One word? When seven would do…

Today I wanted to make our Christmas cake, get an ebay parcel posted, pop into the library to collect some items and take some back and then go swimming.

We had a slow-ish start, Scarlett made breakfast for her and Davies and tea for me :). I am sure there is a healthy element of competition in them both being so grown up and helpful with all this tea making, washing up, fire lighting, chicken keeping and so on but it’s all very lovely and very heartening for next year when we are needing them to be both independant and able aswell as helpful and useful :). Before I had children if I ever did imagine myself as a mother (which I have to confess was not often) it was always with ‘kids’ rather than babies and I think at 10 and nearly 8 I do now have ‘kids’ and I love it :).

I parcelled up the ebay package, cleared out the stuff that had accumulated beneath and behind my sofa and worked out some money stuff for camp while the kids geomagged and we all half watched a documentary about whether humans have evolved from more than one initial starting point – ah found link Incredible Human Journey which was very interesting.

We then gathered stuff together and headed into Lancing. Post office first where there was a huge queue which we passed time in by discussing stamps being currency, looking at the new range of Wallace and Gromit post office products, wondering whether the little flint Davies had chipped away at could be considered a weapon and guessing which cashier we would be served by. We looked at the presentation pack of W&G Christmas stamps but decided not to buy them despite the PO running a competition to win a trip to the Aardman studios if you bought one, which would of course be one of Davies’ dreams come true.

From there we visited the bakery at the childrens’ request for a cake each for after lunch and then to the library to take some bits back, collect some that were in and both children picked a book each too.

Back home for lunch after which I realised I didn’t have time to get the Christmas cake done before we left (it needs a good couple of hours in the oven and our oven is too unreliable to leave unattended as the temperature gauge thing is broken so it flares up and down at will leaving you with raw or burnt food if not closely monitored.

I was intolerant and ranty for a bit, hung some washing up inside, Scarlett made me another cup of tea and then I sat and priced up a boxful of clothes ready for my friend’s nearly new sale. Am hoping she can collect them soon as they are really cluttering up the playroom. I have a second box to price and a couple more items to freecycle and that should pretty much leave us with most things to leave the house having gone aside from stuff in the garage and the sack of kids clothes we’re bringing to Okehampton.

I tidied all of that away and the kids put their stuff away then it was off to the swimming pool. I got stuck into my lengths and was doing really well – 53 in the first hour so well on track for my 100 in 2 hours. When we first got there it was pretty quiet so Scarlett being rowdy was rather noticeable and she got asked by a lifeguard how old she was and where her parents were when she answered that she was 7. She pointed me out and I happened to be watching so was able to wave and agree that I was with her which satisfied the lifeguard who had been mostly concerned as to whether she could swim as she was hanging about near the deep end.

I then noticed Davies wasn’t in the pool after about 10 minutes of Scarlett being in her lesson so had to stop at the end of a length to spot him. He was sitting with his towel looking cold and rather pale and saying he felt ill. I said he may as well wait until Scarlett had finished her lesson as all our clothes were together in one locker and I wanted to see if he perked up so I carried on with my lengths, stopping after every two to check he was still okay to sit and wait. Hence we left half an hour early so I only had 90 minutes swimming instead of my planned 2 hours and did just 76 lengths rather than my aimed for 100 🙁 .

Once we were out and dressed Davies seemed to recover a little and so got a lecture about making Scarlett miss out on her last half hour of swimming time, me on 25 lengths and putting more pressure on my sponsored swim and the fact he had missed the lesson my Dad pays for too. He is perpetually tired, pale and clearly suffering from a lack of sleep but still sits up in bed every night finding ways to not go to sleep. It drives me mad and I have even less sympathy when it impacts on the rest of us during the day too. I have tried wearing him out physically, ensuring he has meals at sensible times and is full of carbs, having no stimulating TV or games before bed, reading calm stories with quiet cuddles before bed, aromatherapy tricks in his room and nothing seems to work. He’s like some mad professor who is at his most brilliant in the dead of night, full of imagination, creativity and ideas but a growing 10 year old body doesn’t thrive on this and I veer between feeling glad he can allow himself to work to his own natural rhythm and not being a black kettle calling pot when I am frequently still awake many hours after midnight myself and fretting that I am being utterly irresponsible in allowing it to go on…

So we were home early and the kids put the chickens away and closed curtains round the house while I lit a fire and got their dinner on – sausages with jackets for Davies and mash for Scarlett. We were having our sausages later with roasted veg and the kids liked their sausages so much I cooked a couple more each for them :).

Ady arrived home and Davies read to him for a while from a book he’d picked up in the library while I read to Scarlett from a book she’d saved from the Book Sale box about wild animals all around us in the UK. We looked at hedgehogs and moles 🙂 She has a real repetoire of animal facts these days and often tells me a couple which are almost always things I didn’t know before. I do love being Home educated by my children ;).

Scarlett was asleep fairly quickly and although I heard Ady talk to Davies when he went up to bed about 1030pm he is now fast asleep so this sort of counts as an early night for him….