One word? When seven would do…

When you’ve had a houseful of up to 9 children, a drip feed of junk food and snickerdoodles, various adults bribing you with things to go and play and films, games, inside and outside play all with minimal supervision for three days to go back to normal and spent time with your cousins instead. And of course for me too 😉

But we tried. I had 6 CVs come through which must have come on foot from Brighton as they were postmarked 9th April but didn’t arrive til yesterday with a note asking for them back Wednesday/Thursday so I managed two last night before my eyes started to get too blurry to see my laptop screen. I got another one done this morning and the last three this afternoon so I still managed to get them in on deadline though. 🙂 So a CV, packing a picnic and getting slow cooker chilli on before leaving by 10am was pretty good going considering none of us were up at 8am. 🙂

We were meeting Julie, Jack and Maisie in Bognor at a park which years and years ago used to be a zoo. I remember going there on a school trip and being upset about a black panther pacing up and down in a really tiny cage and having something like 3 tokens to spend on ‘attractions’ such as the mini train. All of that has gone now and it is just a big park with a fairly cool playground bit in it. So I spent the journey there reminsicing about how I used to do that journey every single day (I used to work in Bognor managing a well known card and gift retail shop) and the rest of the time reminiscing about school trips.

Davies and Scarlett were tired, fractious, generally not at their best with Tarly wanting constant attention and to be carried round the place (WTF!) and Davies has just been used to slightly more freedom this week than it’s feasible to give him when he’s with three three year olds so he was getting reined back in again every few minutes which we were both finding wearing. The plan was to have a play, have a wander round, find somewhere to eat lunch and then go to the local library. We did all of the first bits but when we went back to the cars for Julie to collect some books to take back I decided – and the children both agreed – to come home instead.

I set them up with some readymix paint, newspapered the lounge floor and gave them their papier mache eggs which have sat with small amounts of Floam pressed onto them but otherwise unfinished for weeks. I hung some washing out (it’s been intermittently cloudy and sunny here but with a strong blasting wind all day perfect for drying clothes) and then settled down with a cup of tea and the rest of my CVs.

Now I believe it might have been documented before that I have contol freak issues in some areas. Laundry, packing food shopping into bags, putting the lids back on felt tip pens, the indoor or outdoor classification of toys being adhered to, jigsaw puzzles being put back in their boxes and the lids not being trodden on and finally the mixing of colours of items which can have their colours mixed. We’re talking playdoh, plasticine and paint. Oh and the nibs of things like felt tips or paint pens on top of each other. I’m all for autonomy, learning through experience and so on and of course the educational and cause and effect style benefits of colour mixing. I know that the very best way for children to grasp primary and secondary colours and shades is to create them for themselves. So for a time I rather enjoyed listening to them say ‘oh, look, red and yellow make orange’ and ‘Look, look, I’ve made pink with red and white!’ and ‘if I add more white to this pink it gets lighter’. Which would all of course have been fab if they’d used their newly created colours to embellish and decorate their eggs as planned. Instead there was further mixing until we reached that most logical of all conclusions when small children and colour mixing combine. Yep, brown. Brown, brown, brown. Slightly different shades of brown in every pot granted, and a translucent sort of brown in the water pot but brown nonetheless. And whilst I don’t mind the cause and effect of create brown and you can’t uncreate it when it’s being learnt using cheapo plasticine or home made playdoh (well actually I even mind that a wee bit but I can let it go 😉 ) and even the paint being ‘wasted’ was a lesson in the ‘well its a finite resource so if you want to use all these lovely bright colours to make one big old goddam (;-)) stash of brown then feel free but know this, you will not have green, yellow, white, pink, red, blue or black to use next time you want to paint anything. Nope, your painting scope will be limited to brown dogs eating chocolate standing beside a tree trunk on a woodland floor covered in conkers singing don’t it make my brown eyes brown. But splashing it all over their eggs seemed a bit of a shame. 🙁

So they got a lecture, which went over Tarly’s head and Davies headed off into the kitchen bringing me a peace offering of a plate with a chunk of cheese on it and a glass of water 🙄 and we chatted about why it wasn’t really what we had in mind when we set out and I helped them finish them in shades of brown having decided we could further decorate them on a brownish base with glitter or something tomorrow.

I finished my CVs, Ady came home and sorted out their tea and bathed them while we all watched Ice Age and they continued their pattern of the week of late to bed. 🙂 Which is at least making for later to rise than normal too.

Tomorrow Ady is working, at least for the morning and I think we need a quiet end to a busy week so we’re planning to head off to Blockbusters in the morning and rent out a few films, come home for Hot Cross Buns for lunch followed by some of the microwave popcorn I’d bought and forgotten about for earlier in the week and watch films for the day. Looking forward to cuddles on the sofa. 🙂