"Easy, Easy Like Monday Morning......"

Part of the mosaic in the subway in Horsham we looked at today with a smiley pig amongst the feast.

On reflection I probably shouldn't have watched "Black Mirror" on channel 4 last night. Very dark comedy, it was a bit like "The Thick of It" in tone and could have done with a dose of Malcom Tucker to lighten the mood. Really has me thinking today about moral dilemmas. Would the Prime Minister have done that for anyone outside of royalty? I somehow doubt it.

A real shocker for The Smalls this morning as we woke them up, totally used to rousing naturally it was a real surprise for them not to be the ones waking up their parents. It's the little side effects of not going to school that are sometimes the things that keep you going. Perhaps a randomised trial would show little difference in waking times, alarmed or natural, but it is the state of mind, especially important for teenagers I suspect who have been shown to need more sleep. I wonder when they are older if they will remember these little details of their childhoods. S often reads in bed for a while after waking and is at her "best" at the time she would be on the journey to school. As I said in my first ever blog post Growing Brains:

"How would it have been if the bell had rung midway through that gorgeous butterfly painting?"

"I believe so strongly now that timetabling is a resource allocator with no basis in educational psychology. Who has ever proved that the optimal learning time for humans is in one hour blocks?"

and again in Everything you ever wanted to know.......

"For us it is about being in control, not of our children, but of our lives and having the freedom to seize the moments. Ten minutes with an interested child is more beneficial than a whole day with someone who is not listening. They don't stop painting because the bells goes, they stop because they have finished. "

and I guess I feel the same about sleep.

We took The Daddy one to a near by station to catch the train to work so that we wouldn't have two vehicles to deal with upon his return from Houston; after the pantomime on Friday (The "It is unlikely you will be picked to go on stage two years in a row" expectations management has begun.)

S (7) enjoyed the early morning drive with its stars and, on the drive home, the vibrant colours of the dawn breaking - oranges meeting blues - she told E about the expression "Dusk til Dawn." and pointed out some geese flying in a stark v formation in the sky. "Have they left it too late to migrate south for winter? she asked. She is so observant for everything. I swapped over memory sticks in the car so we had some new listening matter. We are so counter cyclical in every way, empty roads on the journey there, a contrast to the stream of headlights facing us upon the way home a reminder of how busy our area is becoming.

Later, after a breakfast of jacket potatoes, we whizzed into Horsham to spend birthday vouchers they have had for a month. The birthday feeling must be over now because S let the helium balloons go in the garden and watched them head to the sky. They were seriously good value given the amount of play and experimentation they have been subject too. In the shop she told the assistant how much change she was expecting. We tried to have a play at the park after, the surreal Mum and Buggy jogathon going on around us. How do they do that? None of my babies would have ever slept in a pram whilst I jogged around a park. There was also a boot camp style fitness session going on which S & E asked many questions about. But we couldn't stay even though we knew 15 or so home ed families are often at the park on a Monday, it was too cold for us and Baby Small was too tired so we came home after bumping into some friends in the car park (not literally) and:-

S has been doing her Usborne Christmas Sticker Book and playing Barbies. We looked at Houston on my 1991 Peters' Projection map (that's the one that shows countries by area not influence) of the world that my Dad framed for me 20 years ago and talked about how much further away The Daddy One is heading than we drove on our Tuscan gallivant last year. The map was pretty dusty so I traced his route well! E has been playmobil in one room and lego in another room and watching youtube clips of his contempories with their lego and playmobil set ups on the tablet. He is really keen to have a go at his own and has been asking questions like "Where are the hands that are moving them around?" O and I have made cookies with the left over dough from yesterday. I think it was better left in the fridge for a day. Hearts and butterflies this time.

I am still really stiff, the rest of my body is now holding the stress to compensate for the bruise on my back, I am not a good patient. This cheers me up though. Hilarious stuff from my children at the panto last year.