A long, long, long, long day

This morning started ridiculously early for me at 6am when the children woke up and discovered 3 chicks and had started even earlier for Ady who left around 430am to go to places like Birmingham. We were up, dressed, breakfasted and at the newly opened down the road Petsmart or Pet City or whatever they’re calling themselves before it even opened at 9am. We had a bit of a wander round there looking at rabbits, hamsters and various fish before getting the cat food we’d gone in for and chatting to a very consciencious worker about stick insects, guinea pigs and reptiles.

We came home and did more hatchwatching and chick worship with constant updates to Ady on the road about progress as it happened. I’d promised to ‘do stuff’ with the children today so at their request we played codebreaker for a while and then I offered to do some baking with them. Davies wanted to make biscuits and Scarlett snickerdoodles, so we made both. I assembled sugar, butter and flour infront of Davies with the scales and just told him ‘weigh out 6oz flour’ which he did, then I helped him a little with the butter and he rubbed it all in before being told how much sugar to add and weighing and adding that himself. He then did most of the rolling and cutting and placing on the baking sheet with occassional ‘what could you do differently to stop the mixture sticking to the board, the rolling pin and your hands do you think?’ type comments from me. He opened the oven himself, put the sheets in, swapped sheets about, took them out of the oven and moved them onto cooling racks all with total calm and maturity. Very proud 🙂 Scarlett supervised the weighing out of sugar and butter telling me when the scales said the right amount and did the creaming together of that with fairly minimal help, I added the eggs and flour, she did a fair bit of the mixing and then I finished it off and dropped balls of mixture into sugar and cinnamon for her to roll and put on the baking sheet. She also had a go at putting them from the baking sheet to the cooling racks when they were done. I remember being desperate to do baking when I was a child and aside from it simply not being something my Mum did for fun (I do recall assisting in the 1000s of mince pies made every December once she bought her first sandwich bar business, but I would have been 7 or 8 by then and helping was limited to brushing the lids with milk) she probably would still be stood over me waiting to take over and do it ‘properly’ now if she watched me bake let alone encouraging me to challenge myself and do stuff with responsibilities. I learnt loads about baking from a teacher at school who was really old fashioned and alongside teaching us all how to iron a shirt properly and brew the perfect cup of tea would delight us each week in Home Economics by walking round our little kitchen areas and proclaiming one girl the ‘queen of the quiche’ or ‘madame of the pineapple upside down cake’ depending on what we were making. 😆 I mixed up some red icing and spread it over the biscuits then the children had a bowl of decorations each to overload them with.

I got all the dirty washing done, all hung out and at least half of it brought in again dry, so that was a result. I didn’t get any further with decluttering but as I’ve certainly not sat around on my arse all day today I won’t be beating myself up about that. 😆

We had lunch, the one winged chick finally broke out of it’s shell – it’s since been named by Ady and answers to the name of ‘Feathers.’ I wanted ‘Blair’ or something else suitable for it only having a left wing but as I’d already named one Feathers it is :). We all gathered round a little later for the final egg hatching, which I caught on video again so Scarlett got to witness two hatchings as well which was great as that main event was a big part of doing the whole thing. The incubator has been cleaned up and is going back to Bruce tomorrow, whatever happens from here on in we certainly won’t be hatching any more eggs this year.

The children played for a while with the toy animals and then wanted to do some drawing. Davies wanted me to show him how to use the spirograph we picked up at a car boot sale a while back but we then got engrossed in sorting out the pen drawer instead. Scarlett proved to be a demon pencil sharpener, whizzing through a big pile at great speed, while Davies and I chucked out all the not working any more felt tips and the broken crayons. I started scribbling to test the pens but then we got onto writing words and Davies went and got some stencils so we did a bit of writing words down and spelling them out and Davies asked me how to spell various words and then drew pictures of them to illustrate his writing. Oh and he played with a compass loads, making pictures from circles.

Then followed one of todays shouty episodes of which there have been a few. Frankly you don’t get me out of bed at 6am and keep me in a house all day with only sporadic adult company by way of chick hatching updates to Ady’s mobile and not have shouty episodes really 😆 but we overcame it all and I sorted the children’s tea out – Scarlett wanted eggs and toast so clearly no issues with where our food comes from and the eating of other potential ‘Punzel’ or ‘Freddies’! 😆

Ady arrived home and we all piled in his car and drove across the town to the blood donation venue as Ady and I had both had invitations through from the last session. We should have booked actual appointments rather than just arriving in a 2 hour window really as we sat for about half an hour trying to keep the children fairly quiet and amused by playing I spy and then trying to keep straight faces while trying to make each other laugh. This time I was not mutilated in the first test and was able to give blood no problem. The children did really well while Ady and I were incapacitated lying flat on our respective beds, going between the pair of us, gathering stickers from the donor aids proclaiming ‘My Mummy gave blood today’ and ‘My Daddy have blood today’ and generally charming everyone there into getting them biscuits and squash meant for the donors. They were both pretty interested in the whole idea, curious about all the medical bits and pieces and determinded to give blood themselves when they are old enough. Ady’s blood flows very quickly and as we were sitting having juice and biscuits afterwards we realised his shirt was starting to soak with blood where the needle had been having soaked through the plaster so he had to be re-plastered while I was being told off for lifting a heavy water jug with the blood-letted arm to get Davies a drink. We both seem to be in one piece still now. 🙂

It was gone 8pm by the time we got home but as we wanted to give the incubator back and the chicks are all fluffed up and ready we’d decided to transfer them to their new home which of course the children wanted to be part of. Currently they are in a plastic storage box with sawdust, water and chick crumb food with one shelf of our camp kitchen over the top and the brooder (light and heat) lamp resting on the top and they seem very happy. I’ve had an email from a freecycler responding to my plea for a cage offering a hamster cage which might be better so hopefully I can collect that tomorrow. Candle is *very* interested in them so we’ve decided to keep them in the playroom with the door shut by night to prevent her terrorising them or injuring herself on the brooder lamp and then back in the lounge in the day so the children can observe them as much as possible. Chick number five is currently being addressed as ‘competition’ so no doubt we’ll be deciding on a name from all the suggested ones sometime tomorrow and annoucing it.

Children finally went to bed, Ady and I had baths and ate a very late dinner infront of Grand Designs. Hurrah for Friday tomorrow!