One word? When seven would do…

Had a very unsatisfactory morning at work. 🙁 Kessingland is causing me headaches which I’m really pissed off about, it’s a long time since a job stopped me doing stuff, let alone one for just 11 hours a week 🙁 I checked the dates of the two proposed weeks on Saturday as I realised that the middle Saturday would be a definite day I’d need off, either being the first of last day of the week away and also realising it was my Saturday to work. Turns out there is someone off both of the weeks so with the camp being the second week I need to get someone to cover my Saturday afternoon shift and my all day Friday shift (my Wednesday morning is fine, I don’t clash with the other people off that week then). Worst case scenario we’ll come after I finish work on the Saturday and I’ll have to either come home to work my Friday and then come back to pack up on the Friday night ready for Saturday, or we’ll all have to come home on the Thursday ready for me to work on Friday. Either way will be a bugger and I so don’t want to miss the last two nights :(. I’ve already asked one person about swapping shifts with me and got an outright no, I have two more possible colleagues who could swap so I’ve left notes for them and will have to see. Grrr. And this is before Ady has even thought about seeing if he can get time off – it’s always a bit ‘wait and see’ for him as the season doesn’t end by a certain date particularly, it’s all to do with the weather and how stock sells from now until the end of June. We’ll see…

Davies had had some X box related emergency in my absence, which turned out to be fine but had had him upset and wanting to talk to me, my phone was on silent and hadn’t vibrated so I’d not known and although he was fine I felt a bit crap at not having been here for him. Things have been loads better the last week or so, on the surface at least but I’m keen not to cock it up with one isolated set back. Which sounds like I’m walking on eggshells and I’m not at all, just a bit pissed off that on an occassion when he really wanted me I wasn’t here. 🙁 (particularly when I was having a bad morning somewhere else instead :roll:). So I came home really keen to chat to Lucy and the children were not at all up for leaving us to do that. Everytime we got one or two of them sorted out the others would start to interupt, we even hid in the kitchen for a while thinking that would foil them but they all followed us out there :roll:.

I took Scarlett across the road to the doctors for her pre-school booster jabs :lol:. I recall ‘over-preparing’ Davies for his at the same age and him being all keyed up ready for it to be far more dramatic than it was and surprising the nurse by asking ‘is that it?’ when she’d done it. I’d clearly done the same with Scarlett, explaining that she was going to have injections with a little needle into both her arms to put some medicine into her to make sure she doesn’t get ill with certain diseases. It might hurt a little bit but won’t be nearly as bad as things she has suffered before and been fine with. She was slightly reluctant but almost seeming like she felt she had to rather than because she was genuinely worried. We got to the doctors and she was all happy in the waiting room with me reading her a couple of stories and then we were called in. She sat down, chatted with the nurses, stated ‘well that didn’t hurt’ and barely flinched (they’d insisted I hold both her hands ‘really tight’ as in ‘can you physically restrain her’ 🙄 and she didn’t even tense as the needle went in) so she got two stickers with lions on saying ‘I’ve been brave at the doctors’. The same age little girl who’d gone in before us and come out howling was still wailing in the waiting room when Scarlett bounded back in saying ‘well that was fine Mummy, can we go now?’ while we sat for a few minutes to ensure she didn’t have some dreadful delayed reaction. I explained that lions are supposed to be the bravest animals and that’s why they were on her stickers so she’s been telling everyone that ‘lions are the bravest animals on the earth’ and instantly gave Davies one of her stickers :). So that’s that done.

Scarlett and Rebecca played really nicely for an hour or so, being very girly and having to go everywhere together including to the loo while Lucy and I attempted to continue our chats and eat lots of flapjack. Scarlett ate about 3 bananas and then they left and I did the kids some tea and Davies got ready for Badgers. Ady arrived home with seconds to spare for us to dash off and I sat in the car again eating humbugs and reading. Felt better today than I did on Monday doing it though, thankfully.

I’ve heard back from the animation workshop people and it sounds excellent but is probably too expensive to be a feasible thing to do. The cost is about £250 a day with a further £120 per day charge for final edit / dvd production etc which I’m assuming would be at least a days work. They reckon 12 is a good number and I would need to sort a venue too, which would be at least another £50 for the day (thinking of somewhere like the hall we use for our parties). So it would be a good £30 plus per child and I can’t think I’d manage to find another 10 or 11 children up for paying that. 🙁 Will carry on thinking on that though, there must be some way of sorting it, it looked so good and exactly what Davies would love to do.

Tomorrow Ady is working from home and the children and I are supposed to be meeting Julie, Jack and Maisie at Fun Junction. Davies has said he wants to stay here with Ady which I think is an excellent idea so I’m hoping he does just that and Scarlett still wants to go to soft play – it’ll save me Davies’ entrance fee and mean he gets some time on his own with Ady.

Davies and I had a good conversation about childhood in the car tonight. We were in Ady’s car and he has some Carpenters songs on cd so I put one on and said it made me feel happy and sad at the same time. He asked how that could be and I asked him how it made him feel. He said it was a sad sounding song (Rainy Days and Mondays) and I agreed but said it reminded me of being a little girl of about Scarlett’s age – I have a very clear memory of being in the house we moved from when I was four, with my Mum doing housework listening to The Carpenters at full volume singing her heart out and being happy. I told him that it made me remember being small and being loved by Granny and Grandad and not worrying about anything, having all my toys and my little brother to play with and just being a child. I told him that childhood should be the best time of your life because you have nothing to worry about, you should be loved and protected and not scared of anything and that is what my childhood was like, so it made me feel happy to remember that. He said that as he is a child he knows about these things and that actually there are some things for him to worry about and listed things like ‘having to be careful crossing roads’. I had another similar drag back to the past moment last week at work when someone walked past me wearing the perfume my Mum wore when I was little and used to love because it smelt of her. My Mum has said a few things recently about things she regrets in terms of me and my brother and our childhood and it struck me how so often the things we think we are doing wrong are rarely the ones our children hold against us. Even at my shoutiest, most resentful of the children, bad days they still defend me as ‘the best Mummy in the world’ and forgive me a whole morning’s crapness for one story or cuddle, their faces glow with joy when I tell them I am proud of them and like the scent of a perfume, or the opening bars of a Carpenters song taking me back to wonderful memories of my mum at her best I am so pleased and proud of how we are extending that period and giving them even more memories and time to enjoy their childhood.

Can you tell I’ve been reading loads of articles on naturalchild today 😆 ?

Should have nicked some of the egg boxes from yesterdays junk modelling session – and then soundproofed the cupboard under the stairs with them and moved in!

Scarlett and Ady have coughs. I can hear them now, coughing in stereo in their sleep, one from upstairs and one from downstairs. Meanwhile I sit here planning on running away to start a new life somewhere where no one coughs. Ever. I think I may have mentioned my zero tolerance level for coughs once or twice before? I actually have a headache from narrowing my eyes at them both so frequently today 🙂

Davies has also got a hatred of coughs, no idea whether it is nature or nurture but he gets a pissed off and tutty about it as I do. For two solid days pretty much the only thing he has said to Scarlett is ‘HAND!!!!’ whenever she coughs. Which I guess saves me doing it.

It’s also rained today. All day long. Not hard enough to drown out the sound of the coughing (or even to drown the people doing the coughing) but certainly enough to bring out the Eeyore in someone.

I had a verging on a tantrum moment about washing / the state of the house / the people coughing / the rain which spurred me on to do some washing and get some hung around on radiators to dry and put some clean washing away. Then I went and sat in Davies’ room and did a puzzle book on The Incredibles which has 6 x 50 piece puzzles in it which had fallen out all over the bookcase. Found that quiet and soothing.

Ady came home – he’d gone out and come back again before college and was able to drive me to town, park outside the bank and then drive and park outside the other bank so I could swap money about into the mortgage account. I had a chat with the man in the Halifax about how they get chosen for those ads – he was telling me it’s sort of a like a Pop Idol type contest which amused me. Wonder if people now try and get jobs working for them just so they can enter the competition for doing the ads? Ady went off to college and I decided my options were to go and hide for the afternoon, spend it shouting at the children or do something with them. So we made a huge vat of popcorn and some sticky sauce for it and I told them to choose a film each. Davies chose Trapdoor (not a film – the plasticine animated ‘cartoon’ show from the 80s / 90s which we have several videos of) so we watched that and chatted lots about the animation techniques. Then I showed him the Honda ad I linked to yesterday and made him (and it was by force :lol:) watch the making of video to that too. Then I made him watch Flying Pickets which actually he quite liked and then we put on some of the throat singing. He was less impressed with that, even having been told that SB likes it so I found some beatbox stuff on youtube for him to watch. He was impressed by that and made us all do some beat stuff to see what it sounded like with 3 of us. Scarlett was less cooperative but Davies and I enjoyed it :).

We’d all eaten vast amounts of popcorn and gotten bored of watching tv too so Davies asked for Zoombinis and Scarlett and I did a puzzle together. It was a 100 piece one with lots of cross section type nature stuff including underground and underwater wildlife. It’s a spring scene with birds on nests or with young and the various animals all with their babies. She made most of the puzzle and then we looked at the various wildlife on it and talked about it. Then we went and watched Davies playing Zoombinis for a bit and then I had a go while Tarly wandered off and made a potion with some leftover drinks in the kitchen 🙄 She didn’t make any mess but had clearly tasted it as her breath stank of coffee! 😯

I made them some tea and was in the kitchen when Ady got home. Scarlett then went into meltdown mode and we had a chaotic hour or so of lots of refusal to do anything ‘on her own because she is scared on her own’ including cleaning her teeth, getting her pyjamas and so on. 🙄 Ady was feeling rough, I was feeling rough and so neither of us were remotely in the mood for it. It all got patched up in the end though and I had a very long, very hot bath followed by some ginger wine (medicinal purposes obviously). I’m working in the morning and actually no matter how rough I feel I am looking forward to spending four hours doing something else and then coming home and being lovely in the afternoon. Except of course for the fact that the library is just bound to be stuffed full of people coughing! 😆

Despite being really late to sleep last night both the children were awake early this morning. I was utterly incapable of getting up at 7am when Ady went off to work so instead they both came up to the bedroom and sat / wriggled / laid / chatted with me instead. Scarlett played in the bathroom for a while looking at all my various hair slides and bobbles and Davies came and gave me a forehead rub as I told him I had a headache (he has very good hands, gives a lovely massage 🙂 ) and then dismantled one of the dried flowers from Kirsty’s wedding that had found it’s way home with us and been discovered by Scarlett and sprinkled them over me proclaiming them ‘the petals of joy!’ 🙄 so had to sweep those out of the bed otherwise Ady would wonder what on earth I’d been up to in there 😆

I was all sneezy and the children were all grumpy so it seemed only right to head off out in search of the rest of the dwarfs rather than stay home and mope. Also the MM yahoo list had mentioned junk modelling as an activity which I knew would go down well with D&S. I would have brought along junk of our own but recycling day is today so all our carboard, bottles and tins were already in the back of the dustcart. While I drank tea the children got out the plastic animals and the geomags and played with those.

We arrived fairly promptly at MM and once they realised just what junk modelling was about they both got stuck in. For Tarly the appeal was in cutting sellotape and spreading glue more than any specific end result but she sat and stuck (boom boom) with it for well over an hour so that was good. Davies assumed more of a directors role and seemed to be telling Kate the whole plot line of the Curse of the Were-Rabbit too while overseeing my creation. He’d found a roll of fablon (or to give it it’s generic rather than brand named and also far more art and crafty name, the sticky backed plastic!) which had a pattern of blues and greens which put him in mind of stained glass windows so he suggested someone could make a church and use it as the windows. For want of better inspiration I ran with that and made a church complete with spire, weather vane, stained glass windows, raised path, lawns and finally graves and headstones. I was quite proud of it actually 🙂 if a little surprised at my subject matter ;). I was then asked to make a Wallace and a Gromit which I did with toilet rolls and finally I made a robot complete with jointed arms (oh the joys of paper split pins!) and wheels instead of legs, which actually turn :).

The children wandered off to play and I had a conversation about monitoring, registration and the future of Home Ed where I was aware of being spoken to and answering but felt like I was hovering above myself. Combination of cold and mooncup time were meaning I was fading fast. I did some tidying up and we headed for home while I could still envisage managing to pop into Tescos for the few bits we needed.

They had Curious George for £5 something, which I wanted to buy since we saw it at the cinema so I didn’t take much persuading for that and a few other bits we needed including a couple of pairs of jeans for Davies who seems to be perpetually short of clean trousers so for £2.25 a pair it’s worth having a couple of spares. Home for first viewing of Curious George, two cups of tea and a quiet hour on the sofa finishing my book for me and then early tea for the children before getting Davies ready for Beavers.

Ady arrived home and like weather house characters as he pulled up and got out of his car we got in it and drove to the fire station. I’d lost the slip of paper with the details of the trip to the fire station on it and although I knew it didn’t start at 530pm like Beavers does I couldn’t remember whether it was 545 or 6pm. So we parked outside and waited until more Beavers appeared before going in. I’d intended asking if I could stay, particularly as they were short of CRB checked parents to have the ratio correct and thought that even if I just stayed and assumed responsibility for D I would be easing the burden. Also I was quite interested to see inside a fire station – and no, I’m not remotely interested in seeing all the burly firemen – not really my thing! Seems they are indeed the thing of plenty of other women though as there were lots of giggling mothers there wanting to stay so having ensured Davies was ok with me waiting outside I went and sat back in the car with a book and a bag of humbugs. Which was probably what finished me off for today really, it was cold and a bit miserable.

D came out full of it and having gotten the names of two Beavers who he’d like to invite round to play so I’ll work out who their parents are next week and ask them about it. He’d not been allowed to slide down the pole 🙁 but had been inside a fire engine. When I arrived he was quite the little ringleader chatting away to the fireman and encouraging the other lads to say things. At least he flies the flag for HE children not being shy, reserved or unable to communicate with others I guess ;).

Tomorrow we have a couple of things to do in town but other than that we are free so I’m planning lots of sitting around doing not a lot for me and hopefully activities like reading stories, doing jigsaws and watching films with the children ready to restore me for work on Wednesday. Oh and Tarly has her MMR booster due on Wednesday too so I’ll have to see how she’s doing with her cold but I think she’ll be over it sufficiently by then.

I have a cd in the car of various music that ‘takes me back’. Not all the tracks on it mean anything specific but they transport me to times gone by. One of them is a Huey Lewis track, Naturally which I especially like because it has no instruments, just voices. We were talking about how voices are probably the most versatile instrument the other day in the car and trying to make the biggest selection of noises with our voices to prove it. I was telling the children about a cappella singing and how there was once a group who only used their voices called The Flying Pickets. Anyway today we played the Huey Lewis song and it reminded me I’d promised to try and find some a cappella music for them to listen to.

But I’ve searched the catalogue at the library and we don’t have Flying Pickets. Does anyone have any other suggestions of that sort of music or even a copy of a Flying Pickets album they could lend me / copy for me? Will add it to our charity shop wants list in the meantime.

The other thing it reminded me of was that recent car ad where the whole audio was done by voices, but I can’t recall what brand of car it was? Anyone help me on that one?
ETA – Found it 🙂
ETA again – found this, bunging it here to show D later.

James the cat.

Been doing lots of remembering theme tunes from childrens TV of the past here today. Driving the children utterly insane with breaking into the Pink Panther song several times and testing each other with a single line from a show. Lots of dancing around and generally acting like we might just be the kids from Fame. Honestly, if we’d have left the house while singing and a yellow NY taxi cab just happened to pull up outside we’d have jumped on it’s roof in our legwarmers and pranced around a bit doing ‘High Fidelity’ type dance moves. You can just picture it now can’t you? Me and Ady! 😆 Actually aged 15 I once did walk over a car as a dare from my friend Vicky – this was in the days before I got drunk and silly, I was merely giddy with youth. Fortunately it was also in the days before car alarms, modern cars made from very thin metal and me weighing approximately twice what I did back then. So we all came out of it unscathed and with a sense of triumph, daring and edginess. Wonder whether the Thank You Neighbours would welcome us grooving to some Jive Bunny on the bonnet of their Sierra?

Well anyway that was this morning. This afternoon I have gradually come down with A Cold. The children have been fading fast throughout the day and were fit for bed at about 5pm but both suddenly got second winds and Davies didn’t fall asleep until 830 with Scarlett still wandering about closer to 930 and seeing part of Bridget Jones which I’m not at all sure is suitable viewing material for her. Bet they’ll be lovely tomorrow 🙁 And depending on how I feel and whether I take cold and flu tablets I might be a veritable yoyo of moodswings too. And it’s mooncup time. Not looking like a great Monday really is it? Davies has a Beavers visit to the fire station in the evening though so you never know what pole related craziness the day could end with ;).

In the morning Ady planted some flowers in the garden (I think they are pansies – I know literally nothing about the plants he works with, I have zero interest in gardens and can’t even be accused of sitting in them during the summer. I will tolerate short periods of time spent in the shade with pimms if I have people to talk to but seasonal walks aside I am not really one for being all outdoorsy. Admit it, this does not surprise you greatly :lol:. Scarlett did some Barbie.comming and Davies and I did some baking. I gave him the recipe book (some Usborne cakes and cookies thing I think) and he chose flapkjacks. Ady showed him how to light the oven, he greased and lined the baking trays and then we looked at the recipe together. I told him we were making double the quantity and he managed to double all the ingredients fairly effortlessly (not a massive deal I’m sure for someone who’s been doing mathsy type stuff but he has recently worked out how to use his fingers for basic maths and was pretty speedy at telling me what two sixes are. I like that he does not simply know this or has learnt it but actually was visualising two real lots of six. He tends to then remember it once he’s worked it out once. Recently he told me that 100 is 5 lots of 20 – not sure whether someone had told him or he’d worked it out but he has that little nugget stored away now. He also has totally got the hang of all the 10s going up to 100 now too and having been speed sign spotting doesn’t hesitate to recognise 30, 40, 50, 60 etc – again nothing to indicate maths genuis there but similarly nothing we’ve done any specific noting of either. Oh and I forgot to mention the other day while we were at Paradise Park he was looking at one of those machines where coins get dropped in and are on sliding shelves with the idea being that you push some of them off into the tray as winnings and he identified the 2p and the 10p coins just by sight without even really seeming aware of it himself. I’ve noticed him doing the same with pennies and 50 pence pieces too. Again something that has just sunk in with him playing with change lying around at home and looking at it closer to work out what it is worth then remembering the appearance of it and recalling it from that. I remember doing workbooks on coins at school – either in the first or second year and finding it tedious.). So he weighed out the butter and sugar and stirred them in the pan to melt while I added the syrup. I’ll let him touch the hot oven and stir hot pans on the hob but I won’t risk the mess of a dropped jar of golden syrup on the kitchen floor! 😆 He stirred in the oats and spread the mixture between the two trays and then put them in the oven. It’s the first time in ages he’s wanted to do baking with me, Scarlett is always up for it but Davies had lost interest lately to that was nice.

Then because Scarlett continued to be occupied with the laptop Davies and I looked at a book together about cartoons and animations. I think it is aimed at a slightly older audience and covers cartoon strips, flick books, 3d models and video clips. There were some good ideas in it, mostly for modelling, background drawings and details like features and expressions on characters but very little practical advice and certainly nothing we’ve not already long since eclipsed. Davies is in a tricky place right now with that in that he has visions and ideas which he is not yet able to execute and does not have the patience to learn all the theories and techniques behind doing so. Clearly more an ideas sort of person 🙂 I did think that we could do a bit more of the more technical stuff like expressions on faces with plasticine and stuff like tracing and backgrounds though so we’ll try and do some of that this week.

When the flapjack had sufficiently cooled we all went over to my parents for lunch, taking a tray with us. We had a very pleasant afternoon round there. Ady and Dad mostly watched the football. I sat and read a big chunk of a book (always a lovely way to spend an afternoon 🙂 ) and Mum did lots of playing with the children 🙂 So that was a win, win situation. Davies got restless with the girlie bonding that Mum and Tarly seemed to be doing (long overdue!) at one point so came and sat with me and we had a few games of noughts and crosses. Then I showed him how to play boxes although he got fed up of that before the end (think I made the grid too big actually) and then we got out the dominos and had a game of that. Scarlett joined us for that. My Dad has this fab set of dominos that his Dad made him when he was a boy. the box is home made and hand painted and each domino is painstakingly carved, painted black and then has the dots picked out in white. He went further than the double six being the top though and went right up to double eights. The children are quite good at recognising the scores from playing lots with dice and picked up the idea of dominoes very quickly.

My Mum got her laptop out to show me the photos of one of the people they went on holiday with recently and so I got Davies to show her his MMP blog, of which he is very proud. He navigated round it very expertly and showed her all his youtube creations. I think she was quite impressed actually. She started to ask me about making them and I just told her to ask Davies as he makes them, not me. He spoke really confidently and knowledgably about them too (and Dad was listening 🙂 ) and then insisted she watch all the ‘Making of’ ones including the out-takes, which Scarlett came over for as well. Mum had bought Davies his tripod as a Christmas present and I’m sure she thought it was secretly for us so it was good to hear Davies telling her about why it is important to use the tripod etc. My brother came home shortly afterwards and Mum insisted Davies show him the site too. I’ve always been very upfront about our approach and how we don’t do any sit down work but I think my Mum has got the impression that we are either having friends to stay, out visiting other friends or Davies is on the xbox. Which as it happens isn’t far wrong but of course hanging off every corner of those pursuits lurks education and it was quite nice to demonstrate to her just what he can do and be proud of. My biggest moan about my parents, particularly my Mum is that she never really took the time to get to know me, work out what made me tick, what made me passionate and what I felt most alive pursuing – I could feel her already making the same mistakes with D&S, underestimating them in so many ways and placing ridiculous expectations on them in others. I really hope that a bit of a dawning of understanding happened today with some glimpse into what we are all about and in particular, what makes Davies change from the little boy who has to be reminded every two minutes not to jump about on their sofa into a person with passions, a hobby and an interest in their eyes.

We came home, I fed the children and then took myself off to the bedroom for ten minutes reading in peace as I was being all irrational and shouty with everyone and never one to limit the ‘if you can’t be nice then don’t be with people’ rule just to the children I ‘removed myself from the situation’ 😉 , then I came back down and helped them get ready for bed – which they then didn’t actually go to for hours but never mind. Ady cooked a lovely roast lamb dinner and I have had a glass of medicinal red wine for it’s antioxident properties or something. And now I’m off to bed, with hopes for none of us waking too early and all of us feeling better in the morning.

You know those times when you think you had a good idea and the whole bloody universe gangs up to show you just how wrong you were? That was me 20 minutes before I needed to be at work this afternoon. When I was stood in Asda in Brighton – 15 miles from work with two full shopping trolleys, a husband in denial (of being my husband along with all sorts of other things) a son who wanted to cuddle me, a daughter who wanted to pack the bags and was articulating this at high volume, a queue of people behind me, an checkout operator with a ‘there’s no rush, duck’ attitude and precisely £17.82 less in my pocket than the total she’d just rung up. Oh, and wearing unsuitable clothes for work and having had no lunch too.

So this morning I’d got up after a lie in and swanned about eating croissants. Now there is an art to eating croissants akin to the art of eating Cadbury’s flakes. Anyone recall the series of tv ads for Flakes? Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before? The first one I remember is the woman in soft focus, with very glossy lips, a floral dress, a look similar to Kate Bush and a field of some sort of seasonal crop. Must have been the 70s. I recall the one where she was in a Ros-bath with the phone ringing and a lizard too. Anyway, much though we’d all like to think we look as erotic, sexy and gorgeous as those women when we eat a flake we know the truth is we look bloody clumsy. We end up in pretty much the same state as a toddler with a pack of chocolate buttons. There are miniscule flakes of chocolate stuck to our chin, top and cleavage. And as it is so flaky it melts upon contact with your skin leaving brown smears everywhere. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and makes you speak all funny and coats your teeth. Well croissants are like that too. They are French, which by definition should be all sophisticated, evocative of reading Sunday papers in bed with freshly squeezed orange juice and black coffee, smeared with real butter and posh marmalade but actually there is not a great deal of a croissant which makes it into your tummy, most of it either crumbles back onto the plate or ends up all down you. One has to inhale rather than consume a croissant.

I made my list of food shopping for the month and was debating with Ady whether to do it this morning or to wait until tomorrow when I came up with the idea of all of us going together to do it, you know, like a family. I need to fill two trolleys for a months food shop so I usually do half the shop, pay, load it in the car and then go and do the second half. I had visions of us pushing a trolley each, children assisting as we went round, identifying all sorts of produce from around the world, smiled indulgently at by other shoppers, two of us loading the conveyor belt while the other two packed up at the other end, waving a cheery goodbye to the checkout operator and when Ady suggested Asda it completed the vision with the four of us tapping out back pockets in the style of their tv ads as we left. We’d arrive home in time to put away the shopping before I got changed and headed off to work.

And then I woke up!

So we did indeed arrive at Asda. The first indication that we should have given up and gone home again came when the queue for the cashpoints was snaking into the carpark. There are 3 cashpoints there but one was out of order and one was working but out of cash. Scarlett came with me but hadn’t worn a coat and was shivering so I picked her up and she wriggled inside my fleece with me where she was overjoyed to be so close to me and spent time kissing me and tickling me with loud ‘I’m tickling your boobs’ comments. And actually a fleece with one blonde and one redhead appearing out of the top kissing each other probably did look faintly odd.

One of our two trolleys was the classic supermarket trolley which has a mind of it’s own. Quite literally. It had an IQ reading and everything. Except it had gotten all above it’s station and decided it didn’t actually want to be a supermarket trolley. It wanted to be bumper car. It had wheels and it was going to use them, but not for the purpose some supermarket trolley manufacturer intended. Oh no siree bob! It’s was going to use to them to escape, to leave Asda, trek across country and find it’s spiritual home in a fairground somewhere in the west country. It wanted to feel the wind in it’s wire, feel the rough ground beneath it’s wheels. It wanted rough hands to grasp it’s handle and spin out of control to the sounds of ‘scream if you want to go faster’ with the scent of cheap hotdogs and candyfloss in the air. And with every negotiation of a corner of an aisle, with every tin of value baked beans and six pint carton of milk we put in it, it expressed it’s desire to escape just a little more violently.

Ady had zoned out and was clearly spending his time in some safe and warm happy shiny place deep inside himself. Somewhere where he sat next to Gregg Wallace and drank proper alcohol and wasn’t trawling the wine aisle for the cheapest bottle of white available. Davies had regressed to some toddler state and discovered the pitch of ‘eeeeh’ just above the one where only dogs can hear you and was still audible to humans. And he chose only to communicate using this sound. ‘Which flavour Hula Hoops do you want Davies?’ ‘Eeeeeeh’

And Scarlett? She was probably the most sane of our number but has way too many characteristics of her mother, a taste for extravagance and a love of the fruit of the vine, so when not carefully monitored she was trying to load either or both trolleys with bottles of wine. Particularly of the rose variety cos she does love a bottle of pink wine does Tarly.

When we were barely half way round and I checked my watch to find it was midday I started to feel slightly disconcerted, what with me being due to start work at 1pm and all. And I tried to chivvy everyone along a little. Some ten minutes later I was barging past all sorts of other shoppers with my band of merry helpers and renegade trolley following behind me, tossing in the value toilet roll and own brand crunchy nut cornflakes. Me and the children stopped at a checkout and started loading our trolleys while Ady went off to get fruit and vegetables leaving both trolleys with us. Trolley without a cause had given up the will to be a bumper car and was quietly pondering a career with the circus. I tried, and frankly failed to organise a packing procedure based on where in the house the final destination of the goods was to be and even gave up worrying about whether things would get crushed or frozen things were going to start freezing the hula hoops by too close a proximity. Scarlett was single handedly loading the wine onto the checkout, all the while looking at the label and commenting on the vintage, Davies was continuing with his ‘EEeees’ and adding in the ocassional ‘Ummmm’ and then Ady came back with all the fruit and veg so I was able to go to the end of the till and start packing while he carried on loading. It was 12.25. The trip is possible in 15 minutes, I had my name badge in my bag and would have to live with not wearing clothes I would have chosen for work.

But I hadn’t banked on this particular checkout operator. She was no ordinary checkout operator. She had been trained by the same person as the checkout operator that Gill once had the good luck to be served by. She actually said to me ‘No rush Darlin’. I’ve learnt that there is no benefit to hurrying. My shift doesn’t go any quicker, I don’t get paid any more and there is no need to throw things down the checkout at customers.’ Wise words indeed. The sort that make you want to hug the person next to you. To start a rousing chorus of ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’ to feel the love and respect for your fellow man, the stop and admire the daisies, to hear the birds sing, the bees buzz and to take time to see all the beauty in the world around you. To nod sagely and agree that there is nothing to be gained by hurrying, no good can come of it.

Except of course getting to bloody work on time!!!

But, and reasons for this will become clear, I am SOOOO glad I didn’t say a word. So pleased that I didn’t incur her wrath by saying something like ‘well actually I’d really rather you did hurry becuase I have to be in work in 31 minutes and it is a 15 minute drive away and we still have to get these two trolleys, one of which is about to make a bid for freedom and get on it’s way to St Ives as soon as it smells fresh air across the carpark and loaded into the car along with these two children which will take at least 7 minutes by my calculations leaving me with very little margin for error, daisy smelling, birds and bees listening or the luxury of worrying about whether you put hairline cracks in my eggs by sending them whizzing down towards me a bit on the quick side.’ Instead I just smile and complimented her on her great attitude.

So we got there, we were all standing on the exit side of the tills, our two trolleys were brimming, the end was in sight, we were a full minute and a half ahead of schedule (and this was despite me being a bit crap at getting the bags to come off the bag dispenser and the checkout lady bustling out of her checkout, coming to the end and pulling off about 300 carrier bags for me to ‘help’) and then she pressed the total button. And although I looked at the total as it showed up on the screen I didn’t quite believe it until she said the words ‘That will be £217.82 please’. Which would be fine. If I didn’t only actually have £200 in my pocket. And by being a bit sensible with my loading the last few items to come through and therefore be loaded into the trolley were 10 loaves of bread at 26p a loaf, 12 lots of 6 pints of milk at less that £17 for the whole load and all the expensive things like meat and wine stashed right at the bottom of the trolleys where it was totally unfeasible to drag them out and say ‘oh just take these bits off actually, we don’t need them’.

So instead I smiled my best smile, left Ady and the children stood there, left the friendly checkout operator and the queue of people behind us, said a cheery ‘bear with me just a moment’ and dodging the crowds ran back to the cashpoints outside, joined the queue of 4 people waiting for the only machine dispensing cash and got some more money out. Ran back to the checkouts, with a face clashing horribly with my hair, handed over the extra £20 (I gave her the £200 before I ran) and then walked out with my cheery goodbye and Asda back pocket tapping just the same. Ady said the woman behind us in the queue had been all tutting and eye rolling so the checkout operator had been saying about how ‘that’s the thing about ASDA, there are just so many great things to buy you always end up getting more than you came in for!’ while he pretended not to actually know me and be one of those volunteers who accompany the care in ther community folk when they go to do their shopping while Davies made further noises and Scarlett rearranged the shopping in the trolley and the errant trolley edged further towards the exit.

Somehow we still managed to toss all the shopping into the car and get me to work with minutes, well ok seconds to spare. I regaled my colleagues with the story, apologising about my top (a black top with a massive pink bejewelled ‘Tickled Pink’ splashed across the front and jeans with lots of frayed bits (thankfully I’d not worn the pair I wore yesterday which have ‘Angus’ written across one thigh in black biro, but that’s another story!) to which my boss laughed and said ‘ah that’s fine, it doesn’t say anything offensive does it?’.

It meant the topic of conversation at work this afternoon was food shopping though, with me explaining my shop for a month and menu plan and batch cook and freeze policy. I then confessed to doing a fair bit of baking rather than buying cakes and biscuits which led them all to look at me in astonishment as some sort of sensible grown up type. I did tell them that I felt I was misleading them all rather and I felt they should know that by 9pm most evenings I am in a wine sodden heap singing James Blunt songs but I fear I have totally given them the wrong impression of me 😆

My favourite colleague F gave me a lift home (although hurrah for broad daylight at 5pm! 🙂 ) where I got a very warm welcome from the children. They both have colds so have been medicated before bed tonight. I’ve sat and cackled through back to back Cathering Tate on tv and Ady fell asleep on the sofa. I think the extremes of award ceremonies in the company of Gregg Wallace to shame at Asda was just too exhausting for him 😆

Oh, it’s all go here.

but have you ever seen a panther that is pink?

How lovely it is to have children old enough to stagger downstairs, sort them out something to eat and drink and stagger back up to bed again while they entertain themselves. 🙂 I laid in bed for a while reading a book and then dozed off again to the sound of them giggling uncontrolably. I knew what they were giggling about too – they were making up a song about poo. And frankly if I don’t have to listen to it, get to sleep in longer and it bonds them together as siblings in crime then songs about poo rock with me :).

I made a picnic while watching the wonderful Ken Robinson as linked to on Making It Up and then we went to collect Lucy, R and R for a trip to Paradise Park. It’s been a while since we’ve been but Lucy and I had decided to go halves on a family annual pass which gets us in together for free for a year and enables either of us to come with one extra adult and two extra children as well 🙂 All for twenty quid each :). The children mostly entertained themselves on the journey over there while Lucy and I talked autonomy (I just can’t stop 😉 ) and then we had a most enjoyable walk round there. They have added various new bits and pieces and some work is still in progress, coupled with which every time we visit the children seem to pick up on something new. Davies always staggers me by remembering all the names of the various dinosaurs (on the way there he was telling Richard about how some dinosaurs eat meat and some eat plants. I don’t think he realised that Richard’s ‘yeses’ in response to some of his questions mightn’t have necessarily indicated full understanding and comprehension 😆 We’d talked about rainbows and light prisms recently and there was a good poster explaining that better than I had managed so we looked at that and I was a bit teachery with some of the questions I was asking them as we went round to prompt stuff we’ve talked about before but they were both in the right frame of mind for it and enjoyed chatting and asking questions about stuff. 🙂 All very educational 🙂 As ever during holiday time they had some sort of treasure hunt going on – this time it was 12 pictures of dogs posted around the place with names underneath, the entry form had the names of the dogs as anagrams so although we didn’t actually find the last one we completed those and posted them in the box. I got Davies to spell out the names of each and he attempted to read a couple of them too. On the way home in the car he was calling out various strings of letters and asking me what they said so we talked a bit about vowels.

So, some educational bits about our planet, lots of physical exercise and then a good old play in the play area afterwards while we ate lunch. I happened to have 40 pence so when both D & S had been looking at the various amusements wistfully for a while I gave them one 20 p token each to use. They spent ages walking round trying to decide what to spend it on. D chose a grabber type machine where he tried to win a cuddly fish (and naturally didn’t) and S after lots and lots of consideration including wanting to spend hers on something she could ‘share with Davies’ had a go on a Pink Panther ride. D had a bit of a moment about not winning which he took a bit of cajoling out of but I explained the rather crap odds of such ‘gambling’ machines and eventually he smiled again (but we took some pictures of us frowning just for fun anyway!). For the last 15 minutes or so they played in a small soft play area where D made a couple of friends including introducing himself to one of them’s parents and grandparents and inviting him over for tea one day. I watched from afar as D chatted to his audience of four adults, using his hands to make some point and getting indulgent smiles all round, one of them leant forward to ruffle his hair and they all stood and watched him walk away with ‘what a lovely boy’ looks on their faces as he made his way back over to me. He simply replied ‘oh stuff’ with an airy wave of his hand when asked what he’d been talking to them about but had clearly made an impression. 🙂 Love my boy :). He seems to have taken ‘making friends to play with including inviting them back to play at my house’ fairly seriously and is on an all out mission to do so!

On the way home both D&S were on a mission to not let me talk to Lucy but managed it very well by engaging me in intelligent conversation. We talked about the whole vowels thing and then spotted some very small lambs which led to a chat about why we couldn’t have one (it’d need it’s mothers milk) which led to a chat about how breastmilk / mothers milk is utterly tailor made for that baby including Scarlett giving a very well thought out example of Layla and how she stopped making milk when Claudia stopped needing it but started again when Jasper did. For a not remotely militant or extended breastfeeder I appear to have very committed to breastfeeding children :). At everyone’ insistence Lucy and co came back here for a coffee with the idea that I drop them home on my way to work which didn’t quite happen as Ady scraped home with mere seconds to spare to get me to work on time so as he pulled up outside I leapt in his car and went off to work and he leapt in my car and took Lucy and co home, then brought D & S back for tea and bath while I did a two hour stint at the library, which all but paid for my season ticket at Paradise park today :).

Home again for bedtime with the children, reunion with Ady and a rather lovely (if I do say so myself) curry with lots of ‘accessories’ (bhajhees, poppadums, naan bread etc) and wine. 🙂 We watched taped Masterchef with me asking A lots of ‘is he like that in real life’ type questions and then some back to back Dinner Ladies on UKGold – oh Victoria Wood is so great :).

Ady rang me several times last night, mostly all pissed off about being away from home, until he surprised me by ringing at midnight when I was in bed, suddenly sounding more pissed than pissed off and full of excitement for who he was sitting next to. He was at Grower of the Year awards
and on the same table as Gregg Wallace from Masterchef goes large which is one of our favourite tv shows. He wanted to put me on the phone to him but being half asleep and lying in bed I declined 😉

He rang this morning to say they’d had a brilliant night, and he has lots of photos including one of him wearing his glasses so that he could be his stunt double. Can sort of see what he means!

Anyway they exchanged phone numbers so clearly we’ll be mixing with the stars every spare moment from now on 😆

Up early this morning to wave Ady off – he is at some swanky and glamorous growing awards ceremony in London tonight. I could have gone too but I was working, we had no one to look after the kids and I’d have had to hire a ballgown. So actually, no I couldn’t have gone at all 😆 Which meant I had time for lots of cuddles with the children before I went to work myself.

D and I had a few conversations about making playing with younger children interesting, most of which he put into practise from a chat with Lucy later today, so that’s good. He often picks up on something he knows I am fretting about and perpetuates it but I’ve got lots of plans for stuff for him and I to do together and have promised to speak to some parents of Beavers next week and will also sort out a get together with Liam again soon as well as NicCamp so I think March will be a good month. 🙂

We picked up Lucy, R & R, I dropped them all back at our house and headed off to work. Another good day there although it felt really long for some reason. It was pretty busy and certainly didn’t drag but I don’t feel so much the new girl now, I have things to be getting on with and did a few ‘taking initiative’ type things today too which was good. I also (drum roll please) was praised again, which caused me to smirk with the knowledge I would dash home and blog it – if it had happened before lunch I’d have blogged in my lunchbreak about it ;). There is a vacancy for a 17 hours a week position which is slightly more than I work so I won’t even be The New Girl soon, there will be someone newer although with CRB checks etc they probably won’t actually start for months! 🙄 In my lunchbreak I dashed round the charity shops and picked up 3 jigsaws for 50p each – one 100 piece Little Mermaid one, one 100 piece nature one and a 13 piece teddy one which claims to be for 6+ years and has no picture for guidance promising to be challenging (though not specifically intellectually challenging 😉 ). D did it in about 2 minutes flat though so although he loves it it hardly seemed worthy of it’s ‘difficult’ tag or age guidelines. 🙄 S loves the Little Mermaid one though and made good headway with that – definitely 100 pieces are the way forward, she sat and did a smaller one practically with her eyes shut yesterday. I bumped into a friend in town too which was a nice catch up. She loves the idea of HE so was all enthusiastic in her questionning about that. She is the same age as Ady but they had their children young and her daughter has just had her second baby so she is twice a granny, which seems very odd to think, particularly as I remember her daughter (Nicola 🙂 ) being born 😯 surely that’s not right?!

Reports from child watchers and the state of the house suggest a good day here – Scarlett and Rebecca sound to have had a ball together and really seem to have gelled this last few weeks. I admit to starting to think we were simply forcing them into each others company and hoping for a friendship which was never going to happen but dynamics have changed between the four children and S and R have finally clicked :). Dad was on good form and seems to be really making an effort to be cheery and friendly so that’s good too. :).

Dad left shortly after I got home and the children settled straight into their new puzzles while I got their tea. They ate that watching Backyardigans and then went back to their puzzles before playing together for a while. Eventually I decided I wanted a bath and some wine so they went off to bed, I had my bath, my wine and my dinner and I’ll soon be heading to bed.

I was telling someone about this poem recently and stumbled across it tonight while looking for something else. I think it’s lovely so am going to put it here in full so I can find it again when I next want it.

Without You.

Adrian Henri

We were supposed to be meeting up with Julie, Jack and Maisie today for a Pre Spring Walk but the arranged place is the best part of a 50 miles round trip with an hour drive both ends so when Julie rang to confirm details this morning I was reluctant enough to convince her not to bother too. Maisie is in the last throes of a mild dose of pox so she was quite happy to have a quiet day in anyway.

So I offered D &S the choice of what to do. D chose ‘making an animation’ and came up with an idea for something to do with toast – details of which are over on MMP so there was much doing of that which revolved around him actually eating his breakfast at the same time then he snuggled up alongside me as I edited it in moviemaker and you tubed it. I then got caught up looking at animation workshops and events for children having been all envious of the fab stuff at Animated Exeter that Sarah keeps linking to (finally able to get to her blog today so overdosed on it 🙂 ) and found a very local company that offers schools animation workshops which look fab. I’ve emailed them about the possiblity of D joining a pre organised one or the costs for hosting one and seeing if I can summon up numbers to make it worthwhile, haven’t heard back yet though.

S did some more puzzles – she got out a UK map one with 100 pieces and I was really shocked when I looked down and discovered she’d done a huge chunk of it all by herself 😯 meanwhile D was making all sorts of geomag creations and making them move animation-stylee. I suggested a couple of ideas for geomag animations none of which grabbed him so I set about making my own (took the pics but haven’t done anything with them yet – might task D with putting them in order as it’s simple drag and drop to make the film). The sun was shining in through the window which made D start to make shadow puppets and see what shapes he could cast on the floor with his geomags and panels so I got a big sheet of card and drew round his profile to show him sillhouettes. He then did me, I did Scarlett and then Candle very obligingly stood still in perfect cat profile for us to do her too. 🙂 They liked that idea and we talked a lot about what makes shadows, the sun and it’s path across the sky during the day, things that cast shade and so on. Davies mentioned sun dials again and reminded me that we really should have a go at making one with the right time of year for it on it’s way. We’re using the clock more and more lately with me telling them where the ‘big hand’ will be when we do X but unfortunately although our clock is fairly sized for time telling 😉 it is roman numerals (which did lead to a conversation about roman numerals the other day as they are on one of the W&G x box games so I was explaining 1 to 9 – confusing because my clock has IIII for 4 but the game had IV).

This led to some shadow casting with my artists dummy but by then Scarlett was asking for help with her puzzle so I left Davies to that and went and sat with her for a while. Davies came over (having gotten bored of making the artists dummy shadow dance!) and identified the English, Scottish and Welsh flags and then asked if the Eire one was Germany. We have a flags game which is still unused so I went and got that out – it’s like snap with four each of various countries flags, so he looked at those and asked me which country they all were and found the various UK ones to match to the puzzle. I know virtually nothing about flags so I wouldn’t have identifed most of them without them being labelled underneath but they seemed a fairly bizarre mix with some obvious omissions and some curious inclusions.

We left everything where it was and got coats and shoes on ready to go to the park and meet Lucy, R and R. Davies really didn’t want to go but I decided some fresh air would do us all good. Both of them are quite fragile at the moment getting upset over small things and seeming very ‘tired and emotional’ – hope they are not going down with anything :(. The park was pretty busy being half term *and* a nice afternoon but they all had plenty of goes on things. I pushed both of them on the swings for a while, did some seesawing (excellent thigh exercise seesawing with a small child :shock:) and then Tarly occupied herself with Rebecca while Davies and I had some goes on the roundabout and finally queued up to go on the dish type swing thing. He adored that and had a nice long go before Scarlett, R & R came over to join us. We were there over an hour before deciding to come home again. On the way home Davies suddenly decided he’d go to his room when we got back and watch a film, which he did while the others played. After they had gone he came and had a chat with me about wanting to have more of his friends over and not just people who always want to play with Scarlett. Not at all sure whether this was perfect timing on his part, some overhearing of me talking lately or just sibling-ness but I explained that I do understand we spend lots of time in the company of younger children and that it can sometimes not be that exciting for him but that he does have the chance to suggest and lead games because of that, showed him the couple of things we have booked in for March where he will be spending time with *his* friends – although he did moan that Scarlett would still get to be with *her* friends too 🙄 and then talked to him about having his Beaver friends over for a play. So we agreed he would point out which child/ren he would like to invite and I will work out who their parent is and approach them about coming over, which is a bit of a new challenge (for me! :lol:) but I’m sure will be fine.

And that was about it for today, I think.

Tomorrow I’m working all day and Ady is away (again, sigh :roll:) for the night so expect either silence while I spend the evening making welcome home banners for his return on Friday or blogging aplenty about library related incidents and full details on how great my boss thinks I am ;). Ooh with maybe a side order of cheerleading for autonomy 😉 Give us an A!

We started the day with some ill fated pancakes for breakfast. So ill fated that after burning one, making another into sweet scrambled eggs and just about managing one edible one each for Davies and Scarlett I gave up on producing anything for myself. I know a bad workman blames his tools and all that but our only decent spatula had fallen apart so I had nothing to flip them with which wasn’t helping.

The children just had time to eat them before Em, Eve and Rei arrived. Having been staying with Lucy for a couple of nights they came to see us before heading back home again. Davies and Rei seemed delighted as always to see each other with Eve spending some time showing Scarlett her DS. There was a riotous game of hide and seek and various other top volume playing with a back drop of Scarlett coming in in tears having suffered various injuries. They seemed to rub along fairly ok together overall. We had lunch which they watched some W&G short films to accompany and then decided to dance to the theme music. This hampered Em and I’s various very interesting chats so I offered to put some music on in the playroom for them to dance to. I brought in Hooked On Classics from the car (which Em described as ‘bad hold music’ :lol:) and 3/4 of them danced to that before starting a board game marathon.

Eve started to show Davies how to play chess which morphed into an elaborate game involving all four children and all the chess and drafts pieces. Scarlett found Davies’ camera (yay!!! 🙂 ). Lucy and Rebecca arrived and the board games continued. I nipped out to get a new spatula all the while marvelling at being able to leave the children and pop out, I still recall with remarkable clarity the trials of trying to go anywhere and leave Davies with someone and while I’ve gotten used to going to work and leaving them the idea of jumping in the car to go and get a spatula without the children feels like some sort of prison break!

Em tried to make us eat beetroot thinly disguised as chocolate cake but D&S imediately noticed the suspicious red bits and rejected it. Once I’d ascertained it wasn’t lentils in there I did eat mine though. 🙂

Lucy left, shortly followed by Em and co leaving us just enough time for a more successful batch of pancakes for the children’s tea. Dad arrived, shortly followed by Ady meaning we didn’t actually need Dad but he sat and had a coffee and seemed on good form, happily confirming he’ll be here on Thursday afternoon so some of my chat with Mum must have fed back about not letting his views on HE colour his relationship with the children or his willingness to spend time with them when I’m at work.

I got changed and went to work. It’s really nice working a two hour shift. The shortest shift I’ve ever previously worked anywhere was 3 hours on the 5-8pm shift at B&Q years and years ago. So the time went super fast. Book group was tonight so I stood watching all the book group members come in. It was the busiest group ever with loads of us there discussing Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses so lots of lively debate. I got ribbed for wearing my Library Badge and told them all to ‘Sshhhh!’ to prove my ability. It was really nice. 🙂

Came home and had a bath, then Ady made jacket potatoes for dinner followed by pancakes. And now, having been typing this while having a IM chat with Lucy I am about to publish this, say goodnight to Luce and head on up to bed.

Which was supposed to go directly above the ‘and boy’ post about Davies but things related to tea got in the way!

Anyway, this is about my Dad.

I’ve always considered me and my Dad have an easy, very good relationship. We share many traits (most of the ones which annoy my mother :lol:) and although I can’t really think how I’d meet a man 35 years my senior who doesn’t move in any of my circles he is someone I would choose as a friend to spend time with even if we weren’t related. He has always fitted the ideal model of what you would want from a Dad, he is kind, patient, strong, loves me uncondtionally, there when I need him and a solid, dependable force. He makes me laugh, forgives me my mistakes and still has the power to reassure me that everything will be OK even when I make big, proper, grown up cock ups instead of minor childhood and teenage mistakes.

But there is one thing he really doesn’t support me in at all. He thinks I am making a huge error, doing potential damage to my children and my own life and following completely the wrong path.

Home Education.

He doesn’t agree with it, doesn’t get it, doesn’t see it working and never, ever will.

I thought we’d come to a sort of agree to disagree type impasse on it, we rarely discuss it now aside from when one or other (or both of us) has been drinking or is otherwise spoiling for a fight (both of us can be quite beligerant with drink, particularly with each other) and the odd snidey comment from him when one of the children demonstrates any trait he can ‘blame’ on HE. But it appears I am wrong. Far from quitely accepting it and just waiting to see the proof of the pudding so to speak it appears he has simply given up talking to me about it but continues to be very vocal about it to my Mum. 🙁

He has been slightly awkward about having the children one afternoon a week which surprised me as he gets on well with both of them, particularly dotes on Tarly and is much beloved by them both, particularly with his ‘Only Grandad’ status. I discovered from my Mum last week that this is all to do with him thinking they should be in school. Apparently he’d be quite happy to collect them from school (as I explained them being in school would be even more disruptive to my 11 working hours a week involving Breakfast Clubs and after school child care).

My Dad grew up in a fairly remote Welsh village where there was one school for all the children aged 4 to 11, he’s an August birthday so would have been one of the very youngest when he started. His very early school days were during WW2 and he would be the first to admit he is from a different era. He was born to older parents, an only child who had what sounds now to be a fairly idyllic childhood albeit a poor one, many of his attitudes are very Victorian and whilst he is an excellent parent in many ways he seemed out of touch with modern life when I was a child 30 years ago so the world Davies and Scarlett inhabit and will grow to live in as adults is simply beyond his comprehension.

He is also fairly critical about schools today in this country and will spend hours telling you what is wrong with them and how they should be changed. I have often said to him that I agree with all he says about schools but changing schools is not within my power – ensuring my children recieve the right education for them is, hence the choice to Home Educate. I think he would be more comfortable if we had a structured approach. Hothousing would be justifiable to him providing I could demonstrate the children were getting a rich and varied backup of activities and socialising. But of course we don’t do that. My six year old isn’t reading when he comes round, he’s playing X box instead, the children are not sitting with maths workbooks they are playing some crazy game involving running round the house pretending to go on holiday camping (don’t even get him started on camping! :roll:). He’s been to the children’s parties, he’s seen them running in packs with their huge number of friends, he’s seen the pictures and heard them talk with enthusiasm and passion about camps, get togethers and parties. Every time they see him they are bubbling over with chatter about walks in the woods, Beavers, Badgers, making animated films, trips to the cinema, things they have made, ideas they have had, they are noisy, animated and alive little children but all he can think is that they should be in school.

I have told him that I would have far more respect for his viewpoint if he was talking from an educated standpoint, that his experience of school is outdated and his experience of Home Education is nil. That I have a shelf full of books which he is welcome to read on the subject and I will happily talk to him all day and all night about any genuine specific concerns or questions he has. He is not prepared to do this, he simply states that they should be in school.

My Mum is fairly opinionless on the matter – she tends to agree with the person who made the most recent good point. She too is utterly clueless about autonomy – a fair viewpoint in many ways, it took me several years to grasp it – and says ambiguous things like ‘well I hope you’re doing the right thing. I’m not saying it’s right and I’m not saying it’s wrong’ but she can at least see that I am making an educated decision about the welfare, happiness and development of my children, from an unselfish, caring parent point of view. That this is not some silly whim, some fad of mine that I heard a bit about so decided to try, that this is something I have spent the last four years researching, building up a network of friends and social contacts, constantly reevaluating and rethinking. That being a HE family shapes our lives day to day, week to week, year to year and is what we have given over our lives to doing for the time being rather than what I happen to choose to do term time from 9am-3pm Monday to Friday.

So what do I do? My Dad’s approval does matter to me. A lot. I do care that he thinks I’m making a grave mistake, it hurts that he thinks I’m doing something so wrong and doesn’t appear to be giving me credit for what I consider to be a pretty good job so far. I feel that if the children are successful then he will consider that ‘in spite’ of Home Education rather than because of it. And such blatant doubt on a bad day can make even the most fervant believer in what I’m doing feel a little niggle of doubt when most of my life has been about realising that actually Dad did know best after all…

I took a lot of getting going this morning – caffeine definitely has more of an effect than I’d given it credit for. Davies was already stuck into Were Rabbit on the Xbox, getting loads further than he’s ever got before so he was less than keen to do much else other than explore previously unchartered territory on that and Tarly was content to play with her Barbies. I offered them the choice of Home Ed group or Sainsburys for their choice of food for lunch and they went with Sainsburys. It occured to me the other day that it’s quite some time since they got their current shoes and Tarly has a mark on her heel from where her boots rubbed which I assumed was due to wearing them without socks but felt bad incase it was just that they were too small. So we went up to Sainsburys, via the cashpoint and got various supplies, including TEA 🙂 Whilst I was perusing the tea aisle the children saw the PG tips with free monkey packs and persuaded me to get a couple of packs so they could have one each (frankly I didn’t take much persuading and the idea of them being as happy to bring home tea as I was, albeit for different reasons was quite attractive – spread the joy and all that 🙂 ) and given the choice of anything in the store for lunch they chose a Dairylea lunchable each so their happiness was cheaply purchased :). Then to the shoe shop where I was pleased to learn and they were disappointed to learn neither of them needs new shoes just yet. This is good news, not least due to meaning we don’t need to buy shoes this month but also means we will probably be into sandals and doodles type weather before they need to be reshod.

Home again for lunch for them and tea, tea, tea, tea, tea for me. I delighted them by taking the series of self timer shots below, which Davies felt bound to recreate for Ady when he got home (if nothing else it means next time I run out of tea it may well be worth checking behind the radiator as I’m sure at least one bag got chucked behind there 😆 ) – poor mites are bound to need therapy in future life, bet Mummy chucking t bags about while taking self timer shots will be among the incidents they recall 😆

Tarly did some jigsaws, Davies Xboxed and then as we had to pop in to see my Dad we had a quick look round some charity shops near my parents specifically looking for puzzles for Tarly and Snoopy videos for Davies. We had no luck on either count, called into see Dad and then came home for their tea. Both children are on a real bacon kick at the moment so they had bacon and various other odd accompaniments for bacon at their request while I drank more tea :).

And that was us 🙂 Brought to you with a nice cup of tea!

I’ve not really blogged about this but I have hinted at having struggled a bit lately with Davies. I’m not going to detail the whole thing but I did want to record a few general things, more for my own honest record of our relationship than anything else really.

When I found out I was pregnant with Davies I really, really wanted a son. Actually, the truth is if I was going to have children at all I only really wanted sons anyway. I was fairly sure he was a boy and we had it confirmed at the 20 week scan and I was delighted. There were various reasons for wanting boys rather than girls, not least the repeated history of my Grandmother and Mother both having a boy and a girl and so clearly favouring their son that I was terrified of repeating that situation yet again. I quite enjoyed my position of being Ady’s and my Dad’s and my brother’s ‘princess’ and was not particularly keen to breed my own replacement and of the few children I knew I far preferred the little boys to the little girls. I recalled from school days how tricky girls could be and was not at all keen to have the house cluttered with Barbies, pink and fluffiness. Of course that all got blown out of the water two years later, but that’s a whole other story! 🙂 Suffice to say I’m over my worries in all areas on mothering a daughter and such trivial concerns soon got put to the back of my mind when faced with a real live girl anyway!

So, Davies. He was a tricky baby but as I was expecting no less than utter chaos and bedlam to come along with a new baby that was no great surprise. He was a model toddler, an excellent big brother when Scarlett came along and a mature, trustworthy and helpful 3, 4 and 5 year old. I do look at Davies and think he would be such a different child if he’d gone to nursery at 3 or 4, gone to school at 5 and was sitting here next to me on half term, exactly half way through his second year at school instead of the product of four years active Home Education. I guess the true answer is ‘we’ll never know’ but I certainly have my suspicions and am supremely confident that there is nothing negative in not having sent him to school.

Sometime in the last year though he has changed. Of course he’s changed I hear you say, and you are dead right, of course he’s changed. It’s just that my expectation of him took a while to catch up with those changes. I think it is a parent’s job to view their child through rose tinted glasses to a certain extent – I hope I always see the best in my children and whilst I might be aware of the worst it is not what I choose to dwell on, to articulate too often or too form too big a part of how I see them. I don’t think I’m blind to my children’s faults it’s just that I see them as far outweighed by all their many good points to focus on them too heavily. To be honest I view most of my relationships in life like that – if someone is worth bothering to have in your life then you must see more about them that is desirable than is undesirable – I see the faults in my husband, my friends and myself but I consider them far outweighed by what I love about those people so why spend time focussing on the negatives?

But Davies has become slightly more challenging, I have been less able to view his positives, less able to curb my own temper in reaction to him and less tolerant of his behaviour. I struggle almost daily to deal with him being a six year old boy. And actually that is all he is doing. He is loud, boisterous, inquisitive, bossy, sensitive, sometimes aggressive, quick to act but slower to think, unable to keep still, likely to start the squabble with his sister, annoying and full of energy even after having been out for a (winter) walk all day. He is also like pretty much every other healthy, normal six year old boy I have ever met! 🙂

After a particularly bad couple of episodes the week before last involving a very poetic Aesops Fable type lesson in telling the truth otherwise next time you do people may not believe you, punishment of x box ban (I’m not at all sure I believe in punishments and actually he seemed fairly unfazed by it anyway) and general shouting and bad temperedness from me, a whole host of tics from Davies (he is prone to such things when tired or upset) and some serious threats and consideration of school – on the basis that I was not prepared to compromise his and my relationship for the sake of Home Education before realising that actually Home Education is a massive part of our relationship and forced entry to school would likely do a hell of a lot of damage particularly when it was being as a punishment. I concluded last week that it was time for me to roll with it a bit, accept this next stage rather than fighting it, reevaluate who I think Davies is and put some of the effort, time and energy into our relationship that I did with Scarlett last year to quite some level of success. Time to put aside the whole ‘but Davies is X’ thoughts I had and accept some of the responsibility of being his mother, the grown up, some one who loves him and needs to work with him rather than constantly finding faults and picking him up on them.

So first steps, talking to him, establishing whether there is anything going on that he is not happy with? Plenty of his behaviour comes quite neatly under the attention seeking catergory. I have always felt that if a child is being attention seeking then the answer is simply to give them attention. I agree that there is some bad behaviour which shouldn’t be rewarded but I think acting out to gain a parent’s attention is not really bad behaviour as such. I am aware than me working will have had some impact on the children. I think it’s been pretty low level, they like and enjoy the company of all the people they have spent time with while I’m working and it has not felt too disruptive. Davies has started at (new) Badgers and Beavers since January and possibly most key to a lot of his behaviour, we are spending huge amounts of time with children far younger than him. In the main I think a lot of good has come of Davies spending so much time with younger children, many of the positive aspects of his personality have been honed from being the ‘big one’ in a group, but that is only good when there is the balance of time spent with peers or older children. Some of his previous freedoms have had to be limited by being with 3 littler children, for example when Lucy is housesitting and here alone with D, S, R & R. Little things, but hard to deal with perhaps in amongst other challenges at the same time. It’s winter and although we do get out and about a fair amount I bet we don’t clock up nearly as many outside, active hours per week as we do in the summer. For a six year old boy with ‘excited puppy syndrome’ and certain amounts of energy needing to be exhausted every day this can pose problems. He insists he’s happy with everything in his life and actually in those odd snatched moments each week when he and I are on our own, just chatting straight back comes the Davies I know so well.

Phase 2 would normally be to talk to people in similar situations. Thing is all my friends who have boys either have same age ones but they are not their first child or don’t have boys at all, or their boys are in school. But I did chat with a few people, all of whom simply agreed that six year old boys do a fair old bit of acting like six year old boys :lol:. Next came doing some reading. I’ve always read around subjects when issues have arisen. I read loads about pregnancy, babies, toddlers, siblings, education, recently loads about spirited children but never specifically boys so I got a copy of Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys – the pertinent bits of which I read in one sitting last night (didn’t bother with the bits about teenagers, I’ll deal with that when we get there 😉 ). I’m not going to say it’s changed my life, or Davies’ or that it is the answer to all our woes – I’ll leave silly claims like that to the dust jacket, but it did give me several ‘oh yeah!’ type moments, I’ve chucked it at Ady and told him to at the very least read the bit about Dads and in the same way as one single comment from Alison taken from the Spirited Children books she recommended changed my whole approach to Tarly I think this is going to do the same, for now, for me and Davies.

I do think birth order – which is not mentioned in the book, plays a big part in children’s behaviour /personality. I can certainly identify with things related to being the oldest which Davies get’s frustrated with and he gets being the oldest perpetuated even more by the posse of smaller children we spend lots of time with whereas most children would at least get a bigger taste of being the same age as everyone else for most of their day at school. I think Beavers, Badgers and MM gives us a good weekly dose of that, as does the various get togethers we have with HE friends but I’m going to try and foster some more one to one time with other same age boys for him too – watching him with Liam last week, where he got the chance to do all the classic laughing at things to do with toilets, brandish swords and be generally loud in the company of someone doing the exact same thing and with noone frowning or telling him to hush demonstrated to me that he needs more time to do those things. I’m also talking to him lots more, explaining that aslong as he is trying to behave and is attempting to rein in his craziness when the situation calls for it then I won’t be cross with him (or send him to school!) and hopefully in giving him the opportunity to work off the stuff this age dictates he needs to do, provide a bit more for his needs we can move forwards to the next stage with as little fall out as possible. 🙂

which is of course what I should have titled the first post 😉

Right, about to contact Legoland to clarify their HE pricing but on their website they are showing educational rates now of £5 per child and £15 per adult with one adult free for every 10 kids – which has hiked up somewhat from their previous £7 per person if you’re an adult heavy family (POO, POT, POLAG etc). And that’s just on certain days – which in April is:
Tues 17th
Wed 18th
Thurs 19th
Fri 20th
Mon 23rd
Thurs 26th
Fri 27th
Mon 30th

We could move it into March but it would mean being the week after NicCamps which I’m not too keen on (and can’t do the Wednesday anyway) – Legoland is closed on Wednesdays all throughout May. So if we’re going for a Wednesday it pretty much decides us on 18th April really 🙂

How does that date work for everyone and assuming the costs are as above can I have some provisional numbers while I wait for Legoland to get back to me about how it all works (paid up front or on the gate etc.).

And Tuesday 6th March for the Tate? Any takers?

ETA : Legoland have confirmed it will be £5 per child and £15 per adult for us. They could do a group educational workshop for us at 50 pence per child, some of them look pretty good but we can decide that once we’ve settled on a date. Further looking at Wednesday 18th shows it to not be the best of days for me – I’m supposed to be working in the morning with the dentist in the afternoon and Badgers in the evening. Is there any chance of a different day of the week for you Helen? Ros, as they are having £5 entry for that week I assume it is only Devon’s odd school holidays happening that week so aside from lots of folk eating clotted cream teas we are probably more at risk of flocks of children in school uniform 😉

Was lovely 🙂

The weather looked a bit grim but as we drove over to Slindon it brightened up and was dry if not particularly sunny. It was so mild today too – no need for hats and gloves and actually barely a need for coats. 🙂 We arrived a bit before Chris and Julie so we went into the woods and found a fallen tree which Davies tried to climb up. He got a fair way up so I had a go but used the wrong technique and tried to climb up rather than walk up. Ady had a go and did it straight away, leaping off just before Chris and Julie appeared to witness his splendid feat!

The children all ran ahead, Ady and Chris walked on talking about work and benefits and Julie and I walked together chatting about various things including her offering a morning a month childcare to help me out with my library childcare issue. 🙂 This is very good news as it leaves me with just one morning a month not properly covered, which hopefully between Ady and my Mum is manageable. I have emergency care sorted for any afternoons my Dad can’t manage and I’m feeling hugely more settled about it all than I did this time even last week. 🙂 Chris headed off halfway round the walk and the rest of us carried on to our camp where we did a bit more camp building and then at Davies’ request carried on with our music making from last time. Except this time we had the camera to capture it all 🙂 I debated gathering likely looking leaves to brew up with but decided it would be equally lacking in caffine as my hippy teas already at home. We were so caught up in our hiyayayayaing that we sort of forgot we were in a public place but Ady said at least three lots of people walking their dogs heard the noise and took a different path through the woods rather than walk past us – no doubt picturing goats being sacrificed and a cauldron bubbling in the middle of our teepee structure! 😆

We left and came home to get roast dinner on. There was much debate about what to watch on tv which meant we ended up watching nothing – Ady spent some time in the garden mowing the lawn and chopping up logs for the coming week – we’ve started saving the sawdust from chainsawing logs and using it as cat litter for Candle, which is saving money and surprisingly efficient – far better than the shop bought cat litter we were using. Oh how we’ve taken to this frugality ;). I cut Davies’ hair and at her request cut a fringe into Tarly’s (which she has already pushed off her face so many times it has gone back into her hair, but I do have some locks to keep forever now 🙂 ) and they both had a long bath. Then Davies, Scarlett and I all got out a jigsaw puzzle each and completed them (Davies did a Dora one – very easy and then an alphabet one. We debated how he didn’t know alphabetical order and I called it out as he found the letters – later when he was playing on the compuer an alphabetically ordered keyboard came up for him to enter his name and it was very funny to watch his fingers automatically going to where the letters would be on a qwerty keyboard instead – although I can see the purpose of the alphabet for filing, dictionaries and alphabet puzzles I reckon learning letter placement on a keyboard is probably a more important skill today actually.). Scarlett did a Wallace and Gromit 100 piece puzzle and I did a schmuzzle puzzle where every piece is the same interlocking shape. The children ended up coming over to join in with mine. Really must add to our puzzle collection – they are both into them at the moment and easily able to do 100 pieces and above – another reason to get a table eh?! 🙂

We had roast dinner while watching The Cosby Show which I used to adore and the kids really liked, I drank lots of cherry Coke to bring my caffine levels back in line, then Davies played Zoombinis and Tarly watched Aristocats (her current favourite film). I joined Davies in playing Zoombinis – he’d chosen to try the hardest of the 3 discs and was making an admirable effort and didn’t take too much assistance to get some of the trickier logic bits. Tarly did some more jigsaws and then there was a brief interlude of Goddard family craziness (possibly brought on by caffine rush in my case) of us all singing various songs including Lion Sleeps Tonight and U Can’t Touch This (MC Hammer) which led to me finding that on youtube to show the children the crazy trousers and has possibly coined the phrase ‘Stop. Hammertime’ in our house for the coming week. 🙂 They went to bed, we ate toast and I watched Lost.

I’m now killing time until the breakmaker finishes a loaf as it is smelling quite strongly and I’m concerned it’s overheating so want to wait until it completes the loaf so I can unplug it. And tomorrow, tomorrow I shall drink tea!