One is an academic, One is creative, what will I get in the lottery with number 3

I have two totally different daughters, one who is an absolute sponge when it comes to learning anything academic (strangely like my brother!) and in fact is so sponge like that she is very hard to motivate because she just doesn't see why she should put in any effort (come to think of it I really do need to get onto the school about what she is not accomplishing due to her lack of effort!). Baa is amazing at reading, spelling and writing, her math is also ahead of her class and her scientific interest is going to take her a long way, I love to have conversations with her about all sorts of things, she analyses and questions everything and wants to learn all the theory behind things. Its a good job I paid for a university scholarship for her because when she gets there she will fit right in.
The school does most of Baa's learning now and so I don't get to see what she is up to for most of the day, it breaks my heart knowing that she is being let down by the school's rule about not accelerating a kid above their age level, but at the same time she is being exposed to more subjects than I could competently cover in the same period of time, and she is making some friendships as well.
Then there is Jboo, she doesn't have to work hard at learning either but she does it in a totally different way. Jboo is amped all the time, she bounces off the wall but boy when she decides to concentrate on something she is dedicated to the finish. Her favourite things are make believe games where she can make anything talk, be it a truck a wooden block, a tree or one of her sister's bratz dolls (which she keeps on finding and undressing, she hasn't worked out how to dress them again yet though!) and a teddy bear. Another thing on her list of favourite things is drawing and writing, I have never seen her hold a pen, pencil or crayon in anything but the right way to write with and she has been doing pre writing shapes and colouring in between the lines for ages now.
She is still sponge like in the way she just absorbs things without being directly taught them, the exposure to things does the trick, yesterday on our walk home from school she was finding all the letterbox numbers and tracing them with her finger, it was a long slow walk but she knew all the numbers from 0-9 by the time we had got home and was starting to "draw" them in the air with her finger.
Then there are the drawings, she can draw anything she wants to and it becomes recognisable with a minimum of her explaining, she loves to be drawn on, I have even started writing her name on her arm because she is learning it better when she can feel it.
Everything is tactile and done at full speed, its great fun hanging out with her and seeing what she is up to.

Wow 200 posts and some personal revelation

Well here I am again at another milestone, my last post was number 200, it almost passed without remark but I was fortunately focused enough today to notice!!

This week has been a week of personal revelation, the first revelation being that yes I truly am insane and I really did hand over my car to some radio station dj's.

The second being the revelation that came from interacting with the dj's.
The dj's are the closest thing that I have ever got to meeting a celebrity, sad I know but thats the way it is in the teeny tiny place that is NZ! and Im even less likely to meet one in Palmerston North!!
When Mike West arrived to collect The Whale on Sunday I found myself in defensive posture, arms crossed over my chest, eyes cast towards the ground and talking to him as if he was some lord of the manor!!
I have talked to them twice since then, once on air, and I found myself saying things with negative connotations, for example, when I called to arrange when the car would be returned I said "well I have no life so just let me know when it suits you".

OMG!!
I absolutely have a life, I have obligations and I am totally equal to these guys and girls but do you think my subconscious believes that. Evidently not!

I am blown away with my "lowly" state of mind, for goodness sake I have managed a warehouse, I have raised not only my own children but several other peoples children through their formative years. I have volunteered to help on committee's and successfully raised money through organising big events!
But... here I am unconciously struggling to recognise my own worth! It is actually scary to see myself from this angle, scary and saddening, I have very few friends and am not terribly good at establishing and retaining relationships with others, my readership has taken a big hit and now I know why, I have lost the ME in me, my mojo (thanks austin powers) is missing, the part that makes me the interesting and energised, intelligent and witty person has taken a hike into nowhere land.

Time to motivate

This morning started quite well, Quinn woke at 6am had a feed and went back to sleep (its the going back to sleep bit that is unusual) so I was able to get up and get myself sorted out before I had to start whipping kids into shape.
Jboo woke at 7am (also unusual) and was happy to get sorted out, she even ate breakfast and was ready before Baa.
Baa got up at 7am (thats unusual too, most of the time I have to pull the blankets off her at half seven) and then she sat and ate her breakfast as slowly as she possibly could, (thats not unusual) so she got sent to do everything else minus half her brekkie!
Although Baa was trying to delay I still managed to load up all the kids and head out the door at 8.30am and Baa was outside her classroom twenty minutes later, Right on time!!
The buggy was fully laden with four kids on the way to school as I was obviously racing the clock, but on the way home I was able to let Jboo and Ty walk and they had great fun jumping in scrunchy autumn leaves and racing each other along the foot path, tomorrow I will try to get some photos.
Yes it was pretty cold, about 3 degrees when we stepped out the door but with Jboo dosed up on her inhalers she made it all the way there and back again without a wheeze or a cough to be heard.
The pedometer tells me it was 2058 steps there and back again so it will be interesting to see how many I do in the week.

Now its a reality

The Great Blue Whale has gone, my carport is empty and my brain is telling me that I must be insane!!
As I watched my car drive out of the driveway and off down the road I realised that there is no going back on my decision now.
All afternoon I emptied and cleaned the car, taking out carseats and crumbs, smeared finger prints and spilt hot chocolate from my drive through visits!
When 5pm arrived I hoped that they had maybe decided that it wasn't such a great idea but then at 5.20pm there was a person on my doorstep, oh boy they really are going to do it!!

So begins the reduction of my carbon footprint.

I did a silly thing

I was listening to my local radio station this morning as I do every morning with it cranked up loud enough that it will stop the kids from attempting to turn the tv on because they won't be able to hear it anyway so whats the point.
While I was listening I heard the dj's talking about doing some carpooling and they were asking for a minivan/people mover type of vehicle to borrow. I listened for a while, and heard some inventive if impractical solutions - ride on lawnmowers, although who wants to hear a lawnmower going down their street at 4 am I don't know!!, Mobility Scooters - given the distance the dj's live from the studio the battery would be flat when they got to work!
So whilst I was listening I formulated a plan.
I have been needing to get off my backside and start walking again, but the convenience of the great blue whale has got me even when the sun is shining and I have the ability to use the double buggy and Baa's bike.
I called the radio station and offered them my car for a week, goodness knows The Whale is big enough for the five or six people they are going to be taking into work at 4 am.
So as of next Sunday evening I will be carless for an entire week and that my dears is a whole lot more motivation than I was ever likely to create on my own.

Mothers Day,

an improvement on last year!
Sometimes I wonder why I bother getting out of bed (don't we all!!), and then there are days like the ones I have been having lately.
Im tired all the time but for some reason I am accomplishing more at the moment than I have done in a very long time.
Sometimes I get grumpy about being the only grown up in the family but then I get days like today.
Today is Mothers Day and today really was "Mother's" Day.
This year I got to do it my way, this year I knew that it was me and only me that was running the show, I knew that there would be the early morning wake up call from Jboo and Q, and I set everything up to handle it.
Jboo arrived at my bedside a wee bit earlier than I had initially anticipated thanks greatly to the power going out in my area of the city and suddenly we were all plunged into darkness, which of course Jboo and Q noticed at 3 or 4 am ish (time unknown due to lack of clock in power outage!), fortunately Jboo crawled into bed and went back to sleep once the power came back on nearly two hours later (not sure what that was all about, you would think darkness would = better sleep but no), Q fed himself back to sleep around the same time and me well I dozed my way through the two wrigglers in my bed and then got some real sleep when they crashed just as the sun was coming up. When consciousness finally returned to both of them it was approximately 8am and that counts as a sleep in anyway, but... (the fates stepped in) Q decided that all he wanted was some more breakfast and then back to sleep and Jboo woke Baa up and they headed for the lounge where the cleverest mummy in the world (yes I have ego issues) had set them up with snacks and a dvd so that I could get some more valuable nap time.
Once I awoke for real it was 9.30am and I got myself and the kids showered, dressed and turned around out the door in time to have brunch by 10.45am. Now as 10.45am is 15 minutes too late for MacDonald's breakfast I was ready to resign myself to no BLT bagel, but... (here they go again) I heard an advert on the radio for a place called "wholly bagels" and low and behold they have heavenly bagels, and best of all they have a "child corral" or rather a fenced in play area where I was able to let the Jboo do her thing (thats a post for another day) without driving me around the bend.
As we were finishing brunch I realised that we were running a little wonky on our schedule so suggested that TMFKATB meet us in town for his weekly Q visit time.

After spending some time in our local hardware store pricing timber and plasterboard we made it home, still in one relaxed and cruising piece.

Once home Jboo who had fallen asleep in the car was placed in her bed for a nice wee nap, Q was fed until he looked ready to burst and Baa was given the colouring things so she could "design a princess" for the What now tv show.
And me, well my idea of bliss turned out to be some alone time spent mowing the lawns and sweeping the leaves, yup I really am losing it.

The cool thing about mother's day is that everyone celebrates it differently and there isn't really a preset benchmark that commercialism expects us to meet. For me as the one and only parent, everyday is "Mother's Day", as in, I am the one and only person who does everything, spends all the family time and gets to experience all the ups as well as the downs. So today on the official day for mother's I decided that I wanted some away from the family time.

In the end I still had to cook dinner, sort out the uniform for tomorrow, get the bedtime thing sorted out and do washing, but hey at least it was my day and I got to do it my way!

Finish What You Start...

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me and we all could use more calm in our lives.

By following the simple advice I heard on a Medical TV show, I have finally found inner peace.

A Doctor proclaimed the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started.

So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished .

Before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of shhhardonay, a bodle of Baileys,
a butle of vocka, a pockage of Prunglies, thamainder of bot Prozic and Valum scriptins,
the res of the Chesescke an a box a chocolets.

Yu haf no idr who gud I fel.Peas sen dis orn to dem yu fee AR in ned ov inr pece.