My mother will start to worry, my father will be pacing the floor…

And it’s not that warm indoors either!

The crappiest of crappy nights was had, Davies stayed awake til an unheard of 10.30pm insisting he had heard ghosts talking to him and nasty eyes hiding in his Christmas tree (which really freaked Ady out, that man should never have watched Sixth Sense!) and by 10.40 Scarlett was awake 🙁 I sat with her til just gone midnight before bringing her up to bed with me and we more or less slept. Poor Ady was up to work at 6am but me and Scarlett slept fitfully til Davies woke us at 8am. Hence three very tired, in various stages of cold lurgy folk have been here today.

In fairness we have probably all done pretty well considering all the above. Adamant I would not stay in all day with them I braved Sainsburys this morning and whilst they were not angels they were pretty well behaved really. We always start in the fruit and veg aisle as a positive and blissful example of HE at it’s best, with my children naming the produce, helping to count carrots, pointing out the colours of things and putting stuff in the trolley for me. After the cold shock of the chilled section of meat, butter and yoghurts (and generally a couple of ‘no you can’t’s to various dairy related overpriced, Cbeebies character branded desserts things are normally flagging, and by wines, beers and spirits we are in need of breaking something open there and then to fortify us and raise the mood to get round the bakery, morning goods and frozen foods! So today I controlled Davies with an air of menace (well okay a bribe that he could play whatever he liked when we got home if he was good) and Scarlett with a dummy! Managed to get a fair few bits for Christmas too – stuff like chocolate coins, candy canes, some 3 for 2 stocking fillers like Thomas and Fimbles jelly sweets and so on.

Home for lunch and they both ate quite well which makes a change. We then settled down to some fairly educational play with the puzzles. Scarlett due to her cold and mammoth sleep deficit is like a toddler with PMT (and snot!) so veered wildly from being pleased with herself for doing it, to cuddling on my knee to at one point having a total hissy fit about the direction of Pilchards tail on a Bob the Builder puzzle), she is also being really mean to Davies and keeps smacking him and denying him any time with me (no! MY Mummy!), he in return is simply being nicer than ever to her and keeps fetching things to try and pacify her (ooh, that relationship sounds familiar, yes, wait, it’s me and Ady 😀 ) . But we battled on and Tarly managed some transport puzzles, some two piece very basic animal puzzles (but named the animals, the sounds they make and the bright colours on the background) and a complicated 3y+ jungle animal one with help, as well as the doomed Bob puzzle. She is at the stage of being handed the next piece still really as she gets quickly frustrated with it if she believes a bit goes somewhere and it doesn’t, but she is getting there!

Davies has done his big long Space puzzle with all the solar system on it. He did it pretty much by himself with my helping him along by telling him to look at the picture on the box, tell me what colour the next planet is, what letter does it start with (they are all labelled) and helping him that way. All pretty educational I think 🙂

I have in the last half hour managed to break away from being Lap Mummy (thanks Kipper 🙂 ) to write the job list for the week, answer a couple of emails and a phonecall and I think I should now get some tea sorted for them before they either fall asleep where they are sitting or decide they need phyical contact with me at all times again and do the cuddling my leg while I cook thing!

Probably more later…