Buses

Black to move. White queen looks vulnerable. A few moves later, white lost her bishop too. But somehow won. The kids have been playing a lot of chess lately - usually with some parental support to stop Conor just moving his knights wherever he likes "because my knight can jump further than yours".

So, offers on houses are a bit like buses then. One day you're bereft, standing in the rain at your metaphorical bus stop just waiting, endlessly waiting. Then suddenly three show up and you don't know which one to jump on.

There will now, I hope, be a slight pause from housebuying/selling related worries: Mr B is off to the UK for a quick tour of band rehearsals and tax filings, while I stay here and do some school catch up. Mr B has been doing a sterling job as chess and fractions teacher, now it's time for consolidation and handwriting for the juniors, and just about everything for the infants. Conor's maths is coming along great, I have to say, but he gets very very frustrated with reading. I know his speech issues are getting in the way of that - and it's needing a lot of patience from both of us to get through.

The consolidation of volcano learning went down well today though - so I need to find some more science projects for them. I did today find on-line a free resource which is lesson plans, notes and worksheets for teaching maths the whole way through primary school. And all sponsored by Mr B's old employer, so even if they hadn't said it was fine for home educators to use it, I'd still feel justified!

I realised today that our emphasising positive gender roles had gone a little too far with the kids. We have always tried to make it very clear (despite my mum's efforts to evangelise otherwise) that there are no jobs for men and jobs for women: that there's nothing odd about Daddy ironing or cooking or mum fixing the loo roll holder - everyone can do everything. But the kids, on hearing their Dad was going to be away for nearly a week looked horrified and said "but... oh no.... what will we eat?"

Time to remind them that Mammy can cook things apart from cakes. Started as I mean to go on with a crowd pleasing meal tonight: roast chicken pieces with all the trimmings (in our family that means carbs; so we had risotto, plain rice and mashed potatoes). I think I need a lie down after all that.