One word? When seven would do…

Just realised I hadn’t blogged yesterday before blogging this morning. I’d meant to do it first thing and of course other things sort of got in the way.

Let me cast my mind back all those hours ago… ah yes. We all woke late (well the three of us not expected back at work first thing anyway!) – kids are still on camp time, which for once means as well as going to sleep late in the evening they are waking late in the morning too. I’m a bit torn about this really, I don’t actually have any issues with them going to sleep late if they are getting enough sleep – they are in their rooms by about 8pm and tend to either play or look at books fairly quietly in their beds until they fall asleep. I used to fret about this when they were still waking at 6am and then looking like zombies with great big shadows under their eyes and getting really tired and emotional during the middle of the day. But at leasts 4 people commented to me last week that Davies didn’t have his normal ‘camp look’ going on (twitches, purple shadows under his eyes, great holllows in his cheeks etc.) and they both did really well going to SKC, coming back and flaking out pretty much straight away for a good 10 or 11 hours. But it does feel a bit slack somehow – languishing in bed long after other kids their age have been sat at school desks for an hour. I can’t decide whether it is sensible to let them keep their own hours, particularly when they also suit me or if I should impose a new regime of being up and dressed with shoes on and sink scrubbed by 8am prompt flylady stylee for home schoolers. 😆

Anyway, we all woke late, breakfasted late and then got ready and went into town. I needed to move money about between bank accounts and also really desired a small bit of retail therapy, which I got in New Look with a couple of very bargainous bits for myself which thanks to A’s bonus we can afford this month and after a rough couple of weeks without the relaxing holiday I’d felt I needed before I even got there, let alone the actual holiday I had once I was there I felt quite justified in the little buzz from trying on clothes which looked nice and then buying them. Home for lunch and then I got changed, Dad arrived to look after D&S and I headed back out into town again for a training session at Worthing library.

It was quite interesting, all about using the library’s cataloguing system and searching for things but it was run by a man who was clearly bored by it himself so it felt tedious and the 3 hours dragged. Home again for a crazy fast turnaround of getting Davies fed, changed into Beaver outfit and turning the house upside down to find the bit of paper about where Beavers were meeting for a Worthing Pier visit before Ady arrived home to whisk him off to go to it. They wanted adults helpers and as both Ady and I have been CRB checked I have Davies the option of which of us he wanted to go along and he chose Ady. They had an interesting, if rather windswept and chilly time looking at all the life saving coastguard stuff on the seafront, looking at wind and other seaside weather conditions, checking out the tide timetables and doing various sea safety type stuff. Ady said it was pretty good. 🙂

Scarlett had the choice of what she wanted to do and she asked for a bath followed by stories, so that’s what she got. The children more often than not share a bath and generally would stay in it for hours if I let them playing, but they sometimes ask for solo baths and after a week in a field I could relate to her wanting one (I hasten to add she has had at least two baths since coming home already, this was not her first! :lol:). Then she got into her pjs and we read some stories together til Davies and Ady came home.

This morning was taken up with chicken related dramas and when we’d finally sorted all that out we got out some Tesco experiments kits I’d picked up at the weekend. We did one on optical illusions and one on things to do with compasses. We didn’t get very far with the compass one as it had a weather vane and a sundial kit, neither of which I wanted to start doing today but the optical illusion one was pretty good. We looked at some balancing things and some colour mixing things with them both coming up with intelligent, considered comments and ideas so that was good. I’ve been doing lots of thinking about educational provision since coming back from camp and may well blog about it when I have more sitting down infront of a computer time, but actually the doing the experiments came from them – I bought the kits cos they looked interesting and were £1.97 each but they found them and brought them to me.

We had lunch and then Lucy and the Rs came round for a couple of hours. I was really proud of Davies, he managed to leave Scarlett and Rebeccas to play and said to me that sometimes he pretends to plug in one of his x box controllers and lets Richard hold it and think he is playing with him so he did that. He coaxed Richard off Lucy’s lap and down onto the floor, sat and chatted to him about the x box game and when Richard tired of that he went and got the big box of cars in for them to play with and sat talking to Richard and categorising all the cars into rows of fire engines, police cars, etc. He was just really good with him, with loads of patience and time, which given his own traumatic morning was all the more commendable I thought. Hurrah for Davies! 🙂

Scarlett and Rebecca mostly disappeared off to play although they were times all the children were in the lounge and times they were all off playing together. I think Lucy and I managed to catch up on all the things we’d not said to each other all last week – and of course good to hear the take on things from three tents down ;).

They left, the kids had tea, Ady came home, I started to slump after a fairly wobbly day having also started to come to terms with the fact that I’m now thinking all four remaining chicks are cockerels and actually having started to lose interest in chickens altogether. 🙁 I cooked tea, drank wine and am now feeling better again :). We’ve decided that if we lose another chick then the whole lot get shipped off to a farmer to do as he will with them. If they survive – and they should, we’ve really barricaded them in tonight – then we’ll keep them til the food we bought at the weekend runs out which should be another 2-3 weeks in which case we’ll know for sure if they are cocks or hens and it would be nice to keep them long enough to hear the first crow. I still like the idea of keeping a couple of hens but am resigned to the idea that it is not the right time just now for all sorts of reasons and if we have ended up with four cockerels then it clearly wasn’t meant to be just now. Joyce, we’d NEVER seen rats round here before although I have to assume they were here but the chicks must be making them bolder or something. I’ve seen two and the next door neighbour reported seeing one to my dad so clearly they are being attracted here by the chicks whereas maybe they’d just pass through otherwise. From looking at chicken forums they just seem to go together no matter what you do (another reason chicken keeping is looking less attractive). I think what’s most upsetting is that I heard it all happen last night and that it was that particular one who I had sort of championed from hatch-point.