At last! We (a bunch of local home educators) managed to get an evening out together (Tuesday)! Hooray! Put the flags up! Roll the drums! (And all that sort of stuff....)
You might think this isn't much of a challenge, but when you spend most of your waking hours meeting the demands of other - usually small and disproportionately loud - people, it's amazing how difficult it is to remember that actually you deserve a life too.
So off we went to the pub and had a bit of a 'really, do you feel that way too?' sort of bonding session. And oh it was so marvellous to have a conversation that wasn't interrupted by wails of 'I need a wee' or 'mum, xxx just hit me' or any line that starts 'I want...' and ends with a wail when you say no. And then, to top it all, we were the last out of the pub (oohh what stamina). Perhaps we were just trying to prove a point, or perhaps we genuinely didn't want to go home 'No! Please don't send me back to the kids! I'll do anything! Just don't send me back!'
So the next morning I woke up refreshed and positive, and thinking well perhaps my life isn't so c**p after all and I am doing an ok job some of the time and at least the kids are happy even if the house looks like it's been taken over by a giant magpie with a tendancy for large shiny plastic junk, cardboard loo-roll inners and small lego-shaped items.
In fact, so positive I was today that I even got the hand sewing machine out - i.e. the thing that can make tangles out of thin air and is guaranteed to raise my stress levels even before the handle is turned. Now that's what I call brave. And (nah nah nanahhh nahhh) we made 'Celtic cloaks' to go with the theme we're doing in history at the moment (Celts, obviously). [I had to put that in bold type, just so it would draw the eye and look really impressive if anyone actually gets to read this - hey you out there, skip the rest, just read about me on the day I did a really good job of home edding and made Celtic cloaks with the kids {g}] And, not only that, I was able to -calmly - coordinate sewing interspersed with cloth pinning and brooch-making amongst 3 children without shouting once. Ok, well maybe a raised voice once or twice, but hey, that's pretty good for one of those full-on home education-type activities. And this was after I had already done some spelling and some reading with Leon (ok, I'm getting blaise - er how do you spell it?). And then....wait for it...I had another 4 children dropped off in the afternoon, so 7 children in total. Ok, ok, perhaps that was a bit crazy, but I figured if I kept moving they'd get bored trying to track me down and then be forced to play with each other. Well actually I cheated and stuck a Scooby Doo video on and that satisfied about 2 thirds of the group so the rest were able to play undisturbed (while I kept moving so they couldn't track me down...). So that's it for *Super Mummy* for a week or two, back to the grumpy one tomorrow I expect. But it was nice for the kids while it lasted...
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