Little boxes….

My Dad used to sing this to me when I was a little girl:

1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

I googled it because we painted little boxes at MM today and I’ve had it in my head all day but all I could remember was ‘little boxes on the hillside…. and they all look just the same’. Odd how fitting the song is though eh?!

I’ve been runnning on very little sleep today – I didn’t make it to bed til gone 2am and then got woken before 7am by Ady and Scarlett being noisy about weetabix and then couldn’t get back to sleep. I did lay in bed for about an hour reading a book but then was forced to get out of bed for reasons I won’t go into for consideration of my more squeamish readers. Davies played x box while Scarlett got a pen and notepad and curled up next to me writing out streams of letters and asking what they said then getting me to tell her letters for various words she dictated. She had a fairly random selection of words such as ‘Tesco’ ‘I love you’ and ‘tooth’ 😆 I tried to write a few words out and see if she could work out what they said but she was nowhere near ready for that or indeed remotely interested so I let that pass pretty quick.

We headed off to MM with the intention of only staying for 2 hours today. It lasts for 3 hours which can seem too long for the children sometimes and generally when things go wrong there for them it is during the last hour. We’d arranged to meet up with Lucy and The Rs at the park on the way home so my plan was to engage them in the craft activity and then head off. I’ve hinted at us changing our week around a bit and one of the things we will be altering after Christmas is a break from MM. This is for various reasons really. The chief one is time – we’ve found ourselves in the situation of being overcommitted and perhaps not getting as much out of everything as the time and money we need to put in. I like the idea of Beavers and Badgers (and for Scarlett Badgers and Rainbows both starting after Chrismas), swimming lessons continue and that means 4 out of 5 week nights have something happening. Added to that my day and a half a week working and we start to have very little time that isn’t squeezed into little boxes or windows rather than stretching out ahead of us lazily allowing us to let the wind blow us somewhere. Ali and I have a plan to do something group-y on a semi regular basis and I’m thinking about trying a closer to home Home Ed group once a fortnight so we ‘keep our hand in’ but it will mean the end of the week is taken up with my working but the beginning of the week becomes ‘free time’ again to allow us to just relax at home, go to Drusillas or see mates, do baking, do crafts and so on. There is also the cost issue. With petrol and subs MM costs us most of a tenner a week which would pay for soft play or lunch out or just be £40 a month back in our pockets which would be nice. We have all got loads from it for the year plus we have been attending and we are not turning our backs on it forever, just recognising that the time is right to take a break for a bit so after the next two Christmassy sessions we will reclaim our Mondays for a while. There is some stuff going on generally with Davies which I will blog about later in the week when I’ve thought it through more but MM wasn’t necessarily the best environment for him at the moment either which has brought it altogether in a timely fashion.

So today Allie had done a Baker Ross shop and procured some fab little wooden boxes and some gorgeous pearly acrylic paint in beautiful colours along with some sticky gemstoness to adorn the boxes. The children all got stuck in and lavished great volumes of paint on them which had all the adults desperately trying to persuade them to appreciate the individual beauty of the shades rather than create brown, until we all seemed to realise it was fruitless and actually the paints were that lovely even the brown was all pearlescent (is that a word?) and lovely :). I adored both the boxes and the decent paints and have vowed to make a baker ross order one of the first things we invest our saved MM funds from in the new year. 🙂 Once the children had done their boxes, run off and come back again having got involved in the less desireable underbelly of MM they were persuaded to come and sit with me again and use the paints on paper this time. Davies and I did some printing with our fingers and cotton buds and made some Christmassy things while Scarlett did a very abstract picture of herself. I managed chats with various adults – some of whom I’ll miss lots, some of whom I hope to see still, all of which was nice and affirming 🙂 before we headed off as planned to meet up with Lucy.

We went to a great park next to the airport with quirkly play equipment like inverted slides with twizzling ladders. For once the children were totally taken in with it all, and set about creating some imaginary game to occupy themselves for well over an hour while Lucy and I chatted and Richard sat in the car. I started to get cold and fed up before anyone else so invited them back to ours for warming reviving hot drinks and a play. They all settled into drawing while Lucy and I continued our chat.

They left, D and S tidied up then watched the Sarah Jane Adventures while eating tea before we dashed Davies round to Beavers. Apparently they talked about composting and recycling tonight. While he was gone Scarlett and I sat and sang Bicycle Race and she did more writing while I perused brown knee high boots on ebay. I’ve sold another £50 worth of stuff this weekend so have another load of parcels to get wrapped and sent tomorrow.

Also tomorrow begins the start of preparing for Tarly’s party at the weekend and given it’s half midnight again already a lie in might be nice.