Trauma surgery

So after another wet August week its back to work with a bump tomorrow - ugh. I've just logged on and looked at the pages of emails with a falling heart... I know there are no show stoppers in there as I've been vaguely keeping watch, but there's probably a whole bunch of stuff that I need to do something with. My strategy is to 1) scan for anything from clients (very little as they had the good grace not to email me as they knew I was on holiday); 2) scan for anything directly related to this week's meetings and 3) wait for people to come back to me on everything else - if it's important it will rise to the top naturally. Oh, and 4) keep my fingers crossed that my strategy doesn't come back to bite me.

This week we have mainly been exploring craft activities. With the lovely August weather keeping us more house bound than normal, we have been knitting, sewing and drawing.... well, Glenn and I have anyway. Abi and Izzy have been alternating between asking to be shown how to do the knitting / sewing thing, and then storming off as it doesn't immediately work for them. The knitting didn't exactly come to us easily either. I remember Mum spending ages with us casting on, us getting frustrated before producing a badly knitted square and asking her to cast off for us. Roll on 30+ years and here I am doing it for my girls! This involved Glenn on You Tube getting the basics nailed in principle but not in practice (2 very tightly knitted rows in pink wool!), before teaching me and then
me trying to teach the girls. Cut a long story short I then ended up knitting them both a square which they carried around as teddy blankets for a few days.

The sewing was a more serious affair. Izzy's favourite comforter, Rabbit, has been looking very sorry for himself for some time, and this week he was worn so thin I had to rescue the situation before it was too late. Some very gentle conversation later, Izzy agreed to not only have him patched, but also for him to have a full ear transplant. For anyone who has seen his ears recently you will understand just how much this was needed, but also what a monumental decision it is to cut off her favourite part of him. They were disgusting though! So Rabbit was prepared for surgery, with full anaesthetic and surgical covers, before we cut off his ears, sewed them together as a keepsake (think trophy scalp) and replaced them with hand sewn shiny new ones, as well as a new face, new feet and new hat. He is a changed Rabbit!

My other dilemma this week has been the conversation about what is acceptable viewing online. Abi is (I think) pretty good in this respect. She watches anything and everything horse related, including 'Daily Barn Routine' which I understand is videos of people mucking out and feeding their horses, and Taylor Swift videos. Izzy on the other hand is more prone to surfing from one thing to the next and I came into the playroom yesterday, asked her what she was watching, only to find it was an odd You Tube video of a girl cleaning her teeth after being sick. This raised immediate alarm bells of eating disorders etc etc for me - I do not want to be going there, ever if possible. I know I'm very conscious of this and other potential challenges that come with young girls so I overeacted and whipped the iPads off them and was very cross. I realised very quickly that wasn't much help so then sat down to a very tearful Izzy and defensive Abi to try and explain why I was so upset. We talked about what they had learned at school about being safe online and agreed some rules:

- Taylor Swift and One-D videos are fine
- Other music videos also (generally) fine, as long as everybody has their clothes on (instigated a conversation as apparently Harry Styles stripped to his pants in one video)
- Anything that looks funny / odd / wrong - they have to ask first

To make me feel better I've also put restrictions onto my iPad as well, which just means I can't get into anything. Bloody internet!