A mixed bag today.

We had intended to meet up with some friends today but due to late planning on my part and other things turning up for the other mum, we ended up going off on our own to a soft play center.The place is a 30min drive away but is worth it,it is very well laid out and has Ikea furnishings,proper tables and comfy chairs instead of patio furniture. It also has lovely squishy sofas so is very comfortable for mums and dads as the children have a good run around.It serves freshly prepped food and good coffee and herbal teas and is definitely an improvement on some of the more basic ones we have nearby.I am by no means a snob but prefer to spend my time in nice surroundings wherever poss;-))

We stopped off at a garden center on the way to check out the recycled rubber pieces as an alternative to play bark for the area under Milly's trampoline and climbing frame.It is more expensive initially but over time will pay for itself as it won't need replacing.Purple blue or green to choose from Milly choose Blue.We just need to work out if we can afford it this year,the area has not had bark down for a couple of years and is now just weeds and mud and on top of that is not particularly safe if anyone was to fall,the climbing frame monkey bars are quite high and I do worry about friends falling,they haven't up to now but you never know!!.

Back home to make tea and it was a brilliant evening so Milly took me to the park in the village after we had eaten.Well actually before that, after we had eaten she was standing near my chair which backed on to the bookcase and started pushing one of the books back on the shelf saying she needed to hide it away,it was the book All about sex I had bought from the charity shop on holiday that she got all embarrassed about and didn't want to read with me.She had looked through it with my nephew when he picked it up on his last visit and was very interested and as it has little cartoon characters she found bits funny.She obviously still felt a little embarrassed, so I said that if she wanted to look through it we could do so now and we read for over half an hour before going to the park and another half an hour after we returned from the park.She has been unfazed by any of the details and has been mezmerised by the pictures especially the little cartoons depicting eggs and sperm.We have always been very open and answered any questions as they came up and so some of it is not new to her but this is obviously in much greater detail and has pictures.She asked me to put her to bed so I could read a little more to her and then when I was tired she continued to look through it using her torch,then it got put in her special place down the side of her bed.

On a similar topic she has been most upset that we have missed the boat and not managed to get some tadpoles for our pond(I call it a pond, it is a sad attempt in a planter that I think we may have to redo this year as it has been badly neglected) my sister took her to the stream near them to see if by chance there was still some frogspawn but no luck.So tonight she has been trying to make one,all my ideas didn't quite fit the bill as it had to float in the middle not sink or float on the top.Needless to say we couldn't find anything to do what she wanted so we now have a wineglass covered with clingfilm with our invisible friendly tadpole bobbing about in ;-))

Al went off to tai chi at 6.30 and we were v busy with one thing after another,first the tadpole making,then sewing a button on her bag she had made with Aunty P and then as I was browsing I found a couple of links on Unschooling voices 14
Seabird chronicles
Giggle poetry
Play with music
Poem in your pocket day April 17th so we looked at the Animal poems on the giggle poetry site and having found one she liked I was ready to print it off but Emily decided to write it out after acouple of attempts she wasn't happy with (paper torn up in disgust) she got her new journal she has started and sat on my knee and coppied it off the screnn and wrote it out beautifully during which time I had to be a bossy teacher and I must not give any encouragement at all as teachers just don't do that!!!!
I particularly liked the play with music site and she did too but didn't want to spend much time on it tonight so we will revisit it another time.

Dad came home and we went to watch Extraordinary people on TV about a man who was turning into a tree(he was actually suffering from a severe skin condition but his hands and feet did look like tree roots) Emily saw one of these programmes one week about conjoined twins and was fascinated and now remembers when they are on and if she isn't too tired she will stay up to watch them.