One word? When seven would do…

Over knives. Well not entirely over knives but it was the subject matter for the fall out.

Tarly loves to eat raw carrots, has done for ever. I keep several whole carrots in the bottom of the fridge and as the children are able to and infact encouraged to help themselves to food and drink whenever (in the main – I might take a stand against youghurts ten minutes before dinnertime) and all the stuff like crisps and chocolate is still kept slightly out of their reach she often goes to the fridge and gets one. In our cutlery drawer are knives, scissors etc and I have never restricted their use or access to them and simply taught them the correct way to carry them / walk with them / use them.

About a month ago Tarly brought in the vegetable peeler, a knife, a bowl for the peelings and a carrot and proceeded to show me how she could peel it, top and tail it herself. We talked about the safe way to use the knife for the topping and tailing and she’s been doing it ever since. Today she was in a slightly beligerant mood and she brought in a carrot, peeler, knife and bowl, carrying the knife in an unsafe manner (A would have had a heart attack – he was at his college course in NEBOSH Health & Safety at the time :oops:) and then tried to cut the carrot in a very unsafe manner. I asked her to get a chopping board and said I’d show her how to do it safely. We argued and she got more and more stroppy until eventually I took the knife away and she just started screaming and trying to lash out. I asked her to calm down or said I would take her to her room. Which was what ended up happening. 🙁

I sat one side of her bedroom door while she sat the other, screaming, banging the door and yelling at me. Eventually she calmed down, I opened the door, we chatted about it and I showed her a little round chopping board in the kitchen which I said could be hers. We brought it into the lounge and I showed her how to chop the carrot safely which she enjoyed so much she sat and chopped the whole thing into bite sized pieces. Safely. 🙂

She does continue to hold a belief that she is somehow beyond or exempt from the rules of the universe, insisting that ‘sharp knives are not dangerous to me!’ which I find slightly worrying.

I’m recording all this, as painful and leaving myself open to criticism as it is partially because I welcome the comments and ideas and (sod it I like the sympathy and the hugs 😉 ) partially because one day I’ll read this back or Tarly herself will read it when I hand over this account of their early years and it will be either reassuring to know that things got better, a great story of how we dealt with it, or the chance to pinpoint where it all went wrong and give her loads of sticks to beat me with when she’s going through her ‘I hate my Mum’ phase ;-).

I’m considering today a success!

There have certainly been elements of it which could have been dreadful but I’m going to be all about the spin and view them as learning opportunities and take credit and pleasure for the good bits of the day too.

My tooth is now well and truly better – as I type I am washing down my last antibiotic with a swig of wine but my throat is very sore. I am therefore considering myself living proof of that curled edged poster in every doctors surgery which tells us antibiotics don’t work on coughs and colds 😉

My Dad called round this morning which was nice, we’ve not seen him since we’ve been back from Helmsley. He only stayed an hour or so but it was lovely. 🙂

Davies has had a succession of late nights and early mornings and it all finally caught up with him today. He spent three solid hours this morning playing X box – a Were Rabbit game, he normally plays the Project Zoo game (both W&G of course) but today he started to crack this game too. Amazed at how much he’s picked these things up really – and when he finally put it down he just slumped. So he was moping about the place being all wet while Tarly and I had a massive series of run-ins. It was a mammoth effort to persuade her to get dressed, to put shoes on, we compromised on coat wearing and I brought one ‘in case’ but then she flatly refused to get in her car seat. It’s not walkable to Home Ed group (infact it’s a 20 minute drive!), I cannot allow her to be in the car not in a car seat (which is what she actually wanted, to sit next to me in the front passenger seat), we don’t have the money to buy her a new car seat at the moment – and actually weight / height / age wise she is fine in her current one a while longer anyway, she is inbetween the crossover and if she didn’t hate her car seat so much because it’s a ‘baby seat’ according to her then I would happily leave her in her five point much longer. So I had Davies in the car, not really up to going to group but we’ve not been for three weeks and I wanted to go and thought it would do us all good to get out and mix and have some time with other people. Scarlett and I spent nearly 20 minutes with visits from two of the neighbours 🙄 😳 before I finally got her in her seat. I tried reasoning, asking, firmness, alternative option of her staying at home and me getting my Dad back to look after her. I so don’t want to physically force her into a car seat and then strap her into it, aside from anything else she is now too big and strong for me to do it much longer and even if I did manage it I risk hurting her. Eventually I got sterner and with only slight resistance I got her into it and off we went. She was asleep within five minutes of leaving the house. Much though it was an unpleasant and tiring episode I was pleased with not losing my own temper and remaining calm whilst not actually giving into her – couldn’t manage that sort of thing every day though so I hope car seat refusal is not about to become a new issue. I think that would quickly fall into zero tolerance area if it does…

We arrived at MM about half an hour late by which time she was fully restored by her nap and in good general humour but Davies had utterly slumped. He sat on my lap for a while but I left him to go and do some painting with Tarly. She did her usual trick of holding the paint brush with perfect precision, appearing thoughtful and considering of what she is planning to paint, making various confident brushstrokes on the page and creating something recognisable and good before remembering she is 3 and smearing the whole thing with as much brown paint as possible, finishing off with lots of water 🙄 She then disappeared to play with the other children while I made a cup of tea and watched some marble experiments, childless for a brief time. Then I went to seek out the children and found Davies being all aimless and self excluding so I brought him back in again and we sat and did drawing together and made our poster. He sat quite happily chatting to various children and adults who passed by and commented on his poster and explaining it to people while Scarlett came back in and made another brown, very painty creation. I did a bit of clearing up, managed to avert a meltdown at removing the brown paint and brushes from Tarly (I was so expecting one it was quite a shock to have them handed over happily!) and then we headed off slightly early. One of the other mothers who’s son Tarly had been playing with told me she was ‘so beautiful and wild, like a wood nymph or fairy or something’ which pleased me. 🙂

Once home I bit the bullet and made two phonecalls both of which the prospect of have been keeping me awake at night. Good results on both 🙂 One being finances related and the other being to request that I work a different day to start work next month instead of Tarly’s fourth birthday. Several people have suggested that I just tell her that her birthday is the day before or something which I know full well would work just fine, but *I* would know and as I blogged last week it is probably more my issues surrounding me starting work and leaving them than theirs so I don’t think doing it for the first time on my baby’s birthday will do me any favours really. My new boss was fine about it, totally understood and said that of course if it wasn’t my first day then I’d have swapped shifts accordingly so it was no problem. I offered to work any other morning that week instead if it helped and she agreed we’d sort something out nearer the time as soon as my CRB check came back clear. Next I need to do a big spreadsheet detailing childcare plans for the next couple of months and start coordinating that properly – this denial is no good! 🙂

I then had a phonecall from the Badger leader asking if Davies was coming to Badgers tonight. Then asking if I would be sitting in the car – as usual – tonight and then when I agreed I would be asking if there was any chance I would come and sit in the hall instead as she was going to have to cancel otherwise as the child:adult ratio was not enough to hold Badgers. Which was a bit of a bugger really as I was debating not taking Davies tonight anyway as he was so wiped out and actually I value that hour a week sitting in the dark in my car reading my book by the internal light and hoping it won’t drain the battery very much. It is the only hour a week when I don’t feel there is anything else I could be doing instead. It is the only hour a week I know nobody expects anything of me and I don’t have to keep half an ear open incase someone is calling ‘Nic’ or ‘Mummy’. I value that hour of freedom quite highly!

As is happened it was fine – I sat in the corner and watched them play games, enjoyed seeing how very different Davies is within that group to how he is within the Muddlepuddle group, the Jack, Maisie, Richard and Rebecca group and how different he is without Scarlett at his side actually. Lisa, the Badger leader adores him and has told me before he is her favourite and I could see why today – he is such a little old man, full of logic, literal arguments and comments, super helpful and frankly such a credit to his mother 😉 Bless him I was very proud to be ‘Davies’ Mummy’ tonight. 🙂 They wouldn’t believe it was the same child who painted Chris and Alison’s house with charcoal or engaged six children in tomato fights at Merry’s – he is so the child I thought he’d be when he was two 😉 🙂

A really nice day, lovely to have both my children in all their differences talked about to me by others highlighting the very things which I so celebrate about them individually. Hurrah for good results on my phonecalls and woo hoo for having a day at home tomorrow with nothing planned other than finally sorting out the HomeSchool Shoe box swap to America I have been putting off for weeks – which should actually be quite fun if the three of us work together on putting something interesting into it.

More days like this one please – I am reminded again why I want the life I have :-).

with apologies to Creationists, Darwinists, Scientologists, erm Lactivists, Feminists, Florists and erm anyone with a shread of idea of how history really runs!

At MM today Davies and I created a storyboard picture starting with the big bang and leading to the present day. We had nine boxes to fill and Davies drew some and I drew the others under his instruction, then he dictated what he wanted written underneath each box before colouring it all in. It is now residing on our lounge door, where it shall remain in the style of cave drawings of the past.

Words and grammar are all Davies’ own 🙂

Once upon a time it had a beautiful Sun and Earth and suddenly a big bang exploded.

And then after the bang came the dinosaurs and the dinosaurs were there until a volcano erupted and killed all of them

And then came the Ice Age which had mammoths and loads of other creatures

And after that came the cave men but none of us know how they came, but we do know they came after a giant meltdown.

Next came creatures and dragonflies and birds and fon’t forget the grasshoppers and don’t forget the snail in the corner.

And next came Henry VIII with six wives, then he didn’t choose any except for the last one who lived longer than Henry VIII

Next came a brilliant scientist and he created the television

And this is the picture to show you space when the giant explosion had gone. All nice and happy in their spaceship

Last, but not least, us, the people. Did you see all the snails in every picture?

Clearly it owes a lot to various films – Ice Age, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, Dinosaurs. It also draws in various stuff from the works of Eric Maddern and his suberb Life Story and Earth Story books. There are glimpses of things we have talked about at places like Paradise Park where you walk through a history of time from the big bamg to today past neanderthal man. The TV invention was all his own work, Henry the VIII (big fat man!) is brought to you courtesy of Horrible Histories cds and my one attempt to interfere was man on the moon which he read as the flash back to show us what space looked like once the big bang had all calmed down again, so I didn’t bother putting him right. I love it 🙂

For want of a better title 😉

Jan asked me last week how it was all going with Tarly and actually although I think she has possibly gotten slightly worse in terms of ‘expressing herself and her rage and her demands’ I feel we have gotten better at dealing with it – which may well explain why she is being slightly more vocal but hopefully is the apex of it before things start to improve or at least level out.

I am trying really hard to deal with her demands calmly and rationally and keep reminding myself that she is not even four yet so large elements of childishness, selfishness and no consideration for others are actually completely normal. Just because she is able to articulate herself so well doesn’t mean she necessarily has all the relevant maturity to go with that, although it is hard to remember at times. She is still very prone to getting herself in a state about something, forgetting what it was and remaining in that state picking up on anything and everything which is particularly challenging, especially if it happens while out and about. Davies is also picking up on the increased attention she gets from the behaviour and either competing with her by coming up with equally crazy demands or doing the equivalent of cartwheels in the background while she kicks off, which is also challenging to balance and I don’t want to simply transfer issues from one child to the other by dealing with one while the other suddenly develops problems so I am working hard to stay on top of that and giving him as much individual attention as I can when I can (even though this seems to just translate as watching him play X box :roll:).

This last week has offered fresh challenges as Tarly has been ill with a cough and a cold, not sleeping at all well so tired too and of course I was not at my best either with my tooth but somehow it managed to not be the nightmare of a week I was expecting or would have been excusable. I am trying to deal with each individual demand or upset in isolation rather than totting them up. If it is a request that I can reasonably meet then I am attempting to as I feel at least part of this is about Tarly getting some control which far from being a bad thing I am viewing as a positive ambition of hers. One of her favourite things to shout at me when in the throes of rage is ‘I am in charge of the house!’ which is obviously something I must have shouted at her previously. Now much though I don’t want her to start believing this to be true I also don’t think it should be true about any of the people who live here – I don’t want to ‘control’ her or ‘own’ her, I just want her to learn how to behave and conduct herself in a way which primarily makes her happy without causing harm, damage or upset to herself or anyone around her. Some requests clearly are not feasible – this weekend examples have been wanting a drink or food RIGHT NOW, when we are in the car travelling somewhere and have no food or drink. Easily solved for the future by carrying food and drink with us (although I hardly think it is actually about being hungry or thirsty – but at least if her request is met then the feeling of control passes back to her). She also wanted to go out in the cold barefoot and without a coat. This is trickier as she is *only* three and she is still recovering from a nasty cold so actually barefoot and coatless in November would be neglectful of me and whilst it might ‘teach her a lesson’ it seems a rather harsh one. The other aspect to her personality is stubborness and she is more than capable of getting very cold and not asking for a coat to save face – she hates to climb down from anything. I’m trying to refrain from reward and punishment and bribes and using the same tactics in the form of cause and effect almost. So it’s been more ‘we can’t go out to the fireworks if you don’t want to wear your wellies and coat because you might get cold or hurt your feet, but it’s up to you’ than ‘put your coat on or we are not going to the fireworks!’. Written down it doesn’t look much different but it felt like more of a reasoning than a threat. She chose not to anyway as there was a film on she wanted to watch instead so it all got averted. 😆

I am trying to manage her expectations a little more too – Davies is far better at anticipating what might happen next and being ready for it – possibly his being two years older but I think it’s more his character. So going home from somewhere still seems to come as a surprise to her and warrants a big fuss.

So far a combination of remaining calmer rather than getting uptight with her and choosing which battles are worth fighting and which are worth surrendering is ensuring that her and I spent less time with our horns locked, are both happy that whilst we have not entirely relinquished ‘control’ we are allowing the other one some points, Tarly is feeling more like she is listened to and respected when it is feasible and starting to accept that when I do ‘pull rank’ (for want of a better phrase) it is for justified and sensible reasons rather than simply because ‘I’m the grown up’. I’m doing plenty of talking things through with her, lots of reassurance that it is okay to be angry, to show your rage etc and generally validating her feelings. And against all parenting manuals and ways of dealing with things I am probably using a fair amount of inconsistency in my approach as I am trying to view each ‘episode’ as an isolated event and deal with it accordingly rather than try and adopt a blanket method.

I think that last sentence is the key really. In life generally you get different reactions from different people at different times. I know for example that I always got away with more with my Dad than with my Mum – so by modern parenting techniques they cocked up there but actually our children get different responses from Ady and I and given that we are two different people I guess they would really. Similarly the approach of playing a certain role or using certain techniques to get people to help me or work with me during my adult life has proven mostly successful and the ability to read a person and a situation and modify behaviour and responses accordingly is a very valuable skill so I’m guessing that if the worst that comes of this is that she learns which buttons to press to get what she wants as long as we are not automatically bowing to foot stamping and fist clenching every time we won’t be doing her any great disservice.

The day started way too early. Tarly was in our bedroom at 5.41am. It was my turn to get up but I don’t really consider the day to have started much before 8am, 7am at a push and 6am if I am being really extreme – so a full 19 minutes before my earliest possibly start time was still the middle of the night as far as I was concerned. She was persuaded to snuggle in bed with us and had all but gone back to sleep curled up into my back when Ady got up for a wee which meant she leapt out of bed too and made so much noise Davies woke too and we all ended up getting up. Although once the children had been placated with milk and cartoons me and Ady headed back off to bed again ;-).

Ady and Davies spent some time in the garden chopping firework, wombling in the garage, playing with mud etc. while Tarly and I did some baking. We made some snickerdoodles at Ady’s request although he still refuses to call them snickerdoodles and comes up with a different crazy name for them every time. We had various lengthy phonecalls with Chris and Julie through the morning too, the upshot of which was that instead of the planned chestnut collecting walk we ended up going over there for Bonfire Night fayre and fireworks, so Tarly and I also made some parkin. Scarlett was in full on ‘little girl who had a little curl’ mode today, delightful and dreadful by turn – hence some of the fireworks 🙄 I suffered the usual pangs over the ‘girlies in the kitchen, boys getting dirty outside’ set up but I guess some stereotypes are just that because they are in much the same was as cliches wouldn’t exist if they weren’t the default most of the time. And I certainly don’t hanker after playing in the mud or chopping wood either although I’m sure I could manage it just fine if the need arose.

We had lunch and then headed over to C&J’s. The children all played outside while Julie and I made a lovely apple cake (I’ll bung the recipe on Indigestion later, it was delicious) and some spiced citrus punch, which the adults spiced up further with tots of brandy. We had a small firework display as darkness fell and just enjoyed a really nice afternoon together. We talked about Guy Fawkes and fireworks generally during the day in a very low key way, which would be something we could pick back up on again if needs be but if not was a nice introduction to the whole reason behind the tradition.

We came home firework spotting as we went with plans to head across to the pub for their free fireworks but both children were already really tired so Davies and Ady ended up standing in the garden for half an hour or so watching from there while Tarly and I sat and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original) which was on TV.

The taking stock of the title comes partially from some further thinking about learning styles and Home Ed which is rather more coherant now I’m not in pain any more and partially from the chicken bones from Friday’s dinner which I have been boiling up today with carrots, onion and herbs to make stock for soup. This month is looking likely to be our very most frugal yet and I am also quite keen to start Davies and Scarlett eating more of the same food as us so I’m hopeful that soup is going to be something they will eat more of.

And now, I’m very tired so I’ll do some flickring and some more of what I had planned to say later in the week.

Edited to offer birthday greetings to the right child at the right age!

Happy second Birthday Josie – lots of love Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlett. Hope you had a lovely day! 😉

Today was Jasper day, so despite being my lie in when I was awoken by the children being rowdy at about 7.30am I got up instead of rolling over and going back to sleep. We managed to be out of the house by shortly after 9am and arrived in Reading for 11am. A quick trip to Costco for ‘hurrah, you’ve had a baby!’ gift and putting some photos in for printing later and we were having our official introduction to baby ‘JW’. And rather lovely he is too 🙂

I don’t really do babies, but if I have to do babies I’d rather they were boys. And babies belonging to people I adore. So this one ticked all relevant boxes and I enjoyed a lovely long cuddle while Davies and Scarlett indulged in their own brands of baby worship. Given my own lack of interest in babies generally they are not well used to exposure with babies really – they tended to spend their only time in the company of zero years aged people when they were peers and I was occupied holding my own rather than someone else’s so Jasper had a certain novelty value.

Which admittedly wore off once Claudia came home and some geomag deco panels were broken open aswell 🙂 And then they disappeared upstairs. I peeked in on them when going to the loo and was very amused to see all three of them crowded round Claudie’s pc playing some educational game – poor autonomously Home Educated wee ones desperate for some nice structured education in line with early years curriculum goals 😉 😆

We called into Chris and Alison’s on the way home to return some items and collect the rather lovely pottery pieces from E’s pottery party a couple of weeks ago. The children are both very pleased with their plates and Tarly’s kitten and Davies’ dinosaur. We came home via Costcos again to collect photos and McDonalds for the kids tea.

Now we are catching up on the Torchwood episodes we missed – we came in at episode 3 so we’re doing 1 and 2 on BBC3 – really must watch those last two Dr Who episodes to find out how Rose left at some point too…

We didn’t do any of the reading with Davies due to all the gallivanting but he did lie in bed on the very verge of sleep and ask me if ‘the word learn has L and E next to each other?’ so I guess he’s going to get there with or without my structured, reading system help eh? 🙂

Tomorrow we have not a lot planned – there is a car boot sale in the pub car park across the road which I am intrigued about the logistics of so want to go and check out. We have arranged to meet Chris and Julie for an Autumn Walk to collect chestnuts (for roasting on open fires) and the same pub has a free bonfire and firework display in their beer garden later tomorrow evening. Honestly if we had money that would be the pub to relieve us of it 😉

Today was the day when it all got better again 🙂

My tooth is still painful but sore rather than agony and I’m still taking painkillers but I can go for longer between doses so it’s on the up 🙂

This morning the children played with the geomags and some X box while I did various things around the house including some laundry – it’s freezing here now and washing takes two days out on the line with a quick air on the radiators to totally dry but at least it is dry and it is getting dried outside rather than being draped round inside and necessitating the heating or the tumble drier being on for it. I also made a couple of phonecalls and various other bits and pieces. We also watched some Discovery Kids including some interesting Science programs, none of which I can recall the content of now but I know we chatted about various things as a result.

Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived around 11am and as always seems to be the case when we have seen them two or three times already in a week the children all got straight on with each other. There was some ‘cross bonding’ went on today too with Rebecca and I cuddling up to do some jigaw together and Tarly clambering around over and behind Lucy, which is always an indication of her approval (that and allowing someone to wipe her bottom as she offered Ali the honour of last week at camp :lol:). The children were all playing with geomags but as I have been mourning the underuse of the various map puzzles I had purchased in frenzies of Home Educator-ness in years gone by I thought I’d dig those out, Lucy and I could sit and do them and the chances were the children would join us.

Dead right! 🙂

Within minutes the geomags had been abandoned and the children were debating colours of countries, working out equator lines, deciding which way up the writing was on the pieces and whether they had straight edges of not. The puzzle got finished in record time with loads of interest and general chatting from Lucy and I about where each place might be on the map. Then once it was completed we pointed out Britain and where on the tiny country we lived and then I showed where Ady and I had gotten married and Lucy showed the couple of places she has lived.

We have two seperate puzzles of the UK – one of which is double sided so we set to work on both of those in various combinations and Rebecca and I did the county one chatting about the various places and whether we’d been to them including where we live, where Kessingland is etc. While Lucy did the other one mostly with Davies and Scarlett. While all was peaceful I took the opportunity to nip to the post office and was probably gone for about 20 minutes in all. I returned to utter calm and we were both really pleased with how smoothly it had gone and how well Scarlett particularly had responded to Lucy’s dealing with her ‘testing’. Feeling really quite positive about how me leaving them to go to work is going to pan out actually – although I need to get childcare for the first two months totally sewn up so everyone who is having them knows the dates well in advance and can plan around it.

I also came back just as the coal lorry was pulling away from my house having delivered our winter supply and – I assume – knocked down the lamppost outside our house. It was a rather lovely lamppost as lampposts go actually, cast iron and one which had probably been around for many, many years. We’ve knocked it a couple of time with various cars (it is very close to the edge of our drive and prevents us from coming out of the drive and turning left) and it has never moved at all. It had broken near the base and fallen across the pavement, remaining in one piece but with the glass at the top shattered across the road and pavement. Various neighbours came out to look (naturally 😉 ) and builder-bloke from across the road reckoned it would still be live so I went inside to ring the council. Three phonecalls later I spoke to the right person who assured me they’d get someone out.

So we’ve had a succession of men and vans with flashing lights and machinery on the back here all afternoon which we have gone out and observed the actions of, chatting to the more friendly ones. They came and put a cone over the base, which was indeed still live. Then they came and tried to smash the lamppost to get it in the back of a van but it was unbreakable so another van came with a winch thing on the back and they tied a rag around the post, winched it up in the air, swung it over and into the back of a lorry. Then more men came and dug a hole around the base to turn off the electric and dig out the bottom of the post. All the while someone had to stay next to it and watch to ensure no one electrocuted themselves on it. It is now not there at all with a traffic cone over the hole. Guess we’ll get a new one put in some time next week, but it will probably be an ugly concrete one rather than our rather nice old fashioned one. All very interesting to watch though 🙂

Back in the house we had lunch, then snacks, then mid afternoon-ses and then a little something 😆 which of course meant that D & S didn’t eat tea but as the snacking was on fruit and cheese that was fine :-). We played more with geomags and toy cars and sticklebricks and some magnetic word tiles and some running around. Lucy and I managed lots of chatting intersperced with educational asides with various children – I made some 3d shapes and discussed their construction with the geomags and Davies and Scarlett including which shapes were strongest and why, how many rods and balls would be used and various other maths-y things while Lucy was showing Rebecca numbers on her phone. Davies held a ‘make a robot with geomags’ masterclass for Rebecca and I and I talked to Rebecca about potato gratin! 🙂

They headed off and D & S continued playing with the geomags.

I cooked them tea which they left and we watched some Discovery Kids which was about crop circles which spawned some interesting conversations. Then my Mum arrived shortly followed by Ady so Davies got read a story by Granny while Tarly helped Ady lay and light the fire. We try to take some of the mystery out of the fire by letting the children help with it lots under very close supervision on the basis that if we don’t it will become an object of fascination and we dare not leave the room incase they are giddy with it – so far it seems to be working although I confess to twinges of doubt about Scarlett and matches ;-).

Mum left, Ady took Tarly to bed with a story from the link I posted yesterday and Davies suddenly announced he wants to read. I think this must be as a result of something last week as it was clearly something he’d realised someone else can do and he can’t. He got a Dr Seuss book, sadly none of which was remotely phonetic so was rather beyond him, so we chose three words ‘you’ ‘can’ and ‘think’ – one phonetic, one not and one sort of – for him to recognise and read throughout (anyone guess which book it was then? 😉 ) and he did that really well. Then he got a Maisy book which Tarly and Granny had been reading and read a few bits out of that. He wants to know how long it will take before he can read because he ‘really wants to as soon as possible’ so I explained that it will be tricky but if he really tries and we spend lots of time on it then he can do it. I’ve said we’ll maybe start by revisiting 100 easy lessons and perhaps some of the easier phonetic books as I sense he is going to be fairly impatient about this so for now at least making it as easy to succeed as quickly as possible is the way forward so he gets quick results before he gets put off. I get the feeling this is child led as in other children rather than my own, but that’s just fine by me :-).

And of course having spent all of yesterday convinced it was Friday it finally is really Friday now, so hurrah for that. 🙂

Davies has been holding geomag masterclasses all day to his adoring audience and I promised when the camera battery had recharged I’d record a version for the blog ‘just like SB’s balloon car clip’
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To Isabelle – 2 today!

Have a lovely day, from Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

This site is a bit good 🙂

Once I had a bin bag
It was black as black could be
I loved that old black bin bag
I took it everywhere with me

I took it right around the house
and emptied every bin
in every room, even the lounge
and the bin bag put it in

I tied the top up in a knot
with tender loving care
I went outside, opened the dustbin
and placed my bin bag there

Bright and early the next morning
I believe it was a Wednesday
the whistling, cheery bin men
took my black bin bag away

I often wonder where it went
probably to the tip
and every time I think of rubbish
I always think of it.

Had a much better night last night and my tooth itself is far less painful, just a bit sore today. The infection ache seems to have travelled down my jaw and is now more tender to the touch (like a bad bruise) than a constant insanity inducing pain. I’m still keeping the painkillers topped up as it feels worse as they wear off but I feel far more like me again today.

The xray at the hospital was amazingly straightforward – I was in and out clutching my xray in about 20 minutes. It’s a full life size one so we’ve all been looking at my teeth and jaw and stuff – clearly I have no inkling of what I’m looking for on it but as the ABs are clearly kicking in I guess the next step can wait until my follow up appointment at the dentist in two weeks.

The X ray waiting room is shared with the whole X ray and radiology department so there were several pregnant women waiting for ultra sound scans. It’s where I had all of the scans for Davies including the first very scary one at 5 weeks or so pregnant the day after I’d found out I was pregnant and had gone to the doctors with bad pains and been sent straight to the hospital for an emergency scan all on my own. Also where I had the 12 and 20 week scans with Ady in tow, where you had to go with a full bladder and then sit for about an hour waiting for your turn jiggling your legs up and down because you were so desperate for a wee. So it’s where we found out we were having a boy and where we had the final very late scan to check I didn’t have placenta previa and could have a ‘normal’ delivery instead of a section. I walked down the same corridors I walked down whilst in labour and down again with a newborn baby the following day. Don’t have your babies in hospitals kids – it makes you far too sentimental about them when they are at risk of closure! 😉

Painkillers wore off rather quicker than I’d hoped, just popped another two and will be heading off to bed as soon as the throbbing stops 🙁

Had a salt water mouth wash thingy which made me gag and retch. Salt water is really disgusting you know.

Just realised I don’t actually like brandy unless it is in a liquer chocolate – we only have tesco value brandy anyway so that has also made me gag and retch.

Ady’s home 🙂

One child is already asleep 🙂

Ady is working from home tomorrow so he can take me to the hospital for my x ray and sit in the car so we don’t have to remortgage to park in the hospital car park.

And he says the best thing for me to do is to go to bed late when I am utterly asleep on my feet so I fall asleep easily and he will let me sleep in in the morning.

The painkillers are finally kicking in (and yes I may have exceeded the stated dose slightly :oops:) and we all know the effect that painkillers have on me – I’m flying high! 🙂

Ady has just told me that it is practically The Law that you have to have a nip or two of brandy when you have toothache 🙂

Listening to Nina Simone and Deacon Blue on the 21st century version of a mix tape of tracks on Ady’s laptop. 🙂

Ady is logging while I’m blogging so there will soon be a lovely roaring fire to toast my painkillered antibioticked brandy soaked toes beside.

Oh and it has just occured to me that I haven’t actually eaten anything today, so I’ve given myself extra portions for dinner too 🙂

That blog post was interupted by the arrival of Lucy and I’d ranted and gone OT from what was supposed to be the round up of our day so I’m back now with more.

So yesterday morning I did tidying – Davies played on his X box and Tarly came and ‘helped’ me tidy. Then we had a text from Lucy to ask if we wanted to go round for lunch, so we did. The children were all in a running around shrieking sort of mode which I at least was really struggling to cope with so we hatched a plan to take them to the park. Scarlett decided this was not for her and had a total meltdown about putting her wellies on and I refused to take her out without shoes so Lucy took the children which was actually a good first step towards Davies being happy to go off with her, Scarlett calmed right down and we sat and read some books together, played a game and then she suggested we put her wellies on and go and join the others at the park. They had some time playing and I pushed them on the swing which is when Davies demonstrated he *can* count past twelve 😉 then we went back to Lucy’s for a short while before coming home.

The evening passed in a blur of me feeling shite and being all irrational and ranty at the world in general, hoping for an early night and so not getting one. (Thanks Merry and Ali for keeping me company for part of that – and to a particularly interesting car crash style thread on a forum I was watching unfold with horror and fascination – really suited my mood!)

This morning I composed the post below which was interupted by Lucy arriving, followed fairly swiftly by Julie. The children played – and trashed pretty much every room in the house 🙄 while we chatted. Discussions varied and were all deeply interesting – I love our Wednesday afternoons 🙂 We covered birth order and siblings, small and large families, wet nursing and surrogacy, drugs, pain, Home Ed camps of the future, tolerance and acceptance of others’ beliefs and knowing when to shut up – all really interesting stuff.

At 2pm I left to walk to the dentists which is just across the road. I have only ever had two emergency dentists appointments in my life – all the rest have been the six monthly checkups. The first was when I was about 11 and had an absess which necessitated an extraction. I always feel something of a fraud when going to the doctors or dentists and hate the idea that they might be tsking or rolling their eyes at me for wasting their time or being a wuss – to the extent that I’ve often let things fester for far longer than I should before getting them seen to. So I was really gratified to hear her say ‘oh yes, this is really nasty’ when she looked inside my mouth. I was sent away with a prescription for four times a day antibiotics, a form to turn up to the hospital with as soon as possible for an xray to determine what is going on with the tooth, instructions to take very strong painkillers until the ABs kick in and have salt water mouthwashes and a repeat appointment for two weeks to see what the x ray has uncovered and whether it needs taking out now or whether we can wait until it’s fully errupted – I suspect now will be slightly more complicated than later 🙁 She used a whizzy thing to mess it up a bit which got rid of loads of the yuck and left me with a mouthful of foul tasting blood and a grazed inside cheek but to coin a phrase the poking of something already hurting was actually nice in an ‘exquisite torture’ kind of way (finally, I know what that means! ;-)). So I am now slightly sorer, slightly swollen but reassured that tonight will probably be the last really crap night and that I wasn’t being a big girl for no reason.

I also gave the woman at the chemists something of a thrill by getting the abs and asking for ‘the strongest painkillers you can legally sell me please’ which made her all giddy and quivering as I imagine in my local chemists the most racy purchases usually are cornplasters and lavendar water with a side order of ‘something for me piles’. She selected a pack in a dangerous looking black box with ‘nothing hits pain harder’ inscribed across the front and we maxed it to a 24 box instead of a 12 pack so it was a pretty wild moment! 😉

Lucy, then Julie left fairly shortly after I got home, Davies and I tidied the house back up and he is now X boxing again while Tarly geomags. I’ve taken my first double dose of ABs and one painkiller which is already proving not enough so I’m about to top it up with another and I suspect – Tarly willing – that I may well not be back round this way again tonight!

Feeling a bit living dead today. I’m really tired due to having crap nights sleep with my tooth three nights in a row and having Tarly up aswell. Monday night she woke coughing at about 10pm, came and sat in the lounge with me until midnight and then I went to bed thinking she’d finally fallen asleep. She hadn’t and she followed me to bed about 10 minutes later where she stayed tossing and turning.

Last night was the same, she woke around 10.30pm, came in the lounge with me till around midnight and then I sat on her bedroom floor with her til 1am. Not terribly late for me I know but when my tooth is a constant nagging pain rising to a real throbbing agony for the last half hour while the painkillers wear off before I can take more and I’m having all sorts of weird hallucinagenic dreams when I do sleep I have that sort of tired exhaustedness I’ve only ever really had during very early parenthood when a newborn is waking me every hour and a half. Everything is all woolly. Fuck knows how I managed to blog last night’s post really – I imagine I’ll go back and reread it next week and it won’t have said anything like what I meant it to ;-).

Anyway, I have a dentist appointment for this afternoon so fingers crossed it will be on the way to ending the pain. I have a feeling it is infected and will require ABs and I’m not even sure if dentists can prescribe – which will be hideous as our doctors never give out appointments closer than 10 days after you are at deaths door so it could well be Christmas before I get any! I can actually feel a lump in my cheek / jaw which I am assuming is where it’s drained to. It’s truly horrid. And making me evil to spend time with – last night I was so nasty to Ady he seriously asked me if I wanted him to leave 😯 – so day three of the evening primrose capsules and no great change there yet ;-). I think it is utterly possible to go insane with pain. When I was pregnant with Tarly I got an ear infection. They were reluctant to give me anything really due to being only about 22 weeks pregnant but gradually upped my doses of painkillers and ABs until eventually they sent me to hospital where they sorted it out. I spent nights pacing the floor and burying screams in my pillow and days sitting crying in the doctors waiting room as yet another promised high dose of painkillers failed to touch the pain. At one point I told Ady that is someone said they could take away the pain if I gave them Davies I would have more than happily handed him over – it trumped childbirth pain from both labours combined. This is not on that scale but the relentlessness is bringing it close. I’d make a really crap long term ill person wouldn’t I? 😆 I’d be there trying to trade all my belongings and rights to my children in return for a bit of respite!

Yesterday morning I started on tidying up the playroom. Partially cos it looks like a tip, partially because I am still on an ebaying frenzy and looking for more loot to list and partially because although the children will not be adding much at all to the plastic mountain this Christmas it would still be nice to get shot of some of the stuff they never play with. In doing so I was reminded again of the excesses of my past – Davies and Scarlett do not have two sets of indulgent grandparents or any generous aunts and uncles – they only have my parents who are very sensible and give them one small token gift each Christmas and birthday and a very generous amount of premium bonds as a ‘real present’ which means they both have a fairly impressive ‘portfolio’ of them but all plastic stuff over the years has come from us. If I observe the childrens’ playing the only toys they would miss or we would pack up to take with us should we ever do our campervan world travel plan would be the geomags and the plastic animals. Scarlett actually cried in the car on the way to Chris and Helen’s last week because she didn’t want to go there, she wanted to come home and play with the geomags instead. And all the way home from their house she was singing a little geomags song to herself in anticipation :-). So I went through the boxes to try and trim the toys down a bit. We have a box of plasticine and playdough cutters and moulds – that gets used so we’ll keep that. I bought some Fimo which will go into that box after Christmas. In the same area is the magic maize and Happymais too. We’ve got a box of lego which sometimes gets played with, we had it out on Monday and built a house with it. There is room to add to that box and I think it will be a toy which gets played with more as they get older anyway. Next is a box of pretend money, an ELC cash till, some maths stuff like rods, some ELC scales where you balance numbers which add up to the same etc. and a calculator. I’m really tempted to sell the till on ebay – in the ELC catalogue this morning I noticed the new version of it was over £17! I don’t think it ever really gets played with and actually if they ever were to play pretend shops they could use a calculator. Similar to the box of pretend food – we’ve got tins, bottles, boxes, fruit, vegetables and morning goods. Oh and a couple of teasets. All of which has been played with over the years but actually when I was a child and used to play shops I’d raid the kitchen cupboards for real tins and packets, or make the food out of plasticine – that was sort of the fun of it really. The pretending to select food off the shelves and take it to the pretend till was the smallest part of the game. Oh and of course my children get to go real life food shopping with me every week anyway so pretending to do it at home has limited appeal really. We then have a couple of boxes of toys which I want them to have rather than they ever desired – things like wooden blocks (so nice, so timeless, so boring when stood in competition with an Xbox!), jigsaw puzzles of maps of the world and of the UK (too much land, too much sea, never stood a chance when there are Dora the explorer or dinosaur puzzles in the same cupboard!) and three different marble runs – these do get used but we could probably manage with just the one sort! And then we have shelves of games – connect four, snakes and ladders – they can stay, there is every chance the children will play with them more as they get older.

So I’m building up to a rant here really and of course it is only because there are people like me who covert and purchase these things for the children that the demand exists and therefore the shops are full of them so I take my responsibility for my part in this but looking through the catalogues of toys which have been arriving through the letterbox every morning this week in preparation for Christmas I can’t help feeling that we are ever increasingly taking away our childrens’ imagination and replacing it with plastic. There was a ‘toy office’ in one of the catalogues this morning FFS!

Anyway, I’ve pulled out another big chunky load of stuff which is ready for ebay and I’m going to talk to the children about getting rid of the pretend food and the pretend till, not that I think they’d notice if I just spirited them away anyway but as I’m making this U turn I think I’d like them to know about it. And I’m not getting all minimalist about toys, they are mostly getting X box games for Christmas 😉 so I’m hardly one to talk when I am saying they should leave behind the plastic food and immerse themselves in a cyber world. 🙄