Badgerama

One of those days today. There is a long, long list of things I could have done with the children, possibly even things I should have done with the children but I wasn’t in the right mood. I have been in a curious frame of mind today, slightly resenting having to look after children at all and with little or no tolerance for them and their squabbling. As is so often the case this has been magnified and reflected back from them. If he had it she wanted it, if she said it he copied it til she whinged, if I told them to be quiet they shouted louder – it was just wearing. But despite the fact I shoued so much I actually gave myself a sore throat it somehow didn’t characterise the day and there were plenty of nicer bits scattered inbetween.

I did eventually decide that like a bad scriptwriter having his male character chuck his female lead ‘it wasn’t them, it was me!’ so took myself off to my room, with my laptop, and had a very happy half hour or so doing blogthings – the results of which can be seen below 🙂

Elsewhere in the day then….

First thing (before 7am again, urgh!) Davies asked me to do some drawing with him today, so still drinking my waking up cup of tea I sat on the floor with them and we did some drawing. Since Adam’s Madagascar party Davies has been utterly taken with the idea of themed parties and is meticulously planning a Wallace and Gromit themed party for his birthday. He has sorted the guest list and even decided what everyone will be coming dressed up as, decided on the games, the decoration and the catering and is currently spending all his drawing time on creating elaborate invitations, personalised for each invited guest. Can’t imagine where he gets that from 😳

I said I’d do four pictures so I dashed off one of Totty, one of Wallace and one of Wallace and Gromit in a photo frame, which Tarly took off me so she could colour it in, then Davies gave me a masterclass in drawing and colouring the penguin. He’s quite a good little teacher you know, not at all sure where he gets that from, but I watch him do it regularly with Tarly and he has a really gentle and encouraging way about him when imparting knowledge or showing skills. 🙂

I was midway through composing the first go at the ‘where I’m from’ piece and thinking about my Dad when I glanced out of the window and saw his van pulling round the corner into our road, so I shot upstairs to get dressed while the children entertained him. The children then played with the foam puzzle thing while Dad and I chatted. He stayed for about an hour and a half during which time Davies made loads of 3D letters out of the shapes – L, S, U, N, C, Z, O, P, F, E, V, Y and so on – think that quite impressed Dad actually, so hurah for that!

Dad left and I made a couple of batches of snickerdoodles with varying levels of help and hindrance from the children. We had lunch and the children played with jigsaw puzzles together, mostly nicely but with odd outbursts of squabbling which were very irritating and ended up with me yelling to break each one up (hence the sore throat). Davies spent some time playing on paint producing a picture of blobs he entitled Space but then got bored of that and I can’t get the diskdrive to work to load up any of his disks and refuse to let them play on my new laptop.

I had half a plan to do something with them to try and sort it out but was utterly unmotivated so took myself off to the playroom to tidy up a bit in there after which I’d had enough and banished myself to my bedroom!

I came down very refreshed, to find Tarly sitting on the kitchen worktop eating snickerdoodles and Davies had tidied up. So we all had cuddles and kisses and Davies got changed ready for Badgers just as Ady arrived home.

At Badgers they made German flags using various stuff for sticking on the red, yellow and black, they learnt a German nursery rhyme and looked at where Germany is on a map and on a globe. There were only nine children there this week and the little friend who Davies was full of talking about last week wasn’t there. 🙁 I didn’t check on him (I sit in the room next door, the door is open and I could listen to what goes on but I’d rather switch off and read my book for an hour 🙂 ) but he was slightly subdued and said he’d been sitting next to the assistant leader Badger (18 year old lad) and was very pleased about that. He does have a tendancy to attach himself to an adult if at all possible rather than another child, but that’s fine and he said he really enjoyed it again.

I overheard the end of the session where they were being given out letters to ask about going along to a Funday on a Saturday in July. 8.30am to 7.oopm and you drop them off in the morning ready for breakfast and come back for them at bedtime. I showed appropriate levels of interest and excitement for the activities and the ‘Fun’ of it all but he was already saying he wouldn’t be able to go as he was on holiday then and he doesn’t want to miss our holiday – actually the date is fine but when I gently clarified that no, I wouldn’t be going with him and yes, it would be something he did without me and I came and collected him later he imediately said he didn’t want to go. I asked him if he’d think about it and he was still certain it was a no.

When we got home Ady tried reasoning with him on it too but I think we may have pushed too hard as he ended up crying on my lap because he really, really doesn’t want to go. 🙁 And of course he doesn’t have to and I categorically do not want to undo the good work Badgers is doing and my current softly softly approach by blowing it all for the sake of one fun day – and I have to admit even I am not at all confident that ‘once he gets there he’d love it’ so I’m not going to push him any harder than making it sound attractive but being realistic about what it might be like too. We’ve agreed that next week I will wait in the car rather than in the room next door for him at Badger and maybe the week after I might just drop him off and come back so I am pretty happy at the fairly quick progress we are making there and TBH it’s not until July by which time we may well be ready for it anyway. We’ll see…

So tomorrow we have nothing at all planned and I really want to have a nicer day all round. There is a big stack of library books waiting to be read and if the weather is nice or if they are suffering from cooped-up-ness then I might take them for a dash around at the park or the beach.