Confirmation, just incase I needed it…

First of all apologies to anyone who has been waiting for more sheer lunacy in the form of kids TV reviews – normal service will be resumed on this blog early next week 🙂 Regular readers will notice a pattern to my posting – weekends and days when Ady is not at work see a balanced, non-ranting, almost relevant to Home Education post, days when he is at work but I have real live people to talk to or pre-arranged stuff to do see the odd rant about the real live people I have mixed with and a smattering of HE, days when Ady is working and I have planned to be at home show an ever decreasing level of sanity as the posts come fast and furious throughout the day wondering off at all sorts of tangents. For the benefit of anyone who may ever be tempted to report me to Childline I can at least swear that I do not (as yet) drink during the day (other than tea – which may account for my tea post the other day – hard evidence of my tea consumption and not the gin!) and if my kids were to be questioned (in the manner of Child of our Time style interviews) they would not give any information more damning than I occassionally say ‘bloody’. 🙂 So, today I have been leading my real life life, tomorrow I plan to do the same, on Sunday I have company in the shape of Chris and Julie and the twins in the day, and my parents in the evening (invited by me as I simply MUST have my roast dinner on a Sunday and I can justify it if I am cooking for three of us as opposed to just me!). However rest assured that by Monday I will be morphing back into my blogland alter-ego of LoonyNic – wearing my (high waisted pants) on the outside posting random blogs with no thought for my own safety. No subject matter to obscure, no word used if six would do the job instead, no rule of grammar and punctuation left unbroken, etc. And as for paragraphs – why they are the sworn arch enemy of LoonyNic!

So, (dragging myself back from the brink there!) back to today. This morning I indulged my own personal biggest vice of spending money. I have moved on from my previous habit of spending money like it’s going out of fashion, spending like a woman with no hands (not sure what that means but my Dad says it!) or acting like it’s burning a hole in my pocket. I now spend much time dreaming up ‘legitimate’ spending opportunities! Last week I went through all the various bedding in the house and decided we needed to become all coodinated with our colour schemes etc. Scarlett has two sets of bedding new anyway from the whole getting the new bed adventure (remember that one?), but Davies was really down to one decent set as the series of nose bleeds left their mark (albeit faded) on two of his sets. And us? We did probably start with several matching sets but they got mislaid along the way and I used to get sad looking at four different pillowcase covers on our bed. So my plan was to buy one spare set for Tarly, two new sets for Davies and two complete sets for us in exactly the same design so they can be mixed and matched (urgh, a my mum phrase if ever I typed one!). Oh and the kids needed some clothes in preparation for the summer too 🙂

So over to Asda, via Matalan I went this morning, child-free and with plastic in my pocket! Got everything I wanted and even purchased a couple of cushions to decorate our bed with in the pretense of being grown ups! Get us eh? 🙂 Kids oohed and ahhed over the various bits I’d got them and I got my spending fix 🙂

Sorry just had to do that for fun. Promise I won’t make it a regular habit. But this is going to be a long one 🙂

Back home and off we all went to Tumble Tots. It was good that Ady was able to come along for the first one as it meant we could get our bearings and he was able to stay with the child who wasn’t being Tumbled or Tot-ed or whatever the word would be.

Scarlett was up first and totally surprised me by being quite clingy. She was not at all sure about being in a group (about 16 kids I guess) all her age and in fairness I don’t think she ever has been before, and certainly not without Davies (who is more of her parent than either me or Ady in her eyes I’m sure!). The structure of TT is a group sit down with the leader first, a bit of a singsong, then splitting into smallish groups and circulating round the four sets of aparatus set put (climbing frames, squashy shapes, slides and the like) in a sort of circuit training for tots type manner. They have a theme every week – this week it was Winnie the Pooh (although I get the feeling that is something in their guidebook that must come with the £12K franchise investment and maybe is not always that relevant when carried out on the local level!). For Tarly’s age group parents stay and take the child round, for Davies’ parents are more encouraged to stay in the next room and allow the kids to be led by the staff instead.

Tarly was not super keen on sitting down, then she flatly refused to be getting up again to pretend to be a rabbit 🙂 I persuaded her to come over to where her group were going and we did a small amount of bouncing about like Tigger. The main issue was that the women working there kept coming over with helpful suggestions of things we might like to try and attempting to interact with her, which simply resulted in her pointing at them and saying ‘away, away, away!’. I then got her happy on the second patch where there was a slide until she took it into her head to go the ‘wrong’ way through two tunnels put together with a ladder in one and a slide in the other. My daughter will always climb up the slide and down the ladder, so of course that was what she wanted to do here. Which was fine until she met head of a little convoy of three other 2 year olds going the right way. I had to try and coerce her out, failed miserably and eventually got her out when she bumped her head and needed a cuddle. We were sort of getting there by the time they called everyone back into the middle again by which point she had totally had enough and she knew Ady and Davies were in the next room so I whipped her out. One of the women followed me and came to talk to Davies. She asked him if he could go and get the sticker for his little sister instead and with a nod from me in answer to his questioning look he took her by the hand and went off to get it 🙂

Some mad running around with footballs for half an hour and then it was Davies’ turn. He was adamant that I needed to go with him, so I did. He was first to talk in the ‘and what did you all get for Christmas?’ conversation (first day back after xmas hols), refused, just like Scarlett had to join in with the whole rabbit dance thing, was just about persuaded to be a train going over to the first circuit and with a small amount of hand holding on that first one he was fine. Second one I stood back from and although he kept looking at me he did really well. As he sat down to listen to what to do on the third one I crept over, whispered that I was going to check on Tarly and left the room. Me and Ady took it in turns to peep at him through the doors but he was loving it. I went back in at the end but took Tarly with me so while he was sitting down getting his sticker I was walking round the equipment with her again so she got to have a go and enjoy it to remember for next time. She really struggled with being seperated from him today – he was fine though.

The leader of his little group came over to say how well he’d done. I explained that he has never been left anywhere so for him to allow me to leave the room had been quite a big deal and she couldn’t believe it. She said he had already picked up on the names of a couple of the kids in his group and complimented me that he had said ‘thank you’ to her when she passed him a ball. I said ‘oh yes, he’s very polite’ (which he is!) and she said ‘well he’s the only one who’s ever said it!’ Guess I can be reassured I am not breeding a child who is lacking in social graces even if it could be argued he may not get much opportunity to exhibit them 🙂

So I am going to sign him up next week and he can get his yellow T shirt and so on and join the ranks of the ‘belongers!’ Scarlett is having another trial lesson next week to see if her issue with it was simply down to her being two or whether it is just not for her yet. TBH the whole thing is more for Davies anyway so I’m less inclined to spend £4.50 a week on something Scarlett doesn’t gain from and wait until she expresses an interest in doing something else. We’ll see.

To end the day on a high (and to counteract the fact the kids had done something healthy and in total contrast to what kids of today should be doing apparantly (watching Eastenders and other unsuitable post watershed TV and playing with their X boxes or something!)) we went to McDonalds and then over to Mum and Dad’s.

Stuff like today really does make me wonder about what we are doing with HE. Not in a negative way, just as to what really is right. Davies settled just fine there today, true he stuck pretty close to the ‘leader’ and he does stick out as different (even if it’s something which makes me proud like the pleases and thank yous is that something he would get taunted for in the playground?), but I know that with a bit of effort he could and would conform. OTOH I struggled with watching him a couple of times through the window talking to the leader and being ignored or not given her full attention – nothing she was doing wrong – she was mindful of ensuring that all six kids under her eye were playing nicely, not about to hurt themselves, answering all six questions and dealing with all the different ability levels. Oh yes, that would be your average teacher then, only with about 5 times as many children. I guess I don’t want him to conform, fit in, lose his individuality and his Davies-ness. I want him to have his questions answered, I want him to be the centre of attention, I want him to have the best possible start. He can learn about being just a number later in life, if he decides that is the path he wants to take, and at least be getting paid for it. An hour a week is fine, for the rest of the time I will remind myself of this when I am bored of explaining what why who and when for the seventy-fifth time that day 🙂