We’re off on holiday tomorrow for a week :-) I can’t wait. We’re going to a self-catering cottage on a farm where we’ve been for three years in a row now. We went when Mopsy was 8 weeks old first, and Flopsy got tonsillitis (the dr even thought it was bad enough to be scarlet fever!) and we were amazingly lucky enough to go to see a local GP who happened to be a homeopath! Last year I was feeling very tired and sick all week…got home to find out I was pregnant with Cotton-tail :-) This year I’m hoping it will be better than ever. It’s a lovely place. The owners are incredibly kind and generous; they have a couple of goats which the girls go to feed each morning with uncooked pasta (of all things!); chickens and lambing sheep to watch. I’ll post lots of photos when we get back…which reminds me I must find the camera battery charger to pack!
It’s too far! I just got my head around the idea of camping with three littlies and thinking I could possibly do it, knowing that many of the lovely people from the Early Years HE list would be there, and also from the Early Years HE blogring and then I did a route finder on RAC. I just don’t think I have it in me to drive for 5.5hours, then camp with two young children and a baby, then drive 5.5hours again. I’m really disappointed. Maybe I’ll just have to organise my own camp over our side of the country! Who’ll join me? 
We haven’t heard from our LA about Flopsy going to school…other families in our area with children her age have done. Maybe we won’t have to deal with pressure to be inspected by LA officials - something I’m getting very nervous about as we get nearer and nearer to this September, when most children Flopsy’s age would be starting school (although it’s not compulsory until September 2008). I’ve been burying my head in the sand about the current HE situation in the UK, and locally, but I think I’m going to have to spend this evening reading all the recent emails on the subject on our local HE email list so that I do actually know what’s going on. I am also reading wonderful blogs like Sometimes It’s Peaceful and Dare To Know - people writing about autonomous learning and how it works with the LA, just in case we do get ‘found out’! I don’t want to have to take this so seriously, but I think I ought to now. I also don’t really understand why I’m feeling so nervous as time goes on…we’ve been planning to HE since before she was born, and now I keep questioning whether or not we’re doing the right thing…are we just doing it for us? To continue our non-mainstream way of life? Are be being selfish by not sending her to school? I know all the reasons I don’t want her to go but I’m still nervous about it…am I the only one? I guess I’m particularly nervous about having contact with our LA, but maybe that won’t happen for a while. I think I need to start going to more HE meets to build my confidence a bit more.
I can’t begin to say how angry this makes me feel. Childcare workers will, like teachers, soon become so busy filling in forms to check up on their babies’ learning that they won’t have time to play with them. Where’s the fun in childhood nowadays? It seems that the single most important of childhood now is to memorise a whole heap of things that someone has decided you ought to know. Once you’ve done that, then you can get on with enjoying yourself. Trouble is, there’s so much to memorise you don’t have time for playing. And, as I showed in my last post, if you don’t make sure you do the memorising before you do the playing, you get punished and are allowed to do even less playing :-(. I am so determined that my children don’t get into this school system where evidence of their work (not their learning) is more important than they are. And now they’ve decided to extend this nonsense into babyhood. It’s all so wrong.
Just read another post on a mainstream parenting forum which has made me glad we’re not sending the girls to school - the daughter in year 2 was kept in during playtime because she didn’t do her homework! What age is year 2? 6/7 years? I thought one of the reasons we’re meant to send our children to school is for the ’socialising’ and yet if children dare to have fun at home instead of doing work, they are punished by being forced to stay in while all their friends play :-( Makes me so angry!
There is a charity task-force in the US set up to make sure that babies of disadavantaged mothers get the “the food to make it through their infancy healthy and happy”. Fantastic! They’re going to sponsor breastfeeding counsellors and supporters to help these mothers breastfeed their babies! Oh…no…I’ve got it wrong…they’re going to raise money to buy them formula milk! Of course! That’s obviously the best way to “make an impact on the lives of single mothers in the state of Wisconsin” - these “mothers will be able to sleep soundly knowing their newborn children will receive the formula they need to be healthy”. 
My computer is nearly fixed! My sound and video cards are working, I’ve managed to download picasa again, even though I’ve only got crappy Windows 98, and I’m just waiting to ‘borrow’ (don’t tell anyone!) an Office programme from someone and then it will be better than new 
but not as good as an actual new computer, which would be all new, of course, rather than old and dark ages. Still, at least it’s fast and doesn’t crash, which is the main thing, and I can read more than four words on the screen at once, and I can here sounds on it. Not much to ask…
However, I am excited and that’s that! I’ve found out which drivers I need (the website for the manufacturer of my computer lets you search for your computer’s serial number), have managed to unearth the sound one on a disk somewhere, and have downloaded the video one. The sound one is set up and working, but the video one says I need to put the Windows 98 cd into the drive and I don’t have it - DH’s friend does. He’s kindly bringing it into DH’s work tomorrow, along with Office so by tomorrow night I might be all up and running again - for no money! Hurrah! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the video driver works tomorrow as I am very sick of this dark-ages screen!
