One word? When seven would do…

socialisation – check, education -check, paranoid mother reassured by printing off the National Curriculum – check!

Another good day. We got up lateish which was nice (by lateish I mean 7.30am which by my own definitions is now late, four years ago would still have been the middle of the night!!), had breakfast and got dressed. Kids then ‘helped’ me put three baskets of washing away and we changed Monsters bedclothes. We then decided to go out for a walk and Monster chose a medium walk (choice of short, medium or long) so we walked into town through the alleyways which Monster has not done before. He gave us a long running commentry on all the nettles and weeds in the alley, the rubbish, the fallen down fences and walls, the shade created by overhanging branches etc and the temperature changes they caused – and all unprompted by me bless him!

We had a quick wonder round Lancing, bought a colour atlas for 10p from the charity shop then Teeny noticed a Laalaa backpack (they were selling for about 25 quid back when Teletubbies first came out and I actually wanted one for myself back then but was just too far out of my teens to justify it!) for a pound! Swiftly purchased she cuddled it all way home, apart from a brief allowance of Monster to have a go with it on his back (look I’m like Dora with a back pack!), then some sweeties in Woollies and caught in the rain all the way home. Luckily it was just light rain and it stayed warm and the overhanging branches saved us from getting too wet – but Monster did sing ‘rain, rain go away’ all the way home anyway! Back home for lunch and then Rachel and E arrived.

Quite a nice afternoon with them really, E played nicely with Monster and they refrained from getting every single toy out and scattering them all around the house, which was nice! Rachel is really showing her pregnancy now and I’m quite excited at the thought of someone I know having a new baby to coo over! Teeny was very tired so not at her best and spent most of the afternoon cuddling on my lap, but she is definately winning Rachel round to the idea of little girls!

Tomorrow is health visitor developement check day, and we might go to storytime at the library in the morning too. If the weather is nice we will walk to the library as it was only about ten minutes through the alleyways.

I printed off the National Curriculum stuff today, including subjects and what children should know / be able to do in KS1 – all the key stages are totally beyond me as I don’t know any school kids and as Monster has never been to a formal learning institution I have never had cause to understand them. But so far all the stuff he needs for English, Science, History, Geography, Design / Art is all totally covered, Maths is more of an issue but as he is not yet four we have three years to get him to that stage. I’m glad I checked it as its totally reassured me once again of my ability to cover everything with very little problems – I think the only thing I will want to formalise a bit is Maths, which is fine cos I really like Maths myself and will enjoy doing some structured workbooky type stuff on it – we will start looking at numbers when we finish the letter scrapbook – but he can already count easily way past 12 and gets the concept of adding and subtracting so I don’t forsee any great issues – and I know there is at least one maths book for Leapad too so that will halp when we are ready to start tackling it. I am also debating spanish lessons at some point too – I wouldn’t mind learning myself but would not want to be learning and teaching at the same time – perhaps I could pay for him to have lessons and then he could teach me!! Ady has decided he wants to ‘do’ science so he is up for getting some sort of junior chemisty set and blowing stuff up in the shed (we don’t actually have a shed by the way, maybe we need to use the cupboard under the stairs as a lab!), so basically we’re sorted!!

Still no update on the rest of our upside down lives, not sure if we are being silly and in denial or sensible and waiting for it all to sink in and making a considered and rational decision when we are more in the right frame of mind for it. Think we need some sort of break really, I know we’ve only been home for two months and we didn’t really work for three months before that but now we are back and sort of settled we need some time off usual life to reflect and relax and maybe some answers will show themselves to us – or at the very least we can have a longer conversation than ‘whats for dinner?’ or ‘its your turn, i got up last night!’ about stuff when we are not like zombies!

B is for Buzz Lightyear, Bob the Builder, Boots (from Dora), blue, beach, bed, book, ball, bell, banana…

Monster chose the next letter for his letter scrapbook and decided (seemingly quite at random) that it would be b ‘for box’. Despite Teeny not having a sleep today and me suddenly deciding to tidy the playroom we made a pretty good start on it. We printed off a picture of a brachiosaurus, photocopied images of Buzz and Bob, photocopied a page from an alphabet book, I drew a picture of Boots (which I may blog – it was quite good if I say so myself!) which he coloured in, cut out a giant ‘b’, copied a map of Britain (which we will use tomorrow to spot places begining with B which we have been to and add some pictures of us there – Brighton, Blackpool, Bognor, Birmingham etc), added a sticker of a butterfly (may get the paints out and do one of those folding butterfly pictures if I can face the mess!)and I have plans for some sort of crafty type creation to depict babies, brothers, balls, balloons, and more. He also did a very impressive recreation of a b and was quite handy with the glue pens too…

So first thing this morning I made the decision to do something constructive with my day and tackled the playroom – it was not dreadful and to be honest you probably couldn’t tell I’ve done anything as I have not necessarily tidied it as such, but I did go through every box and reorganise them and sort out the bookshelves so all the story books / Teeny’s picture books are accessible to them to go and get when they want and all the educational books, stuff for when they are older, workbooks and the various Christmas books (for some reason we seem to have about ten!) are on the next shelf up so they don’t have access to them without asking. The kids veered between being helpful, finding a small spot of floor amidst the chaos and playing wtih stuff and mithering me to the point of yelling at them. Teeny managed to run off with crayons and decorate at least three walls (managed to buy some of those flash stain remover thingy sponges advertised on telly by the man who used to be Jacko in Brush Strokes! and d’you know what, they really work!) and she flatly refused to have a nap despite clearly needing one – although she did sleep through the night last night (you know that feeling when you wake and its morning and you can’t quite believe it!). I need to get a couple more storage boxes and then all the toys will be neatly catergorised and able to be put away every night (one day I might even take a pic of my playroom when its tidy and blog it so you can all see how anal I am about the toys ‘going to bed’). Then we did the stuff for the scrapbook and had some lunch.

Dad then arrived to look after the kids while I went to the opticians – I wear the all day all night contact lenses and with my hayfever I have been suffering from blurry eyes and lots of gunk clogging them up – also needed to reregister with the local branch after the move down here. I was gone for nearly three hours, had to get some birthday cards (busy birthday month, July) and some food shopping, but both kids had been really good for Dad and were quite happy when I came back. Teeny was really struggling to keep awake but they both managed to eat all their teas and three yoghurts each – both totally independantly and using cutlery!

Teeny fell asleep straight away but Monster hung it out downstairs till after 7pm and did not go to sleep till nearly 9! He has this new trick of begging me to teach him stuff – tonight he spent ages lining all the dinosaurs up (he has about 30 little plastic ones in a bucket), counting them, naming them, telling me whether they eat meat or trees etc and making up this long story about them going in the mud (a sheet of paper he had coloured in brown), then it continued in bed with him asking me to teach him about types of nuts (as he refused to let me come back downstairs I took my wine and bowl of nuts up with me while I sat with him) – he mastered peanuts and brazil (well sort of!) and when I finally did get away yelled down to me about how he could say Manchester properly and demostrating it at great volume!!

Tomorrow we might go into town in the morning or may just stay home and do some crafty stuff, then Rachel is coming over in the afternoon.

Which little finger did it bite?

Today we went to the Blue Reef Aquarium as part of an Activeo event. We arrived at Southsea at 10am, an hour early as I didn’t know for certain how long it would take and we were all ready to leave before nine so we did! We parked right outside and walked around Southsea seafront for an hour – watched the hovercrafts coming and going from the Isle of Wight, listened to the ferries and Monster played all the way along the patterned paved pavements – some of it was the path and some was the sea so he alternated between splashing and swimming through the sea – cue much indulgent smiling at him from the elderly Portsmouth folk lining the early morning park benches along the prom! (is it cynical to wonder whether they will still be smiling at his imagination and clear joy at being a child once he is blatantly school age?!). We arrived back at 11.05 which was sort of late, but not usually by HE standards! There was no one familiar around and as I had printed a voucher for free entry from the website which brought our entrance fee down to the same as if we went in on the reduced group rate we went on in. Monster loves stuff like sea life centres, and Teeny loved it too – her whole face lit up as she gazed into the magical blue tanks filled with electrical coloured fish, miniature sharks and amazingly curious rays peeping out of the surface of their huge open topped tank. A shame to be there on my own really as Teeny had to stay in her pushchair and she would have loved to be pressing her nose up against the tanks and dipping her fingers in the water! Blue Reef is much smaller (and in my opinion although good) and not as good as Blue Planetwhere we went quite a few times when we were up north, so we walked round three times and on the third time Chris walked past us on his way to the loo! We went back into the entrance to find Julie and the twins and the Activeo woman checking them all in. We walked round together once – Monster totally stalking Chris – who was struggling to manage whichever twin he was in charge of let alone answer all Monsters endless ‘why’ questions, bless him! Monster really impressed me by recognising ‘Nemo’ in one of the tanks and then actually knowing that he was a clown fish, but then seeing ‘Dory’ too – which I would never have noticed (and he was right – clearly being smart and capitalising on potential spin offs they had named the fish Nemo and Dory and he had spotted the right breed!). A shame he can’t read yet as the information boards around the place answered all of his many questions but he was onto the next one before he had let me finish reading them out to him! We then enjoyed a very windy picnic in the grounds of Southsea castle before parting company promising to meet up this weekend coming at a localish stately home and grounds. Ady arrived just as they were about to drive off so we had a quick ten minute chat before they went then me, Ady and kids parked closer to the rest of the Southsea attractions and wandered round the amusements and fairgrounds for an hour before he had to get back to work and we went home! Kids ate all their tea and after a few wrestles are both now asleep!

Tomorrow we plan to do some stay at home stuff in the morning – Monster has decided he wants to do letter ‘b for box’ next in his scrapbook so hopefully Teeny will have a bit of a sleep in the morning letting us make a good start to it.

A crap night but a good day!

Total musical beds last night, Monster arrived in ours at about 1.30am to be joined by Teeny at about 3am. Bed far too crowded for four, particularly as it was a hot night. By about 4.30 both kids who were in the middle between us were awake and squabbling so finally Ady brought Teeny downstairs where they watched boring middle of the night TV (fishing show probably!) and dozed on and off till me and Monster came down at 8.30. Monster and Teeny made make your own chocolate croissants – Monster is really proficient at them now and Teeny has been itching to have a go so we had some fairly tidy and some which were more like chocolate munched up packages – but they all tasted nice!

Then we went to Drusillas and collected our membership cards. We stayed for about three hours which is never enough to see everything but enough for us when we were all sleep deprived! Lots of pics as below (also included one of Teeny I meant to blog earlier in the week when she insisted in having her nails painted when I was doing mine – Monster wanted his done too but I (rightly!) guessed that Ady would be fairly cross about Teeny’s let alone Monsters too!. We went on the train, played in the park for a bit, stroked some rabbits that were on display and generally just enjoyed being there. We left at 2.30 which I decided was too late to take in the dinosaur place too, so that will have to keep till next week. Went to Mum and Dads to collect Ady’s car which we had left there on Friday night and came home. Teeny is knocked out although she keeps stiring – she has finally cut the tooth which has been making her all cross all week but it is clearly still causing her pain so she has had some medicine and we hope for a better night. Monster has lasted till 9pm, which is a miracle given how tired he is, but he is also finally asleep and hopefully will stay that way for at least 10 hours!

Tomorrow we are going to the Sea Life Centre in Portsmouth on an Activeo event, Chris and Julie and the twins will be there and hopefully Ady will manage to join us for a bit, Tuesday nothing is planned for, although I need to get the car taxed, Wednesday we meet up with Rachel and E, Thursday we have the Health Visitor meetings and that’s all we’ve planned so far. I’m really hoping to get some ‘proper’ work done this week with Monster and to get the work I want to achieve properly planned out. Also still looking at houses and I want to do some proper work on my business plans and maybe even blog something. Have started putting my idea to a few friends and have been met with positive feedback so will get it out there to some of my virtual mates too soon I promise!

enjoying their ice lollies 

Monster achieved crocodile pace! 

Teeny running (her speed is equivalent to a cockroach apparantly!) 

Monster practising the long jump (kangaroos can do 4m y’know!) 

Feeding a goat (whether he wanted it or not!) 

Teeny and a book – her new great passion! 

Monster striking a pose! 

Teeny and her pretty nails 

Have been totally rubbish at blogging – and now you are all at camp anyway!!!

Its been a long and fairly crappy week really, the planning permission getting turned down on Monday and all the mental draining stuff that has thrown up has been really tiring, Teeny has not slept a full night all week (except last night and as she didn’t actually get to bed till gone nine that doesn’t count anyway), I’ve properly worked one very full day and I’m just a bit zombified with all thats going on really!

So to catch up from the last blog …

Thursday – quite a nice day really, we had the dentist first thing.. now I actually don’t mind the dentist at all, infact I love going to the hygienist as she is a really nice girl, with two kids a bit older than my two and we always talk about kidstuff, working part time and she has this fab whitening machine which removes all the tea stains from my pearly whites and makes me all proud to wear bright red lipstick and do inane tooth exposing smiles at total strangers for the couple of weeks before they get all tea stained again! Ady hates the dentist, so I had not told him we were going till the day before, he went in first, then I took Monster in with me, where he sat on a chair watching me have my check up and asking lots of ‘why’ questions which were either answered by me if a ‘urghh’ with a mouthfull of dentists hands and mirrors would suffice or fielded by the dentist and his nurse if not! He then sat in the chair and went up and down, recline and back and let the dentist have a look in his mouth and count his teeth – he then chose a couple of stickers as a reward – excellent way that kids are dealt with IMO – cer tainly at this dentists anyway! Teeny then came in and was ‘exposed’ to the general surgery environment, which is all they do at her age, was admired by both dentist and nurse as very very cute (I did tell them its an act that she has perfected by spending time practising infront of the mirror every day and they should not be taken in by it, but they just laughed!)and then also chose stickers. A very relieved Ady went off to work leaving us all dressed and out the house with the day ahead of us by 9.30am! So we took some clothes back I had bought a week before to a local branch of the shop and rang Julie (Ady’s brothers wife) to see what she was upto as we were not far from their house.

Julie rang back and we went over for about three hours and had a really, really good time! Its so nice to have ‘family’ other than my parents, who I love dearly but can be a trial! Julie and I get on very well, Ady and Chris are still building their relationship but they are getting there – and the kids (they have twins a couple of months older than Teeny) have all got used to each other and play alongside each other nicely. J (the boy) seems to hero worship Monster as the older cousin and follows him round, M (girl) and Teeny have this bizarre obsession with all the juices! J and M have matching pink and blue juice cups as do Monster and Teeny (different design though) and the two girls seem to spend all their time together distributing the juices between the four of them, drinking each others and hiding them! Julie and I did some more bonding – talked more about HE and how we both envisage it working – quite similar ideas really, the local group – Activeo which we are all members of and general getting to know each other stuff. Also told her about the planning permission and got another viewpoint, lots of ideas and some nice sympathy too! Also broached the potentially difficult topic of that fact that we are planning to write our wills and get everything all tidied up a bit and in the event of something happening to me and Ady we don’t feel there would be any option but for my parents to bring them up (they would certainly not be short of love, or material possessions and although they would not neccessarily be raised in the way I intend to their lives would be irrevocably changed by losing both their parents anyway) if they are not capable (ie too aged, too ill or its simply too much for them full time) then we would like Chris and Julie to do it, or at least share the responsibility. Julie agreed at once and its something they have talked about and would like us to be the first people for the twins, which of course I agreed to aswell. Morbid, but comforting that we have done our best to provide for the kids financially and practically if the worst should happen (well in theory anyway, I will expect massive congratulatory comments when I finally announce we have done it all officially!). After a very ‘Julie’ lunch – vegetable and rice pie – which I ate and actually quite enjoyed, Teeny loved and Monster flatly refused to even sit down to (not at all surprised and he was okay with the fact that there was nothing else on offer, and managed to last till tea time back at home where he polished off all his very large tea!).

Whilst in Littlehampton we trawled a couple of charity shops and picked up 12 books on a four for a pound offer (so three quid in all – bargain!), mainly ladybird classic fairystories and a childrens encyclopidia.

Thursday night a couple of bloke mates came over to watch football with Ady while I wrestled the kids to bed – very stressed by the end – Monster did not go to sleep till nearly 10pm and Teeny awoke at 11.30 and ended up in bed with us all night – so just an hour and a half child free time for the whole day and night, during which time I ate pizza (which was overcooked having been in the oven for ages while i waited for Monster to fall asleep), watched England lose with three saddened blokes and prepared all my work stuff for Friday.

Friday was a crappy day. I was doing H&S training in an office in Islington. Ady had arranged his week so he could take me and do a couple of London stores while I was doing the training but it all went a bit wrong! We all slept later than intended – not surprising given the time the kids went to sleep, so we arrived later than planned at mums where Monster was fine about being left but Teeny got a bit upset when she realised I was going, so I ran! The routefinder said it would take 1hour 45 mins, we arrived having driven all round scary central parts of London such as Threadneedle Street, London bridge, past the Bank of England, past loads of other Monopoly board tourist attractions a full three hours later! Given it was now 11am, Ady had not even started work but was convinced that having found the office if he left me now he would never find it again we decided he would come in with me and do the H&S audit while I whizzed through the training, we could then get it all done in about three hours, allowing us to get round a couple of stores together afterwards to do his work. The office went really well, I enjoyed doing my training, the staff enjoyed having it and Ady did his pompous H&S expert act which was really funny to witness when none of the staff knew he was my husband and were looking at me, eyes to the ceiling when he got all boring about H&S laws!

We then spent from 2pm till 6pm driving round London frantically trying to find a B&Q store, we looked in vain for one we were convinced was in Islington, before finally conceding there is not one there, could not find Tottenham and then found our way close enough to Peckham to think we might find the one there – we drove round Peckham for 2 HOURS, we asked four lots of people, I cried, we rang my mum to say we were going to be very late, she sighed and huffed and puffede, Monster came to the phone to tell me he loved me lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and stacks and millions (his words) and that I was so lovely and he missed me and wanted me to come home now! Finally all tear stained and hot and dishevelled I went into a dry cleaners and practically begged them to help me, which resulted in all three staff helping and someone even drawing me a map, which finally got us there…we then drove home very tired and ready for bed after our big day ‘in the smoke!’. Kids and Mum were clearly tired and ready to be split up! They were both asleep by about 9.30, we had a chinese and Teeny and Ady slept till 7.30 this morning (Teenys best night in ages!) and Monster and I till 9.30am (love Ady!).

Today we spent the morning lazing and then the afternoon driving round West Sussex looking at potential areas to live in. Collected some details but think we need to move somewhere a bit further away, next we will look at Hampshire and see whats about there. Teeny clearly has a tooth coming through accounting for her mardiness this week, and particularly today so we are planning a trip to Drusillas and Paradise Park (the long awaited return trip to the dinosaur place!) tomorrow as something for them. I am supposed to be going to the Sea Life centre at Southsea on Monday but I have not confirmed our place yet so must do that tomorrow…

Finally it is my plan having told lots of people this week all about how we are going to HE to draw up a new Ed Phil detailing it formally and to draw up a sort of lesson plan / activity schedule for Monster. This will not be anything formal as far as he’s concerned just a list more for my own use of stuff to cover, what subjects that will encompass, what we can tick off from NC type thing by doing so and form the basis of a structured learning plan for any future LEA contact. We have our appointment with the HV next week – both kids are having development checks and registering with the doctors and I know that Monster being in nursery / signed up for a school will form part of the conversation – our HV is very nice, but has definate ideas and will have an opinion on HE – she will either be more than happy with the idea of me doing it, or concerned in which case I want to be able to reassure and convince her – now I know there is no need for me to worry about her opinion or work to convince her at all, but I would like to think she is an ally in this and it would be nice to know I can convince a ‘professional’ that what we intend to do is right for us even if its something she would not advocate in the normal way – will report back after the meeting!

Back to an even keel – for now!

I did draft a post yesterday but got interupted and thought I’d finish it off today, however it was all miserable and self pitying and today I am feeling good again so I’ve deleted it!

But to recap yesterday in brief:
Kids were total horrors – two estate agents visited – one at 11am and one at 2pm. At 10am I left Monster downstairs playing with – at his request – hama beads while Teeny and I went upstairs and got dressed and put away the four baskets of clean washing I had finally got dry from last week being away. Teeny is so cute in the mornings when I get dressed and put my make up on – our morning routine rarely varies – we get up, kids have their milk and I have my tea, then we eat breakfast and while Monster is either watching TV or playing downstairs she and I go upstairs to get dressed. I sit on the floor in our ensuite loo and put my makeup on while she gets the ponds cocoa butter out of the cupboard and rubs it into her legs and mine – its really cute and my legs have never been so silky smooth!

Anyway Monster had called me to come and see what he was doing a couple of times but I had shouted back that I was busy putting the washing away and had sort of forgotten he was playing with the bead till I got back downstairs to find the whole lounge floor covered with hama beads of all colours! I tossed up yelling again or being calm and quite honestly am so bored of the sound of my own shout I told him all calmly that I was very cross but if we picked them all up it would be okay (estate agents arriving in half an hour and kids still not dressed!) so we picked them all up and put them back into the right compartments – and I was so impressed with Teeny’s colour sorting skills – she knew which compartment to put all the colours in and could even find a black bead, yellow bead etc when I asked her. Her speech really seems to have come on loads in these last couple of weeks too – her yeah and no is very clear and she clearly understands soo much. Yesterday morning I forgot who I was talking to and asked her to bring me the toilet roll from the windowsill – and she did!!! I didn’t know she knew what a toilet roll or a window sill were – so I’m impressed!

Anyway, they were then both perfectly horrid for the whole time i was talking to the estate agents, then we had lunch and sat reading some books all three of us before the next estate agent arrived – during which they were lovely till the doorbell rang, then horrid again! We then went over to my parents who I was hoping to leave them with while I did food shopping, but there was no one home so in the end I had to take them both with me round Sainsburys for a whole weeks food shop – and perfect angels they were too! Bribed by chocolate lollies and allowed to choose the odd item to add to the trolley here and there they were so well behaved I was almost proud of them! Then back to my parents where Dad had arrived home and they spent a merry hour touching everything they are not supposed to, clambering all over the furniture and playing games far too raucous and boisterous for my parents antique furnitured, precious porcelein figurined house! I could actually see my dad thinking that Monster should be in nursery so I said to him ‘you are thinking he should be in nursery aren’t you?’ to which he replied that it would give me some respite and allow him to burn off some energy – the reasons seem to be getting weaker somehow! I left feeling quite deflated until we got home and when Ady put Monster to bed he suddenly said ‘its not fair, every morning Teeny is in bed with Mummy and I always have to sleep in my bed’ ahh! So Ady made a big deal about the fact it was a special treat and let him fall asleep in our bed watching Peter Pan…It led me to thinking about how everyone, and I mean everyone always comments on how close Monster and Teeny are and how well they play together etc. They are quite literally best friends, they squabble – sure but they pine for each other when apart and they generally spend most of their time together playing and doing stuff together. I had always put it down to them having always spent lots of time together so just being used to nothing else, but having given it some thought I think their bond is that they have never been in competition with each other – they have their clearly defined roles – he is big brother, she is baby sister, he is the older one, she is the baby, they both get equal time, love and affection from me and Ady, we almost take it in turns to do stuff with each of them seperately but we don’t have any sort of ‘allocated child each’. When we are out we vary the couplings from me and Teeny and Monster and Ady to the other way round, I have always made a big deal to Monster about how I am the oldest and I know how hard it can be to have a baby come along and want to play with all your stuff, ruin your games by crawling through the middle of them etc, but equally talked about the plus side of having a little sibling – she is ‘his’ Teeny, and pretty much her first word was his name. In a bit of a reverse from the norm he went from being at a nursery two days a week (which he hated)while I was pregnant to coming out and being at home with mummy again for a few months, till I went back a couple of days a week to work when Lynda started coming to look after both of them at our house, he has never felt pushed out by her and I truly think that to send him to nursery as some sort of childcare solution now would really damage their relationship – they would not be together so much, he would resent being ‘sent away’ while she got to stay with Mummy etc. Anyway enough musings – but another plus in my opinion for the whole HE thing anyway!

So today we went to take some library books back – except two Monster was adamant he wants to keep a bit longer – one about our body – which he has amazed us with his deep interest in, (when Teeny’s knee saga was at its height, he totally dumbfounded my parents by telling them that Teeny had lost some cells from the skin on her knee!)and a Hairy McLary one. Instead of getting more from the library we went to the charity shop and bought about 10 books for under a fiver – a couple of Usborne ones – one of silly jokes – Monster is obsessed with the idea of jokes so I want to actually teach him a couple and try to explain how they work – play on words, double meanings, sounds like etc, a children’s Atlas which is too advanced for now but looks like it will provide endless educational assistance as and when, some ladybird classics – secret garden, jack and the beanstalk etc, one very educational one about groups of animals, one Usborne Science book – again not for now but loads of cool experiments and one about ‘things to collect in a bag’ which included fossil searching which is on our list of stuff to do! We then a big discussion about why you can’t see the wind (gale force here today – worried about waking tomorrow with no roof!)but you can feel it and see what it does. Then home for lunch and then round to Rachel and E’s house for the afternoon!

Once again I am sure I have filled Rachel’s head with ‘alternative rubbish’ she always comes away from our afternoons seeming all inspired by me and I just know her husband must dread them as she always seems to be going home to talk to him about something we have discussed. Today she said to me jokingly (but its the second time she’s said it so there must be something in it!) you don’t want to HE a third one and have E do you? when I was telling her about our Ed Phil and how organic I intend our learning to be. Funnily enough Chris and Julie have also put across the idea of swapping kids once or twice a week in the future – seems i might have my childcare issues and socialisation all sewn up somehow! I might give it some more thought and speak to her about it properly next week….the kids all played really nicely today – E seems to be calmed a bit by my two and they are getting a bit braver and more able to tell him to stop doing something if they don’t like it instead of running to me crying – progress methinks!

So to update on the rest of our whole lives situation – the house has been valued at pretty much what I thought it would be, we are thinking over the following options:
a – stay where we are for now – but knowing its short term – perhaps a year to see what happens with Ady’s job and think about what we want and where we want it. there is no great urgency – we could manage here for a bit longer I suppose…
b – move somewhere locallish – well within the south of england anyway – we’re off to drive round Hampshire and Sussex this weekend nice area spotting and price comparing – update to follow – we could move to somewhere bigger in a percieved not so nice area perhaps….
c – rent the house out again to pay the mortgage, use the money we have in the bank for the extension to get a camper van and tour the US for a year – which may lead to something else or may just be a good experience to keep as a memory when we come back and pick our lives back up again – not as straightforward as it sounds given our commitmment to personal loans, credit cards etc but still feasible if we really wanted to do it…
d – buy some sort of business and sell the house, thereby giving us accomodation and salary. We looked at pubs about six years ago and were accepted as landlords by two pub chains but we bottled out and then I got pregnant with Monster anyway, the idea still appeals but Ady feels it would be too many hours and too much work with the kids still so young, we used to think we might do a B&B, but he has decided (and quite rightly if I’m honest!) that most of the ‘work’load would fall to him and hes not keen on that, but I have just discovered pages of post offices with general stores / retail areas attached which would really suit us both – we would need somewhere operable with just one of us on duty so we could divide the childcare, or somewhere profitable for staff at least part time to allow us to still HE —– ooh decisions, decision, watch this space, our lives could just get all interesting anytime now – or maybe they’ll just stay the same for now… Ady’s job could take off big time in the next year, which we may not want to do forever but if he could make a big salary for five years or so we could trade up to a bigger house, get more money behind us and then do the big adventure / life change from a stronger position. Which in the meantime would allow me to have a bash at my business idea and see if it has any milage too…promise I will blog what it is soon – I’m not being cryptic I just need to get it straight in my own mind before I put it up for scrutiny!!!

Anyway what was all negatives yesterday is all positives again today – when I speak about my HE ideas to anyone I get all excited again about what we are doing and how great it is and how life is full of so many opportunities if you are just brave enough to grab them… but its 11.30 and we have the dentist tomorrow and I just know Teeny will probably be awake within the hour – so until tomorrow…

Oh Bugger!

Things have all just gone a bit wrong! And the worst thing is I have had this strong sense that stuff was all about to go a bit wrong and have been ignoring it for far too long!

Basically I have just rung up to chase our planning permission to make our house big enough for us – and its being refused! For a variety of reasons, none of which if I am honest I can totally disagree with…there have been two letters of objection, presumably from neighbours and the woman, who was sympathetic and as nice as she could be said she could not see any ways of gaining the extra space we want here and getting planning permission. We wanted to build an extension to our kitchen which would have been in place of an existing garage and then put another bedroom on top for Teeny. In theory the house is big enough for us but Teeny’s room is downstairs and the kitchen is really, really small. Cos its a detached house it has a small strip of garden all the way round as opposed to a front or back garden which means no real room for kids garden toys and no security for them to play outside alone. So we love the house, like the location, get on well (or so we thought!) with the neighbours, family and friends are nearby but it just feels too small for us and there a fair few negatives. Which leaves us with some serious thinking to do…

We have got stacks of equity in this house, although I don’y know if we’d even get our current mortgage let alone a bigger one now we only have Ady’s salary (current mortgage was gained when we were a two salary, no children family!), we live in Sussex which means our house is really overpriced and we could probably buy somewhere much bigger and nicer in a ‘worse’ or different area. We have no real ties – Ady’s job is pretty interchangable at the moment – he’s on less money than he was up North, I am not working at all to speak of, we don’t need to worry about schools obviously! So I guess the time we have been looking forward to / dreading is upon us…. where do we want to live and what do we want to do with our lives?

We have a friend coming round tonight so doubt this will even get talked about but I think Ady and I need to do some serious sit down talking about where we are going next. I have got two estate agents coming round tomorrow to value the house so we have a better idea of what we could buy elsewhere and I think we need to make one of three decisions:
a – stay here for a bit longer and deal with the lack of space until we see what happens next with Ady’s job and whether Boss Lady actually does pull anything off to give me some work or not – and maybe give my business idea a bash and see what comes of that.

b – buy somewhere else ‘locally’ to enable Ady to stay at his job, me to carry on as above but have some more space and more ideal layout of the house – unlikely we will keep all the benefits we have here though – such as being detached or

c – get out a map and stick a pin in it!! The problem with the two above options is that we are feeling a bit lost and itchy feeted anyway at the moment – with the kids not committed to school we feel that we are not trapped here so why should we stay really – the danger with this option is that with our last big adventure moving up north we kept the security of this house and it was not really a big risk – selling up to do something mad might be!

Erk! Have just phoned my dad, who is the voice of all reason – my Jiminy Cricket if you will who will pour cold water and sensible comments all over my madder ideas before I start trying to sell them to Ady and get us both caught up in something irreversible! Not sure if I am excited, upset, terrified or a combination… will let you know as soon as I work it all out!

G mob, back with a vengence!

Hi Honies, we’re home! We actually got back late on Friday but have been madly busy ever since so here is the full update for the week!

Tuesday – good journey upto Liverpool which resulted in only getting lost once, right on the doorstep of the hotel! Really, really nice hotel (Travel Inn!, checked in and let the kids have a good old bounce about on their beds – they had been in the car for about seven hours (with a couple of stops) and had both been so good! Then downstairs for dinner. Now usually I am a very strict mummy who has them down to a cannot be broken ever routine – which involves tea at 5pm, bath at 6 and bed at 7pm – true Monster is often still awake and playing in bed as late as nine but he is in bed just the same! So we did the same as when we went to Ireland and staggered their days slightly so they had tea with us in the restaurant at 7ish (very, very early for us – 9pm is an early dinner for us! and very very late for them!) The first night Monster was a perfect angel but Teeny played up a bit – back to the room for bed at about 9pm – she fell straight asleep and was put into a bed for the first time ever (unless you count ours!), Monster went into a bed at 18 months (I found out I was expecting Teeny and did not want him to think the new baby had got his cot) and he had been fine so I thought she might be ready and this was to be the trial run – more about that later…. Monster stayed awake throughout some programme about a father of four who struggled to cope with the kids while his wife watched from a hotel room – and gave us a running commentry on the kids and the daddy being ‘naughty’ at various points which was all quite cute. By the time Big Brother started at 10 and he was still awake we were less impressed with his cuteness and at 11 I pretended to be asleep while Ady carried on giving him a hard time about going to sleep! He finally went at about 11.30pm!

So back to Teeny – she was in her sleeping bag and the bed was simply a pull out thingy on the floor – so no height to fall out of. I woke up at about 2.30am and saw she had rolled out onto the floor, but she looked comfy enough so I decided to leave her rather than risk waking her. An hour later I was shaken awake by a frantic Ady ‘Teeny’s missing!’ he was shrieking at me and ran around the room opening all the cupboards and drawers, checked the bath and finally ran into the corridor in his pants! I saw she had rolled a bit more and was right up against our bed, sort of hidden by the valance so scooped her up and plonked her back in her bed where she promptly woke up! The following night she did similar tricks and ended up in our bed for most of the night so the cot looks like its here for a while longer yet!

Wednesday – I love hotel breakfasts! All ate well and enjoyed the novelty of those little pots of jam, individual cereals, pots of tea with jugs of milk and the cool toasting machine where you bung the bread in and it goes round a little rollercoaster type adventure and comes out as toast! Ady then walked round to the office (only a couple of blocks!) with the portable TV and Video needed to watch the fire safety video which is part of the training he was doing as the nearest parking was the one next to the hotel we were already in. We then realised he had still got the car keys so went back into the room to watch Tweenies on the hotel TV while I read Heat magazine till Ady came back with the TV and the car keys and we could be off.

We went to Lynda (our old nanny)’s for a lovely day. We arrived and the kids were straight to her for cuddles, played all day in her garden with a fork and trowel and patch of her mud and a washing up bowl filled with soapy water. Lynda and I had a good old catch up and I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in her garden while she watched the kids, brought me endless cups of tea and a lovely lunch and just enjoyed the sun! Ady rang to say he was on the train from Liverpool to Manchester so we set off to find our hotel for the night.

We stopped on route to buy Teeny a my first leap pad – we have been so impressed with the leap pad Monster has – the basic book with it is fab, he has a Toy Story one which is not so good (not the real voices!), a dinosaur one which is a bit old for him but he loves and is learning loads from and the lastest addition – the mircophone to record your own bits and the two excellent books which go with it – a circus one all about letters and one about what you’ll be when you grow up! Teeny loves to try and play with it but its way too advanced for her so we got her the 3-5 year old one (she is only 18 months) as it said it was suitable for once a child holds and pen and scribbles (have you seen the crayon on our playroom walls!!!) and takes a book and pretends to read it (yep, she does that too!) and of course it has a Dora story so we were sold. So far its been great – she has sort of got the hang of touching the green go circle, but she is great with the pen and is learning loads from pointing at stuff, she knows loads more words than i realised and most of her colours too!

So, back to Manchester… now we lived there for 2 1/2 years and only moved away six weeks ago, but I never really drove round the city centre, there is such a great tram service (Posh was pictured waiting at the tram station in all the celeb mags last week so it must be good!!) I’ve never bothered. So I had my map of where the hotel was – check, dangerous feeling that cos I know where I am if I was to be walking instead of driving and encountering one way signs for the wrong way I want to be driving which lead me left, then left then left again and right over the other side of the city to areas I’ve never seen before – check, two kids – one screaming cos she’s tired and wants her dummy – check, and the other wanting to open Teeny’s new leappad and play with the Dora book – NOW MUMMY! – check – oh and Ady ringing my mobile which was not hooked up to the handsfree to say the tram service (the same one previously raved about and used by Posh!) was not running so he was stuck at the station) – check! Suddenly saw a sign for said station so rang him back – to hastily wired up handsfree which had maximum volume creating massive feedback screeches to rival even the children – to say I would collect him and we could find the hotel together – saw him, swerved across two lanes of traffic adding tooting horns to the orchestra of sounds, tooted my own until he saw me and then hastily swapped over seats when the bus infront stopped (he won’t let me drive him unless he is totally pissed!)…..long story short – we found the hotel, checked in and another nice room!

Another good behaviour from the kids at dinner, this hotel had better crayons and colouring books than the first which helped! The kids then treated us to a repeat performance of the night before when we tried to persuade them that as it was now 10pm they really should be asleep and although the next mornings breakfast was nice we were struggling to rouse ourselves from sleepytown all day!

Thursday

Dropped Ady at the Manchester office which handily happened to be near enough to the shops for us to walk in – got rained on twice! Got a bit of shopping and then collected the car and went back to Lynda’s house for the afternoon – a nostalgic (if you can be after only six weeks away) drive past our old house on route showed the To Let sign still up and our neighbours extension (which was definately to be finished in time for Christmas – last year!) still without windows!

Had a lovely afternoon at Lynda’s, finally met her husband who is equally as lovely and they kept the kids for me while I went back into the city to collect Ady as the tram still wasn’t running! Despite staying at Boss Lady’s house and supposedly arriving at 6.30pm, Ady and Stuart (Lynda’s husband) bonded and we just had to stay to watch the football – so I gave the kids their milk and put them in their pjs so they could fall asleep on the way. Finally arrived at 8pm – Monster barely opened his eyes as we put him into bed, Teeny awoke and stayed that way until midnight when I went to bed and cuddled her to sleep! An interesting evening at Boss Lady’s which has spurred me onto deciding I want to start my own business (more about that later in the week) instead of the frankly sporadic and not that well paid stuff I am doing for her… Having woken their daughter up with Teeny’s crying in the night, and keeping them all up till midnight we all slept in till 8.30am and went downstairs to find them all up, dressed and ready to go!!

Friday – we were meant to be going to the Coventry office but a (very) last minute change of plan meant we stayed up in Stoke – nearer for that morning but further to come home that evening.It also meant that I had to cancel meeting Nik which I had got arranged for that afternoon. Even I could not face more wandering round shops in the city centre so we spent three hours amusing ourselves without actually buying anything in Mothercare world (one with one of those cool lifts which is a tree), Toys R Us and (Monster’s name for it) Magnotdonalds. Before collecting Ady and starting the hell that is the journey on the M6 and M25! It being Friday night the traffic was bad, kids were tired and fraught but did not want them to sleep so late in the afternoon so we fed them sweets to keep them awake (I know, bad shameful parents are we!), listened to the Peter Pan soundtrack album we picked up for 3 quid in one of the services – ooh only about 27 times – we can fly, we can fly, we can fly, there isn’t a boy who won’t enjoy a working for captain hook! Finally arrived home about 8pm, kids asleep by nine, indian takeaway at ten! bliss to be back in our own beds! And a really nice message on the answerphone from the Health Visitor to rearrange the appointment I had cancelled for Monsters 3.5 year check and registration with the doctors – at the end of the message she said ‘ oh and I’m really glad you are back!’ Bless!

Saturday

Already arranged visit to West Dene Gardens near Chichester with Chris, Julie and the twins to celebrate Chris’ birthday. A lovely day actually – kids all get on so well, Ady and Chris are getting there but I get on really well with both Chris and Julie – its odd that two couples who (despite the fact they are brothers have not been raised together) have such different backgrounds and ideals but have very similar values and ideas about raising the kids. Chris and I had quite a chat about HE stuff – very similar outlooks and reasons for doing it, I’m seeing Julie again tomorrow at an Activeo event. We then went on to Goodwood when we left them to watch some cars racing round – Teeny LOVED it (see photos) and spent the whole time yelling ‘wow!’ at the cars! Then on for a speedy strawberry picking session, collecting cream at the farm shop and on to my parents for a couple of hours. Shared the strawberries and cream, kids had another later night than planned which brings us to….

Today – Happy Fathers Day!

Having not gone to bed till 1.30 last night (doing work I should have done before we even went away for Boss Lady and sending an email tentatively mentioning I don’t think its really working out) I then was up at 6 am with Teeny as it was Fathers Day… three loads of washing to add to the two loads already on the line (all of which is currently drip drying from the heavy showers today but is still on the line – its supposed to be a nice day tomorrow!), exchange of cards then onto meet mum, dad and bro at local Beefeater for Fathers Day lunch. I can’t believe I ever used to think Beefeater and Harvester food was so nice. Up north the one thing we did learn was that ‘nice’ restaurants really are nice! We had the best food I’ve ever tasted at the restaurant 15 minute staggering distance from home up there so todays steak really just taasted like McDonalds! (without the happy meal toy!)but the kids were perfect angels – they both ate well, behaved, stayed clean and made me most proud! Everyone came back here for the afternoon and as an officially very knackered woman I am about to retire for the evening!

Just a couple of things Monster said which have made me laugh this week:
in the car on Friday i said to him ‘ you slept really well at Miranda’s house didn’t you?’ he looked at me and said ‘Mummy, I slept like a log!’

today in the restaurant he was sitting so nicely eating his baked beans with a spoon and not spilling any and I leant over and said ‘well done darling you are being really good’ he seemed to quieten the whole restaurant by asking ‘ are you really proud of me then mummy?’

on one of the various fraught car journeys after offering juice,biscuits, toys and dummies and failing to quieten her I told Teeny to shut up – Monster said ‘Teeny be a tiger’ to which she instantly stopped crying and growled. Monster said ‘see Mummy, when Teeny is crying you must ask her to make animal noises and then teeny is happy!’ which is true and what I asked him to tell granny and grandad when they looked after them both the other day!

and finally a Teeny’s knee update! Having fallen on it a grand total of 8 times with blood loss there is finally a tidy little scab which she had refrained from picking as yet but there will definately, definately be a scar which means even at the tender age of 18 months any young dreams she had of being a knee model have already been scuppered!!!

just a nice pic of my dad and Teeny! 

Teeny being swiper! 

strawberry fields forever! 

me and Teeny watching cars racing at Goodwood