I worked all day Friday. Ady was at QVC for the day so Mum had Davies and Scarlett all day. After a shaky few times of having them things seem to have improved and all was well. They’d been for a long walk along the beach, through Lancing and home again including a stop along the way where Mum had bought them sweets. All usual grandmotherly stuff really but not something she’s particularly done before. Actually I have to give her credit, these last couple of months after a wobbly start she has been doing great and seems to be enjoying the afternoon a week she’s been spending with them. I think she still favours Davies and is far less patient and tolerant of Scarlett but she does seem to be managing to act like the adult about it rather than reducing herself to the 5 year olds level too.
Work was fine; busy but for the first time in ages and ages we were fully staffed with experienced staff, infact I was the newest person there (and I ‘celebrate’ my second anniversary of working there in a couple of weeks time) so it all felt very calm and well oiled. It was baby rhyme time so I did that and we had a good turn out of about 17 babies. It remains something I am content to do rather than happy or enjoy but it is very much ‘Nicola’s Rhyme Time’ now and I think I hide my distaste for other people’s babies slobbering all over me and the instruments fairly well ;). I’m doing Storytime again next week as I have the last 3 Thursdays I’ve worked so I’m currently doing either Rhyme Time or Story time every week. It’s a far cry from anything I’ve ever done before or indeed anything I’d particularly want to be doing but I guess it’s good experience and is probably teaching me a thing or two along the way.
I got home and had the regular fortnightly rush to get Scarlett fed, changed and decided about what to bring to Rainbows for show and tell in a 45 minute turn around. Ady wasn’t going to be home before we left so Mum offered to stay on with Davies to save him having to come out with us. I think there was only about a five minute crossover before Ady arrived and Mum left though. Scarlett took a kangaroo that has a joey in it’s pouch and some pebbles she’d collected with my Mum from the beach earlier in the day.
The activitiy was decorating glove puppets with fabric pens which she enjoyed (dog on one side, cat on the other) and then they played some games including a great one where two girls were blindfolded at one end of the room and two girls were stationed at the other end as lighthouses. They had to call out ‘Blib’ or ‘Blob’ continuously while the blindfolded girl followed their call to reach her designated lighthouse. Meanwhile the rest of the rainbows were sitting in their path being rocks, that had to squeak if the blindfolded ones got close. We walked home chatting about fireworks and something which escpaes me now but was interesting at the time.
Unfortunately once we got inside everything went a bit tits up. Within about 20 minutes I had Scarlett in her bedroom sobbing that she was scared of me (I’d shouted at her for arguing with me about putting her pjs on and putting her hand on her hip and sighing at me like a teenager) and Ady underminding me with Davies who I’d asked to do something. I gave up and went upstairs to lie on the bed myself. I decided to get back up and start sorting out the bedrooms ready for Kirsty and James who were arriving in an hour or so and lost my rag again about the misplacing of the air pump which had been last sighted earlier in the week as part of the ‘Air Museum’. Ady and I ended up having a hissed row ‘You fuck off!’ ‘No you fuck off!’ type thing without the children hearing while Scarlett continued to pretend to be scared of me and Davies was close to tears about the air pump. Ady said we should ring Kirsty and James and tell them not to come, I said we couldn’t as they’d already be halfway between here and Sheffield and it was just the end of a long day at the end of a long week.
Eventually order was restored, the pump was found, the rooms were got ready, I had a bath, Ady locked himself away and cooked a curry and the children went to bed so by the time K&J arrived at 9pmish all was well again. Alex and Marcus went upstairs to join the kids in bed (we had a dorm type arrangement for all four children while K&J took Tarly’s room), we ate curry, drank plenty and watched music television and some live Amy Winehouse music we have videoed.
Scarlett at one point said to Kirsty ‘My Mummy didn’t want you to come earlier!’ 😆 which was hilarious and if we’d not already been telling them about the row earlier could have been quite embarassing ;). We went to bed in the end about 130am. Marcus and Scarlett had finally gone to sleep but Davies and Alex were still wide awake. I yelled at them and went to sleep myself. Ady woke up again at about 3am and they were still awake…