Archives: eve

Well, we’ve had better weekends. In the end I ended up taking Jack, Jude & Esme to Burnley on the Saturday. It was planned that we all go to Huddersfield & Jack was none too impressed at a bus journey, but it was too late I the day for the train. Louise blamed herself & ended up staying home in case Eve returned from play with Amber (she didn’t). Sunday was better; got some sorting out done, Took Eve & Esme out shopping to Morrisons & met Amber there, (with her mum & dad & Lilly) so popped to the Cafe with Amber (released from her parents charge to walk home with Eve & I). No problems having to worry about it not being fair that Esme would be put out about not having Lilly because she was soud asleep. I got Esme a scone at the Cafe in case she woke up, but as usual it was not until outside that the cold air roused her from slumber, so she got to eat it on the way home (which evidently cheered her up).

Jack is still swamped by homework. It was all we could do to nag hi into completing what he did over the weekend & we’re trying to work on him to apply himself better to sorting it out. I thing a wall chart is the next thing; something that allows for us to have things set out in an easy to see format that needs to e transcribed from his jotter. We shouldn’t get nasty surprises line ‘page 18 of your science to be handed in Monday’ (read last night from his jotter at 22:00 last night. You could see Jack’s face drop). He doesn’t have science on Mondays but his form teacher is his science teacher…

So then – how do Eve & Jude’s teachers perceive that they are dong at school?

Well, Eve’s teacher: she likes Eve; confident, able considerate & all that sort of thing; lovely girl, “Another bright one there”. Louise brought up her lack of confidence at the moment & teacher was a little surprised. Two edged… Eve is uncountably seems more confident at school, so it’s not odd that she’s a little surprised by this. She’s also the same teacher that didn’t spot Jack’s confidence crumble while he was in her class… So… we either are worrying unduly or not worrying unduly… but it’s too early to tell. Eve may just have had a couple of ‘off’ weeks, or as is more usual has different responses to different situations. She has quite noble ethics, does Eve & the hurly burly of our family life does take it’s toll on her sense of justice now & then (thus the ‘not fair’ weekend when there was little that could be declared unfair).

So then Jude… Jude is with a teacher Jack just didn’t get one with… for one reason or another. Jude seems to get on with her fine though, so this is good. She says that Jude is a bit of a dark horse. He (like Eve) is in the ‘top ability’ group & he can do anything that she gives him. He also seems to be canny enough not to do too much; it seems he can pace himself so that although he gets everything done, he doesn’t do it too quickly & thus be given extra to do. She doesn’t seem to indicate that he’s not pushing himself, it sounds like she’s indicating that he’s figured how to ‘work the system’ that she operates; ‘dark horse’, indeed. Jude does have ’11+ type’ books at home for maths & verbal reasoning & Louise does set these & he does enjoy dong them. He’s not by any means scared of school work. I was being jumped on by Esme yesterday evening (Esme did a lot of jumping on me yesterday) & he asked if he could read me his reading book. He ended up reading it to Louise, but it was pleasant to have been offered.

Jack had a homework overload a little bit again last night. Bad day at school was foolish enough to try to catch a bus up the road to catch the school bus, but caught the wrong bus leaving him having to dash back to where he wants to catch the school bus. The school bus could be more… civilised. Being ‘Year 7’ (youngest in the school) they are lower in the packing order & therefore find it harder to get seats on the bus. Therefore Leila, Cleo Thomas & he have been travelling further up the bus run to catch the bus where seats are less sparse. Jack is presently walking quite a way to catch the bus at an early stop at the moment. So yesterday as he has a bus pass he tried catching a bus to get further ‘ahead’ & failed miserably because he didn’t think things through properly. He’s been chastised at home for even trying because he does run the risk of missing the bus altogether if he keeps takes this approach. Next bungle involved rushing from Food Tech without first ensuring his bag was well done up & his school bags spilling into a muddy puddle. He has some seriously damp books & he was not allowed to go out of German to go back & retrieve a couple of books he (somehow) missed – including his German, which (…hmm – this all sounds so less likely as I type) included his German book which meant that he could not hand in the German homework that he was supposed to have done. Hmm… anyway – he did get a merit in German because he only got one wrong in his spelling & that was because he wrote ‘s’ rather than ‘z’. Homework next lesson. Jack seems to miss noting down all the homework he’s has due sometimes. Stressful day for him though.

I wonder why he was up in the night & left the hall light on & left a chair from his room in the middle of the hall? The lights on is nothing new – he does that when he get up to go to the toilet – it’s just part of who he is that he doesn’t manage to turn the lights off, but the chair was odd.

It seems that Eve didn’t even get a ‘sprain’ diagnosis – bruising, yes… I wonder what it is that qualifies as a sprain… perhaps damage to the ligaments or something… Anyway – just as well, because it’s not pleasant & she’d need to be using crutches & all that sort of malarkey. As it is she’s a lot better now. She stopped limping during the day on Monday (well,school is a great distraction) & now she seems OK. It is still delicate as her tears at Jude pulling her foot yesterday evening tends to show, but on the whole it’s thankfully no problem.

Weekend low key. Jack was not keen on applying himself on homework & we paid a little last night because although he had written his history essay it needed typing up & sticking in his book.

Again I have a vestige of memory of something on Friday, but I refuse to scrabble round trying to figure it out. Monday… Eve had extra homework from school as she’s on the ‘top table’ & someone on the table said that they wouldn’t mind extra homework (Eve was aghast!) . She protested about it after tea bemoaning the (un)fairness of it all. However Louise managed to get her to sit down & make a start; sat with her & guided her & through what she was doing & Eve started to enjoy what she was doing. I think she’s starting to realise that she can do this it’s not really so hard when you look at it. I think Louise has managed to bolster Eve’s confidence quite well. When Eve came home yesterday she announced that she’s enjoyed the maths lesson that day. Jude piped up that maths was his favourite lesson (he is good with his numbers at the moment, is Jude).

Oh, I remember what the Friday ‘thing’ was – Eve had hurt her ankle at school, but it seems mostly better now. She’s apparently excused games for a bit, but that’s about all. When she got home on the Friday she was quite weepy about things & not really able (or willing) to put her weight on it. She’s fallen off the climbing wall (which is not high – she just dropped down badly) It was a little swollen & we were a little surprised that they hadn’t really taken a look at it at school because she was chided by her ‘friends’ (hm – well, classmates, then) going to & fro the church for the Harvest Festival service. Jude had a speaking part in that…

So although we were concerned enough to call up the health centre we were brushed off by the terse receptionists with the explanation that it was an ‘incident’ (the hurting of an ankle) & therefore we should not go down to see a doctor, but to go to a casualty department. Louise says I should just have asked if it was possible to see the duty nurse, but I evidently do not know my way around that particular bureaucracy.

So, in the morning Eve is not much better. Esme is still in a clingly mood after her tummy upset the week prior, but as she’s feeling better she has a greater propensity to show off & be a noisy attention seeking monkey, so although I could take Eve, I could not face a time in hospital with a performing chimp. Esme was being very ‘daddy’s girl’ proclaiming that she wanted to go with me, so I muttered that it wouldn’t be possible for me to go, therefore pissing off Louise as she would have to go . It’s not that I wanted to manoeuvre her into a corner, but I was manoeuvred into a corner…

Louise set out with hobbling Eve & I was left with the kids for the morning… afternoon… I did manage to get them out to the supermarket as we needed to get supplies & Louise & Eve came home (Louise a little refreshed by the change of pace from frantic to tedious: hospital time) & Eve was … happier having spent some time with just the one parent & had an x ray & so forth – all that attention. And she had 2 chapters of the Gruesome Grotto read to her.

Voom! – Hey! -it’s Friday? Ah well – not unexpected, I guess, but there never seems enough time; it just races.

What has been a doing in this old week? Jack had a day off school on the Wednesday – I suppose that might be the weekly anomaly. He also started helping Eve with some of that ‘Home maths’ stuff – the sort of thing Jack was doing… This approach seemed to work well for Eve, she was calm enough to deal with it. I don’t quite know why she protests so much & gets so upset when we help her – well- when I help her in particular because I take it calmly, ut she seems to dig her heels in about it & not I a good way – she starts to believe she cannot do something & therefore puts up mental blocks to actually doing it (rather than staying calm & focussed). This becomes a little galling, but I just try to reiterate the point that I don’t think she’s talking in in a slightly different way. That said there’s usually some form of noisey distraction as well – perhaps she’s not so good with those either… it’s not like Louise or I could remove ourselves from the noisy Distractocons to assist Eve as they would just follow & persist; they are difficult to ignore & dismiss. I guess the difference with Jack helping her was that they were able to go to Jack’s room & close the door…. hmmmm

Eve also did her homework OK last night (although I had to remove Jude from sitting on the table Eve was working on; he was complaining about some or other injustice that he perceived the world had dealt him. He was not in a good mood last night – not sure why… he had been better on the whole these last 2 weeks (quite delightful at times) & there were little bits of ‘really good and helpful’ behaviour seeping out from him from time to time, but on the whole he was argumentative & stubborn.

Mind you Esme was wild & wilful yesterday evening as well… She’d been playing with Lilly since they got home & they are always getting themselves all hyped up; such is the intensity of their playing.

Jack got homework worry last night… It was Religious studies what done it… They had to write up what Religious Studies was for which is a little bit of a nebulous question, really. It may have been the case that they took notes on the subject class & were supposed to write this up, but it was the last lesson on a Friday & Jack’s notes seem to be a little threadbare on substance. Also: he’s never had to do anything like this before, so he had some troubles with the idea of how to approach the whole thing. It being a tricky question he needed to do more preparation for the writing of this than he was used to doing, but Louise guided him through it well, & by the end of the evening (it took a while settling nerves & discussing things) he had a few good paragraphs which made up a pretty good little essay. Jack’s thought processes always have a tendency to go flying off in the many possible directions he sees… this might not be such a good thing for buttoning down an argument (at the moment) but it is one of his strengths. We decided (as an aid to writing) he could do it on his laptop – the theory being that it would stop him having to worry about having to rewrite things as he was restructuring them & that seemed to help as well. He still wrote everything out long hand before committing it to type & has oddly kept all his notes as well (hoarding instinct?)

Jude’s temper upon leaving school is as bad as ever. I’m not sure what causes all this pent up aggression… probably being ‘good’ at school, as he is good there as he can be at home if his pettiness doesn’t get the better of him. He was up early again this morning as Louise called just before seven to ask where the little camera he was playing with yesterday had gone? Just on the floor by the computer – I saw it there this morning (thinking that he never looks after anything). No doubt that will just have been his first demand of the day.

Eve is doing a lot better. She seems to have pulled herself together a lot following a rocky end to the holidays & start of the new school year. She’s even started reading her books herself, rather than rely on just my reading at bed time to traverse a story. It’s good; her approach to things is generally a lot more stable & certainly a lot better appreciated.

Esme (as usual) is full of life. Her over enthusiasm causes her problems at times – like a sore head she got when she saw me arriving at the playground yesterday & ran across the playground to open the gate, pushed open the gate too hard & when it stopped swinging open she couldn’t stop & bashed her head on the bars of the gate. Tears & screeching ensue so I give her a cuddle & plonk her in the swings (which seemed sufficient distraction). After a few moments all I had left was Jude & Esme but Jude was cross because I refused to push him on the see saw roundabout contraption (no one to balance him out – Esme is not doing it because he’ll be bored with the slow pace) . Jude remains super grumped up all the way home, but he doesn’t attempt to biff me… I wonder why?

Big Empty train (strike day – limited service). Hey – my brain is the same!
It would rather be sleeping, but that could not be the case even without work to attend, as Eve was awake before I left this morning.

I shall attempt to recount a little of the holidays again. If Boxing Day was Thursday (I think it was) then Neil & Jess arrived in the afternoon. This pleased Jack no end, as he really likes them. They all had a good time. Eve tuckered out again & so did Jude (later), but Jack kept going. He would have kept on & on. He was starting to tire, even with his buoyant mood & excitement he was getting clumsy, so rather than he be upset by upsetting someone, we upset him; by taking him to bed. He howled & protested for a while, but calmed down with the reading of a new book; Ivor (the Engine) & The Foxes – which has a mounting sense of excitement as Mrs Fox gets chased.

The next day we went to this open farm. The really good thing that the kids enjoy is the barn which has one of those inside play areas – all slides & climbing & …well- adventuring for the young ‘uns.
They stayed there a good while & bounced on the trampolines & Eve had a go on the tractors (push along & pedal). Was not so mild that day tho – so the adults (Louise & I, me mum & Neil & Jess) did a lot of standing/sitting around being cold. Jack befriended some other boys in one of the climbing frames & then went off to play on the slides. The boys all then started shouting, “Jack! ….Jack! JACK!” etc. Like he gets an instant cult… weird.

Saturday was pottering around & packing. Not so interesting for the kids, but Jack & Eve did get a little walk on the beach with Neil & Jess.

Traveled back that night & home. Only Eve worried us on the journey. After we left the motorway & were ‘on the final straight’ metaphorically, she stirred & was upset. She cried & was almost to the ‘distressed enough to be sick’ point. She did one of those magnificent pre puke belches she does – forced out by a cough… but she managed to keep it together.

Jack awoke the next morning & announced to Louise, “That was the best holiday I’ve ever had” (as already mentioned).
They’ve settled down quite well. Jack still has a slightly frantic edge, but nothing compared to pre Xmas.

We have Caroline from London visiting now – so I was up far too late last night. My body has not yet adjusted to the early morning wake up that I have to do to get to work – so I was already a bit of a wreck by the time I was coming home. Actually – I’ve been clumsy as well – which is more than tired… Aha! I can happily blame this cold, then.

This being New Years Eve, it looks a lot like I will be up late again tonight. Bonus point is that I do not have to go to work tomorrow – yeay!