We had a plan to meet Tasha at the park today but we woke to rain and Tasha had already sent me a text to say ‘forget the park, come straight here for lunch at 12ish instead’ which left us the morning free to slob about. In direct contrast to other pretenders to HE the children were still not dressed at 1130am ;).
I drank lots of tea, Scarlett lay around the lounge wrapped in a fleece, singing songs, drawing and colouring while Davies played DS. I unpicked my not-really-turning-out-right ragrug and we all had a retro TV session of watching Tikkabilla. Except Tarly didn’t realise it was retro – I was singing along to the Opposites Song (‘in and out, up and down, standing still or spinning around, the world is full of opposites, all those opposites to be founddddddddd’) and she looked at me in awe and said ‘Mummy, how do you know all the words? Have you heard it before?’ 😆
To the casual observer we were slobbing about but of course the practised eye of a HE spin doctor we were all learning – Scarlett for all her lying on her back in her pjs was answering all the questions on Tikkabilla and guessed correctly which window we were going through. And she did some dot to dots. Davies was reading various small bits of text on his DS instructions ;). I also did some flickr organising which always gives me a glowy feeling, hence the picture below :).
Just as we were rousing ourselves to get dressed, tidy up a bit and head off to Tasha’s the doorbell went and there was my Dad. Busted! The children were really pleased to see him, they’ve misssed him lots as Mum has been doing all his ‘childcare shifts’ lately. He stayed for coffee (and would probably have stayed for lunch too if I’d offered) and the kids did get dressed and we all left together.
We had a nice time at Tasha’s. Davies and Scarlett disappeared off into Toby’s room to play and aside from a brief scuffle between Davies and Scarlett about Ben 10 top trumps the three of them played very happily for about four hours :). Tasha and I chatted but we have fairly quickly exhausted sharing life stories as mine will be largely irrelevant and hers is basically her own childhood and then parenthood as she fell pregnant with Toby when she was only 17. It is odd to meet someone a whole ten years younger than me at the same stage of parenting but with nothing before it. Due to a set of life choices I could very easily have been in Tasha’s position, a single mum at that age and it is slightly disturbing to see how we have reached similar stages in terms of parenting choices and ideals coming from such different starting points. I have huge respect for her in both doing it on her own and in bucking conventionality and striking out for what she naturally believed was best for Toby, despite it being in conflict to how she was raised herself and the advice from others around her. She was talking earlier today about something and I commented on her views being ‘very TCS’ and was surprised to hear she’d never heard of TCS, it’s just what she feels is right for her sons.
Once we have established that we agree about how parents should respond to children and that HE is great we are lacking common ground a bit though. Tasha’s sum total of career was a job in Comet before she fell pregnant, her friends are all just thinking about getting married or having children and she is just half a generation away from me. When I was paying my first mortgage repayment she was starting junior school, my husband is the same age as her Dad, her conversation is littered with references to stuff I know nothing about, her experience of life is very different to mine.
Inspite of all that I like her a lot and think once we get passed the fact we are not going to find common ground chatting about past lives we will find new topics of conversation. She does share a similar sense of humour to me and we both like to make things so that’s a good starting point :lol:.
We came home and Ady had already beaten us here (busted again then, we’d left the house in a hurry and a state) and sorted the childrens’ tea. Then it was off to Badgers. I’m not sure what they did, something to do with bones and skeletons (they are doing Active Badger this term) but they enjoyed it. When we arrived there were were about 10 minutes early and Davies and Scarlett leapt out of the car and ran around on the grass outside for the full 10 minutes. I love the way they just *know* when they’ve not had enough fresh air or exercise and go and get it :).
Ady and I got our own fresh air and exercise by going for a walk for the full 75 minutes. It is less nice now that it gets dark during the 545-700pm time slot but we still enjoy chatting and having some time to ourselves. Home for another pile of books including a second reading of The Cats in Krasinski Square which is a lovely book and includes some historical facts and background at the back which we also read and talked about last time about ghettos in Warsaw. I love the ecclectic historical education they are getting via some of the lovely books we’ve read – I can see the appeal of Sonlight.