Watery emotions

Today started with technology, Davies was Xboxing, Tarly was DSing and Ady and I were on our laptops. The children wanted bacon for breakfast (and again for lunch actually, pigs seem to be in favour :lol:) and then I insisted we put March of the penguins on that I’d borrowed from work. Loved Morgan Freeman narrating, especially as the last twice I’ve seen him in films he’s been playing God so it seemed very appropriate to hear him voicing the whole thing over :lol:. Davies and Scarlett dipped into it rather than watching avidly, with me sometimes drawing their attention to bits of it but they were playing with the plastic animals at the time and recreating lots of it as they went so plenty sunk in and was processed even though they were not hanging off it’s every scene. It’s funny I never think of either of them as having concentration problems or struggling to learn stuff but then they are never in ‘proper learning environments’ really, all of their questions are ones they ask in relation to something that is happening around them or as part of a naturally flowing conversation. They both sit very still to listen to a story from a book but I don’t expect them to ‘shut up and listen’ and we often talk about the illustrations or add our own comments as we go. They are both monkeys for talking during films – only the odd comment and worse if it’s a film they have already seen and want to draw your attention to a good bit coming up or explain something to you – something I actually find quite irritating and know other people would too but on thinking about it probably just means they struggle with not interacting. When Davies is xboxing and either of them are DSing it is never silently – they ‘talk to’ the characters in the game or sort of narrate as they go and Davies often talks his way through his drawings (something I remember doing, making up stories as I drew about them). I often hear of children who need to bounce about while learning something or be doing something else at the same time and wonder actually if far from being unusual this is perhaps a normal state? To get back to the film, they both speculated a bit on the making of it and we also talked about why reporters of nature don’t intervene with nature and then I stuck on the making of it bit of the dvd and left it to run while we all got on with other things.

We had lunch and the children made birthday cards for Liam and Lily. Davies has a sort of standard birthday card design of balloons with the birthday child’s initial and their age inside them. Scarlett drew a picture of Lily and then lots of carefully selected colours in stripes to make a sunset sky :). They both did lovely writing inside – Davies is notably fast with his letters now, I can dictate them to him as quick as I would expect to to an adult (not that I am often dictating indiviual letters to adults, or indeed dictating anything to adults really) and Scarlett is getting ever more confident of her letters (which we seem to be just naming rather than sounding, I realised today but somehow she is getting the gist of the sounds of them anyway – when I said we needed an L or a lllla to start the word Love she immediately looked at the word Lily she’d written and said ‘that one then’ pointing to the L) and forms them beautifully. I wrapped a present for Lily and then decided that the present I’d earmarked for Liam, which was a spare present I’d bought at Christmas to be given to anyone I found us needing to give a present to but having forgotten to buy for and then never needed to use, was not right. The box was slightly tatty from having been in the loft and the batteries which were in it for display purposes only had gone flat which meant the demo bit didn’t work so it just looked old and unwanted rather than new and purpose bought. So we nipped to Tesco on the way and got something else instead for him in the toy sale :).

Liam and Lily’s birthdays are just a week apart and as we are friends of them both we always get invited to both parties and select one to attend – last year we went to Lily’s, this year we went to Liam’s because Lily’s was on my birthday and call me selfish but that’s not how I wanted to celebrate being 34 :lol:. Actually I think we made the right choice anyway. Liam’s was a swimming party at a local swimming pool. I remember my mum going through a phase of taking Frazer and I swimming and this was one of the pools we liked the most but I was probably about Davies’ age last time I went – I certainly wasn’t swimming. It hadn’t changed a bit, and I was immediately transported back to my 7 year old self and wanted a banana milkshake from the coffee shop which I remember having back then :lol:. I’d sort of assumed we’d all go in but when Mel asked if she could put Ady down as one of the supervising adults I realised that was not the expectation (and sure enough there were three men and one woman in the pool, everyone else sat round the edge fully clothed) and although it looked fun it was very splashy and only about 2ft deep so I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway. The children all had a great time though – Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed themselves, playing with all the floats, playing a shark game with Ady and generally just loving being in the water. 🙂 I spent the whole hour smiling at them all. Mel came and chatted to me for a bit – she finds the children’s parties slightly awkward as her and Liam and Lily’s dad split up 2 years ago and she is with a new partner. Both of them attend the childrens’ parties and although it is all very amicable it is obviously slightly odd to all be together – and on show – like that with the children clearly slightly thrown by the dynamic of having all ‘their adults’ together when they are normally with one of the other at a time. Very strange when we left to say thankyou and have all three of them saying ‘it’s a pleasure, thanks for coming’ in chorus too :lol:.

They came out and we went up to a little side room for party food, singing Happy Birthday and being given goody bags – Liam had invited two girls from his class at school and about 8 boys – it was very interesting both in the pool and again afterwards in the party room to observe the very obvious politics of a group of children who spent so much time together even at age 8 and see them all assuming their roles in a way I’ve never observed in our group of HE kids, there was real pecking order, social standing and lots of fulfiling stereotypical roles at work.

The children were worn out after all the water fun so we came home, they had a bath to wash all the very strong swimming pool smell off them, followed by toast and bed. I’ve been hormonal today so have been a total cow to everyone at least three times each 🙁 (but I know they’ll all forgive me and I’ll try harder tomorrow (to be nicer, not to be more of a cow!). Ady is off tomorrow for his annual B&Q roadshow up in northern parts – he’ll be back Wednesday and is then away again at the beginning of next week and again the weekend after and aside from Beavers for Davies in the evening the children and I have nothing planned. I’ve promised a beach walk if the weather is not too dreadful and might do some baking. I’m planning to let them stay up a bit later too and want to start reading them a slightly longer book to carry on rather than a pile of shorter stories – we could really do with sorting out our bookshelves of childrens books as I’m sure we have treasures we are not making use on stashed on them and possibly things we have outgrown taking up valuable space on them too. Looks like I do have stuff planned after all then :lol:.