Can I have a cuddle, while I’m still six!

A busy day today with me dashing off to my boss’s house for 830am ready to go up to Horsham library for a training session. Ady stayed home a bit later than normal until Lucy and The Rs arrived about 930am so that Lucy’s morning started as a slightly less unsociable time ;).

Wendy (my boss) and I chatted all the way to Horsham about recruitment and selection. Interesting as I worked in both a Recruitment Agency and in writing CVs and of course during the course of my career have done a fair old bit of recruiting as well as been interviewed many, many times during my period of changing job every 18 months or so and still trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up so trying out by applying and being interviewed for all sorts of posts to see if that might be my ‘calling’. Wendy can be quite wildly indiscrete, which is something I have encountered in many bosses over the years and never been sure if is something I bring out in them or whether all bosses are infact totally indiscrete :lol:. Anyway it was a good gossipy chat ;).

The training was for Baby Rhyme Time and Storytime. Various libraries across the county do different things but Lancing does weekly Storytime sessions – designed for under 5s, generally we have 2-4 year olds though with the younger end of that most represented as lots of 3 year olds are heading off to nursery now, let alone the 4 year olds. It’s a half hour session with several stories read aloud, some nursery rhyme singing, some colouring or other crafty bit and then off they go. Baby Rhymetime is a monthly session, again lasting about half an hour but for under 2s with lots of very tiny babies attending to have lots of singing and nursery rhymes with some instrument rattling.

Now as it goes reading aloud and actually storytelling generally, even without the ‘prop’ of a book is something I really like doing. But I like doing it with older children and I have no particular yen to be ‘teacher’ up the front with a book. I actually spent a fair bit of time reading books to various children this weekend and loved every minute of it, but it was very much an interactive activity with children I actively like rather than random snot-nosed kids 😆 Also there is a colleague at work who is very much ‘the storytime lady’ by virtue of her adoring children, all children, and thriving on having them clambering all over her while she attempts to read a story to them. Which would so not be my way of doing things :lol:.

Anyway, we arrived and were two of 16 attendees there, armed with a favourite picture book, nursery rhyme and cuddly toy. As previously arranged we’d arrived about 10 minutes after the start time and walked in just as they were working their way round the room introducing themselves. And their cuddly toys 😯 😯 I was staggered at the amount of women who had brought a teddy belonging to them, with a name and a bloody personality and everything (sometimes I can so see why librarians have the reputation they do!) including one who brought the bear she got on her honeymoon 27 years ago. FFS my honeymoon was about a lot of things but the acquisition of cuddly toys was not one of them ;). I’d brought along a long legged tiger which was a birthday present to Scarlett when she was 3 from Layla and is much loved by Tarly but does not have any sort of personality trait or favourite tv show or anything projected onto it even by Tarly.

We split into groups and chatted about why the book we’d brought was a good one. I’d taken We’re Going On A Bear Hunt as I think it is good to read aloud as it has a rhythm, plenty of repetition, loads of scope for making it interactive with joining in, a suspense building ending and nice, non conforming to stereotype illustrations. But some of these women (and they were all women) were giving their pop up book of choice more of a build up than the New Testament. I’d hate to hear them wax lyrical about something like Harry Potter! 🙄

We then had an exercise to do with the 4 categorised ages between 0 and 36 months – split into 0-8 months, 8-18, 18-24 months and 24-36 months. I can’t recall all of the names but there were names for each like ‘movers, shakers and players’ for the 18-24 months group. Then we had various statements like ‘uses their whole body to communicate with the world around them’ and ‘uses increasing communication skills’ or ‘shows curiosity and interest in others’ and we had to put them in the ‘right’ age group. I imediately stropped and pronounced it a trick question as all age groups demonstrated all statements IMO – a newborn baby uses it’s body to communicate it’s needs as indeed does a 3 year old, just in different ways. This of course wasn’t the point of the exercise but I do get pissed off with them whole prescribed ‘your child will be doing this’ type pronouncements.

We did some chatting about the benefits to child, carer and library of storytime and rhymetimes and talked about the schedule for a good storytime. Next we covered rhymetimes including singing lots of nursery rhymes with varying degrees of enthusiasm. I was again stunned at the odd reactions of some of the women to getting up and singing Dingle Dangle Scarecrow – clearly something I could, and indeed have done in my time and would do again, but possibly without the shrieks of ‘yay! my favourite!’ that they were emitting. And such coveting of two finger puppets of birds in order to carry off a truly great performance of ‘two little dicky birds’ you have never previously seen :lol:. I finally lost my patience when shoving Tarly’s tiger back into my rainbow bag to come home and hearing a gasp of horror followed by a ‘you’re huwrting tigerry-wiggery’ from one of them at which point I fixed them with my best steely glare and with the same tone I’d have given Tarly if she’d said such nonsense replied ‘It’s. A. Soft. Toy.’.

It was a good training session, emotionally retarded co-attendees aside and may well lead me to more ambitious work related stuff so I’m glad I attended. On the journey home we laughed at people who have cuddly toys into their 40s and discussed how we have no intention of competing with Karen for the most children on our lap while reading The Gruffalo world record and would bring our own stamps to Storytime rather than emulate what already happens.

Home again and a nice relaxing couple of hours chatting to Lucy while the children managed to continue getting on with whatever they were doing. Davies sat and watched lots of youtube Doctor Who clips, the others mostly played outside.

When Ady got home I dashed off to Tescos for a couple of bits including The Tardis Playset which has been on Davies’ wishlist ever since he got into Dr Who, having seen Tilda’s a couple of years ago long before he had any idea what it was. At £40 I’d said no, but he got birthday money from a couple of party guests so knew he had a certain amount to spend. Yesterday Ady noticed in Tescos that the playset was half price so today I whizzed along there and snapped up the last one. He knows he has it but has not been allowed to open it all up yet so that will be a highlight in the morning.

I got home and washed children’s hairs (I’d cut Davies’ earlier) and then tried to persuade them to bed. I wrapped up Davies’ presents from us (those Doctor Who posters are still coming in handy and have made excellent themed wrapping paper :)) and then packed Ady off to my parents to collect all the birthday party gifts that we’ve made Davies keep back for his actual birthday tomorrow. Davies kept coming downstairs or calling us upstairs for ‘one last cuddle while I’m still six!’ type requests.

And now, while he is still six, because I’ve a feeling seven year olds get up pretty early, I’m off to bed.