One word? When seven would do…

Obviously your prime concern will be what the weather was like here today. Well it was sunny, pretty much all day and (drumroll please!) I got ALL my washing done and dried. Woo and also hoo!

I had a plan to get the house all surface tidy this morning but spent an hour on the phone to Julie instead so had to do a quick sprinkle round every room with some mandarin essential oil to give the house a citrus fresh scent and do the breakfast washing up before giving D & S strict instructions about playing nice.

Lucy and The Rs arrived very shortly followed by a new HE contact Lucy had tracked down and made contact with. She only lives about a mile away from me and has a four year old son, Nat (who Davies and Scarlett very amusingly kept using different vowel sounds for in the middle, he was called Nit, Nut and Net at various points today by them :lol:), she has always been intending to HE, Nat has never been to school but rather astonishingly has never had contact with other Home Educators. She was very nice, if something of an enigma to me for her lack of network either online or in real life and her lack of worry about it either – I think most of us are very aware of the socialisation challenge we are thrown almost constantly so have a very ready line of defence against it. She didn’t, neither did she seem at all apologetic or concerned about it. More power to her really I guess, but it was the first time I’d been the first other HEor someone had met and not faced a barrage of questions, concerns, worries and need to seek assurance and information from them. Nat seemed a perfectly nice little lad who got swallowed up into the house by the other children almost immediately and proved quite a hit with them all I think. Davies struggled a bit, he spends a lot of time being a Big Brother and it always seems a shame for him to have to do it ‘professionally’ when we have friends over as well but he managed well, organising a film showing in his bedroom. Ady asked him this afternoon what he thought of Nat and his answer was ‘yeah, he was ok. He liked Shrek 2’ which seems to be enough of an indicator of whether he is acceptable or not 😆 I was rather in policewoman mode on the beat round the bedrooms and playroom in a bid to keep disturbance to a minimum with a zero tolerance policy on crisp eating in bedrooms, bouncing on beds or wilful trashing of my house. Scarlett and Rebecca – who seem to have formed some sort of dreadful alliance and will probably be making Lucy and I curse ever having introduced them to each other at such a young age when they hit their teens and being awful – both recieved cautions for crimes including climbing up Scarlett’s bedroom window, jumping on her bed and being a bit handy with their slapping of boys 🙄

Ady rang just after lunch to say he was passing the house on his way to Tunbridge and did I want him to pop in and collect a child for the afternoon so I nominated Davies, giving him a bit of Daddy-time and Scarlett the chance to play with Rebecca in a girlie fashion for the rest of the afternoon. Ady came home, whisked Davies away, K and Nat left and once Scarlett had recovered from not being the chosen one to accompany Ady she and Rebecca had a whale of a time playing together really nicely. I made quiches for our dinner and with some leftover pastry made some jam tarts which we sampled before taking Lucy and The Rs home. Ady fed Davies ‘on the road’, Scarlett had a bowl of pasta and then Ady and Davies arrived home. Bedtime was rather protracted but they finally got there and as I’m working all day tomorrow I really should go off to bed myself. Ady has his first NEBOSH exam tomorrow – the second one is next Friday and then that’s it – no more studying, college or revision for him which will be a big pressure off him and a relief to us all. I’m really proud of him for sticking with this, it’s been tough for him and not something he has enjoyed at all, which given it was voluntary makes it all the more commendable that he’s seen it through. So I imagine many a beverage will be drunken tomorrow in celebration of being halfway through the exams by the end of the day.

stick with the stuff you know…

Work this morning. Just for a change it rained.

Very subdued workteam today comprising me, my least favourite work colleague who I would best describe as ‘mardy’, the childrens’ librarian who is precisely what you would imagine when you hear the profession ‘children’s librarian’ – very sweet, nice, teacher-ish and speaks the whole time as though she is addressing children and reading them a story, and one of the Saturday assistants who is a very nice lad but only 10 years older than my son, putting him closer in age to my offspring than me and thus someone I am likely to embarrass both myself and him by attempting to find any common ground. In his eyes I am quite clearly ‘a grown up’ and as I always struggle to act like one it seems best to be silent rather than cock it up by coming over as a bad parody of a grown up (the best I can manage) or trying to by ‘down with the kids’ and say things like ‘well bad’ or ‘minging’ which are probably way adrift of what all the cool kids say nowadays anyway. 😆 The rain brought the borrowers in in droves though where they all sat about on computers or browsing the shelves with slight steam rising off their damp clothes. I was on the counter most of the morning where I said a rotation of about 3 different things for most of the four hours;
‘well it is a morning at least’ in repsonse to ‘well it’s hardly good’ when I said ‘good morning’ to people as they walked in.
‘no, it’s not lovely it is?’ in repsonse to ‘it’s horrible out there’ as people came in shaking their brollies.
‘I know, we were on the beach most days in April’ to ‘what’s happened to the seasons, it’s June in a couple of days?’
All of which I must have said about 57 times each 😆 I did come home with a big pile of dvds that had come in for me though including HSM (again) that Davies has been after watching again and they put on (twice) this afternoon singing along to, so I have all the songs buzzing round my head yet again 🙄 We were indeed soaring and flying all afternoon long :lol:.

Everyone seemed to have had a nice morning here with Davies putting on a magic show for us when I got home ably assisted by junior audience members. He is toying with the idea of being the compere for Cabaret Night at Kessingland, which I think he’d be great at, but then he’s also toying with a magic act, some singing and dancing along to Mika and a stand up comedy session, so we might have to wait and see what he delights us with on the day.

Once we’d had our fill of HSM I started telling Davies about the animation on Ivor the Engine from the show we’d watched the other night and we got the pens and paper out to make some of our own. Then having demonstrated the idea we put an Ivor the Engine video on so he could see it all in action. He really liked that idea (it’s very basic animation with a static background and lots of pieces of drawn things which simply move across the background. Characters are created with various heads, limbs etc and then the bits are swapped over on the background accordingly – no need to do things like animate mouths or faces, just swap for a different head) and we talked about some ideas for making an animation like that. All the digital cameras in the house take pictures that make the stills too long and I can’t work out how to shorten them sufficiently to properly animate, so after looking at them in shops and online for ages I bought a webcam off ebay which should be here by the weekend so we can have a go with that – a friend made an excellent lego animation film with her son using a webcam recently so I know it can be done better than with digital camera.

Davies has been going to sleep later and later this last few weeks, often not going to sleep before 10pm, which would be fine if he slept in the following morning, but he doesn’t so he is getting lots of tics and twitches as he does when he is tired and his eyes are all sore and slitted, so I sent them both to bed at 630pm tonight. I read Scarlett a pile of books including an excellent story called Beware of girls which is a good twist on the big bad wolf stories, then a collection of Wicked Wolves Tales to complete a load of wolfy type stuff and a couple more about witches and little girls. Ady read to Davies – they have been looking at a comic style Wallace and Gromit storybook for ages which I refuse to read – comics are all but impossible to read out loud with all the non verbal sound effects, speech bubbles and words along the bottom, particularly as they have tried to spell all of Wallace’s Yorkshire-isms phonetically which makes it really hard to read. But Davies was still playing with toys while I cooked dinner and appeared just before someone was fired in The Apprentice, so it was 10pm again tonight despite him having been in bed for more than 3 hours 🙄

In animals in the Goddards household news Candle is fine, I am clearly forgiven and she has not done any dreadful acts since, the chicks have been cleaned out (again – man, can those creatures poo!) and Freddie – the oldest, two weeks old tonight, can now fly/jump/hop out of the box if the lid isn’t on 😯 and is looking ever more feathered with every passing hour. They are incredibly tame and will happily hop onto your hand or arm and when their box gets hoovered round at least once a day will come nosily over to see what’s going on rather than hiding at the back of the box behind each other like you’d expect (it’s what I feel like doing when I see a hoover 😉 ).

I’ve missed my vocation in life you know. I wasn’t meant to work at the library or any of my previous occupations. I was not supposed to be at home Educating my children. Oh no. My calling in life was clearly to stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Wincey Willis and John Kettley and bring you regular weather updates from Sussex. I was supposed to be a meteorologist!

So today, just for a change it has not done this
it has done this instead which was nice.

After a phonecall from Ali to say they wouldn’t be coming over today after all 🙁 I decided the weather was just too nice to stay in all day so after shoving more washing on we headed into town to move money about in bank accounts, which needed doing one day this week anyway, so saves a rush job later in the week. We had an hour and a half on our parking meter which should have been loads, and having exchanged texts with Lucy to call round and visit them on the way home I thought my time keeping was going to be pretty good for once, but somehow time vanished! We only got two people commenting with ‘I bet you hate half term’ to me when the children were, well, being children really. To which I was able to grimace and say with total honesty, ‘yep, I hate school holidays’ which of course I do, but not because of my children ;). We picked up various bits and pieces, things like fleeces half price and super snuggly pjs for Davies ready for camping, oh and pac-a-mac style waterproof coats for them both. I recently realised that both the children’s pjs are halfway up their legs and Scarlett is wearing 2-3 years and Davies is wearing 4-5 years so I got Tarly a couple of pairs of shortie pjs in age 5-6 on the basis she can wear those for a couple of years and I’ll get some more for Davies when I next see some cheapy ones. We continued our search for a sunsuit for D and waterproof trousers for them both but to no avail. And then I realised while we were queuing in a shop to pay that our parking ticket had run out five minutes previously so we dashed back to the car.

A quick stop at the supermarket to get some lunch on the run and then round to Lucy’s house via my house to peg out washing on the line. We had a lovely couple of hours round at Lucy’s with Rebecca, Davies and Scarlett playing mostly outside without any real adult intervention required and Richard joining them as and when. Richard is really into Toy Story atm which is quite charming for me as it was the film which Davies was obsessed with when he was two and kickstarted his love of all things animated, particularly Pixar – including taking him to see Disney on Ice where he shook Buzz and Woody’s hand when he was 3 and the Pixar exhibition at the Science Museum last year. He used to sit and watch that film back to back four or five times a day and it was real interactive viewing too with him laughing and gasping at the action, chattering away to anyone else in the room about what was happening and reciting some of the lines along with the characters. He hasn’t watched the film for well over a year if not longer and in the style of the film his Buzz and Woody toys lay under the bed discarded (altogether now, ‘when somebody loves you, everything is beautiful…’) but watching Richard all captivated by it today took me right back. 🙂 Yep, I’ll even get sentimental about other people’s children’s obsessions! 😆 Lucy and I managed a fair bit of chatting which was nice, we spend a lot of time together but rarely manage to actually finish a sentence without interuption let alone a whole conversation!

We came home and I had a falling out with Candle, the cat. She really hates the chicks being here and as ever her method of protest about something – us going away for more than one night, lots of people in the house, new babies (when we had them!) is to go and poo somewhere, preferably on the clothes of the person she is pissed of with, or even better on their bed if she can get in the bedrooms. Hence we keep the bedrooms shut at all times nowadays. Anyway she’s been pooing in various places over the last 10 days since the chicks were born and I got home to find the house stinking as it was warm and all the windows were shut. I grabbed her, took her to the poo and then flung her out of the front door. Which is pretty much what I always do when she does something wrong – take her to it, shout at her and then put her outside (to think about what she’s done 😉 ). I was really pissed off and chucked her slightly harder than usual and she disproved the cats always landing on their feet law :shock:. She looked at me with utter confusion and I slammed the door and watched her shadow slink away feeling sick that I might have really hurt her. I didn’t want to go straight after her as I was fairly sure she was ok, just shaken and I was still really cross, so I went and cleared up the mess and got the kids’ tea on before going outside to find her. She was hiding under the garden bench looking very sorry for herself so I called her and she came and followed me back in the house, jumping straight onto my lap and has been very affectionate all evening, whereas normally when she’s done something wrong she will avoid us for a few hours. Anyway no harm done but it was a horrible feeling thinking I’d hurt her through anger having lost my temper.

I’ve been doing lots of hanging out on chicken forums, mostly US ones and am slightly dismayed that I appear to be turning into a classic US Homeschool Mom – one of the forums which I found purely by googling about chickens, chicks and eggs (and believe me you need to be selective when you are googling the word ‘chick’ :roll:) has a huge great thread about homeschooling and how it seems to go hand in hand with chicken ownership. I’ll be swapping recipes for cookies and making corndolls and pinnys next! And there was me thinking I was alternative – I’m just a cliche after all! 😆

Here’s Rhonda 🙂

she’s doing fine, as are they all. No idea whether they are hens or cockerels yet. They’re growing at an amazing rate, flapping their wings and actually getting off the ground very slightly.

And she’ll get to meet her very soon 🙂

I slept in this morning, I was having a lovely dream although I can’t quite remember what about now, although it was interupted regularly from about 730am by one or other child coming to report various things to me. It has rained all day long here and we didn’t have plans until 1pm so while the children played and watched films I did a bit of baking. I made some choux pastry, melted some chocolate and started to whip up some cream with icing sugar for filling to make profiteroles and then while I turned to do something in the sink the top heavy bowl with the whisk in it fell over and cream went all down the gap inbetween the cupboards and the fridge. I managed to construct a special cleaning implement with tea towels wedged on the end of the dismantled broom handle and hopefully got it all mopped up – I’ll soon know if it starts to stink of gone off cream in the kitchen in a day or two. I then realised that actually it was single cream which the motor of the whisk would burn out before it whipped so the children and I ran round the local shop dodging raindrops and puddles to get some double cream instead so I could finish them. I also made some chocolate chip rock cakes and had grand plans for flapjacks and some cheese and pesto scones but ran out of time so might do those tomorrow instead. I like the idea of some home baked sweet and savoury things to have for lunches instead of white bread and value jaffa cakes this week. 😉

Ady had hoped to be home before 1pm but various emergencies at work meant he didn’t leave until nearly 3pm so the children and I headed over to my parents at 1pm. Having had quite a ranty morning I was determined to remain calm and serene and be nice to everyone, which I managed to pull off well so we had a nice lunch, Ady arrived, I graciously accepted compliments on my choux pastry, sat quietly cuddled up to Ady while he and Dad watched the football and Mum played with D&S and a rather impressive collection of Betty Spaghetty dolls that she has amassed over there. It was quite nice to sit there and daydream for about half an hour with noone actually wanting anything from me until Davies brought over all the dolls to show me them.

We left there fairly early as I wanted the children to try and get an early night after several late ones over the weekend (it didn’t happen, but my intentions were good!) and came home. I cleaned the chicks out as they were stinky and we took some proper pictures of them each now we know which one is which. I cooked a very lovely, if I do say so myself, spaghetti bolognaise and home made garlic bread – really impressed with the meat from the butcher so far, lovely lamb yesterday and excellent mince today, we’ll be boycotting supermarkets before you know it ;). Ady and I watched the BBC four show about children’s TV in the ’60s and the film afterwards about Smallfilms and making of Ivor the Engine and Bagpuss which I’m kicking myself for not videoing, Davies would have loved it and I can’t find it listed anywhere as repeated :(. But it’s given me some ideas for animation with drawings which I might share with Davies tomorrow along with some more baking before a visit from Ali and Freya in the afternoon. Oh, and probably some more rain.

If there were three things my mother would shake her head sadly over and tell complete strangers she is disappointed about in me they are as follows:
1. My weight
2. My laziness around the home – despite it not actually being true my parents still have me painted as a 15 year old teenager who slobs around the house all day. Quite how they think our house isn’t knee deep in crap with starving children and general day to day running of a home ground to a halt when they both consider ‘Nicola does NOTHING’ is beyond me (well actually it isn’t, they think Ady does it all!) but I do have to concede that my house does fall fair short of their standards of a place for everything and everything in it’s place showhome standards. Truth be told I would rather sit on my (fat) arse and read books all day while eating bon-bons and ordering internet shopping but actually I seem to be pretty worn out by the end of every day which suggests to me that I am not being nearly as lazy as I would like to be.
3. My crapness with money. Well I guess even I can’t deny or defend that one, but having lived very successfully within a very limited budget for 18 months now maybe we could let that one slide?

So if ever there wasn’t a good day to arrive (late!) to Davies’ swimming lessons, rushing him to the poolside to watch his lesson before stripping off into a frankly ancient and unflattering (we got up very late this morning and it was the first one to hand, really it was lucky I remembered to bring towels and children and a swimsuit!) swimsuit, stretched elastic in all the stress points of my most overweightiness (I’m pretty sure I wore it whilst pregnant too so it’s really quite misshapen) having left the kitchen strewn with all of last nights curry remains, it was today. I looked up from taking Davies to the pool to see my Mum, sitting immaculately turned out in her Casual Sunday wear (honestly, the woman is like bloody Barbie with entire outfits on coathangers in her wardrobe with matching shoes, handbags and jewelry for every occasion, she’d have plucked out ‘Sunday morning watching grandson’s swimming lessons’ this morning with jeans, T shirt, matching cardigan and pink trainers and a cute little rucksack style bag) in the spectator area. She did manage to refrain from waving and calling to Davies and distracting him from his lesson, which as there was only him and the triplets there today was quite a good one for him.

Ady and Scarlett got straight into the water and were having a great time bobbing and splashing about while Mum and I watched the lesson. Then I went and got changed and we all had a swim. We were probably in there about an hour, Ady and Davies went down the big slide a couple of times, I remembered why I’d stopped wearing the old swimsuit and bought a newer one last year – the top completely flops down when I try and do anything remotely active in it – great for easy access breastfeeding, crap for swimming in a public pool and totally unsuitable for going down a slide with a child on my lap with an audience at the bottom! 😆 I did four lengths of the pool – which is lame I know but wore me out! I did some swimming about with Scarlett on my back, plenty of stuff with Davies trying to reinforce what he’s been learning and then the lesson after Davies’ ended so the little pool was opened and we spent ages in there playing with floats and the mini slide which Scarlett particularly adored. And all the while with my Mum watching wearing her special ‘blimey she’s five times the size of me’ look :roll:.

We finally came out when we all looked like prunes – the others had all been in for half an hour longer than me and met Mum upstairs at the entrance. She bought the kids sweets each from the vending machines and then they begged her to come back to our house to see the chicks, which she did, raising a slighy eyebrow at the washing up strewn kitchen before we tidied it up. Ah well, it was very nice of her to come and watch Davies and nice to see her generally, even if it did give her fodder for that sad head shaking for weeks to come. 😆

Ady got a roast dinner on and we braved the continuous rain (it’s not stopped all day) to go out to a local animal food and supplies centre to get some stuff for the chicks. They were about to run out of food and I’d read in several places that you should start introducing a bit of grit to their chick crumb diet and we needed a proper feeder and waterer as none of our home made efforts have worked, neither had the canary waterer I’d got from the pet shop yesterday. We also got some coloured bands for their legs so we can finally know which chick is which. No idea which of the yellow ones was which initially although one is about a day ahead of the others in feather growth so we’ve kept that one as Freddie which was the first to be born, clearly the black two didn’t need them but we thought they’d feel left out if they weren’t colour coded ;). There was a tent show on the green over the weekend which was looking very damp and quiet but we stopped and had a quick look round there. Being in a tent while slightly cold and wet with the wind flapping and the rain pouring took me right back to Newgale and The Great Flood but still hasn’t ruined my anticipation of camping this summer :).

Home for a lovely roast dinner, some hama beading which the kids asked to do but got bored and wandered off leaving me to finish – I made an elephant for Davies to look like Elmer and Scarlett’s name – both of which were ironed and stuck to their doors while they had a bath. They have a collection of shells from the beach in the bathroom which often get put into the bath when they play various games and a razor shell had broken and cut Scarlett’s knee quite nasily, which brought about an abrupt end to the bath while she was given first aid. She was very blase about it though, claiming it was nothing compared to the time she had stitches 😆 Clearly she was right to be calm about it as ten minutes later she was dancing round the room to Mika with Davies trying to make up a dance routine for Kessingland cabaret. Very much in the style of that dance to Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn that’s done the rounds on youtube with very literal moves for every line, but very cute to watch. I’d have videoed it but they were still naked from the bath so it wouldn’t have been something I’d have put out for public viewing anyway 😆

I’m watching Lost and struggling with the rollercoaster of ‘they’re dead! They’re not dead! Someone else is dead! No they’re still alive too! This time they really are dead! Or are they?’ type stuff that’s going on with it. Oh and googling for waterproofs for D&S having realised how crappy it is to have wet clothes whilst camping :).

I worked at Shoreham library this morning, which for those of you not familiar with local Sussex geography is the next town along from us. I was asked a couple of weeks ago if I’d swap my afternoon shift today for a morning shift there and I readily agreed, not least because really don’t like working Saturday afternoons, it just means the whole day is a write off as there is not time to do anything really in the morning and by the time I’ve finished work the day is gone. So I got to go and have a poke round a different layout, slightly different money taking system (they have an old fashioned, Open All hours style till which I’ve not used since Clinton Cards days) and meet some new workmates. We were overseen by the Childrens’ Services Librarian who is lovely but Very Sensible Indeed. She has two boys, about the same age as D & S and took the chance to have her teabreak with me and ask me about HE which she has clearly been itching to do since I started working for the library. The library service is really quite close partners with the schools system, particularly on local levels so I imagine the very concept is shocking to her but she hid it all well and I did a sort of low level compromise on answering her questions about whether I set aside ‘school time’ each day and how I can teach them things when it might not be my area of expertise with stock answers rather than my own more passionate replies. Some people are just not worth spending time convincing because you know in advance you will not change their basic beliefs or ideas and actually have no real desire to do so. Her children are clearly happy in school, she is clearly happy with them in school, we only had a 15 minute tea break and the first five minutes were taken up discussing the weather, it really would be a waste of my time and energy to start trying to give her my hard sell chat about autonomy and free range education!

I quite surprised myself with how quickly I picked up the lay out of the library – the numbers for all the books have clearly stuck themselves into my brain way quicker than I’d realised and I appear to be more confident with things like ordering books in for people than I’d realised when I found myself doing so and holding a mini training session for one of the Saturday girls who’s been there for two years. I’ve really been accepted into ‘the fold’ at work during the last few weeks, with them clearly deeming me ‘alright’ and sharing some of the in jokes and modifying what they say infront of me a little less, which is good – it will be six months I’ve been there next week, which if I was full time would have been an age in any other job I’ve had and childcare wobbles and occasional dragging workdays aside I am really enjoying it.

So anyway, I worked this morning, was allowed 15 minutes travelling time so arrived late and finished early getting home before my shift would have even started if I’d worked as normal at Lancing this afternoon. Ady and the children had been busy doing stuff in the garden, refloored the chicks brooder with peat as the sawdust was smelling and gotten involved in a game of Harry Potter using the geomags. I think they’d watched HP4 too, so they are now up to date with the films 🙂 Hurrah for the library!

Ady had promised to help Dad cut his hedge so we went over there and they did hedge cutting while I took the children over the road to the pet shop and bought a water feeder for the chicks. We came back and the children played in Dad’s garden while Ady and I chatted to Dad.

This month we are concentrating on local sourcing of products for our monthly food shopping so we’ve done all our meat purchasing at the local butcher and will get all our fruit and veg from the greengrocer, so we only used the supermarket for alcohol, tinned and dry goods. It may not actually save us any money but it certainly won’t cost any more and we’ll be all pleased with ourselves for our responsible purchasing :lol:. So we went to the local butcher and the onto Tesco for our bread, milk, tins and dry stuff, then Ady took the kid to McDs while I went to M&S (all on the same complex) to get a couple of bras so I don’t wear my frothy lacey affairs every day. There was a mother and daughter in the fitting room getting the daughter measured for her first bra which is something I don’t recall doing and of course won’t be doing with S for quite some few years yet but I could sense the excitement of the young girl getting her first bra which is one of those landmark moments of puberty I recall longing for and being thrilled about for ages afterwards knowing I was wearing a bra! Now it’s just a bugger to know that I have to spend £20 on something which a cheap version simply will not do of, but despite my cleavage flashing most people will not see!

We got home in time for Doctor Who and then packed the children off to bed while we put all the shopping away (worst part 🙁 ) and then I cooked a lovely curry.

Tomorrow is swimming lessons for Davies and we’re all going to go swimming afterwards as the weather is too iffy for car booting and I really want to get some reinforcement of Davies’ lessons now he’s starting to make progress.

And there you go, not quite bullet points, but probably still brief by my usual standards!

Just deleted another comment from table bint over on M&T. This time picking me up on a couple of spelling mistakes. I’m pretty sure I know who she is, another Home Educator on the blogring that isn’t Early Years and the Far Out Crowd one too – and having learnt recently just what they all think they are far out of I am pretty much filled with simple irritation at the lot of ’em anyway.

I really loathe the fact that the biggest challenge to Home Educators actually isn’t the government, it isn’t other people who have their children in school, it isn’t that nosey checkout operator who asks ‘no school today?’ every time you go to the supermarket and it isn’t misleading articles in the TES. It’s other bloody home educators!

I’m not saying I don’t judge other people, I do it all the time, and within my own little circle I could even be described as scathing (yes, really 😉 ) but I can only assume that people’s need to go and make little snidey comments on the blogs of total strangers is to feed their own insecurity at their parenting, educational provision or lifestyle. I’m not going to respond, the table rant was on a bad day when I didn’t follow my own usual advice to ignore people not worth responding to, but the blog is now moderated for anyone I haven’t approved a comment from before and hopefully in the style of most of life’s minor irritations if I don’t pay any attention to her she’ll give up, go away and focus her attention on something a little more worthy, like her own life.

I had a smidgen of a lie in today although with both children in the bed with me after Ady left around 6am it wasn’t the luxurious and indulgent experience it could have been. Actually shortly after 830am I gave up because Davies couldn’t get HP2 to work – he couldn’t see the word ‘play’ on the screen. The reason for this became apparent when I did come downstairs – they’d put the bonus disc which just had ‘play bonus stuff now!’ or something similar as the only available option rather than the film disc.

Once I was up I busied myself with all sorts of thing to do, plenty of them online, while Davies watched HP2 and Scarlett brushed my hair, in a very comprehensive manner and with much detangling spray. I packaged up all my ebay sales from earlier in the week and then we went off to Lucy’s via the post office so I could get them on their way. We had lunch and then headed over to the beach for an hour or so which was very nice although having worn jeans I couldn’t really go in the water before heading back to Lucy’s for baths for some of the children before coming home. The children put on HP3 to watch while I did various online things and made a few phonecalls.

Feeling very off blogging for various reasons and only really doing it so I have my own record to look back on, infact I’m really generally anti-people at the moment, particularly online ones (because of course online people are a whole different species to real life ones :lol:)…

My day was pretty mundane really, I walked into work, had a fairly run off the mill sort of day with a variety of library tasks including putting books on shelves, taking books off shelves, issuing books to borrowers, discharging books when borrowers brought them back, putting new dust jacket covers on tatty books and withdrawing a huge pile of books off the system, ripping out the first page and pricing them up for sale. But I did get paid today so I celebrated that with a brie and pesto pastry for lunch :).

Back at home the children watched Harry Potter and Davies dressed up as Harry in his glasses and a cloak while Tarly was Hermione. I had a massive pile of books on chickens waiting for me at work, which as I was walking home again I quite ruthlessly picked through only bringing the pick of them home and picked up HP 2, 3 and 4 on dvd for them to watch over the next couple of days. I’m still flatly refusing NOT to watch them on some sort of hangover principle about all the hype of the books and the films – well that and the whole mystical magical world sort of thing not being something I’m remotely interested in. I was far more of a Malory Towers and Famous Five kinda girl than a Lord of the Rings as a child – I’d rather read about / watch real people doing real stuff than fantasy or sci-fi type stuff. They left our house and went to play at Lucy’s for a while (this is all hearsay btw, from what D&S told me :)) before coming back here again after lunch to meet Dad.

Dad walked them to Brooklands and bought them ice creams and when I got home Scarlett was cuddling a chick and chatting away to my Dad, while Davies was sitting near the garden wall with a little sign written by Dad advertising lavender sprigs for sale for 10 pence each – and he’d sold one! 😆 Dad left and Scarlett went out to man the lavender stand with Davies while I cooked their tea.

I then got everyone to dig out all the library books from their bedrooms and various other places and piled them all up in the hall to tick them off the lists I’d brought home of all the items out on our tickets – nearly 70 in all :shock:, we made a biggish pile of things to take back and the rest all disappeared back into bedrooms again, but at least everything is accounted for!

Chicks continue to grow apace – they are a week old today, all have proper wing feathers and the start of tail feathers showing today. Feathers (one wing) continues to do ok but is markedly smaller than the others – I’m pretty sure it’s grown, just not as fast, and it has wing feathers and is flapping it ok. The yellow ones are still interechangeable although there does seem to be one very vocal one. We put a stick in their brooder tonight to give them something to start perching on which they are loving. The yellow ones particularly are very friendly, despite the pecking and will happily hop onto your hand if you put it in and sit for quite some while being stroked quite contentedly. Hopefully there are a couple of hens in there at least who will make nice tame pets having been reared and handled so much by Davies and Scarlett.

Said Scarlett about Eve and Rei this morning while we were making their birthday cards and wrapping up their presents! Ady’s heard a similar quote about The Proclaimers (obviously brothers rather than sisters) but it really made me laugh to hear Scarlett say it with total sincerity! 😆 It’s not even like she’s not used to twins, but I guess it’s a measure of how little she considers any of the twins we see lots of as twins or even siblings and more that she sees them all as individuals, maybe.

A bit of a frantic morning with me faffing about with houseworky stuff and then realising we needed to leave the house in about half an hour and the children were still in pjs and we hadn’t made cards or wrapped gifts yet. They were dispatched to making one card each – thankfully no rows over who made who’s – Davies claimed Rei’s and Scarlett was more than happy to do Eve’s. Davies drew a tiger and a rainbow for Rei as he ‘knows they are her two favourite things’ and Scarlett drew a picture of a person who was not Eve for a while but then became Eve after all. 😆 They both wrote inside them – Davies with me just calling out which letter came next and Scarlett with a bit of me showing her, a bit of her telling me she knew that letter and a bit of looking at what Davies had written which was a faintly chaotic few minutes with me calling out different letters to them both – they both did really well though, while I sellotaped lots of paper together to wrap the presents and then wrote ‘Eve’ and ‘Rei’ all over them in crayons. I managed to remember bottled water and changes of clothing but failed miserably on bringing food other than a packet of rice cakes. Thankfully Lucy had brought sufficient food for four children so that failing wasn’t a problem.

We stopped for petrol and then collected Lucy and The Rs before heading off to Ipswich. Similar to when we drove to Nottingham just to see The Gruffalo for Ben’s birthday last year driving 300 miles and spending about 7 hours in the car for the sake of 4 hours with friends does seem a little crazy really but worth it to see those friends and for the children to have such a good time. Ady had handed over his Sat nav so we used that to navigate us there which was fine until the A12 was closed due to an accident which meant we had to make a decision about which way to go. We thought we’d cracked it with a road which seemed to run parallel to the A12 until I foolishly listened to the sat nav telling us to take a left, followed by another left … you get the idea. Although we didn’t actually end up back where we started, we drove through a small village and suddenly the traffic started moving again and we were back on the A12. Mileage wise we didn’t seem to have gone too far out of our way and when the sat nav got bored of telling us to ‘take a u turn as soon as possible’ with four children and two adults yelling back at it (Scarlett at one point called it a ‘bloody thing!’ but none of us acknowledged it :lol:) it surrended and gave us directions in front of us rather than behind. It did sterling work guiding us to the actual party destination in Ipswich though – I’m converted and impressed with it. 🙂

All of the children were really good considering it was a very hot day, we spent a lot of time in a car and aside from Richard getting himself into a state just before we arrived and Davies and Scarlett having a few very minor sibling spats – oh and Davies managing to stay awake even when all the other children had fallen asleep and wanting to chatter to Lucy and I on the way home, they all were really well behaved. Seasoned travellers 🙂

The party venue was great, fairly new I think, a big soft play shack place which Davies and Scarlett instantly disappeared into and were swallowed up for an hour without me catching more than a fleeting glimpse of them, then we all went back to Em’s house for tea, a fab spread of party food and lots of running round the garden. D&S were delighted with their rabbit and tortoises (very cute, I love tortoises 🙂 ) and I got to catch up with Chris & Helen and Em. We could have happily stayed for hours more but I was very aware of the drive infront of us so we left just before 6pm and had a really good run home, dropping Lucy and The Rs home and getting back here before 9pm. Ady presented the children with a bath, me with a can of red bull followed by a pint of cider and a lovely dinner. The children took ages to get to sleep, Scarlett having slept for over an hour in the car and Davies just full of everything he’d done and seen today but now the house is quiet aside from a Buzz Lightyear toy which goes off for no apparent reason every so often on a constant loop of ‘Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger’ and ‘To infinity, and beyond!’ which I may have to throw in the garage before I go to bed!

Some photos on flickr, all of which seem to have red eye which I can’t be bothered to sort out just now, I see Em’s already flickr’d and I’m sure Helen won’t be far behind. Thanks for a lovely day Em, hope Eve and Rei have a fab birthday tomorrow and thanks to Lucy for the company (and petrol fund!) on the drive. 🙂

No prizes for getting that one Merry 😉

Feeling loads better today, no idea what yesterday was about but clearly nothing too life threatening. This morning we were all up and dressed early as Tony was delivering a film projector for Ady. Davies was trying to teach Scarlett to play battleships, which was always going to be tricky as he is not 100% reliable himself. Davies, with some helpful additions from Scarlett narrated a piece for the Sussex newsletter about the chicks hatching so we got that emailed across. A flurry of text exchanges with Lucy meant we packed up a picnic and met up with them at the park. The children launched straight into a game leaving us to chat – they’ve only watched the Harry Potter film once but already the name Hermione which took me about a year to confidently pronounce is tripping off their tongues as Davies is Harry (complete with his glasses this afternoon :lol:) and Scarlett is Herminone. They had a really good run around and then Lucy and the Rs went off to meet her Mum while we headed into town to get birthday gifts for Em’s Eve and Rei for tomorrow. I had a rummage around in the ash tray in my car where I often shove a couple of quid in change for parking and found just 40 pence – enough for half an hour in town, along with a crumpled up £20 note – so hurrah for that! 🙂 We whizzed into town, found suitable presents and got some suncream as our last bottle is in Ady’s car and might as well stay there for when we’re out and about in that before dashing back to the car again within our ticket time and then home.

We had a play with the chicks then D&S disappeared up to Davies’ bedroom playing games, they’ve got on really well today, a new and different set of people to pretend to be has really livened up their playing. 🙂 They snacked all afternoon on rice cakes and raisins that I’d taken to the park but they hadn’t eaten so when Ady arrived home dead on 5pm from college I suggested we head off to the beach for an hour or so before a late tea for them, so we did. It was really nice, the tide was in sadly as I’d hoped for more rock pool investigation type stuff but the children ran off way ahead to play chase the wave and clamber on the rocks which meant Ady and I actually got to walk along holding hands, something we’ve managed a bit recently actually, after nearly 7 years of not doing it due to pushing pushchairs or holding little people’s hands. Ady gave a stone skimming masterclass to Davies and I and we both managed to get 2 bounces out of some stones, which we were chuffed with, then we headed back home again.

The children had tea and a bath while I cooked our dinner and Ady spent ages rearranging the playroom to accomodate the projector, which he then spent all evening battling with to get it to work how he wants it to. He’s not managed it yet so is sulking and will need to confer with Tony I think. I’ve had a celebratory glass of wine because I felt so much better today (and also because my jeans have been falling down all day and I quite liked the pictures Ady took of me at the beach so am feeling all good about not drinking in the week so thought I’d treat myself :lol:) and now, because I’ll be driving lots of miles tomorrow, I’m off to bed.

Just been to the park with Davies and Scarlett and Lucy and the Rs. It was full of people with dogs, which is fine. All of the leads, which in a public park which allows this is again fine. What isn’t fine is allowing your bloody dogs to come right up to complete strangers, sniff at them, jump at them and wander through the middle of their picnics. I wouldn’t let my children do it so why the hell do people seem to think it’s ok to not even bother calling their dogs away from people or watching where they are going and stopping them from even approaching strangers.

I had to lay there while a dog came up right behind me, sniffed at me and lurked behind my ear before getting bored and wandering off while I was quite literally frozen in terror. I’m sure the owner was perfectly confident that it wasn’t going to savage me and to be honest on a rational level even I knew it was unlikely but I just wish people would realise that if someone is scared of dogs (which is actually quite a legitimate phobia) then allowing your bloody great dog to come and sniff at me while you wander way way behind is equivalent to throwing a jar of spiders in the face of an arachnaphonic. And actually even if I were a dog lover I’d really rather not have someone else’s canine come sniffing at my crotch and picnic.

There are days which stay in your memory forever, moments you will recall for life – times that you will always be able to say what you were doing when you heard that particular bit of news.

Occurances which inspire you to great creativity, singing, dancing, art, poetry, photography, music.

There are highs which make even the lowest of lows worth experiencing just so the peak at the end is that much greater.

We have lived through dark days, we have overcome great difficulties and scaled huge mountains.

I have tried, tried to fill the gap. I have started countless new blogs on topics as diverse as when I cut my toenails to what we’re having for dinner, but I know you have humoured me at best with your reading of them, knowing at heart I could only ever be second best. I’ve missed her, you’ve missed her, the sun has shone that bit dimmer in her absence, the birds don’t sing as sweetly, the words just don’t make me laugh as loud, but now she’s back.

Strike up the band, pull up a chair, boil up the kettle and prepare for:
the long awaited,
much anticipated,
never overrated,
rarely understated,
return negates the need to be berated,
beautifully crafted sentences I wish I had created,
posts through up issues to be debated,
no matter how much she writes we’re never satiated,

drum roll please:

Woman with the best needing the toilet desperately story ever!

Right decision not to go to MM definitely as I felt ill on and off through the day. No idea what it is but I’m off to bed in a minute with hopes to sleep it off and have another quiet day tomorrow before a madly busy one on Wednesday.

I did a bit of sneaky baking of bread rolls and flapjacks which we had for lunch, read lots of my book which I’ve decided I’ve now read enough to not be voting for as the winner of the orange prize for reading group and can therefore stop bothering with and get on to the next book. Davies did some xboxing, Scarlett got loads of her cuddly toys in ‘because they are my super animals, Mummy’ and did lots of little drawings on tiny pieces of paper which she kept bringing to me. She did loads of letters too and brought them over saying ‘this is my Best Ever Y Mummy, look!’. In the same way that suddenly Davies knew what all the letters were she seems to be learning them from various places – the Y is from the ends of Daddy, Happy and Birthday from cards to Ady and Frazer in the last couple of weeks. Davies ‘read’ a load of words in the back of a Dr Who book based on guesswork and a bit of sounding out – now that Scarlett is interested he is being pushed into reading to keep ahead of her and also to do his helpful big brother act – an excellent reason to read IMO! 😆

I did some jigsaw puzzles with them, one of a pirate ship and one world map one which they then played with. I was rather stunned to listen to them pointing out a few countries to each other too – they both found the UK really easily and as the puzzle had wildlife pictures on it too they were really quite confident in various other places like Australia (so that must be New Zealand there), Madagascar (yep those lemurs again!) and Africa.

We had lots of chicks out run around time and then they watched the Pink Panther before it was time to take Davies round to Beavers. Scarlett sat on my lap and talked nonsense to me until Ady got home and then he took over, taking Tarly round with him to collect Davies, popping out to get potatoes and lucozade and making shepherds pie for dinner while I sat on the sofa and was pathetic. We rehoused the chicks into a bigger box as they just seemed so crowded in their old one. This is enormous and they are huddled together under the heat lamp but keep scurring around exploring and seem happy with the space so this should do them until they go outside.

I’ve spent ages today watching the chicks, they really are very entertaining. When I was about Davies’ age my parents built a dove cote and got four white doves, which quickly became 8 white doves and for a while they had up to 20 at a time. They were very pretty and one summer I spent hours training them to land on me for feeding and tried to nurse one caught by a cat back to health (I failed, he died but it was a good try). The doves didn’t get replaced as they gradually died / left home, my Mum didn’t like the bird poo all over her car and the dove cote got taken down eventually, but I do quite like birds.

I’ve also spent ages today online reading about chickens and educating myself, I’ve joined a forum which looks like it has loads of experts on it so should get any help with anything I can’t find answers for. Now we just wait to see how they fare over the next few weeks and work out whether we have any cockrels or not. We’re moving them to a bigger box tomorrow which should do them until they are ready to go outside (6-8 weeks old -ish) although they may go into the garage before that depending on how noisy / smelly they get in the meantime.

I can’t believe how quickly they grow – from the wet little things that drag themselves out of the eggs all beak and feet it is just hours until they are the cute little chicks you see in pictures. By day 4/5 they are already looking like mini-chickens. They have wing feathers sprouting and sometime in the last 24 hours they all lost their egg tooth, their feet and beaks have grown more and their combs are already starting to show. Load of flapping of their wings and pruning of themselves is going on and they can already fly a teeny bit with a big hop. Their necks seem to have stretched giving them much more of a chicken look.

They all stand up and cheep when one of us approaches them and respond to our voices, particularly mine and will jump into a cupped hand. The cleavage placing was possibly an error as they will scramble up me to get to my chest now, which would be fine if they didn’t peck at my freckles, which doesn’t tickle at all now, it just hurts! Yesterday we only had one yellow one without an egg tooth which we assumed was Freddie, now I can’t tell the difference between the yellow ones again. Feathers (one wing) is still lots smaller than the others but growing and developing just the same and seeming to be pretty feisty – if it gets bullied as they grow we’ll have to seperate them.

From reading about chicks today it seems we were amazingly lucky to hatch at all and certainly to hatch 5 out of 6 of those second lot of eggs. Although we were lots more diligent this time that before we still didn’t adhere to all the scientific rules and tips I’ve been reading about today. I did learn about home made incubators today though, so if we did it again I might be tempted to try that rather than borrow one again or buy one. It would appear we were very lucky not to do any harm to the eggs that hadn’t hatched when we were lifting the incubator lid every few minutes while they started hatching too. 😳

Davies had another swimming lesson. The teacher was in the pool with them this week which seemed to mean they all got more one to one attention and practical help, normally she stands on the side.

Davies did really well, getting his legs up and kicking and ducking right under the water etc. I remember so clearly learning to swim myself in that pool, I didn’t really enjoy it at all, I’m still not that into swimming so I have huge empathy for it not coming totally naturally to him. Two out of the three triplets ended up coming out of the water this week for various reasons and from there initially being two or three of the children way better than the rest they all seem to have evened out now.

We left the swimming pool and went to the car boot sale. There is one which operates summertime only next door to the pick your own farm and keeps the same opening times as the PYO and yesterday was the first one of the year with the weather being suitably nice for it. PYO opened this weekend too and we might try and get along there for some strawberry picking later this week if the weather is good. We managed to only bring home one small carrier bag of stuff from the carboot sale, Barbie books for Tarly and a Barbie scooter complete with crash hat and matching holdall, a Gromit mug and various other W&G bits for Davies, some clothes for S from a woman selling everything for 20p and some last minute bits from the stall giving away their books and videos free at the end (I picked up a fish cook book and an ice cream book, Ady got an ET video and the first Harry Potter film).

We got stuck in a traffic jam behind what looked like a very nasty accident requiring fire engines on the scene to cut people out so sat in the car for about an hour before coming home. We needed various bits of food so I went for a walk into town to get them from the supermarket before coming home and starting to feel quite ill. I laid down on the sofa with a book but kept falling asleep. The children watched the Harry Potter film while I dozed and Ady cooked dinner, which was lovely, but I felt even worse after eating and at about 6pm went up to the bedroom to lie down for a while. I slept badly, with many visits from the children before getting up at 10pm to watch Lost and then going straight back to bed again at 11pm.

This morning we’ve decided not to go to MM as I really don’t feel up to either the drive or the socialising and we could do with saving the petrol money and the entrance fee anyway – this is our first month of the new budget and it’s going to be a tight squeeze from now until payday on Friday. I’m still not feeling at all great with a spaced out feeling, slightly wobby vision, a bit of a headache and a general intolerance for anyone around me including children, cats and chicks! I’ve just put the breadmaker on to make some dough for rolls for lunch and am planning some baking today (without childrens assistance) to make some nice food . It’s pouring with rain again and the children are quite happily playing. A day of drinking plenty of tea, maybe reading some books if the words stay still on the page and eating nice things is in order I think.

Not at all sure I can see the point in this but in the style of the album title of a band I quite like ‘Everyone else is doing it so why can’t we’ I’ll give it a go.

A quietish morning here with plenty of chick hanewndling and some making of birthday cards for my brother who is 31 today. I can’t quite believe that actually, I know that I’m 33 so clearly Frazer must be 31 but he still feels like my ‘baby’ brother. 😆 I read something once that talked about how our siblings are our history, how no matter where we go in life they are the ones who truly know and understand where we came from. Growing up Frazer and I were not especially close, our age gap was the wrong way round for our friends to mix in the same circles and heading off to single sex secondary schools meant we didn’t even know each others mates but there are good and bad memories that I have from childhood which Frazer could share with me and no one else alive could. We still have in jokes, he is still the person I think of every Christmas Eve when I watch Davies and Scarlett get all excited about Christmas and remember how Frazer and I had our little Christmas Eve rituals. I remember the things about him that used to wind me up when we were tiny, which counter he would choose when we played Monopoly, how it was only daring each other to do try harder that spurred me on to jump off higher diving boards, swing higher on the swings and run faster, jump further and climb higher. So many of the ‘when I were a lass’ stories I tell D&S feature ‘Uncle Frazer’ and I recall the times when it was him and I against the world, my parents, the mean kids at the park, the babysitter. I watch Davies and Scarlett replay all the old sibling games that I remember doing with Frazer and know that that relationship is one of the trickiest, most precious and special ones there is. I’ve not actually talked to him in person today, we did call round to my parents twice but he was out both times. His birthday will have been marred by United not winning the FA cup but I hope however he celebrated it he has had a bloody good day.

We’ve been doing lots of handling the chicks and lots of letting them have free run of larger areas of the lounge today. They are really fast when they run and flap their wings. 🙂 I had some cuddles with all of them on me which resulted in them pecking at my freckles which initially tickled and was amusing but actually quite hurt after a while and one of the moles on my neck was almost bleeding after several well aimed pecks!

Ady did a couple of runs to the tip which means we now have a lovely big clear space in our garage and we all went to collect a freecycled hamster cage with the intention of making it the chicks next home. Upon collection we realised it wasn’t actually any bigger than the storage box we’re using so we’ll refreecycle it and keep looking for something bigger for them.

We had lunch and went over to meet up with Chris and Julie at a localish village fete. It was not fantastic to be honest with very little there in the way of things to do / see. It was held in the grounds of a posh private boys boarding school so I amused myself by looking at the proudly displayed work of 10 year olds studying life cycles of caterpillars and butterflies and thinking that we covered that two years ago :). The children mostly amused themselves with the long jump pit. Ady has a new camera (for work, when my one broke he told them he needed a new one so I now have his pretty purple canon and he has a new Olympus one which has this nifty little six photos in quick succession so you can choose the best one, which means we have filled flickr with very slightly different from the pictures before and after shots 🙂 ) .
We left there and had a bit of a walk into the downs before coming home again, via Mum and Dad’s (still no Frazer so we didn’t stop) with more chick free-ranging in the lounge, tea, haircut for Davies, bath and Dr Who before packing children off to bed.

And now I’m off to bed too – swimming lessons first thing followed by some carbooting and a fairly lazy rest of Sunday.