I’ve spent the last two days with really itchy eyes blaming early hayfever and this morning I woke with a runny nose and streaming eyes. I think I might be suffering with hayfever and the kids’ cold. 🙁 Oh and it’s mooncup time again too. Ace! 🙄 Have also been yawning all day despite having an OK night’s sleep (both kids dosed up on Medised made for 12 hour stretches of sleep for them both 🙂 ) I could have crawled back to bed at any point during the day and gone straight to sleep the instant I closed my eyes. So I think I will be doing just that very shortly.
First thing I got out a make up kit I’d had stashed away for Scarlett so she sat and did my make up for me and a construction puzzle kit thing for Davies which I sat on the floor and helped him with (while having lurid green eyeshadow and very pink blusher applied). It was excellent actually, made of a sort of plasticky cardboard which you pushed out and then followed numbered instructions to fold and slot together to make a digger truck. Then using a plastic screwdriver supplied you used plastic nuts and bolts to hold it together. He wanted cheerleading rather than actual help and I did plenty of ‘so what number did we look at last, what number should be do now? Which bit of it do you think that picture is representing?’. The kit only cost a quid and frankly the half an hour of making it was worth loads more than that but actually the digger itself is pretty good and of course he is very proud of it and has brought it everywhere with him today. 🙂 Must see if there are any more in the same range and get them. Ali and I were speculating abolut meccano for him the other day watching him create stuff with some giant brio meccano-a-like stuff Freya has . He likes k’nex and lego and stuff but the appeal of actually bolting stuff together seems to really do something for him and he loves either following instructions or using his own imagination to create something. Looked on ebay and it is still holding it’s price and I checked in Woolworths at it today – must keep an eye out at car boot sales.
I’d originally planned to go to Brighton today with Mum and the children for a Primark and H&M run. I had various clothes and shoes purchases I wanted to make. With our current financial situation it is actually easier to stick to our monthly budget by making a list of things we need prior to needing them and factoring in the purchases in advance. This coupled with the fact I still love shopping even if it is just for childrens pants and socks ;-). But they children are still fairly snotty and not on top form, Mum didn’t want to be too far from home so wasn’t up for Brighton so I decided to go to Worthing and she came with us in the end.
We had a really successful day. Davies got doodles, sandals (he’d had a meltdown about me putting some outgrown Spiderman shoes on ebay last week so I’d promised if we saw any more Spiderman shoes I’d get them for him and low and behold, there in Woollies were Spiderman sandals, hurrah!), cheapo black shoes for Badgers and then he asked for jelly shoes to wear in the beach / in the sea and cited Kessingland as the example for needing them. For £1.50 I thought his sales pitch was good enough (even without the PowerPoint stylee illustrations and plasticine models of himself wearing said jelly shoes I know he would have worked up to if I’d said no) so he got FOUR PAIRS of shoes today! 🙂 In fairness this was for the same price as a usual Clarks pair in total though, so not too scary, just watch him grow a shoe size in the next fortnight.
Edited to add – And I’ve just checked reciepts and realised there was a 3 for 2 on shoes so the jellies were actually free 🙂
Scarlett got doodles and sandals. She didn’t want jelly shoes as they only had blue ones in Woollies, she liked some pink ones in Mothercare but they were a fiver so I said we’ll look out for some for her over the next couple of months until the time she might actually need jelly shoes anyway. It was after all still snowing only about 2 weeks ago so we are possibly slightly premature in such comprehensive summer stocking up anyway 😉
They both got a pile of new pants and socks, Tarly got a couple of pairs of £2 each summer pjs and as they both already have sufficient shorts / lightweight trousers / skirts from last year which still fit them I got them both enough cheap T shirts to last the summer which completes their wardrobes until the Autumn. Oh and got Davies’ £3 black school trousers for Badgers too. I also sent Davies across from the clothing concession bit in the Co-op where I was buying T shirts to the normal tills to pay for a french stick. I could see him and he could see me, but he was still really bold and confident, chatting away to the checkout woman and being all polite and charming. I’m dead proud of that boy you know. :-).
While out we saw a poster for Joseph & the technicolour dreamcoat which Davies was asking about so we talked a bit about as much of the (Bible version) of the story as I could remember and promised to tell him the rest when I’d looked it up. This led to further debate on God and religious belief, which he then followed by seeing a poster of Elvis and saying ‘oh look, Elvis’ in a really casual way followed by saying ‘I look a bit like Shakin Stevens today Granny, I’m wearing a denim jacket and jeans’ out of nowhere, which he followed up with ‘actually I’m wearing jeans, Mummy’s wearing jeans, Scarlett’s wearing jeans and you’re wearing jeans too Granny. That’s a coincidence’ which just made us laugh loads. Strange boy with all his observations, combination of the very deep and the very inane and his little turns of phrase so far beyond his age!
Retail therapy, frugal shopping and new clothes for kids, sorted! 🙂 Came home and have piled up another batch of stuff ready for ebay too which I’ll try and get listed this week cos if I’m thinking about buying summer wear then I guess other people will be too – and I’m fired up on ebaying again having transfered £50 from paypal to my account from last weeks sales. 🙂
We went back to my parents for a late lunch, where Dad had arrived home too and I spent some time setting up a few bits on Mum’s new laptop for her. They have just had wireless broadband put in so she’s learning all sorts of new skills and I’ve trillianed and flickrd her up which she’s slowly starting to get to grips with. After about an hour the children, who it has to be said were not really on best behaviour all day started to get snapped at by my parents for various crimes such as trailing crumbs on carpet, banging doors and making ornaments wobble and getting their feet on the sofa (honestly – well where did you think my thing about indoor toys came from eh? 😉 ) so we came home.
We had a grand trying on session of all the new clothes and shoes, they had a big bowl of strawberries each for tea, I took reciept of a praisefilled email from CV lady about a particularly challenging one I’d completed yesterday (and another 3 arrived in the post this morning – keep ’em coming!) and I hastily and about 7 hours later than planned shoved a bolognaise sauce in the slow cooker (well it had a good 4 hours or so).
And now, I will retire for the evening.