Supernanny rode up on her trojan horse…

Been a far better day today all round. 🙂 It’s been slightly cooler which has helped a lot, and aside from my laptop claiming to have a virus which appears to be not causing any great harm other than the AVG warning popping up three times every time I start a new application to say ‘hey Nic, you’ve got yourself a virus’ ‘Did we mention you had a virus Nic?’ and ‘Nic, you really want to be getting that virus seen to’. Which for the normal person on the street with average tolerance and patience levels, in a very hot room, with an internet addiction would perhaps induce one to throw the laptop out of the window fairly quickly. But not me, no siree Bob. I have two small children who have taught me patience, calm, serenity and the ability to ignore such minor irritations by clicking the ‘yes I know’ ‘Really I am aware of that’ and the ‘would you shut the fuck up coming along telling me about the bloody virus every two minutes already’ button with dignity, restraint and NOT hard enough to wear all the letters off the keyboard and damage the nerves in the tip of my finger. 😆

So all week Davies has been nagging to play with the air drying clay. I have a big tub of the ELC stuff which we’ve only ever used the once. It is not actually that nice to work with and leaves lots of chalky residue on the fingers (like real clay then really 😉 ) which I have ‘issues’ with. And I hate the idea of more expensive stuff being used for ‘playing’ rather than actual ‘making’. So I told him if he planned out what he wanted to make with it and maybe drew some pictures of it (and jumped through some hoops lit with fire and sang a song about it which rhymed and had original lyrics and at least two musical harmonies and a percussion part) then I’d get it out and play with him. I am partially trying to teach him a bit about planning, logical reasoning and stuff here and partially just don’t like the stuff (and yes, maybe I should just let him use it all up and be done with it 😉 ) and partially I just don’t want the windowsill and bookcase full of small misshapen ‘things’ waiting to dry, getting fragile and being broken by Scarlett and causing rows.

So I got him a book from the library the other night about sculptures. It talks about all sorts of methods of creating stuff from twig weaving, paper pulp and papier mache, stuffing paper and materials, junk modelling and so on. And it had a page on ‘critter pots’ a basic pot with some sort of creature or animal based around it, with a recipe for salt dough to use and then paint when dried. Which sounded a much better plan.

They’d been playing with magic sand while I was riding my trojan horse (and as an aside that’s a really good site which I must read in more detail for next time we get the magic sand out) so we cleared that up and then made some salt dough (dead easy recipe, 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt 1 3/4 cups of warm water, knead for ten minutes and use.) left it white so we can paint it and copied some of the pictures in the book. Davies made a frog with a bowl in it’s body, I helped Tarly made a duck cradling a bowl, then she made a duck on her own, which was excellent, totally recognisable as a duck, Davies made a model of Gromit eating a bowl of dog food and I made a Gromit with a bowl on his back and an ill fated Wallace with a bowl on his lap. Tarly then mashed up the Wallace, the duck and a little cat I’d made but the rest is all sitting drying out ready for painting another day. I was thinking of doing it again and sticking stuff into the bowls before they harden like the jewels you can get from BakerRoss or even mosaic bits to create different things. Both the kids love things like bowls in their rooms for all their tat and we could make some really glittery sparkling ones for Tarly’s dressing table bits and pieces.

Then we talked about paper making for a while – featured in another library book and looked at some origami but it was getting fractious so we decided to head out for a while. We went into Lancing to the library. Davies’ library ticket is probably in the house somewhere but has not been seen for a while so we got him a new one – he was thrilled to not have a Kipper one anymore and to have a poppies one like mine – and signed them both up for the Reading Mission. They’ve not done the previous summers ones. The librarian there is one I have spoken to before, a youngish man who is really earnest and tries really hard but clearly has no experience of being around children. He told them all about it (while Scarlett lolled around on the floor :roll:) and send us off with our first ‘mission’ – to find all the characters around the library and fill in a sheet. So Davies and I did that while Tarly played on the computer in the childrens’ area and then we chose a big pile of books. They love Charlie and Lola – although Tarly insists it is ‘Charlie and Lulah!’ so we found a couple of them. Then as it was lovely and cool in the library we sat and read a few books in there too. A quick scoot round the charity shops in town and then back home again.

My Mum popped round briefly, the children had a long, cool bath (their equivalent to a pool round here!), Ady read a couple of books to them and is now gardening, Tarly’s asleep, Davies is still being noisy upstairs and I’m about to cook our dinner.

Tomorrow we’re seeing Ali and Freya – for the first time in what feels like months and it’s Friday. Woo hoo! 🙂