Who Do? ZooDoo!

I have been unexcusably slack on this blog, and I apologise, and will be slack over the next week to 9 days as I have my three final assignments for uni due and I haven't begun a single one. I am crazy but somehow I always seem to pull it off with decent if not good results. I have been reading all the set texts though so maybe it is a little OK in regards to Uni. For this blog though, I have been naughty. I have got a lot of housework done, managed to complete one scrapbook page (which I won't share due to it being a bit personal) and begun another. And we've had a wonderful Halloween as well as going to ZooDoo on Tuesday.

I've admittedly questioned my decision to stick by Andrew and his mental illness, and this of late has had some bearing on my stress levels. He has in the last 3 weeks gone completely of his meds, gone back onto one of them and completely withdrawn from that and begun a heavy dose of Lithium. This has been a very difficult time as he's not so much been depressed (he hasn't), he's had one single symptom - incredible irritability. The normal children playing noises was enough for an explosion.

So, I very nearly had enough, was just about ready to clear off but he went to the GP now he's on Lith and he's doing much much better. He didn't go on the slow approach about it either, he copped the harsh physical side effects to get better faster probably because he knew how I was feeling about the episode. But two of the best memories of our married lives happened this week, one being ZooDoo, and the other was Halloween yesterday. Just a simple family day but a good one. I'll put a post up especially on that later.

We loved ZooDoo, we were taken by the baby Marmoset with mum, the Tigers and Lions were sleepy of course, but it was nice to see them, the baby animal nursery was sweet as the children interacted nicely with goats/sheep/guinea pigs etc but the younger two enjoyed the native Australian animal area much more. They were shy to begin with.

The tour was good too, but Raven was quite freaked out by the Emu who snatched his food bag right out of his hand and it made him nervous of the whole lot after that - especially the Ostriches which were surprisingly quite gentle.

The black swans can be found and enjoyed right out our window, so they weren't very special to us, but we loved the albino and coloured peacocks (there were even matching peahens for both!) Peacocks are lovely as they embody my favourite colours of purple and turquoise, so beautiful.

It was really a great day, but I'll be looking forward to a return visit when they have the lizard enclosure up and running. The children got a token stuffed toy of course: Monika a monkey (she loves them), Raven a Koala (he became quite taken with the Koala there, so passive and sweet - I think it was the only animal he touched whilst we were there), Kai got an echidna (he loves the oddest beasts, his all time favourite is an elephant because he thinks they are cute. As an aside it is the strangest thing I've ever seen given away on freecycle - an elephant - true!), Dante got a Tassie Tiger and Labyrinth got a Kangaroo with a Joey in its pouch (she's obsessed with baby this or that, scary).

We took along our own BBQ. As you may be aware I have to eat Gluten Free as I'm a Coeliac, you can see the dramas of that in my other blog. I am only really recently diagnosed by diet and blood, relatively speaking, and Raven shows the classic symptoms/appearance and has the double DNA markers so he's GF too. So I made our own burgers, which I'll probably post the recipe on the other blog as I do quite a few of the recipes we make in the other blog also (however I must warn I update that even less).

All of the children have already blogged on ZooDoo (go into profiles and those links are there) to those blogs.

I have to go as Monika is crying and won't hop off my lap... but one last thing, I included the ZooDooLoo as I was so impressed by it, I love Jasmine, was quite something as an outside toilet, it rekindled my desire to build my own home on a farm. Thats it for now, Q.

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.

Woes of the Internet

Unfortunately, been off line basically for the last week. This is great because *this is the first week of my distance uni course which requires broadband*, and wonderful because it was during this time I could have *opened a non receipt of item dispute* on ebay for a Totoro Organiser I so want and can't seem to find anywhere else on the net. It also meant I couldn't moderate on the Family Value Forum, or frequent other forums. I also could *not* blog. It was a tough 5 days, and I am not pleased.

So is the woes of no internet, and the woes of allowing my hubby to run our finances when I know I shouldn't because of this bipolar financial symptom he has ie, no control. So this time I made sure things happened as they should (and am keeping us to it).

So, last week in brief.
Monday, It was Andrew's birthday, and as I'd been ill for the weekend, it fell to me to clean up and get a roast lunch ready (after brekkie in bed). It was also going to be a bbq tea and play for the children, but he was far too depressed. We've also been working on an off the page piece for Andrew's birthday.
Tuesday, Andrew and I both did lessons. These being maths, reading and writing. Labyrinth actually played up for her dear Dad! No one except Kai finished their writing lesson. Labyrinth had a cooking lesson with making a chicken stirfry.
Wednesday, was a good day for reading all round. I took over the ardous task of reading lessons with Labyrinth and she did really well. Dante is coming along beautifully much to my delight. Kai is slow and steady, but that's OK, I'm not pushing him. Dante did the cooking lesson this time, and we had chicken wraps. There was a documentary on Sharks that Dante watched today, and the rest of the family in bits.
Thursday, another good day for homeschooling. Lessons all around in maths and spelling and reading. Labyrinth watched a documentary on medical sciences, in particular, when labour goes horribly wrong. This was fascinating for her as she got to "see" a ceaser being done on about four different women, one with triplets. This interests her because of Monika being the token "cut-out baby" in our family.

Friday I'll dedicate an entire post to...