Am looking forward to tomorrow, for all sorts of reasons but chiefly that I get to go to work for 3 hours which I’m sure will lift everyone’s spirits! 😉
This morning with some gentle cajoling Ady stopped cleaning, making food and generally not being in the room with the rest of us and did some stuff with the kids. I have told him, many times, that he will regret being remembered fondly as the father who brought the children a drink before they even realised they wanted one rather than the father who spent real time with them and got to know them. I get really fed up with seeing him in his ‘professional uncle’ guise around other people’s children where he is able to switch on ‘fun and wacky and zany’ and be the most popular Pied Piper figure there is but switch is back off again when it’s just Davies and Scarlett. It’s great that he is able to put all that effort in but it would be nice to have some effortless bonding too rather than concerted effort producing this sort of manufactured parenting. I certainly don’t think I have all the answers in parenting but I am at least able to consider myself engaged, present and in very strong individual relationships with both Davies and Scarlett.
Oh doesn’t Christmas with all it’s prolonged intimate contact, time spent indoors, feeling sluggish from too much food, drink and TV and too little fresh air, exercise and decent reasons not to spend time with your family such as work through all our little quirks into sharp relief and do an excellent job of bringing out the worst in all of us! 😆
So, they three went outside and gathered stuff to view on the Eyeclops while I researched recipes for fancy confectionary gifts I wanted to make for a couple of upcoming birthdays. They looked at worms and various other garden safari creatures then released them back into the wild and Ady and Davies did some meccano building together. I went off to do sweet making and Scarlett joined me for a while and made some smoothies in her smoothie maker. One of my recipes proved tentatively successful but was put to chill / set whilst the other was obviously not a success and I managed to burn the tip of my finger by dipping it in to scoop out a little to try. D’oh!
I made lunch for everyone and then we went out to visit Ady’s work mate, Tom. It was one of those weird situations where Ady and Tom had been effusive with promising to get together between Christmas and New Year while they are off work, Tom and Ingrid bought us and the children very generous Christmas gifts and they adore Davies and Scarlett so I’d encouraged Ady to follow up on arranging it. I realised this morning though that we were visiting them at Tom’s little house in Portsmouth rather than his parents big countryside pile where we’ve been shooting and fishing and running with the dogs. Ady had also said something like ‘we’re over your way tomorrow…’ when arranging it so then had to manufacture some reason for us being in Portsmouth other than us just having driven over to see Tom.
Neither of the children really wanted to go and it suddenly felt like those Christmas visits to relatives as a child when the home didn’t have resident children and was therefore a cross between really boring for being filled with adults stuff and really fascinating for being filled with things that anyone with children simply wouldn’t own or would have moved to higher shelves when they had a baby. We arrived to find Ingrid had gone out and some tension of a recent row still in the air (they’re having a bad patch), so stayed for a cup of tea and a bit of a post Christmas, pre New Year chat before heading off again about an hour later.
Davies had been asking to go to Toys R Us as both children got £40 each Christmas money (and Scarlett still had £10 from a cash incentive we promised about 2 years ago to persuade her to give up her dummy that she’d cunningly recalled and cashed in when she actually gave them up 3 months ago!). I’d said they could spend £10 each and had to put the rest in their bank accounts given they both did so well at Christmas. Davies was torn between a Lego Indiana Jones set and a Hans Solo Star Wars figure. Scarlett walked round the whole shop lurching from one soft toy to the next, and making faux-vomit sounds all the way round the ‘girls’ toys of Barbies, Baby Annabel and Hannah Montanna 😆
Finally, after nearly an hour Scarlett made a very strong case for spending all £50 on a Playmobil animal set. She has played with her Noah’s ark pretty much every day, does love Playmobil and frankly what you get for £10 is bugger all compared to what you get for £50. There was a set with £20 off containing loads of animals and other little accessories (a tree house with jeep, motorbike, dinghy and more) so I relented. At which point I told Davies he could spend all his money too. He remained torn but what he really wanted was a big Lego set (Indiana Jones) which was also £50, so on the basis that such joy and delight is rarely bought for the bargain price of a tenner I said he could have it :). £100 later (only a tenner of it mine, mind you) we left with two glowing children just like in a TV advert.
Back home Tarly and I set up the Playmobil while Ady and Davies made a start on the Lego. This made for a very late tea and an even later night which we decided was training for tomorrow. Baths and dinner for Ady and I were equally late and I also did some further sweet making, finishing off the first successful batch and remaking the second to a far more satisfactory result.
And, as I said at the start of this post, I’m off to work tomorrow for a couple of hours so I really should go to bed.