It’s the most wonderful time of the year

Dear Diary, what a day it has been….

This morning saw Scarlett finally getting her head round the xbox controls and playing Barbie Wild Horses or Crazy Ponies or whatever it’s called. She is a bit rubbish at xbox doing that whole body leaning the way she wants to make stuff happen on the screen but failing to manage to get the controls to do it with her fingers. Davies was being all patient and lovely with her and she was doing very well indeed with it. She kept saying things like ‘I’m really getting the hang of this now aren’t I Mummy?’ in a pleased tone :). Very cute.

We headed out into Lancing where I wanted to get her a mug as I broke her fairy mug a while back (cutting my hand in the process) and promised her a new one for her birthday and the latest Barbie dvd that she’s been eyeing up the adverts for for ages. Also I wanted to get some candy canes ready for Christmas tree decorating at the weekend. So we trailed round various places but failed to get candy canes as nowhere seems to be selling them this year. Davies spotted me picking up the Barbie dvd and with a knowing nod at my hissed ‘can you help distract her please?’ did sterling work in keeping her busy while I paid for it. He was great – real sitcom style ‘Let’s look at this together Scarlett!’ and ‘come and see this with me, quick!’ all with comedy winks and nudges at me – very sweet and most amusing :).

Then we drove to the MOT place and left the car with them. We’d talked earlier about what MOTs were and why we need to have them. When we left it started to pour with rain but as has been the case all day (it’s like bloody April round here!) it didn’t last long and we walked back to our last hope shop in Lancing for candy canes – to find none there either. On the way back we talked about how old you need to be to drive a car and how the driving tests have changed over the years and why you need to be tested and what driving lessons are like and people I know who had to take and retake their tests several times. We arrived at Lucy’s for lunch and playing. I left D&S there while I walked back to collect the car and get the verdict on the MOT and literally as I stepped out of the door the rain suddenly started and poured down all the way meaning at the end of a couple of minutes walk I was sopping wet. I took this as an omen of bad news to come and having already decided if it was less than £200 worth of work I would be accepting of it’s fate given it has passed all it’s MOTs with just the odd changed bulb for the whole 6 years we’ve had the car I was shocked, stunned, amazed and rather thrilled when the guy said ‘oh yes, it passed fine, that’ll be £30 for the test then please’ 😯 So I paid hastily incase they changed their minds and skipped back to the car as the rain stopped :).

A nice afternoon back at Lucy’s again with the children mostly getting on with playing letting us chat a bit before we left to have tea before Badgers. It was presentation night tonight – next week is just a dvd and sharing festive food (and Scarlett gets to go along to meet all the other Badgers before starting properly in January) – and they were showing off all the art and craftwork from the term, serving mince pies and mulled wine and then presenting the Badgers with their badge and certificate and a few special awards. As we arrived – first – Julie, the leader came over to say how well Davies has done this term, what a pleasure to have around he’s been and how in the last half term she has noticed a real change in him, he’s grown up, really started to participate more and just given, and gotten loads out of it. I was beaming and said to her how lovely it was to hear that. She then talked a bit about working in groups and stuff and I said ‘well you know he doesn’t go to school so obviously the group work he does at Badgers is a big part of his limited stuff like that’ and she agreed and then I said ‘I expect that is more obvious when he is with other children who all go to school?’ and she laughed and said ‘No, far from it!’. She said his imagination, cooperation and levels of understanding were all excellent and we agreed that his seventh birthday really seemed to be a turning point. I thanked her for saying it all sort of expecting that she was doing a bit of a parenting evening style walk round all the parents but didn’t notice her doing it for anyone else. We walked round and admired the art work – they’d made models of their bedrooms, designed a playground, designed a uniform for whatever job they wanted to do when they grew up, made a friendship flower which was a flower with them in the middle and petals with all their friends on. The younger ones had just drawn pictures of their friends and the older ones had written the characteristics of their friends too. I was pleased to see Davies’ name featured on several of the other children’s flowers :). Finally we saw sheets where they had interviewed each other about things like favourite colours, hobbies, siblings and things. All very impressive work and creative ideas for activities. I like Badgers for that, it’s really well run :).

We then took our seats and the Badgers came in a lined up and were presented with their badges and certificates and then various additional awards were given out to long serving Badgers etc. Finally they brought out the Badger of the Month cup. Now Davies won this back earlier this year and privately I was slightly sceptical about the whole thing, considering it to be something they handed out on rotation but Julie pre-empted the presentation by saying that sometimes some children won it more than once because they kept on demonstrating their effort or outstanding contribution and because of that it would be again going to Davies! 🙂 :). I won’t pretend to be dazzled by the awarding of a shiny metal cup but I was truly proud that his effort and achivement had been recognised. On the way home Davies said ‘you’re not proud about the cup, you’re proud because I tried aren’t you Mummy?’ which pretty much summed it all up :).

In many ways Davies is set aside from the other children there; he has his unusual name, his not going to school status and his mother who sits in the car outside every week and doesn’t participate in the other mums’ chatter at picking up time, he doesn’t know any of the other children there through school and he is somewhat afloat in the whole being dropped off and getting on with it-ness of that environment. Yet despite all this he has gone in and made his mark, built his own personality there, been someone utterly independant of the rest of the family and succeeded at it. Julie doesn’t read my blog, know what I consider Davies’ strengths to be or see him through anyone’s eyes but her own, held up in comparison to the other 10 or 12 children there – but she’s commended him to me for his thoughtfulness, imagination, ability to put in loads of effort and be part of a team – some of the very skills I see in him but wonder if I am looking through rose tinted mothers eyes. How lovely it was to have it all validated tonight. 🙂