One word? When seven would do…

Today I spent yet more precious, never going to get them back again, once they’re gone they’re gone, could have been doing constructive or world changing or at the very least meaningful hours of my life on Dolphin feckin’ Island. And I can’t get past day 29 when a virus is unleashed on the water pump and all the sealife needs medicating. And then feeding. And then medicating again. And unlike all the days before it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I go round each enclosure and feed and medicate all the buggers they keep needing yet more feeding and yet more medicating until eventually the marine control board people come along and tell me I’ve failed and need to go back to the beginning again. Eventually (and yes it has taken a full 48 hours) I decided to check on the internet to see if there was a walkthrough or even, so help me, a cheat code to use – oh and get me knowing what cheat codes and walkthroughs are anyway, two children and several years of exposure to gaming didn’t do it, I was able to resist tetris when I had a facebook account, I have merely toyed with Zoo Tycoon when it came already loaded onto my laptop but a week of Dolphin Island in the house and I’m practically a gamehead! And what did I find? Just several forums, blogposts, reviews and pleas for help from various other people scattered around the world also unable to get past day 29. I feel liberated and freed and able to move on with my life again.

I’ve long been of the opinion there is little point to games even when they are something you actually can achieve, when they become quite literally impossible there is clearly no point at all. This doesn’t mean I will be able to leave it alone of course, my fingers are twitching with stylus withdrawal, the electronic music is whirring round my head and tomorrow at work I’ll be ordering in such titles as ‘Orcas and how to look after them’ ‘you and your pet flamingo’ and ‘sharks, a users guide’.

So what else have we been up to aside from DI on the DS and being the neglected children of a DS obsessed mother? Well plenty actually.

Scarlett is being rather tricky at the moment. I could bring out all sorts of reasons and excuses for it but I suspect it is mostly a combination of being 5 and a hefty dose of my genes as she has a beligerance and attitude I recognise all too clearly. I think she’s been getting her own way a lot lately and have plans to realign things a bit as I’ve seen a few glimmers of the steely side of her character lately that I’ve not much liked and suspect she has the ‘baby of the family’ act off to such a fine art she could do with being challenged on it a little. Today she was quite annoying with demands and baby talk and rather too much of the spoilt brat about her, but we’ve had a chat and I will continue to talk to her about it as and when she displays behaviour that she is fully aware isn’t ok.

As is the law of more than one child Davies has been practically perfect in every way in contrast (how do they do that? do they have a rota? draw lots? earn points?) although today was much more the sort of day he enjoys and company he loves, which no doubt helped. 🙂

So, after a fairly lazy morning we filled the car up with petrol and headed over to Ali’s. On the way we changed the lyrics to Razorlight’s America to reflect things that are really in America, we started with ‘Americans’ and ‘dollars’ and then moved onto words they use for things that we don’t so we had ‘sidewalks’ ‘garbage’ ‘freeways’ ‘trunks’ ‘pants’ and so on. Amused us anyway 😆 It was music, literature (lyric writing?) and cultural differences all rolled into one ;).

At Ali’s Davies settled straight into xboxing, mostly alone, sometimes with Freya and plenty of eavesdropping. He is at that dangerous age of knowing how to make himself ‘invisible’ by not interupting or drawing attention to himself but quietly sitting there taking in every word. I remember doing the same myself and overhearing all sorts of interesting things, some of which didn’t make complete sense at the time because I was too young. Scarlett and Freya did some playing together, mostly hatching plans to make mess I think and when she wasn’t being needy and distracting Scarlett played nicely with some of Freya’s very pink toys such as ponies and dolls house furniture.

Ali and I managed plenty of chatting and tea drnking and then we all had a go on the wii fit and the wii sports. I was shite but Davies and Scarlett seemed to fairly quickly get the hang of it and loved playing against each other at the boxing 😆 I can see what an investment buy a wii would be, allowing them to get all their sibling angst out on each other without actual bloodshed 😆

We came home (LSoH music on the way), they got changed into swimming stuff, I had another go at Dolphin Island, plaited Tarly’s hair and then we headed off to swimming. Ady rang as we reached the bottom of the road (Davies takes my calls while I’m driving, hopefully it won’t be long before he can text and twitter for me too :lol:) to say he was a few minutes behind us. I dispatched the children poolside, then Ady arrived and about halfway through the lesson when we were both holding our heads in our hands at Tarly being rubbish at listening and waving madly at us instead we heard a voice behind us say ‘no she’s waving at me!’ and it was my Mum. 🙂

She had popped in on her way home from work to watch so met us upstairs when they were dressed and dry for a quick chat before heading off home. Ady took the children home while I nipped to the chip shop for chips for their tea. Chips, stories then bed for them. Some more DI and finally closure on the whole thing for me followed by Martian Child on dvd which I thought was excellent.

Tomorrow Ady’s taking them to work with him in the morning while I work, then we swap over at lunchtime. I’ve no idea how long we can quite literally juggle work and the children between us but with enough practice we may well reach circus standard, maybe encorporate a little human pyramid type stuff into our act, train the chickens up too and all our financial, work and childcare issues will be taken care of as we take to the road in brightly painted caravans and travel from town to town as Goddards Amazing Circus – all very Famous Five, maybe we could solve mysteries along the way as a sideline!