which is surely one of the best – and most unlikely -product names of all time :).
Davies had a bad dream last night so ended up in our bed. We’re having quite a lot of bad dreams, struggling to get to sleep and other reasons for one or other child ending up in our bed at the moment. Not at all sure why as everything else seems fine and I have no real objection to a child in the bed, particularly as it’s Ady who tends to give up and go and sleep elsewhere, I just welcome the small, warm body snuggling up to me, but it would be nice to pin a reason for it incase something dreadful is going on that we don’t know about.
The snow has all gone, but for dirty looking heaps of ice in places where people cleared their paths and piled it up. My car still won’t start mind you, this despite David the thank you neighbour coming over twice with his mobile jump start unit to try and get it going. The first time he kissed me on the cheek when it wouldn’t start, the second time he said he wished he was a mechanic and could get it going for me and offered to push me anywhere I wanted to go. Bless him 😆 😆 Nutter!
We watched ‘Gimme a break‘ which is our new favourite TV show. Today they had the most miserable parents ever on there, they moaned about everything, hated all the activities and were just so grumpy. I told Davies and Scarlett they should apply for the show and they were horrified ‘But why? The show is for kids who hate the holidays they have with their parents, we LOVE our holidays!’ :).
I did several loads of washing and got it all dry ready to pack for next week and did a sweep of the fridge to make sure there was nothing that needed using up. I found some cream that had been opened and was on it’s last day before running out so poured half in a jam jar and shook it to make butter.I put the other half to one side to let the kids do it later.
I talked to Sheila who was on my Waste Prevention course and is an ex-music teacher (among other things, she had a real varied career) and had offered to do some musical stuff with Davies and Scarlett having met them at the recycling plant, liked both them and the whole Home Ed thing and been keen to get involved, She’d rung earlier in the week to arrange to meet up so I rang back and we chatted through what she is planning to do – a mid-morning to mid-afternoon at her house, letting D and S play with her piano, guitar and folk harp, staying for lunch and then having given them free rein and seen what they could do and liked she will give them some basic first pointers towards learning music and playing instruments. The kids were sat next to me listening in and are very enthusiastic about it so we’re looking foward to that sometime in February with a view to a regular thing if it works for everyone. She let slip that she had had her 81st birthday last week – just 2 days before my birthday – odd to think she was only Ady’s age now when I was born.
I emailed my MP who has raised an amendment to the bill and is sitting on the public bill committee meeting next week to say thank you for his continued support – I had felt he was paying me lip service with his support but not really doing much actively but he does seem to have pulled it out the bag rather now. I am still faintly skeptical and wonder if only now it has been seen to be a bigger deal than MPs might have first thought (certainly a minority in indidvidual constituencies, but perhaps a bigger political issue nationwide) it is worth getting properly involved with? Either way it’s nice to feel heard and represented, although I will withold judgement until after the event. As it goes he got my vote anyway, but I’m glad to see those crosses on ballot papers are now actually translating into my voice making it to parliament in some small capacity.
We had lunch and listened to Katy, Jonathan and Mayuel on the radio and chatted quite a bit about that afterwards. Davies said he would think about something like EF, we talked about what was good about it, what we’d find hard, why I wouldn’t be at all keen on the idea but if either of them really wanted to do it like Jonathan had we would attempt to find a way to make it a possibility. We talked about the logisitics of another child living with us for six months and the impact on all of us of the year of extra child and then minus two children, which would leave us with an only child for six months (neither of them much fancied that it had to be said, being very used to being half of a very close pair of siblings). They both wanted to be sure they’d see Mayuel again before he goes (yes, next week!) and we talked about the times we’ve met him and how it has so clearly been an excellent experience for him, how amazing his English is and what we think it willl be like for Jonathan going, and Kit, Libby and Anna being left without him.
After some debate about whether to watch a film altogether the kids went off upstairs to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Davies’ dvd player and Davies put on My Sister’s Keeper which I’d borrowed from work for me to watch. Oh how I cried :(. It was just incredibly sad the whole way through. When I first had Davies and was home on maternity leave with very little to do other than watch daytime TV I would often sit and watch those made for tv movies about real life stories and Ady would come home to find me in pieces, sat on the sofa, cuddling the baby, sobbing about how the person had died / been beaten / been kidnapped / found her true love / met the child she had adopted 18 years ago but never forgotten. It was a bit like that.
The kids came and sat in the lounge playing their DSs for the last 20 minutes or so while I choked on snotty sobs and when it had finished and I’d explained what was so sad we talked about cancer and how it wasn’t a true story as such but children dying of illnesses is very true and real. We had to have plenty of cuddles to cement how lucky we all felt to be alive and healthy.
I made their tea and between the three of us we shook up the rest of the cream to make butter, tasting and smelling and checking at each stage of the process. We’ve done it several times before (at least twice at Home Ed groups and at least once at home) but it still sparked conversations.
After dinner I was looking at various online things and booked camping at the Sustainability Centre for the Green Fair and the week in September and happened to look at their campcraft and survival events. Davies and I looked at a day course and an overnight course for kids and he fell in love with the idea of the overnight one – it’s a full day of building shelters, starting fires, navigating, using tools etc, cooking your dinner, star gazing, bat watching, sleeping in the shelter you made and cooking breakfast the next day for a child and accompanying adult. He loved the idea (one of his things he’d like to do this year) so we’ve provisionally booked it as his birthday present. He said he wanted me to do it with him (torn between pleased and disappointed) and it happens to be the Saturday before the Sunday we were planning to be at the Sustainability Centre in September anyway. So the plan will be for him and I to do that Saturday day / night and for Ady and Scarlett to come and join us there with tent etc on the Sunday and all to stay for the week. Think it will be an excellent start to a lovely week there :). We talked about how much better the gift of an ‘experience’ like that is than plastic toys too ;).
We finished reading Mr Gum and also read which we’ve read several times before but learn something new and are blown away by with each reading nonetheless. Then it was bedtime.
I’ve sorted out swimming stuff, clothes for Scarlett and I, written Davies a list to pack with tomorrow but remain not at all ready to leave for work in the morning and not come home again afterwards. Infact maybe we won’t quite pull that off anyway…