One word? When seven would do…

And sodding weather!

There is clearly some law somewhere that states that if I hang out washing and crow about doing so it will piss down with rain solidly for the following 48 hours. The same law clearly works in even more irritating ways to decree that when the weather forecast is for ‘severe weather’ including heavy rain and gusts of wind making me think ‘aha I will not be caught out in the same way again. I shall not do that pile of washing in the hopes of getting it dry before the weather turns again and end up with all of the metres and metres of washing line full of soppy washing for days’ and therefore not do the washing in a smug manner it will be the most perfect drying day for weeks. The severe weather so far has been no greater than lots of wind in an otherwise sunny day. Ah well, the previous lot is all dried now at least.

So today we’ve done loads of reading aloud. I went and sorted out both the childrens’ bookcases – although I could probably do with further sorting at some not too distant point but at least all the books are in the bookcases the right way round again now. And I found all the library books and have got them all together in one place again now. So we sat and read most of them. In the pile was ‘A diffendoofer day’ which I just adore. I’m sure I’ve linked to it before as it’s so HE suitable – it’s about a school where they don’t teach anything conventional – stuff like laughing and thinking. We also did some messing about with a little kit of plastic meccano-alike stuff I’d got but it was quite fiddly so when it turned into me doing it all and them watching TV over my shoulder we packed that away and turned the TV off! They then played with the geomags and the pretend food. Oh and had several games of Kerplunk too.

I made flapjacks (most of which have gone now :oops:) and we had lunch. After lunch Davies wanted to do some writing so he copied lots of various words and we spelt them out together (don’t get excited, his contribution to the spelling out was minimal 😉 ), they both drew a series of drawings each to tell stories with – Davies’ was very good, logical and had an introducing the characters bit with a bit of background about them both, a middle bit with some plot and then an ending. Scarlett’s was slightly more random and she then filled sheets and sheets of paper with folded flicker pictures, not quite grasped the actual how to do them so they are animated but I’m not correcting her on that yet as she is loving drawing two versions of something so she more than grasps the basic idea. 🙂

Then I remembered a competition I’d got details of with with our Film Education screening details for next week (we’re seeing Curious George on Monday and The Wild on Wednesday – it’ll be Tarly’s first time at the cinema and we’re really looking forward to it. Hope any soundtracks are not too dire as I imagine I’ll be hearing them lots! 😉 Oh and Davies already seems to have achieved movie critic before seeing the film status as off the back of two trailers and a poster for The Wild he’s decided that it is ‘just Madagascar with a different name! 🙂 ) .

So we talked through the rules of the competition and Davies decided he wants to do W&G (I could pretend to be surprised but you wouldn’t believe me 😉 ), Tarly is still thinking. He was slightly fazed by having to write the title out and checked several times if ‘that was the law of the competition’ I agreed it was indeed ‘the law’ and showed him a quick sketch of a poster I’d do for Madagascar – movie title, a made up tagline, some pictures of the main characters and lots of background so the whole page is filled. Explained that was my sketch and I’d then do the proper poster. I can’t find anywhere on the entry form which states a size of entry so we are planning to do one on our big poster sized paper which should be cool.

He started doing the writing first and made some excellent progress with that. We’ll no doubt continue with that over coming weeks. Good project I reckon 🙂

The plan was that Ady would be home for 2.30pm so that I could take Tarly to the docs at 3pm to get her stitches out without Davies. Not sure how strong of stomach D is having never injured himself and always been fairly traumatised by Tarly doing so, and also wanted to focus on her rather than worry about him at the docs. But at 3pm he wasn’t home so I had to take him with us. They went into the waiting room to play with the toys while I tried to check in. Turned out the giddy bloody receptionist (have I ranted before about doctors receptionists? I’m sure I must have done 👿 ) had booked her in for June 1st rather than today. I just stood there with a patient look plastered to my face while she muttered and mumbled and said ‘erm well we’ll have to fit you in somehow’ and got all flustered. I agreed that indeed June 1st might be leaving it a bit late and I hoped she would have healed completely by then so removing stitches at that stage may be a little tricky! We were in within five minutes 😉

The nurse was cautious when she saw Tarly and asked how old she was and looked quite doubtful about how easy a job it might be, but Tarly just asked her if she could keep her stitches to take home in a jar and happily hopped up on the couch and jutted her chin out. Davies climbed up on a chair next to her and was all interested. Don’t think she quite knew what to make of us really! She had to call another nurse in in the end as she was struggling to see the stitches – apparently they were very small – the smallest she’s ever seen. As they are the only one’s I’ve ever seen I can’t really comment either way. 🙂

Anyway, it took ages as they were really embedded in her scab which has healed so well I think they could have come out a day or two ago even. They smeared loads of cream on and told me to keep it moisturised so it doesn’t pull as it heals and finally got them all out and in the little jar.

Tarly laid there, without moving at all, said it ‘tickled’ when I asked her if it hurt and was proclaimed the ‘bravest three year old ever!’ they said it would normally have been a nightmare to get stitches out of the average three year old – guess I always knew Tarly wasn’t average really ;-). So she got a whole sheet of stickers again and the nurse actually put on her notes ‘three very tiny stitches removed from a very brave three year old indeed’ which she said will stay on her record every time it gets pulled up. So when she’s there in X years time having a home birth with no assistance they’ll read that and say ‘ah yes…’ 🙂 She loves her little ‘spider stitches’ in her jar and will no doubt be showing them to everyone we meet along with her scar. The scab has already started to come away a bit and it looks pink but healthy underneath so hopefully it will continue to heal well and she’ll have a minimal scar – picking not withstanding.

Ady was outside the surgery on his phone as we came out, very apologetic that at the last place he’d been to before coming home he’d walked into a crisis to do with million pound customer threatening to stop ordering given the quality of the delivery he’d just receieved. Ady feeling bad that he couldn’t justify his daughter having stitches out as reason enough to leave anyway, but it was fine, Davies was fine and I can think of many instances when neither parent would have been around to take a child so I’m sure neither of them will need counselling about this particular incident 😉

And that was pretty much our day. Some cleaning out of tadpoles (about 50 remaining according to Ady but he said that a week or so ago and has been fishing dead ones out daily so somewhere his maths is wonky – clearly counting them twice as they swim around 😉 ) – they are now in a shallower water with rocks for climbing available. We’ve not made as much of the whole tadpole rearing experience as I’d semi planned to but sometimes that’s the way things go and they have clearly learnt as much as they would have done even if I’d had them drawing life cycles and making lapbooks about it – we’ve fished out dead ones at every stage and had them under microscopes, they’ve held live ones at every stage and gauged ‘wigglyness’, we’ve watched them at length and observed the changes in shape, colour, size and movements and we did read one book right at the beginning detailing how they change at each stage. We also have plastic versions of each stage of development which Davies could already name and order so it’s been cool to have the real life version to watch go through it’s metamorphasis just like we did with the caterpillars last year.

So, tonight, lovely dinner (tacos and fajitas), Big Brother launch night, my cold is feeling better and tomorrow Ali and Freya are coming over, and even better that that IT’LL BE FRIDAY!!! 🙂