The trials of living with famous males!

We’ve had a nice day today :).

We started fairly lazily although ever mindful of the blank display space at the library waiting for us. We watched some CBBC, although quite what escapes me now, they made a giant brio track, we had breakfast and got to the library for about 1030am. We needed to get velcro dots to stick on the back of the pictures so first went to Woolworths, where Davies went up to pay for them himself (when he takes ownership of something he does it very wholeheartedly :lol:) but realised very quickly they wouldn’t be enough so went to the art shop to get more. Scarlett played on the childrens pc in the junior library and then chose a pile of books while Davies put the display up and I assisted. We filled in a form for the display space and chatted to the staff who were on duty. Scarlett also chose a film (Charlottes Web, the animated version which we’ve had out before) and she went off with her and my library cards to take them out. She chatted away to Frankie who was on the counter and was pretty much issuing them herself including a discussion about the security tags on some of them. She’d taken her small collection of soft toy jaguars (which she still pronounces ‘jag-wires’ – Dora still has a lot to answer for in terms of early influence :lol:) and was introducing them to Frankie too. Davies wanted to get Series of Unfortunate Events out again too (we had it way back last year and watched it again when it was on TV at Christmas) so after Davies’ little photosession and flurries of goodbyes we came home again.

Davies put Lemony Snicket on, we had lunch (reheated leftover pizza, they both refuse to eat pizza but love the crusts, which are the bits I tend to leave so Jack Sprat and his wife stylee we shared lunch) and then Scarlett played with a variety of ponies and horses that she has (an eclectic mix of lurid pink Barbie unicorns, anatomically correct brown ponies and the clunky My Little Ponies all forming a surreal stableful), Davies played with geomags and they looked up at the interesting bits of the film.

I decided to do a puzzle and we have a skeleton and internal organs double pack one we’d not done before so I got that out and did the skeleton. As planned both children gradually worked their way over to me and we ended up doing it together. Jigsaws and reading aloud are two things I would happily sit and do all day every day with them. I would also do baking, most art and craft type stuff or watching documentary type programmes on tv. Unfortunately they would far rather I pretend to be the voice of a baddy with their Doctor Who characters, dress up Polly Pockets or watch them play on the xbox. I have repeatedly told them both that the sole reason I underwent pregnancy and childbirth twice was to relieve me of these duties by way of giving them each other :lol:.

I repacked a parcel that had been a casualty of being used in the morning’s brio game as one of the boulders in the quarry and we went off to the post office. They chose to walk as ‘it’s far too nice a day for us to be cooped up inside’ said Davies :lol:. He’s going through one of his Young Fogey stages again at the moment – he told me the other day that he ‘wouldn’t feel the benefit of his coat when we went outside as he’d been wearing it in the car’ :lol:They had lots of races on the way, of the ‘race you to the big lamppost’ type ones, which Davies despite being by far the most cunning and ensuring he had a head start before he issued the challenge lost pretty much every time to Scarlett on by virtue of her being so very fast. She really is very speedy even though I am cringing with her every step expecting her to fall over with the way her feet seem to narrowly avoid getting tangled up in each other. I let them have 10pence worth of sweets each at the post office which they organised themselves. On the way home we paused a while to stroke a friendly cat, were stopped in our tracks by a beautiful smell which we traced back to a bush with tiny but highly scented flowers and speculated on whether the wing span of a seagull we saw pecking at something on the pavement was wider than their armspan – it definitely was and would probably even have been wider than mine, bloody great birds seagulls – and seem to be increasingly coming further inland.

On the way back they decided they wanted to play Super Monkey Ball on X box instead of watching Charlottes Web as planned so they did that for a while and then they watched the Simpsons that we’d recorded for them last night before tea. I worked on my page of places we want to go to this year which will be a work in progress but has already got me marking a few things in my diary and emailing places for more details. We talked about it too and they added a few ideas to the list.

Then it was time for Davies to go to Beavers with Ady just about getting home in time for us to not have to take Scarlett with us. Davies and I ran most of the way with me barely making the top of the road before feeling like I needed an inhaler – I am embarrassingly unfit :oops:. Scarlett and I sat and read her pile of chosen library books from this morning together and then Ady went out to collect Davies. The deal was that if they got pj’d quickly I’d finish the whole book of ‘The Cat Who Wanted to go Home’ as I’ve not read any for a few nights, so we did that. Davies was really looking at the pages and picking out odd words here and there too, this books without pictures seems to have come at just the right time for him to get lots out of it and I could see how the suspence of wanting to know what happens next after I decide to stop reading could well be enough to spur him on to carry on for himself :). Scarlett still gets fidgety really – she likes the interaction of picture books and was much happier snuggled on my lap talking about how many clownfish we could see, guessing the next word in rhyming couplets and looking for things on the page while Davies was out, although she has been saying ‘chez moi’ and ‘merci’ and ‘au revoir’ lots which are all from the latest book so it’s all going in even if she feels the need to prance around and illustrate the book with actions due to lack of pictures in it.

We watched the Life in Cold Blood Attenborough programme which was excellent – must try and remember it’s repeated on Sunday afternoon so the kids can see it too. Tomorrow we are free aside from swimming lessons so I am trying to decide whether to have another day at home or get out and about instead – I think it might all depend on the weather.