Our week

Photo Note...This is Princess, aged 6...she is holding a screw J-Man found on the beach, with a piece of fruit inside, and calling herself the Statue of Liberty (lol).



I had an epiphany this week...that maybe I am not helping my children get along well...maybe I've been contributing to their fights recently...and it seems I have- everything changed when I apologised to my gorgeous boy- and I saw (a bit late really) just how annoying it can be sometimes to be "the eldest", the one that is supposed to be perfect always.

The message that jumped at me so suddenly was from a fellow usnchoolign Mum, in an unschooling (ponline) hang-out I havne;t been frequenting for ages...maybe it will help someone reaidng here.

Always assume good intent.






Days are whizzing by, but we're just having fun being together, and loving each other.

This week we were concentrating on planning J-Man's birthday (my baby is 10!), and the plan just wouldn't sort itself out.

His original one was to have his two favourite people- best friend J12, and favourite cousin M11 over to go to the wave pools, then home for (bought) pizza, and a sleepover...but we didn't count on M11 needing to go away for the weekend. Then, J12 got an ear infection, so couldn't swim.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time talking over different possibilibities, and (procrastinating about) getting invitations done...well, it was hard to create invites when we didn't really know what was happening.

We also had a fun night at J, M and J2's, quite accidentally...it began with a playtime in their pool, and went on to be Thai takeaways (good for points, though probably not with the quantity I ate), and lots of chatting and some tv.

We're going to really miss them when we go, and are very glad to be seeing a lot more of them atm.



We took buses to Papakura for Princess to see an ear specilaist (all fine), and that ended up being a neat adventure, with a lot of time spent at a cool park. It was also a tonne of walking for Tombliboo, and resulted in his first ever 7 hour sleep! I don't think he snuck in a breastfeed without me looking at the clock...I always look at the clock, as daft as that is, lol.

We made icecream in a bag, watched lots of movies, read books, chased each other, planted some container-seedlings in to the ground, played Singstar, dug up my first ever batch of potatoes (man they were *good*!), went for walks to the shop and library, played Packrat (on Facebook), Gaia, drew pictures, played with trains. Princess had a real puzzle day where she did as many puzzles as she could fit in the lounge...then Tombliboo came along and spread them roudn the house.

Gradnma and Poppy visitedbriefly, and Poppy (very kindly) sat through an entire dvd of Curious George with his littlest grandson...



J-Man started making a computer game with some free software, and fiddled aroudn with Photoshop (changing the colour of his eyes, and removing a mark from where Tombliboo hit him with a stick!).

We also tidied the mess that just keeps growing...why aren't people working harder on the self-cleaning house??