It’s the same room but everything’s different

Up and about early today so we decided to go and continue the Boot Quest before soft play. The place we used to go to in Worthing was called ‘Fun Junction’ but it is now called PLAY which is an acronym for Play, Leisure, Agility, Youth. I’m guessing they came up with the PLAY bit before the words that it stands for 😆 As an aside I do like the names of soft play places. Locally we had Fun Junction (a meeting place for fun?), Monkee Biznez (I may have slightly changed the spelling of one of those words but they started it!), Funplex (plex of fun, many a chat we’ve had about the meanings of the word ‘plex’) and ‘Flying Fortress’ which is the most sensibly named as it is in an airport hangar and is the shape of a big plane.

It was Lucy’s idea to meet there but she is offline currently so I’d posted it to the local HE list and invited a few other people (SIL Julie, Tasha our new friend) along too but didn’t really know who might actually turn up.

So we were out and away nice and early and parked in town and walked in to continue boot-shopping. We got trainers for a fiver from shoezone for both children – they wanted the same ones but still had no luck on the boot front. We did go and ogle the kids DMs in the posh shoe shop in town where Tarly fell in love with both the shiny hot pink DMs and the snowflake and penguin print ones. They are so cool :).

We headed off to soft play then and Lucy and Sam were already there. I’m sure I’ve mentioned Sam before, she is very sweet but irritates me. Today she compounded that by calling me Nicky twice and wanting to talk all about nursery (well it’s not nursery actually, it’s playschool :rolls:). Cintha and Tasha also arrived and Julie came along later too so we had a good little gathering of folks, well worth setting it up as a regular monthly get together.

Davies and Scarlett played almost entirely with Toby, their new friend from Tuesday and all was going swimmingly. We ate lunch with them and then Davies started to play the victim. He does this every so often (Julie was most entertained as Chris is still like it at 40 and Jack does it too so she reckons it’s a Goddard male gene fault :lol:). I did have to wade in when a small boy who was being very unparented and causing hassle for Davies, Scarlett and Toby came over with his mother who was trying to tell me they were being horrid to him as I’d sat and watched the whole thing play out over about an hour and he was simply being a violent little git who they had been incredibly tolerant of but had finally had enough of and were trying, unsuccessfully to let him know they really didn’t want to play with him. She actually left soon afterwards which I felt a bit bad about but everyone else assured me I hadn’t been rude or horrible to her, just justifably short. Cintha did say I’d been scary too but that’s more a default thing than something I brought out specially ;).

Anyway, Davies and Toby struggled for a while when Jack and Maisie arrived and the dynamic alterered. Scarlett was doing a bit of stirring too I think and Davies got upset and unable to deal with things rather than put them behind him and move on. I did wonder if some pheromone was being piped in actually as suddenly all the children started falling out with each other and we had a long line of them all queuing up to have cuddles. I did the ultimate in faux pas by saying ‘Oh I much prefer boys!’ just as Scarlett approached me but she questioned me on it and seemed happy with my answer (we did joke that the mood Davies was in if he’d heard similar about me prefering girls he may well have been off to perform self mutilation in response :lol:). But all ended well with us arranging to get together with Tasha again hopefully next week and the kids all said goodbye to each other.

I decided I really did want to get the whole boot thing sorted so we drove over to Littlehampton where good old Peacocks came to the rescue as always and Scarlett found a very similar to the OshKosh pair she liked brown cowboy style boots for £12. Result :). Davies found a really nice jean jacket with sewn in hoodie fleece which was half price too and is now the proud owner of his first item of age 8-9 clothing :).

We came home and they had tea, Davies and I fell out and he had some stern words from me which have hopefully gone in. I’ve really felt like I’ve tried hard to meet his needs this week and focussed on him a bit with setting up social opportunities for him with same age boys and spending money on things like soft play admission so I do expect him to put a bit more effort in to making these things work for him when the chance is there. I always feel like Davies does take on board chats like that though and tries hard to make a change. Of course that Mummy-pleaser thing tends to override most things for him.

Ady rang to say he was coming home in a works van as he had a pallet box for a compost bin so could we meet him at the allotment so we grabbed the kids trowel and fork and headed up there in the late sunshine. We chatted briefly to two fellow allotmenteers and the kids claimed the area they want as their patch. I had planned for them to have a patch each to avoid arguments but they were insistent that they want to work together and share a patch so they earmarked that and started digging. Ady arrived and we manhandled the compost bin over and looked at the sea view before wandering round planning what we want and where it might go.

As we left we introduced ourselves and chatted to a few plots down neighbour – David. He’s at the end of his second year there and has a very tidy and productive plot. He told us our plot belonged to a man who died earlier this year but had previously worked on it very hard and grown lots. He told us about the allotment association which is worth joining and gave us a whole load of his excess leeks that are ready for planting out now and said we could also plant onions and garlic now. This is great as we are keen to plant something now rather than wait for the spring.

We had a walk round the adjoining plots and chatted to another family up visiting their plot, got some ideas of what we’d like to do and then headed for home. I read some more of George’s Secret Key to the Universe. Davies got one of those magic writing slate things where you can erase what you’ve written by lifting the top sheets so he and I were writing each other messages – all of which he could read and write no problem. He chucked it down the stairs to Ady and I who were in the bathroom chatting (him in the bath, me sitting on the floor) with ‘I LOVE MY MUMMY AND MY DADDY’ on it later which was lovely :).

Tomorrow’s a working all day kind of day so I’m off to bed.