nothing to see here.
My feeling rough continued and I felt crap by the time I’d sat on Tarly’s bedroom floor while she went to sleep. She then woke in the night and came into our bed where she lay, sprawled out, hogging most of my pillow coughing and sniffing 🙁 for what felt like hours until finally we got back to sleep.
This morning it was still raining, having rained all night so the idea of driving to Barnham for Book Club was a non-starter. If I’m totally honest I was ever so slightly relieved as we’d not read the book. It was Beedle the Bard, by JKRowling and I was very bitter about having to read any of her work having avoided all the Harry Potter books / films / everything. We read the introduction and the first chapter and none of us enjoyed it at all. I’d said we’d read a further two chapters so Davies and Scarlett could go along having listened to the first three chapters and explain what they’d not liked about the book. They are au fait with HP having seen most of the films and I did try hard not to let my feeling cloud their view. I think making a considered decision to not carry on with a book based on sound reasons is perfectly fine and life is way too short to read bad books. I also don’t buy into the idea that anyone *needs* to finish things they have started necessarily and don’t feel it is a life skill the children need to develop. Infact I think it is a far braver and greater thing to be able to recognise that finishing something you started might be a waste of your time / energy / a pointless exercise / may even do harm and be able to know when to throw in the towel. So we had already talked about what they would say to contribute to the discussion at Book Club but it never happened anyway.
So I did some laundry processing, made some plans for Chatterbooks next week, did some baking of comfort food to make myself feel better (flapjacks, chinese chews, cheese scones) and did some hefty amounts of moping too, whilst drinking tea and reading a book I *am* enjoying myself (One Day
).
Davies spent some time yesterday creating a landscape and some characters for his own version of the creatures in the Hughes Creation stories we’ve been reading so he and Scarlett spent most of the day with the plasticine making more including the whole breathing life into them, giving them names, characteristics and stories. I love it when something inspires them like this into such creativity :). Infact I wonder if maybe I should get some plasticine for Chatterbooks next week instead of drawing?…
We watched a documentary about The Whale That Swam to London which was really interesting (if sometimes a little gratuitously graphic with it’s scientific shots of disection I thought) and as I became ever increasingly crap feeling and the rain continued to fall I decided I was not up to risking my car breaking down on the way to or from swimming lessons so we didn’t go.
Scarlett has decided that Brownies isn’t for her. I’m not surprised, or infact particularly disappointed. She tried it, I could clearly see it wasn’t something for her and would have been more surprised if she’d loved it really I think. I have made contact with a very local street dance class for them both which we’ll go along to when Chatterbooks finishes (it clashes but there are only four more Chatterbooks) and see if that suits them and could potentially be the way to get their back flip ambitions met and I’m looking into athletics for Tarly too. I’m quite happy that they get enough group after-school stuff from Badgers for now with the added things like Wildlife Explorers and other things we attend with Home Edders. I never want to feel we’ve not explored every opportunity but at the same time I can’t deny it’s a relief to have less things of a week day evening to rush about for and feel committed to, particularly in the winter when it’s cold and dark so early and turning out of the house feels like a huge effort.
We watched some of the debates in HoC on Parliament tv which led to interesting conversations about child protection, serious case review, who was ‘Baby P’ and all the details of his case. Tim Loughton, who has been on Tower Block of Commons and was talking a lot in Parliament today is our MP so we talked about him too. We listened to debates about smacking and corporal punishment which were interesting and talked about whether I think it should be against the law to ‘batter’ a child and why. A bit sad that such major issues are being discssued in such a sparsely populated HoC really but good to be able to watch MPs in action. I remember the channel being launched and how exciting it was at the time to be able to see inside the HoC.
I cooked the kids’ dinner, chopped some kindling and got a fire going (which promptly went out half an hour later when I tried to put some logs on that were just too damp 🙁 ) and then slumped. Ady came home and took over dinner preparation and got the fire going again while I had a bath and a couple of the cold and flu tablets he brought home which had me feeling much better.
Watched Survivors (yay, to the reunitedness :)) and had lengthy chats with both children about getting to sleep earlier, which clearly went right over both their heads as they were still awake at 11. If I had the arsedness myself to get them up and out at 6am for drill on the front lawn I would…
We’re doing early mornings and total ban on any form of entertainment (books included) after 9pm for Pea atm. Her sleep pattern is totally out of control and she’s heading for her second cold this year and always seems to look grey. It’s making a huge difference. She’s allowed until 10.30pm Friday and Saturday, she doesn’t get to bed until this time 2 other nights of the week due to karate, so it’s not as though she’s being put to bed like a baby, but the zero tolerance from us is making our days much better. Just about to type I’m sick of the sodding rain and the sky has just cleared and the sun has shown it’s face!!!! I got soaked an hour ago taking Pea to work.
Comment by Roslyn — 24 February 2010 @ 11:27 am