Laid back learning and life.

There's some alliteration for you!  I'm feeling much more like myself again now, but we've had some very laid back days over the past week, while still getting out and about rather a lot.  K & M have been doing an awful lot of colouring, something they haven't done for ages until fairly recently, when it's become the activity of choice to do while listening to story cds.  Over the weekend, I went out on Saturday to the Post Office and the library and to chose a new bag for my birthday from A because the zip broke on mine.  Although I felt less bleurgh in the head, my legs felt ridiculously cotton-wool-ish, which was really rather unpleasant.  I had a nice sit in the library though, while K had her ballet lesson before going to pick her up.  I also, with the help of one of the lovely ladies at the library, found this.

The reason being, that the dvd of Cats arrived from Lovefilm and as we generally like to read books before we watch film or tv adaptations, I thought we could/should do the same with this one.  Over the past couple of days, having finished Ballet Shoes for Anna, I have read them all the poems.  We talked about them and compared a bit to Lewis Carroll's poem's, some of which K & M can recite by heart.  They are really fun to read aloud.  Apart from that we've been watching some of the Winter Olympics, which always has plenty of scope for discussion, whether it's about the geography of where the athletes are from, or how the curlers reduce the friction by sweeping the ice and melting it slightly so the stone can travel further.

Today we went to the girls' drama group, where they continued with their 'dinosaur and cavemen and women adventure', which they enjoyed.  Unfortunately, I realised that we are going to be away for the final session on this topic, but K & M didn't mind too much.  Afterwards our friends E, C, L & J came back to ours for a play and a cup of tea.  K, M & C seem to have an on-going game that they play, but were very firm that the younger brothers weren't invited to join in.  I find this a bit tricky, as I don't like that they are excluding other people, but as E explained C doesn't get that much opportunity to play without her brothers (and I know that younger siblings can be annoying sometimes!), so as long as L & J don't mind too much and the girls aren't unkind about it, it seems okay.  When L & J went to try to join in, but weren't welcomed, I asked if they'd like to find something in the playroom to play with or play a game and they were both very keen to have another go at Forbidden Island, so E & I played that with them and in the end everyone was happy.

As far as the life part is concerned, K & M have continued to be helpful and on Friday when I if they wanted to help get tea, they each peeled a potato and a carrot, which is the first time when I've asked that they haven't been 'too busy', even though I have reminded them that they said they wanted to do more learning to cook.  Goodness me, it took a long time, but baby steps and all that!  Fortunately I'd left plenty of time
so we didn't end up eating too late.

We also had a conversation today when eating our evening meal about Nana and Little Grandad (my in-laws) and about how although Nana is managing to look after Little Grandad at the moment, he isn't going to get any better and she won't be able to manage with him at home for that much longer.  She is 80 (although you really wouldn't know it!) and he is 87, has Alzheimer's and needs a lot of personal care.  The topic came up because A phoned up a local care home for dementia sufferers today and was impressed that they said the best way to judge such places was just to turn up to look around and ask questions.  The plan is that when Nana can no longer cope and residential care becomes necessary, he would move into somewhere close to us and she would move down here to be near us, as A is their only child.  It's not a very easy conversation to have, but K & M seemed to take it in and accepted the idea (even though neither of them finds change very easy) and A (who as he usually does in these situations!) left me to do most of the talking said he thought I'd dealt with it very well.