One word? When seven would do…

Had a good morning at work – Wednesday’s are always pretty busy although I do work with my most annoying colleague on my every other Wednesday :roll:. I felt all efficient working on the counter for the first hour and a half, answering the phone and reserving books and everything, then I had tea break with one of the senior staff followed by an hour with her talking about how it’s all going and doing the pre-training brief for tomorrow. She is the woman I know from Reading Group and is fairly new to the job herself, although she has worked in libraries for years. She lived in America for 10 years and has a daughter doing a Fashion Retail degree so has a rather different concept of customer service to the staff in the library who have been there for 15 years! My training tomorrow is in Customer Care which will be interesting, given I have previously written and run Customer Care training programmes for up to 15 staff at a time :lol:, we talked about what I think I’ll gain from it with me surprising her by telling her I will still learn something from tomorrow and am actually really looking forward to it if for no other reason than to get a better understanding of the slant and focus of Customer Care from such a different angle. Clearly the Customer Care focus in retail is sales generating related whereas in a library it will be rather different. We also talked about my personal struggle with the pace and culture change and my slight frustration with the lack of commercial awareness focus and, ironically customer care. All interesting stuff 🙂 and of course refreshing to be having a proper grown up conversation which is not related to my novelty value as a Home Educator ;).

Home for a pleasant couple of hours with Lucy and all the children including some jigsaw puzzle making and general chit chat. Reminded me again Lucy that we really must sort out some time to dedicate to chatting away from children altogether 😆 They left, I fed the children and then Ady arrived home in time to come with us to drop Davies at Badgers and pop round to see my Granny for an hour. I thought Scarlett was utterly charming while we were there – she spent ages looking at all the pictures in her lounge, including loads of me as a child, my parents wedding day, our wedding day and various other family snapshots, then she played with a load of elephants that Granny has on her fireplace. Granny did a lot of that frustrating ‘ooh, how many elephants is there then?’ type stuff which Scarlett (more power to her 🙂 ) either ignored or treated with disdain, prefering instead to speculate on what the elephants were made of (ivory mostly!) and then telling us about how mammoths were extinct but actually they hadn’t died out altogether because elephants were descended from them – which for me was rather more impressive than lining them all up and counting to six 😆 We left there laden down with sweets to bring home and the promise of a ‘really special present next time you come with Davies too’ which pissed me off both in the whole ‘you must come to me to recieve this bribe’ and also the whole buying affection thing too. Why do so many grandparents do that? They offer sweets or gifts every time they see a child so that eventually the child comes to just associate them with the sweets rather than being pleased to see them and then gets considered rude or greedy or spoilt when they ask – really quite rationally – where their sweets are next time they see them. A child will so innocently be thrilled to see someone who engages with them, loves them and showers them with attention, but if you keep ‘training’ them to be happy to see you because of what they get from you rather than just being happy to see you then of course they will learn that lesson. 🙄 Might start to call in there a bit more regularly though as it is just round the corner from Badgers and on evenings when I have to take Tarly it makes far more sense to sit in her house for an hour and drink tea. Won’t give up my hour to myself to sit in the car reading and eating sweets when I don’t have to take Tarly though :lol:.

We collected Davies who had learnt more about first aid, recovery position and resucitation and then home for them to go to bed. Granny had also given them a book each so they had them as bedtime stories. Tarly was asleep really quickly but Ady had brought home a Hornby train set and the original Mousetrap game from a charity shop which we were busy setting up so we called Davies back downstairs to show him them resulting in a rather late night for him. 😆

I’ve photocopied and posted all the relevant paperwork for my laptop so that is all in hand and now I’m off to bed, I’ve training to attend tomorrow you know :).

It is the Day Of The Cough. Joyce’ll know what I mean. I’ve had the Day Of The Croaky Voice already where I like to sing Bonnie Tyler songs and admire how like her I sound, now I’m paying the price. But I also seem to be feeling a bit crap again tonight with a runny nose too. And am generally a bit shivery and grumpy. All can be explained by hormones though I reckon so hopefully I’ll be feeling better again tomorrow.

I did a quick dash into town this morning to move money about in bank accounts as Ady was working from home before going to college this afternoon and then Lucy came over with Richard and Rebecca for a few hours too. I was feeling fairly intolerant of four children talking over our conversations so tried to banish them to the playroom or their rooms (which actually I don’t think is that unfair really given they do have a bedroom each AND a playroom) but Davies made me laugh by suggesting that Lucy and I went somewhere else and they put the TV on because ‘that might keep us quiet!’ 😆 We ate popcorn, plenty of playing did go on although Scarlett failed in her efforts to get Rebecca to play with her which was a shame as she did try really hard. I’m sure it will all turn round again tomorrow though – those two rarely seem to want to play together at the same time :roll:. I’m rather playing up Davies’ ‘big boy’ status at the moment as he is by far the better for feeling older and more grown up than trying to bring himself down to the 2, 3 and 4 year olds so when I had a brief chat with him about understanding he didn’t want to play with the ‘babies’ all the time and that it was fine for him to find something he’d rather do and get on with it we created a little partition for him to do some unhassled colouring and dot to dot behind. It didn’t really work but I can see he is starting to want / need to seperate sometimes just as I have seen the older children do within our social circle when they were around his age and he and Scarlett were a couple of years younger. When it is just Scarlett and Davies at home they often play together for hours but it is always at a far ‘higher’ level than the games that get played in a group of younger children and actually I was watching Scarlett playing with her Barbies earlier and thinking that she is already far more creative and imaginative with her play than even Davies was at that age, so she is good company for him. But just as often they play apart and when playing alone his games are far more complicated and intense so I’m going to encourage him to feel free and happy to go off and do just that even when there are other children here rather than join in with the more babyish games and end up getting told off by me for adding a boisterousness and silliness to them which needn’t be there. Not sure if that makes sense really, but I know what I mean and it’s probably more an observation that he is needing to not be held back when he would rather not be than anything else I guess.

Lucy, R & R left, Davies xboxed, Tarly played with her Barbies, spending ages dressing and undressing them and then making them talk and move around – I love this age of unselfconscious play :). My laptop came back with the report to say it is definitely a fault with the machine and not something I had done to it, so that will be posted off tomorrow and hopefully a replacement will be sorted out soon. 🙂

Davies continues to play with numbers lots. He was telling me in the car yesterday all the number bonds to ten although he didn’t know that’s what they were. He knows that 5 20s make 100 so he counts up to 100 that way and has learnt to use his fingers to count all sorts of things. He is really enjoying playing about with numbers at the moment and finding patterns and ideas with them so that is nice to be watching. Scarlett counts along with him a lot of the time and demonstrates what I noticed in her from a fairly early age which is an ability to count things without actually counting them – she could look at 4 or 5 of something and know without starting at one and pointing to each of them that there is the right number just by sight. She is also better at adding one or two to something by continuing from her previous total, something that Davies has only just started to do – so if she had 4 and then you gave her 2 more she’d be able to say ‘five, six’ whereas he’d have had to have gone back to one again to count his new total. Fascinating stuff to witness. 🙂

And now I’m off to bed. I’m working in the morning and I have told my Granny that Scarlett and I will call round to see her while Davies is at Badgers tomorrow evening so that’s going to be a long old day.

Up and out bright and early this morning in a super organised fashion. First port of call was PC world where I had a helpful but ultimately unsatisfactory chat with a member of staff there about my laptop where he said that as I am out of my 1 year warranty they couldn’d do anything but it might be worth contacting Philips as the manufacturer. He did give me proof of purchase thought which I’d not been able to find anywhere at home. I was able to track back on my blog the exact date of getting it and quote that at him so he printed me off a copy receipt. Hurrah for the blog! 🙂 D&S were on their absolute best behaviour. Not sure if it was the begging and pleading beforehand, the fear of knowing how crazy I go regarding anything to do with my computer or just that they were in a behaving mood today but they stood almost silently beside me and then asked if they could go and play on the xbox 360 nearby. We then sat in the car in the carpark ringing round Philips, PC world customer services at head office and a local laptop repair service. We then drove to the local laptop repair place, spent ages trying to find somewhere to park, went through an estate agents to the basement where two lads who looked barely out of school age were surrounded in semi darkness by thousands of insides of computers and a French lad looked at my laptop. I was rather too busy being fascinated by his accent and gesticulations (very many gaelic shrugs in response to my requests for a prognosis) and his very amusing little beardy thing to pay much attention to what he was saying other than it would cost around £200 plus VAT to fix. So we left there. Rather rapidly. We drove a very long way round (no idea why I did that actually) to get to MM home ed group listening to Rotten Romans and Terrible Tudors on cd as we went with lots of asking what certain words meant along the way. All very educational.

We got to MM, Davies and Scarlett got stuck straight into painting and produced about 4 paintings each. Davies did a really good one of a load of fruit in a fruit bowl and another one that he wrote ‘DAD’ on for Ady, Scarlett did her usual trick of painting something really rather good and then adding just that little too much of a finishing touch to it so the good stuff underneath got rather disguised. But some nice colour mixing with Davies barely having to ask now ‘what makes green?’ before saying ‘oh yeah, blue and yellow’ before I even got to answer. I’d brought ingredients to make some bread rolls and some cream with containers and marbles for agitating to make some butter. Made the bread dough, pummelling all my PCWorld and laptop related rage out and then we shook the cream between about five of us to make a nice big load of butter. I love doing that, it never fails to astound even the most jaded adult to see it change before your eyes and although I’ve done it at least four times it still fascinates me as much as it did when I did it in infant school using the top of everyones little third of a pint bottles of milk. Not only do they not get the milk in school any more I imagine it would contravene all sorts of health and hygiene regulations as well as not being listed on the national curriculum so hurrah for Mrs Hart when I was Davies’ age being allowed to do cool stuff like that with her class 27 years ago! 🙂 See how far reaching the effects of that have been.

Davies and Scarlett had a great time there today, the not playing outside for them this time of year rule which took quite some getting used to finally seems to have sunk in and Scarlett plays really nicely with I, a little girl of a similar, perhaps slightly older age than her. Davies seems to exist fairly happily on the periphery of the boys there, dipping in when he wants to join in and then coming back out again for gentler pursuits and to catch up with Tarly again as he sees fit. I had about six cups of tea, enjoyed actually doing something propped up in the kitchen and really felt like part of the group – it was great. 🙂 And all my rolls got eaten. 🙂

We came home, talking loads more in the car as we went. We’ve had some really interesting conversations today although naturally I can’t recall a single one now :roll:. Davies really amused me by saying to me earlier ‘you know you said your laptop is dead Mummy? Well don’t worry, it had a really good life’ with a comforting pat to my arm. 😆 Once home D got straight on the xbox while S got out a princess jigsaw to do and I got on the phone to PCWorld again. This time I got somewhere and with a couple more phonecalls and another trip out the laptop is now in the hands of someone who will do me a report to say it is a fault rather than misuse which has led to it’s demise which should then get me a replacement from PC world. Will not get too excited about this yet though as I can’t possibly anticipate it being quite that easy. It is being returned along with the report tomorrow afternoon.

Back home again, with yet more interesting chats in the car, in time for tea before Beavers. Ady arrived home in time to stay with Tarly, I walked Davies round there and then came home again where it seemed to take most of the hour Davies was gone to talk Tarly into her pjs. 🙄 I went back to get him and was presented with a load of letters including one to say he will be invested next week 🙂 Also a pile of ones about various outings, camps and activity days, so that is all good. 🙂 As we started to walk away Davies was hailed by another Beaver yelling across the road in the dark to him ‘Bye Davies, see you next time!’ which made me feel all glowy 🙂 Davies says he doesn’t know anyone’s name yet but he has two good friends there already that he always plays with so that sounds pretty promising. I told him to ask them their names next week 😆 It’s amazing the difference same age and older children’s company has on him and his behaviour – today he has been so lovely having had peers to play with rather than an adoring audience of far younger children, whereas after a few days with Scarlett, Jack & Maisie, Richard & Rebecca he is tricky and difficult. I have observed this before and hopefully our regular Mondays at MM and Beavers, followed by Wednesdays at Badgers is enough to give him what he needs. I think there are definite positives to him spending time with younger children too but it needs to be balanced rather than as exclusive as it’s been of late. I think Scarlett alone is pretty good company for him, she is on the mature and imaginative side with her play anyway and easily brings herself up to his level but being the eldest (by far) of six children seems to do him no favours and tends to have him dropping to their collective level instead. I’ll try and identify his mates at Beaver’s parents next week when we go to watch him being invested and see if I can sort out an after school play meet up one evening as well maybe. If I feel I fail Davies at all then it is in allowing him to be a six year old boy, he does miss out on that hour a day in the playground he’d be getting at school and while the positives far outweigh that singular negative and I don’t think the answer is to sign him for some sort of extra curricular activity every evening it doesn’t hurt to be aware of it and try to do my best to compensate for it. I feel like we’re making progress with that one.

We said goodbye to his little friend and started to walk home with Davies saying ‘what shall we talk about now then Mummy? I know, volcanoes!’ so we did. And then I pulled a book off the shelf (I love how all those Book People sets I invested in when he was about 3 are suddenly coming into use – we probably have at least two reference books in the house on any given topic – we’re better equipt that the children’s reference in my library!) which answered some more of his questions, then Ady took him off upstairs to show him where Russia is on the globe in reference to something about weather so we ended the day on a high educational note too. Bedtime stories for them both by Ady tonight.

I’m now working my way through realising what I will have lost with the demise of the laptop – all the decent photos are on flickr, all my email addresses (I think) are on this old laptop I’m using now so if I get a new one rather than a repair I can copy them across, everything else I’ll have to live without and maybe finally learn a lesson about backing things up onto disc. 😉

Had a really nice day today. We made fairly last minute arrangements with Chris and Julie to go for a winter walk with them at our usual woodland haunt this morning, meeting at the ridiculously early hour for a Sunday of 10am. Somehow we were at our most efficient ever in leaving the house and arrived a full ten minutes early. So we started to walk around the entrance and looked at various fungus, small bugs, moss, fox and mouse droppings and so on. Ady worked as a game keeper many, many years ago and has a pretty good knowledge of nature-type stuff and considering how un-outdoors-y I’d think of us generally we probably do spend a fair amount of time doing woodland walks through the year so the children have a pretty good knowledge of nature-y stuff through the changing seasons.

Chris, Julie, Jack and Maisie arrived and we headed into the woods for our walk. It was loads muddier than I’d been anticipating so although everyone else was wellied up and coped well I was a bit more dainty treading between the muddy puddles in my DMs. We stood and watched the ducks for ages and then walked round to where there has been a ‘camp’ built with tall sticks all through the summer and autumn. It had been dismantled much to Julie and I and the children’s dismay but all the sticks were still strewn around nearby so we set to and rebuilt it. Chris mainly stood and took the piss, Ady mainly stood and took photos, the kids veered between helping and hindering before losing interest (except Davies) but we did a pretty fine job of it we thought. See it all over on flickr along with every other photo we took today indiscriminately loaded up cos I’m having computer problems so they are safer there for the time being and I don’t have time to be all selective with them right now. We talked about how we would finish the camp if we were building it as a genuine shelter with woven bracken and mud and leaves daubed on top, at which Davies’ eyes lit up and we promised we might come back and do in the spring. Actually I have seen several workshops advertised lately for camp / den / shelter building in woods so maybe I should investigate that for him.

We walked leisurely back to the carpark with everyone at their own pace and the speedier walkers waiting for the slower paced ones on a chopped down tree trunk before saying our goodbyes and going our seperate ways. Julie and I have planned to come back again the week after next when we may well sneakily do some more work on our camp :lol:.

Ady and the children came home to wash Ady’s car and get dinner on, while I went and did the food shopping for February. I normally really struggle to get everything in one trolley which is a nightmare and ends up with me never fitting back in again bagged up properly so trying to push a trolley with bags in each hand too. This time I was more sensible and filled one trolley, queued and paid for it, loaded it into the car and then went back in and started again with the second. Still well within budget but a good £50 more than we’ve been spending. The organic meat is definitely costlier but we’re noticing a real difference in taste so even if our conscience wasn’t sufficient to break the frugality our tastebuds won’t let us now ;). We have started to use our under the stairs cupboard as a larder though, with loads of tinned and other dried goods stored there and it does seem rather crammed so I’ve a feeling I have topped up with far more than a month’s supply of some stuff, which means March will be cheap at least :lol:.

We had our roast dinner and Frazer never appeared despite me sending a couple of texts and calling the house. So after dinner, ever conscious that my parents would likely ring either today or tomorrow I called over there to check that everything was ok. It does really annoy me that I feel obliged to check on a 30 year old man but he has recreational habits that dictate I would fret about him alone in the house unheard of for a couple of days and I know I would get an earbashing if he’d failed to turn up and I hadn’t chased it up when my parents do ring :roll:. I scared the living daylights out of him appearing in the kitchen though, so got my evil cackle out of that one ;). He was fine and had been sleeping off the excesses of a Saturday night, we had a brief chat, the house looks fine and I was able to leave confident I have been a good big sister. I’m even going round to see my granny with Tarly on Wednesday while Davies is at Badgers, so I am fulfilling all my promises to my mum to look after everyone while she’s away…

The children had a bath and instead of tidying up the marble run they’d been playing with Ady and I had a marble run building championship tournament instead. I built a plastic one and a wooden one and Ady built a plastic one and then the children judged them and ranked them first, second and third when they got out of the bath. I reign supreme at marble run engineering :lol:. Bed and stories for the children, a bath and a fruitless hunt for the receipt for my laptop for me and Ady. The laptop is not at all well and will be being taken to PCworld in the morning with hopes of a speedy and cheap recovery. In the meantime this blog is brought to you by way of my old laptop which is fine other than not having wireless abilities so is tied to the router with a phone cable. This will severely hamper my online activity, so I may be gone some time. Wish me well!!

which is what I am known as elsewhere but in the context of this blog is a Nic none of you are familiar with. She has children but they are not in the vicinity or earshot (which with one of those children being Davies is rare indeed 😉 ), her clothes are not necessarily those of a Mummy, she wears a name badge and talks in joined up speaking. Why she has A Life Outside The Home, she Earns A Wage, she Talks About Things Other Than Her Offspring, she wears her pants on the outside. Well ok I lied about the pants! 😆

Had a lie in this morning then got dressed and wafted about the place for a while. I helped Tarly with a puzzle and set Davies up on a Sponge Bob Square Pants game on the laptop, then I walked into town to the hairdressers. She’s nice the new hairdresser, I’ve been to her twice, she replaced the one I went to before who used to talk to me about nightclubs and stuff. This one is only 19 too but she is more of your sensible settled 19 year old, she’s getting married later this year and everything. No nightclubs for her, she spends her evenings poring over bridal magazines and colour charts. 😆 And she doesn’t bloody listen when you tell her what you want her to do with your hair!!!!! grr.

When I went last time I blamed myself for not being explicit enough about what I wanted so this time I was very clear. I wanted to keep the length but have LOTS OF LAYERS cut in. I wash my hair every night and it dries naturally, I then sleep on it and whatever has happened to it during the night is the style I sport the next day. I rarely, if ever brush it, if it looks crap then I put it up, if it looks okay then I leave it down, if I am working I tend to do something with the front involving hair grips. Therefore it requires a fairly decent cut every so often to allow it to be neglected like this and not look as though it is neglected. It has a quite nice wave to it which lends itself well to lots of layers but the top ones need to be fairly short otherwise it can tend to go bushy. So I made all this clear, settled into the chair for random chatter about whether I had a nice Christmas, where I’m going on holiday this year and the weather. Before I knew it she had put her scissors away and got the blow drier out. I sat for a few moments debating whether to ask her to ‘get those scissors straight back out again missy and cut some more bloody layers in like I asked you to’ but chickened out. So she dried it all nice and straight and swishy, I’ve now washed it and it looks as though nothing had been done to it. Grr. Need to find another hairdresser… I even hacked a bit more out myself having observed her layer cutting technique (and was quite proud of it) but I’m way too scared to do any more incase I do something dreadful which takes months to grow out and means I have to wear a wig for Kirsty’s wedding. 😆 She did at least have more hairdressing knowledge than Ady who looked at me just now as it all dried curly again and said ‘well what was the point in that then? You didn’t have it cut straight at all, it’s gone all curly again now’. Er, no darling, you can’t have hair cut straight, that’d be all in the drying 😆

I then had an hour to wander about the charity shops looking for the perfect bag for next weekend which eluded me before going into work. It was one of those days I am familiar with from retail days where clearly all the nutters in town had been let out for the day. We had them all in this afternoon, which if nothing else was an excellent bonding exercise for all the staff rolling their eyes and giggling about people after they were safely out of earshot! I had a bit of training and was told I can go on the Enquiry Desk soon. This is quite a Big Thing I understand. A colleague who recently left to go to another library had been there for over 6 months working twice as many hours as me and was still not allowed on the Enquiry Desk whereas I’ve only been there a month and a half and was already dealing with a couple of enquiries this afternoon. I was told by my boss that I ‘seem to be doing really well – I’m very conscious that I can leave you to get on with things and you do them without me worrying about you.’ And I have completed several tasks in record speed this week too, so that’s all good. 🙂

Ady and the children came in 15 minutes or so before we shut to choose some books and a film each including ‘beeping’ them themselves. They seem to be regarded very indulgently by colleagues which is nice and they have always loved the library so it is really nice that they are able to get a bit more sneaky inside peeks at the workings of it too. Davies chose Stuart Little 3 as his film (I watched the first with them – not dreadful but not great, by the second I was feeling very rodented out and this one is not only flogging a dead mouse so to speak but is fully cartoon animated rather than using real people like the first two) so that was watched when we got home, then some wildlife programme about wildebeest which led to discussions about food chains and circle of life type stuff. I always fret we may have potential vegatarians when such programmes come up and they get upset about the baby gazelle being eaten by the crocodile and I feel duty bound to cite our own consumption of pigs, cows, lambs, chickens etc as examples but actually so far that has always seemed to put it back into perspective – and my wonderful explanation that if the crocodiles stopped eating the gazelles they would die anyway because there would be too many gazelles eating all of whatever plant is their foodstuff so lots of them would starve to death seemed to do the trick. No one tell them about lentils, please okay? 😆 Ady read Scarlett her library books and I read Davies his, then we had steak and chips for dinner while watching Love Hurts which was something we watched when we were very first together. We started watching it during the six weeks we lived with my parents before we bought this house and got hooked and carried on for the early days of living here. It is really dated now but feels quite nostalgic to watch and remember where we were when we watched it the first time so I got the first series on dvd from work. I know, I know, it’s not like us to be so sentimental ;).

Tomorrow we’re meeting Chris, Julie, Jack and Maisie for a woodland walk. Jack has the pox (started developing spots the same day as you Lucy – could it have been caught at FJ do you think?) and Maisie has a fractured elbow from a bed acrobatics incident – oh learn from this little bed jumping children. Then my brother is supposed to come over for dinner later in the day. So a very familytastic day lined up to end the week.

He’s woken up almost entirely rash free today – hurrah! 🙂

I’ve just spent time trawling through the blog to find when they had rashes before. Tarly has had it twice, both times I’ve attributed it to a reaction to a different bubble bath which seems fairly logical.

Davies has had it three times, once in September, once in May and once in January. The May one seemed to be in reaction to grass or hayfever related with contact with The Outdoors bringing it on and making it worse to back that up. The September one and this one are both at the tail end of a cold – could it be some post-viral reaction or similar? With the exception of hayfever for them both they don’t have any allergies I’m aware of and if it was some sort of different food or drink they were reacting to I’d have picked it up, I’m sure but they’ve not eaten anything different to normal so unless it is in some way related to his cold I can’t find any connections. But anyway he is blemish free once more so hurrah! 🙂

which no, you can breath a sigh of relief I am not about to rewrite the lyrics to match 😆

D’s rash is still ever present. He had a long soak in a bath which Ady ran and got Matey bubble bath added to (I’d have done plain water or some lavender oil or something equally new-age-y 😉 ) so it all flared back up again. We smothered him in E45 cream and he went off to sleep ok, hopefully a quiet weekend with some full on ‘Daddy Time’ tomorrow will sort him out, poor lamb. 🙁

We never did make the chocolate cookies but I did do lots of geomagging with them and we managed a really generally nice day. I’ve emailed my Granny and texted with Frazer inviting him over for Sunday lunch so all granddaughterly / sisterly duties have been taken care of.

Tomorrow I get to be OtherNic – I’m having my hair cut and blow dried in the morning and then working in the afternoon. All with the comfortable safety net of Ady at home with children. And I’ll be with colleague-from-yesterday-I-didn’t-do-a-good-job-of-explaining-HE-to aswell so a chance to put that one right. It’ll be good. 🙂

The rash continues although it appears to be doing what rashes of the past have done and working it’s way out of his body. These rashes always seem to start on the children’s trunks and necks, working their way down their limbs and up their faces, finally ending in their hairlines, ear tips and chins, fingers and toes. Davies now has puffy fingers and toes, ankles, wrists and forehead.

We had a lovely day planned with Ros and co, finally visiting Shinies for the first time followed by an afternoon and evening in their company. It would have done Davies the world of good to spend some ‘boy’ time with Adam, he is totally overloaded on girl company just lately, Scarlett would have adored being with Amelia and especially Ellie (she loves Ellie) and I would have got to catch up with Ros which is long overdue 🙁 Sadly it wasn’t to be, even though I know the rash is Davies specific and not contagious we all still have our cold and he does look fairly disfigured and is very tired so wouldn’t have been great company. Will organise a re-run of it very soon though.

So the kids are having a pj day, to be followed by an early bath and clean pjs later. We’ve watched back to back films – Cat in the Hat, My Little Pony (Ali, we really, really must give you that back. Really :lol:), animated Cat in the Hat and Grinch and now some Discovery Kids – going to put something else on in a minute – quite fancy something like Incredibles or Toy Story that we’ve not seen for a while. I made a vat of popcorn – we usually use the microwave stuff but we’d run out and I’d bought a bag of popping corn in one of my frugal moments so I opened that and made a HUGE pan full of it (goes a long way doesn’t it – if I popped that whole bag it would fill a room!) and some home made toffee sauce to pour over it. May have been foolish as I’m not sure either of them will welcome the microwave stuff again! I’ve had a request from the floor for chocolate chip cookies too so I might slip off and do that in a minute. I’ve caught up a bit on the laundy, lit a fire and drunk cups and cups and cups of tea. Davies is now playing with the geomags and appears to be quite a bit better, Scarlett is playing at making music on some kiddie website or another. What has happened though is after a really pants week of clashes between me and Davies ending with him being really horrid at Lucy’s on Wednesday he has suddenly become a little boy again needing his Mummy not feeling well, so last night he snuggled up beside me while I ate my dinner and today he spent hours curled up next to me or across my lap while I stroked his itchy back. Don’t know what he is allergic to, but I was having a reaction to his behaviour this week and this appears to have got things back on track again. 🙂

We all slept well but didn’t seem to feel any the better for it this morning. Scarlett woke up coughing just before my alarm was due to go off. She didn’t actually want to get out of bed though so I went back to bed for ten minutes too. Davies came and joined me and answered the phone when Ady rang to say good morning.

We all got dressed and headed off to collect Lucy, R and R, I dropped them all back here and headed off to work. One of those mornings which felt like I’d already done the day’s work before I got there and it was almost a relief to arrive and be told what to do with my time by someone else. I had a slightly dissatisfying conversation with a colleague about HE – she has four children and is very child-focussed so I expected her to understand if not agree with the whole thing and have been waiting for the conversation to take place as she was the last remaining colleague to have not mentioned it. Instead we ended up dwelling on the (perceived) negatives with me feeling a) slightly defensive and trying hard not to let that come across and b) utterly bored and exhausted of explaining the same point over again for the nth time in recent weeks. There was recently a thread on an internet forum I’m on about HE and whether it should be more governed which left me feeling much the same way. Frustrated that people either couldn’t get what I was saying, or at the very least seem to want to try and simulataneously wish that I could just exchange the name of my children’s school with other parents instead of being different. Really hard to argue the point of how great HE is when actually you have had a bad week with your school age child being around all the time, you are tired and would like nothing more, right now, than to have packed them off to school secure in the knowledge that you are not relying on a variety of childcare made up of favours so that you can go to work. Yep, one of those days. All compounded by the realisation that having thought I’d sorted childcare for next week I hadn’t realised that actually I am on a full day course on Thursday a 20 miles drive away with no childcare options and Ady ringing me at lunchtime to tell me he was going to be away again all that day. Think it is sorted now, and of course my parents get back at the end of next week which should get things back to some sort of normal again. I remember waiting for life to return to normal after having Davies and then realising that actually it never did, you just found a new normal. The same thing happened with Scarlett was born, when we moved to Manchester, when we moved back, when we started down the path to HE. What feels to me like normal life nowadays is such a far cry from what I would have ever considered normal 5 years ago or even anticipated as possible. So I’m not waiting for things to get back to normal really, just waiting for our ‘new normal’ to show itself perhaps.

Otherwise I had a good day at work with a couple of phonecalls home. I was praised for being super quick and efficient at several tasks and enjoyed some banter with some of the regular customers who are starting to become familiar faces to me, as I imagine I am to them. I wore new (to me – ebay) boots to work and at lunchtime was surprised to realise they were not hurting, but by 3pm they were really rubbing. I recall at least two jobs in the past where saying you were tired or your feet hurt were really looked down on, infact stating I was tired having been getting up at 5am to be in central London for two full weeks was cited as one of the reasons for my parting company with one very short lived employer. So when I mentioned my new boots were rubbing a bit to my boss I immediately wished I could take the words back. I went off to tea with her sympathetic words ringing in my ears and came back to find she’d found me some tasks to do sitting down! 😯 Oh it’s such a different environment to what I’m used to – these people seem almost human! 😆

I came home and repaid Ali for Davies and Scarlett minding with a shared bottle of red wine, vegan suitable snacks (oh and bacon flapjacks made with lard! 😉 ) and then gave viewing of my two wedding outfit choices for Ady and Ali to vote on with new upholstery underwear. Ali chose the same one as me, leaving Ady alone in his selection, which I think clinches it really. Although I may end up bringing both and dashing round the hotel in the morning getting random people to vote too :lol:.

Ady took Ali and Freya home, I got the children ready for bed, Scarlett fell asleep and Davies came back downstairs again. 🙄 He started to develop a rash (hives like, itchy, allergic reaction to something rash) at lunchtime and Lucy administered drugs, it had subsided a fair bit when I got home but has since gotten worse again this evening. He has had it before and it is clearly a Davies specific reaction to something rather than any sort of contagious thing which may or may not have totally disappeared by the morning. So he sat with us while we had dinner and watched property programmes before going up to bed when Ady did. And I’m about to join them myself.

Chris Price 🙂

otherwise entitled, ‘Mummy, was does delightful mean?’ – anyone guess what our weather and therefore song of the day was? 😆

Ady woke me all little-boy excited at about 6am to tell me it was snowing and once the children were awake there was no hope of staying in bed while they amused themselves with Nick jr – not when there was snow outside! So unless I wanted social services called by well meaning neighbours as my offspring played on the front lawn in their pjs and bare feet I had to get up. We had planned to go to soft play with Lucy and co but Davies and Scarlett were not at all tempted by such ideas. We wrapped up warm – even Scarlett was persuaded by three layers of tops, a coat, a scarf, a hat and socks! But couldn’t find gloves anywhere. I also had a need for upholsery underwear and enough money left in my budget to fund it and some sort of dinner tonight so we dashed over to M&S and Tescos before heading over to Lucy’s. Before going out Scarlett did some Barbie.com-ing and Davies and I did some more online games, including some that Davies has seen Lije doing and remembered. He’s enjoying various logic based games at the moment, along with a bit of a leap and bound along the letters and numbers path too, so I’m forgiving some challenging behaviour as a phase along with a bit of an overdose of female company of late.

I chose a couple of very figure flattering sets of underwear which required trying on so we headed to the fitting rooms – staffed by an ex member of staff of mine when I worked for a large high street retailer. So that was nice to be recognised as a former boss while having two children, dressed for antartic exploration hanging off me while I wore a silly hat and wanted to try on figure flattering underwear. Oh but it got worse :lol:. For a while Tarly has been showing an interest in my body – Davies is largely oblivious and doesn’t seem to pay much attention at all to me wondering round naked but Scarlett is more curious, particularly as she anticipates growing some of the same features I have 😆 So I have had several comments lately, bourne out of utter curiosity about the size of various bits of me, which I have tried to handle as best I can. Today she decided to be complementary however. We were in a fitting room which was huge and divided by a curtain, with the sort of all round mirrors in the Trinny and Susannah show. D & S were perched on a bench seat observing while I stripped off and struggled, in the sort of unflattering manourveres while naked I wouldn’t subject Ady to watching so will probably have them both in therapy with all sorts of future issues. Davies was being – totally unrelatedly – annoying and bumping into Scarlett so I sent him the other side of the curtain with lots of hissing at him about behaviour and then went back to struggle into the second underwear thing at which point Scarlett looked at me with true love flowing and said ‘Mummy, you have lovely boobs’ in a rather loud four year old voice. So that was nice. 😆 I ended up calling Davies back in so he could add his vote to Tarly’s about which underwear made my tummy look least like it had a new sibling for them cooking in it just to further titilate any eavesdroppers outside including my previous subordinate. And there was me not an hour earlier worrying about them playing in the snow inappropriately attired!

We dashed round Tesco gathering up soup and crusty bread and cakes to take to Lucy’s for warming up after snow playing and new gloves each for the children. And arrived at Lucy’s a mere half an hour after we’d been expected 😉 (sorry Luce!). We went to the green area at the back of their house and had a bit of a snowball fight, made possibly the world’s smallest snowman and generally messed about in the snow for half an hour or so.

The children would have continued for longer but I needed the loo and some tea so we went inside and joined Lucy, R & R who had already been out once so hadn’t stayed as long as us. Lots of playing in various combinations, lots of eating of aforementioned soup, bread and cakes and lots of chatting for Lucy and I.

We left there with time to get home, have some tea for the children and get changed into Badger uniform for D and pjs and blanket for S then off to Badgers. Davies went in and learnt about the recovery position while Tarly and I stayed in the car with the heater on reading a pile of books and writing on the steamed up car windows. Home for milk and watching a shark diving show on BBC2 and me trying repeatedly to light a fire until it finally caught.

Sometime during the evening I conceeded that yes I did indeed have a sore throat and maybe my tiredness was more than lack of sleep so I’m clearly going down with the children’s cold. Ady tells me long distance that he feels the same so at least we’ll have it out of the way for next weekend I guess. So, I’ll be off to bed then.

All round. Children were feeling better and we got out and about which made us all better generally. Ady had to go to a couple of local garden centres this morning so when he told me that last night I decided we’d go with him. One has a large pet section with loads of fish and small animals which I knew the children would enjoy looking at. So this morning we were up and out fairly early doing that. Whilst looking at the rabbits a woman with twins in a pushchair (around 2 ish I guess) struck up a conversation with me about how she can’t wait until her two are out of the pushchair and not just trying to make a run for it in different directions. It reminded me that it is not that long ago that I couldn’t just decide to go off out with the two of them and not worry about that myself – strange how quickly you forget the epic-ness of leaving the house with very small children needing pushchairs, nappies, snacks etc. and how ‘going for a walk’ with Tarly at the weekend genuinely was ‘going for a walk’ of a couple of miles all told. I love having children rather than babies or toddlers. 🙂 We chatted about various things to do with the fish, reptiles and small mammals we saw including the tropical and cold water fish, the fish which clean the sides of the tank – algae eaters and what albino means having looked a fine example of one as a rabbit.

Ady dropped us home and went to collect some logs. I called into my parents house on the way past to check everything was ok. Frazer was supposed to be coming for dinner tonight but cancelled as he is feeling crap with a cold. My parents rang last night having just arrived in Buenos Aires (sp?) on about the third or fourth hotel so far. They seemed to be enjoying it but said it was a very busy trip.

Home for lunch and the children quickly got engrossed in some game with wooden blocks and fuzzy felt. Scarlett got out some magnetic word tiles and played with them for a while spotting letters from her name and Davies’ – as the car is always steamed up at this time of year they are doing lots of writing on the windows and she always asks him to write his name so I assume it won’t be long before she can write that too. 🙂

I have been doing bits of ebaying, spending the money I made on selling those clothes and the first of two dresses arrived for me this morning. Hopefully the other will arrive tomorrow. As I then needed shoes to go with it and am still craving the actual real life shopping experience I decided that as some of the transfered from paypal money arrived in my bank account this morning I would allow myself a bit of retail therapy – that was my deal with myself after all. 🙂 So on bribery of a small present if they behaved we drove to a nearby town with three shops all of which sell clothes that suit my size and budget. 😉 I ended up buying another dress, some shoes, some funky tights and a new top for work – all in the sale and all for not much more than one of my suits had sold for on ebay. 🙂 The children were rewarded in the charity shop with a Roddy from Flushed Away Happy Meal toy for Davies – the one character he didn’t already have, and a brand new mosiac craft kit for Tarly with various shaped gems and a box and some photo frames to decorate with them – all for under 2 quid! 🙂

In the car we had an interesting conversation about first memories – mine is my brothers Christening, which led onto what a Christening is and why you would have them and why D&S have not. Which led onto why I don’t believe in God and what I do believe in. Which somehow led to actually how does the seed get from the man into the woman to meet the egg to make a baby? 😯 I started from the beginning explaining about testicles, ovaries etc which took us away from the more tricky question (I would happily tell them both but am unsure they have the maturity to use such knowledge wisely! :lol:) and moved us onto puberty and signs of it instead. They were reassured that they do indeed have all the bits already inside them, that they will not wake up one morning menstruating with developed breasts / hairy of chest and dropped of voice and balls by which point we had arrived at the car park and they had started to lose interest anyway. Phew! I think.

Once home – during the return journey we had a rather more sobering conversation about precisely why I need to concentrate when I’m driving so I don’t crash and that them squabbling in the back of the car does not assist in such concentration – ably exampled to Davies as the same as when Tarly is being all noisy while he’s trying to play X box and it puts him off, but the consequences of losing a life on the game are rather more serious in real life – we had a tidy up session and then Davies went off to introduce Roddy to the rest of the Flushed Away gang while Tarly got busy with the glue and mosaics and started working on a photoframe. I played some online mahjong which Davies came and joined in with for a while by which time Ady was home and their tea was ready. Ady brought with him a bargain of his own – a pair of purple dms with stars in Davies’ size, just need a pair of laces. 🙂

Tonight we have watched a rather odd film and tomorrow Ady is off again overnight leaving me home alone again. 🙁 Me and the children are off to soft play with Lucy and co so at least they will work some of their bounce off and I should get them to bed at a decent hour. 🙂

Just heard about this on the radio. Feel much better (if rather snuffly) now. 🙂

I keep watching programmes about different lifestyles and hunter/gatherer outdoorsy type of pursuits and deciding that although what we have is less than we used to we still have way too much. Really hankering after a camping trip and some time away from all things electronic and plastic :lol:.

Scarlett was awake again in the night, coughing. They are both still fairly miserable although it does just appear to be a cold so I had pretty much decided not to go out today which was decided totally be realising one of their car seats was still in Ady’s car anyway – so no MM for us today. I’d already offered the children the option of going out to group or staying home and watching films and they’d gone for the films option anyway. So we / they have watched Shrek 2, something with Barbie and a Brum video. I made some cheese scones for lunch and some flapjacks. I read a book for a while although it was stinking of cigarettes (one from the library and funnily enough one of my colleagues was talking about how some books come back reeking of smoke and I said I’d not noticed it before. I could smell cigarettes in the bath last night and couldn’t work it out, deciding it must just be the fire, but realised this morning it would have been the book I was reading. Made my fingers smell too – urgh 🙁 I then felt the need to do something other than sit behind my laptop so I got the hama beads out ( very boosted by some donations from Alison a while back and Merry last week 🙂 ) and we all did that for a while but got bored around the same time as each other so tidied that away again. This time of year always makes me wish I had some sort of crafty hobby like knitting that I could be getting on with – I love to read but it always makes me appear absent to A and the children as I get immersed in it – something to fiddle with while still able to talk or watch tv with then would be ideal – and something non messy like my papier mache or modelling projects so I can still sit on the sofa with it. I think I have some knitting needles and wool around somewhere, might dig it out and have another go or try and come up with some sort of sewing project again.

Right, need to go and sort out some food for the children before Beavers for D. Oh and Dr Dog is on with a hypnotiser, just incase D had forgotten all about that. 🙄

We are sliding ever more towards later bedtimes for the children, the knock on effect of which is that they tend to sleep later in the mornings too – all good :). Scarlett has had a couple of disturbed nights though this week and last night was one of them. Both the children seem to have gone down with a cold in the last two days and she was awake last night complaining of being cold. Ady dealt with it although it kept me awake too so I was glad that no one woke until 8.30am in the end. Ady slept in while I got up with them.

We snuggled on the sofa and watched Croc Files (oh Steve 🙁 ) and chatted a bit about that then we made a wacky wiggler thing together. We’d made one following the instructions yesterday but had clearly not pushed the bits together firmly enough as it kept falling apart – this time we got it spot on so all took great delight in that. Davies and Ady talked a bit about the whole gears side of it and the part of each individual cog in the whole thing being so small and yet so important. Davies read the names of the various creations in the instruction book with minimal help. I’ve noticed a real leap forward in his working out words – for ages he would just repeat the individual letter sounds and not really blend them, now he seems to break them into syllables fairly easily and then blend those – all steps forward :).

Ady got up then, I got dressed and the kids and I made pancakes together while singing ‘Fiesta‘ very loudly in the kitchen – perfect pancake making sound track that 🙂 put me in mind of that Morcombe and Wise breakfast making to music sketch from years ago. Until Davies took the whizzer out of the batter mix while it was still whizzing so he could see how it whizzed 🙄 Fortunately it cleared up pretty quick and I calmed down sufficiently to show him how it worked and explain why it was blades and how I’d originally bought it to whizz up his baby food long, long ago but it also served the purpose of mixing and blending too.

Ady went off to collect some logs while Tarly played on the pc (My Little Pony, Barbie and various other pink and very fluffy websites :)) and Davies and I had a go at draughts. I used to love playing with my Dad when I was little and Ady and I have gone through phases of draught playing championships over the years too. I’ve tried to show him before but he always gets bored of the rules and tries to create his own game loosely based on draughts which I run out of patience for. We managed one game with him getting some of the idea of thinking a move or two ahead and tactical playing. The set also contains chess pieces and he decided he wants to learn that but as I do not know how to play that (my Dad didn’t so I never seemed to learn that one) Ady will have to do that.

Ady brought home a couple of grabber things (the sort people who collect litter use to grab it from the ground and put it in their sack) from the trade show he was at which have proved a great hit with the children so we were reaching things on high shelves with them today. 🙂 We got down a Kitchen Science kit which is from at least three Christmasses ago and had a play with some of the experiments in that. There was a cold tea (from the teapot 😉 ) one where you added various acids and alkalines to it and tested them with litmus paper, mixing oil and water and then adding things like syrup, food colouring etc which was very pretty and has possibly inspired us to create on of those egg timer style lava lamp thingies if we can find a suitable container and finally an experiment on mould where we have put two pieces of bread in sealed bags in the fridge – one with salt and one without, and two pieces on the mantlepiece as a warm place, again one with salt and one without to see which conditions are best for growing mould in. Felt a bit contrived really as it was all very following instructions and what they actually wanted to do was just mix up loads of stuff and not really care about the scientific explanations but somehow because it was a proper set with test tubes and everything I couldn’t bring myself to allow that 😆

Davies then played X box, Ady cooked dinner and Scarlett and I went out for a walk to go and buy some wine. We walked into Lancing (about a mile) chatting as we went about all sorts of things. She is a very different child to Davies and where conversation with him is as easy as with another adult and always seems to have been so I tend to get more childlike responses from Scarlett and conversations are more along the usual walking down the road with a four year old variety of observing things along the way and asking random questions as you go. When we hit the main street she suddenly started letter spotting everywhere – road markings, road signs, drain covers etc and was 100% reliable in spotting the letters in the word SCARLETT and also found a couple from other words such as a D for Davies and a N for Nic – she knows A, B and X from the x box controllers and knows the names of several of the letters in her name too. We went round the shop, queued for ages it’s a little Somerfield which is always busy no matter what time you go in there, and then walked home again. Scarlett did not stop talking for the entire time we were out. 😆 She takes the term ‘chatterbox’ to a whole new level that child. We agreed it had been a very nice walk and arrived home to find a motorbike in our drive announcing a visitor. Tarly predictably tried to climb onto it but was persuaded into the house to see who it belonged to. It was our friend Bruce, who’s wedding we went to nearly a year ago. He was deep in conversation with Ady in the kitchen which seemed very confidential and stopped rather when I came in, so I busised myself in the lounge with the children doing online colouring in of ponies with Tarly and left them to talk.
Lovely roast beef dinner then a peaceful afternoon / evening with more pc games. I showed Davies some of gamegarage and we played several logic and platform games requiring thinking moves through before making then which he seemed to enjoy, there is no doubt that his xbox gaming has brought out a new level to his skills in that area. He has also been asking and talking lots about numbers, playing with multiplication and addition lots and counting up ever higher. He asked me today if there was such a number as 2001 and how long would it take to count to it, so I explained where it was and that actually he could count to it himself if he wanted to, he’s also been adding up 11s. I overheard Ady counting in 3s earlier (no idea what he was counting) and Davies saying ‘you’re missing out numbers Daddy, that’s not how you count’ so Ady explained and I’m sure that will have gone in and resurface at some future point too.
Ady took Scarlett off to bed with bedtime stories while Davies and I watched Ray Mears together, then we have had bath, toast for tea and various bits and pieces of tv watching. It’s been a very nice weekend. 🙂

Just watched – finally – the last episode of Dr Who. For some reason we missed it when it first went out and never managed to catch up on the repeats. So I borrowed it from work and we’ve just watched it. Ady has gone to bed, still laughing at me for crying at it. 😆

It’s been an interesting week really. I had a bit of a house of cards (or so it felt to me anyway, maybe I’m rather too used to being let down) arrangement set up for childcare for my one and a half days working but that all went splendidly. I had a couple of lovely evenings in Merry’s company, got to drink wine around the children yesterday with Ali (love proper socialising with someone I only really get to see in daylight hours normally 🙂 ) and had an excellent day at work yesterday. A few new faces have been put infront of me at work the last two weeks and broadened my horizons slightly with regard to the whole thing so that is making me feel rather more positive. There is a particularly interesting woman who normally only works weekends but has been around a bit during mid week and I am finding really lovely to be getting to know and yesterday I felt much more like I was getting immersed in the whole job generally. So that’s all positive – will blog about that a bit more maybe soon as I have more to say but will save it for a post all of it’s own. 🙂

We had Class Visits yesterday though with children from year one – Davies’ age and that was rather illuminating 😯 rather too many shades of battery farming for my comfort levels. The most shocking bit was when they needed to make all the children be quiet at the end of a story and the teacher announced ‘one, two, three, RABBITS!’ and they all fell silent 😯 Again something I anticipate coming back to and I know the ratio of adults to children requires some level of crowd control but still…

It’s been a good week generally for Home Education. I’ve done a lot of talking about it, some of it preaching to the converted, some of it telling the curious but doubtful and some of it defending in the style of an online rant. As ever when I have talked about it a fair bit I am feeling fired up, passionate, zealous and empowered by the whole thing so prepare for plenty of evangelical ‘ I have found the one true path’ style blog posts :lol:.

Lucy was here with D & S in the morning, handing over to Ali and Freya in the afternoon. The children seem to be actually be positively thriving on the childcare arrangements so far which is good. 🙂 I’ve done some very productive ebaying getting a pair of replacement boots suitable for workwear, wedding outfits for me, Davies and Scarlett (none of which have arrived or been tried on yet so are subject to change 🙂 ) and the Wacky Wigglers all with the proceeds of my ebay selling so that is good. 🙂

Today we have caught up with being just the four of us and this particular four of us given the array of people passing through the house this week, caught up on sleep, popped out for a few bits of shopping supplies and generally lolled about. More of the same planned for tomorrow. 🙂 Oh and maybe some baking, been ages since I did any of that. 🙂

Blogging from work in my lunchbreak 🙂

Ady back tonight so may not be around online 😉

Having a lovely morning so far and can’t wait until I am important enough to use the computers whenever I like. Can you imagine the blogging potential?

‘Just had an old woman in returning the latest Danielle Steele novel – she says it’s good but not as good as that Titanic one she wrote. Right off to put some travel guides to Latvia back on the shelves now’ 😆 It’d be great :).

Does mean I need to sort links back into my side bar so I can find everyone else though – oh and get used to IE again!

Went the wind and whoosh went the week. Can’t believe it’s Thursday already.

Merry and girls arrived on Tuesday afternoon and stayed until after lunch today. It’s been a lovely couple of days with all the children seeming to get on really well. Lots of dressing up, playing with the castle and colliseum, Barbies and Polly Pockets and a fair bit of film viewing. There was some sort of Fimo masterclass for Tarly with Fran teaching her to make fairies (Davies just got on with it and made a Wallace and a Gromit :lol:) and I think pretty much all fall outs were between siblings.

Lucy, Richard and Rebecca joined us today which was nice and Lucy stuck around after Merry and co left and helped me work round the house restoring order and collecting lost property (three socks, two tops, two pairs of trousers, that angel teddy (which Scarlett is convinced is a ‘dead teddy’ :lol:, a wooden doll – will bring them to Sheffield unless any of it is desperate to be posted?).

Merry and I managed 4.30am on Wednesday morning and 3.30am today before retiring to bed. Not so bad this morning as I don’t think either of us emerged much before 10am although I know I was getting visited by children so I’m fairly sure she was too. Yesterday was slightly less sensible as I worked in the morning, so was standing behind the counter in the library a mere 4 hours after having gone to sleep feeling every one of my 33 years 😆 and more!

Merry bought a lovely selection of her new beads and bits to coo over and play with which was much enjoyed and I am now sporting my new liquorice allsorts bracelet having made and baked fimo around 1am this morning. 🙂

Davies had Badgers yesterday evening which he really enjoyed again, he is getting loads out of Badgers and Beavers and in some ways they almost seem to be complementing each other too so that’s all good. 🙂

Ady is loathing being away, it is loads of corporate entertainment which is so not his thing – I believe he got to bed even later than melast night which is hitting very hard for a never seen after 11pm sorta man like him. He’s desperate to get home tomorrow and I imagine will need the entire weekend to detox and recover!

This afternoon we watched Bagpuss with Tarly and I snuggled under a blanket and Davies playing with the Gears! Gears! Gears! Wacky Wigglers that I won on ebay after Helen naughtily reminded me of how I’ve been meaning to get a set by blogging about them, but I did get at a bargain price and he has been attached from the instant the door closed behind Merry and co (it arrived this morning and I told him not to open it until everyone had gone home. 🙂 ) They had soup for tea and Tarly was asleep well before 7pm, Davies hung it out a bit later but was at least tucked up in bed playing by 7 too.

I’ve bathed, fed, spent more time on ebay bidding for things for me and the children to wear to K&J’s wedding. We need to be up and about early tomorrow as we have to pick Lucy up at 8.30am to drop her and all the children back here and be at work for 9am, Ali and Freya are coming over in the afternoon for second shift of childcare and Ady will be home in the evening :). Looking forward to a quiet weekend and having had one or both children in my bed for the last couple of nights I am shortly about to go and savour the whole bed to myself before Ady returns to it again tomorrow ;).

Alison (Big) – who at 7 today really is getting big!

Quite enjoying the solitude. 😆

We had a nice afternoon and Tarly and I dropped Davies off at Beavers. We came back and I read her a pile of books all cuddled up together as I said I couldn’t do bedtime stories tonight as Daddy’s not here. I also lit a fire. Ady tends to have problems with lighting our fire but it’s one of those tasks that it never really occurs to me to do (a bit like hoovering 😉 ), anyway I laid it just like I watched Dad do every winters night for years, lit it and away it went – I felt just like a first former lighting one for the older girls at Malory Towers 😆

We went to collect Davies, stopping to look back at the house and see the smoke coming from the chimney on the way. I’d pretty much abandonded him really given last week was his first ever week there and he knew no one but the thought of trying to contain Scarlett while 15 boys ran around playing games was too much to consider so we’d just dropped him off and left – they have my phone number and obviously I could have been back there in less than a minute (it is literally at the end of the road) – I even kept my shoes on just in case :lol:. Anyway we walked in and he was quite happily messing about with one of the other lads and sitting in the middle of a group looking more than happy so no worries there then. 🙂
He came dashing over to tell me he had learnt something new which he *needed* to demonstrate and as they had announced that ‘Oliver is going to say a prayer as we are doing our faith badge this term’ at the end I was semi anticipating either a psalm or indeed a demonstration of hypnotising the room enmasse 😉 but he dashed to the end of the hall, took a run up, dropped to his knees and spread his arms out to skid across the floor towards me. With utter delight 🙂 He said the others had all been doing it so he’d watched them and had a go and couldn’t believe how you kept moving on your knees. So another great milestone moment there. 😆 I told him that it is a child’s solemn responsibility and contribution towards the couple’s future happiness to perform this act at wedding receptions while the adults dance to High Ho Silver Lining and Love Is All Around so I imagine he’ll be trialling that at Kirsty and James’ next month. 😆 He did ask if we could refloor our hall (the only area in the house with the length to perform such manouveres but I said not so I expect he will take every shiny smooth floor opportunity he can get to hone his skill – won’t be taking him to Tesco’s any time soon then. 😆

They rang Ady to say goodnight – Davies’ first sentence was ‘Mummy’s made a fire and it’s really good!’ then went off to bed with fairly minimal fuss. I hoovered in honour of Ady and then had a bath by which time both of them were asleep. I had a dinner that Ady doesn’t like so is my stalwart in his absence dinner and am enjoying the peace, my lovely fire (which I have sent him a picture text of :lol:) and listening to Kirsty MacColl.