New brooms, this room, sweep clean

So Ady went back to work today and much as I missed him it was sort of nice to return to normality a bit. In many ways I’d love to have him home more, or infact all the time, but because he’s not and it is a temporary state there are irritations which would be sorted out if we knew it was a forever state. The children are not that well behaved when he is around, they order him about, play on the fact he is not 100% up to all their tricks and aware of what they can and can’t do and of course they try and play us off against each other. What then ends up happening is I get cast as the ogre because my usual rules and standards of behaviour still stand but they try and push it that bit further with Ady, who ever conscious of being Fun Parent and Limited Period Only tends to let them get away with more than I do. Anyway…

Spent the first hour of the day cuddled up on the sofa with both children, we watched The Backyardigans which is a firm favourite with both children – both to sit and watch and then to recreate again later. They often draw pictures of the characters and wander round singing the songs from the show. I actually quite like it too – not sure why as it offends many of my all singing, all dancing animals wearing clothes and being the wrong colour type sensibilities but I do think it is well thought out and covers lots of educational spin off type stuff. Infact if I was of a mind to do so I could probably create a curriculum based on it! 😉 But I’m a bit busy creating my alternative to Flylady one just now, so I’ll have to put it on the back (yardigan) burner.

The children then put C&TCF on for some Oompa Lumpa dancing while I had a quick catch up online and dug out that inspirational piece about animals starting a school again to remind me why I want to HE the way I do. Might ponder more on that later, then again I might not! Ady and I did some trillianing (very Paul and Linda I know, barely 2 hours apart and we needed to catch up! 😉 ) and then we whizzed round the house getting dressed and tidied before Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived at 10am.

The children were as I had fretted they might be and far from gracious hosts really. Richard is 9 months old and classically ‘into everything’ so Davies trying to put on a magic show and Tarly trying to build something from sticklebricks was never going to be peaceful. Scarlett veered between wanting desperatly to play with Rebecca and insisting she was ‘not allowed’ to touch any of her toys :rolls: and they both kept talking across me and Lucy every time we tried to have a conversation. Rebecca is fairly shy so was clinging to Lucy’s legs which was challenging for her when she was trying to breastfeed Richard or remove him from eating sticklebricks! But we managed a bit of a chat somehow 😉 We had some lunch – gastronomes that we are Lucy had brought star shaped peanut butter sandwiches to which I added chocolate spread star shaped sandwiched and cheesy footballs, and then got everyone wellied and coated up and headed to the park. Davies was stroppy because I wouldn’t push him on the baby swings for very long (he’s really too big now and refused to do the swing thing with his legs so his feet were scuffing the ground all the time and also Rebecca kept running infront of the swings so I was cautious of getting him too high that I couldn’t grab him and stop the swing if she darted infront of it) so he was skulking about looking like a kid playing truant! Did some different life musing type chatting inbetween and then walked home and they left. Lucy is really keen to foster the friendship between Scarlett and Rebecca and is also keen to get time to do stuff with Rebecca that she used to do before she had Richard so we have a bit of a plan to go to their house next time and if Scarlett is up for being left there to play for a while then Davies and I can head off. They live in town and are near to the beach, the swimming pool, the shops and the main library so there is plenty of stuff me and Davies could have a great time doing if Tarly is receptive to going there to play for a morning. Rebecca is definitely not ready to leave Lucy’s side but I could probably tolerate babysitting Richard for a few hours too every so often and actually Davies would probably quite enjoy helping to ‘look after him’. We’ve made an arrangement to see each other the same day every fortnight (in an Ali style forward planning sorta way!) so we’ll see how that pans out. I think it might be good for Tarly to spend time with a gentler soul sometimes – she is so used to either being with Davies or the equally feisty small girls she is friends with that she can be a bit overpowering for same age girls who are quieter, so putting her in their environment rather than her own and taking away the ‘back up’ of Davies might be an interesting experiment providing she is comfortable with it and enjoys it.

Once home the children settled back infront of C&TCF again so instead of going online I made a cup of tea and retired to Tarly’s room to give it a really good tidy and sort out. I didn’t seem to actually get rid of much – although I have earmarked a whole shelf of books to be disposed of when she’s not looking as they are just too babyish to be read to her anymore and I don’t even think they will be suitable for early readers for either of them, besides which we have pretty much every early reader scheme the Book People have put out so I think we have that area covered anyway! Are we doing any sort of Melrose bring and buy – they might be good for that… Anyway it felt productive just the same and looked tidier to the point that Ady noticed and remarked as soon as he came in. 🙂

Tomorrow the plan is to do Davies’ although that looks to be a slightly more mammoth task. It needs redecorating although we already have the paint so I just need to remind Dad to do it while we’re at Melrose and he can do it uninterupted by little people. I’m sitting in it now debating having a move round of the furniture again to better fit in the colleseum and fort that seem to be dominating it at the moment and there is a dark corner where toys go to die aswell as 3 micro machines which I just know don’t have the right bits and pieces in each one and these are the sorts of things that bother me! 😉 Thursday I want to do the two bathrooms and then I will have done every room in the house over a month period as I did the kitchen cupboards and my wardrobe just before Christmas. The final task is the hall which only consists of a coat rack, shoe boxes and a book case, but oh what overcrowded areas they all are. There are coats long outgrown or out of season on the rack which need ebaying, clothes banking or storing til the Spring, shoes which need binning, cleaning or putting away for the summer and the books may take a week all by themselves to sort. 🙂

While doing Tarly’s room the children appeared and carted the Dora house off to play with, then both came back and sat on Tarly’s bed and asked me to tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood using a doll Tarly has had for years with LRRH on one side and the Granny / Wolf at the other end, so I did that to their delight :-). They had their tea watching Backyardigans again yhen to achieve my final goal of the day I started reading them a Book People version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe while they were in their bath. I don’t really like bathtime and now they are bigger I tend to leave them to it a bit and just bumble around doing other stuff while keeping an eye / ear on them (bathroom is downstairs so that is not as casual as it sounds!) but I could get to love it if they would sit so captivated every night! Scarlett was not quite so enthralled as Davies and wanted to see the pictures for every other sentence but Davies really took it all in and even repeated some of it back to me and wanted more although he then started watching Little Bear when he got out of the bath so it was forgotten. I don’t think he’d be ready for it as a cinema film but perhaps when it comes out on dvd we’ll look at it if he continues to enjoy it.

And that was the day really. Nice, a little frustrating, very productive and over all a good one 🙂 Also very cheap!

Tomorrow will be less cheap as we are off to the Soft Play place with Julie so admission and lunch will be costly, but as they would normally be at TT tomorrow that is a tenner we’re ‘saving’. I’m doing some pondering about the future of TT at the moment too but I’ll save that one for another day.