I did both digging and ballet on BH Monday, which caused me to feel rather creaky as I changed after the class.

On Wednesday I did some necessary shopping in town, equipping Charles for hot weather. His feet have grown again: he's now a 6F in the right foot and a 5.5G in the left. I followed the nice assistant's advice and got his sandals in size 6G; they have velcro straps so are pretty adjustable too. Also did a swift trip round Boots and got 3 pairs of shorts and 4 tshirts. Now he is equipped.

Once home I cooked a vast pot of veggy pasta sauce, as I'd promised to make a family meal for one of the local NCT members who is undergoing chemotherapy. Thanks to Jonny this was merely a bit rushed rather than complete panic, as he took Charles off while I chopped and cooked. I always forget how long chopping takes. I decanted the family's portions into chinese containers and just dropped them off in time by bike. The idea was to have the rest of the sauce for our own dinner but I was too hot to eat hot food so had a cold snack instead.

On Thursday I joined Ben et al for a picnic on Parker's Piece. Charles ran around a great deal, and ate a fair amount of my pizza and generally had a whale of a time before we cycled home just before sunset. Then I took him and Jonny to Tesco because I'd failed to get Sandra's goodbye present on Wednesday. We were able to get other useful stuff to justify the journey, and Charles decided that he is now old enough for the trolleys with little cars on the front (he even did up the strap himself!) Unfortunately they don't let you take those out of the store because "people leave them all over the place and they damage cars" and Charles expressed his opinion of being transferred to a standard trolley at the top of his voice - at least we were leaving.

Yesterday was Charles's last day with Sandra. Thanks to those friends who gave me advice with the reference (I went with ending 1, the explicit explanation about the smell of smoke). I turned up with present, hand-made card with photo of Charles on it, and reference, but then got all emotional, and just handed over the bag with it all in and explained I'm not good at goodbyes. Sandra said she wasn't either and we retreated to laughing at the cat being silly. We sometimes run into her at the shops and stuff, so it's not goodbye forever.

Then swimming in Impington, for which I bussed there and walked back. My hair dried on the walk back, and I drank several pints of water on arrival home. Only two more lessons now before I go back to work full-time and can't take him any more, but it looks as though I may be able to get someone to take over my last 5 lessons. I must make an effort to get contact details for some of the other mums before I finish, I will miss chatting with them.

Work continues rather busy and I find myself looking forward to the extra 2.5 hours per day I'll have in June, while at the same time trying to make the most of my remaining afternoons with Charles. The lovely weather helps.

I gave our childminder notice today, and in just over 4 weeks time Charles will start with a new childminder whose home is completely non-smoking. I've never sacked anyone before and it required a lot of screwing my courage to the sticking post.

In the event it went better than I had feared, not least because I could be genuinely truthful about regretting leaving her. I made it clear it was the smell of smoke in the house that was the issue, not anything else.

My next task is writing her a good reference. I assume the Done Thing is to keep that as positive as possible and skate over the fact of leaving and why we did so.