Just like any other day then…

Except the roads were busier before 9am and everywhere else was dead all day :).

First thing I did various householdy stuff and then we put CBBC on and they children watched something called Wonderful World of Weird, or something along those lines. This was great, it had all sorts of odd factoids including details of a French bloke who eats shopping trolleys, cars and even a plane. While that was on they were drawing and colouring – Scarlett in her magazine from Saturday and Davies with a tin box that was a free gift with Horrible Science magazine when we used to subscribe. He’d copied out the words ‘Horrible Science’ in beautiful writing although he claimed to have no idea what it said 😆 then he’d drawn various characters on bits of paper including the Horrible Science people and The Doctor, some potions and medicines in different colours, a pyramid shaped case for the potions, some lockers for the ‘most poisonous ones’. I’d planned to read some books with them this morning and pop along to the library to finish the BWR but they were so happily occupied with their drawing I left them to it.

At 11ish we walked round to the nearest cashpoint (only about a fifteen minute round walk) and chatted as we went about things as diverse as why the park was so empty, how Scarlett could be starting school today, why they give school years year names (does that make sense written down? It did when we talked about it), what happens when you finish compulsory schooling, how talking to someone who knows lots about something is the very best way to learn more about it rather than books or the internet, how Lucy or Julie would be good people, for example, to ask questions about horses (as we saw one walking along with a rider and a walker) and then once we were back on the right side of the road again they ran all the way home. We came in and brushed our teeth and then Ady arrived home so we could all go to the dentist.

Davies wanted first turn in the chair so sat there happily chatting away to the dentist about his new tooth, his wobbly tooth and why he didn’t put it under the pillow for the tooth fairy. She was really happy with the way the new one is coming through and his teeth over all so that was good. 🙂

Scarlett was next and once she’d chatted to her (the third person in the last week or so to comment on ‘how big’ she is ‘for four’ which surprises me, I think she is rather average sized but maybe I’m missing something) and looked at her teeth she proclaimed them all very nice and healthy but with an issue over her dummy usage. She knew straightaway that she was either a thumb sucker or dummy user and said we need to try and break the habit now before it starts to affect her adult teeth. She doesn’t have protruding teeth which could be fixed with a brace, she has a gap between the top and bottom teeth where they simply don’t meet. Cosmetically it is something I’ve never noticed before but now I’m aware of it I’m sure I’ll be seeing it all the time.

Davies had a dummy until his third birthday when he happily and all but voluntarily threw them in the bin and never spoke of them again really. We tried to do the same thing when Scarlett was 3 but after nearly 2 weeks of sleepless nights and a very unhappy little girl we gave her dummies again. We talk fairly frequently about her giving them up, but as we realised when we gave them back to her again after her 3rd birthday simply taking them away and going cold turkey because we’re the ones with the power to do so goes against everything we believe in as parents. So together with Scarlett, who agrees she doesn’t want a gap in her teeth forever if it is in her power to prevent it, we’ve come up with the idea that she only has dummies in her bed and we will gently take them out of her mouth as soon as she is asleep to minimise the time she has it. She has also agreed to try and maybe start using it every other night rather than every night once she gets used to the in bed only idea. I think she is as committed to this as we are so it will succeed, however slowly which seems far better than forcibly removing it and dealing with her tears and upset. It would be nice to think she might hit five not using it any more though.

Ady was next and was told that his teeth and gums are doing really well and he could even go to 9 month intervals between appointments if he likes. :). I was last and had a scale and clean up done and was told I’ve no need to go 3 monthly either anymore and can have 6 monthly checkups with the others now. So we left with an appointment for next year :).

We came home for lunch and then Davies, Scarlett and I went off to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie and a couple of other HE families at the fruit picking farm. The other families are both localish Home Educators that I’ve known for a couple of years and see at various events with Julie. They all get together at least once or twice a week though so Scarlett struggled a bit to infiltrate the girls gang that was Maisie and Cate and Katie’s daughters and in true Scarlett style gave it a go then decided it was probably not worth bothering so played with the boys instead :lol:. Davies went straight into over loud, showing off mode which he often does in company he’s not sure of. I can sympathise as I can sometimes do a similar act although it is slightly more sophisicated than his once alcohol is added to mine there is probably not much in it ;).

We picked apples and sweetcorn, the others also picked raspberries. We all ate loads of apples picking off different trees and seeing that there was a difference just between two trees of the same type of apple let alone different types of apples in terms of firmness, sweetness and so on. Scarlett also tried and ended up eating all of a corn on the cob as we walked round. We finished up with a whole circuit on the tractor and then the others got off to pick onions which I decided we didn’t need so we waved them goodbye and carried on to the entrance. In the queue Scarlett and Davies befriended a little bilingual boy while we waited so we chatted about that. Oh and how the Kaiser Chiefs have lots of nanananahs in all their records :lol:.

We called into Tescos on the way home to get sweets for party prizes and goody bags so that is another job ticked off my party list. Ady brought home over 100 images from Doctor Who printed onto A4 and A3 paper so that’s my decoration for the room pretty much taken care of too (it’ll be blue tac a-go-go Saturday morning :lol:). We then chatted about how many days are in each month on the way home. I told them the ’30 days hath November…’ rhyme and we talked about leap years. It came about as Davies is counting down the days both to his party on Saturday and his actual birthday next week. Normally I wouldn’t go so far with an explanation but I’m trying hard to give a bit more information at the moment when they show interest hoping that something will spark more interest and we’ll head off on a flight of fancy. I’ve realised that my answers to them haven’t grown much in terms of content in the last year or so and they are probably ready for more details than I give a lot of the time. Which is not me beating myself up as I just as often end up giving really long winded explanations for things, but I want to try and do it more often so it is a matter of course rather than a conscious ‘oh here’s something I could expand on’ type thought.

Once home I cooked their tea, cooked our tea and made some extra mini quiches with leftover quiche mix and pastry.

I’ve felt quite blah today, a bit out of it with the people we saw and am still sad not to be making the London meet up on Wednesday (and still smarting from working preventing us from going Off The Path so pissed off work is stopping Wednesday too 🙁 ). Given Kessingland was not the week I’d hoped it would be and we seem to have not managed nearly as many get togethers with friends this summer as in previous years I am feeling rather out of touch with various friends. Although I am looking forward to seeing everyone at the weekend I know it won’t be the right time to sit and chat and catch up then either so I’m hoping to plan in some visits, home and away with various people soon to catch up properly. I think all our regular clubs starting up again next week will be a good thing for us all too, I like the shape of our weeks to have form even if what we do during the day itself is rather made up as we go along.

Finally Ady and I are doing much talking about different ways of life and where we’d like to be all of which is something best sat and debated with mates when you are in the early days of making such decisions so I’m hoping to do some of that in real life time soon too.