Onwards and upwards…

I’d meant to come back here yesterday to boast that I had indeed done some thank you cards with the children so we could tick off reading and writing too but wine, a bubble bath, my turn to cook dinner and the last double bill episodes of series one of Lost all contrived to keep me away.

Ady left at 5.30am today for a day trip to the place (in Leicestershire somewhere) he is away all week at next week, I’d asked him to wake me to say goodbye which he did and I had only just fallen back to sleep at about 6am when Tarly woke. She stood at the bottom of the stairs yelling for Ady and shrieked at me everytime I appeared or called to her. After about 10 minutes during which time she stamped her feet, yelled in rage, tried being devastated, gave up and was merely a bit cross and then went silent for a good five minutes before saying in a very sweet and girly voice ‘Mummy? Please could you come downstairs and give me my milk please?’ Noisy but effective 😉 Of course this all woke Davies too so I sorted them out for milk and breakfast and then told them they could watch whatever they wanted on TV if they were quiet and let me doze on the sofa (I am completely ineffective at anything at all before 8am, regardless of what time I went to bed, and of course last night it was later than ususal anyway.). So we did that 🙂

Then Tarly did some painting and drawing while Davies played on the Nick Jr site, the Cbeebies site and Bear & Penguins Maths Adventure in the playroom. Then Tarly ended up snuggled up on my lap so I grabbed some books from her shelves and we read a book full of fairy tales – Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the 3 bears which she really enjoyed.

My Dad then appeared having been in the area and was followed about a minute later by Ady arriving home for the day. We took the opportunity of him being here to ring yet another of the scary finance related people and for once I came away feeling really quite hopeful that all is not as scary as we had feared and at the very least we have bought ourselves some serious consideration time in which to decide what we *really* want to do with our lives. Feeling quite excited although I’m not yet sure what about really! Anyway, facing the whole financial stuff in a renascent way again, which is good – this week has not been a good one for all things cash wise really. Despite only having left the house once and getting my whole week’s shopping so cheap.

The children then played some highly imaginative game involving rearranging their cube table and chairs into a bus and decorating it with wikkisticks. They seemed to have a very clear idea of what their aim was and were working together towards it so we left them to it and watched a guess the year show on one of the music channels.

Then the children had a bath and I read the rest of the bookpeople version of LW&W which Davies has really enjoyed. He was sitting and retelling it to Ady afterwards and aside from a little mix up between the words Aslan and Narnia (and when he explained that he’d thought it was Asland it sort of made sense really!) he seemed to have got the jist of it. Might well see it on dvd when it comes out but I don’t think it would hold him enough at the cinema.

While Ady and Davies were chatting about that I persuaded Tarly to let me brush her hair so she is looking princessy rather than hobo again – well until tomorrow anyway 😉 I’ve sort of given up battling with her and about once a week she will sit and let me do it and will tolerate it being plaited or otherwise tied up in the meantime so I can live with her not being the immaculate little doll I had cherished hopes of! While we were doing it there was a love songs show on the music channel which seemed to mainly consist of couples walking hand in hand along beaches (hadn’t realised quite how overdone that scene is in love song music videos til now!) and she was asking me how come the man was walking along the beach and shouldn’t he be at work!! It struck me that in most of the homes she spends any amount of time in the Daddy does indeed go out to work and the Mummy is at home doing HE with the children – which is not to say that the Mummy’s don’t work infact several of our friends work from home. Don’t know why it made me feel a little uncomfortable that she so vehemently insisted that it is *always* the man who goes ‘out’ to work but I do think I need to read her some stories to redress the princess / mummy / defenceless maiden balance somewhat. Not that I’d be in any way disappointed if she never did anything other than married well and went out to lunch, but it would be nice for her to know she has not failed if she simply has to earn her own shopping money 😉

Early night for both of them as we are indeed venturing out of the house again tomorrow, meeting up with Julie and weather permitting we’re off for a wintery walk. Infact I was looking at an excellent page on the bbc website about outdoor ideas for activities so I might have another look at that in the morning and see if we can do something slightly more obviously educational while we’re at it.