One word? When seven would do…

That’s me!

A pretty good day today all things considered. We had another rough night with Tarly up and down the stairs several times but I did persuade the small people to entertain themselves for the best part of an hour after Ady left for work so I could at least snooze with an ear open if not drift totally back to sleep. Still feel pretty wasted though 🙁

So first thing we had some wildlife programe on and had breakfast, then we tried out one of the cdroms I got yesterday. They are SATS based tied in with Key Stage One and produce a certificate based on what a child ‘should’ be doing when you enter their birthdate and age. Not my normal sort of thing at all really but I thought they looked quite fun and might pick up a few no so obvious to me gaps in the early years stuff which could lead onto other discussions and interests.

Now Davies actually prefers to be on the PC without me hanging over his shoulder, and I prefer to have him happily doing something which then frees me up to either get on with other stuff or have some one to one time with Scarlett. Sadly these are not the software solution for such times. We onl tried the colour and shapes one but as you have to answer questions (written questions – tricky for someone not yet reading) and then work out what to do by using the answer it is a bit over complicated and dressed up as a game unnecessarily. The questions were pretty basic such as ‘what is a circle?’ answer choices being ’round, square, rectangular or triangular’ which Scarlett could happily answer verbally, but written down in different coloured boxes. You then had to try and work your way through a maze to find the correct coloured door and click on it. I know! We’ll give one of the others a go tomorrow and see if it’s any better.

Then we did our usual dashing out of the house with moments to spare act and arrived at soft play at the same time as Lucy. I had also invited Julie (who I always used to see on Thursdays and we agreed that we should not have let it slip and would start doing so again) and Vickie (who I had also semi planned to do something with today but she had not been able to confirm one way or another and I didn’t want to keep the day free on a maybe) but neither of them came in the end.

So it was Lucy, Rebecca (slightly younger than Scarlett) and baby Richard (six months old, sitting and very smiley and content, ok as babies go!). Davies and Scarlett immediately headed off into the maze playing some complicated game about lions and after a short warming up period Rebecca joined them. Lucy and I sat in the ball pool with Richard and chatted. As usual the conversation revolved mostly around HE – she is really looking forward to the Halloween party and to meeting some other HE folk – with a list of questions she had thought of since we last met and general parenting chat too. I feel slightly fraudulent in her company as she has decided that Davies is so intelligent and such a wonderful example of Home Ed that I must spend all my time ‘teaching’ him stuff. I have tried to explain that we don’t live like that but she still doesn’t believe me when I tell her that I spend most of my day on the internet or meeting up with other HE mums to chat and drink tea while the children are mostly left to their own devices 😉 .

We had lunch there and then headed back in for a second play. Unfortunately Tarly was getting tired and on one of her and Davies’ tandem slide falls (massive slide which they sit at the top of, hold hands and come crashing down together) they collided with each other’s faces at the bottom and she came off worse 🙁 . Davies, bless him, was really upset and tried to comfort her but she pushed him away and then I had to deal with her sobbing so he got all stroppy with me too :-(. I finally sorted her out and she went to have one more go on the slide and fell over again so more wailing.

We left shortly afterwards!

They both perked up sufficiently for us to pop to the library on the way home where I gave them free rein to choose whatever books they wanted and grabbed a couple for myself. We were just about to leave when I found The Grinch (Jim Carey version) in the dvd area so we grabbed that too. Came home and they sat watching that with popcorn while I sorted out the pens, pencils, crayons and felt tips, paper and crafty bits like glitter and glue in the playroom. Another bin liner full of rubbish lost from there, and a list of supplies we need ready to be ordered from Baker Ross later 😉 Davies came in and drew some lovely pictures – a witch, a castle, one of him and my Mum which he has put in an envelope and written the address tidily enough for me to think it’s worth sticking a stamp on and hoping it gets there (I’ve written the postcode so I’m sure they can work it out – their house doesn’t have a number, just a name so with the postcode correct the writing should be able to be made out). He also worked out almost all by himself how to spell ‘Nicola’ with me helping him to break the word down into syllables and saying it carefully. We’re getting there 🙂

They did some more playing about going on holiday to Centerparcs when the film ended and then Tarly went and got her pjs on and announced it was night time and she was ‘tired-y’ so packed her off to bed and sat cuddle up with Davies until Ady arrived home.

Tomorrow promises to be chaos but not until the late afternoon / evening so we plan a quiet morning with much stew preparation for what has become an impromptu last minute blog bump session.