How do you teach a child to read?

This is the main question that has been puzzling me for the past few days, having been trying to get Emilia to read. We were making good progress before, but now I realise that she was only remembering the story, not learning how to read. It doesn't seem as though the school is helping, which is often the case, as they leave struggling children behind. She is interested in stories and books. We went to the library this morning, and we read some books there. Well, I read them, she listened. I point to the words when reading, but it is very difficult to get her to look at the words. She is forever looking around the room or at the pictures. She faces the book when I get her to read her school book to me, but her eyes are off to the side. I am at a loss as to how to get her to pay attention. We took out 10 books from the library, and now Edd's dad and I have spent an hour going over the letters F, U and N to get her to sound them out and put them together to make a word. She is so easily distracted and would so anything not to do as she was asked. It's trying my patience, yet I know that the only way she will learn is if I have patience with her and keep encouraging her. I also found out that her maternal grandfather had told her not to learn to read and that she is stupid and will never learn to read. It's going to take years to undo that damage. I want her to learn to love books as much as I do. I can't believe someone would want to ruin another persons life like that before they've even had a chance. The world is full of some horrible people.

3 years today, I'll be getting married

Big thing eh? It kind of scares me in a good way. I mean, we have pleanty of time to plan and save, but still. 3 years isn't long. But then, I'll be 28 then, I'll be old. I feel old already. Although I seem to be bypassing the glamorous part of being in your late 20s. I need to find a look. I've had the same look for years and I feel it's high time I have a new look. A new style. I have no idea what, but that is what's mainly on my mind today.

To elope or not to elope...

... that is indeed the question. I'm excited about having a big day. Yet one more objection about our choice of date and I'm seriously considering buggering off to Vegas and getting married there with no one to tell us that the chosen date isn't practical because so and so will be away/somebody's birthday is in the same month/the hamster has to go to have a haircut etc etc. Why did no one warn me about this stressful side of the wedding? It's our bloody day and I don't really mind if it's autumn and there won't be any leaves coming out on the trees, we want to get married then, and that's when we're getting married.

Please, someone tell me it gets better? Please?

Raspberry Pavlova ice cream? Don't mind if I do!

Edd's parents are back from Sweden. This means Emilia is back, yay! This also means that the clashing of opinions has started and in the past 4 days there have been plenty of raised voices, boo. It's just getting used to all 5 of us living under the same roof again, but still, the stress levels are high at the moment. Hence the ice cream.

In other news, we have pretty much booked the wedding reception venue! Yay! It's all suddenly getting really real now. Oddly enough, all I can think about is having a little baby boy to be a page boy in a cute little suit.... got to stop being broody!

Emilia has now decided that when she is an adult, she's going to be a doctor. I was her first patient...

Nothing beats a haircut

Or the posing you do after!

A wee bit of self assessment

After being inspired by what was said by a certain Miss Fat Rat in this post here about chapters in life, I started thinking about how I look at my life, well, what has passed of it so far. I don't see myself as having chapters based on where I've lived, as I haven't really moved aorund that much. As sad as it is to admit it, my defining chapters in life have happened because of men. I don't know if I'm proud to admit that, but sadly that's the way it is. I have been a different person because of different men in my life, and they have shaped the way I am now. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a good time girl who tried to set a Guiness World Record here, no, I'm not that bad. What I'm trying to say is that at various points in my life I have been and felt like a different person because of a man. This has mainly been while at uni, and because I have an appauling taste in men. Well, I used to, I've found a keeper now.

Let me begin. Before I left the sunny surroundings of Surrey to move west across the country to a different country in fact, in search of a higher education, I was a fairly average girl. Yes, my first love had broken my heart, but I found out (as all of us do), that it wasn't the end of the world and that life carried on. Obviously, it felt like the end of the world at the time, it always does, doesn't it? Still, I came to Swansea in 2005, already in a relationship that had been going for a year and survived his first year at uni, so I was in a fairly good place. I felt happy and secure, as far as you would be moving to a completely new city where you know no one but have a boyfriend at the other end of a phone to tell you that everything is going to be OK. Sadly, as I found out, everything was not to be OK. Distance is a harsh test on relationships, and unfortunately wandering eyes led to wandering feet, which led to wandering peckers, which led to a tearful Kerri catching a train home from Oxford after 4 hours of being there for a weekend visit. Still, I picked myself up, and there ended the chapter of my life most likely named "Kerri - the non-student from Surrey". I'm thinking about if my life were a book, and naming the chapters accordingly. It's not one of those books where chapters are given numbers, because that would be rather boring and I like chapters with a heading, giving you a little clue as to what's in store.

So, the next chapter began, and I think this one would be "Kerri - the big rebound relationship". I pretty much carried on after that big relationship to another big one. Now, let's admit it, we're all guilty of having a rebound relationship at some point in our lives. It's hard to avoid it. You try and take the best pieces of your previous relationship (and they're usually one of the long ones) and drag them in to your new relationship. These relationships rarely seem to work. Or at least not for me. I tried to settle too fast, and there were parts of me that were lost in that relationship. I rarely went out of friends that weren't connected to my boyfriend somehow. I guess, this being the first relationship away from home and not having to abide by parents rules, I wanted to prove that I was a grown up. In reality, I wasn't at all, but it was a learning curve. I learnt that relationships are about give and take. I gave a lot, didn't quite learn how to take anything back though. This led to arguments, to feeling neglected, to what ultimately ended the realtionship and something that I regret to this day. This also is where I had a major overhaul in personality, and this is due to one man...

In relationships, nobody wants to feel neglected. Well, I guess in life generally, it's not a nice feeling. Yet, a relationship is where you're supposed to be as close as it's possible to be to someone, both emotionally and physically. You don't want empty promises of spending quality time together, only to show up and be palmed off with excuses because your boyfriend wants to get stoned and play Pro Evo with his mates. Again. I'm not making excuses, I'm to blame as well. However, I felt neglected and did the worst thing possible in a relationship. I cheated. This, you'll agree, is enough to make someone feel completely different in itself. It's just that, the person I cheated on my boyfriend with, had such a profound affect on me, he's pretty much the reason why I'm writing this post. I don't agree with cheating, I think it's a horrible thing to do. My stepdad had an affair and part of me still can't forgive him for it. I always said I'd never cheat, and I honestly never thought I would. I can try and blame the alcohol, but that's a shallow excuse. I've been drunk plenty since, and never cheated. What it comes down to at the end of the day, I was unhappy and I was drinking with an incredibly manipulative man who could see that and used it to his advantage. And thus we enter the "Kerri - The lost years". Because that's what I was. But how did this come to pass? Well, as I mentioned before, this man was manipulative. I confessed to my boyfriend, we broke up in a spectacular fashion in the uni nightclub. The aforementioned man was the manager of said nightclub, so it wasn't great. After an excessive amount of alcohol, all I could do was cry. Mr T (for that is what I will call him for the rest of this post) took it upon himself to comfort me, and me, being drunk and miserable, let him. I was taken in by his words of reassurance, of how a great and wonderful person I was, about how I didn't need a wanker like him, about how I shouldn't feel bad, sex is only sex after all. I was taken in by it, I thought he meant it. This was the start of a year of messing with my head. Of giving me enough to grasp on to, and then letting it go just as quickly. By the end of the year I felt I was worth nothing. I found myself trying to prove to this man that I was worth something, hoping he'd compliment me and take me in to his arms, when in reality he just wanted me for sex. In the times when I was being ignored and feeling low, I adopted the idea that sex is only sex and nothing else, at least I thought I did. I was just trying to get someone to want me. I was clearly going the wrong way about it. This all came to a head when I met a nice guy, and Mr T tried to ruin it all. He'd done this a few times before. He maintained that he didn't want a relationship or anything like that with me, yet as soon as I met someone, he would do his best to destroy it. It usually worked. Until the last time, as on a drunken night he somehow ended up collecting me from a night out and we had a blazing argument. He said that he'd always liked me but I'd buggered off with other people. Based on this final lie, I walked away, knowing that I was over him and there ended that chapter of my life.

The following chapter would be entitled "Kerri - the spanish version", as I was a different person when in Spain and the relationships I had there. The influence of Mr T was still there (he still tried to contact me a fair few times), and I still found it hard to distinguish the difference between people liking me genuinely or just for someone to sleep with. This led to the colombian, and I was in a very bad place when I was with him. I lost weight, was constantly on my guard and couldn't see my friends without accusastions of infidelity. I was never unfaithful, but when you're in that situation, part of you thinks, seeing as I'm being accused of it, why don't I just do it anyway? I eventually found the strength to walk away, after months of arguments and tears. It made me a lot stronger and I wasn't so trusting for a long time.

We then come to the chapter "Kerri - the restoration", where I spent a long time finding out who I was and learning to be by myself, without a man. So I guess this chapter doesn't involve a man as such, I mean, there were a few flings, but they were more passing blips, and they never really changed my character in such a dramatic way.

And then I met Edd, and now we reach the current chapter, what I hope is the final chapter based on men influencing my life. This chapter hasn't been named yet, I can't think of one fitting for it. Edd has changed me for the better, many people have said so. I am calmer, I don't see sex as the be all and end all, I've learnt more about myself and I am happy with the person I am now.

Where did this huge internal monologue come from? Well, my dreams have featured a few of my exes recently, and I reckon it's because I'm so settled with Edd now that I am processing what happened before from a safe place where the wounds aren't so raw and I can see what happened for what it was. I came out the other side a better person, and I owe a lot to the idiots who hurt me, for now I am where I want to be.

Love is....

...the hug after a hard day at work

...accepting that one of you snores loudly, the other is a mean sleep talker prone to kicking their loved one out of bed

...cooking together and arguing about who does the washing up

...not getting angry that he squeezes the toothpaste from the top of the tube

...talking through the tough times rather than just shouting and giving up

...waking up at 6am to take your other half to work, and even making her a cup of tea before she leaves

...making a packed lunch for one another

...telling each other how much you love each other before bed

...never holding each other back

...laughing at each others really bad jokes

...feeling comfortable breaking wind in front of each other, even doing it competitively

...never feeling ashamed about crying

...this....