It’s just another laid back Monday…

It’s been a pretty nice day today actually. The children have been really, really well behaved, which means I’ve managed to remain calm, patient and loving all day and it does make such a difference if I’m not watching the clock from about 3pm gagging for my first glass of wine and for them to go to bed!

First thing they watched W&G twice 🙄 and played with geomags, currently the game with them is to create one dimensional characters using the rods as straight lines and the balls as joints – skeleton style really. So Davies creates his W&G line up and then ‘plays’ with them. Scarlett’s current favourite game is using about eight of the soft toys who usually live on her bed. She brings them into the lounge, lines them up in a very specific order and proceeds to do what I suppose is her equivalent of me playing with my teddies and creating tea parties or picnics when I was a child. At least three times a day I will bung them all back in her bedroom and at least three times a day she will go and retrieve them and line them all up again!

I spent some time working out a shopping list for this week’s dinners and then we headed off to Sainsburys. Davies elected to sit in the trolley (a real squeeze!) and Tarly wanted to walk alongside me. They were perfect children for the whole time we were in there which must have been close to an hour as we were talking and counting and stuff as we went round. Scarlett walked round the whole of the fruit and veg naming stuff and asking whether we needed it. A woman actually stopped and listened and said to me ‘she knows more about fruit and veg than most eight year olds!’ I laughed and said ‘yes but she doesn’t actually eat any of them!’ which isn’t strictly true but she was pulling off a good impression of a vegan and it scared me! 😉 She helped count six carrots into a bag and learnt about checking for freshness / ripeness on certain things. Green bananas as we already have a couple of yellow ones at home, firm grapes rather than squishy ones, that sort of thing. They begged for strawberries so I got some and we had a chat about them not being seasonal and how plants and flowers are ‘forced’ or ‘hothoused’ at times of year or even countries they wouldn’t naturally grow in.

Round and about the aisles with Davies reaching the higher stuff from his trolley vantage point and Tarly bending down for lower stuff, lots of counting for Tarly and addition maths for Davies. They even managed to keep it together while I loaded the conveyor belt, packed and paid so I was really really pleased with them. 🙂

We then headed to the library where we had several books to return. As we left the house the post had arrived with my HEAS newsletter and a couple of World Book Day tokens so we popped into the bookshop in town too. Davies originally chose the Harry & The Bucket of Dinosaurs book out for the WBD promotion but they didn’t have any of the more girlie titles in yet and then Davies spotted a make your own Willy Wonka’s factory book and Tarly spotted a Paint A Princess book complete with heart shaped watercolours so as they’d been so good at the supermarket I added a couple of quid each to their tokens and sent them off to pay for them, which they both did beautifully with plenty of pleases, thank yous and lots of chatting to the shop assistant. I was really pleased to see the delight with which they ran to the children’s section at the back of the bookshop actually. They dashed down there, carefully selected a title each off the shelves and settled straight down on the floor to ‘read’ them. Scarlett adores those ‘That’s not my….’ Usborne books, we have that’s not my bunny and that’s not my fairy at home and they are firm favourites of hers. There was a That’s not my mermaid version which she read through making good guesses on what it said. I love how much they love books. 🙂

Then we went back to the library and spent about 20 minutes sat on the floor there looking through children’s books. They both chose a couple each and I chose a couple of carefully selected ones for them too. While I was looking they’d sat close to each other flicking through a book together and deciding what they thought it was about from the pictures. Davies then grabbed a craft activity book too so we got all those out and came home.

I offered to read to them or for them to do their new painting / Willy Wonka books but they declined and went back to their games for the rest of the afternoon. So I flicked through the YH booklet that also arrived in the post marking off ones available for Halloween with enough beds that are not too far for Joyce. Slightly limits the choice really 😉 I’ll shortlist the ones that qualify and then check availability before posting a short list in the next couple of days for us to decide on and get booked.

Frazer is here for dinner tonight (chicken curry already sorted in the slow cooker 🙂 ) so I’ve been grilling him about Fiona 😉 whilst the kids leapt around him on their space hoppers for a mad half hours exercise at the end of the day.

Tomorrow I have planned pancake making, some reading and maybe some bird seed cake making as we seem to be attracting a fair few feathery visitors to our original ones which the children are loving watching through the big lounge window so I want to keep encouraging that.