One word? When seven would do…

Have failed to do my bit today 😉

My day started at 8.15am with Ady calling me from downstairs to get up, I staggered down, barely managing to drag a nightie over my head and was sitting bleary eyed on the sofa with a child (not even awake enough to register which one) drinking milk on my lap when my Dad rang.

His van wouldn’t start – again – and he needed to get it to the bloke who was going to fix it. Could I come and tow start him? Ady offered to work from home instead of the office for another hour or so (he was working at a Hampshire store today so was intending to go via the office, but could as easily have done the same stuff remotely from home) so I dashed and got dressed and headed out the door with Ady thrusting my cup of tea hastily tipped into a thermo mug into my hand as I went.

Towed Dad all the way down their road (it normally starts by half way down it) and it still wasn’t going so we decided I’d have to tow him all the way. It’s probably no more than 2 miles if that but it does comprise of getting out of the end of my parents road which has pretty much constant traffic both ways (and we needed to turn right across both lanes), over two roundabouts, through three sets of traffic lights, out of one junction and over a very steep hill. It was also just before 9am so kids were flocking into the 3 schools we drove past and lemming like lollipop ladies were at every turn. You could have made some sort of X box game out of the perils we encountered! 😉 Plus I am really shite at towing (although I shouldn’t be, I’ve done it enough!). So the rope broke twice, I ended up pushing the van across a busy road, we nearly killed a lollipop lady and every time I looked at my Dad behind me in the rear view mirror he looked utterly terrified (and not much scares my Dad!). When we finally pulled up outside the garage we couldn’t get the tow ropes off his van – we said it was because our hands were too cold (it was bloody freezing here this morning!) but I think it was more because they were shaking! 😉 So I brought Dad back here to warm up and drink restorative coffee all morning. 🙂

Ady went off to work, the children played with Floam and geomags and Dad and I browsed the internet looking at holidays. Mum has holiday booked at the end of March / beginning of April and they are planning a trip to Chile, Argentina and Brazil. We found a really good one but it had no quoted price so we’ve ordered the brochure for them to look at it in more detail. I think when I grow up I’d like to be a travellers companion. 🙂

While playing Davies said to me ‘Mummy, it’s happening again.’ He mentioned to me earlier in the week that sometimes when he looks at things his eyes go all funny and it looks blurry, but when he shakes his head it goes away. He has a slight twitch sometimes when tired or bothered or overwhelmed anyway and it often comes out as a lot of blinking and he has always (since very young, about 2) had a tendancy to go off into very deep thought at times so I put it down to him doing that and drifting away into daydreams which does make your vision go blurry (like when you do a magic eye picture) but I told him to tell me when it happens in future as I was concerned he’d start to make the head shaking a habit too. So I rang my optician and made him an appointment for this afternoon to get his sight tested.

Mum arrived just before lunch so we all ate together and then Dad stayed home to look after (read tease!) Tarly while Mum took me and Davies into town as she has a permit for parking down there from work. She headed off to do a bit of shopping and me and Davies went to Specsavers. The optician is the same guy who I have seen there before for contact lens checkups and was very good with him. He asked about school but when his next first question was ‘oh are you a teacher then?’ I’m afraid I bottled out and just said ‘yes’ and made myself appear suitably teacher-ish for the rest of the time we were there! Anyway he has a slight astigma in one eye (his prescription was +0.50 in one eye and +0.75 in the other) so he has got glasses to wear perhaps twice a week for an hour or so in the hope it will correct it over the year before we go back for a check up. He said it is very slight and there is every chance he’ll grow out of it and I have a sneaking suspicion that pretty much every person in the world could go to an optician and get prescribed glasses for wearing in some instances but I’m glad we got ’em checked.

Being Specsavers there was loads of choice of frames and Davies chose a red pair. We headed off back round the shops for the hour while they made them up for him. I threw out my childhood globe a while back that Davies had inherited and have been promising him a new one for ages so we went to The Works where I’m sure I’ve seen them cheap before but they only had a tiny one for a tenner. We did get a Dora sticker book for Tarly in there though which Davies went up and paid for. Then we went to look in ELC as I’d said he could have a small present for being so good at the opticians. He chose a small spaceman and then I spotted space hoppers in the new outdoors Spring range just in store. I’ve been wanting space hoppers for the children for ages and tried to get some at Christmas but the only ones I could find at that time of year were retro ones for about 20 quid each from Hawkins. At Ali’s on this week they had a great time on them, I know Davies also loved playing with SB’s when we stayed with The Beans and as I know they are bouncing off the walls a bit at the moment being cooped up in the house a fair bit I thought bouncing on space hoppers might be preferable! So we got a blue one for D and a pink one for S and Mum went halves with me :-). Ady’s going to find the foot pump tomorrow and then we too can have naked space hoppering like at Ali’s house! 😉 Looked at the rather lovely light up globes in ELC which have nice pictures on them of the animals living in each continent and some landmark buildings and stuff so Mum muttered something about ‘maybe for Easter’ :-D. We then had about half an hour to kill so we went to M&S coffee shop for hot chocolates (I love being out with my Mum, she happily includes me in her swish lifestyle and she pays!).

Back to Specsavers where a really cool Canadian guy fitted Davies’ glasses for him along with much high fiving and ‘look at Mummy with them, is she still as pretty as without’ 😳 and taught him a little poem to remember:

If they’re not on your face
keep ’em in the case

And we came home with Davies wearing them all the way and telling me how he wants to be an optician when he grows up!

We got home and he told Dad ‘I’ve got these glasses because I’ve got a slight astigmatism in my right eye, Grandad!’ which made me roar with laughter, guess he might be on track for his career choice then! 🙂 While drinking hot chocolates we had several educational conversations. I explained about how the glasses will help his eye correct itself hopefully, what long or short sightedness means in terms of the shape of your cornea being not totally round, we discussed how your eye is an eyeball but only a small section of it is exposed. We talked about patches to train lazy eyes and I used a rather good explanation of how if I had one lazy child who never tidied up and one good child who always did all the tidying if I made the child who always tidies stop doing it all the time then the lazy one would have to do it all and catch up so that eventually they both worked at the same pace. He liked that! 🙂 Then we had a chat about why a rush of bubbles came to the top of his cola when he stopped sucking the straw. I got one of those glimpses of having just one child like we were talking about in comments the other day, as I know Tarly would not have stood for such in depth conversations, explanations or demonstrations going on. We also talked about how Euchariah from Grinch Night has astigmatism too and how Marcus and Alex wear glasses and why although I have glasses I rarely wear them (contact lenses).

Mum then took Dad off to collect his van and came back so we could sort out her signing up to broadband. The children watched W&G for the third time today and had their toy cars out too.

Ady’s got all the Melrose and wedding pictures developed so the memory cards are clear for me to get some snaps of Floam and Davies’ glasses tomorrow.

And I guess that would be about it for today, expect to confirm that the Ady machine is back (thanks Ros :-)) and I got a very welcome book parcel from Joyce (thanks darling 🙂 x) so me and Ady both have sufficient to keep us occupied tonight! 😉