I do sometimes worry that Davies and Scarlett will grow up thinking it is quite usual to be in the media. When Ady was on QVC regularly they were so blase about it they used to turn over to watch Cartoon Network instead. When Scarlett used to be up in the night every night and Ady would stick the TV on for her to watch while he made himself a coffee she once called him in saying ‘Daddy telly!’ and sure enough there he was from a TV show he was in when we lived in Manchester (docu soap type show on the shopping centre we worked in). Davies has experienced the whole TV studios / make up bit and been interviewed on radio and of course we featured on tv, radio and newspapers over the whole bubble blowing thing last year, aswell as them being in the local paper for their litter walk. In the last year we’ve seen Ali and Freya on tv and the papers and radio, Tasha and Toby in the paper, listened to Merry on the radio, seen the Fishes in all sorts of places, listened to Jo on the radio and Davies certainly is old enough to remember Anna on Different Life and Katy and Becca on the TV show they did too.
So listening to Jo today at lunchtime and then watching Newsround with the Fishes later on today wasn’t a big deal but then to Davies and Scarlett selective mutism and Extreme Exchanges aren’t big deals anyway, just things they know about in relation to their friends, subjects we’ve chatted about and part of their lives in some small way. Funny how so many of their circle have been newsworthy and not even all in relation to Home Ed though. We’re always very proud of how well our friends come across though and today was no exception – thought Jo (and indeed Poppy!) did great and The Fish and the magic sofa were excellent :).
I was busy being efficient this morning and did four loads of laundry, blogged over on selfsuffish, found out abut ice skating, rang Julie and spent some time researching campsites for our planned Scotland trip. Davies did some Xboxing and Scarlett spent some time on the pc playing the Roar game on cbbc website. She also spent some time making beasts and getting Davies to read the descriptions to her. At the moment we’re going for showing her as many opportunities as possible when being able to read would be a great advantage – fortunately there are ample examples several times a day and this demonstrated loads. With Scarlett she needs to conclude herself that something is worth the effort rather than being told by someone else it is.
Davies showed me the game he is playing loads on Xbox – called Blinx which he is enjoying and I could see the lure of and then we had lunch.
The kids had sandwiches, pretzels and fruit salad and I warmed up some leftover pizza before discovering the unpleasantness that was a tipped over carton of cream in the fridge that had gone all yucky and took lots of clearing up 🙁 We had an avian interlude when the crazy hen scaled the fence to get into the logs and the cockerel went mental and after squarking flew up to follow her. I resuced them both and shut her in the dark house to lay which seemed to work.
Scarlett told me she was all out of audiobooks and asked if we could go to the library to get some more. I’d had an email from the important librarian to say the budget had been approved for buying Chatterbooks supplies so we headed to the pound shop to get clipboards and felt tips before going to the library to drop them off, claim back the money and get Tarly’s audio books. I had a quick catch up with my boss who is back at work and congratulated a colleague who has just got another job so will be leaving soon.
Scarlett pulled out a pile of picture books and as we already had a towering pile of audiobooks to fill her ticket up with I offered to sit and read them to her there so we could leave them at the library. Davies spent the time sorting through the shelf of picture books for older readers selecting books with interesting illustrations for the second Chatterbooks session as he and I had been talking about what I have planned and I’d been getting his feedback on my ideas.
Once home I went to the kitchen to get dinner going for Ady and I (a lump of beef cut off of yesterday’s joint cut and cooked up to make steak pie filling along with Hugh’s rough puff pastry) and took requests for dinner for Davies and Scarlett who ended up with bacon and potato shapes.
Ady came home, we all watched Newsround and then I read a couple of chapters from .
Davies has reappeared downstairs and we’ve had a lovely hour reading blogs, talking about all sorts of deep, meaning-of-life type stuff and doing early hours of the morning hanging out. He’s very easy company is Davies, despite the fact he really should have been asleep hours ago…