One word? When seven would do…

Nah nah nah nanah!

That’s me, a veritable bumble bee with all my buzzing with busyness today!

Yesterday was nice although I was fairly glad to wave Ady off to work again today. Too much confined space with children being way too clever about playing parents off against each other! 🙄 If he were home all the time I’m sure we’d shake down into more of a routine and plan our time better but when you know it’s only temporary there is a certain frustration about someone getting under your feet while you try to go about your usual business! 😉

My parents came over bringing lunch with them and a joint of beef for roast dinner too (I’m loving the trade off of us supplying the labour and them supplying the goods now we’re officially poor! I’ll happily pour the wine and cook the food for someone aslong as they supply it and I get to share it!). Before they arrived Ady and Davies spent ages in the playroom with Davies doing crazy dancing to ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ (It’s from Shrek 2 y’know!) and Ady videoing him for future embarassing footage to bring out to show potential daughter-in-laws and show on a loop at his 18th birthday party! Scarlett and I made snickerdoodles. I clearly lost something in the translation of Amercian ‘cups’ to UK oz though as the mix was very wet so I kept adding flour until it was doughy enough to shape and we ended up with far more of a cookie far less of a cake texture. Still very nice though and a fair amount were demolished still warm from the oven. I like baking with Tarly, she keeps up a running commentry of what’s happening with is hilarous to listen to and very cute.

We had lunch then the children build an ‘normous biro track, Ady did a fair amount of wandering round appearing to be busy but not actually achieving a great deal, Dad fell asleep and me and Mum played with her new laptop. It’s quite nice although it makes me all the more pleased that I went for a smaller screen this time as it felt very odd sitting with a great big one on my lap! I did some basic stuff with her like setting google to her homepage, showing her round google, setting her up a flickr account so she can view our photos and putting trillian on her machine so we can do IMing. I think that was the thing she was most impressed with actually – she thought it was excellent fun to sit side by side typing messages to each other rather than talking! 🙄

Around 5pm ish I started on the roast dinner and Ady did the kids tea and bath. In an effort to keep the children awake later than 6pm I took them into Tarly’s bedroom and we read through a whole pile of library books. A couple of really nice ones actually such as Danny and the Great White Bear, The Sandman and The Story Tree which was just fab and spawned loads of chat about the countries the stories came from, what the moral might be, some various words explained which were new to them both such as ‘redemption’. We also finished off with a very interesting version of Puss in Boots which Davies adored (Tarly had wandered off by then) and took up to bed for Ady to read to him again.

Davies then managed to stay awake til 10pm which was very frustrating as he kept reappearing downstairs saying he was frightened on his own so eventually Ady took over the dinner and I sat with him til he went to sleep. Hence a very late dinner! Ady went off to bed around 11pm but Mum and Dad stayed for another hour and we talked about what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. Their choices appear to be selling their house and buying something smaller and spending the money on travelling or selling their house and buying two smaller ones, one to live in and one to rent out for an income or finally selling their house and buying something with us where we can all live – some friends of ours did this a couple of years ago and it has worked really well – the grandparents get to spend time with their grandchildren (which is also a help with childcare enabling their mother to work part time) and they know that if they get to a stage where they need more support they are not living alone in their old age. We debated various options such as buying property with holiday home type accomodation built in to generate income for their investment for them or some sort of business which me and Ady could work. We even looked at a few properties on the internet but I think it is an idea which would take a lot of working through to ensure no one felt they were getting the raw deal. Mum was already getting huffy about the idea that in one of the properties we looked at which had a seperate granny flat it would be them that got the smaller bit of the accomodation 🙄 – I could see her point but the idea is that they release some of their equity to live on so clearly they would end up with less space!

This morning I have managed to clear a big pile of paperwork and phonecalls I had to do. Some financial stuff, some bank stuff, writing and printing off a couple of references for some ex employees at Dreamieland, I’ve done a load of washing and been on a mission of mercy to my Dad who’s van wouldn’t start so he rang me to go and tow him to bump start it. I *hate* towing almost as much as I hate being towed – I think I’d rather push a car! We had so many old bangers during our early years together that regularly required pushing and towing it is a very recent thing to not get into a car and turn the key muttering ‘please start, please start, please start’ every morning! Dad had a succession of vans through my childhood which used to dislike cold or damp mornings so from the age of about ten I was the one who had to control the pedals and steer while he pushed it along banging on the roof when he’d decided the van was going fast enough to let the clutch up! It started fairly easily anyway so we followed him to his destination to ensure he got there safe and then came home again, all the while me answering questions about engines, damp, cold and biting points and trying to distract me from asking me any more as I was way out of my depth! 😉

The children have played some complicated game called ‘Dr Davies and Dr Scarlett’ which involves doing something with geomags and a load of soft toys. They are utterly absorbed in it and have been at it for about 3 hours now. I want to do at least one Bob book with Davies at some point today but other than that I think I’ll leave them to it. They are enjoying each other’s company so much since we got home from Melrose it would be foolish to disturb them.

I must just record while I remember something we did at Lynda’s last weekend. She had two identical boxes of Kids K’nex (the chunkier version of k’nex) which Davies spent ages playing with. He also spent ages playing on the nick jr site on Lynda’s computer but he found the dot com site rather than the co dot uk site we normally use and was most amused to note all the different voices of the US Backyardigans and Blues Clues being hosted by someone other than Kevin! Anyway, he made all the various creatures from the instruction book, several creations of his own and we played a couple of games of racing each other to see who could make something first and a competition to see who could make the best robot too. When we tidied up I got Davies to split all the bits into groups of different pieces, count them and then divide them in half to put half of each away in the two cases. He started off counting and then experimenting with numbers (e.g. 8 pieces, took 3 away and then counted 5 so took 1 more away and checked that both piles had 4) but was soon spreading them out and halving them by eye then counting to check he was right. Very interesting to watch and of course an excellent example to Lynda and Stuart of how maths can be done in everyday life and through play at his age which we had only been speaking about the previous evening. When he’d finished I explained to him that it was called dividing and he’d been dividing in half or two which may well have not gone in as such but I felt happy that it was a good foundation for later stuff.

I still have loads of stuff I really should be doing today really. The house is a shambles with two baskets of washing to be put away, both the children’s rooms need a proper tidy up, the playroom is utterly trashed and the lounge has various piles of stuff in places which really need proper homes found for them. I have four CVs and a covering letter sat waiting to be done which admittedly don’t need to be back til Wednesday but as I’m out tomorrow day and evening it would be very sensible to get them done today. I also have three emails from Home Educators wanting local info sitting in my inbox for which I really must sort out some sort of basic email reply that I can tweak for each one and then send and I have at least three phonecalls to friends I should make before I start getting struck off Christmas card lists!

Back later with possible progress updates!

which has gotta be one of the most stumbled over phrases in the language I reckon 😉

It’s been rather a long day today, which makes me all the more glad it was not preceeded by a 500 mile journey home yesterday. Tarly didn’t sleep well, infact she woke up around 11pm just as I was intending to go to bed so I sat on her bedroom floor for over an hour before heading off to bed and hoping she might go to sleep. She didn’t 🙁 And ended up in our bed where she stayed for the night. Around 3am Ady went off to her bed as she always tosses and turns until she gets at least half the bed. None of us woke until around 8am though so at least we got something of a lie in.

Dad came over around 9am to finish off Davies’ room which is looking pretty good after a second coat. We’re planning stars and stuff handpainted in silver and glow in the dark which I’ll get done next week but it looks way tidier that it had done so that’s good. There was a rather tatty Buzz Lightyear border around about half the room which I pulled off and has taken some of the lining paper with it so we decided to make a border of our own to put up instead. Davies remembered the Space picture we copied from his puzzle way back last year and had on the lounge wall for a while. It would appear that the original has been ‘tidied’ away by Ady so we decided to do a new one. Davies made the puzzle with some assistance by Tarly and we made a start on it doing the drawing and the writing as we went along. We’ve been utterly remiss with keeping up on reading practise but he did a wee bit with that and both his writing and his drawing have noticably improved since last April when we first did it – as have his puzzle making skills!

Scarlett and I had a session with all our musical instruments playing along to a Sinatra cd so we had Mack the Knife, Got You Under My Skin, New York New York and Leeroy Brown accompanied by cymbals, drums, shakers, slide whistle and xylophone which was nice! 🙂 I sang along into the echo microphone and it was great fun!

We had some lunch, Dad headed off and then we all got dressed in our wedding finery before heading off to the venue. Pic below is the traditional self timer which also gives a record of the children’s first attendance at a wedding and the new colour of our lounge 🙂

Full set of pics available on flickr here
but a couple of particular favourites are:

It was a lovely place for a wedding despite the rainy greyness of the day it was beautiful and the service was of the quality that you barely notice the presence of the staff which was good. The children were very well behaved and despite both proclaiming themselves bored at various points they were easily bribed by packets of sweets to be quiet at the important bits and were both full of life to the end and said they’d had a great day on the way home. Paula walked down the aisle to ‘You’re Beautiful’ so Tarly predictably felt the need to tell the guests who was singing it but that was cute rather than annoying. They both enjoyed the spiced warm wine served after the ceremony (the non alcoholic version of course! 😉 ) and despite not really eating anything other than bread rolls and large bowls of strawberries they managed to not complain at all when faced with very unchild-friendly food (platters of cold meat, fish, salad etc).

We fluked an excellent table which only had us and two elderly relatives on it both of whom were not drinking so the entire table quota of a bottle of champagne, a bottle of red and a bottle of white was mine if I wanted it as Ady was driving so not drinking either! I refrained from sinking all three bottles and sitting under the table singing and maintained decorum and decency far above my usual standard 😉

By 8pm we were all fading fast so despite the promise of a pretty good evening part of the day we made our excuses and left. We had debated running the children home after eating and getting my parents to babysit while we returned as there was a live band, headed up by Bruce’s younger daughter which looked really promising and of course further food and drink aswell as the expected arrival of all of Ady’s old crowd of friends who had been invited to the evening do, but we decided we were not really up for it either so got home around 8.30pm. Ady and I walked in the front door already removing fancy clothing and by the time we arrived upstairs to get changed we’d already taken all clothes and shoes off. Not at all sure how I used to manage in suits and heels all day every day in my previous life as a career woman but I rather think I prefer my SAHM uniform of jeans with pen and snot wiped down them, boots with muddy soles and tops which expose cleavage in a comfy way rather than a trussed up one! 😉

We’re now sitting in our slob out clothes, drinking hot chocolate laced with Baileys (me) and Guinness (him) and watching Men In Black on dvd for some pure trashy entertainment. Plans for tomorrow include Ady getting depressed about returning to work, maybe finishing off Davies’ space picture and some slightly more serious inroads into the washing mountain than I have pulled off the last two days. I did finally empty the holdalls and get everything put away back in the wardrobe today though so I am getting there!

When I’ve not been grring all over the place it’s been a fairly ok day. Very quiet which I think was much needed. The children have reconnected with each other which has been nice to witness. They don’t often spend so much time apart from playing with each other as they did last week and it was all the queerer for them actually being in the same building. I don’t think either of them thought much of it or even realised how little time they spent together but I found it odd to watch given how close they are normally. So it was lovely to watch them back playing their usual games of Backyardigans and all sorts of other exclusive Davies and Scarlett type games. 🙂 Bit like me and Ady I suspect who also seemed to be rarely spotted together last week really 😉

The lounge has indeed been finished with a third and final coat and it does look fab 🙂 just need to sort out some curtains which match the room now (Joyce have you any in your stash 😉 ?) Davies’ room has had it’s first coat of a very ‘experimental’ United Colors of Benetton paint which is sort of purple and has glitter in it and is supposed to be rag rolled so has shown all the brush strokes. I can’t decide if it looks really cutting edge or really shit – D loves it though and I have plans to attack it with freehand approximations of stars and stuff in silver and glow in the dark to drag it over more to the cutting edge side of interior design. 🙂 The paint was 50p a tin so we’ve nothing to lose really!

We’ve been looking at the venue for tomorrow’s wedding on the website and it looks most posh and classy. Not at all sure what one of our mates is doing getting wed there – and utterly unsure what he’s doing inviting friends like us and their children! 😉 At least we plan to scrub up well!

Davies played Zoombinis for a while today and didn’t ask for help even once. When we got back from shopping he was with my Dad watching so I imagine given his knack for questioning every single move you make he now has a good working knowledge of painting and decorating. He managed to get one of his socks yellow and selected an almost matching one of the same design but different colour and proceeded to explain to me how they were the same and how they were different in great detail! He’s also been delighted to get back to Sky and ‘red button’ games and is navigating round the TV with sudden and astonishing ease so all that number recognition must be educational.

Tarly (when she wasn’t being a spoilt little mare!) enjoyed the attention of two whole parents all to herself – not at all sure when if ever she’s had that before. She dictated the musical choice in the car (James Blunt – Merry have you been indoctrinating her? 😉 ) and despite having several melt downs she has responded very well to Supernanny techniques of getting down to her level, removing her from situations and talking to her calmly – all good prep for Ady’s return to work next week and the fall out in behaviour I always have after he’s been around a lot.

After lunch we read one of our library books about germs – excellent book actually would thoroughly recommend it. So with lots of participation in getting the children to do sneeze sound effects we learnt all about how blood is made from water, red blood cells (for colour), white blood cells and platelets. How scabs are made of red blood cells and platelets and why we shouldn’t pick them (Scarlett!) and why stuff like handwashing and ensuring food is ‘clean’ is important and so on. They were hugely inspired by it all and spent ages drawing white cells fighting viruses with chemicals and eating bacteria to kill them just like in the book, so that was science and health and hygiene I guess.

They also played with the geomags for ages and have generally treated each other like long lost best friends all day which has been great. 🙂

Mum popped round on her way home for a quick catch up and a slide show of the pictures (mine and those already flickr’d by others) so we’re pretty much caught up and settled back in again. It was soooo nice to sleep in my own bed last night and to have a fairly laid back day pootling around instead of travelling 427 miles southbound and I do have hopes for the children pulling off human if not well behaved tomorrow given they were both asleep by 7.30pm.

Final bit for today is the recounting of a very funny phonecall from a creditor that Ady took today. We were warned that they might ring and try and squeeze more money than the CCCS had decreed out of us and indeed today we had the first such call. Ady was talking to this bloke for about 15 minutes just repeating himself that we have no more money than what we’ve offered and we have put ourselves in the hands of CCCS and will be adhering to their advice. The guy ended by saying that maybe we could come to some arrangement to pay off a proportion of the debt as final settlement. Ady was getting more and more pissed off which means he gets more and more calm and controlled. The guy suggested ways of raising money – remortgage, selling some possessions and finally ended up at ‘could you borrow some money from someone?’ Ah yes said Ady, I’d notthought of that. Erm could you lend it to me? Cue laughter all round and a swift and speedy conclusion to the phonecall! Clearly the way forward 😉

Will be back later with the rest of the day but needed to ARGHHHHH!!!!! and would rather it got knocked down by a cheerier post later than was the total of the day’s ramblings.

Grrr no. 1 – my Dad kindly agreed to repaint our lounge and Davies’ bedroom while we were away. We moved all the furniture into the middle of the rooms before we left and expected to return to freshly painted rooms from Melrose. Unfortunately I get my leaving everything to the very last minute gene directly from the paternal side and he had only done the lounge yesterday and was planning to do D’s room today. So when I rang him from the M1 at 3pm yesterday to let him know we were halfway home he was slightly horrified! And given the state of the house when we actually got here at 8pm he was right to be. 🙁 The lounge didn’t take too long to put back together although it needed a third coat this morning so we had to make do with some of the furniture staying in the centre of the room last night. He’s finished it this morning and I love it. It’s a really bright yellow colour which I think looks fab, it matches our sofas far better than the old green colour used to but it does make our rather tired looking curtains look all the more tired and all the more odd given their greeness against a backdrop of sunshine retirement home yellow! And Grr for coming home to such chaos 🙁 Davies’ room has had it’s first coat of paint this morning and Dad will finish it in the morning so he has another night of sleeping in the middle of his bedroom with all his stuff piled up around the bed.

Rant no. 2 – long and confusing but my insurance company is trying to refuse to pay an invoice for the first company who looked at my laptop. It is obviously a case of misunderstanding as I was told to get a quote for getting it fixed which I did but it cost money to have it examined to see exactly what the damage was and how much it would be to put it right based on what bits would need replacing. The insurance company had agreed to that but ended up not using the company I had got that quote from and so their invoice was simply for 3 hours labour – they are a small company who were really helpful so I feel dreadful that they are having to chase their invoice, but hopefully a rant to the typically non British and not having a very good grasp of English call centre oik has resulted in them agreeing to pay it. They’re calling back to confirm next week, so I’ve assured the other company that I will make sure they get their money somehow (even if I end up getting my Dad to pay for it). So grr to insurance companies and grr to not being able to speak to someone who understands sentences other than the ones printed on the script of enquiries infront of them! 🙄

Rant no. 3 is related to Ady, Scarlett, supermarkets and my own pillock-ness! While Davies ‘supervised’ Grandad painting his bedroom me and Ady took Tarly to Tescos with us to get food shopping and the pressie for tomorrow’s wedding. Not only did Ady perpetuate the whole Daddy is lovely, Mummy is an evil dictator mentality that Tarly has been developing all week by getting him to carry her on demand, letting her walk rather than sit in the trolley whenever she asked and then get back in again and bribing her to be good with all sorts of crazy treats (a go on the carousel in the foyer which I did put my foot down over, a mulit pack of fruit pastelles, a toy to play with while we went round) he also blew my budget by putting me off what I was buying, getting sucked into buying stuff cos it was on special offer although we didn’t actually need it and then caused utter chaos at the checkout by going to take the just to play with while you’re in the trolley toy back leaving me with Tarly who he had promised could get out of the trolley wailing that I wouldn’t let her which hampered my loading the shopping on so there was still about half of it to load when he got back and I had to start packing. The packing got all confused cos the trolley wasn’t there waiting for me to put packed bags into it, Ady got stuck with Tarly at the wrong end of the conveyer belt with Tarly out of the trolley. So there was a big delay while I muttered at him about not putting potatoes on top of eggs into the trolley, Scarlett was loudly protesting about wanting her ‘frweeties please. PLEASE!!!!!’ and about being plonked back in the trolley while the person behind me tutted at our time wasting and messing about. And then I realised the cheque book I’d picked up only had paying in slips left it in!!! 😳 Speaking extra loud to be heard over my wailing daughter I had to explain to the cashier and we left all shamefaced as our trolley was pushed to customer services for me to return again half an hour later.

Grr, grrr and thrice grrr! 👿

But first of all, some photos – for those of you who are after the brief version of my life here is the last few days in pictures instead of words!

My Melrose
Ady’s Melrose

although in fairness Ady actually took all of the photos but he gets to flickr the arty ones and I get the ones with all the people in them!

So what have we been up to since I last blogged threatening death by battery to my eldest offspring then? Friday morning saw us up off and away pretty early on the way to Manchester – well Hale actually which is posher than Manchester being in Cheshire and all but less familiar to the world at large than simply Manchester! 😉 We arrived around lunchtime at Lynda and Stuarts (for background Lynda was the lady who looked after D&S while I worked when we lived up there. She started with us when S was just 6 weeks old and D was 2.5years and was with us until we left well over a year later. We have stayed in touch since coming home and she and her husband are now more part of our family as an additional set of grandparents it is hard to believe we once used to pay her to look after the children). It was probably one of the nicest weekend stays with friends we’ve ever had. We were taken out for dinner and they utterly refused to let us pay (and they don’t even know how dire our finances are!), fed us and fed us and fed us for the duration of our visit with all of the favourite foods that we have ever mentioned, drip fed us wine and guinness, totally took over all childcare (I don’t think we saw our children at all for most of Saturday). We also managed two nostalgic trips to The Trafford Centre where we mooned about remembering how I used to spend money there and Ady used to love working there. We also drove past our old house to show Tarly the place she was born (in the dining room of that house there Darling. No, I don’t think the people who live there now would let us in to have a look at it!) and fed the geese and ducks at our old usual Sunday afternoon haunt. Oh it was lovely!

Lynda and Stuart’s oldest son has just had a baby girl so she was brought over to meet us on Saturday too – very possibly the quietest two week old child I’ve ever met – mine were certainly never that peaceful for that long!

In the middle of Friday night / early hours of Saturday morning Tarly was awake and vomiting which was concerning – and not so good for a decent night’s sleep. It led us to debate the wisdom of bringing her to Melrose the following day but as her last bout was at about 5am and she went on to make a dramatic recovery with no one else going down with it we put it down to travelling / excitement / over indulgence of chocolate cakes and left Manchester far later than planned at about 3.30pm having been ‘forced’ to eat cooked brunch before we left! 😉

The combination of two four hour journeys within 48 hours, confused days and nights with daytime sleeping and the overwhelmingness of all those people did seem to take it’s toll however and she decreed herself unable to walk for the first two days at Melrose and took dramatically to her bed every afternoon for restorative naps! Given the outbreak of v&d we seem to have left behind I am now wondering if it was a bug but given me, Ady and even Davies remain uneffected I am fairly convinced we didn’t bring an infectious small person to the mix. Hope not 🙁

Melrose was the same full on experience it was for us last year. There are highs and lows of such intense circumstances but in the main we enjoyed being with friends and participating in the whole communal living thing. We missed the absent friends terribly although I did text all of them at some point, but I felt definite Layla, Ros and Sarah shaped gaps in the week which no one else could quite fill for me. 🙁 Which is not to say I spent all week aimlessly wandering the corridors clutching three empty wine glasses in their honour (well two wine glasses and a tumbler for alcohpops!) with my own overfilled one slopping over the carpet singing Grease songs on my own doing all the parts by myself in their honour – I did manage to participate in the rest of the socialising! 😉

Highlights which stick out for me are:

Joyce reappearing with a genuine real live cushion after leaving the room muttering about ‘needing a cushion’

Sitting with Alison on the balcony sofa with a bottle of fizz and a five a day vitamin juice carton!

Chopping veg for Kath and Andrews Pizzeria with Alison, Barbara and Helen while we all sang along to ‘I’ve got Tourettes!’

Chris F’s alien abduction theory – all the funnier retrospectively really eh Chris! 😉

Pretty much anything Leandra said!

The dynamics of the little girls – Lulah, Amelie, Robyn, Piglet and occasionally Scarlett – wonder if they are the princess outfit wearing posse of tomorrow, somehow I suspect not!

Joyce and Katy’s baking – Muffins indeed! 🙂

Bob’s valentine surprise – which almost surprised Ady who bumped into him in the town and came back utterly shocked more than it surprised Joyce!

Nic’s Nails – the impromptu salon for little girls set up in the common room one afternoon – wish I’d brought a wider selection, I could have happily sat all day painting small children’s nails and giving them advice on base coat, ridge filler and the importance of a good quality top coat! 🙂

Merry’s poem re: washing up and the whole Merry / Nic washing up double act (Don’t you worry Merry, I’ll come and dry up for yooooo!)

Seeing Kirsty 🙂

Helen and I deciding that we really might be some sort of Satan, Antichrist duo and realising that if only Layla were there we could have formed a trinity! We even had a song of sorts based on the hymn Make me a channel of your peace. (sorry!)

And probably loads more!

We are attending a wedding on Saturday (the male half of the couple who split up last year is marrying his new lady) and Ady particularly has always been twitchy about leaving on Friday – indeed prior to Kirsty inconsiderately ( 😉 ) getting a whole new life and moving further away than even Melrose is we had planned an overnight stay with them on Thursday / Friday to break the journey home or even make it an earlier get away, but when a last night talent show was proposed I decided we’d stay on and offered to cook stew for last night dinner. However with Joyce and Alison heading off early and Karen and Stella already having gone any sort of last night event was rapidly looking unlikely, which made my justification for not leaving early to Ady all the more shaky so having found a very willing volunteer to take over my dinner cooking duty (and showed her where all the ingredients were stashed having been purchased earlier that day) in Kris we did indeed pack up this morning and hit the road around 10.30am.

It proved to be very much the right decision as the journey did indeed take all day and then some (arrived home around 8pm) – the children slept in the car after lunch meaning it was gone 10pm before they slept in their beds, the house is a shambles having had one room already redecorated and the other due to be done in the morning and the thought of having not done this with a full day and two full nights in our own bed before expecting the children to pull off best wedding behaviour for the day on Saturday is very scary indeed. I have promised Ady to listen to him in future on all such important decisions! 😉 I think we probably had an even better journey (and it was by no means great believe me!) today than we would have had on a Friday too, so much though I feel bad for abandoning ship (although I do have more than a twinge of jealousy having spoken to Barbara who was in the process of clearing up all of the remaining food and drink with the other last ones standing! 😉 ) it was definitely the right decision.

And now, probably around the same time as the rest of the week – I’m off to bed 🙂

Davies has pushed me to previously unstood on brinks this week. Every so often one of the children seem to do this and this week it was his turn. 🙁 He’s been shouted at so many times this week I’m surprised I have any voice left. He just does not listen – well frankly you could probably just insert your own rant about typical 5 year olds behaviour here and save me rehashing it really but he’s been testing me a lot. He’s been going to sleep really late and waking really early making him prone to floods of tears with very little provocation too which always irritates me. Anyway today he did something so stupid I don’t actually know how I refrained from breaking my own very firmly believed rule about not smacking children. I shouted at him and was so angry that he was shaking as I scared him with my rage. Probably not helped by having an audience and probably not helped by the actual straw that broke the camels back being not the biggest misdemeanor in the world really but enough when added to everything else to make me want to break him down for parts to sell on ebay with my bare hands!

I recovered fairly quickly and we made up, but far from managing to pull off appropriate ‘best behaviour’ for the rest of the day he has continued to just be so bloody giddy I don’t know what’s got into him finally having been sent to bed where he is now looking at books and still not going to sleep 🙄 Anyway, enough of that!

I managed to get everything on my list done today, went to Tesco for things like cat food and sweeties for tomorrow’s journey, I’ve packed in two bags – one for the weekend and one for Melrose, I have a list to tick off as we go in the morning of last minute ‘stuff’ to pack and I’ve moved all of the stuff in Davies’ room into the middle so it’s ready for Dad to come and repaint it while we’re gone.

Ros & co came over to collect the Ady machine which they have custody of while we’re away, bringing soup, OK magazine and best of all home made chocolate cake with them (thank you darling 🙂 ) so I caught up on holiday chat, we had a bit of a gossip and the children mostly managed to lose themselves for a couple of hours which was nice 🙂 (aside from Scarlett but she was mainly wanting Ros’ attention so that was fine by me!).

Tonight’s plans include excavating under the sofas as they need moving for the lounge to be painted and quite often things like magazines and odd bits of lego seem to go there to die, a bath (the last for a week, I’ll be sure to savour it!), some wine in an effort to fully unclench that knot still in my stomach from being so damned angry and a dinner packed with as much meat as we can tear raw from the bones with our bare teeth 😉 😈

I’ll be back sometime next weekend. Safe journey to those also travelling to (or even in) Scotland, really looking forward to seeing you 🙂

I once heard someone somewhere say that they knew someone who had spent years trying to disprove the existance of badgers. Their case being that no one ever saw a live one or the few live ones which are spotted could infact me remote control models. Sure we’ve all seen dead ones by the side of the road but they could be planted there by people who want us to believe that badgers are a real creature.

The theory went on a bit from there and was pretty funny but I am not doing it any sort of justice in the retelling so I’ll stop. But badgers seem to come up a fair bit – just today I got all befuddled about badgers and beavers when in relation to the names of groups of small children getting together to perform tasks for the extrinsic reward of a small cloth badge that I might even end up having to do sewing with. And it was not so long ago that I saw yet another mention on the BBC news site about badger culling too.

So I’ve spent a while tonight googling trying to find some reference to the whole Badgers – an urban myth? theory and uncovered nothing. This could of course mean I hallucinated the whole thing, or it could have a more sinister meaning. Such as the original discoverer of this great big badger existance conspiracy was catured by the evil perpetrators of this outrageous lie and all traces of his ideas wiped from the memory of all living souls and the internet with me being the only exception in a shadowy, half remembered, Total Recall stylee sorta way, or maybe I am actually the first person to realise this cover up, this huge scam and it is my own subsconscious that is nagging at me to bring the truth to the masses. Or the 20 odd people who read this blog at least…

My parents came over for dinner last night. As always seems to happen when they do my Mum came and chatted to me in the kitchen while I cooked and ended up having way too much wine (some people just shouldn’t try to match me glass for glass! 😉 ) and went through the entire scope of drunkeness within about an hour an a half – we had manic, giggly, philosophical, challenging, melancholy, utterly depressed and then quiet and sleepy! Funny to watch 😈

Ady had to go to Birmingham today so he was up at 4.30am – funnily enough the exact same time as Tarly woke up 🙄 so he gave her milk and then plonked her in bed with me at 5.30am when he left. She did sort of snuggle down to sleep and then around 6am Davies appeared and snuggled in with us too. At 7 they decided to get up and go downstairs to carry out their now regular morning routine of eating breakfast made by Davies from whatever he can reach (a loaf of rather stale bread which he had managed to saw hunks off with a butter knife, ribena (rather a lot of which ended up on the worktop) and chocolate biscuits this morning!) and then taking all the sofa cushions off, putting C&TCF on really really loud and bouncing on a sofa each fast forwarding to all the songs. Independance, physical exercise, music and movie appreciation all before I even get out of bed ticked off then! 😉 They also played on Nick Jr for a while too.

We walked round to the corner shop for some bread (muffinicity slipped a bit here this week with regard to bread baking, but we did buy some reduced to clear for 19pence so frugality still ruled!) and chats with three lots of neighbours so that took the best part of half an hour and involved Davies paying for the bread himself and a chat about the word ‘neighbour’. We made sandwiches and headed over to Chris and Julie’s. On the way we listened to all my Will Young records with me telling Tarly how we went to see him in concert when she was inside my tummy (Davies’ claim to fame being he came to New York with us in my tummy needed some balancing out! 😉 ) and then some James Blunt. On the way home we listened to Tumble Tots Action Songs, hence the post title!

It’s been a beautiful day here today and we did have good intentions about going for a walk but they ended up spending time in the garden instead so we didn’t feel too guilty about chatting and drinking tea instead!
The children played naked bouncing on Jack and Maisie’s bed which seems to be a current favourite game round there for my two, Scarlett and Maisie played at being kittens and other girlie games, they all four spent ages running up and down the garden and Davies spent about an hour with Chris who came home at lunchtime watching him do stuff in the garden and having a hold of their pet guinea pigs which he was thrilled about.

Julie and I covered topics as diverse as internet porn, porn generally, regulation of the internet, freeedom of speech and censorship (I have to say I have just spent nearly half an hour on the internet trying to conjur up the word censorship – I ended up ringing my Dad and eventually in trying to describe to him the word that was escaping me I came up with it – argh!). We talked about education, gender differences in behaviour, friendships and childish behaviours such as exclusion of others in games and so on, morality and ethics oh and loads more. Very nice afternoon 🙂 We also talked about a couple of books I’ve been reading too so it all felt qute highbrow!

We left there and came home for the children’s tea. Scarlett is fading fast and will be in bed very soon I suspect, Davies hopefully not long after. My Mum is calling round with a baby photo of me to email to Alison and Ady rang around 4pm to say he was leaving Birmingham and should be home around 8pm hopefully.

I’ve been very industrious in my research and sent emails to the local football club for under 6s training on a Saturday morning (held about a five minute walk away from here), Badgers (held round the corner but it says for 6-8 year olds on the webpage) and Beavers (held a five minute drive away). Now I’m off to make a list of stuff to pack tomorrow and my plan is to pack leisurely through the day so that we can have an early night and be out early Friday morning on our way to Manchester.

I have got some stuff buzzing round in my head for a Davies ‘when he was five’ page which I may end up doing later been as I’ve blogged early and I have nothing to say on any other blog ;-).

Bit of pondering here today. Lucy came over with Rebecca and Richard but the children took an age to shake down and get on with themselves. Infact they didn’t really manage it at all. I think the problem with my two is that they are very self sufficient – minor sibling scuffles aside they tend to play together most of the time. They both have periods of time out – either by occupying themselves individually or by one of them being with me but really they spend most of their days playing together. Which is great, I love it 🙂 But it does mean that when someone comes to visit who is only really a playmate for one of them it becomes slightly awkward. It doesn’t happen very often – Julie has Jack and Maisie and increasingly Jack does hero-worship of Davies while Maisie and Scarlett play with dollies or other such girlie stuff, Mel brings Liam and Lily so the boys spent their whole time in Davies’ bedroom while the girls stay with me & Mel or play in Tarly’s room, when we see Ros Davies plays with Adam while Scarlett is ‘looked after’ by Amelia & Ellie, at Alison’s Davies plays with Lije while Tarly plays with Lulah – you get the picture… Infact I think the only lone child we see regularly is Ali’s Freya and somehow because she is inbetween them in age the three of them manage really well with no odd one out – either the girls do something, Davies and Freya play together while Tarly hangs out with me and Ali or all three of them charge round together. But Rebecca is very shy and clingy to Lucy anyway so takes quite a lot of enticing away to play and Lucy clearly says to her that she is here to play with ‘Scarlett’ rather than ‘Davies & Scarlett’ (I know cos she said it about 4 times today!) and it just doesn’t seem to work. Davies does his very gentlemanly act of being really keen to include Rebecca (Ali, you know this act 😉 ) which then annoys Tarly who is jealous that *her* brother is paying attention to someone else and is then horrid to her, or Tarly and Rebecca find some common ground game which by definition seems to exclude Davies.

I actually preplanned today and got out all of the children’s pretend food and tea sets, their play money and electronic till and suggested they set up a ‘shop’ and ‘cafe’ and take turns to go shopping and so on. It didn’t happen at all, which if nothing else taught me a lesson about telling children how to play ;-). So after Davies & Scarlett disappeared upstairs to play together having given up trying to get Rebecca to go with them and leaving Lucy being hassled to go and play with her instead after some lunch I set Davies up with some games on the pc which he suddenly finds easier by virtue of managing to read some of the on screen stuff and Scarlett and Rebecca *finally* went off to play together. Lucy and I managed some good chats and they ended up staying for about 5 hours so it all ended OK.

But it did strike me watching Davies try and lead the girls in one of ‘his’ games, which actually Tarly normally happily joins in with that there is one aspect of school life which I simply cannot replicate for him at home. It is what I know he will spend most of next week doing and having a whale of a time and what I think he is actually craving a little. That is the lunch hour he would spend charging round the playground yelling at the top of his voice and pretending to fight monsters, run away from pirates and generally being a boisterous boy. I know that he needs to feel comfortable with a group before that comes out in him and I know that there are still some situations where he would be able to get that but would not fare so well (I saw that from observing him at TT towards the end) but I do think he needs to spend a little more time with boys, being a boy and getting rid of some of the boy energy and volume. I’ve looked at Boys Brigade but it just is too scary ‘Christian Youth Organisation’ from the website, Beavers (scouts) doesn’t start until he’s six (although that will be something to look into cos it’s literally round the corner) and I need to do some real detective work to track down someone to speak to about Badgers. I could also look into stuff like football too I guess. I don’t want to load our week’s up with commitments and things which will end up being a chore and obviously at the moment our finances don’t allow for any expensive activies but I imagine there is plenty out there for very little cost which would offer what I think he needs. I did do this exercise about six months ago and none of it came to anything in the end but I will have another go at sorting at least a couple of trials of various things out when we get back from Melrose. I also think we might think about something like swimming at the weekend when all four of us could go and get some exercise and various combinations of bonding.

What else? Not a lot really, I forgot to blog yesterday that we’d caught about ten minutes of one of those birth stories programmes on the TV and Davies had been fascinated by it. Ady had talked to him a bit about how babies come out and we’d explained again that he was born in hospital but Tarly was born at home and then we got out their baby books. Davies ended up with 3 different ones – one we bought, one my parents bought and one from my Granny. And I’d been consciencious enough to fill all three out so we looked at pictures of me and Ady before he was born, pictures of me pregnant, pictures of everyone meeting Davies for the first time, his hospital tag, first footprints and stuff like the dates he did stuff for the first time (first crawl, first word, first steps etc) which he loved. Scarlett was slightly less interested in hers and was probably most taken with the picture of her meeting Davies for the first time at 2 hours old – and that was only because Davies has a dummy in the picture and she didn’t realise he’d used to have one apparently!! 🙄

Anyway, Lucy and I ended up telling birth stories and comparing experiences so the books came out again and we had one of those ‘if I had another one I’d do this, that, the other differently next time’ conversations. Based on the security of not having any more I of course would plan all sorts of wacky things I know I will never have to live up to ;-).

This afternoon I’ve spent ages playing at menu planning, shopping lists for five week rotational meals preparation and other such mental tupperware type tasks, Davies has played more with the pc and the wooden blocks I got out for Richard to play with, he’s watched Nightmare Before Christmas and I realised that he already knows all the words to all the songs on that and he’s played some game upstairs with his dinosaurs. Oh and he tried mango for the first time and loved it! Scarlett has also played with the wooden blocks, been sent to her room for various offences and left a trail of strawberries on the kitchen floor. 🙄

I’m feeling generally shouty and cabin feverish today after a weekend of being indoors and some crappy nights sleep. Tomorrow we’re over at Julie’s so hopefully if the weather is OK we might get out for a walk. Thursday we’re packing and preparing and then on Friday we’re off to Lynda & Stuart’s in Manchester for a two night stay on the way to Melrose, which I suddenly realised means I have not a hope of baking anything to bring as it will be 4 days old by the time we get there. Being away for a full week and coming in Ady’s weeny car means we won’t have space to bring any toys or other exciting stuff and when I asked the children about bringing fancy dress this morning they both said they didn’t want to anyway so hopefully cooking a meal one night and my generally sparkling company will be enough of a contribution to bring to the Melrose table! 😉

Last night echoes of my threatened violence if the coughing didn’t stop rang in my ears. Ady woke up around 1am, staggered down the stairs and was noisily and violently sick (sorry Sarah!) – I tried to block that out but suddenly heard a scared little voice saying ‘Nic, there’s blood in my sick’. So I had to go and take enough of a peek to confirm that yes, there was indeed a fair bit of blood in it. So then he spent the rest of the night continuing to be sick and I spent it lying awake worrying that I had inadvertantly put some horrid curse on him.

He was still adamant he was going to work this morning – he cannot recall ever taking a day off sick and I certainly don’t remember him ever doing so since we’ve been together but I hid his shoes and keys and made him a doctors appointment instead. I’d been reassuring him all night that he had probably just torn something with his violence in retching but secretly I was pretty worried too. This was not helped this morning by getting out our medical encyclopedia (dangerous book!) and following the yes/no flowchart for vomiting to vomit with blood to see it read ‘Medical Emergency. Call Ambulance.’ 🙁

So he duly rang in sick, went over the road to the docs and was sent home again to rest and see if it was just a tear or of it continued in which case he’d need to go to hospital for a camera down the throat or something. I rang his boss to explain and packed him off to bed. He has had loads of sleep, not been sick since although he now has diarrhoea which reassures me that it is indeed some sort of bug or food poisoning rather than anything more sinister. He’s eaten and is looking slightly less like he should be lying on a slab in a morgue and was even up to staying home alone with the children while I took some library books back and fetched in some soup for him. (I did leave Davies with strict instructions to call an ambulance under various circumstances and ran through the process for doing so with him again which we do every so often whenever I am overcome with fear of some sort of hideous accident whereby he has to save all our lives and end up getting some child of courage award from Carol Vorderman!). He is now talking of hoovering and is currently changing our bed linen so he seems to be returning to form anyway. Bit scary that for a while though… And don’t worry fellow Melrosers, we won’t bring anything horrid with us and we’ll make sure we are out of possible contamination times.

My friend who I saw at Sainsburys a couple of weeks ago and who promised she’d come round actually did just that this morning. Her and I were very close a few years back, we used to go clubbing together when we were 17/18 and I believe her mother blamed me for leading her astray 😉 She’s also called Nic and has the same colour hair as me so we were fairly well known and noticable together. Around the time that we got married she went off to be a holiday rep for a couple of years in Tenerife so our lives took fairly different paths for a time but now she is married and settled back down in Worthing, thinking about maybe having children at some point soon and suddenly we seem to have plenty to talk about again, if only me reassuring her that children are not actually as awful as we both always imagined them to be.

So we sat drinking tea and reminiscing about old times, catching up with gossip on mutual friends, she told me all about her wedding and her husband, I told her all about motherhood and Home Education, we both talked about plans to move abroad or certainly to a cheaper part of the country and generally had a really nice couple of hours.

The children were utter superstars throughout. I suppose because they didn’t know her and because she didn’t try to talk to them really they pretty much ignored us and were very caught up in their game of something to do with sticklebricks and geomags. After a while they disappeared into the playroom where they got the duplo out and then Davies came and got a tray from the lounge. When I asked him why he needed it he said ‘I think you better come and check actually Mummy, I’m not sure if what I’m doing is being naughty!’ :-D. He was making a ‘dinosaur exhibition’ on the tray using cement from his mini bricks house building kit and his plastic dinosaurs, which we decided was not naughty as it was creative and would require no more clearing up than a quick hoover! They also played with their musical instruments (forgot to mention that they played on the piano at my parents yesterday for ages. They love it and although they both refuse my offer of some sort of lessons or help they are excellent at ‘playing’ music to tell a story (favourites being giants and fairies using either end of the keys) or be happy or sad. They are also both very gentle with it and actually use one or two keys (which manage to sound like proper chords) at a time which I have seen far older children not manage to pull off in favour of banging the hell out of it) telling some sort of story, Davies played with the red button on various children’s channels for ages, they watched the end of Words & Pictures and two shows of Starship on Class TVand Scarlett played with some magnetic Dora books for ages too.

Nikki left and Ady resurfaced from bed so he fed the children while I shot off to the library and back. We had a fairly nondescript afternoon watching various stuff on TV, keeping the fire burning and everyone but me ate soup. It was that sort of day!

We realised just before Davies was about to go up to bed that we’ve not read our Bob book for today so rather than go and dig it out I wrote down three sentences for him to read instead. ‘Davies sat on Daddy’s lap’, ‘Mummy is on the sofa’ and ‘the cats sat by the fire’. Obviously ‘the’, ‘mummy’, ‘daddy’ and ‘Davies’ are words he can sight read. ‘Lap’, ‘cat’, ‘sat’, ‘on’ and ‘is’ were one’s he’s either come across or were easy to sound out and then ‘by’, ‘fire’ and ‘sofa’ were new ones. He read the first one effortlessly and with minimal help from an amazed Ady who has not seen him doing any reading at all he managed the other two. He declared it ‘fun’ and then set about wandering round the lounge looking for other words to try and read! 😯 To say I am amazed, delighted and thrilled would be an understatement – this was the only point I had fretted about thus far with HE and autonomy and suddenly he has finally clicked that not only is it possible, something he can do and actually good fun, he is actively asking for and looking for more and more things to read. Hurrah, hurrah and thrice hurrah! 🙂 :need a woohoo smilie:

So that’s us – all very knackered, most of us on soup diets but fingers crossed we make it that far and that long really looking forward to – and in great need of – a holiday!

Happy 6th Birthday Maddy Puddle 🙂

Have a lovely day!

Tarly got the same as me – we are very alike but not like that 😉

Ady got this:

Your Birthdate: May 13

You’re dominant and powerful. You always need to be in charge. While others respect your competence, you can be a bit of a dictator. Hard working and serious, you never let yourself down. You are exact and accurate – and you expect others to be the same way. Your strength: You always get the job done Your weakness: You’re a perfectionist to a fault Your power color: Gray Your power symbol: Checkmark Your power month: April

which is not really accurate and Davies got this:

Your Birthdate: September 14

You work well with others. That is, you’re good at getting them to do work for you. It’s true that you get by on your charm. But so what? You make people happy! You’re dynamic, clever, and funny. And people like to have you around. But you’re so restless, they better not expect you to stay around for long. Your strength: Your superstar charisma Your weakness: Commitment means nothing to you Your power color: Fuchsia Your power symbol: Diamond Your power month: May

well as far as *my* birthdate goes anyway…

Your Birthdate: January 6

You tend to be a the rock in relationships – people depend on you. Thoughtful and caring, you often put others needs first. You aren’t content to help those you know… you want to give to the world. An idealist, you strive for positive change and dream about how much better things could be. Your strength: Your intuition Your weakness: You put yourself last Your power color: Rose Your power symbol: Cloud Your power month: June

Gah!!!!! 😈

Today. A day of frustrations, a day of wanting to smack my palm against my forehead, a day of wanting to have a remote control to aim at people to ‘mute’ them!

Anyway… I finally went to bed around midnight, waking Ady up to go and sit with the mad piriton’d up dancing crazy girl in the lounge as I’d crashed and burned singing ‘Love is in the air’ with her having been inspired by Joyce’s blog post of the same title! I seem to recall some sort of musical beds thingy went on, apparently we’d woken Davies up with our singing 😳 and shortly after Ady went downstairs he came into bed with me, the next thing I knew he was downstairs crying cos Ady told him to go back to bed (it was about 1am)! The next thing I knew after that is was 8am! Ady recuperated further for an hour or so and then when he got up and the coughing from all corners was driving me insane I snuck my book upstairs under the guise of going to get dressed and closed the bedroom door, laid on the bed and read in peace. Bliss. For all of about 10 minutes….

Ady was first up bringing the camera with some photos he wanted me to ok him deleting, swiftly followed by Tarly with her cuddly toy tiger who apparently *needed* me to stroke him. Hot on Tarly & Tiger’s tails was Davies who wanted me to listen to his newly made up song… 🙄 I sent them all away again but really my peace was shattered and shortly afterwards Ady started clearing out the cupboard under the stairs (always a sensible task to begin doing when you are due at the in-laws for lunch in half an hour) which meant he was calling up the stairs to me every couple of minutes about whether I still wanted x,y or z?

So we were late getting out of the house (surprise! :roll:) and Dad and Ady headed off to get some logs, Davies and Scarlett were entertained by Mum for a bit so I got my book out of my bag and tried a read over there but Mum kept talking to me so that didn’t work. Dad and Ady came home then so we started to eat lunch. Now Davies does this admittedly *very* annoying thing sometimes when he’s eating of sort of humming and yumming as he eats. I’m always telling him off for it and it really irritates my Dad. So he starts doing it while eating a chunk of cheese, Dad tells him to stop, he sort of eyes Dad up and then carries on so Dad really yells at him. Davies dissolves in a sobbing heap and has to be placed on my lap. Not content with having managed that Dad continues to rant at him and then starts on me about discipline, pandering to my children and if I won’t teach them how to behave then he will!! I imagine anyone who knows me already knows I can be fairly harsh on my kids myself so I certainly didn’t agree with any of that. I started to answer back and it very quickly degenerated into a shouting match 🙁 . I got the kids and Ady getting their coats and shoes on and demanded that unless he apologised for reducing a small child to tears because he was utterly out of order for doing so then we were leaving. Cue a stand off between me and Dad, Mum butting in, me in tears and Ady shepherding children out of the whole scene. Dad finally did agree that he hadn’t meant to make him cry, that indeed it was not his place to discipline my children anyway and that he shouldn’t have shouted so I got Davies to apologise for ignoring Dad’s first telling off and Dad to apologise to Davies for shouting and making him cry. So we stayed.

I felt slightly hypocritical (and indeed was accused of being so) as I have shrieked and shouted at my kids so much these last few weeks myself but that is just a tiny percentage of the time I spent with them that although it may be unpleasant it certainly does not characterise my relationship with them. When they only see my parents once or twice a week for a few hours shouting at D until he cries is something that will have an impact on his relationship with my Dad. What he did was basically bully D by using his size, authority and volume to scare him to tears – that is not acceptable and on the occassions when I know I have been guilty of behaving wrongly to the children I always apologise. Anyway it appears to have been forgotten now so rant over.

We ended up having a fairly pleasant afternoon after that little episode and Dad agreed he would pay for a course for me to learn a new skill which could help with some freelance work – not being deliberately secretive about it but I still have some thinking to do on it and maybe some chatting to a few of you next week so I’ll save it for then.

We came home to meet Frazer who popped round after work to try and work out what exactly is the matter with my pc that died after Xmas, so Ady dealt with the children’s bedtime and got dinner cooking while me and Frazer dismantled, hoovered and finally gave up on it having decided it was likely a virus of some sort. He’s taken the tower away and is going to put windows XP on it using one of my laptop discs so all the computers will be on the same system and hopefully it will get shot of the virus too – or something! I don’t really understand what he said actually but he seemed confident 😉

Of course all that took *hours* so Davies ended up starting to watch ET which predictably he loved and Ady is recording the later repeat for him to watch tomorrow, dinner was really late getting on and Davies has only just fallen asleep. Off to have a bath, drink some wine and eat a very late roast 🙂