Happy New Year for 2012

It's January.  Our Christmas did not go quite as planned.  I was ill before Christmas with a bad cough and some kind of flu-like virus and then on Christmas Eve Springy said she wasn't feeling too well.  On Christmas Day she woke up with a fever and no appetite.  We didn't have Christmas dinner 2011 and most of the next few days were spent on fever management with a cold flannel.

She spent the entire Christmas week at home and no friends round (one of her best friends' father is undergoing cancer treatment so we didn't want to risk giving him an illness either).  Anyway, in some ways the break was just what we needed.  It was simple:  simple meals, simple activities, lots of cuddling up together.

She's now back to Irish Dancing and Cubs (her last term and has just been made a Sixer).  She also got walkie talkies which is what she wanted for Christmas and an American Girl book on the body.  The book is excellent - just what I could have done with at her age in order to prepare for puberty.  It's very matter of fact but also deals with some of the feelings girls have about changes in their bodies.  Springy is a few years off puberty still but some of her friends have started to alter and I think it's useful because she can help them too with the information and it's opened her to knowing that she can trust and ask me about anything she wants.

This week and a bit since the start of the New Year has seen us returning gently to a rhythm for our home education (although it never really stops).  Springy has been painting, we did some maths involving graphs and bar charts (from Galore Park) and also today she has been modelling with Fimo, before going out this afternoon for her aunty's birthday lunch.  I must admit that I was in a panic last year - I felt stretched in so many directions.  As well as home educating I work and the work has not been as busy as we need to pay bills etc.  So I've been worrying about getting another job and then wondering how I could fit that in with home educating and already working.  I'm also studying for a degree and also a BTEC.  This year I'm not able to afford much of my BTEC studies so although I would love to do them (and not doing them is going to affect my therapy business as well the likelihood that I will ever finish the course), it's one less stress in many ways. 

On Wednesday we went down to the harbour to watch the sunset.  It was beautiful. There were loads of swans, oyster catchers, sandpipers and curlews - eerie bird noises along the shoreline and soon the owls were due out.  The tide was going out so the shapes in the mud flats and the bare winter trees looked spectacular.  We've also been watching a series called Earthflight which is about birds, on the BBC.  Although the script is rather 'dumbed down' in places, the visuals have been wonderful.

Thank goodness for tangrams

I've still got no voice at the moment and when I do have one it's painful (laryngitis) and I then cough like mad and my sinuses pour like a waterfall (nice image...not!). Home education still has to go on though.

Last night Springy did some tangram pictures.She's still loving her Rainbow Magic books and is onto the second set (given that they are very short she can read one a day). I read her the Michael Hall reader for November as her bedtime story (inbetween coughing and my voice going - not great). At lunchtime she helped me to cook some pasta with some vegetables. She had questions about how the kettle worked (told her in brief it had something called an element in it that worked with electricity and that heated up and thus heated the water and mentioned that in days before kettles, people would have to boil up water over the fire or on the cooker in a pot or with a non-electric kettle).

This recipe for Dundee Cake sounds delicious and I hope to be able to get one ready for C for Christmas: http://www.tashatudorandfamily.com/pdf/receipts_dundee07.pdf

Illness and hens

Today has been a beautiful October day. We spent a lot of time with Springy outside as today was the first day she has not had a temperature for three days. Springy has been ill since Sunday. She came home from a Beaver event with a headache which we just put down to being overwhelmed. However, it seems that there is a bug going around and Springy developed tummy ache and a very high temperature for the past few days, along with frequent toilet needs.

Today was gorgeous. We had the bantams out on the lawn and Springy and I played a little bit of football (just kicking the ball back and forth). We also baked some bread (I've been reading a book called Bread with Children). Later on I drew some chalk numbers from 1 to 12 in a line on the path and Springy did some maths that way (moving between numbers with plus and minus). I think tomorrow will be nice too because the sky has a nice pink flow about it.

Sick with a bug

Ill - yes we've been ill which is why my idea to blog has fallen by the wayside until now. We were supposed to have had a home ed meet up with another family yesterday but just before 2 pm my daughter vomited as we were about to set off.

We have had a weird bug that is going around; it's a cold with either a) diarrhoea (I love spelling that word) or b) vomiting or both. I had the former at the beginning of the week (herbal info for diarrhoea: bistort root with cinnamon bark - place 1 dstspn bistort and 1 cinnamon stick in pan with 1 cup cold water, bring to boil and simmer for 10 minutes - caution in pregnancy etc) and now my little girl is in bed with a temperature (currently asleep which is why I am writing but I keep checking her) having both.

I stayed up all last night with her to check she was all right and to help her hold the bucket, sit on the toilet and then carry her back to bed. At about 6 am she stopped vomiting after drinking and has now been keeping fluids down - cold camomile tea and water, alternating, with little sips of each. Husband is wonderful because he took the night off, got his sleep and then took over late morning when I was too tired (managed to get a much needed nap).

I'm hoping that the fever will break and then she should be fine. It's always a worry when you love someone that much and I hate to see her look so sad and weak.

I read her three stories today. She wanted to remain quiet and was asleep for most of the day but I asked if she wanted some stories and I read her three from the Oak Meadow Kindergarten collection. She really enjoyed the one about Princess Eliza and the one about The Golden Spider (who weaves blankets for baby fairies); the third story was The White Snake but it wasn't a good story for reading to a sick patient, at least not my sick little girl.