Valentine's , a birthday, Harry Potter and stuff

Owen had a long lie in, he's reading till late at night. We have tried our best to get him to sleep earlier but it just causes him stress and he can always work ways round any solution we feel we may have found. One of the many bonuses of how we live, is that he can take a nap or have a lie in when he needs it.

So I start off with Sam and he does maths, whilst telling me about all the things he did at the park with his friend yesterday.

Owen gets up very late and thinks and early lunch is in order. I explain its called 'brunch', he thinks this is a marvellous idea! He makes fish fingers with salad:

We work on his maths together. He's having a bit of trouble understanding coordinates, so I explained it more for him and he soon got the hang of it. He will need to do it for quite a while before it 'sticks' but he could see the logic in it by the end of the session.

 I needed to do some planning so the children played online after lunch.

We started with maths. Sam and Owen did their own work whilst I sorted washing etc.

Sam

Owen was pleased to be able to suss out the coordinates questions single handedly now.

Next we played Black Jack.

Then Historical Timeline. Which always causes some great debates and conversations.

The children played with friends online and learnt more about the ways Roblox can be used. In the evening we took them to jujitsu. After they were in bed Blokey cooked me a Valentine's meal.

In the morning the children got up early to give me the birthday present they had saved up and gone and bought themselves. This was a first for them and they were very excited.

Sam gave me body lotion and Owen compression socks. Both of which I really wanted. They looked at my cards and approved of the headphones Blokey had given me.

'We will cook our own breakfasts ' ...and they did.

After this we worked on some maths.

Sam

I did my exercises and the boys played together on the Wii Harry Potter game, so I went for a shower.

After that we went out for a walk before lunch. I have to say here that I am having a really hard time with Owen. He's still fixating on Roblox. Don't misunderstand me , I know there are a lot of learning opportunities in the application and he's using it to be sociable BUT it is to the exclusion of everything else. I mean everything else too, washing, eating, drinking...all have become even more of a battle with him. Now if there wasn't as much of an impact on him and the rest of the family, I could leave him to come out of it on his own. The reality is that it is impacting on us all tremendously. If Owen doesn't eat correctly and not drink enough, his moods become, shall we say, mercurial and the meltdowns increase, even over the smallest things. Also it's not very pleasant living with someone who doesn't wash...so we needed to find some resolution as a family. He had also started to refuse to leave the house, which has puzzled his local friends and I worry they will give up on him. 

As expected, he didn't take my explaination well, but once he had calmed down, he agreed to make a schedule for himself to make sure all his self care was addressed. Although he kicks off at these demands, once dealt with he seems to relax more and get his focus back. It feels like he loses his way and needs help getting back on an even heel. I had also noticed he wasn't enjoying the gaming as much because he was anxious, so hopefully he will have a better week now. 

The next day the boys were organised with their studies and self care. Owen stuck to the schedule he had made and seemed more relaxed. I tidied round as my mother was coming over.

Sam played his guitar and did some maths, Owen did some more work on Minecraft Jam, which he's enjoying,

By the time my Mum arrived, Owens mood had taken a massive spiral and he was pretty unpleasant to me. He was rather taken aback when his placid Nanny told him off about it. However, it was a bit of a wake up call and he tried really hard to address his behaviour for the rest of the day. We managed to have a nice time and all played board games together after lunch. 

The next day got off to a calm start , the boys played and then we had a belated birthday dinner at the pub. Owen really enjoyed himself and Sam ranked the pub in his top 3 all time favourite chocolate cake venues...he grades every meal out by the quality of the chocolate fudge cake on offer.

Afterwards we took the boys to spend their pocket money and ran the car through the car wash. It really needed it too. We talked about how Sam was terrified of car washes as a toddler and he had a good laugh about it. This is the first time he's managed to sit through one, he decided it was rather fun.

Back to the opticians for me again, so we walked around town and did a bit of shopping. At home we played chess and tried to resolve a nasty incident with the PC. A worm...terrible thing and we lost quite a bit of stuff. There were games of cards and UNO.

Sam played outside for hours with his friend, they finished with a long game of badminton. Owen was competing in Roblox competitions with his home ed friend and I could hear him chuckling away. Then we watched some manga in Netflix.