All about the boxing, with additional brackets

Last year we went to the beach on Boxing Day and it was lovely, so this year I wanted to do the same again. One of Davies’ presents yesterday was a bike. Which sounds huge and I guess would have been if it had been something he particularly wanted and something we’d paid a lot of money for. Ady got it at Tesco (he has contacts ;)) for about £18 way back in the summer but we’d stashed it to give Davies when he wanted a bike. And he never really has 😆 For his birthday he wanted a scooter so there seemed no point in giving him both or disappointing him with a bike instead. Late on Christmas Eve we decided that it was silly having it stashed away in the cupboard any longer though and dug it out and wrapped it.

Ady’s enjoying being at home (he finished work on 23rd and doesn’t go back til Jan 5th – longer off than me!) and was up early being all domestically efficient; putting washing on, chopping firewood, running the hoover round, getting a fire lit and getting a cooked breakfast on the go. He brought me up a cup of tea at about 9am 🙂 I like having him home too although we exist in different time spheres so if he was here all the time I’d feel the need to go out to work I think 😆

The kids were plugged into their DSs – as they have been pretty much constantly for the last 2 days really 😆 I’m sure self-limitation will kick in eventually but for now we have lost them to the church of Nintendo. We appear to have mislaid a charger somewhere though so there is a battle for the single charger and as they continue playing while it charges it takes longer and there seems to be constantly a child sat next to a plug socket and one laid across the sofa.

I made up Davies’ bike, we had breakfast and then I got increasingly frustrated at everyone else taking so long to get motivated to get out of the house. I may well be a bit crap at not just announcing what is going to happen, with fairly little notice and it happening ;). Anyway, we finally got going, there was an issue about getting the tyres on the bike pumped up which was resolved by Ady remembering he has a compresser thingy in his boot that runs off the cigarette lighter (does anyone use that for actually lighting cigarettes anymore, or just for charging things and running equipment? Infact is it even called a cigarette lighter anymore or a ‘dashboard power supply’ as is more fitting?). We drove to the beach the other side of Worthing town centre, mostly for it’s proximity to the road so we could park easily next to the promenade.

Scarlett had her scooter and Davies and I had a go at him learning to ride. Unfortunately, as has been previously ascertained and demonstrated many times I am crap at teaching, Davies is crap at being taught, I lose my (limited supply of) patience rapidly, he gets upset at me being impatient and we quickly lose sight of the fact we love each other and share the common goal of transferance of knowledge from me to him. Today and bike riding was no different to the various other things we have attempted and within moments he was in tears and I was making a public show of myself as a crap parent infront of all the other parents indulgently taking little video clips of their offspring clad in proper safety equipment (knee pads, elbow protectors, crash helmets, inflatable anoraks, gum shields, head to toe personal airbags that sort of thing. Can you sense my disdain for over protection?;)) trying out their skateboards, rollerskates, bikes, trikes, scooters, go karts and the like. The most amusing was a couple with a child who could have been barely walking, who you couldn’t actually see for padding, being held up between them flanking him on both sides while his feet were resting on a tiny skateboard :lol:.

Anyway, Ady took over and did a far better job that me for ages although did forget that Davies has not been raised on the ‘toughen ’em up’ school of bringing up boys and therefore telling him ‘well you will fall off and hurt yourself, that’s what it’s all about’ was likely to make him cry again and never want to sit on a saddle for the rest of his natural life. (You can either jump off this cliff through a ring of fire wearing a strait jacket or get on this bike without stablisers? The cliff eh?). I redeemed myself as Good Mother by a quick pep talk about how actually it didn’t matter if he never rode a bike and that the only necessary things in life were breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping and how there would be people alive who had never even seen a bike let alone mastered riding one (not in Beijing though obviously, we all thanks to Katie Melua that Beijing is overridden (pardon the pun) with bicycles). Then we put the bike and the scooter back in the car and had a walk on the beach. I managed to prevent the kids from actually going in the sea (although it took some doing) and they did some clambering on the rocks next to the signs saying DANGER KEEP OFF just to up our rule breaking quota further ;).

Back home for a very late lunch, after which I really wanted the Christmas cake I’d made but left at my parents house so I nipped over there to collect it and had a quick 10 minutes with them too. Back home again the day continued in much the same way. Scarlett did a couple of her kits from yesterday – make your own nail varnish and make your own lipgloss, Davies mostly DS’d. Ady put a couple more games on both their rumble packs including duplications of each others so they can connect. The current fave is a dinosaur one, combat of the giants, which they’ve both been sitting next to each other playing.

Davies, Ady and I played junior scrabble and Davies and I have been doing lots of BopIt one on one. Scarlett and I had a bath with face packs. The children had tea and eventually went to bed. Still not sure Davies is asleep, I think he might be practising staying awake for NYE 😆

Ady and I watched Hancock which for once was a film we both thought was pretty good.