One word? When seven would do…

Today, today 🙂

Very efficient morning with the children breakfasted and dressed nice and promptly. I’ve not blogged about Scarlett and her milk actually have I? She still has a bottle of warm milk morning and evening. Davies only stopped earlier this year, way past six and totally in his own time. Scarlett also still has a dummy which again I am confident she will leave behind somewhere between now and her 18th birthday :). So, most mornings the children get up with Ady before he heads off to work around 7, 730am ish. I tend to stay in bed until around 8, 830am depending on what we’re doing that day and how late I’ve stayed up the night before. I enjoy at least an hour alone in the quiet once everyone else has gone to bed at night, which often ends up being more like 3 hours and therefore does not mix well with early rising. Scarlett had missed Ady going off early one morning last week so managed to locate her bottle and got the milk out of the fridge, poured herself a bottle and screwed the lid on. She then got the stool out of the bathroom, climbed onto the worktop, opened the microwave, put the bottle in, set it for one minute (I asked her how long she’d cooked it for and she said ‘one minute, I pressed ‘express’ three times and then pressed ‘start’ – blimey, she’s going to teach herself to read by using kitchen appliances!!!), waited for the beeps then took it out, climbed down and enjoyed her milk. I guess I don’t need to worry about it keeping her baby-fied still drinking from a bottle really do I 😆 It has spurred us on to thinking it might be better to just move the microwave down to a reachable level for her (bet if I put this on the other blog someone would suggest we need a table or I should be up with her or something 😉 ) but I was impressed.

Anyway, this morning I was up with them and making breakfast etc, negating the need for circus acrobatics style worktop clambering, I got some washing done and pegged out and got some prices for available hostels for NicCamps which I’ll post onlist there probably tomorrow once I’ve done some maths. The children got into some shows on CBBC which appears to have gone to summer holiday schedule rather than Class TV, so it was programmes like ‘Stitch up’ about playing practical jokes on your mates, which they seemed to enjoy. Oh and I spent some time looking on ebay for costumes for me for the Castle Day – I quite liked the idea of a medieval wench’s outfit for myself but couldn’t find anything under about £40 so gave up and will wear jeans and cleavage as usual :).

We picked up Lucy and The Rs and headed off to Paradise Park driving through some awful rain. It did lead to conversations about why the rain stopped when we went under a bridge, why the rain was running horizontally along the front two windows off the windscreen but not along the back windows and where the rainbow might be. I think there was also some finger drawing on steamed up windows too. As usual we stormed through the educational bit pressing interactive buttons and stopping to look at various bits, whizzed round the cacti gardens and through the outdoor dinosaur walk ending up at the pirate ship area for a little rest and play. There is a bell to ring on a chain which Davies has never been able to reach before and can now brush with his fingertips when on tiptoe so it was an exciting indicator that he is indeed growing. He managed to create an extension to his reach with a stick hooked through the chain and rang it that way :). Have I also mentioned that he finally has his first proper wobbly tooth. I saw proper because there has been a smidgen of movement in this tooth for months but he steadfastly refuses to help it along with regular finger or tongue wobbling so it has only just gotten really wobbly because the new tooth is already peeking out. His trousers and sleeves all seem a little too short suddenly so hopefully he’ll hit seven not still wearing aged 4-5 clothing :).

We mostly ate lunch as we walked round but eventually stopped at the indoor amusements bit where Lucy and I ate and the children played, then we moved outside and then we went for ice creams. Very expensive ice creams but I think we decided they were indeed delicious so probably worth it. We were going to go back through to the park again but it would involve walking through the whole exhibit again and Davies had Beavers tonight so we decided to call it a day then. Davies had found three piles of tickets that the amusements spew out and can be redeemed for a penny a ticket in the shop. He’d counted that he had 51 there which equated to 51 pence (whooppee!) so I said I’d match it when he asked if he had enough to buy sweet for him, Scarlett, Richard and Rebecca. That caused a lengthy totting up of the tickets at the till and then we were off home.

Lucy and The Rs came back with us, where they all mostly went off and played and I bullied Lucy into ringing the doctors Right Now to get an appointment for her poorly throat which she managed and Colin came and picked them all up. I made tea for D&S and then Scarlett and I walked Davies round to Beavers. From saying she was tired and spending half an hour snuggled up next to me on the sofa she suddenly got a second wind and wanted to go out for a walk but I’d had enough so we came home and Ady was not far behind us. He read her a story and got her ready for bed while I went to collect Davies (who came out with two badges – one for Adventure and one for Safety – more sewing, sigh!). There were several new beavers invested tonight, one of whom walked all the way home behind us past our house and said goodbye to Davies as we came into our garden so hopefully lives fairly local. I’m desperate to invite some of Davies’ Badger or Beaver friends round to play so he has some local, same age mates and I’ve managed to extract a couple of names of children he’d like to invite to his birthday party from both Badgers and Beavers.

Tomorrow we’re home all day receiving visitors so I’m hoping to get the tents out to dry / air / clean if the weather stays nice and maybe do a bit of baking too.