A highly productive day today. 🙂
First thing the plan was to sort out the playroom. It started as one of those mammoth tasks that half an hour in you wish you’d never started as the first task was to go through all the dressing up stuff, bag up anything outgrown ready to be cleaned, photographed and stuck on ebay. The rest had to be matched together into outfits, hung on hangers (and finding child size hanger was enough of a problem – most of Tarly’s clothes are now in a heap at the bottom of her wardrobe!) and put onto a clothes rack. We moved both big units to the same side of the room and cleared some of the unused toys. There’s still plenty to do in going through cupboards and clearing more but for now it looks hugely better, far more like a playroom than a rather large cupboard and a room I go into and smile rather than feel slightly depressed in. It used to be Ady and my bedroom many years ago and as the chiller with the wine and beer lives in the understairs cupboard which is accessed from that room I go there often and used to get really fed up with it being such a tip all the time. Fingers crossed it has moved into a new phase as the children are slightly older.
The kids veered between very helpful, not quite so helpful and downright hindering but when I called them in to try on some of the dressing up clothes so I could work out what did and didn’t fit any more Tarly had us all in hysterics when she insisted on putting on a Mother Christmas outfit and then pulled on a scary Halloween mask and said ‘look, I’m the nightmare before Christmas!’
She chose her outfit for Halloween this year (the one she wore the year before last) and then spent ages flouncing about in a bridesmaid dress that Ros gave us ages ago, teaming it with a red flashing nose, knee high white socks and various comedy hats! She does make me laugh loads that girl 😆 Davies sat and put loads of number puzzles back together in the right order – always makes me smile to see that despite very little in the way of formal number recognition work he manages somehow. Tarly really is ready to learn to read though so somehow I need to combat my utter lazy-bugger-ness and set about doing that with her. I can’t pretend to be autonomous any more if I’m actually ignoring my children even when they beg to learn 😉 !
We had lunch and then headed over to Chris and Julie’s for a couple of hours. Davies was in a fairly boisterous mood and despite Julie and I taking the children off for a walk round some nearby fields he remained such for the rest of the day. I’ve made email enquiries about the ‘under sixes’ football team for him come September. I looked into it last year and it runs to school years so despite the fact he actually hits six two weeks into September he would still fall into the under six team for the coming year. It runs on a Saturday morning at the very nearby school for an hour and Ady and he could go along together for an hour. They don’t play matches but they work on basic practice and aside from good physical activity, the chance to make more friends, learn some sporting skills and spend some time doing something just with Ady I think he is ready for a bit more of the whole rough and tumble type side of being a little boy. He has suddenly grown a bit I think too – I was watching him and Tarly run down the road together yesterday and realised that the gap between their heights which had lessened (to the point they are both wearing some clothes age 3-4 at the moment!) as Tarly had a growth spurt fairly recently seems to have opened out again. Which is just as well – I was starting to worry he must be smoking in his room at night and stunting his own growth! 😆 The gap between them generally has widened again as it does every so often and I realised today that we really only tend to play with younger children that him – must remedy that a bit more from the Autumn and the football may well help.
While we were at C & J’s I mentioned that we were looking for a bike for Davies. We have a bike that our friends gave us (along with Davies’ bed and various other bits and pieces) when they emigrated to NZ four years ago – their daughter is four years older than Davies almost to the day and it was hers – albeit a very unisex multi-coloured design. He’s been riding it but despite having the saddle and handlebars up to the max it is really too small for him. Chris did a bit of a ‘ta dah!’ from a caravan which lives in their garden with all sorts of garden toys and pulled out a car boot sale bargain he’d bought for ‘Jack – one day’ for £4 and is perfect for Davies now. 🙂
So we brought it home, the multi-coloured one officially changed ownership to Tarly and we spent a happy half an hour with them gaining confidence in riding up and down the slight slope on the pavement outside our garden.
Tarly utterly mastered steering although her pedalling is a bit wonky – but then so is the pavement! Davies totally got ‘the bug’ for it and was begging for ‘one more go down the hill’ by the time we came in. I’ve tasked Ady with getting him sorted without stabilisers by the end of the summer and told them they can bring their bikes to my parents tomorrow and ride them on the same path I did as a child round my parents’ house. It’s my Dad’s birthday tomorrow so the plan is to have lunch and then go out for a Downs Walk but I think we may be able to persuade everyone to wander down to the nearby park (the same one we have Home Ed meet up at each week) for some cycling practice instead.
And that’s about it really. Davies went to bed listening to Cat in the Hat on tape following it along with the book, borrowed from the libarary – I’d not realised before that the audio books were FREE. I followed Alison’s links and signed up for free Tescos dvd trials and laughed at myself for struggling to think of any films I’d actually like to watch and am on a total high having been told by Ady to go away for a weekend (my first ever since children) sometime soon and do whatever I want with myself. 🙂 🙂 He’s clearly very trusting of the friend he specifically told me to arrange something with however 😉 – not at all sure that trust is justified! And I have an 8 year plan! Which I will no doubt share at some future point when I have it at a point to put down in a post.
Other than that the sun continues to shine, it looks like there is some slight change in Malice’s eye which is good – we’ve done very well with her eye drops and antibiotics tablets, although I have to say it is infinitely easier to medicate a cat when she can’t see you coming :lol:, it’s been a lovely week with lots of friends packed in and I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weeks with lots more of the same. 🙂
Playroom looks great – I started on ours this week but I’m still only halfway through!
So after the angst last weekend you’ve now got the entire next 8 years sorted? 😆 How very you 😉 Look forward to hearing all about that then 🙂
Comment by Alison — 06 August 2006 @ 10:45 am
And I’m going to sound like a complete old woman here, but make Tarly wear shoes when she’s cycling! Ever since a friend told me about how her sister totally mangled her foot by having a small accident whilst cycling barefoot and getting her foot tangled up in the bike, I’ve been really paranoid about it happening to the kids.
Dunno why that affected me, I know it’s not my usual style. I think it’s because it’s so easy to imagine happening and would be really gross!
Comment by Alison — 06 August 2006 @ 1:21 pm
There’s still more to do here but cosmetically at least it looks loads better 🙂
And hmm to the 8 year plan – probably my typical way of dealing with angst really and yep, you’ll be hearing it in great detail very soon I imagine 😉
Eww to the barefeet on bike story – you are dead right of course and I wouldn’t normally have her bare foot but she’d just got out the car having kicked her shoes off – and bare foot does seem to be a bit of a usual state round here. You’ll have me thinking about helmets next…
Comment by Nic — 06 August 2006 @ 6:18 pm