One word? When seven would do…

Friday was my all day at work day. I got up early enough to chuck some stuff in a bag to bring away, issue Ady with a list of things to do / chuck in the bag too and told the kids to bring 2 sets of clothes and 1 set of pjs each. Then they dropped me off at work.

Work was okay – it felt like a long day and actually due to a rather crappy timetable involving no time on sitting down tasks it was quite tedious. The library is very quiet at the moment which always makes time drag even more and I’d had far too many late nights last week even by my own standards. I did Baby Rhyme Time but we only had two families attending – one has two daughters and always sings along with everything although her older daughter is a bit over-friendly to me and often tries to clamber on my lap / hold my lap / etc. The other attendee was a clearly autistic little girl who has been coming to Rhyme Time for the last 2 years since she was teeny tiny but has never yet talked to me or even really made eye contact despite me welcoming her by name every time and trying with her. She tends to make a beeline for her specific favourite instruments, have a huge tantrum if she doesn’t get them and then select a book and sit with that completely ignoring the singing and not playing the instruments but snarling at anyone else who tries to pick them up. Her mum is lovely, she used to be a hairdresser in the salon around the corner from our house and she did cut my hair a couple of times years ago and I can never quite decide whether I admire her for bringing the little girl every time when she appears to get nothing out of it but probably is, or whether it annoys me when she kicks off and she doesn’t remove her from Rhyme Time as she frequently drowns out the singing of everyone else. So a very intimate Rhyme Time with 3 adults and 3 children and me having to stop singing at least twice each song to cough, which left the other two women to try and carry on with varying levels of enthusiasm and ability. I did lots of shaking my tambourine to keep things going even when my voice failed me though 😆

I really enjoyed talking to one of my colleagues, Sarah (there are 4 Sarahs who all work at the library at various times) who will be 50 next year and has 2 teenagers about what it’s like to have teenage children, to be getting to an age where you are classed as a proper grown up and indeed what it’s like to rediscover (or not) the relationship with your partner again now you are less co-parents through the intensive years of parenting smaller children. It’s entirely appropriate that your relationship does change with your partner when you have children I think but it’s interesting talking to someone who is almost out of the other side about what that’s like, and indeed what it is like having teenage children as whilst Davies and Scarlett aren’t even really on the cusp just yet I am aware it will be the next big culture shock in parenting.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett collected me at 6pm and we started straight out for Sheffield so I arrived in my work clothes. They must be very different to my Nic clothes as everyone commented on my appearance 😆 The drive was not too bad, considering it was over rush hour, took in M25 and M1 on the Friday night before half term, but whichever way you look at it, it’s still five hours sat in the car at the end of a long day at the end of a long week :(. We arrived just after 11pm and having primed Davies and Scarlett for any / all children in residence having been asleep for hours so they would have to creep in and go straight to sleep they were most delighted to discover not just Ben and Rachael but Jonathan, Kit, Libby and Anna aswell as Lije and Lulah all still up and awake 🙂 🙂 So they went and joined in and I suspect were then guilty of prolonging those childrens’ awake-ness for even longer 😳

We had a very lovely fondue meal (with baked cheese for Katy who was not so likely to enjoy cubed meat dunked in sizzling oil) before retiring to the lounge. Ady peeled off first, followed some time later by Chris the Wife Whisperer, several hours later by Alison and I (who have form for staying up late before parties but were trumped this time) and finally Katy and Barbara. I was definitely upstairs and in bed and asleep before 6am, just not much before 6am. 😆

Saturday Of course didn’t officially begin until after some sleep, despite having dawned several hours before we actually went to bed 😆 The children were awake stupidly early – I admit Davies and Scarlett are rubbish at going to bed but at least they then sleep in in the mornings, I forget that real children (ie other peoples’) still get up at proper times in the morning. I listened to them all chattering in that semi dozing, half dreaming state and laughed when I heard Scarlett tell some of the others when playing Sardines ‘you can’t go in there, my Mumma’s asleep!’ well hardly! Nice to have her thinking of me but participating in shrieking right outside the door meant I wasn’t asleep at all. Unless she was thinking of her friends and warning them off me rather than being considerate on my behalf? 😆

The children had all eaten and were off playing in various combinations; I think the boys were mostly together DSing and the girls were mostly together pretending to be animals :). A very complementary and compatible group of children :). Chris went off to get supermarket supplies, Ady did some pretending to be an animal and Barbara, Katy, Alison and I did party preparation. Unusually this involved throwing bags of bicarb and vinegar out of patio doors, making sugar solutions and adding food colouring, experimenting with water bombs and putting safety goggles in crates along with the more traditional cutting of sandwiches. Ady rejoined us to find all four of us, stinking of vinegar, noses pressed against the patio doors cheering as a bag exploded outside 😆 😆

Chris returned and the rest of the party guests arrived and the party commenced. Babs had done a fantastic job of planning loads of cool science experiment and led the 14 children in all sorts of stuff including mentos and diet coke in bottles, marshmallow and malteser molecule and atom construction, rainbow sugar water solutions, sugar and yeast balloon inflation, load of food followed by the grand finale of the party, a Van De Graaff generator which was just superb. We did standing with hair on end, making chains of children with hair on end, touching fingers, ear lobes (and rather painfully for me, from Davies, my front tooth!) to create static shocks, sparks and generally enjoy the access to such a cool piece of kit :).

Children not staying all left and it then was blatantly wine o’clock. Except a couple of the grown ups don’t drink and one was leaving (despite best efforts to prevent her from doing so ;)) which just left Babs and I. And Babs doesn’t quite have my capacity… 😉

The rest can be seen on brightkite really :). Suffice to say it was a fun and frivilous evening which I really enjoyed. I love my friends very much :).

We were less late-to-bed than the night before, poor Ady was feeling rough so he headed off first, Babs, Chris, Katy and I stayed up a little later and Chris mulled some wine which felt all festive and autumnal and I guess it was about 130am when we called it a night.

Sunday I noticed even the children were not quite so early to rise (certainly mine were not, I overheard other children commenting on Davies’ lateness to wake :)). We had tea, coffee, breakfast, chats, yet more groups of adults standing and gazing out of the window (this time at a stream we can’t actually see from the kitchen window anyway) before we decided to brave the M1 and M25 due south at about midday.

We had a really clear run home and arrived back about 430pm. The kids had baths and food, Davies did some Simpsons movie making stuff, Scarlett watched a progamme about finding tigers on mountains, they had some dinner and a very early night (not that Davies was asleep still, he appeared back downstairs at 1030 and I’m still not sure he’s asleep now) and I’ve done some googling to find out whether Davies’ latest request of things he might want to learn about is feasible before we go – he likes the idea of falconry (HP inspired obviously but he’s seen several displays and would like to learn more about it and how you train birds).

Baths and dinner for us and now as we have yet another busy week ahead kicking off with me needing to bake a cake in the morning I really should try and make up some of my sleep deficit!