Beep beep beep beep beep…

I was woken this morning not by the cockerel but by Tarly and Ady under the bedroom window reorganising the chicken area. Scarlett was wearing her winter boots and a nightie 😆 I went off to work leaving them to it and came back 5 hours later to find them in the same place. All the chicks and hens are now ‘integrated’ although they have gone in for the night to seperate places still, they are fenced in by attractive green mesh which disguises their area a bit and Ady has lined it with potted plants and flowers (which we have in abundance round here). Scarlett has bonded with the non-mothering hen and has spent most of the day tramping round carrying her aswell as loads of time handling the bigger chicks.

I started work slightly earlier than normal today and then finished at 130 instead of working all day as they owed me some prorata hours for the bank holiday. When I pulled into the carpark I realised there were no other staff cars and the grill was still across one of the windows so I had a sneaky feeling I was the first to arrive. Sure enough as I unlocked the door it was all dark inside the library and the alarm started beeping. I panicked only slightly (I was shown how to turn it off but that was way back when I first started 18 months ago), deactivated it and set about turning lights on, unlocking windows, turning all the many pcs and tills on and generally getting the library ready to open. There was a message to ring the boss at Shoreham so I did that and she told me where the safe key had been hidden so I dug that out and got the tills out too. By the time I’d done all that more staff had arrived.

I had been asked to do Storytime today too so I’d ordered in and put aside a few books ready for that aswell as bringing some home to read to Davies and Scarlett for their opinions. There is no set pattern for storytime, just some songs, some books and some colouring depending on how the person running it wants to do it and indeed how the children react as you go along. I like the idea of the colouring tying in with the stories so I drew 3 different characters from the various stories I was reading and photocopied loads of those ready.

It was a fairly rowdy crowd as there were several older siblings on half term joining the little regulars so I had a multi-tiered audience of adoring wide eyed little girls sat touching my knee, babies on parents laps, jaded 8 year olds listening with a weary air and then the parents and grandparents and childminders who bring the children along. We sang lots of songs and I took requests, I read Supersonic Tonicwhich is a nice rhyming action packed story, Giraffes Can’t Dance which is a personal favourite, Kitty Princess which is all good and moral and allows me to do my Miranda Richardson ‘Queenie’ (from Blackadder) voice to full spoilt royal effect 😉 and King Smelly Feet which was my Davies and Scarlett tried and tested one which we’d read at home about 4 times so I was able to put loads into as I knew the story well :). We then did the colouring and as the babies and small toddlers headed off the older children crept forward to chat. There was a group of 5 children; a small girl who always comes and her older brother and his mate and older sister and her mate who the mum was minding all of for the day. I spoke to the two 7 year old boys about dinosaurs and poems and books and killer whales for ages. We also talked about Enchanted, Shrek, DSs and they confessed they’d not joined in with Wheels on the bus go round and round because they were too old for it which made me laugh. I asked them what they would have joined in with but aside from ‘big boys songs’ they couldn’t come up with anything. Which was a shame as I think I could probably have pulled off most 7 year old boys requests for songs 😉 – I’ve promised an older girl coming along to the Dad’s special rhymetime at the weekend that if she comes and sings along with all the nursery rhymes we can do some HSM2 songs at the end 😆 The two older girls came and chatted too and it was actually a really nice hour and very good for the library as we talked loads about books and films (all available to borrow ;)).

I spent the next hour manning the enqiry desk while J (the man at the library) worked on the counter and we chatted. He is Very Serious and somewhere has gathered up the misconception about me that I’m well read so I’ve been bluffing my way through chats about proper literature whenever we work together :oops:.

I got home and Ady dashed off to work, I spent some time chatting to the children in the garden before Lucy and The Rs arrived for the afternoon. It was a really nice visit, the children spent almost the whole time outside and paired off for some of the time with Davies and Rebecca playing together while Tarly and Richard spent ages with the chickens. Lucy and I had loads of chatting time although we still flitted from one conversation to the next without managing to complete any of them :rolls:. They left just before 7pm when I suddenly realised it was really late and dashed about sorting out D and S’s tea, running them a bath and putting all the chickens away for the night.

Ady arrived home, I read a couple of chapters of story and Scarlett was literally asleep in moments. Davies was not :(. Ady told him ages ago he could have a Ben 10 DS game on May payday and wrote it on Davies’ calendar which he has been counting down to ever since. Tomorrow is the day and Ady bought the game yesterday ready to give to him but Davies was aware it was in the house and sent a note downstairs saying ‘Ben 10 DS, mei naoo (me now)’. We’re getting loads of this emergent spelling at the moment, he spent a while on Tuesday IM chatting to Ali with pretty good spelling. He doesn’t do enough reading to be picking up correct spellings really and when you listen to him sounding out words it is easy to see why he comes up with the letters and spellings he does (like naoo – nn aa oooh – now). He is also starting to read little snippets in places (tonight was ‘back up’ and ‘select’ off the tv screen when a reminder for something came up) so reading and writing seem to be happening together suddenly. Anyway, excitement about Ben 10 DS games meant he struggled to fall asleep, again.