Last day. I have enjoyed having Scarlett all to myself and she says she has enjoyed having me all to ourself. We both admitted we’d rather have had Davies here though! We do have plans afoot for if he does it all again next year though.
There is no denying I have not coped at all well with this week. I have missed Davies every bit as much, and more, as I was thinking I might. I have HATED the prospect of contact by phone or post but not actually getting any, I have really struggled with the ‘we know best’ attitude of the leaders when even I don’t presume to know best for my kids – the just not knowing has really pushed me to insanity. The week started with a feeling of utter loss, it has lessened slightly to a feeling of incompleteness and low level anxiety but none of it has been a positive experience for me really.
That all said, and I hope I don’t speak too soon, I am incredibly proud of Davies. This was something he decided he wanted to do, thought very hard about, went off and did and he’s done it. This was a massive deal for a child who up until 5 weeks ago had never had a night away from home / me. A whole week, with no one else he’d ever even met before in a place he’d never been before with no idea about what he’d be eating, doing or seeing took immense courage and strength of character. I’ve yet to hear his version of events but from what the leader has said to me he made an instant impression as a mature, sorted, together person. She has described him as helpful, pragmatic, supportive and caring, interested, curious, adventurous and sociable.
Davies turns nine in a few weeks, it hit me the other day that he is halfway to adulthood. He’s come a very long way from the 2 year old that we decided to pull out of nursery because he was so unhappy, a very long way from the 4 year old who couldn’t be left with anyone. This is one of many of his steps towards independance, towards learning how to fly. I’ll probably never know if it was as hard for him as it has been for me but I suspect it was as huge if not even bigger, a true landmark moment in his young life that he’ll remember forever. I hope he’s got everything out of it he hoped for, and more. I hope he’s taken all the highs and lows, new friendships and lessons and experiences and continued along that road to who he is and will become.
I know I have many more small goodbyes ahead of me with my children, leading up to the day when they will one day walk away for good and start calling somewhere else home, but I know I’ll forever remember this week as that first tentative step towards growing up and away.
And of course I say all this, safe in the knowledge that in less than 12 hours he will be back with me again ;).
So, what did Tarly and I do on our last day WD (without Davies)?
We’d arranged to meet Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna at PYO at 11am. Scarlett came into our bed in the night (she’s done that a lot this week) and when we got up she decided she wanted me to read her her two books for the Summer Reading Challenge so we could take them back. I think she quite liked the idea of being 2 books ahead of Davies 😆 We read them both and then headed to the library so she could do that. It was a new volunteer who didn’t really have much confidence in what he was doing so I had to help him a bit with what he was supposed to be giving her (bookmark and stickers) and he didn’t really ask her much about the books. We then went into the childrens library so she could choose some more books and I read her a story while we were in there. Several small children gravitated towards us while we were doing that to listen in – never sure if it’s because they recognise me from working there or if small children just can’t resist listening to a story being read aloud! I had a quick chat with colleagues and then we headed off with a new pile of books.
There had been loads of emergency vehicles screaming past our house all morning and when we drove to the library we went past massive queues of stationary traffic so I suspected we may have problems coming back and indeed we did. It looked like a lorry had gone over at the traffic lights junction of the A27 so we were diverted through the village and ended up nearly half an hour late to meet Julie.
She’d written a note to us and left it on her car but we’d not looked at her car so spent an hour half looking for them and half picking stuff before we eventually found them. We’d already picked cooking and eating apples and sweetcorn. Scarlett had bonded with a woman and a baby in a sling and small daughter on the tractor riding round so had gone off with them to pick corn. She came back full of information about them having ‘made friends’ :). We caught up with Julie et al at the raspberries just as they were leaving so Julie helped me pick raspberries while we chatted and the 3 older cousins ran off together for a while. Lorna is now properly walking without holding hands and is very cute toddling along looking all pleased with herself :).
We parted and Scarlett and I came home via the supermarket and pet shop for various bits. We had a very late lunch and she went off to play in her room for a bit before coming back and asking me to ‘do something’ with her. I suggested a couple of ideas and she went for baking.
First we decided to make an apple crumble. Ady had picked some blackberries off the brambles in our garden so we used them up and then decided to pick some more. We ended up with a large amount so topped up the apple and blackberry crumble and got that in the oven then decided to make jam with the raspberries we’d picked today at PYO and the rest of the blackberries. Only enough for one jar of each but both lovely :). Scarlett enjoyed the jam making process very much and while I did the washing up and hot stirring she weighed out the stuff for snickerdoodles, then decided she wanted lavendoodles instead so went to pick some lavender. She chopped that up and did most of the making and mixing and we got those in the oven too.
We were interupted by David the Thankyou neighbour calling over with a letter he’d written to the doctors surgery across the road about their staff and patients parking inconsiderately in our road. It was very poorly written, both in terms of content and grammar and spelling but the jist was all there so I signed it and he popped across again later for Ady to do so too.
Ady came home and Scarlett updated him on all we’d done and brought him samples of crumble, jam and lavendoodles to try. He’d brought home some mask templates I’d got him to print off for a competition to win a trip to Marwell so Scarlett spent some time colouring one of those in, then making a costume to match (cheetah) from a white T shirt and then putting dots and whiskers on her face to match too. She did use pen and nail varnish for this so it took some getting off :rolls:
Scarlett finally went to bed after a HUGE pile of books including and and and more.
And now I’m off to bed…can’t wait for the morning 🙂