It’s felt like a very l o n g day today…
I was up before 7am with Tarly as Ady was off to work early so we did some cuddling and chatting which is always lovely – she has such charm that child 🙂 Davies joined us before too long and we sat drinking milk and tea and being all early morning cuddly and snuggly. I had a deadline of today for 2 CVs I hadn’t even looked at yet so I sorted breakfast out for the children and asked them what they would like to amuse themselves with while I got some work done. After many suggested activities Davies finally deigned to play with the brio which has not been out for ages and ages. He built a small track while Tarly alternately cuddled up to me, played with her cuddly toys and annoyed the hell out of him 🙄 including deciding he wanted to use a certain piece of track, didn’t know how to include it so got a piece of paper and some pens and planned his construction on paper first – How impressed was I? 🙂
I got the first CV finished and then got myself and them dressed, decided the weather was not beyond hope after all (it had been raining this morning and was still very black in the distance but seemed clear and windy and several neighbours had washing out) so stuck some washing on. I realised a day too late (well several days if I was to be on time with posting cards etc) that it had been Lynda’s birthday yesterday so brought in the pens and some paper for card making activities. Davies is able to write whatever letters I tell him with very minimal supervision so i just spelt out the letters to him for ‘Happy Birthday Lynda Love From Davies’ – some of which he knew already – we played a bit at guess the first letter of the word, guess the next letter etc but none of the words are very phonetically friendly except perhaps ‘happy’. He then did a lovely drawing of both him and Lynda holding hands 🙂 I spent rather more time with Scarlett showing her some letters to copy. She was actually very good at this. She has had a very good pen grip from an exceptionally young age and can already draw at a very high standard so I guess copying letters was never going to be too much of a challenge for her, but she did a very good ‘happy’, slacked off a bit on ‘birthday’ and brought it all back for a grand finale of her own name which I don’t believe she’s really done before. 🙂
I then started work on my second CV while Davies drew an excellent picture of a dragon on a massive sheet of card – I have a pic I’ll upload later including his latest fad of drawing the back of the picture on the back of the sheet of paper / card, which I’m sure is some sort of anal / genius trait 🙂 and then my parents arrived.
They were coerced into watching The Emporers New Groove (the film from family film night, already watched at least 10 times and requested to buy so we can ‘keep forever’ – I’ve said I’ll see if it is in the ex rental bargain bin at Blockbusters) while I finished my work and then we had lunch.
I kept the washing ongoing through the afternoon and most of it is even dry. Not only that it is dry and folded up in a laundry basket inside rather than swinging about in the breeze outside on the line waiting for the next rain shower 😉
A pleasant enough afternoon although both children expressed wishes to do stuff with me rather than any of the other adults on hand in the house 🙄 so we read some of the vast pile of library books in the house. One of them was about a crocodile and his big brother which imediately grabbed Davies’ attention and he headed off to the playroom to find a poster sized piece of paper to draw a crocodile on then together we found a sparkly pipe cleaner to wind into a nose ring shape and add sticky tape to so we could play ‘pin the snout ring on the crocodile’ like in the story. We used a piece of scrapstore foam for a blindfold and Tarly came to join us so the three of us played that for a while.
I was in and out sorting dinner out (slow cooker chicken curry served with home made pilau rice, shop bought nan bread and onion bharjees, home cooked poppadums and home made bombay potatoes) so I caught various tail ends of conversations but I am noticing how much my Dad seems to be telling / teaching Davies stuff, which is exactly what I had hoped might happen 🙂 I quite often tell the children about how ‘grandada used to do / tell / teach me about X when I was a little girl’ in the hopes it will prompt them to ask him to do the same for them.
Ady was home fairly early so he took care of their tea, I got Tarly off to sleep but Mum took Davies up while I did more dinner preparations and this evening I made a start on the cuddly Totty for Tarly to go with Davies’ cuddly Wallace.
Inbetween all this I also managed to ring and pay the balance for Kessingland, fill out the booking form for Halloween Camp to post to Sarah, get an apologetic note to go in with the birthday cards from the kids to Lynda and make a phone call to the answerphone of the venue hire for brand new HE group this week to confirm the booking as I have utterly failed to get the form returned to them. And then AND THEN I walked round the corner shop, bought stamps for all the letters and put them in the postbox. Predictably although both my parents were here the children both elected to come for the walk with me and ran all the way home infront of me including crossing the (dead quiet but still!) road infront of our house and ringing on the door bell to get back in.
I had a text from my brother this afternoon to say he has split up with his girlfriend so rang him for a brief chat and was reassured he was OK but asked not to tell my parents so have been struggling with that knowledge in their company all evening while covertly texting my brother more to check he is OK 🙁 Hopefully he’ll be fine and it won’t be long before they know – and fingers crossed they do not find out that I already knew 😳
And that’s about it really – not very Bank Holiday-ish I know, will try harder tomorrow 🙂