And saved at the last minute from getting far to close to the old normal too!
Ady went back to work today so once we were all up and dressed I decided to go into town and browse the sales. I was getting all itchy about wanting to spend some money and had a mental list of things I’d like to get. Neither of the children wanted to go out and I’d already exchanged texts with Lucy asking them round later in the day. Then I came to my senses just as we were putting our coats on about how actually we might have a bit of cash now but we won’t have by the end of the month, there is nothing I actually *need* and the kids would have been totally miserable being dragged round the sales while I tried to get some sort of fix like a desperate junkie falling off the wagon. So we all took our coats and shoes back off again, I texted Lucy to say they were welcome any time and the children continued playing while I made myself a cup of tea and settled down with a book. Close one that…
Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived shortly afterwards and I got my fix by running round the shop for a loaf of bread instead. At the risk of belittling other, more damaging addictions I do wonder whether the urge to spend money I don’t have will ever really go away. It was quite scary how the moment I felt I could pull off some covert spending cos Ady was back at work I was all geared up to do it with butterflies in my tummy and the anticipated joy of new stuff in new carrier bags ready to empty over the bed when I got home and savour the feeling of having acquired new things. The feeling has passed now though and I plan to ruthlessly go through my wardrobe, cull it right down and flog all the stuff I am unlikely to wear again on ebay. Whatever I make from that I can justify spending penny for penny on new stuff. I have got at least 10 suits which I can’t see me having occassion to wear any time this decade (not as excessive as it sounds – I did spend a good 7 years wearing suits to work and lots of them were purchased with 40% staff clothing allowance at Bhs, but they’ll still go for loads on ebay, larger sized stuff always does. 🙂 ) and enough coats to wear a different one each day for a fortnight so some of them could go too. Then it’ll be like swapping clothes rather than buying new ones right?
Anyway, Lucy arrived, the children got straight into playing and we had a really good catch up. Although we saw a lot of each other during December it seemed to be mostly childcare or chaos so it was lovely to reminise a bit and share a few stories from the past. The children played with a variety of things – marble runs, the musical instruments and some drawing. The drawing morphed into some other sort of game to do with a golden train for which you had to have golden tickets so there was lots of creating posters, train tickets and the like. Scarlett seemed to be odd one out for a while which created a bit of minor friction but then there was a long period when Davies and Scarlett played together and Rebecca entertained herself too so that all seemed to even out in the end. Davies and Scarlett obviously took in more of Superman than I’d realised the other day as lots of their games have involved superheros or super powers the last few days and that was the theme of one of the games that they all played together with them coming and announcing their various super powers to us.
Colin came to collect them around 4.30pm so I got the kids’ dinner on and they watched some tv and ate dinner. They are into a bizarre mix of viewing at the moment with some Cbeebies thrown in for retro purposes (mainly Charlie & Lola), Nick jr for only selected shows such as Wonderpets and loads of Discovery Kids. Davies appears to have fallen into a whole new sleep pattern and was still awake at 10.30pm – clearly the NYE late night is going to take a while to catch up on – I might pick up some story tapes from work tomorrow to see if that helps him drift off or at least relax a bit at bed time though as he has a tape player in his room.
He has been really into writing the last few days, either getting me to write things for him or asking me to spell words so he can write them. He did a lovely picture of a church today complete with stained glass window and used a ruler to draw all the straight lines which was a first (and totally unsuggested by me) then he took a notepad and pencil to bed and kept coming down having copied works and sentences from his books and posters in his room. He’d copied ‘best of British’ from a Wallace and Gromit poster so when he brought me that I made him spell it out and read it himself. He’s clearly on the cusp of something and his wonder at his achievements is lovely to witness – wouldn’t miss such lightbulb moments by forcing him before he was ready or shipping him off to school for someone else to see it for the world. 🙂
Scarlett is doing lots of letter spotting too – she knows the letters from her name now although she doesn’t know the names of all of them and can spot them all on a page of text. She also surprised me the other day when we were watching home videos of Ady’s 39th birthday by going up to the TV with a cake and candles saying 39 and pointing to them saying ‘look, three and nine’ cos I didn’t know she recognised numbers written down. It’s times like these that I really have to sit on my hands not to leap in and try and introduce a phonics system or have them start to learn the alphabet or do workbooks, but it’s also times like these that I am reminded that they do indeed learn these things all by themselves, because they want to, for their own reasons, when they are ready. I think I’ve said before that I believe Home Education is about listening to your children and hearing them ask, in whatever way they choose to ask, for whatever it is they need. Clearly children who are copying and spelling out words from the posters and books featuring characters that they love don’t need to be bombarded with workbooks featuring Lovely Lamp Lady and Uppity Umbrella. And the child who is getting joy from spotting the letters that make up her name is unlikely to get the same pleasure from wordsearches about things you’d find on a beach.
Tomorrow is work for me in the morning and Davies has new Badgers starting in the late afternoon. I’ve not mentioned it to him for weeks as I only realised myself that it was tomorrow when I looked in my diary earlier tonight and currently I’m more fretful about finding his Badgers polo shirt and ensuring he has a pair of black trousers to wear that fit him than how he’ll cope with the new group. I would be that mother drying school shirts with a hairdryer plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car driving them to school in the morning!
Well done for not going into town 🙂
I have never owned a proper suit in my entire life! And if I ever get a proper job again I will have to make sure it is not one that requires wearing smart clothes 😉
Meanwhile *I* am the mother yelling ‘what do you mean you can’t find a polo shirt, didn’t you put them in the wash last week? And if you didn’t put them into the wash how do you expect me to wash them?! So you’ll have to wear x shirt instead and it’s your own fault if you get into trouble’ 😉 Which reminds me, I forgot to wash both their PE kits over the holidays and I must do it now or they’ll kill me!
Comment by Sarah — 03 January 2007 @ 2:11 pm
I don’t think you *are* belittling more “damaging” adictions by saying you get a high from spending. I think you are doing well to beat it and I’m sure that it *will* get easier over time, each time you stamp your foot adn say you aren’t going to give in.
Enjoy the de-cluttering, hope it makes you £££££££ to enjoy but not to get “high” on!
Comment by t-bird — 03 January 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Sounds like Davies is at one of those fab moments when things take off.
Glad you managed to resist the spending temptation. I am encouraging an ‘appreciate what we’ve got’ phase in our house. I often find that if we get out something the kids haven’t seen in a while then they really enjoy it. Also hoping that this will lead to a bit more pocket money saving – they have junior accounts at the credit union. I have dug out my old walkman and am listening to all my books on tape that have been gathering dust since technology left them behind.
Suits! Wow! You won’t need those in library work – I speak from three libraries and thirteen years experience. I now own the grand total of four pairs of trousers (including jeans and hand me downs from D) and have completely lost the art of buying clothes. I can’t believe I used to buy something every week as a teenager with a Saturday job! Now I just stand in shops, sweat, panic and leave with nothing or something that doesn’t fit. That certainly helps control the urge to shop.
Comment by Allie — 03 January 2007 @ 4:07 pm
Oh, well done on not going shopping! And I say that as one who did NOT resist the temptation yesterday and came home £74 lighter …. ill-afforded. I am alternating between the feeling of pleasure at having got such bargains (and I really DID need a couple of new things) and sweating slightly at spending money we can’t really afford. Perhaps I’d better Ebay some stuff quickly to pay it off….
Comment by Joanna — 03 January 2007 @ 9:07 pm