One word? When seven would do…

Today was the day we finally got to meet Lorna. Due to having visitors at the beginning of the week, working in the middle and Julie having prior engagements too today was the first day we were both free. Davies and Scarlett have been so desperate to meet their new cousin and were really looking forward to it.

The plan was to meet at the stables so Julie could feed Honey with spare arms to cuddle Lorna then to have a walk in the woods. We arranged to meet after lunch which meant we got to have a quiet morning at home. Tarly’s new dress arrived in the post, very gratefully recieved and pranced round in for a while :).

Davies did some more painting and finished off a Ben 10 picture he was copying from the front of his DS game;

We talked a bit about trying to very accurately copy something like a cartoon character and I used some watercolour pencils to have a go. I really must do more of that sort of thing with Davies as it is a skill I do possess in some capacity and one he would like to have and I’m sure would come fairly easily to him. He did a few more pictures including some pastels of London being bombed and then a still life of an orange, some grapes and a Wonka bar, all strangely from memory rather than a still life infront of him but all very good. Tarly did some experimenting with pastels and blending colours. I don’t like pastels as they are very chalk-like but I did admire the results from afar.

We sort of watched various things on TV including some Way Things Work (class tv type stuff) and and extreme animals or similar which included sloths, platypus (which are on Tarly’s zoo game) and chameleons. Then the tv went off, the art stuff was tidied away and they got out the blocks and built bridges. I read my book :).

We had lunch and Scarlett managed to cut her leg by standing on an upturned plastic box which promptly split and she fell through. It’s one of those accidents I have described the possibility of happening to one or both of them many times over the years so as it was a clean scratch rather than a stitch requiring gash I was quite pleased to have at last been proved right. 😉

Scarlett is rather a mess at the moment though; She has her three patches of impetigo / whatever it is, two long scratches lower on the same leg, a big graze on her elbow which looks to be turning infected despite her being on ABs and various miscellaneous cuts, bruises and minor injuries. The impetigo appears to be clearing up but not quite as speedily as I had hoped and as the AB course finishes tomorrow I can’t help feeling this isn’t the end of it. We’re away next week so I’ll see how it pans out and make another drs appointment if it isn’t cleared up by the time we come back. She has also been rather ‘not herself’ this week which has had me wondering if the ABs are having an effect on her generally.

After lunch we headed off to Slindon. Davies and Scarlett ran ahead of me at the stables and I spotted Jack and Maisie down at Honey’s field so went down to meet them there and found just Jack and Maisie there. I found Davies and Scarlett backup at the tack room admiring their new cousin who was having a feed :). The four children ran off to play while I caught up with Julie and then I had a lovely cuddle while Julie went off to feed Honey. All photos are arms length with one hand while cuddling the baby so looks of wonder at the miracle of new birth are slightly staged 😉


Julie says she looks like Maisie but I didn’t spend much time with J and M when they were newborns as we were in Manchester until they were nearly 2. I can certainly see Chris in her though and slightly surprisingly nothing of either of my own two babies, which odd given I see lots of similarities in Ady and Chris and of Ady in Davies and Scarlett. As lovely as she is and as pleased as I am for Chris and Julie and also pleased to have a new niece and baby around I felt no tugs at all myself either and although Scarlett was quite smitten with her and delighted to have a cuddle she is quite happy that the baby isn’t going to be living with us. She has never expressed any desire for baby siblings (which is just as well!)

Davies wasn’t interested in cuddling although he did lots of stroking and hands and feet inspecting. He was more interested in having found what he proclaimed to be ‘the biggest pill bug in the world!’ and it certainly was a good size:

He did have lots of questions for Julie though and wanted detailed explanations of the choosing of her names 😆 He said afterwards she was very cute but not what he’d been expecting although he couldn’t quite explain why not.

We had a walk down to the woods through a long grassed field and paused at the duck pond which was nice. Davies, Scarlett, Jack and Maisie enjoyed lots of running around and getting grubby before we walked back again to the stables to collect our cars. We left Julie feeding Lorna again and popped into the chicken supply shop which is closeby to get a couple of new feeders and a sack of feed for while we’re away next week. The shop is ace, loads of intriguing chicken related retail opportunities, all of which we resisted of course.

We hit some traffic coming home which would have meant we were cutting it fine to get Scarlett fed and changed ready for Rainbows but Ady had beaten us home and got their tea on so that was fine. Tarly had her tea and went to get her Rainbows uniform on but came in clutching the jam jar she’d been keeping a single tadpole rescued from Caz’s garden in. She said it had died and seemed fairly philosophical about it as she generally is with such things and said she wanted to empty the jar out in the garden. We told her to wait and do it after Rainbows but she insisted so off she went. She reappeared a few minutes later with a crumpled face just at that about to cry any moment look, folded herself into my arms and sobbed :(. She continued to sob all the way round the corner to Rainbows, through meeting Lucy and Rebecca up the road, through signing in at Rainbows and sitting on my lap there while a steady trail of other Rainbows came to ask what was wrong with Scarlett and the leaders threw enquring glances over her head at me. I thought we were going to have to come home again as she simply could not be pacified and was crying about how it had been too young to die, why it had to be her tadpole, why it had died when she loved it and so on.

In my usual manner I answered as honestly as I could and said that I didn’t have a reason and sadly often people and animals die young and that in choosing to love someone or something you have to be aware you could lose them and weigh up whether the happiness of loving them will outweigh the sorrow of losing them. I reminded her to think of happy times with her tadpole rather than sad ones and through her tears we talked about how there was nothing I could do to put it right or make it better which is a life lesson that I don’t recall learning quite so early myself about the lack of omnipotence of my parents but I guess is a valuable lesson just the same. Finally I gave her the choice of joining in or coming home and she went off still sniffing and with utterly defeated and sorrowful body language but was quickly recovered to her usual sunny demeanor and seems to have gotten over it now. She was 100% genuine in her distress but it was very out of character and I wonder what else was going on with her for her to take it so badly?

The activity was decorating cakes for Fathers Day and then decorating a paper plate to put them on. They moved through into the anteroom and played a running around hugging each other game and then had circle time where Tarly brought her huge stuffed dog. It always amazes me that the most confident and articulate of little girls slightly go to pieces with the focus of the whole group on them and Tarly is no exception. She often reverts to baby talk and nonsense speak infront of the group as several of the others do. So although I find it personally irritating it is not concerning.

Home for bathing, Davies had already had one, and then the end of Famous Five 6 – we have 7 & 8 to take away with us. Ady and I had a lovely dinner of slow roasted pork with loads of garden herbs and potato gratin, delicious :).

Ady has finished work for holidays and I just have tomorrow morning to work – we’re keeping watchful eyes on the weather forecast for next week and hoping for the best.