I had the dentist first thing this morning for the check up on my wisdom tooth and review of the xray from the hospital. Lucy came and sat in the house with all the children while I dashed across the road to the dentists – love being walking distance from the docs and the dentist, it’s fab :). She was happy with the way the tooth is looking now, all the infection has cleared but it is still not fully erupted so will require further monitoring. The surgeon is at the dentists once a month so she is planning to show him my xray and get his opinion on further action if any. But she did notice that while my teeth are pretty healthy my gums are not. My Mum suffered really bad gum disease whilst pregnant with me and never really recovered, to the point that they receeded so badly she actually lost all her top teeth a couple of years back. The teeth were all in fantastic condition still but the gums couldn’t hold them. Dentists have always kept a close eye on my gums as I think it can be a hereditry thing and sure enough mine are not good and worsened with both pregnancies. My teeth also stain really badly (due to all the wine and tea mostly :oops:) and when we used a private dentist I actually went 6 monthly to the dentist and 6 monthly to the hygienist to keep them in check and she suggested I start going to them 3 monthly to keep an eye on the health and condition of my gums. Then told me that today would be free and if I could manage to come back again within the next two weeks she do a scale and polish for me free too all under the banner of what I paid a couple of weeks ago – which was £15.50 and will have covered three appointments, a scale and polish and an xray at the hospital. I dread to think what that would have run into at my private dentists but it would have been more than I spent on a months food shopping nowadays for sure. Hurrah for the NHS (on this occassion!).
Julie, Jack and Maisie arrived and we headed over to the local park for about an hour. Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed it, I’m not so sure the other children did quite so much :(. Davies had been watching dead leaves blow about in the wind and decided to do ‘a science experiment’ to see if enough leaves would carry his weight in the wind. He knew he needed to collect loads because he is heavy so he got a good sized handful, climbed up a climbing frame and waited until a gust of wind came and then holding the leaves aloft jumped to see if he’d be carried. He’d already said he didn’t think it would work but he wanted to test it. He then tried again by collecting more and climbing slightly higher on a different climbing frame but this time I had to stand beneath and catch him if the wind didn’t. I really loved how he knew it wasn’t going to work but wanted to test it to prove it. We talked about what might work and decided something like a sheet would maybe work for longer in a far stronger wind, we talked about how parachutes work when used from higher up where the wind is stronger. They then went and played on a skatepark style couple of concrete ramps for a bit. Davies was still in rather a boisterous mood from last night playing with Liam and was a bit too ‘mean boy’ a couple of times but hard as that is to witness it is also somehow reassuring given how I once spent a period of time worrying that he simply didn’t know how to play like a child or be all rowdy like other boys – no such fears nowadays!
Lucy left us to call in at her parents while Julie and I came back for lunch. I enforced a ban on playing in bedrooms to combat the ‘every room in the house is trashed’ issues from last time and Scarlett & Maisie dressed up as fairies and then princesses and playing with My Little Ponies while Davies and Jack played with some cars and some dinosaurs – with plenty of crossovers between the two games. Then we got out the wooden train track and a very elaborate collaborative track was built spanning most of the downstairs of the house. Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived in the middle of that and managed to find space to sit among the track and helped with the building too. Julie, Lucy and I managed some chatting about the future of Home Ed in the UK, parenting, politics and society, the welfare state and just who is responsible for what and who really should be. Ah such interesting and powerful stuff.
Julie, Jack and Maisie headed off, Lucy, Richard and Rebecca stayed awhile longer. There was more dressing up, some tidying up, some bead threading for Tarly and Rebecca and more chat. Pretty much my perfect sort of day really. There was education – obvious and not so obvious, socialising and running around for the children and plenty of sitting, drinking tea and putting the world to rights for me with my friends. Bliss 🙂
And now, dinner, not cooked by me and Torchwood. Oh and I’m drinking snowballs and pretending to be 17 which is always fun too!
Oooh decidedly ‘meaty’ Torchwood, you’ll enjoy it!
Comment by Ali — 22 November 2006 @ 10:27 pm
Glad your tooth is improving – hope they continue to behave themselves. Torchwood was unpleasant. 🙁
Comment by Bob — 22 November 2006 @ 10:56 pm