she was curled up in front of the heater working in her new Sudoku book. I wish she would use a pencil though, it’s bloody irritating listening to her getting upset with the fact that she’s made some mistakes in big, black, indelible ink…

K was getting increasingly grumpy and strung-out, and demanded boobie in bed. I wasn’t entirely surprised when she went to sleep, and seized the opportunity to get B doing some work. She didn’t want to go back to her story today so we wrote notes to each other and passed them over the table. Then she read the first chapter (6 pages) in an Aussie Nibbles book, Tai’s Penguin. I was very impressed with how much her concentration span is improving. I was dubious that we’d make it to the end of the chapter but she kept persevering even when she got upset and frustrated about not being able to figure out a word. I was ready to make lunch when she finished that, so I figured after her dose of LISP last night it wouldn’t kill her to miss doing maths today.

After lunch we headed off the the indoor swimming pool, where Nannie had offered to take K in with her. I wasn’t sure how K would take it, given that on previous occasions she has been pretty ambivalent about the whole deal, but she was instantly hooked. I suspect the nap beforehand was a very good idea, as she had enough energy to pootle around for over an hour, and even then didn’t want to get out. Nannie had brought a flotation ring but it was too big to keep K safe, so I went into the dive shop and bought floaties. They were an immediate success! Once K was being held up by these and not ducking her head if she fell over, she got much more adventurous, and kept wanting to go out of her depth. I investigated the pool’s baby and toddler classes, and will see about enrolling her in one if there are vacancies. Nannie has offered to take K in if it is one of the days she takes B to the pool. Just as well, as I doubt there are many maternity swimsuits made in my size, and all my bathers are far too threadbare to wear in public any more!

When we finally prised K out of the pool, we got home just in time for Play School, so she settled down in front of that, and a few preschooler shows that came after it. She wandered off after the shows got a bit too old for her, so eventually I got around to turning the TV off. In the meantime, K played with some of her toys, then collected a big basket of books for me to read to her. She wanted me to put her hair in pigtails, so I managed one at the back and a topknot, but she wouldn’t stay still for any more, despite having asked me to do them. So I went and did the washing up, and she pootled about (I think she was mostly playing with Elmo in the living room at this point). It’s nice that she’s getting more self-sufficient in her play, it means I can get things done round the house even when B isn’t here to entertain her… After Rollercoaster had finished recording, I put on another Play School episode to entertain her until E got home.

I am currently the highest (and indeed only) eBay bidder on a couple of comic novels by B’s current favourite author, Terry Denton. I haven’t been able to find any page views of the book to see what the reading age is (Ooh! I just tried a different search, and now I have!), but given that B seems to enjoy his stuff as much as she did Dr Suess last year, I expect it will probably be a good investment.

E took B off and they did some LISP together, and I played with K downstairs. First, she wanted to build towers with the nesting blocks, and I noticed that she was paying attention to sorting them into groups (by shape) after I had modelled it. She also carefully built a tower with one of each of the different colours available. After that, she did a jigsaw, without hesitation over which piece went where, but with still a little clumsiness fitting the pieces in the base. Then she wanted to play with the magnetic letters and numbers, so we got a baking tray and used that as a base for exploration. I started out by handing her letters and seeing how many of them she knew – for about ten, she identified them without hesitation, and could even provide an example of words starting with the letter for some. I noticed that somehow she has even picked up lowercase – for those letters she knew, she knew them in lower or uppercase, which surprised me! Then we did the same with the numbers. Although she can count to ten (if she feels like it – when B was trying to get her to repeat her earlier feat she shouted “No seal!” *snicker*), she doesn’t yet recognise the numerals. Eventually she just decided to pack as many letters as she could onto the tray, but she would find multiples of the same letter, some of which came from different sets so were different sizes, and group them together (often she would pretend they were kissing, and declare that they were friends *g*). She would also describe some of them which she could name as, eg. “Big C an’ ittoo c”, which was unbearably cute. Then she went off with Daddy for books, stories and songs before sleep.

E. adds: when we were playing hide and seek earlier tonight, I coaxed her into counting on my fingers, and she managed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. After that, everything seemed to be eight, except for 8, which was 2. Still not bad for a 2-year-old!

Tried a more pictoral tack on the LISP with B tonight. Started with a subject close to her heart — money — and got her to work on an equation ($14 + 5 x $2) – ($23 + 20 x 5c), which was pocket money + five hours babysitting, spent on a $23 robot (her idea!) and 20 5-cent lollies. She worked it out arithmetically without any trouble of course, and then we tried drawing a diagram with the various parts of the equation inside bubbles. This gave her the breakthrough she needed, and she picked up the process of translation from mathematics -> bubbles -> LISP without making any mistakes. This is the key aspect of LISP that she wasn’t getting: that expressions can be arbitrarily complex, so 14 and 5 x 2 and (14 + 5 x 2) – (23 + 20 x 0.05) are all expressions, some of them composed of other expressions, which are in turn composed of more expressions… it’s turtles all the way down, if you like.

After that we did some revision of non-mathematical lisp, the car and cdr operators. Even though it’s been ages since we did this, it came back to her without much trouble.

Next time (finally!) we may be able to get into the fun part: writing functions. Now that I’m on a real operating system, I should be able to find some useful third-party libraries for graphics and sound so she can write functions to play music.

On Saturday we had a slow start to the day, but eventually got out of the house at about lunchtime, me to go op-shopping, and E to take the munchkins to PlagueZone to tire them out a bit. My op-shopping was cut rather short by E’s realisation that he had forgotten to bring bumwiping supplies with him, and that K was marinating in a squitty nappy. I had to drive over so that he could change her in the back of the car. After that, I went into the Mall for my usual meal (which I haven’t had for weeks and weeks), after buying myself a new book to read. E ended up taking the girls to the bookshop in Lyneham, then back to pick me up. We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up before Nannie arrived to babysit, then headed off to David’s place for a gathering, including pizza (because I abhor farnarkling and have decreed that it may not happen in my presence, especially when I am starving to death and craving pizza). It turns out that K didn’t want to go to sleep for Nannie but eventually allowed her sister to sing her to sleep – we need to pay that Elder Daughter more, I think…

Sunday, we got out of the house quicker, and went and had brunch at the organic cafe at the Markets, then I did the F&V shopping while E entertained scrublets. At various times we ran into Jim’s friends Joe and Caroline and their two kids (the last time we saw them the first one was a couple of weeks old, and now they have two!), and Chas and Amanda. Lolling about the house was done for a while after we got back, then we headed off for Bunnings to get a lock for the games cupboard (which turned into getting a lock for the games cupboard plus a long BBQ gas igniter, a set of steak knives, some lightbulbs, some daffodil bulbs, and an indoor plant, as it generally does whenever we go to Bunnings to pick up “just one thing”). We went home via Coles because, yet again, I am craving red meat, so we bought hamburger makings. I lost a couple of eBay auctions in the evening, but in the process learnt an awful lot about the psychology of bidding. I think that eBay is a tool best used sparingly, and with a very good idea of exactly what one is looking for and how much one is prepared to spend. Fortunately, I have cheapskate fingers – they don’t let me bid unless I’m Really Really Sure I want the whatever-it-is. K had an early night, and B kept herself awake after Robin Hood long enough to watch a new Dr Who episode with E before going to bed.

This morning, Nannie came round at 9am instead of 9:30, and got me just as I was finishing getting dressed. I’d forgotten that 9am used to be the usual time, so she could take K out for a walk while B and I did some bookwork. I didn’t have any bookwork in mind (obviously, since I’d forgotten all about it), and B was not hugely happy about the idea anyway, so I gave her a few chores to do and then sat her down with the multiplication book (something she doesn’t mind doing) just before Nannie came back. Then she was reading some of The Cat on the Mat was Flat to Nannie while K and I left (she must practically know that book off by heart by now…).

K had loads of fun at playgroup, as ever, and came home with a frog made out of a balloon with paper feet and stickers stuck on. She also enjoyed joining in the music and listening to a story (she’s obviously getting better at sit-down-and-join-in activities – she’ll be ready for something like kindermusik this year I think). I had a nice chat to some other mums, at least after I had woken up a bit more. I parted company from my first breakfast this morning and didn’t think to have a second one before we left, so I was also ravenous (it would be the first week in ages that no-one thought to bring morning tea for the mums!). K fell asleep in the car on the way home, and B watched her for me while I made Nannie and me a quick sandwich each for lunch. B had brought home a gorgeous blue goblet from pottery that Nannie was trying to convince B should go out to the farm, but B was having none of it! After Nannie went home, B went inside and watched the recording of Robin Hood again while I read in the car.

After K woke up and there had been a sufficiency of cuddles and playing, she settled down in front of a Play School episode, and B sat at the table and wrote another page of her story. Her spelling really is improving, when she’s actually concentrating on the sounds in the words. For example, she had written “wet” for “went” a couple of times, then did the trick of holding her nose and saying the word (this is something we came up with which helps her to identify the nasal sounds), realised there was an “n” in the middle, and went back and wrote it in where appropriate. Go B! She asked for the spellings of some words (like “peasants” and “beginners”), but made a pretty good attempt at some others (like “rekods” for “records”). She still finds it very difficult to keep her handwriting neat when she’s concentrating on composition and spelling, though. She was happy to escape after writing one page, and went outside to plant the daffodils we bought yesterday.

Before the afternoon’s TV came on, we lay on the mattress in the playroom (well, I lay on it – they mostly sat on me!) and I read some of the library books I borrowed weeks ago but which we haven’t gotten to yet. B enjoyed the story of “Edison’s Fantastic Phonograph“, although K was less impressed, so we read her “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” afterwards. Then I read B “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat“, and both of them “We’ve All Got Bellybuttons“, which was a good book to end on as it segued neatly into a tickle fight… Now they are both (I presume) watching Play School.

ETA: I forgot to say that K counted up to 10 with no mistakes this afternoon!

Chickens!

Thursday, we had an informal HENCAST meet-up at NMA, then home to basically turn on TV for the rest of the night. B watched right up until the news (inc. Grand Designs and Hidden Treasures with Betty Churcher), then practised her conversational skills by starting a few lines of chat about things she’d watched. Quite funny, in an endearing way. E was working overtime and didn’t get home til after 7:30, so I was feeling a bit frazzled by the time he arrived.

Friday morning we got up to discover it was raining – yay! K wanted to rush outside as soon as she saw it, so I kitted her out in puddlesuit and rainboots and let her out. The puddlesuit is not, despite its name, impervious to munchkins sitting in puddles, and K has not quite gotten the hang of keeping the insides of one’s boots dry, so eventually she ended up taking them off and playing in a puddle in the sandpit until her poor little feet went bright red with cold. B went off to the shops on her bike with her pocket money, and came home with an eclectic mixture of treats, including a horrible pie for breakfast. Beloved, you are a bad influence!

B watched some of ABC schools’ TV (Numbers Count, BTN Specials: Animal Care, and Engineering at the Cutting Edge, which was about the Falkirk Wheel, and which kept B fascinated), then I managed to nail her to the seat for some bookwork. She elected to continue with her story first, but eventually threw a hissy fit about how she hates having to hand-write the whole story and wants me to take dictation. My attempts at explaining what I am trying to achieve through encouraging her to write rather than limp through spelling workbooks did not go over well, and Words were Had. Eventually (after consultation with E) she agreed to take her exercise book back up to the cubby house and do a bit more, which she did. But she’s still not happy. After our third attempt at getting somewhere we gave up and did some multiplication instead, which she actually enjoyed (hallelujah!). It does look to be an awesome book, and I ended up having one of those Aha! moments when I saw something set out visually which I’d never really grokked before. I like it when that happens!

She also dictated a story called The Mouse’s House, which she read to K:

The Mouse’s House

Tom was a mouse. His house was too small. He said to his wife, “We need more space for our twenty kids, and us, too. I will go and find us a new house so you can move all the stuff in.”

Tom went into the house, dodging the eyes of the prowling cat. He found a little house, just right for him. It had a bath, a bed, a shelf, a television and some food. So he called his family to come quick, quick, quick.

He told his family that he had found a house with a bed, with a balcony, with a bath, with a roof, with some walls and some food. The family came quick, quick, quick to move in to this magical place.

He sat on a chair, and told his wife to sit down too. His children ran up and down the ladders and found the food. They ran up to their mum and their dad and shouted, “We have food, we have food! Come and eat our food!”

They took a big bite, and the food was rock hard! They went to bed and in the morning they had a visitor, rude and impolite. It was big, and pink, and it had no fur. It screamed “Maaaaaaa! There’s a mouse in my dolls’ house!”

She shooed them out. The mice ran for their lives. To their old house. When they got there, they said, with fire in their eyes, “What impolite neighbours! We’ll never go back there.” So they stayed in their old mouse house.

ETA: B also did some chemistry, deciding to check the pH of the fishtank. It was off the scale in alkalinity, so we started adding some of the “pH Down” powder which came in the kit. B was very excited to see it change colour from blue to yellow from the bottom up as the powder dissolved. We decided not to add very much at a time, so as not to shock the fish, but to keep testing regularly to see how the pH changes. B now wants to make a trip to the pet store tomorrow to buy something to get the algae off the walls, so she can clean it out properly and we can get some more fish when the pH is back to normal.

She also watched ABC News and part of Stateline, which was about Derek Corrigan and the production of Bastard Boys. We’ve been talking about that recently, entailing a potted history of the union movement in Australia and the reason for the “L” in the ALP.

I finished picking up and vacuuming the playroom and dining room, and K has been taking advantage of all the space to tip buckets of toys on the floor (of course). She has been playing in her dolls’ house with the hideous Vogon figurine and her Duplo people – I think it’s definitely time to get her a set of dolls’ house dolls! Might make a trip to Grandma’s Attic this afternoon, after B gets back. K is also interested in her cash register, and going “shopping” – she likes swiping her credit card entirely too much for my peace of mind regarding her long term financial health *g* We tried playing hide-and-seek, but K hasn’t entirely got the hang of this “hiding” business. She seems to think it means she should go into another room, and run out screaming with laughter as soon as I say “Coming to get you, ready or not!” She’s much funnier to listen to when she’s seeking – she stands in the bathroom going “2 – 8 – 9! 10! 9! 2! Coming…not!” And she thinks she’s searched a room if she stands in the doorway and can’t see you, so I had fun jumping out on her from behind doors and making her jump. She’s so much fun…

There has been a bit of Play School, but not back to back, and she’s been playing happily for most of the time, so I’m not feeling guilty about it. And she has been grazing constantly – Weetbix, toast, fruit, sultanas, toasted cheese. No wonder she’s never hungry at dinner time…

10pm. We did try to visit Grandma’s Attic in Gold Creek Village, but it’s closed down. There were signs up saying that a new shop would be opening at Gungahlin Marketplace, so we went there. It hasn’t opened yet. Luckily there is also another good toyshop at Gungahlin; Retrokids. We went in there, and found dolls’ house dolls, lacing shapes, and a second-hand Maya Wrap ring sling for me (well, Rosy!). K and B played with the lacing shapes all the way home, then played with the new dolls for ages before Nannie came back after her appointment. Nannie had a cup of tea and played with K for an hour or so before taking B off to horse riding. K even preferred Nannie’s company over Play School – I hope she felt suitably honoured *g*

Nannie also dropped off the page of The Knights of the Round Saucepan which B had written at the farm. She did some spelling with B based on the writing exercise. B wants me to type up the story for her. Looks like she’s quite happy to continue her story (at least in lieu of any other work Nannie might come up with), so I’m glad I prodded her into starting it again.

The plan for tomorrow, such as it is, involves more story-writing and some multiplication tables. HENCAST activity is wandering round the National Museum while the older kids are at Othello, so whether we go to this really depends on whether Caitlin, Lauren and Julian are going. Will get B to ring tomorrow morning to check.

I think that’s about it for the day… *yawn*

B has been bored with the Math-u-See Beta level ever since we started doing it, so I finally decided that we should just get the next level up and if she is confused about anything in the rest of the Beta program which she hasn’t done we can go back to it later. E just ordered it for me (order number 1864313), so it should arrive in the next few weeks.

I just sorted through the resources cupboard and found a spelling book and a multiplication book which I’m going to start trying to do with B regularly. I am somewhat sceptical of her getting anything of value from the spelling book, but she gets so frustrated with her spelling that it’s probably worth a try, even if it just shows me how not to try and help her learn to spell… My preference would be for her to learn organically through writing and editing, but if she hates having to write because she hates not being able to spell properly then it’s a bit of a vicious cycle! The multiplication books looks like it might appeal to B’s pattern-sense, much more than any other workbook on the subject that I’ve seen, and since we’ve never tried to do much in the area of multiplication tables, we might as well try this book out and see how she goes.

Apart from that, the plan is to get her to keep working on her story and do some reading, preferably every day. Since she has developed a passion for Andy Griffiths’ work it makes it a bit easier to find things she’s interested in reading, thank heavens! And then on to the MS Read-a-thon in June…