Seeking a Return to Normality

Here we are, already at the 6th January. We need to get back to "normal", whatever that is - life seemed to go on hold a bit in the run up to Christmas and Emily's birthday. We need to get Emily's education back on a more structured basis and we desperately need to get back in gear workwise ourselves too - this latter urgency having been brought sharply into focus by an unexpected £700 car bill this week :-//

The Christmas decorations are down now and so are Emily's birthday decorations apart from her secret cave bit. This morning we're back to ballet for the first lesson of the year, so I guess normal life is catching up after all. I've had a very heavy cold for the last few days and I think Jon's about due for it. Emily, surprisingly, is showing no signs of the dreaded lurgy - yet.

We still haven't yet done the ritual early January "move piles of Christmas and birthday presents off the floor and into piles in a cupboard"; daresay we might get round to that this weekend inbetween deadlines. Emily's spent the last couple of days in play heaven - between us we've played tons of board games, she's played like mad with Harry Potter stuff and has Nintendo'd a LOT. She's playing Animal Crossing Wild World now; well, we both are since I'm her roomate. She seems to like it a lot, although I must confess I'm getting rather fed up with it since a) we need a shovel and there's never one in the shop to buy and b) Emily's just "had to" buy insurance from "Lyle" as no matter how many times she said no she couldn't get out of the conversation and c) it seems to be completely the wrong time of year for catching bugs etc. I daresay it will grow on me.

I did have a whole set of educational goals in my head for 2007, but I've forgotten most of them - bodes well, doesn't it?! I know this time last year we were worried about Emily's social life, or lack of it at that time. A year on and that's absolutely not a problem - well, possibly it is, but at the the opposite extreme. She's now doing so much "stuff" that it seems *too* much. She has ballet twice a week, yoga, tai chi, drama and karate, so that's out six times a week, plus come February when football starts again that'll turn into out seven times a week, plus we're supposed to fit riding in there too. For someone like me who would be more than happy to hibernate here indefinitely, the social interaction is a bit too high on the scale, lol. Still, she's happy, which is what counts. She's made some lovely friends at these activities, it's just a shame they're all at school.

Academic work-wise, we need some structure. Which I must have said several dozen times over the last 18 months, and which we're still sorely lacking. Last year Emily completed two BIG projects, on the "Human Body" and on "Weather" and a mini project on the Titanic. I really want to get away from the project based thing, though, as I don't think it's working very well for us any more. We need to do lots more science and lots more craft. we need to solidify the maths. We need to move on with IT applications. Emily wants to write tons more poetry to go with the tons she wrote last year. I want to build in some "reading time" into the days since I'm concerned that with so much else going on Emily recently only seems find time to read in the car. Oh, we need to do all sorts of stuff. And I wanted to write a summary for the LEA in response to the friendly-and-surprisingly-legally-correct letter they sent us a while ago asking if we'd care to update them on Emily's educational provision.

We need a timetable that isn't a timetable. Have no hope in hell of actually sticking to one, but something to aim at would be helpful. And we need to make the most of Mondays (temporarily) and Wednesdays, which are the only days not interrupted half way through the afternoon by going out somewhere. Gosh, that's a lot of need to. Better get thinking cap on, as it's back to work for us on Monday.