Right now we are in the middle of building work and that affects a lot of the things that are going on around here. But let’s jump in where we are.

My alarm goes off at 6.15 however let’s not kid ourselves – it’s cold out there, so I stay snuggled under my covers trying not to wake W (my husband) while I go through my rss, and read blog posts until I get to the point where I really have to get up. Today that is 7.10am which is a bit later than usual.

I get dressed into my morning walk gear, and go downstairs to put breakfast into the oven, because today we are having baked oats and that needs 30 minutes to cook.

Once that is in the oven I realise we are out of apples (again) so I incorporate a trip to the supermarket into my walk. Even though my morning walk has been all over the place in the last six months or so, this introvert still really needs it as quiet time, so I try to get out for at least a few minutes (ideally half and hour) each day. Now that the children are older this is much easier, but on the flip-side it is harder to get up when you’re not made to by a two year old, even though I consider myself a morning person.

I get out of the house and enjoy the morning sky while listening to The Guilty Feminist which this week is talking about Hope.

I come back with shopping and W emerges fully dressed but still half asleep, and we catch up for a bit while the plasterers arrive, and start re-boarding and skimming the ceiling in what will eventually be our kitchen.

At breakfast we get two out of the three children because the 7 year old is reading in bed. She comes down eventually, has a hug on my knee and takes her breakfast back upstairs while W leaves for work. After breakfast I find two of the songs that the 9 year old has been playing along to in his rock band music class, and I make him a playlist in You Tube for easy access.

I do some tidying up in our temporary kitchen and when I come back to my phone it has decided to randomly die on me which is a bit worrying, so I bring it upstairs to revive it before I have my shower.

And now it is 10.20am, I am dressed, the phone is working, the girls are playing with playmobile in the shower and my son is playing lego in his bedroom. This winter has been one of slow quieter mornings and this is a prime example of one of them.

After I clean up I convince the 9 old to come do tablework. Right now the tablework for each child consists of a Mrs Wordsmith word, a spelling sheet, a multiplication card, a grammar sheet and a maths lesson, set up for their level of ability. (My four year old also practises 10 sight words and counting in tens up to forty.)

I am really glad that tablework is a short and sweet because it makes it doable while we are having work done to the house. But even so the disruption of it has broken up the day in day out reliability of that routine and today I get a lot more push back than I usually do. Somehow we get the work done, and no one cries. Yay.

Once the 9 year old has finished his work, his sisters come downstairs and (unusually for us) do their tablework at the same time. I used to do it like this all the time when the older two were tiny, but switched to one to one as they got older and the work got more complicated, but it worked pretty well today so if they are up for it we might do it again more regularly.

Once tablework is done everyone goes off the tidy the front room in varying states of willingness. I tidy up all the table work stuff, file the work we have done, and then help them out. Now it is 12.50pm, I am about to make lunch, and the kids are watching Ninjago on netflix.

After our lunch W nips home from work to make himself a sandwich. He and I make a list of all the things that we expect to have to pay for on top of the estimate from our builder. We agree to never buy anything ever again. (We have been saving for this building work for seven years and it is very strange to be finally spending the money on it.)

I tidy up after lunch while the kids finish up their screen time. I go upstairs and write my December and January Empties post, and then put all the containers in the recycling, and thus have a slightly tidier bedroom. Yay.

Once they have finished their screen time we go out to the park. We have been playing in this park for a good seven years and we are still finding new favourite places to play within it. While the kids climb trees, make pretend camp fires and strip back of old sticks with their pen knives, I sit on some logs for a few minutes and do some hip stretches and the physiotherapy for my Diastasis Recti.

And now it is raining and I am freezing my butt off, but I am listening to Truth in the Trenches and have promised myself that when it finishes in half an hour we will go home. However my 9 year old ended up cutting his finger on his pen knife so we have to go home because I don’t have plasters in my bag. We end up buying apple juice and mini cheese cakes that have been massively marked down on our way home.

Once home, cheese cakes are eaten, a small plaster is administered and I spend an age downloading Redwall onto my laptop for the 9 year old to listen to while building with lego in his room. Our ancient, second hand tablet died randomly last week and my old phone, which the girls mainly use to listen to audiobooks, is somewhere in the house but even a reward of a shiny pound coin has not caused it to resurface so we are a bit devoid of technology at the moment.

I make dinner and tidy up a bit (again), and ask W if he can come home ten minutes earlier than usual so that I can go get a load of books that have arrived for us at the local library. While we wait the 4 year old and I watch Hamilton videos on you tube. We have been singing like King George all day.

This is not usual, but today I leave W to finish up dinner and go collect the books ready for the unit study I am hoping to do on the Winter Olympics and South Korea. I also pick up a couple of books for me that I reserved, and a couple of Magic Animal Friends books for the 7 year old.

When I get back dinner is ready and we all eat together. Afterwards the children have a run about in the extension and W (who is on a baking kick) starts making a shopping list for his next bake. While he goes to the shops I herd the kids upstairs to start getting ready for bed. Eventually everyone is in their pyjamas and have brushed their teeth and we gather on my bed to read stories. We read Arthur and the Golden Rope, which really needs to go back to the library, (and which is really beautiful!) and more of Angela Nicely Puppy Love. Recently I have been reading lots of early chapter book, firstly to encourage my 7 year old, and secondly because we have a found a few series that are just fun like Claude books and Mango and Bambang. After this I will look to read something a bit meater, and wintery but I’m not sure what.

After stories I should get up and make hot water bottles but I am updating my Good Reads and messing about on my phone. W has taken over parenting duty because at the moment he is better at getting them to settle and go to sleep. I am knackered and looking forward to listening to the latest John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme

(and probably fall asleep half way through.)

(This is what happens.)