bath time! in crawling into 2014.

But no reality check. Hey, I did one of those the other night!

In the UK one of our main teachers unions had a strike day on Wednesday. I'm always in favour of strikes as teachers are paid a ridiculously small amount of money for the hours that they work as well as using their own money for some resources.

Our school tries to stay open as much as possible but one of the rules of strikes is that if a person is on strike, the employer isn't allowed to get someone else to do the work for them so, in the school my kids go to, classes close if the teacher is out and stay open if the teacher is in. Lila had to go to school and tally had the day off. As well as it being Wednesday which is, usually, the day I volunteer at a different school. I contacted my school to let them know I wouldn't be in and planned a day that revolved around tally.

She's really struggling with my childminding at the moment. A child who has been like a big sister to her since she was one year old has been given permission to go to friend's houses to play and spends most of her time playing out with them which has left tally feeling unwanted and rejected. Another child who is the sweetest, kindest but loudest kid I've met drives her up the wall and she's reached a point of refusing to come out of school when she sees this child with me.

I didn't mention to anyone that I wouldn't be volunteering at the school...

So, a whole day, six hours, of just us. I thought of all the things that she's asked to do with her that I couldn't because of the littlies needing me.

We started the day with some roller blading, she's getting really good at it and I want some roller blades too so we can go together properly! She would probably die of embarrassment though. You should have seen her face when I suggested I buy an adult sized scooter!

We're currently reading the first Harry Potter together so we read a chapter, alternating pages. I had completely forgotten how it started! As we were reading I realised that I have a relatively rare copy... It isn't a first edition which are worth thousands, but it's the next printing which has the copyright as Joanne Rowling instead of JK Rowling. Unfortunately they're only worth about £40 so I think I'll hold on to it!

Then we did some sewing with my old fashioned, hand powered, singer machine . I found a simple pattern for patchwork bookmarks. It took us two hours to make three of them and they look fabulous. She chose various of my batik fabrics and we used a variegated quilting thread on them.

After that was lunchtime followed by a long, playing bath. Once we'd done bath time essentials i put my Jacuzzi attachment in and she got the floating bath toys. We made a race track for them using the jet stream from the Jacuzzi. We dried her hair with the hair dryer, looked through her baby book and set off to pick up various children from preschool and school.

We both agreed that it was an amazing day.