pheeew.....

what a past 2 weeks it has been....
Lucille was quite unwell last week, had blisters on her tongue and in her mouth, for a day on her nose, and one over her lip...her gums were also swollen, and she didn't eat or drink, just breastfed. She was in quite some pain and cried a lot, was in arms most of the day, had a fever for a few days. It's call 'mouth rot', and a kind of viral disease. I found a lot on it in German, but not in English. She got over it all totally in 7 days, where the average child has it for 12-15 days...so that's good :). The photos of her dancing to Justin drumming, were from the night before she fell ill...maybe she danced too hard ;-).
It was quite exhausting, as I was on my own, also had to make food for Matti and myself, meet several other needs, besides caring for her with my everything... and hardly got some sleep. Anyway, we made it, and I'm sure I will catch up again at some point...haven't yet, and have been feeling quite tired, stressed and 'on the edge'....Had a beautiful and very interesting BodyTalk session last Friday with a Practitioner I haven't had one yet, which should help us all....
Well, last weekend we had our first family day since we have been home in July, all weekend days had been filled with gardening etc.
We will take it slower with the landscaping now and at least Justin has 18 days off from tomorrow lunchtime...before next year having to go away with work every month for around 2 weeks. The kids, especially Matti (who is so used to seeing him every day), really miss him and being apart all week has been taking its toll on all of us.

Ok, what have we been doing? What are the kids up to?
We went to a housewarming on Sunday, of another homeschooling family, who have just moved to the village, and on Saturday we had a little Christmas get together with our neighbours (all of our hamlet/4 families).

We had cooking and christmas craft activities at the community centre, which was fun.

We have been dancing - Lucille LOOOOVES dancing, whenever she hears music, she starts moving :-), in the car seat: her head from side to side, otherwise she jumps, runs, turns around, and lifts her arms up and down quite quickly. She loves to put hats on as well, and sometimes she gets our underpants out of the drawers and puts one around her neck :-)...not sure where that comes from :-).

We went to an OP shop and found a few fun dress up heads and clothes...Matti has a queen dress, which will be Lucille's in a little while, got some glasses, a hat with a pony tail and the same one without (looks funny when they both have one of them on) etc.
Got lots of other dress up things for Matti and Lucille for Christmas, which should give them a nice variety for playing.

We baked Christmas cookies...it's already over two weeks ago, and they are all gone by now, but Lucille had her first go in the Learning Tower, so she was high up with us, and it was her first baking session.

She has been doing lots, drawing, painting, a few big piece puzzles etc. Also her understanding has soo gone up - when I help her dress, she lifts one of her feets off the floor, then the other, to make it easier for me...when I say, let's have a shower, she walks to the shower...when she sees a baby, she goes very close and then starts to tap on his/her head (doing BodyTalk)...she also taps herself often, and our plants. She doesn't pull other children's hair anymore, which is a relief.
She comes to us all the time to give us kisses and hugs, and she loves to climb onto the sofa (Matti's previous domain ;-) ), and just stretch out there, sitting completely relaxed like and adult :-).... She has started to copy me, when I hang the washing up, or when I take stuff out of the washing basket to wash, she puts it back in...or when I have filled the washing machine, she takes clothes back out again ;-)....She has also copied me dusting, cleaning the windows, vacuuming etc....Wow, I might be lucky and soon have another cleaner here....(well, Matti used to help me too, but that enthusiasm has gone a little bit...he still does, but not as keenly as he used to when he was 2....). She is pointing to things, that she wants, and she is using more and more words. When she wants to breastfeed, she claps her lips really loudly and comes to me. Amazing, how they let you know what they want, I mean from birth, but it just becomes clearer and clearer.

We have been at the pool a lot. Matti is practicing freestyle a lot, and it's getting better with every time we go. Just yesterday, I was amazed at his swimming.

Another german mum has just moved here. She is married to an English guy and they have one daughter, who is 4. We get along really well. Amazing how many Germans are actually in the village here. Martina is her name, and she came for a visit last Saturday with Etienne, her daughter and 3 other girls, so Matti had a full Harem here :-). They played really 'nice' and had lots of fun. On the way back, one of the girls fell off her bike, face first onto the gravel :(. Her tooth got a bit loose and they went to hospital to get her chin glued together again.

We built our Christmas tree up, and Lucille was very excited about it, Matti too of course. It has a very interesting Deco this year, a stuffed snake, wings, naked barbie dolls, two beautiful glass balls with photos of Lucille and Matti (thanks Mary :-) ), and some pine cones...plus a few presents...much less than last year, as Matti can't handle it and wants to open them all. The ones in it now, he saw in the mail, so couldn't hide them...and he has sneaked into them already. Oh well, I asked him, how he would feel now, as we think, that it will be spoiled for him at Christmas then...but it hasn't. He is happy now, that he kind of knows what's in them, and he is very excited for Christmas to come.
Tomorrow is already Christmas eve, so we will open some presents then, some Christmas morning, and some maybe the following days....It's nice to spread it out a bit, so it's not that much at ones.Oh yes, and most of our Christmas deco has been blown over, as we have so much cross ventilation :)...had to move the tree a few times before it lasted.

Just looked up the weather forcast for the next week, and yeeah, looks like mild, mid twenties, which is fantastic. Lots said that Christmas is usually sooo hot here, so it's looking good...am feeling much better in less hot weather.

Oh, just saw this link a friend had posted, with some great research confirming how successfull and especially much more happy homeschoolers, who are now adults, are:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/13/home-schooling-socialization-not-problem/