A day of many T’s

I like days when I can get up, dressed, sort out stuff like washing and chickens and breakfast for children and be sitting down drinking a second cup of tea before we actually have to leave the house. Of course I could do this every day but it would involve getting up at a respectable early time which I’m not up for so instead I just try and schedule leaving the house for 10am at the earliest ;).

Scarlett has been complaining that her Badger shoes hurt her for a couple of weeks not but because she only wears them once a week I tend to forget about it until it’s time to put them on again a week later. There are only 3 more Badgers this year and we’ll miss one of them next week anyway but I remembered this morning so we nipped into the parade of shops with a big Woolworths and got her a pair for a fiver :). We also got her secret santa gift for next week from a charity shop fulfilling the second hand-ness of the deal and then went to the old fashioned sweet shop that is also in that parade of shops and got some sweets each.

Then we went to see Tasha, Toby and Vinnie who we’ve not seen for a few weeks as Toby was away staying at his Dad’s house. We had a nice few hours round there – Toby tends to find Davies and Scarlett a bit full on I think and comes away from them for a breather every so often before returning to the game again. They all seem fine with this and it is never as a result of having fallen out, infact I think D and S are fairly oblivious as they are usually involved in whatever game they’re playing. Tasha and I chatted about selling home crafts and the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters.

We left there and went to swimming. We had a few minutes in the pool altogether first and Scarlett showed me her really rather impressive back stroke – she has suddenly really leapt forward with her swimming, I reckon she’ll get moved up at Easter to the next group :). She stayed in the teaching pool and Davies and I went into the big pool. We did some lengths, he did some general splashing about while I did some more lengths and we played tag for a while. He had about five minutes left before his lesson was due to start so he went to queue up for a quick go on the slide which they seemed to be about to open. Scarlett came over to me in the big pool but Davies was looking all sad at the side holding his hand. He’d sliced his finger on the metal steps coming out of the pool and of course the chlorine in the water was making it really sting 🙁 He held it together while I asked the lifeguard for a plaster and she got him to sit up on her high chair while she stuck the plaster on but when I took him over to the teaching pool for his lesson he burst into tears and refused to get in. Carolyn the instructor tried a couple of persuasive comments but he was getting more upset so we decided not to push it.

Scarlett was desperate for a couple of goes on the slide so she had that while I sat and watched with Davies who was by then all shivery and shaky so I told her she had to get out. She probably only missed about 10 minutes of the time she would have had if Davies had has his lesson but she reacted really dramatically and cried all the way to the changing rooms, the whole time she was getting dressed, all the way back through the foyer and all the way to the car. I finally lost my temper and told her to stop acting like a brat so she quietened down but snivelled all the way home. Grrr.

When we got home they both recovered and had a nice hot restorative bath while I sorted out their dinner. For bedtime stories we had an Eric Maddern fest with Earth Story and Life Story, a book about swallows and migration, another book about evolution and then one about a grandmother moving away and leaving her grandson with memories and stories. Digging over our bookshelves this week has turned up some great books I’d forgotten we had :).

Survivors for Ady and I which I’m quite enjoying but he’s finding a bit bleak and depressing. Injury and tears at the swimming pool aside it’s been a nice day.