One word? When seven would do…

A line from one from the valleys for St Davids day 🙂

I’ve had lots of reminders from Davies this week of just how much a small child remembers things. He was talking about something, I’ve totally forgotten what of course, at the weekend which had happened when he was about 3 and a half. He recalled it really clearly and in detail. He also showed at Paradise Park how much he’d taken in about dinosaurs way back when he was obsessed with them aged 2. We’ve definitely recapped a few times over the years but he still remembers all sorts of names of them and other information. Today he and Tarly were playing with the toy animals (and the geomags, natch! 😉 ) and lining them all up in different types and deciding whether they were young or old. Ady had arranged to work from home today as he was still feeling (and looking) pretty crap. Our original plan was for me and Tarly to go to Fun Junction and for Davies to stay here and have some one to one time with Ady. Davies changed his mind about this about 14 times during the course of the morning including tears at one point which I finally established were about Scarlett getting lunch at FJ which if you have one of their ‘lunchbox’ deals comes with a small toy (usual value approx tuppence! plastic tat!). Having promised there was no way I’d be buying her one of those – I usually get them one to share, he was happy to stay behind as planned.

So Scarlett and I headed off in Ady’s car and as Davies’ seat was still in the front from Badgers last night I bunged her in that and she sat in front with me. I don’t think we’ve ever gone anywhere with her in the front before so she loved that. During the ten minute drive to FJ we talked about all sorts of things including a very basic first driving lesson – oh how educated my children would be if they were only children who I took out in the car a lot 😆 Oh to be a MOO on the road (MOOOTR). Which reminds me does anyone know why bird droppings are brown and white? Davies and decided it must be because it is wee and poo combined and a quick poll of others today confirmed this to be a common assumption. Infact noone seemed to know whether birds even had a seperate way of expelling urine. I’ve done a quick google and it seems to be something refered to but I can’t find any sort of definitive answer and wondered if anyone knew? Ady’s car has everything on the dashboard clearly labelled so there are words and letters everywhere and Scarlett happily picked out all of the letters for her name from it.

We got to FJ and found Lucy, R and R already there so Tarly ran off to play with them and Julie, Jack and Maisie arrived shortly afterwards. S was not at her best, possibly a combination of jabs yesterday and it just feeling so very strange to be without Davies. None of the other children seemed to notice his absence but Tarly did miss him and I felt very odd without him. It wasn’t even any easier particularly as S was hard work wanting a variety of things without D to jolly her out of it or distract her like he normally does. Lucy left after lunch and Julie and I stayed for less than a further hour before popping into the main library. S and I chose a few books and left Julie, J and M still there. Scarlett played on the kiddie computer for a little while and managed to get to a page where it required a password. Her barbie.comming has taught her that a small white box with a flashing cursor means it needs her to type her name in so that is what she did. Except it is one of those dumbed down kiddie keyboards (which I could rant about for ages) with lower case letters in alphabetical order and primary colours. So my poor uppercase qwerty familiar baby was thrown. But not for long. She hovered over where the letters would be on a qwerty and with the exception of choosing f instead of t – easy mistake, particulary when f is nearly where t would be anyway – she managed that 🙂

We got home to find Ady and Davies had had a good time but A was fading fast and I thought it would be a good idea to get Davies out for some fresh air and exercise so I took them both into Lancing to use their World Book Day vouchers. They didn’t get excited by the specially prodcued WBD selections (and I can’t blame them, I’d have struggled) and after lengthy consideration they both chose an activity book. Which actually given the wealth of books we already have and the endless supply of story books from work was probably a good choice. So I had to put two quid each towards their selections. Tarly got a princesss book and Davies got a Chicken Little one but they kept them entertained for a good couple of hours and they both took them to bed having done dot to dots, spot the difference, mazes and colouring in in them both so that was money well spent.

When we got home I put Hoodwinked on which I’d borrowed from work. I’d been really impressed with it when we’d seen it at a FilmEducation screening, considering it exactly the sort of thing I’d have been so proud to have worked in writing and wasn’t disappointed with a second viewing. I love the clever take on an already known story, I think the writing is slick, the gags are fast paced and funny and it appeals on a universal level. So the kids did their books and we all watched that then they had tea and a bath.

Scarlett looked at her book in bed for a while before falling asleep fairly quickly but Davies kept coming downstairs while I was cooking the dinner. Now I know (not least because I recall using the same tactics) that asking really clever, insightful questions or getting an adult talking about a topic you know they are happy to discuss is a really good way of killing time for a child so I’m always aware that when Davies is wanting to stay up later he will employ just such skills but I’m also happy to answer and talk about some things as and when they crop up so our white board in the kitchen (not sure how to qualify this really as we do indeed have a whiteboard in the kitchen and explaining it as where we write the menu planner for the month probably does nothing to dispel the wrong impression I know people will be getting from that mental image. But most of you have been in my kitchen so are probably imagining a very accurate thing actually!) now has loads of years of birth on it (mine, Ady’s, my parents, Davies’, Scarlett’s, Richard’s and Jasper’s) and some examples of decades, centuries and milleniums, including 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 and 1000000 just because he noticed the pattern of increasing noughts. All because we have a novelty tin can of 20th century air in our kitchen and I was explaining the joke and how the year 2000 was a big thing and that not many people get to see the turn of a century let alone the turn of a millenium and how many generations to come it will be before the year 3000. Which led onto me talking about how 2000 was built up and from being a very little girl I had wondered what my life would be like in the year 2000. Then he said what sort of Daddy he thought he’d be with examples of how he would allow lollies before dinner, which he quickly backtracked on as he realised the dilemmas of parenting and responsibility 😆

Then we got onto why some people don’t get married – it bugs both my children that my brother still lives at home and is not married and doesn’t have children. Which serves really only to demonstrate now unrepresentative most of our friends are with their classic nuclear families with two parents and all ;). We do know one family where the parents have split up so we talked about them and Davies said mummies and daddies should always stay together otherwise it would upset the children. I am a bit crap at agreeing with things like that even when it is an hour and a half past bedtime and my hypothetical reply may give nightmares so I did a gentle ‘well no actually’ answer with plenty of reassurance that I am not about to choose to leave Ady though because ‘I think Daddy’s great!’ 😆 which then led us to families with two mummies or two daddies or just one with the other not around at all for various reasons (for which I’m afraid Dani and Allie you were my best example of a two mummy family so there is a possibility of questions from Davies at MM Allie 🙂 ) which went dangerously close to the whole egg and seed conversation with questions about the colour of the eggs and the seeds and whether he could see them under his microscope or not? We then talked about time capsules (we buried one under the floorboards here in 1999) and the Millenuim Dome (which we visited when I was very newly and still unknowingly pregnant with Davies) before we began to touch on things which simply had to be ‘wait until tomorrow and we can explain it properly’ type areas.

I was saying to Julie and Lucy today how very much I enjoyed Davies being four, it was quite my favourite age of his so far and I am enjoying Scarlett being four just as much. I love the combination of independance, spirit and exploration with the additional rationality, patience and articulacy four has with the echoes of toddlerdom still very much in evidence. But actually this new side of six with it’s enhanced level of wonder at the world, curiosity about times before he was created and wanting to know about me and Ady’s childhood is a whole new area of wonder too that I am really enjoying as we get there.

Work all day tomorrow – Julie is here in the morning for the first time which I think will be a good thing for Davies as Jack is a good combination of hero-worshipping and proper ‘boy’ company and Maisie and Scarlett are excellent at either getting lost to play ponies together or providing the perfect princesses for when Davies and Jack want to be dragons :). And then, woo and also hoo, it’s the weekend 🙂