One word? When seven would do…

Today’s question which I’ve just found out the answer to was why are bonfires called bonfires and what makes them different to just fires?

They don’t get any easier 😉

I have done very little today actually :). Ady has been off so I took that as a perfect excuse to stay up til 2am and then not get up again til nearly 10am which was nice :).

The weather has been very April-y with the added nusiance of lots of wind and cold temperatures to aid the rainclouds along so any possible plans involving being outside were immediately shelved. We did need to go and move money between bank accounts to pay the mortgage and to get the meat for the month from the butcher so we achieved that.

We also popped into Worthing museum for a look round as Ady had not been there before. It’s not that long ago that the children and I went there but several exhibitions had changed and the art was new. They had added a few ‘please do touch’ areas upstairs including a tardis with dressing up clothes through the ages and a dalek outfit :). There was some interesting jewellery on display too of beads made from human hair and photos of dead flies arranged in the shape of necklaces. Slightly odd but quite beautiful too. We all lay down to see how we compared to the height of a female skeleton found buried from 200 years ago and talked lots about the farmers kitchen compared to ours now. I was particularly charmed from an entry in the visitors book. Amid the normal nonsense written by teenagers thinking they are clever and earnest praise from tourist was a childlike handwritten saying ‘my nanna is from the olden days’ 😆 😆

Scarlett has been desperate to go back to the animal resuce place where there were puppies and kittens last time we visited so in the absense of any better suggestions we drove over there. Unfortunately there was loads of roadworks making for traffic jams and a long drive and then no puppies and kittens anyway. Finally she ran across a very muddy area and as the words ‘don’t run!’ left my mouth so she managed a full body slam wipeout into the mud (and no doubt duck and chicken poo aswell :().She was unhurt but a stupid bloody woman standing nearby with two children of her own found the whole scene hilarious and laughed long and loud which really upset Scarlett. I was incredibly tempted to go and push the woman over herself mud wrestling stylee but refrained and helped Tarly clean up and get out of her clothes in the car instead. That cut short any further ideas so we drove all the way home again, calling at the butcher where just Davies and I went in before coming home.

The children had tea and then we went back out again to Badgers. They did paper weaving there today which they both really enjoyed while Ady and I had a whole hour during which we walked along the beach and through the town but it was so bloody cold and windy we gave up and came and sat back in the car and chatted instead. Nice to walk along hand in hand without any children interupting every other sentence though. I recall thinking of the day when we might not have a child with us one day in the future and it’s lovely to finally be here :).

Home for stories for the children, bath, dinner and The Apprentice for us. A cracking show tonight and nice to see Debbie Lewin from Clintons hasn’t changed in the last 10 years or so since I worked for them :). Tomorrow I’m off to work all day and Ady’s home with the children. They also have A and E coming over to play so they’re looking forward to a good day with Daddy :).

And I’ve just blogged our day over on Monster & Teeny as we did our annual photoblog day today :). I don’t think there is anything additional to add to that so I’ll be off to bed!

Yesterday was a planned ages in advance as diaries seemed to be full day trip to London to meet up with Em, Eve and Rei :). Em had suggested the Museum Of Childhood which sounded a great place for a visit and also one suitable to going to with friends rather than some of the museums which are better for doing just us so we can talk about the exhibits instead of run wild with mates (them) while I trail behind shushing and trying desperately to get them to look at things instead :lol:.

So the children and I were up early, dressed, breakfasted and picnic packed and off walking to the station. I was convinced I had allowed more than enough time for the walk(10-15 mins max) and buying tickets etc. but somehow despite walking quick enough to have the children moaning about their pace and stride in comparison to mine we were still struggling for time. The ticket office is the other side of the crossing to where we arrive at the station and indeed where we need to get on a train. The gates were down so we dashed over the footbridge, across to the cashpoint as I recalled at the last minute that they don’t take delta cards and then as the ticket office had a massive queue we went back over the footbridge as the gates were down again to the platform for our side and joined the equally big queue for the self service ticket machine. The woman in front of us kindly let us go infront of her as she overheard me telling the children ours was the next train due to arrive, but that flustered me enough along with the children both wanting to press the touch screen buttons that I bought the wrong tickets :roll:. Instead of the travelcard which gets us return rail tickets to London and inclusive tube tickets too for under £20 I bought single rail tickets for £16. And only realised once we were on the train which pulled in just as the machine spewed the change and tickets out.

We stood for the train journey up to Haywards Heath (about half an hour) and made friends with a woman taking her siamese cat to the vets in a wheely cage. Then we got a train to London Bridge where we sat in the end with the luggage racks which filled up lots when we stopped at Gatwick Airport. We played paper, rock, scissors and the ‘on Monday I went to the supermarket and I bought’ memory game. And talked about luggage and bomb threats. We then totally deviated from the journey planner of the tube route and got there earlier than expected anyway despite stopping to buy tube tickets and get a tube map.

The museum was good, I guess we were there for maybe half an hour before Em and the girls arrived; time to find the loos, look at the zoetropes and start playing a make your own character to go through a platform computer game terminal – sort of a rudimentary Bamzookis :). The children took all of about ten minutes to warm up to each other and then we walked round the rest of the museum as a gaggle. The children were interested in the puppets, the ‘antique’ fisher prices stuff that they have seen at grandparents’, the geomag Big Ben and a lights and optic fibre area. Em and I enjoyed the nostalgia of toys from our own childhood and the custom made dolls houses made as replicas of rich children’s own homes and decorated in miniature.

We left and sat in a park next door to eat lunch. Well Em and I sat and ate lunch; Davies chased pigeons, Rei worried about him chasing pigeons, Eve worried me she’d got lost by sitting on the floor next to our bench and Scarlett ate carrots. They were all very adamant that the park was not a park at all as it had no play area. Em and I speculated that it might actually be Bethnal Green :lol:. Put to the vote all the children wanted to go to the Diana playground at Kensington Gardens so that’s what we did. As we left what I will now call Bethnal Green there was an interesting discussion between the children about what makes a birds feathers fall out and quite how it happens. Neither Em or I could contribute anything concrete factually to the conversation but we did enjoy listening to Davies speak with utter confidence and authority of tone even though we suspected he was talking nonsense! 😆 I’ve since googled and can answer any future questions on the matter.

On the underground Scarlett sat with Eve and Em and was impressed with Eve’s reading while introducing them to Rose her cuddly dinosaur who accompanied us to London (much against my advice). Rose, who is a triceratops was only christened on the train on the way up to London as Rose, having previously enjoyed the more Scarlett-like name of ‘Dinosaury’ previously 😆 I stood with Rei and Davies who were being shrill and rowdy pulling faces at their own reflections in the window 😆 Eventually we all sat together and Scarlett, Rei and Davies managed a three way game of paper, rock, scissors.

The park, as always, was fab. The sun shone, the children played, we chatted and drank caffine :). What struck me most was that aside from poor Rei chipping a tooth in a wonky leap from the pirate ship and Em having to intervene as a horrid child with a toy rake managed to irritate Scarlett and Eve in their game and then pin Rei down while brandishing his rake we didn’t have to deal with the children at all. There were no fallings out between them, they mostly paired off into Davies and Rei & Scarlett and Eve couplings, coming together as a foursome every so often and were utterly happy and absorbed in their games. Scarlett and Eve spent ages burying Rose in the sand at one point completely losing her. I was called in to assist and was told ‘in this general area’ when I asked just where she’d been buried. It was JUST like that old AA advert ‘Kevin, where exactly did you bury the car?’ ‘In the sand!’ 😆 😆

Ady rang to say he was in Crawley so would we like him to drive the extra few miles further up and collect us at about 4pm. Given I hadn’t sorted out my ticket dilemma and was likely to have to spend another £15 odd quid to get us home again this was very good news so we arranged to take the tube as south as we could get (Wimbledon seemed most sensible) and meet him there. When told we would be leaving soon Davies and Rei insisted they still needed to save the world and wanted to know if we thought they could do it in 15 minutes. We assured them they could manage it in ten – and they did :). It was a lovely afternoon, excellent company, great conversations, sunshine and happy children :).Thanks lovely Em x

Aside from a slightly daunting encounter with a drunk man on the tube it was straightforward and we met Ady with a big cup of tea for me and a plan to pop into Ikea for the children’s tea – both very gratefully recieved. 🙂 We got home about 830pm in the end and I showered the blackness off the children (along with plenty of sand!) before dispatching them to bed. Yesterday should have been Beavers but Davies had been happy enough to miss it and seems very content not to return so our plan is to complain to the group scout leader and for him to make up some little letters / cards to hand out to the couple of lads there he would like to stay in touch with. So it continues to bubble away undealt with as yet but I do have a plan now.

Last week we drove past the British Wildlife Centre which looked rather good so today we packed up a picnic and headed off for that. We stopped for a brief look round a car boot sale which has just started on Sundays on the airfield we live near and Ady and Davies found a telescope for 50p which seems in perfect working order so they plan to do some stargazing with that some time soon.

We got to the centre around 1130am. It’s a fab place, fairly small but with big enclosures where they have all sorts of British wild animals including foxes, badgers (;)), stoat, weasels, mink, polecats, rats (grey and black), mice (all sorts), voles, squirrels (grey, red and a white one!), deer, hedgehogs, moles, grass snakes, adders, rabbits, otters, wildcats and a whole load of birds: pheasants, various owls, buzzards, kestrels, herons, ducks. There were keeper talks every half an hour (most were repeated twice through the day) so we based ourselves round those and went to the talks on red squirrels, foxes, otters, badgers and wild cats. The keepers were around all the time so we did plenty of chatting to them during the day too.

It rained fairly heavily a couple of times but we had umbrellas and there was a small theatre with two films running on a loop so we watched those too. One about British wildlife from the Ice Age til the present day including animals like bears and wolves when they lived here and why they died out. Also a film about a day in the life of a vole which only Davies and I stayed to watch and had us in fits of laughter at the dramatic narration 😆

It all tied in rather nicely with a book about British mammals that we half read from the library recently after we saw the adders at Pulborough and various other nature and wildlife things that seem to have cropped up lately. I was really surprised by just how much Davies and Scarlett knew about various animals and the questions they asked the keepers were really sensible and thought out ones. Scarlett knew loads about birds and loved the idea of working somewhere like the wildlife centre one day :).

Loads of pics on flickr as all four of us had a camera today – the children each have a ‘retired’ work camera of Ady’s 😆

It was a really good place, well worth a visit. We were tempted to get season tickets as I could see us going again, it’s only half an hours drive from home, but we have other stuff we want to do this month and we are still very hopeful we won’t be living here this time next year so we refrained.

Home for baths for everyone and roast chicken then a couple of chapters of Famous Five before bed for Davies and Scarlett which was ridiculously late, again. It’s been a really good weekend though, nice days out and about, just what we’ve not had enough of lately :).

Ady was QVCing in the morning so the children and I did some TV watching, some baking and plenty of lazing around drinking tea (me) and playing (them). Ady got home around 130pm and we headed straight out to the site of our regular Bluebell and Not Bluebell Walks of the last couple of years.

There were some bluebells but definitely less than last year which in turn had less than the year before. Certainly not carpets of them like you used to see in the spring. It was a lovely walk just the same though with tree climbing and general silliness. Ady’s got (another) new work camera which has a self timer facility with six shots straight after each other which just begs for pulling a series of silly poses. Which we were happily doing amidst the bluebells when some people arrived along the path forcing us to try and remain straight faced infront of them for the six shots, the results of which I think are even funnier 😆

Scarlett had a few Scarletty moments:

Davies enjoyed pretending to ‘go alien’ at various points (Ben 10 :roll:)

And then we started playing with the cameras and perspective when I accidentally took a photo which looked like Scarlett was holding a miniature Davies:

so we tried to set up some deliberate shots like that:

We also took some silly shots of feet and I made everyone duck at the duck sign 🙂

On the last leg of the walk Davies found a skeleton of either a small snake or a lizard (without feet, which makes it more likely to have been a snake really). We happened upon a Sussex Wildlife worker just afterwards so Davies went marching up to him to show him his find and ask him if he knew any more about it. I love how the children are so confident of talking to people 🙂

Although Davies did say the man didn’t know anymore than he did about snakes and lizards :lol:.

It was nearly 530pm and I’d promised the children the next nice evening we had I’d take them to eat fish and chips on the beach so we planned to do that but a quick twitter check showed Dr Who was starting within the hour so we came home and picked up fish and chips on the way for them instead.

Somehow the evening ran away from us and Ady and I didn’t end up eating our own dinner until about 11pm.

I worked today all day. Julie, Jack and Maisie were here in the morning for the last time of childcare in a while as Julie has only 5 weeks until her due date and no idea when she will be up for getting all the way over here before 9am again. We’ve not seen a great deal of them this year really, partially I suspect due to some remarks I made about Chris and Ady’s mother over Christmas which apparently Chris was offended by. It hasn’t created any problem between Chris and Ady thankfully and Julie and I are fine but I understand he is sulking with me hence only seperate socialisation happening :roll:. I have recently realised that Julie tried to make up for it by doing a spot of mother-battering about my Mum which clearly fell flat as I was obliged to agree with all her criticisms rather than taking umbrage like Chris did :lol:.

Dad was here in the afternoon and I understand everyone had a good day. Julie took them all to the park for a while this morning but further reports on what happened during the day are sketchy :lol:.

My day was good. First thing I had some training with the Information Librarian who is very nice if a fairly text book example of a librarian ;). Then I did Baby Rhyme time with 20 adults and 22 babies. I always feel so not me being all Sarah-Jane from Tikkabilla and getting everyone to get their spider fingers ready for incy wincy spider. I long for Davies to be there and join in with one of our jazzed up versions of nursery rhymes- he likes to do for songs the same sort of thing that Mel C did in the Spice Girls and add twiddly bits and descant versions (not do backflips and wear tracksuit bottoms).

The afternoon was fairly quiet although Yvonne and I did conduct a very scientific survey to prove or disprove my statement that the chocolate limes in the top drawer of the counter where we keep sweeties were inferior to the ones we had last week. 😆 Oh it’s not all about books at the library you know :lol:. I also had an embarrassing moment coming out of Somerfield in my lunchbreak with a wine box carrier clinking with six bottles of wine and coming face to face with two of the mums and pushchairs from Baby Rhyme Time- I guess they know why I’m singing now :lol:.

Ady arrived home with replacement Omnitrix just in time for Scarlett and I to head off to Rainbows. When she was collecting up yet more of her cuddly toy collection to take in for show and tell I told her I could bring one of the chicks round to meet everyone if she wanted. She really liked the idea but it was on the condition that she spoke to the leader about it and I popped off leaving her there to get the chick, both of which she was more than happy to do :). The activity was sticking things to butterfly shaped cutouts to create a wall display for the church hall. I got roped into playing catch with several of the girls and then Scarlett finally went off to play with them herself. They all went through into the other room and I dashed home to collect a chick.

Predicatably a room full of 18 little girls aged 5-7 were very delighted indeed to meet a cute and fluffy week old chick. It got passed round the room so everyone had a hold, I answered lots of questions about it and Scarlett,who actually is quite an authority now on fowl answered even more :). I promised to bring it back again so they can see how quick they grow. Scarlett and I discussed on the way home how she could invite a Rainbow round to play / for tea if she wants. Given how many of them were interested in what other creatures we have at our house I think that would be a popular invite so hopefully she will now start to make some one to one friendships within the group.

Ady popped out to get a few bits and the children and I sat and read a pile of storyoooks that I’d brought home as new stock arriving today. Clearly I am an advocate of library books but there is still something very special about being the first person to turn the pages on a brand new book. It’s lovely when you get to do that with library books :).

Ady’s off and out early to QVC but he should be back round lunchtime when we plan to make the most of the forecast wonderful weather and do a bluebell walk.

I didn’t go to bed til nearly 2 am when Ady got in and we all really struggled to get up this morning. But we were off to the Safety Day that some of you may have seen posted about on various HE lists which was a good 90 minutes drive away so we needed to be out of the house shortly after 8am and we just about managed it.

Thanks to Satnav we found the place fine and were quickly swallowed up by efficient people with clipboards issuing name badges and coloured stickers. We had time for a cup of tea before splitting up into groups for the first talk of the day. I went with Scarlett in the Red Group and we started with a fire brigade talk. Ady and Davies (Amber Group) started with road safety. The fire brigade talk was great, they showed us all the pieces of the uniform and breathing apparatus, did some puzzles and games with the children and then took them for a sit in the modified educational fire engine. Tarly got stuck straight into all that and loved having a go at the hose :). I had walked into the room and been recognised ‘are you Nic? I recognise you from flickr! Oh she’s called Scarlett really, I always wondered what Teeny’s real name was!’ which was sort of nice and sort of odd. I was also recognisd from Alison and Layla’s local HE group which I’ve been to once so explained why I had been there that time but never again and discussed whether any of our children would decide to give school a go like Poppy is :lol:.

Scarlett was delightfully five for lots of the day including making loud, tactless and very accurate observations about people. These included sticky out ears on a small boy, eczema on someone’s arms and asking a woman if she was still pregnant! 😯 She happened to be the rather amazingly trim mother of six children including a 4 month old baby and happily very used to small children and their un-socially-educated ways and thought it was hilarious. It was lovely to just focus on one child, I was so glad Ady was able to come.

We followed the fire brigade with a road safety chat while Ady and Davies went in for their fire brigade session which was pitched older with various role play stuff I think -and no fire engine peeping. Then we broke for lunch.

After lunch Scarlett and I went to a talk by a community police officer who touched on stuff like stranger danger, using emergency services and the role of the police. Then the children went off for a story. Ady and Davies did some first aid and I could see them bandaging each other up over the other side of the room. Finally they ended with a chat with the police officer again pitched for the older audience.

I did lots of chatting too which was nice, to people I’ve loosely met before and plenty I’d never met before as well as those recognising me from other people’s flickrstreams of me on my first ever camping trip :lol:. We collected our various certficiates, stickers and activity books etc. and set off for home.

The radio was reporting bad traffic on the M25 so Ady decided to avoid it and came home via Portsmouth. We stopped at a Tescos on the way to get some bits for dinner tonight and the Ben 10 watch thingy (is it an omnitrix or something?) that Davies has been coveting for weeks. Archie and Elliot have one each and he is always wearing one of theirs when I go to pick them up from there and yesterday he spent ages counting up all the coppers in his money box. He has been making a supreme effort with various things we talked about last week and I just really wanted to buy it for him so did :). Scarlett had got a mini face painting kit from the safety day which cost £1 and was happy with that and wanted nothing more so that was good too :). Unfortunately it appears to be faulty so Ady is taking it back tomorrow to swap over.

We got home about 6pm in the end and after toast, couple of chapters of story they were off to bed. Scarlett was playing with scissors in bed because ‘I just love the noise they make’ so I took them off her before she actually cut anything but it made me laugh as aged about 9 I desperately wanted to be a hairdresser solely because I loved the snippy sound sharp scissors made in the air so much :lol:.

It was a long round trip and there were chunks of the day where it felt like hard work but it was lovely to be at something so ambitious logistically and have no responsibility for any part of the organisation and to be able to walk away at the end too. Both the children enjoyed it and it is one of those sort of events you know they’d get exposure to at school and not necessarily at home so well worth doing.

I had a truly crap nights sleep not helped by having Davies in bed with me, waking every so often to check the clock as I was convinced we’d over sleep and various ‘womanly’ issues too. Davies and I had gone to bed together about 1230am so when the alarm did go off at 7am it was an effort to drag myself out of bed let alone the children :(. Scarlett declared she didn’t want to go and play at Archie and Elliots this morning and I confess if ever I have had the strong urge to phone in sick and take a ‘duvet day’ today was that morning.

But we pulled ourselves together and headed off. Once we arrived both children got stuck straight into the playdoh A and E were already playing with and barely looked up to say goodbye. It’s been fanastic to cross paths with Caz and Bid and their boys – quite aside from the wonderful childcare solution once a fortnight they are very likeminded people to us, chasing a similar dream and with similar educational ideals. Davies and Scarlett adore the company of A and E and after many hours in their company I have yet to hear a complaint about them or any clash that the four of them haven’t managed to sort out between themselves. Scarlett is in her element playing with rough and tumble, grubby getting boys who treat her as an equal and I think Davies has found the first real friend he has met on an even footing with. All good things do seem to come to an end of course and they are going off travelling later this summer but I’m very hopeful that although the regular get together and having D and S once a fortnight won’t continue we will remain in touch.

Work was good – I think Wednesday mornings are my favourite shift as it always goes fast and is fairly busy. Another colleague has handed her notice in which was something of a surprise but does mean yet more new people will be starting in coming months which is always interesting and starts to put me into the ranks of long serving :lol:.

I went to collect D and S and stayed awhile chatting to Bid and looking at their camper van. They have just bought it and spent their first night camping on a local site in it last night. It is very tatty and was cheap but you can just taste the freedom and potential that packing yourselves into a van with beds, sink, cooker and loo and driving away offers. Am envious :).

The children were utterly filthy having played in the garden all day and Scarlett’s hair was in dire need of attention so I ran them a huge bubble bath which they spent about an hour playing in, getting clean and conditioned and ready for Badgers where they are expected to be smartly presented. I brushed Scarlett’s hair so she looked all shiny and decidedly un-Scarlett like (you’d have shuddered Liza ;)). They had tea and we headed off to Badgers. Today was officially the End of The Month as I get paid tomorrow but the family tax credit was paid today so I was able to pay for Badgers and didn’t have to do the whole ‘oh whoops I forgot my purse’ act :lol:.

I dropped the children in and went down to the beach for a fabulous walk with my camera. Don’t look if you worry about things like horizons being straight as I held the camera over my shoulder and shot for most of them so they are a bit random but it was fab, just me and the seagulls :).

Oh and a snail! 😆

I then went and read in the car for half an hour while peeping through the window every so often at the childrens’ backs leaping about. I love the beach so much and the novelty of walking at my own speed, in silence, looking at one shadow is still a long way from wearing off. Before I was with Ady I spent a lot of time in my own company and I miss me on my own. When it’s just me I never fret about anyone getting wet in the sea, saying please or thankyou, giving the right answers or defending any choices. I feel all ageless and stuff 😆

The Badgers have been split into two groups this term to do two different badgers – Davies and Scarlett are both doing Creative Badger which they are chuffed about and tonight’s activity was hand and foot printing so they’d enjoyed that. The programme looks really good for the term with loads of interesting activities they are sure to really like :). Also Scarlett’s Little Miss Loony act at the end of last term and her winning Badger of the Month seems to have been a bit of an icebreaker so a couple of the Dads were chatting away to me tonight at pick up time which was nice given I’ve never really talked to any of the other parents in all the time Davies has been going.

Home for stories (Famous Five) and bedtime for the children. I’ve watched Ady on his 1130pm show and am now struggling to stay awake and up waiting for him to come home. He did say I should go to bed but I know how horrid it is to come home to a dark and quiet house and he’s bound to wake me actually getting into bed anyway so I might as well just wait up.

Ady is working tonight – he’ll be on telly shortly so he wasn’t at work today on account of working until about 3am tomorrow morning. This meant he didn’t need to be at his desk but he did get about six phonecalls from work and QVC and had to go into work to collect a last minute addition to tomorrow night’s show :roll:.

So we’d decided weather permitting to go out for some sort of walk today and our options were Pulborough Brooks, Woods Mill or the location for Julie’s too early for bluebells annual walk now that bluebells are actually out :lol:. We went for Pulborough Brooks as Ady was keen to do some adder spotting after our impressive sightings last week. So we packed up lunch and headed off.

Davies felt car sick on the way which he hasn’t suffered from for a couple of years so he and I got out of the car and walked for part of the way which happened to coincide with a traffic jam so although Ady and Scarlett did drive ahead, park up and wait for us it wasn’t for very long. Pulborough Brooks was busy though including a school trip on a coach. The visitor centre is staffed by volunteers so it is sometimes a bit of a lucky dip as to the service you get but today it was a very enthusiastic and cheery woman who issued spotter sheets and took Davies and Scarlett over to peek out of the window at a moorhen and her chicks.

The children were a bit needy as they often are when Ady is around and after a truly text book visit last week where we saw newts, lizards, adders and all sorts of things we didn’t have quite such a successful time although we did spot one newt and Ady did get to see his first ever adder. It was a fairly small female, basking in the sun who slowly slithered off when she realised she was being watched so nothing like the display we were treated to by the two males last week.

We had lunch in the playpark area and then drove to Ady’s work where he had to collect some plants and pictures for a last minute addition to one of tomorrow’s shows. We were halfway there anyway being in Pulborough. The children have been there before on the nursery open day but they’d not really met any of Ady’s work colleagues who came pouring out of the office once word got round they were there. I was quite gratified to be very warmly recieved too (Ady slightly grudgingly told me the other day how the big gossip from the party we went to the other weekend was what a ‘good laugh’ I am :lol:) and I was pleased to see my most favourite of his colleagues for an extra bonus chat ;). The children finally got to meet Tom who they have spoken to at length on the phone over the years and supplied us with our bantams, the incubator and half the hatched eggs so they had plenty to chat to him about and were generally cooed over by plenty of others too :).

We got home and I dashed off to Sainsburys for a couple of food items and petrol for my car while Ady loaded his car up, the kids got their swimming things on and Ady got some pizza dough on for the kids’ tea. None of this happened as I managed to leave having closed the front door behind me thus locking them all out :oops:. So there was a bit of a chaotic dashing about when I got home to do it all.

Off to swimming where they are still a class of 8 but with several new children. Davies has moved along the line to number 2 in the ability and height order while Tarly who was the smallest and least skilled now has two smaller, lesser abilitied children the other side of her. We don’t often get chances to see our children moving up the ranks but this was a rather visual and pleasing example. Davies took a while to get back into it but did fine. Tarly was a bit of a random splashing kicking flailing dervish and then suddenly right at the end managed to have a couple of flashes of getting arms and legs all doing the right thing at the right time :). Woo hoo!

Home for pizza for them, shirt ironing for A and a ‘see you on Thursday’ for him and then a very protracted bedtime for the children. I think Tarly finally went to sleep around 10pm and Davies has wandered about for ages, tried to go to sleep in my bed and is currently sitting beside me waiting for Ady to be on telly so we can ‘go to bed together’ 🙄 – a bit typical when we need to all be up and out just after 8am tomorrow!

Questions today have included from Scarlett ‘how could the most wonderful thing about tiggers be that he’s the only one of his species when he needed a mummy and daddy to make him?’ and from Davies (about 2 minutes ago) ‘what was the first flower?’ so we googled – (cue ‘ooh gooogle’) and discovered the answer then google image searched for that.

This morning I put away several towering piles of laundry and then we watched Bamzookis on TV. This led to Bamzooki building with geomags – are they the worlds’ most adaptable toy or are my children limiting themselves by almost exclusively playing with them? I sewed on all the Badger badges to their uniforms a whole 2 days before they actually need to wear them and then I made some cheese scones for lunch as we had no bread. I also finished reading my book which I have really enjoyed and has provoked lots of thinking and philosophising for me.

It’s very end of the month-y round here this week til I get paid on Thursday. A minor crisis happened when my kettle seemed to die mid afternoon, even after I changed the fuse. So Ady splashed out £5 on a cheapo kettle only to get home and plug the old one in and it to work. The man has magic celebrity hands I tell you 😆

After lunch we had a quick photo session with the chicks and cleared the newspaper out from the bottom of their box while Candle was outside (she is very interested in the chicks. One of them is very deformed, he has one almost useless leg and the other is sort of in the middle of his body, his wings are over-long and his body seems sort of lopsided. All that said he is thriving and growing and able to get around in a sort of hopping fashion so although we are committed to keeping him hopefully he’ll either be a hen (which is fine) or a cockerel who knows his place and won’t piss off the fiesty one by questionning his authority. I’ve decided to call it Spatchcock! 😆

Some photos of a Rock Chick

A Hot Chick

What happens when you get timing of boiled eggs wrong

and green screen filming for adding in stunt scene backdrops later 😆

(we’ve seen it on Doctor Who Confidential, we know how it works!)

Explaining Rock Chick and Hot Chick to D and S was interesting 😆

We then walked into Lancing. I needed to get some chicken (oh the irony) for dinner so we rounded up some stuff to return to the library and headed off. At the library they both chose three books each they wanted but as I didn’t want to carry them all the way home again we sat and read them there. We got a few strange looks – not sure if that was from people wondering why they weren’t in school or whether people were recognising me from the library and wondering if we had started doing personal storytime sessions :lol:. We left there and popped to a charity shop for a skin coloured valance for some rag dolls we’re planning on making, then got our chicken and some cheese and ice cream.

Davies insisted on carrying all the shopping all the way home. It was actually quite heavy and would have had me shifting the bag from hand to hand but he managed it bless him :).

We had an interesting conversation about bees on the way home about the whole sting you then they die thing and also Scarlett wanted to know how a queen became a queen, was she born that way and how did it get decided. So we googled that and now we all now a fair bit more about bees :). She’s asking lots of ‘world around her’ type questions lately and she has a real knack for thinking things right through, or indeed right back as far as she logically can within her range of knowledge or reasoning before coming to me with the end, very well thought out questions – which I often need to either look up or think very hard about myself. It’s great :).

At home they played (this time with foam 3d blocks and some Primeval characters and an array of Tarly’s toy horses) and then it was time for Beavers. Davies presented me with yet another badge that we’d both forgotten needed sewing on so I did that while he was wearing it and then we walked him round there. I offered Tarly whatever she wanted to do when we came home and suggested the new Barbie film or reading a Magic Kitten book – both activities she wants to do but Davies is less keen on so tend not to happen when he’s around but she wanted to do puzzles so we sat and did an animal puzzle together.

We walked back round to collect Davies and she insisted on taking a cuddle polar bear which is almost as big as her with us :roll:, I insisted if it came she carried it, so we looked like we’d been to a funfair and scored 101 with 6 darts on one of the stalls :lol:.

Davies was sitting outside with the junior leader and my heart sank as she came over to tell me he’d been punched several times in the face by M. She said he’d wanted to come home about 10 minutes previously. I was absolutely furious on every fucking level. 1. This dreadful child (the same one I have blogged about several times) has once again physically abused my son 2. No proper action is being taken to either prevent it from happening or to ensure it doesn’t happen again 3. Davies requests to come home and is kept there. If Davies requests to come I expect someone to phone me imediately . Davies, Scarlett, the oversized cuddly polar bear and I went into the foyer to wait with the other parents so I could speak to K, the leader. I explained in very loud and clear tones to Davies, Scarlett and the polar bear (and consequently every other parent waiting) that I was going to tell them that until the unsavoury little boy (you have no idea how careful I was not to swear – and how bloody fucking difficult it was) left Davies wouldn’t be coming back and ensured Davies was ok with this. Two of the parents asked me if it was their son who had done something wrong and I demanded to know their son’s name before telling them they were in the clear.

The leader is ineffectual, fairly new at the job (she started at the same time as Davies did) and was deeply sorry but helpless. As I said to Ady afterwards it would have been all too easy to take all my anger out on her – and she is certainly not without blame – and wipe the floor with her, but my audience of other children, other parents, my own children and of course the polar bear prevented me from doing so. I expressed how angry I was about M, ensured that this and previous attacks had been unprovoked by Davies – she assured me they were, that Davies is a lovely little boy and for some reason M does seem to pick on him. She explained her new plan of dealing with M along the lines of football red and yelllow card systems, said she was learning from her own mistakes and already felt she had lost two Beavers as a direct result of M. When I said either M went or Davies went she sort of shrugged. M won’t be there next week so I said Davies would be and after that we’d see.

Once home and having discussed it with Davies and Ady we’ve decided Davies will make up some cards with our address and phone number on to give out to the friends there he has made and wants to stay in touch with and then he will leave. I simply do not trust them to keep him safe or listen to his wishes. I am not being hysterical or dramatic but that particular child is totally out of control – I have observed him on various occassions and I believe it is only a matter of time before he seriously hurts someone. He may only be six but I think he is capable of serious violence and if Davies is his target and noone appears to be properly supervising it then I fear he may get injured. There is nowhere I would expect to leave my child and him be at risk of being ‘punched’ and feel that is acceptable. I know there are plenty of places today that is a very real risk but it is not one I am prepared to take.

K did speak about talking to the Cub leader about Davies started cubs earlier as she feels he ‘is ready anyway’ but Davies has already said he doesn’t want to do Cubs anyway and was planning to finish with Scouting at the end of Beavers. He does want to carry on doing something else in a group so we are going to look into various other things he might be interested in. In the meantime I am torn as to whether to take my issues with the Beaver pack further. I know Scouting has hieracrchies that I could go to and whilst it might be something Davies gets no actual benefit from and I am not particularly wanting to make trouble for K I do feel this is a situation that really should be dealt with a hell of a lot more effectively than it has been so far. She told me today that M was kept away from the St Georges Day parade because they knew he would cause trouble. He clearly has issues that are never going to be dealt with at a once a week Beavers group. Will think about that one and chat to Davies about it more I am sure.

A couple of chapters of Famous Five and then bed for Davies and Scarlett. Ady is off during the day tomorrow as he is back up to London in the evening overnight so we’re hoping for nice weather to go somewhere for the day.

Hot Chick

and Rock chick

Ady was off at 4am to QVCland where he was on air for 6 minutes, sold out both his lines and made about £10K worth of sales. He was approached by yet another company about selling their product for them. The ‘going rate’ for this is £250 a time plus commission so it is fairly lucrative work although no expenses are covered so you’d need to factor in travel. You can stay at QVC rather than a hotel though so it is something he could still think about longer distance travelling to London for. He’s building a list of contacts of potential clients for that for next season as if he could do one or two days a week and get five or six appearances on each of those days we’d be able to live the rest of the dream financed by that alone for nearly half the year. Things to ponder on…

Our seventh chick hatched today – four are from our bantams eggs and three from Tom’s. One of ‘ours’ has deformed feet but is otherwise healthy and although I think it might walk ‘funny’ it can definitely walk – it would be culled in normal circumstances so hopefully it will prove to be a hen so we can keep it. At most we could have two more hens here, certainly no cockerels so we will have to see what happens with these seven. I’m fairly sure that is it but will give the remaining eggs another 24hours in the incubator to be sure.

The children and I watched Ady and then they went off to play. There was all sorts of games going on today, none of which I payed a great deal of attention to but they did get the car mat and cars out at one point so I took the opportunity to get a comedy chick photo to add to my collection from last year:

Why did the chick cross the road?

and from last year:

chick lit

and chick flick

I have some fab ones lined up for tomorrow, after all what are children and animals for if not comedy photo opportunities 😆

I also did some baking – some chocolate brownies and some ill fated honeycombe. Scarlett wandered in and out helping at various points.

It was lovely and sunny so the children and I decided to walk over to my parents and meet Ady there as we’d arranged to go over there for lunch. He pulled up just as we were leaving though. They still both wanted to walk, Ady was not so keen having already been up a full days worth of hours so he drove and we walked :). It’s just over a mile and a half and I made them walk fast so we did it in 25minutes 😆 It was nice to be out in the warm sunshine without coats feeling hot though and we talked about it only being a fortnight since the snow 😯

We had a nice couple of hours with my parents but they’d had a late night last night out with friends and were fading fast and I wanted to get home to get dinner on early enough for Davies and Scarlett to eat with us so we left about 4pm ish. Davies and I decided to walk home again and Scarlett went with Ady in the car. It was lovely to have time with just Davies as we’ve had a rough week here and there and he is fab company when it is just him. We talked about spelling, reading and writing and he had a go at spelling various things we passed starting with ‘daisy’ he got ‘d’ ‘a’ and ‘i’ straight away although even he wasn’t sure how he knew about the ‘i’ and then he went for ‘z’ and ‘either e or y, probably y’. He then commented on how the start of his name and the end of cousin Maisie’s name made the word daisy. He then had a go at car (got that one right), sneeze (missed the last e), blossom (missed the second s and the second o but I think most people would read blosm as blossom fairly easily) and a couple more I don’t recall. We talked about how when I was his age we had to do ‘news’ first thing on a Monday morning and write a bit about what we’d done at the weekend. By 7 my Mum had a cafe opening Saturdays so our weekends followed a definite pattern of visiting my Grandma (Dad’s mum) with Dad in the morning, at her flat in Worthing and latterly in a home before she died when I was 9, then over to Mum’s cafe at lunchtime which was in Lancing. We’d be allowed money to buy sweets or similar from the all purpose shop next door to it which sold sweets, books, toys, stationery etc. and was where my entire collection of Mallory Towers and St Clares books came from over the years, then we’d go to the local park there. The hairdressers shop in the same square as my Mum’s cafe was run by a man with a son a year older than me so he used to be around to play with us too. Freedoms I’d not give Davies and Scarlett at the same age just yet despite or perhaps because we still live in that town now. There were other local Lancing kids who used to be part of the ‘gang’ too and I sometimes wonder if it is their offspring coming to Baby Rhyme time at the library now. Because we didn’t go to school with any of them we only ever knew each other’s first names and I doubt I’drecognise any of them 25 years later based on a few years Saturday only acquaintance. Anyway I was telling Davies about that and how writing is a really good way of improving your reading and maybe that is something he’d like to do.

Ady and Scarlett were in the garden when we got back so Davies joined them and spent some time riding his bike up and down the pavement. Ady is helping him learn to ride his bike, aswell as doing more stuff with Davies and they have done lots together this weekend which is good :).

I made a start on getting dinner going along with some faffing getting washing in before it rained and collecting some herbs from the garden to go with the lamb. I had one pot of potatoes boiling for roasting and another ready for mashing and the handle of one pan with in the heat of the hob so when I picked it up it burnt my palm and the ends of two fingers. 🙁 My fingers blistered straight away and my palm was incredibly painful. I think I am normally quite good with pain but my skin is very sensitive to hot and cold – a slice of toast out of the toaster will burn my fingers and I often have to keep putting down something like chilled chicken from the fridge while I’m cutting it up as the cold is too painful. This meant I couldn’t run with the usual run it under a cold tap trick as that was almost more hurty than the burn so Ady slathered it with cream for me and told me to sit down while he did dinner instead.

I read a couple of books to the children, Ady produced a lovely dinner and for some reason despite all the walking and running round the garden both the children took forever to get to sleep. My hand is still sore but not unbearable now and I’ve suddenly realised just how late it is so I’m off to bed myself.

what with our bantams becomming parents and all :). Wish it had been the chickens we hatched ourselves this time last year who’s offspring were hatching but they did all insist on being boys so it made it a bit tricky! 😆

As I type we have three chicks in the brooder, one in the incubator still being a new hatchling and two more eggs that have pipped (have cracks in) so six chicks is looking pretty likely with time for more to follow suit.

This morning started with Scarlett dashing up the stairs calling ‘Mummy! Daddy! Guess what! There is another chick in the incubator!’ which was very cute :). She is getting loads out of the whole thing this year 🙂

I went off to work for the morning. I’ve been slowly coming down with the cold that had Scarlett laid low last week but it has taken so long to come out that I had thought I had unseasonably early hayfever. But it has finally taken a hold of me and I am coughing and sneezing and feeling generally grotty :(. Work was fine though, I spent most of the morning on the enquiry desk and helping various people use the photocopier. It was a good shift with plenty of banter and jollyness :).

Ady and the children did some wax crayon melting art and were all very excited when I rang in my teabreak to report that another chick had hatched without them realising in record quick time. My Dad had also called in for breakfast (cheeky bugger!).

I got home at lunchtime and we headed off to a camping shop where we thought we might be able to get a replacement strap for our tent. We had a nice wander round there getting all excited about camping soon and were told there is no chance of getting spares for our tent but the bloke suggested either buying some webbing and making one or just using a guy rope instead, both of which are good ideas.

On the way we passed The British Wildlife Centre which we pulled into the carpark to have a quick look at. It looked pretty good although not cheap and only open weekends and school holidays. We plan to go back on a nice day though for a proper look as it is well within an hour from home (oh Reading folk- is it suitable for meeting up at too? Could try and get a group price from them?) and easy to get to.

Home via McDonalds for Happy Meals and Mcflurries – it’s been a shite week in places and when Davies asked it seemed a good thing to say yes to. Still only three chicks but another two were pipping so we moved the three hatchlings to the brooder to make way for youngsters :lol:.

Doctor Who, followed by Doctor Who Confidential, another chick hatching and off to bed for Davies and Scarlett. We have two more eggs pipped and a definite two breeds so both our eggs and Tom’s eggs have hatched which is good :).

Ady cooked steak, we watched Pushing Daisies and he went off to bed early (he’s QVCing on the 9am show in the morning) and now I’m taking my cough to bed aswell.

Yesterday I worked all day. Ady was home in the morning, Dad was here in the afternoon. I think they all spent most of their time in the garden.

Today I slept in having had a very bad disturbed nights’ sleep. When I got up at 10am one of the eggs was looking like this:

A second one was pipping and a third had definite movement going on.

We spent the remainder of the morning frantically checking the eggs and urging on the frontrunner (who already had at last seven names – ‘Hatch’ ‘Puff’ ‘Buddy’ ‘Firsty’ you get the picture…) before finally deciding at 130pm when we were already supposed to be at Ali’s that the chick had no intention of working to our schedule so we’d be better off going out and leaving it to it’s hatching business.

We had a very nice couple of hours with Ali and Freya, and Eira with her two from our EOFF set. We went for a walk across the downs which was utterly lovely :). The children picked up chalk (which is one of the few things (along with dogs, terrcotta or other unglazed pottery and chipped nail varnish) that I have issues with and did lots of drawing along the way on the paths.

including most hilariously arrows to each individual lump of horse manure across a bridge with ‘poo’ written by some of the writers in the group 😆

We saw white horses which ate from the childrens’ hands whilst still retaining that air of intrigue and ‘I could be a unicorn you know’ type mystique that white horses have (or is that just me?)

There were loads of rabbits about and we also saw more horses and then walked through the allotments which end with a patch of land where someone keeps chickens, goats and (I’m sure a fairly recent addition) racing pigeons. We talked a bit about them and homing instincts (Davies mentioned cats have something similar). We paused for a bit at a ruined concrete block building. Davies was slightly fanciful in proclaiming ‘600 million years ago this used to be a castle…’ I’m guessing that it was more like 30 years ago it used to be a shed. We moved on rather rapidly when one of the children picked up a lump of asbestos and started trying to smash it up admid cautionary tales of asbestosis from me (which I don’t think any of the children not related to me believed :lol:).

We paused again by a tree and bank that the children all spent some time clambering on and took a bit of persuading down from. While we waited for them all to come down some of them went ahead into a railway tunnel to have fun with echoes. When they had gone quiet I went to investigate and found they had uncovered various pieces of a decorative tile and were pieceing them back together again:

We arrived back at Ali’s and the children particpated in Freya’s treasure hunt activity which went down very well (and had Ali and I goggling at L’s superior reading skills 😯 bless her) and then it was time to head for home.

Where we discovered the egg had finally fully hatched and here was the first (and possibly only although I’m still hoping for more) chick 🙂

Much smaller than the chicken chicks that we hatched last year. I knew they would be of course, given both the egg size and the eventual full grown size but those chicks looked tiny so these are minute! Very cute already having little fluffy feet and already super fiesty and loud (clearly another rooster :lol:).

Hopefully tomorrow will bring more new additions.

A fairly relaxed and slow start to the day here with Ben 10 first thing, naturally :rolls:

After last night’s chat with Davies about foetal development we found a great short film on youtube which was perfect. That led to discussion about Julie’s baby and it’s current development and then to talk about premature babies so we watched this film to learn more about that. That led to discussion about their length and weight and size at birth so we looked at Davies’ first ever photo and Scarlett’s first ever photo for some comparisons. Frankly who knows where all that could have led but Lucy and The Rs arrived :lol:.

I think we had a mostly good visit, the children played outside lots and it wasn’t without some frictions and tears but Lucy and I managed a fair bit of chatting. I also sat and went through the pen drawer and chucked out all the dried out felt tips, sharpened all the pencils and pulled out all the bits of wax crayon then sat and peeled all the paper off them while we chatted which was quite theraputically relaxing :).

After they left I googled for thinsg to do with old wax crayons and came up with melted crayon art and remoulding them into interesting shaped new crayons as the most interesting. We don’t have any suitable moulds at the moment but we did set up a candle and do some melted wax crayon art which was a very interesting art material to work with.

We got interupted by Maureen, our lovely neighbour coming to bring a bottle of wine for Ady and I as a thank you for all the many, many as seen on TV plants and flowers Ady has been supplying her with lately. She also brought a couple of packets of sweets for the children and then asked if they wanted to go over and visit her new puppy. Which of course they did :). So off they went while I sat clutching my wine and wondering quite what Charley would have made of it all 😆

I was then remarkably efficient and fed the children, they tidied and got into pjs while I got our dinner on for later, ran a bath, lit a fire and hoovered, read them some Famous Five and we all watched Ady on TV before they went off to bed.

Ady arrived home just as The Apprentice ended and we had a lovely curry and plenty of post-TV chat. Tomorrow I’m off to work for the day which I’m looking forward to.

This morning after I had made my first bucket of tea of the day, let the chickens out, turned the eggs in the incubator, poured cereal into bowls for children who are capable of navigating worktop clambering, milk pouring and microwaving and spooning hot chocolate powder into mugs to make their own warming, sugar laden hot drinks but seem to struggle with boxes of cereal handily placed at kid height, checked my emails and discussed chilli chocolate with Scarlett I was channel flicking to find something better than cartoons and happened upon Boogie Beebies on Cbeebies. Now Boogie Beebies started on Cbeebies just ever so slightly before we stopped watching Cbeebies so I am familiar with it but never watched lots of it. As part of ill fated, failing quite miserably at Move Around More April I decided to get up and boogie along with it.

I expressed this intention to the children. Davies literally rolled around on the floor laughing. He even waved his legs around a bit in the style of an upturned woodlouse. Scarlett looked amused and stuck her legs out from the sofa so she could rest her feet on my bum. Not sure if this was a physical sign of her support, an attempt to hamper and ridicule me or simply some aerobic form of offering more resistance to enhance my work out.

So I did it all. Davies continued to be amused, Scarlett wondered off for a while and then came back to join in. It was good, I felt energised and alive. And every one of my 34 years plus, yet with a quirk of oddness that my reminder of the age of my bones was due to bopping about to pre school age workouts on daytime telly :lol:.

Davies is being tricky at the moment. Or maybe I’m being tricky or intolerant or something. Fortunately I am older and more cunning so am able to place all the blame squarely with him ;). We seem to be having an average of one Serious Talk per day just now which is tedious and probably diluting the message to him anyway. I can never decide how much of it is me being crap at letting him act like a child and how much of it is potential serious issue stuff that I should be leaping on and stamping out. At the time it always feels like I need to deal with it but restrospectively I am always able to attribute it to normal 7 year old behaviour which makes me think a lot of it gets clouded by my own reactions and intolerance rather than objective reasoning. Ah well…

He read about half a book to me earlier. It was stilted and took me back to learning to read myself which I didn’t think I remembered that clearly but actually I realise I do and suddenly had a very clear mental image of sitting outside the classroom reading to someone (teaching assistant / parent drafted in to listen to readers?) from a Peter and Jane book and stumbling over words I had only read the sentence beforehand. We stopped when he got bored but he said he’d really enjoyed realising he could do it if he tried. We talked about reading again tonight and I said it was one of the best things I ever learnt to do because of the amazing possibilities it unlocks. I think of it a bit like learning to drive or learning to walk I guess, it suddenly opens up so many new areas to discover, places to go and gives you so much autonomy too.

I’ve been being hassled at work by several people to get Davies to enter a competition to design a new children’s library ticket. He’s had various ideas which we have discussed the feasibility of when scaled down to credit card size and he finally sketched an idea today of various characters coming from the pages of a book which he was pleased with so he transfered it onto paper and coloured it in so I could take his entry to hand in tonight. 🙂 Scarlett did some drawing, copying a picture of a fox and her cubs from a book. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen Scarlett actively copy something like that. She’s also doing lots of random letter writingtoo and today managed to spell CARSTEL out of nowhere which she was very chuffed to learn pretty much spelt the word CASTLE (well for southerners anyway ;)) although I think it was a complete fluke :).

We had lunch and then headed out to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily at the park. They played hide and seek for a while and then we walked up the park towards the trees. Lily often complains that she is left out as the others tend to suggest a game and then get on with playing it between them while she either wants to be the one to decide the game or at least have it played her way but is not so good at talking to them so tends to whine at Mel until she intervenes. The others tried really hard to accomodate her suggesting characters she could be and offering to let her decide the game but she remained silent while they asked her and then moaned at Mel about them again when they got bored of her and went off to play again. I felt sorry for her and Mel as she was obviously struggling rather than trying to be annoying and Mel tends to tell Liam off for not including her or insisting he plays what Lily wants which doesn’t seem very fair. However Davies got a bit over enthusiastic waving some leaves around and Liam got hit in the face. It was a complete accident but Liam decided he didn’t want to play Ben 10 anymore after that and Davies and I talked about thinking things through before doing them (like waving plants around near other people) and possible consequences of actions (like Liam not wanting to play any more). Liam and Lily started playing with a football then, clearly something they play together a lot, Davies didn’t want to play that so went to explore some clumps of bushes and Scarlett went off to make friends with dogs and their owners.

Lily and Davies ended up with Scarlett talking to an older lady and her dog for ages. Mel and Liam went to the coffee shop to get teas and icecreams while I went over to collect the children and also got chatting to her about chickens. She was lovely with the children, really patient but properly listening to them and answering all their questions sensibly rather than in that patronising way people sometimes talk to children in. :)I did feel a bit like my mum, or Ros talking to strangers in parks though as both of them always seem to make friends with people wherever they go :lol:.

We had our drinks and ice creams and then finished up in the play park which was heaving. Davies and Liam finally seemed to have sorted themselves out, while Scarlett and Lily sort of paired up in playing on the same things although I don’t think much talking was going on between them. Scarlett got the hang of a scary looking piece of equipment which is a bit like a hamster wheel with a ball type revolving middle bit you stand and run on while holding onto the side frame. She loved it but has black and blue shins from the tumbles she took getting to grips with it. Ady says she looks like little kids should look full of scratches and scrapes from being outside and having fun. I am trying not to use this rationale as an excuse to beat them and leave visible marks ;).

We said goodbye after a good two and a half hours and promised to see them next halfterm – we both have loads of afterschool stuff in term time that means getting together then is all but impossible. But it was good to see them :).

Home for a bath and hairwash for my grubby, grubby children including a hairbrush for Tarly who has suddenly decided she likes having her hairbrushed. I am not totally buying this after years of huge fusses about hairbrushing and suspect it is some cunning reverse psychology she is trying to pull on me :lol:. They had dinner and then Ady came home so I could head off to reading group.

I knew it would still be light enough to walk home and feel safe afterwards so I did fairly brisk walking there and then super brisk walking home again when I knew I could get straight in a bath and wouldn’t need to excuse or explain the 20 minutes of asthmatic wheezing I knew would follow :lol:. Book group was good, opinion was divided on the book – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen– I was one of the not impressed group. It did lead to an interesting discussion about consumerism, western society, the loss of awe and wonder in simple pleasures and nature and so on. I felt really quite enlightened for once sitting there with my smallholding dreams and cherishing my adder experiences of yesterday :lol:, see I can do deep!

A couple of bits I didn’t manage to squish in in the right places:

Davies wanted to know about nettles and their stings today so we did some googling and found microscope images, descriptions of the cocktail of poisons they inject and more.

We watched Avril Lavignes ‘I don’t like your girlfriend’ on youtube as I’ve been singing it. No idea where I’d heard it to get it stuck in my head but they wanted to hear all of it. That prompted some ‘what does ‘she’s so like whatever’ mean?’ stuff 😆 Yesterday Scarlett wanted to know what ‘bust your balls’ meant, as heard in Mean Green Mother from Outer Space. We discussed both the literal and the figure of speech meanings before promising we wouldn’t threaten anyone with such things nor indeed say it to another living person outside of the car 😆

Davies made the observation that pregnant women are a bit like timelords having two hearts inside them. We talked about foetus development (well as much as I could with my slightly sketchy knowledge from my own ultrasound scans, Emma’s Diary Day 47 and your baby is the size of a grapefruit’ type stuff and a bit of half remembered biology.) I promised I’d find a book or film to show it better. There was then discussion about eggs and seeds and how the seed came from the same hole in a man as wee so we did a bit of internal male plumbing descriptions too including talk of tubes, testicles (again!), kidney, bladder and so on. Davies enjoyed throwing in random collected facts such as ‘sperm look like tadpoles but are infact smaller than a pencil dot individually’.

Because the adder adder ‘ankerchief! 😆 😆

Today we were All About The Nature. We went to the monthly Home Ed meetup at Pulborough Brooks. Heavy rain was forecast but the day dawned sunny and bright so we packed a picnic and headed off, listening to LSoH music and singing loudly. Tarly took a spotter sheet, Davies decided not to and we quickly caught up with a couple of other HE families there. One of the girls quickly spotted a lizard so we all crowded round to have a look and that rather set the tone for the day. We saw newts, birds aplenty, rabbits, deer, a cow acting like she might have been in labour and then the highlight of the day, some adders.

I’ve never seen adders before and having googled and found out a bit more about them realised what I did know was sketchy. I have always thought that in the UK we have grass snakes, adders and vipers. I know realise adders are vipers. Clearly when I was a child someone told me you could get adders or vipers in the UK using both names and I took that as two species rather than two names for the same snake. I also learnt from googling that adders birth live young rather than laying eggs.

We saw a male, a female and then Maisie spotted the fabulous sight of two males doing their dancing display. The kids and I had seen some tropical snakes doing similar on a nature programme recently so knew it was a sort of fight to push each other to the ground with the victor forcing his opponent down and getting to be the one to mate with the female. They were utterly unbothered by their audience of small children, adults and various blokes with cameras getting very excited at their antics 🙂

It was a nice walk; Davies, Scarlett, Maisie and I walked the last bit together and had nice chats. I quite like being with a group of children, they make interesting conversation :).

We had lunch in the park there and left when a huge grey cloud finally reached directly overhead. As we pulled out of the carpark so it started to hail so we certainly had the best of the weather. 🙂

We went straight to the library where Davies’ display was needing to be put up again at Lancing having been at Shoreham for the last two weeks.

Scarlett selected a whole pile of picture books and then I showed them where books about snakes were so we picked up a pile of those too and then came home.

Scarlett spent some time with her make up box drawing eyes on the back of everyone’s hands like the women on Saturday’s Doctor Who

Then the children played with geomags (Ben 10 ) while I researched aubergine ideas and learnt about adders on the internet. Ady has a big pile of big and small tomatoes, chilli peppers, sweet peppers and aubergines that he used as props on QVC at the weekend and as part of my Eat More Fruit and Vegetables March Continued I am trying new things so I thought I’d do something with some of it. I made roasted aubergine with roasted and skinned tomatoes and mozzarella and herbs from the garden (I say garden, what I actually mean is excess QVC stock :lol:). But I wasn’t impressed really. Ady is cooking tomorrow so the eggplants get another chance to delight me before being relegated back to ‘things I don’t eat’ again.

The children had dinner and then as Ady was at a meeting and we knew he’d be home late they got ready for bed and we read the huge pile of picture books we’d got which was nice. We’d got a particularly lovely retelling of the Tortoise and the Hare with gorgeous illustrations along with a couple of old favourites such as Six Dinner Sid and All Pigs Are Beautiful.

In other news the fiesty cockerel is continuing to give me things to ponder on. I am slightly scared of him as he appears to have taken against me and flies up at me all pecky and attitudey. Realistically I know he would do very little damage but he is loud and orange and pecky! 😆 He is fine with the children and all three seem utterly happy in the area of garden we have fenced off for them. They have had it for 2 weeks plus now and not seen the need to venture further. They are actually quite flappy rather than any good at flying so I suspect they just can’t be arsed to put the effort in to fly over the fence! Today there were 2 incidents of cats in there though – a ginger one this morning and a black one tonight. The cockerel goes mental and even the two hens puff up, make lots of noise and look menacing so I don’t think they are in too much danger. I do believe that although it puts them in a tiny bit of danger letting them free range is better than the risk free small run option though. We have 25 eggs in an incubator due to hatch Thursday / Friday though so it could all get very chickeny round here this week which I suspect will give me bigger things to consider than the fate of the cockerel who is bloody great at his job of looking after his girls, getting them laying very regularly and protecting them from danger but is slightly scary to me.

Yesterday Ady was QVCing in the morning so he had to leave home about 430am. He was on just after 930am and for once Davies and Scarlett sat and watched all of it. They normally wander off bored after a minute or so. It wasn’t the lure of seeing Daddy on tv that kept them watching, it was the excitement of seeing the bowls, plate and vegetables we bought in Asda the day before on the telly! 😆 😆

On Friday afternoon while Dad was here the children made themselves hot chocolate by heating milk in the microwave and adding instant powder. This is apparently thrilling to do and to drink so we are going through pints and pints of milk as they make it for themselves and everyone else. This means the kitchen smells permanently of chocolate and the worktops need wiping down often :lol:.

We had six bananas which were very ripe and needed using so Scarlett and I made chocolate and banana cake traybakes, then as we were in the mood for bakin’ we made snickerdoodles and cheese scones. Davies watched cartoons :rolls: and then Ady came home. They all went in the garden while I cleared the kitchen up and sat debating whether to go out for a walk by myself or to agree to Davies’ request to go to the park with his bike. It then poured with rain which brought everyone back indoors again and put paid to any plans to go out anywhere as it continued to sunshine and showers in a very April-y manner.

Eventually I decided to go jeans shopping – every pair I own either has holes at the knee, sewn up patches where they’ve ripped elsewhere or ‘unique customisation’ by Scarlett with permanent marker! Noone wanted to come with me (surprise! ;)) so I had a lovely hour or so all alone browsing the shops. I did get some new jeans, which have now given a bit and keep falling down :rolls: and a couple of very cheap tops :). I think wardrobe declutters for me and the children are on my to do list this week, might try and list some stuff on ebay or freecycle too, I’ve got a dejunking bug (must be spring!).

Back home Davies was watching Ben 10 the movie,utterly thrilled at it’s very existance. Ady and Scarlett had tidied her bedroom (it was a long overdue task) and were playing with the Barbie stuff (TV’s Adrian Goddard in playing with out of proportion naked dolls shocker!). Ady and I had baths and got prettied up then my parents arrived. I watched Dr Who with Davies before we left and Dad came with us to bring our car home and come and collect us later :). They probably do evening babysitting for us just once or twice a year so I do like to make the most of each occassion ;).

We had a fab evening, despite being utterly shocked at the prices of drinks, and it was a private club so not even full pub prices :shock:. It was a 40th birthday party for one of Ady’s workmates and there were a select few people from Ady’s work there who we mixed with. Another workmate is the lead singer with a band playing live music there so there was drinking and dancing and plenty of full on fun and silliness :). Dad came to collect us around midnight and ended up coming in and joining us for another hour before we finally headed for home. I was in that happy happy place where it is very important you do not consume another drop of alcohol otherwise you cross to the dark side of drunk – so I sat and chatted to – or probably more acurately talked at – my parents for a while. 🙂

This morning we did a sort of lie in relay with A going back to bed when I got up. After sausage, bacon and egg I felt altogether less delicate and we headed over to the Plantearium again for a show about the planets which was the second show on my list. Next I want to see the one about the Northern Lights but we’ll leave it a couple of months. We bumped into a woman I used to work with there, she was a part time assistant for me when I managed a card shop and we seem to happen upon each other every couple of years, so that was a nice quick catch up with her. 🙂 There were lots of children this time, more than at the last show and none of them were particularly silent so Scarlett’s whispered ‘what does that mean?’ every so often to me was fine and not disruptive (Liza we could have sat behind you without causing too much ranting ;)). It was a good show again, very information packed, a lot of which you almost feel whizzing out of your brain again almost as soon as you’d heard it but like last time I think plenty of it went in and they are both keen to spot Mars and Saturn which are both visible in early night sky with the naked eye at the moment.

Home for dinner for the children after which I lost patience with both of them for talking all the way through something I was trying to watch on telly and then dithering about irritatingly when I’d asked them to get ready for bed. They are both being really crap at staying in bed and going to sleep at the moment which is tedious and ends up getting A and I cross with them and issuing all sorts of threats about locks on doors and tieing them to their beds and stuff :lol:. We watched Run Fat Boy Run which was pretty good and I think heading to bed now would be a good plan given how tired I am feeling and it already being the start of another busy week ahead.

Yes it’s been a day at work complete with Baby Rhyme Time again. I don’t think either myself or anyone who knows me would ever have thought I’d have earnt money sat cross legged in a big group of mothers and babies singing and doing actions to nursery rhymes. Oh there are many more curious things I have pondered career-wise over the years but singing ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ for a living was never one of them! 😆

Nevertheless that is one of the things I have spent time doing today. There have been others, mostly involving books, people who borrow books or people who also work lending out books. The Little Peter Rabbit bit was possibly the most interesting 😆 I am actually starting to develop an interest in the regional and generational passing down of nursery rhymes actually. For example, I had never heard Wind the Bobbin Up until I went to toddler groups with Davies despite having been sung to myself as a child, owning the ladybird book of nursery rhymes and going to playschool. Whereas Sing a Song of Sixpence which I decided to introduce into my repertoire today had blank faces pulled at me from the 20something Mums.

Ady was home this morning with the children and then Dad was here this afternoon. I know Davies spent some time on Ady’s pc playing a game he got with his Happy Meal yesterday to do with dragons. The current Big Thing here is Ben 10 so there was some playing of that too. Having watched a tiny bit of Ben 10 I am failing utterly to see any value in it either educationally, in terms of it being quality programming, animation, scriptwriting or creative idea but given the high level of merchandise for it and the amount of the childrens’ friends who are also in to it I suspect this is an example of me being a grownup who just doesn’t get it rather than my opinion carrying any weight :lol:.

I read some Extreme Animals to them. I borrowed this book from the library for 3 reasons. 1 It looked quite interesting, 2 I would get to say the word ‘extreme’ lots in the style of a surfer /base jumper / dreadlocked dude type manner while reading it and 3. My name used to be Nicola Davies the same as the author’s so it felt somehow right :).

Ady came home from dashing around like a mad thing to get ready for tomorrow’s show for old people 😉 (9am, tell your grannies!), I read some Famous Five and then it was bedtime. Except bedtime was rather protracted. Davies (who has always been a way better parent to Tarly than I am) has decided he will be the one to cure her of her dummies. Ady has promised her a kitten if she gives them up, I have told her she will thank me for nagging her when she is older and does not have the need for lots of expensive dental work and Davies has hatched a Cunning Plan involving all sorts of great parenting techniques like emotional blackmail, playing to the child’s weaknesses, making deals while they are tired and fragile and lots more (I am very proud). He has created a box with a dummy sized slit in which to deposit dummies that will go to make poor sad injured cats lives better. It is decorated with pictures of said cats and better than that if you agree to help these cats by giving your dummies you get a picture of a cat, previously in need now happy and content and saved, using your dummy. Curiously the picture is drawn in a style very similar to Davies’ art 😆

Where bribes, threats and pictures of otherwise attractive women with wonky teeth have failed Davies’ box and personalised newsletter from cats helped by your donation appear to be a winner and he managed to get 3 dummies off her just tonight :). Is it possible to be a parenting guru when you are seven? 😆