One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday evening I got sidetracked with knitting and picpic (DS game) and never got round to blogging. I tend to do that, get utterly immersed in something, (set up a blog about it ;)) then totally exhaust it. Picpic has an end (although I’m not there yet), the current knitting project (a jumper for me – I’ve done the back, front and am halfway through the first sleeve) will also have an end and then I’ll be back. I’ve always gotten bored with jobs after a year or two, friends have come and gone. My relationship with Ady and decision to Home Educate Davies and Scarlett definitely qualify as my sole long running passions. Ever!

So, yesterday. Davies was coming down with a cold and felt progressively more crap as the day went on. He had two doses of medicine (practically unheard of) and spent a lot of the day either snuggled up on my lap or next to me on the sofa. He’s fine today although has the cold properly :rolls: but is back to himself, albeit a snottier version.

In the morning there was some DSing, some drawing and some Kung Fu Panda watching. We also watched a bit of CBBC including Whizz Whizz Bang Bang about a girl who wanted to invent and build a robot horse and Raven.

We had lunch and then after a text exchange Lucy and The Rs came over for a couple of hours. Davies was a superstar – he’s managed to identify that it doesn’t work when he tries to play with them and it only ends in clashes of personality. He’s now reached the stage where he is able to deal with this effectively by simply taking himself off and finding something else to do. I asked both kids if it was ok if they came over when I got Lucy’s text and he said ‘That’s fine Mummy. I know you want to see Lucy, so I’ll just go and play in my bedroom while they’re here’. He’s actually done a fair bit of taking himself off for a while to his bedroom lately anyway. Not in any sort of stroppy way, just clearly identifying himself as needing some time and space to himself and going off and getting it. I can see that this is another stage in development that he’s managing really well by knowing himself and his needs :).

Lucy and I had a good chat and catch up. Scarlett played with Richard and Rebecca and they seemed to get on well although I suspect Scarlett was doing some host bossiness ;).

During the course of the day I realised my self-suffish blog had disappeared. I was getting the error message ‘this blog doesn’t exist’ and a poke around the blogsome forum had a few posts from people who had experienced similar all of which had replies from Blogsome to say their blog had been identified as a ‘splog’ by an administrator and deliberately deleted!! 😯 I am guessing they have some sort of software that flags up blogs with identical text to commercial websites and my second to last post had been recreated, in entirety, on Ady’s work website, with my agreement. I posted on the forum but was anticipating it having been deleted without trace and was really upset at the prospect of all those months worth of blog posts having been lost. Ady and some of his workmates were all really pissed off on my behalf and I had some lovely emails from them all indignant! Apparantely the ‘legal team’ were poised to try and fight on my behalf too :). In the event the blog got restored and a reply to my post simply directed me back to it. I assume they delete them without looking and then deal with any they get complaints on an individual basis. Whatever, I am very relieved to have it back.

Davies came and helped me make Tarly’s tea of pasta and quiche for Ady and I. He didn’t want to actually eat anything and I think he just wanted to be whereever I was but he was quite helpful and we talked a fair bit about fractions while weighing out the flour, lard and butter for the pastry. He has a really firm grasp of mathematical concepts like that and as soon as I give him the mathematical concept it makes sense to him. Today he and Scarlett both had a tube of Smarties and he dropped two. I overheard him telling Tarly that if she gave him one of hers then they’d both have one less than they started with and the same amount as each other. He’s also doing lots of ‘reading’ numbers and manipulating them for measurements like time and money. I can really see how left alone to grasp the idea of how numbers relate to each other I could wade in at some future point and help him put that knowledge and understanding into proper mathematical concepts; just like the way those building blocks for reading have been slowly falling into place.

Anyway, it was nice to do some baking with Davies, so often it is Tarly who drifts into the kitchen while I’m baking. Davies weighed out and cut up the lard and butter, speculating on which was heavier and why, whizzed it in the food mixer and then added first one splash and then a second of water and watched it change from ingredients to pastry. I rolled out one half and he rolled out the other to make quiche cases. Then he went and got the cream and cracked the eggs and grated the nutmeg for the quiche custard while I chopped up the bacon. He started to grate some cheese but got fed up of that and drifted back into the lounge again.

Davies slumped again after that little exertion and we snuggled up on the sofa til Ady came home. We had several chapters of Humphrey and then they went off to bed.

Today Ady had to do some filming for work. Part of the website for his company is a blog and video tutorials of planting things out. You can see a previous blog and no doubt some of todays stuff will make it there soon – plantconnections
First he needed to do another price survey so we all headed into town to visit Wilkinsons. We’ve been needing a hoe so we got one of those and the kids chose a water sprayer bottle each (bargain 59p) then we headed up to the allotment.

More of that over on the newly reinstated Self Suffish for anyone interested. We had a very nice couple of hours up there digging and planting and filming and chatting to various allotmenting neighbours, it was busy up there today :).

What I won’t put up there is these couple of video clips though – Ady did a couple of films about planting out potatoes and then finished with one about garlic. He wasn’t so fluid with the garlic one and after I’d laughed at his 5 or 6 takes he told me to have a go – so I did! The camera ran out before I got to the end but I reckon there’s nothing to it 😉

will add link in later

After observing this Davies asked for a go – so we let him, here’s the results 🙂

We left there and nipped home, via the supermarket to collect swimming things and headed off to the pool. Ady had originally thought he’d come in with us so I’d told the children we were all going in but then he decided as he was getting so many phonecalls from work (turbulent times there atm) he’d better stay contactable as he was in theory still supposed to be working, so he sat and watched instead. The kids were disappointed and I possibly didn’t support him very much as privately I agreed with Davies’ indignant questions about ‘what is more important – family or work?’

We had a nice time though. Davies and I did several lengths together then spent some time playing it. He got a couple of goes on the slide before his lesson and then Tarly came and joined me in the big pool. Ady said Davies’ lesson went really well and he was surprised at much he’s improved. I don’t think he’s seen him swimming properly since Claudia’s pool party last year though. He said Scarlett just seemed to be loving it so much he didn’t really get any idea of whether she was any good or not. I think she’s really improving though and her water confidence is huge :). She and I did plenty of swimming practise and she had loads of goes on the slide.

Ady went off to the chip shop to collect them fish and chips for tea while we got dried and dressed. Back home for their tea and then a bath and hair wash (and brush ;)) for them. We had a couple of chapters of Humphrey and I rapidly started to decline. I’ve been sneezing 100s of times and my throat is feeling rough and scratchy. There is so much illness around I’m really not surprised and am hoping I’ve got what Davies has got which only knocked him down for yesterday but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

We managed to completely forget it was pancake day so we’ll probably have them tomorrow instead. I’m fairly sure we’ve almost always ended up having Pancakes on the Wednesday every year anyway… 🙂