Candle (our cat) appears to have gone blind, all but overnight. She has been a bit odd for a while now I think of it but seems to be struggling with very limited eyesight, particularly at night. She is very old – we have had her for 14 years and the RSPCA said she was 2 when we got her. I suspect she was even older than that. If we had pet insurance or money I guess we could take her to the vets but as we most definitely wouldn’t be able to afford treatment or an operation and she appears to be in no pain and managing just fine,if a little slower than normal I guess we’ll just wait it out and see what happens. Odd to watch a blind cat stumbling around the place again though, 2 years after Malice :(.
I had a lie in this morning and then spent ages and ages sorting out all the washing into piles and putting it away or drafting the children into helping put their stuff away.I supervised (read micro managed) Davies sorting his room out for the second time this week and then spent ages in the playroom sorting that out a bit too. It needs more attention as there is stuff in there which just doesn’t get played with so we need to either decide to get rid of it or get some use out of it. There is also a book mountain that needs dealing with as I think we have bypassed the correct book and bookshelf ratio again so action is needed there.
Ady was cleaning out his car while all this was going on and the children were getting up to various things including playing inside and outside, coming to assist every so often and then doing some drawing.
I then asked Davies if he wanted to come and read to me for a while. He’s at this frustrating point of technically being able to read but not doing it often enough in practise to improve. We have had long discussions about how there is nothing more I can do to assist him other than sit and listen to him reading and carry on reading to him while he tries to follow the words on the page as I read them. It really is a practice makes perfect situation that he is not going to wake up one morning able to do. It is still not coming naturally to him and whilst I would say striving to do something that he finds difficult is a skill that Davies does have for many things clearly reading isn’t pushing enough buttons for him to find it worthwhile doing just now, despite him really wanting the end result. He read a couple of pages but was tired and it just wasn’t happening for him so we had a long cuddle and chat instead.
Ady then asked if he wanted to go on his computer and I showed him the link to Fanastic Contraption which I’d followed from Bob’s blog last night and not done very well on myself. I read the tutorial for him as he clicked through it and then left him to it – for nearly 1.5 hours! He was loving it and doing loads of experimenting, talking aloud, calling Scarlett over to show her and worked his way up a couple of levels. :).
Meanwhile I was reading a book about allotments and doing some mental planning, Ady was cooking late lunch / early dinner and Scarlett was doing a load of puzzles and activities in a pile of comics I’d found in the playroom.
We had lunch / dinner and then Ady and I vegged out for a while and the children set up a toy circus we’ve had for years and they go through phases of playing with lots. They were coming up with every more outlandish ideas for acts in the circus which was amusing us. Then I decided we needed to go out for a walk to work off dinner and get some fresh air so we gathered their scooters and headed down to the beach.
We never actually got as far as the beach but stopped at Brooklands, the big laked park on the other side of the road to the beach and walked round that for an hour or so in the sunshine. It was nice :). Scarlett and I had a fit of the giggles when I called her a pillock for not being sensible about crossing the road. She went all quiet and I’d forgotten it until I went to take her hand and she said to me ‘actually I’m still cross with you for calling me a pillock!’ which made me giggle. She said ‘It’s not funny Mummy!’ and then broke into giggles herself saying ‘well actually maybe it is!’ 😆 I suspect it may become the new family insult. My Dad’s insult of choice was ‘pleb’ when we were children. I’d rather not teach them insults at all but given some of the words I’ve heard from the mouths of children I’m guessing pillock isn’t too dreadful.
We came home and they had a bath followed by Extreme Animals which we have read before but ages ago. Davies suddenly remember it about halfway through though.
Tomorrow is planned to be very low key, what with having virtually no petrol in my car or money to spend. I feel a day reading lots of books out loud coming on :).
Oh, poor old cat. Vets are often a waste of money, anyway. We decided our guinea pig had gone blind and paid seventeen quid for the vet to wave her hand in front of its face…
Loved that bit about Scarlett at Rainbows, BTW.
Hope Davies sorts out what he wants to do about reading – sounds tricky. I’m sure he’ll figure it out.
We like fantastic contraptions here too. I have a colleague who is always leaving incriminating evidence of skiving on the desk computer, in the form of flailing contraptions stuck on a heap.
M is kind of similar with reading. He can do it quite well now, but still chooses not to. However, I think he’s been at the ‘able to do it stage’ for a bit now and I can still see improvement coming along even with not so much practise. He’s much faster and can read things off the telly much better which of course don’t hang around long.
M and A are pining at me to get together with you all again, glad I didn’t tell them we missed the Sep camp. I may have never been forgiven. They want to come and visit your allotment after seeing pics on your other blog 😉 Darn petrol prices making everything so difficult!
Buzz hates reading books so doesn’t. About once a month he’ll go to the library choose an armful and read about 3 pages of one of them. He reads everything else though! I give him things to read for me, like recipe books under the guise of being too busy to do it myself etc, works a treat and he is above what i would expect a 7 year old to be able to read. A subscription to a monthly Star Wars magazine has also helped as there is NO WAY I’m going to read it to him.
Poor Candle, I’m sure you know what you’re doing.
Don’t get me started on sorting of rooms….
Kirsty – mine (as in all 3 of them!0 are desperate to see yours (as in all 3 of them!) too – and I’d rather like to see you too. Shall we try and sort something out? Could you get to helmsley for a day trip while we’re up there? You know you’re welcome here anytime but I know petrol makes it hard. Otherwise we could try and arranged a mid point meet up?
Re; Davies and reading, yes I’m sure he’ll sort it out one way or another. it’s just hard not to be able to really help. He is reading things like DS games, stuff on TV (he is often to be found flicking through the tv guide on sky and manages to work that out perfectly) and regularly picks out odd words in places. I’m sure there is something that will provide the perfect hook of being worth his effort reading, just haven’t found it yet.
rofl – I’ll send you an e-mail about it later and we’ll try and sort something!