Hark the Herald Angels Sing..

It’s been a quiet day here today really, which I think was pretty much all any of us were up for.

First thing I took Tarly off with me to Sainsburys to brave the crowds and do the weeks food shopping. I’m sure it’s just having her alone without Davies to wind her up and whip each other into a state of small children frenziness or Ady to remind her that she has a very clear favourite parent but I quite like to celebrate the fact that she is also very much my little girl and we have a very special and very unique relationship, seperate from that I share with anyone else. 🙂

So she sat beautifully in the trolley, we chatted, we laughed and she was just a joy to be with.

While we were gone Ady and Davies worked some more on the Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory creation that Davies came straight home and started yesterday. There are all sorts of scenes drawn out and made 3D with sellotape and then he’s drawn all of the cast and made us cut them out and laminate them. I will try and take a pic when it’s done but I fear it will not be very impressive by photo really – I’m impressed with it in real life though – I love watching the process of him knowing exactly what it is he wants to create and then methodically going about doing it. He has endless patience with it and enjoys every step of the process too, he is a perfectionist and will discard anything not meeting his high standards and go back to the beginning again quite happily. He gets far more out of his projects than I ever used to with my similar childhood creations.

My Dad was here when we got home so we had a bit of a catch up and showed him the photos of the week on the laptop. I think of all the weird life choices I’ve made going to Youth Hostels with other families is the one my Dad struggles to comprehend the most really. In pretty much every other way I am *so* my father’s daughter, we share all sorts of opinions, character traits, faults ( 😉 ) and ways of thinking but what would have been a living hell for him last week was a fantastic experience for me, so he smiled at the pictures, cooed over the vast quantity of small children we shared time with and listened with barely disguised horror over things like communal cooking, shared bathrooms and evenings spent with large groups of people getting inebriated and silly! 🙂

He stayed for lunch and then Ady and Davies went outside to put up the Christmas lights in the garden round some of the bushes while Tarly and I made some constructions with her ‘girls lego’ (pink, purple and mint green) and cuddled.

This afternoon we watched Hook on one of the children’s sky channels, the children ate popcorn and I finally did my blog of the week’s events.

After the kids ate their tea we went for a 20 minute walk round the neighbourhood to look at all the Christmas lights and decorations which felt very festive. I’m very aware I am banging on about this a bit but when I was a little girl and imagined growing up and having a family of my own it was always with children the same sort of age I was myself at the time – I loved my children as babies because they were my babies – I’m loving my children as children because of who they are as people. I adore the forming of new traditions as a family, I adore learning their likes and dislikes and every day is like those heady days of falling in love in a new relationship – there are discoveries to be made about each other, a passion for learning as much about each other as possible, a sharing of ideas and dreams. I’ve loved them telling me what they enjoyed about last week, hearing about what they did when I was not watching them every second and seeing how their personalities are forming yet further before my very eyes. I will never mourn for their past babyhood – much as I adored having my babies still inside my own body, cradling defenseless newborns and tending to their every need I am getting such huge pleasure from walking alongside them hand in hand all I feel is excitement at what more is to come.

Tomorrow we’re seeing my parents – who I imagine are not getting quite so much pleasure from me at the moment watching me make my mistakes! – and next week is already shaping up to be a busy one. We are as ready for Christmas as we can afford to be really, I have in mind one last minute gift each for the children in addition to what they already have if finances in the week before Christmas allow, otherwise we are done.