And the sickest joke was the price of the medicine

Yep, it’s another Lost Weekend.

Where do they go eh? Working every other Saturday afternoon is proving to be a total bugger and really hampering our social lives. I think we’re booked every single one of our ‘free’ weekends from now until September and Davies’ swimming lessons on a Sunday morning mean even the free weekends are tied to staying in Sussex. It’s all a bit chasing our tails at the moment, with a packed calendar and a great long list of things I want to get done but never seem to find the time for right now. I really could do with an eighth day each week or a self-cloning machine to enable me to pack Nicola off to work while Nic gets on with various other things :lol:.

I have about a half dozen potential blog posts composed in my head ready to get down sometime, a towering pile of things to ebay, four books to read for a Reading group event in 4 weeks (and it’s taken me about 4 weeks to read the last two so my average isn’t good so far) and a great big ‘to do’ list spiralling off from here into next week. I dunno, maybe if I had a table I could sit down at it and get myself organised ;). Anyway…

Yesterday morning is lost, I have no idea what I did other than ironing the hama dalek and tardis we’d made and making birthday cards for Ady with the kids. Davies did a picture of a footballer complete with football boots with spikes on – one of those odd things he just knows without me ever having told him – he didn’t know why though as asked me about that. There was a ball, a goal and a crowd and a Pompey moon and star sign at the top. He wrote inside ‘Happy Birthday to Daddy love Davies’ with fairly minimal help, just the odd ‘what letter comes next?’ on Birthday but he spelt Happy, to, Daddy, love and obviously Davies pretty much by himself. He’s been doing lots of copying writing lately – he sat and wrote loads of words off the pile of videos in the lounge on Friday and illustrated them – Chicken Run, Mermaid (copied from The Little Mermaid) and a couple of others. It’s funny how cyclic his interest is in reading and writing, he seems to return to the same point every few weeks, each time inspired by some different reason and each time go that little bit further with it. It was funny to see my Mum earlier trying to get Tarly to read the word ‘cat’ with no reasoning behind it at all other than we had some pencils and paper out and were drawing and just how utterly irrelevant it seemed. Clearly there was no reason at all for her to want or need to read that word in relation to nothing so she simply ignored the request and carried on with her drawing of a rainbow, concentrating on trying to get the colours in the right order :lol:.

Scarlett meanwhile drew a picture of a pony – she has this fab way of drawing things where she starts off with a slightly wobbly irregular shape – the same shape regardless of what the end picture will be and then she adds in the detail to make it what she was aiming for – so her pony got four legs, a tail, some ears, eyes etc. If it was to have been a cat it would have been the same wobbly shape but got whiskers etc instead. She then watched what Davies had written and copied each letter from his to write ‘Happy Birthday Daddy love…’ and then wrote ‘Scarlett’ with no help at all. There is little to choose between their letter formation – she holds a pen really well and forms very clear letters but without much inkling as to what they are or what sounds they make. Davies has been totally the other way, he learnt the letters first but has only quite recently been able to make clear representations of them. It will be interesting to see what their handwriting is like as adults and whether it differs greatly.

Anyway, there was some watching of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (mostly Ady and I as I recall while the children ignored it :lol:), we had lunch and then I went off to work (I drove as the weather looked dreadful and I didn’t fancy doing my shift in soggy clothes from being caught in a shower on the way to work) and Ady and the children headed off to spend a few hours with Chris, Jack and Maisie in some brother and offspring bonding time. Work was fine, I continued my Enquiry Desk training, including some excellent on the job training in dealing with a man who came in to confess to an accident with his rucksack, some red wine and a Wilbur Smith paperback, a subject enquiry on suitable text for headstones, help finding books on bullying for 2 year olds (2 YEAR OLDS!!!! BULLYING!!!!! :shock:) and some general gossiping with the other 4 staff I work my every other Saturday afternoons with, all of whom are really nice people to spend time with.

I arrived home about five minutes after Ady, Davies and Scarlett, who were very disappointed to realised Dr Who wasn’t on due to Eurovision so I read some stories to them before they headed off to bed with a dvd player each. Davies laid and watched Watership Down. I had no idea he’d taken that up to bed, I’d got it from the library for us to watch together, as I still get weepy when I hear Bright Eyes, but he was fine, said it was ‘a bit sad’ described the plot line to me very articulately and said he’d quite like to watch it again with me next time and was watching some Shaun the sheep to ‘cheer him up again before he went to sleep’ !!! Scarlett watched Aristocats.

I had a really crap nights’ sleep. I’ve been reading the latest Jodi Picoult book which has really played on my mind and disturbed me and I think some of my dreams were tangled up wth that subject matter (bullying, teenage gun shoot out in a high school, suicide, wasted lives over before they even begin) but I must have been awake at least ten times during the night tossing and turning. Scarlett and Candle were both in our bedroom by about 6.15am and although Ady got up first I still couldn’t sleep so I got up too. I woke Davies just after 730am as Scarlett was desperate to give Ady his couple of gifts from us and we had to be out of the house at 9am for swimming anyway.

I’ve been rather hormonal (read a complete bitch :oops:) today generally with the whole world and his wife pissing me off just by breathing so there was a small incident at swimming to do with some mislaid socks that I rather overreacted to but Davies did really well. He so needs to have some of what he’s learning backed up with some time in the pool so we may try and go one evening or if our planned camping trip is called off next weekend due to shitty weather we might stay after next Sunday’s lesson and have some time in the water. He is trying really hard but could do with some time to practise and have it reinforced a bit but trying to go with Scarlett as well during the daytime would defeat the object.

We came home, I baked a birthday cake and then we went over to my parents where Ady was given a pretty good haul of gifts and we had lunch. The men watched football, I went and played on the piano with the kids for a while, sat and watched football for a while and spent some time teaching Scarlett how to do headstands (without practical demonstrations – I feel my body weight might just break my own neck were I try tricks like that :lol:) and wondered on how to teach handstands without practical demonstrations – anybody up for that at Kessingland? 😆 My Granny joined us which pretty much tested my hormonal state to it’s limits – and infact I did end up swearing infront of everyone but we’ll leave that little gem tucked away with bad examples infront of the children and everyone rolling their eyes about me behind my back 😳

We came home, the kids were packed off to bed, we tried to order a chinese takeaway only to discover they are shut on Sundays so we gave up and had crumpets and chocolate for tea and I’m about to follow Ady up to bed and try and catch up on some of that precious sleep I missed out on last night. Photos on flickr – Davies brought his camera along and set us all up for group self timers, explaining at length to my Dad and Frazer how to do it and rather impressing them both with his knowledge and there are some nice ones of Scarlett enjoying a match game of paper, scissors, stone too.