Lots to catch up on...

severely stressed.
The children of late have:
1. Get up way early and the tidy house I went to sleep to is no more.
2. They can take the cleaning up to way past lunch time on a bad day.
3. They have been doing very, very naughty things like - eating treats without asking (not so bad really), egging some poor people's car, breaking each other's toys, going ballistic at the slightest insult from their siblings, smearing food across the table, trying to break the bow's (yeah, Andrew and I got a bow with a bit more kick), making huge paper messes across the floor in the other room, putting clean clothes out in the wash when its already overflowing, and worst of all hurting each other etc etc.

Andrew has been:
1. Not coping and getting stressed out.
2. Being so depressed we don't see him most of the day (because of the children)
3. Breaking the furniture out of sheer frustration. (He would never turn that on the children though - or I'd be outta here)

I have been:
Feeling quite unwell, stressed, headachy and depressed.

Quite simply, I've been tired, in constant pain from my shoulder/neck and aches in my legs/back and headaches. This kinda painful - my baby pushes on my arm I wince and sometimes cry out a bit, I pale up. I need a massage, a break and a nice holiday. I can't afford any of these things. I do need to go back to my GP to get a referal for the physio people, but hey, I've only been waiting for 3 months for that. I did however, look into respite for Andrew today. If I'm not coping then he's nearing a breakdown. This is sadly the reality of the situation.

So... something clearly needs to change. It's not going to come from the children, nor is it going to come from Andrew. It has to come from me.

I've got out from my bookshelf a book called 1,2,3 Magic... and dusted it off. It's worked for us in the past, I'm determined it will work for us again. I remember the week after we first started using this (and how relaxed and happy I was then), I want that to happen again. I will add to the blog in the near future a select amount of art work/craft etc we have actually managed to do.

Kai has finished level yellow of the HOP program, which means he is officially above his reading age (its just coming so naturally to him). Dante is one reader away from completing the red level - which also means he's above his reading age). Labyrinth needs to review a bit, but HAH HAH to Dr Tyson W... She CAN'T have Small Head Syndrome - she's reading confidently at her age level! She will be ready for Master Reader when it arrives in less than 10 days from the US. Her next step is Chapter Books, yup that's right, OMG she really is progressing! YAY! After that she'll be a fully fledged reader. Dante isn't that far from it either, and this time next year I'll put bets on Kai being there too...

Maths, well, there is a problem. They've forgotten everything, so we have to start all over again. I *might* look into MathsUSee again, but its the great expense that annoys me. Actually it's suppose to be Andrew's call, but he can barely cope with them at the moment (and I don't want to step on toes here either). Personally I have no feelings of needing to rush them though, they'll get it eventually.

We have gotten nearly 200 original DVDs onto the hard drive and we'll be getting them onto the media centre (so no more broken/badly damaged discs - they just won't be getting their hands onto to them). Sadly amongst the casualties are two of my very special Studio Ghibli DVDs (the Howl's Moving Castle was a collectable FFS - limited to 2000 copies Australia wide or something), Tales From Earthsea was also damaged. Howl's was extra special as it was a favourite author who wrote the original novel - Diana Wynne Jones. Of course, same with Tales was too... Ursula McQuinn, but not on the same level for me.

I loved The Dark Knight excepting the fact that they changed the actress for Rachel Dawes with a look alike rather than someone who could actually act. I loved Heath's portrayal of The Joker, I can see now why he got so messed up trying to get his head into that psycho. His best role though? That I'm not sure about. This was suppose to be a special surprise for Kai who complained 3/4 of the way through it was too long and too boring :( Andrew couldn't watch it because the two littlest wouldn't let him.

I happily caught up with two good friends on Sunday, they've had a child too, 5 months older than Monika. Lovely.

So, life has not been pretty the last three weeks. Hopefully in another 3 it will be back to fun and games (literally) and lots of natural, enjoyable, happy learning with good engaged children again.

That's the real reason why I haven't been posting - not being on top of it all. Q.