Swimmingly

Well I got my lie in :).

Hence this morning was a slow start and while I was copying shopping lists for mincemeat and birthday cake ingredients out along with making address labels for ebay parcels, Davies was X boxing and Scarlett was curled up next to me doing writing (again!) and they were both still in their pjs. Ady suddenly decided to start panicking about the lack of pink DS lites available anywhere online last night despite us not actually having funds to buy the DSs til Friday and had gone to work and whipped up his colleagues about it too until one of them with a ‘contact’ at Woolworths managed to secure one for us. Said colleage then left work early to go and collect it for us as they could only hold it til the end of today and we’ve managed to scrape the money together to reimburse her tomorrow. So he was on the phone to me recounting all the ins and outs of this when the doorbell rang at about 11am and it was my Mum, looking very glam in her ‘going to the dentist’ outfit ten minutes early for her dentist appointment along the road from us so popped in for a quick hello. To find me on the phone with laptops and cookery books scattered all around me, kids in pjs and x box on. Bet that gets reported back to my Dad 😆 We took that as our cue to get dressed though but Scarlett tried on her three possible party dresses to decide which one she is going to wear on Saturday. We decided it needed a red hair accessory to pull the whole ‘look’ together, which prompted a sudden idea from Scarlett for a ‘Scarlet Red party’ theme, which aside from sounding a bit racey for a five year old would bugger up all the decorations she’d previously chosen so we scrapped that idea and said maybe next year. She flounced around for a while in her dress and sparkly shoes while I packaged up parcels and then she got dressed and joined Davies for a game of lego. There have been a few squabbles here today so I took the opportunity to have a bit of a chat with them about ways to behave, the upshot of which is Davies is going to try really hard to listen to other people a bit more and Scarlett is going to try really hard to remain calm and not lash out so quickly. Almost all of their spats are because he doesn’t pay attention to her when she is trying to tell him something, then she gets frustrated and hits at him. It seems to have worked better today although they needed a fair bit of reminding.

We went out to Sainsburys with our list where we had a really nice time. We did things like weighed apples – I don’t remember the last time I weighed fruit at the supermarket and the children had never even noticed the scales there before, we worked out how many lemons we’d need if we were tripling the recipe and it originally called for 2 lemons and then bought 8 because 2 packs of 4 was cheaper than 6 single ones, worked our way through the list and then the children loaded the conveyor belt and constructed a castle out of blocks of butter and dried fruit topped off with a sparkly red flag from the hair band we bought Scarlett. Trips like that remind me why I want to spend time with them and the good feeling is almost always because I let go a bit, don’t worry about getting round in a certain time and let them do slightly mad things like build butter castles regardless of who might be watching. 🙂 We went to the post office on the way home and they chose to wait in the car while I went in. More idle gossip in the post office about whether they will save it from closure – there is a big meeting on Saturday with local MPs and post office representatives – I reckon they are making enough noise to save it actually – really hope so :).

Once home I got busy in the kitchen while they amused themselves. They got out geomags, plastic animals, lego and then put it all away again and got out the pens and paper. They had a system where Scarlett was in charge of drawing locations and buildings and Davies was drawing the characters to go with them so we had Santa’s workshop from Scarlett complete with Elves, Santa and Reindeer from Davies. He also did an excellent robin perched on a branch too. They’ve been doing lots of cutting out and making snowflakes too so we have a big pile of Christmas inspired stuff made by them ready to be stuck up around the place when we put our decorations up. I called through once or twice to remind Davies about listening and Scarlett about being patient but they actually got on really well and were really working together nicely.

I made a massive saucepan full of mincemeat which made the kitchen smell like Christmas :), it can marinate for a couple of days and then I’ll decant it into jars to keep us in mincepies for the next month. I also baked the cakes for Scarlett’s birthday cake. I’ve been bringing home cake decorating books for her to look through for the last couple of weeks and she’s been loving it. Actually I think food photography is one of my favourite subject matters so I understand why she can happily sit for ages flicking through the pages. Her requested cake is a teddy bear shape so I’ve attempted it. The book suggests freezing cake and then ‘carving’ it to shape while frozen as it is easier to work with but actually I’ve managed to assemble a shape without needing to freeze it although it is all rather held together with skewers. I’m hoping all the skill will lie in the decorating and that tomorrow afternoon I’ll manage to work magic with it and have it looking worthy of a picture by the end of it.

Ady arrived home while Davies and I were looking at a great big DK childrens book of Architecture that he’d chosen from the library a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to take back. It is just filled with bog double page pictures of various very famous buildings from around the world with loads of facts and figures about them. Davies didn’t want to read or be read to but he did want to play ‘guess the country’ with the pictures and have me tell him when they were built and what they were built for. He impressed me by guessing most of the countries correctly, knowing quite a few landmark buildings or at the very least knowing of them (he didn’t know the name of the Taj Mahal or that it was in India, but he could reference it being in the Army of Ghosts Doctor Who episode :lol:). He really surprised me actually as he was far more perceptive than I would be about styles of buildings and his points of reference were quite diverse – he recognised some of the oriental buildings as similar to those in Spirited Away, guessed all the UK ones as ‘well that looks like it must be in our country’ worked out all the cathedrals and so on. Doctor Who was also credited with him knowing The Empire State Building from Daleks in Manhattan. I’d have not expected him to know much about any buildings as I certainly don’t and it’s not someting we’ve ever really talked about but he recognised loads of them and could tell me something about them and the rest he could make reasonable stabs at too. 🙂

Davies and I went off to his swimming lesson. He told me on the way he was going to try really hard to do well today – and to make special efforts to listen – and I said maybe he could focus on getting as far across the pool as he could without putting his feet down. The lesson was slightly disjointed as three children were late, one of them got sent out of the pool for repeatedly talking and then the swimming instructor leader woman came and observed for a bit. Davies was doing his usual struggling to get across the width without putting his feet down at least 4 times when suddenly she sent them all across one by one and as he got past halfway I realised he’d not put his feet down yet. He took it pretty slow and there wasn’t much in the way of style (although you couldn’t call it doggy paddle either particularly) but he was suddenly there at the other side 🙂 🙂 :). When I went over with his towel at the end of the lesson the instructor was handing out a couple of 5m certificates but said to me ‘I’m going to wait until he just gets his legs out a bit straighter before I give Davies his’ which I was fine with – we didn’t bother buying the level one badge even cos I resent paying 2 quid for it when we pay 60 quid a term for the lessons and I don’t quite know where we’d sew it anyway. But Davies came bounding over full of utter delight with himself saying ‘did you see Mummy, I did it, I swam all the way across without putting my feet down at all!!!’ and she suddenly said ‘oh go on then, you did do it!’ and wrote out a slip for him too. 🙂 He was thrilled at the idea so I’ll get the badge next week and chattered all the time he was getting changed about it. It wasn’t until we were outside that I realised he’d not equated what he’d done with meaning that he can swim. So I explained that yes, getting from one side of the pool to the other without putting your feet down means you are swimming across and whilst there is plenty of work to do on style, technique, swimming greater distances etc. essentially he can now swim. So he was thrilled anew 🙂 and as it is my Dad who is funding the lessons and as I felt the need to let my parents see something positive and achieving about my children we rang them from my mobile and Davies announced to them both in turn that he had got his 5 metre badge. Mum was pleased and gushing, Dad was quieter but actually said, and I strained so I could hear too ‘Well done darling, I’m very proud and impressed with you’. Which is huge, he never told either me or Frazer he was proud of us, so it made me cry to hear him say it to Davies :). Swimming has been the first specific thing Davies has expressed a desire to learn and as far as I’m concerned is one of the skills which you can’t just acquire as there is a certain ‘right’ way to do it, although I know others have different views on whether lessons are necessary. So it’s cost my Dad £120 which isn’t a lot more than a trip there once a week anyway and if I or Ady paid to go in with him it would already be more per trip than one lesson works out as, it’s been something that hasn’t come easily or been a natural skill but he’s stuck with it, remained cheerful, optimistic and prepared to work at it consistently and really enjoyed every bit of the process. So hurrah! 🙂

When we got home Davies had his tea and then he and Ady watched Harry Potter whatever the latest film is – 5? Scarlett had already said she didn’t want to see it so her and I had a long bath together, with mud packs and hair washing and back scrubbing and then I read her a big pile of books in bed until the film ended and Davies went off to bed too – bet he dreams of swimming tonight :).