Owwwww! Bye Bye Toenail!

About an hour ago, Emily was cleaning in the kitchen. Her choice - she's been trying to be very helpful all around the house today becuase I'm extremely busy with writing and Jon's been out at his second level Reiki course all day. There was an enormous crash and a horrible scream. Emily had somehow dropped one of the huge half-table size marble slabs we have on the kitchen table onto her foot :-(((

There was quite a lot of blood, which for anyone who knows how squeamish Emily is, was probably even worse for her than the pain. Fortunately she managed to jump back just in time to avoid the slab landing on her whole foot and it just caught her toes. None are broken, just bruised and battered, especially the big toe :-/ She's managed to rip a big chunk of the toenail of her big toe off! The poor love was physically sick with shock and was shaking all over. She's feeling a lot better now after an hour on the settee watching Tom and Jerry, once first aid had duly been administered by a very shaken Mummy.

I was actually very impressed with how Emily dealt with this little crisis. After the initial hysterical crying and being sick, sitting on the floor of the bathroom while I tried to clean it up and work out precisely how bad it was (knowing the size of the slab, I was thinking broken foot, never mind broken toe), she's recovered really quickly. Later this evening, when Jon got back and she'd told him all about it, next thing I know she's taken off her own dressing and is sitting there examining the wound and cleaning the dried blood off it!! For Emily, this is incredible - not so long ago she would have been absolutey hysterical for days about the thought of the dressing coming off and wouldn't have wanted to look at her foot for anything.

Anyway. Before the toe drama, Emily had been busy doing secret things in the kitchen; I wasn't allowed in. It turns out that she'd made a little meal for me and Daddy to have when she had her tea, once he came home. Bless her heart. She'd made a lovely salad for me with chopped tomato, grated carrot, lettuce and pumpkin seeds; for Jon she'd opened a tin of tomatoes and herbed/peppered it how he likes it. She'd made us two puddings - oats soaked in milk with sugar and coconut, plus her special recipe "Emily's Banana Whipscrum" - which is mushed up bananas, milk, grapes, yoghurt and chocolate chips. And a big jug of milkshake to drink. :-)))

As to the rest of the week: Tuesday we cracked on with history and Ancient China, looking at the Shang dynasty. Emily created an illustrated venn diagram to show the differences and similarities between Chinese and European dragon mythology, and she also did an illustrated chart comparing the tombs of Tutankhamun and Lady Hao. The History Odyssey course is supposed to take a year per level, and I think we started it very early this year; I'm not sure we're going to be anywhere near ready to move on to the next level after Emily's birthday - we're barely half way through!

On Wednesday we did some science about sound, finding out about wavelengths and frequencies and pitch and the like, and building some simple instruments. Jon took Grandad to the dentist; he came home complaining that the dentist won't take all his teeth out. Rolls eyes. I rang the hospital (see? I lasted a whole two days before giving in to the demands to ring!) to confirm his admission next week. Reported back to him that I'd rung, and what they'd said about taking his insulin before he went in. He wasn't happy, and was convinced they didn't know what they were talking about and that they didn't realise he was coming in for kidney stuff the day before the angioplasty. Well, there's a surprise. So I rang again. They told me, without me even having to ask, that they know he's coming in for a day's renal treatment prior to the angioplasty, and again reiterated about his insulin. Duly reported back to Grandad, who still thinks they haven't a clue. Figures.

On Wednesday afternoon, Emily and I went swimming again. She did fantastically! Having point blank refused to even attempt to float on her back, all this time, even with me holding her shoulders, after about ten minutes in the pool she suddenly decided to float on her back, then kick her legs, then learn the sculling hand movements - she's now shooting across the pool on her back :-)) She's not tried the proper back crawl movements yet, but she will next time, apparently. I love back crawl, I much prefer swimming on my back to my front. Emily's also got even more confident on her front, is starting to attempt the proper front crawl type arm movements, and is trying to teach herself to swim underwater. It's been a long, long time coming and we've reached give up point several times along the journey, but we've finally made it into an emergent swimmer :-))

Thursday was taken up with tai chi for Emily and Daddy in the morning, then in the afternoon Emily and I went for a wander at Normanby Hall to collect some autumnal nature stuff. Then on Friday Jackie, Mei Lin and Jasmine came round for the day; Jackie taught the girls some more German and later on we got the drills and hot glue guns out to make some autumn sculpture thingies. Emily made some lovely wind chimes out of twigs with bells and beads attached.

Work-wise, I've had an enquiry from CBBC about astrology content for kids on their interactive red button digital thingy. Emily's very chuffed about that ;-) Apparently, I'd been recommended to CBBC by the BBC Teens/Slink people, which was very nice to know. I'm not entirely sure that what they want is actually feasible, but we'll see. And it's nice to be asked. And that's that for this week. Busy week next week with more swimming, yoga, Romy, Tansy and Hazel coming to play, Grandad going into hospital on Thursday and Friday, plus vets appointments to make for Romeo and Juliet's booster vaccinations, plus very probably yet another kitty vet appointment. Voldemort's had diarrhea (again) for the last week. He's perfectly well and happy otherwise, playing like crazy, eating like mad and purring for England, but nothing we're doing seems to be clearing up the problem and even though it doesn't seem to be bothering him, we can't just let it run and run - if you'll excuse the pun.