Facing it in a pugilistic fashion!

Been a rather good morning thus far. I’m on my second load of washing – after which there is only one more load before I get to the 4 sets of bedlinen which have been building up since the weather changed to make outdoor drying impossible. I hate trying to get duvet covers and sheets dry draped over radiators, but as we are on our very last clean set on the bed now I know it cannot be avoided until Spring – and of course my previous answer of buying another set (which accounts for us having the five sets!) is no longer a possibility! 😉 Anyway, I digress…

Watched The Backyardigans snuggled up with the children on the sofa first thing then they started some game involving baby dolls and a soft toy frog, some tissues and some felt tips where they were decorating pillows and sheets for their toys. I decided that it was not the best use of tissues when the floor started to resemble some sort of blizzard scene so they tidied that up and got the geomags out instead. I went and put away a load of clean washing which had been doing a fair approximation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the corner of our bedroom having grown to about two and a half times the height of the basket it was resting in.

Then we headed off to Sainsburys for a few bits and pieces. The children faithfully promised to behave under threat of being sat in the trolley and they stuck to their promise so well I ended up doing a full week’s shop. I was super extra frugal and managed to bring the total in at just over £50 – then the cashier asked if I was saving my rewards so I told him to take them off, hoping for maybe a fiver off. (In the style of Viz) Imagine my surprise when it brought the total down to just £22 – there were £27.50 worth of rewards on there! 🙂 🙂 Ady buys all his work diesel from BP where they do double reward points, and of course as we’ve been using his work car all the time he’s been putting more diesel in – so hurrah for that! 🙂

Sainsburys are doing more and more items in their ‘basic’ range which has IMO rather clever packaging and marketing. I think Sainsburys are doing some very clever things all round ATM generally but the basics range is very well done. Super cheap and with slogans explaining precisely what the difference is that makes the range so much cheaper. So for example I bought the crumpets from that range (kids adore crumpets for lunch and erm, actually so do I!) and they are about half the normal price but as it says on the packaging they are all funny shapes and sizes – misshapes, which let’s face it, unless you are planning to lightly toast them and serve them with butter curls and the finest loose leaf tea from bone china cups is hardly likely to bother you! Anyway, as I said, I’m loving Sainsburys today! 🙂

The children were so well behaved and I was on such a frugal high we loaded the shopping into the car and then went for a wander round the aquarium shop next door to Sainsburys, which as a free alternative is not too much of a far cry from a Sea Life Centre really. 😉 Spent ages oohing and ahhing at the pretty tropical fish, the coral and the seahorses and so on. Tarly decided what fish she wants for her fourth birthday (which is when Davies got his two – Fred and Albert) and that she wants two, both called Scarlett. We finished up looking at the clownfish, which thanks to Finding Nemo they both knew the name of.

Predictably we got home for lunch and they put Nemo on to watch (we’re now watching it for the second time!). Thanks to the Oompa Lumpa dancing on the second C&TCF dvd disc Davies has started to explore all the addtional features on all his favourite discs. Which gives Ady heart failure as he is convinced he will break the dvd player but I am happy to see as I can convince myself it involves some sort of reading skills. 😉 And erm, fine motor skills with the remote control too! We had our crumpets, I rang Ady to share with him the joy of the weeks food shopping for £22 story, he rang me back to say he’d got his payrise letter – not going to make huge difference but as someone recently said ‘every little helps’! And the children are now eating up every bit of fruit in the house, predictable as I didn’t buy any more…

Davies, who can never seem to just sit and watch a film and always needs something else to be doing at the same time has just brought in our marble run boxes. We’ve had a plastic one for years which gets occassional use before being forgotten about for months again. During the last playroom tidy up I shoved a wooden block marble run in with it so that has been cause for delight and he has spent about an hour now building ever more dramatic runs, testing them and then modifying them. Very interesting to watch (if tricky – I am sitting on my hands to not go over and just do it myself when I can see something is not going to work!!) and he’s coming out with some fantastic words to describe it aswell as talking me through what he’s doing. He’s also brought out his Matchbox Haunted House toy which was probably the only present he actually asked for at Christmas and despite being proudly brought out to show guests has not really been ‘played with’ as such. They are both playing with a tape measure and keep bringing it to me at certain lengths to ask what it says and then telling me that’s how tall / wide something is.

I had planned to do some very overdue Thank You notes for Christmas presents from the children with them this afternoon but I am loathe to disturb them when they are playing and frankly nearly 3 weeks after the event is so late another day or two is unlikely to make much odds!

Today is meant to be return to Tumble Tots day but after lots of thinking about it and a chat with the children this morning we’ve decided to stop going. I’ve chatted to Tarly about going in without me and she is adamant she doesn’t want to move up classes where she goes in without me. I have to say that although I would be interested to see how she did get on without me the skills that it would be growing are ones I don’t place much value on anyway – certainly not in a 3 year old. I’ve known that Davies was not enjoying it as much as he used to ever since he moved up classes in September and it has become very very schooly since he hit five – again something I am by no means desperate for him to be exposed to.

I also cannot deny that there is a cost issue – TT has to have annual membership at about £20 a child and it is £4.50 each per session – for that money I could take them to soft play centres once or even twice a week. Once they had both said they didn’t want to go any more I did tell them that and they were thrilled. As Davies said at soft play he gets to do whatever he wants on the equipment and can play at pretending games too – at TT they have to do everything exactly as they are told. I’ve also decided that if Davies should be focusing on anything it should probably be his dramatic inclinations so we’re going to start going to the Activeo drama sessions which are once a month (and frugally cost just a quid per child!) and if he enjoys them then I might start taking him to the drama sessions in the town later in the year. I will also look into the Badgers for him again and look into the timetable at the local swimming pool with a view to taking them there once a week. So in all feeling quite positive about stuff really.

While I’ve been doing this post Scarlett has disappeared off to her bedroom where she is allegedly ‘cleaning’ her dressing table and Davies has got out his magicians set from Christmas and a magic set he got for his birthday before last and is wearing his top hat and pulling rabbits out of places – yep, definitely think drama is the way to go for that child 😉 .