no particular place to go

Back to work for Ady today and as usual when you take holiday all sorts of things had happened in his absence. Big shake ups afoot there which will likely mean changes for him once again but he is at least in the priviledge position of knowing employment of some sort of pretty much guaranteed. He’s had a product he put forward to QVC accepted too so is waiting for the dates for his next load of shows which is likely to tip our lives upside down again too but I guess it keeps things from getting stale ;).

Davies and Scarlett were keen to reaquaint themselves with the xbox, cartoon network, pens and paper, geomags and other missed things while we’d been away. In fairness I don’t think they’d been remotely missed whilst we’d been away actually but just like me and my laptop once we were home again an overdose was in order 😆

Davies spent some time xboxing and watching Ben 10 while Scarlett brought me a big pile of books to read her. We talked about reading and she tells me she doesn’t want to be taught how to read and she’s not ready yet anyway. She is however very keen on writing things and is asking how to spell words and then copying them again elsewhere. I spent much of today with ‘car’ and ‘cat’ written on my arm. She is unconventional about where she likes to write them :rolls: I notice that out of pretty much nowhere she seems to know most of her letters and the sounds of quite a few. Her printed writing is very neat and her drawing has taken a real leap in improvement lately too although a lot of her art is still fairly abstract. Today she decided to write her name in all the books she could find that had ‘this book belongs to…’ pages at the front :). She’s also learnt to write ‘Davies’ and asked me to spell out ‘this is our book’ to write in one that didn’t have the relevant box but she wanted to brand as theirs :).

Davies got the brio out and they played with that for a while which I then distracted them from to ask whether they wanted to walk round to the shop with me to get flour to make cheese scones for lunch. Davies asked if they could buy some sweets round there so I gave them 50pence each and they both chose kindereggs and spent ages playing with the water pistol squid toys that came inside them. I made cheese scones and chocolate chip peanut butter cookies too. We had lunch and then they went out to play with the chickens while I made various phonecalls, hung out the last of the holiday washing and sat thinking about (and blogging) a September camp. I’ve also booked the hall for both their birthday parties, booked the smear test I must have conjured up the reminder letter for that arrived while we were away by thinking only the other day that it must have been 3 years since the last one and got Davies’ name on the waiting list for Sea Scouts Cubs which he is keen to try instead of Cubs round the corner having dropped Beavers. He couldn’t start until January anyway as they start the term after their 8th birthday despite his 8th birthday being the same week as they go back for Autumn term but was hopeful to fit him in then or Easter term at the latest, so although that is potentially almost a year away at least it’s now sorted and organised :).

My Mum appeared during the afternoon as she had a dentist appointment (they use the same dentist as us, along the road from us) and then she came back again afterwards. She told me about her half marathon midnight walk on Saturday done to raise money for the hospice she works for and we told her all about our holiday and showed her the photos.

I did the children some tea and then Ady arrived home. Davies showed us a storybook he’d made with five drawings (very detailed) telling a Ben 10 story. I suggested he write the words out to tell the story and Ady went one better and promised to bring home some blank books made with the comb binder at work for Davies to create. He liked that idea lots and set to work sketching out his next story which involves an alien attacking London and Ben 10 saving the day :). Ady, Davies and Scarlett spent some time playing that game where one person draws a head and then folds the paper down and passes it to the next person to draw the body who then folds it down and the third person draws the feet. Hilarious results naturally :).

We needed a few bits of food shopping and some cleaning stuff so I went to Sainsburys and Davies decided to join me leaving Ady and Scarlett to tidy up and Scarlett to have a shower and hairwash (she is back to straight, shiny, loose hair for a couple of days after plaits and waves). Her patches do seem to be finally healing up although I wonder if sunshine and sea air has played more of a role in that than the ABs but tomorrow is swimming lessons so hopefully the chemicals in the pool won’t make it flare up again. The original patch on her leg has stopped being itchy and reached a point where I can treat it with bio oil as there is no longer any broken skin, the ones on her bum and top of her leg are still itching and she is trying hard but not always managing not to scratch.

Davies and I had a lovely half an hour wandering round the supermarket together chatting. He went off to look at the magazines while I queued up and paid and had selected one for him and one that Scarlett would like and as tomorrow is payday and I had enough change over from the food I let him buy them. Scarlett was delighted and they have both gone to bed clutching them. Ady and I had said how fab they both were last week at not expecting or demanding all sorts of things while we were away and actually a comic each is a usual holiday treat which we’d not done.

On the way out I was looking at a new dvd and Davies said he’d seen the trailer for it and it looked quite good. He was telling me it was about a girl who was ugly and loved someone so kept her face hidden so he wouldn’t see it but at the end something magical happened and she was beautiful and they all lived happily ever after. I asked him if he thought he would like someone more if they were beautiful and whether he’d not like someone because they were ugly and without hesitation he claimed it didn’t matter what people look like it is what sort of person they are that counts. I then asked him what he thought would be the most important thing when he was an adult and he said ‘being happy’ so we talked about other things such as how rich you are, what your house is like, what car you drive, what your job is, if you are married. He said jobs are important but only because making sure you are doing a job you love is really important and that he thought being married would make you happier as you’d have someone to laugh and talk with. We then talked about whether having children made you happier or not. He thought it would as it would be another person as well as your husband or wife to spend time with and he thinks loving people makes you happy. He also thought that when your child is grown up if you can look at them and see they are happy and doing well that would make you feel very proud that you had created that person and they were someone to be impressed with. Those are pretty much his exact words and of course that little speech made me well up. I’m guessing it is all stuff he has heard said but he really meant it all and it was so deep and heartfelt it really touched me :).

We then talked about whether you’d know what you were missing if you didn’t have children as I said I thought people who chose not to be parents (rather than those who desperately wanted to be but never were) would indeed not have those moments of happiness that parenthood brings but they wouldn’t know to miss them. And that not having children would probably make for an easier life with less complications. That somehow led onto HE and we talked about friends we know who are struggling with HE at the moment and what they are finding tough, how things have improved for us since the last to do we had a while back and why Davies thinks school is a very poor and illogical option against Home Education. Of course he only has autonomy to compare it with although we’ve talked about structured HE and the school at home model this makes no sense at all to him 😆 He is very articulate in his argument and that pleases me as although his views are so very clearly shaped by my own he truly believes them and can speak quite eloquently now on his own behalf about why it is working for him :). As he bustled into the house desperate to present Scarlett with the magazine he’d chosen for her he was still shaking his head at the idea of a downside of HE being too much time spent with siblings too as for him this is not only the norm but again something that makes perfect sense – why on earth wouldn’t he want to spend as much time as possible with his sister who he loves, gets on well with and plays better with than most everyone else he knows.

Of course we are now destined to have a series of awful days with me threatening school by the end of the week but it was one of those makes it all worthwhile times when everything from motherhood in the first place to staying at home to do HE all falls into place when reflected back in the words and gestures of my seven year old. He was right, having children does indeed bring moments when you are proud and happy and you don’t have to wait til they’re adults to feel it :).

Bath, dinner and watching Into the wild for Ady and I although he didn’t stick out the whole of the film. Tomorrow I have various planned options including PYO farm for strawberries, Ady might be taking Scarlett up to QVC to deliver something with him if it arrives in time for them to get back here for swimming lessons in which case I’ve promised Davies I’ll take him and his bike to the park, I want to buy some trainers and it’s swimming lessons too.