One word? When seven would do…

I worked in the morning, Ady dropped Davies and Scarlett off with Julie.

Work was good, I like Wednesday mornings as they are very busy with all the delivery to unpack and the books leaving to get packed up. Wednesday is often the biggest delivery of the week as it tends to be the day that books reserved on Saturday arrive. We have four staff, two of whom are called Sarah. When I was at school about the half the class were always called Sarah, Nicola or James, clearly the most popular name choices back in 1974. It’s comforting to be at work with two Sarahs and a James 😆

I topped up my Jean Auel display which is proving popular – will get a photo of it tomorrow. I had a visit from one of the librarians to apologise in person for the whole Chatterbooks debacle on Monday and she showed me the email from one of the senior people that had been alluded to in an email I’d had and I was quite curious to see myself. It was very complimentary which was nice and the only real criticism was that I wasn’t perhaps aware of the ‘after school baggage’ that attendees come along with. An interesting, and true point I’d raised myself but for me yet another reason why we shouldn’t be trying to do an ambitious programme straight after school on a weekly basis.

I nipped into the book shop to pick up a couple of the WBD books as I know they sell out pretty fast and then drove over to collect Davies and Scarlett.

They’d had a lovely morning with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna including a trip to Arundel to walk round the lake. They were all very muddy of trouser, rosy of cheek and bright of eyes thanks to some fresh air, exercise and time to be crazy with cousins :). I stopped for a cup of tea and a chat with Julie.

Home again for a very quick turn around of scoffing some of my hot cross buns and getting changed from work clothes into clothes that would see me through standing around on Brighton seafront for a few hours and then standing around inside the Brighton centre for a few more hours, then jumping up and down, singing and dancing pressed very close to many, many other people for a few hours- tricky wardrobe dilemma that, but never one where the answer is jeggings.

Ady and the kids dropped me off in Brighton and I walked through the lanes down to the seafront. I had a plan to find a coffee shop to sit in nearby and kill a couple of hours (they dropped me off as the parking costs more than the Mika ticket, it’s cutting it a bit too close for the last train home and I’d have to walk 15 minutes from the station through Lancing at night which isn’t nice. But they needed to be back in Worthing for Badgers so had to drop me off early). But when I got to the seafront there were already about 15 people standing around queuing. At which point I decided if I was killing time anyway I might as well do it in a queue really. So I chatted to the teenagers and their Mum (she didn’t stay) next to me for a bit who didn’t really believe me that I had a friend coming to meet me and kept saying things like ‘but do you, like feel that like all of us are your friends, joined in love for Mika and that?’ and sounded *just* like Catherine Tate’s Lauren.

I was very glad when Ros arrived nearly 1.5 hours later 🙂 and I was able to prove I really did have a friend! We spent the next hour in the queue catching up and finally got let in. Last time we went they were pretty good at maintaining the queue order from outside so being very near the front of the queue meant you were first in. This time they had several entrances open and it was a bit of a free for all when the doors opened. I was slightly pissed off that having been about 15th from the front we still ended up about four people deep back from the very front – we should really have made it to the actual front row. But we still had an excellent spot and when I looked behind us afterwards I realised just how many layers deep the standing crowd went.

We made friends with Colin and Emma who were standing nearby, to the extent that Ros ended up giving them a lift home as it was on her way and they were cutting it fine for the last train home. Lovely couple 🙂 although Colin did seem to have a very weak bladder ;).

So we stood for a further hour or so, then the support act came on and did about 5 songs. The drummer was very pleasing to observe but the music was not at all to my taste and just made me feel old. A further half an hour or so and then finally, a mere five hours after I first joined the queue outside Mika came on 🙂

He was fantastic, put on a fab show, sang wonderfully and utterly entertained us for the whole 90 minutes he was on. It was utterly fabulous, over the top, crazy costumes, glitter and balloons falling from the ceiling, women plucked from the stage door earlier in the evening paraded on stage with corsets and fancy headgear and we very quickly forgot our aching feet and need to have a wee and jumped up and down and sang our hearts out along with him. I was quite hoarse this morning :).

Ady and the kids picked me up and on getting in the car I realised just how tired I was. The kids went to bed as soon as we got in, I had a bath and ate the shepherds pie Ady had made for me before stumbling up to bed myself.

Today was a day with rather too many ‘in a minute…’ and ‘not right now…’s in it. Hate them as I always look back and wonder just what it was that could possibly have been more important than spending time with someone asking to spend time with me :(. Fortunately they don’t happen very often.

I was off to a bad start really by sleeping in Very Late Indeed. Davies had been up for a while but Scarlett woke even later than me. I did pledge to try and sort out their late nights but despite best efforts Tarly was very late falling asleep again even if she was in bed at a very early hour. That could of course have rather a lot to do with rising so late. An early morning tomorrow should combat that factor tomorrow at least.

Davies and Scarlett played Zoombinis for a while. They both have a game on the go now but still tend to play sat side by side co-operating and working together. I put some hot cross bun dough in the breadmaker to cook – Ady made some at the weekend which came out pretty well and challenged me to do better. I think we both agreed I have 😉 I did crosses and sugar glaze and everything and they came out really well. Scarlett helped with putting crosses on and dissolving the sugar to paint on.

Scarlett and I walked round the shop together to get some bread and milk and she selected some sweets for them both which she intended paying for but I paid for as I was so touched by her gesture. We had lunch and I spent some time, okay a lot of time batting emails back and forth with library people about Chatterbooks. As I predicted my email yesterday had put the cat among the pigeons rather and I had various reponses apologising, thanking me for what I had done so far and offering all sorts of help and assistance for the coming weeks. It won’t have won me any friends I suspect but I’ve never been that bothered about things like that ;).

I did some of a wooden doll making kit with Scarlett and helped Davies dye his wig orange using a mix of different coloured hair gels.

I also did a fair bit of looking at various local museums etc and booking places for Davies and Scarlett in some events and activities and workshops. Some for the Easter holidays, some for the summer half term and a couple for the Summer holidays aswell as a couple of Home Ed specific events over the next few months. The diary is filling up very pleasingly :).

Then it was time for swimming. The kids both had good lessons I think, we arrived a little late so I only had about 50 minutes swimming factoring in the brief pause inbetween their lessons when I have to wave at Carolyn the instructor as she releases Scarlett from her lesson and to get out of the pool and put my snapped necklace safely with my towel. Aside from my wedding ring, eternity ring and another ring which belonged to my grandma I only have two real pieces of jewellry – a necklace that Ady bought me for the first birthday we were together (20th) and a bracelet which my parents bought me for my 21st birthday. Both are now wearing very thin on every link and I suspect should now be either cashed in for scrap value and something else bought instead or put away and kept for sentimental reasons. The cost of having gold added to each link would be utterly prohibitive and I really should stop wearing them before they break and get lost.

So, digression about jewellry aside, I managed 42 lengths in my 50 minutes which is well over half what I need to swim in well under half the time I’ve allowed so bodes well for my sponsored efforts next month :). If you have already sponsored me thankyou very much, I’ve been really chuffed with getting so many sponsors so quickly. If you haven’t and would like to then please do, it’ll be ever so appreciated :).

Back home again Ady had just beaten us home so took over the kids tea while I lit the fire. In honour of the Chatterbooks film / book task I read some Cat in the Hat for bedtime stories as Scarlett is comparing the film and the book.

And now, to bed.

I wanted to take the jeggings back today. I felt slightly embarrassed about having bought them at all so wanted to reclaim the cash and pretend the whole sorry incident had never happened. Women of a certain size of a certain age should really get over themselves as far as following fashion is concerned, particularly when they have both economical constraints and ecological ethics about buying stuff they don’t need in the first place.

So, breakfasted, dressed, chickens dealt with and a minor diversion in the form of Zoombinis we dashed into town to return them. I did reinvest the money in some deodrant, having done long and fairly scientific testing into different types of aluminium free deodrant I have a definite favourite in Tisserand. I never sniffed under my arms or the armpits of my clothes before and suspect I have even become slightly unhealthily obsessed with whether I stink or not but I am aware that the claim of ‘slow release’ on Tisserand is indeed true and when reaching out to put a book back on a high shelf even in the late afternoon at work I get a waft of lavendar or lemongrass on days that I have used that. So having checked online P&P charges and checked the nearest stockists I was able to combine a trip into town to remove jeggings from my life and pretend they never existed (I won’t admit to it you know, if anyone mentions jeggings in my presence I shall snort with derision and ask ‘what’s a jegging?!’ as if I have no idea) with collecting anti-reek potions.

We also got some batteries for Davies’ Cube World which he’s been asking for for weeks and Scarlett persuaded me to buy her this really rather lovely book from the Works reduced from £17.99 to £3.99

We bumped into The Thankyou Neighbours (all three of them, David, Joyce on her mobility scooter and Annette / Jeannette in full on sparkly jeans finery) who insisted on kissing us in the street, apologised for not bring our wheelie bins back in to our back garden and asked me to pass on the message to Ady that David has a tenner to donate to Pompey should they need it (they do). The kids later berated me for not mentioning the highly amusing rear windscreen sticker in David’s car that had me crying with laughter when I noticed it last week ‘get off my ass’. If ever there was a person least likely to say such a phrase it is David. It’s become our new family motto it amused me so much.

We had discussions about choosing what to spend money on, investment purchases rather than ‘for the sake of it’ or instant gratification purchases and I used the sorry tale of the jeggings to illustrate my point. They have almost come in handy now.

Back home again for lunch, further Zoombini-ing, Cube World re-birth and plenty of looking at Scarlett’s new book.

I remembered an event at the local cinema I’d tried to book online last night and failed and after a final asking Scarlett changed her mind from definitely not wanting to go to actually really rather liking the idea so I booked tickets for all four of us for the Mad Hatters Tea Party Gala Event on Friday night. It includes fancy dress competition and parade, tea and cakes, eat me, drink me taste testing, Pixar mini-films and the premiere of Alice in Wonderland. We’re all quite excited and think it will be fab :).

Much googling for images later I showed Davies and Scarlett the 2010 incarnations of the Mad Hatter and Alice. They disappeared and Davies re-emerged with a magicians top hat, wig and waistcoat as a start. We talked about what we’d need to get them fancy-dressed up accordingly and headed into Lancing to raid the charity shops. We got a blue nightie for Scarlett which with a sticky-out dress underneath, a scarf round the middle and some stitches in the shoulder will pass very well for 19 year old Alice’s version of the blue dress. We’ll plait her hair the night before to get the crazy wavy wiggles in it. For Davies we found a crazily patterned adults shirt which will make a perfect jacket, a scarf of mine will make a bow tie and we just need to die the wig orange to have him looking like a Johnny Depp mini-me (steady girls 😉 ).

And so to Chatterbooks. I’ll document it all here for my own reference. My plan was rhyming stories and books today with the idea of a group poem about Chatterbooks as the activity. I’d already printed off various Dr Seuss worksheets, got in loads of books including some of the titles helpfully suggested by friends on brightkite and facebook that I’d familiarised myself with in advance.

I was expecting the children’s librarian today and was hoping she’d arrive early enough for a briefing you do that, I’ll do this type chat as the session was going to require a fair level of support in places, having 13 children of very different abilities and personality types. But no one turned up. Ady said to me tonight I should have just cancelled it which didn’t even occur to me as an idea.

So I ploughed on. We started with a catch up of books we are reading; this doesn’t really work, as indeed few of the group chatting ideas seem to, possibly because the group is that bit too large so some children are happy to chatter away while others are really daunted.

Then I talked a bit about poetry and rhyming in books – Dr Seuss who makes up whole stories around rhymes, Roald Dahl who’s done some great retelling of stories in rhyme and made the odd song or poem in his books (the centipede in James and the Giant Peach was one of my favourite bits of poetry as a child), limerick style such as Lear’s nonsense and stories written in verse. I read some of Lear’s work and we talked about how limericks work, which lines rhyme with which and who often the same word is repeated to rhyme in lines one and five.

Then I said I’d like us to come up with our own poem about Chatterbooks including all of us. We talked about words that rhymed with our names, if none did then other words that rhymed with things about us – eg girl or boy, where we lived, what our hobbies were, how old we were etc. As a group we came up with loads of rhymes for names, girl, boy, seven, eight and nine (the kids ages), Lancing and so on. This was the point I need support really as I had a couple of kids who totally got it and went off and wrote very credible rhymes and limericks about themselves and some others who were totally capable but needed more support and guidance. I had the usual toilet run issue with about five of them who all decided they needed to go ‘right now’ and two sets of boys who thought it was fun to scribble on each others work.

I did mention once again that noone had to be there, it was not school and my requirement was that they were there because they wanted to be and if they wanted to be there then I expected them to participate, cooperate and not be disruptive otherwise they could bring their adult to me at the end and we could arrange for them not to bother coming again. I hate tarring school and schoolchildren with any sort of brush but I really do see the difference with this group of kids who either by dint of pushy parents or genuine love of books are there after school but can be hard work with the home ed kids I know who just love these sorts of event and squeeze every last drop of value from them.

I then read -amazing how all 13 children are suddenly quiet and enraptured when I start reading, maybe I should just do that for an hour each week? while they all thought about a few rhyming words before going round the circle to see what they’d come up with.

We had a perfect recreation of a limerick which was then uncovered to have been one learnt in school rather than one made up there and then (like I care!), two very good poems doing precisely what I asked for of including the child themselves, several good lists of words that rhyme with names, a good poem about the days of the week that was no use for the exercise we were doing, a picture of ponies from pony obsessed girl who rarely does anything other than draw ponies, a couple of rhyming couplets from Davies, some silly rhymes including poo and smelly from some of the boys and that was about it.

So we talked about about what I wanted- some words that rhymed about or to do with each child. I made one of the more difficult children feel uncomfortable (and frankly good!) when all he could come up with were words that weren’t even words.I then said that was fine as long as if you were going to make up a word you also made up a meaning and read them a big chunk of Dr Seuss which perfectly illustrates this idea with made up words (or letters) and their definitions. So we then all guessed what we thought the words he came up with might be – creature, vehicle, noise and so on for him to guess. I noticed Davies and Scarlett being particularly good at this.

We broke out the biscuits and I talked to all the parents about the book and dvd loans -I’d paired up films and books for loan and got clearance for free one week dvd loan vouchers to give out so did that while making clear the films need to be back next week otherwise will incur fines, got the parents to have input in kids choice of book / film and explained we will be talking about them in 2 weeks regarding the differences between book and film as I really do want to foster greater discussion in the group and the kids sharing stuff about books and reading.

I was incredibly cross about there not being a librarian, spent nearly an hour putting the library back together, left the washing up of the juice cups and came home to fire off a fire shirty email to various high up people along the lines of having been disappointed to not deliver as good a session this week due to being alone and needing to know if that would remain the case for subsequent sessions as I would have to replan accordingly if so. I suspect that will have got people into trouble and pissed them off but I was pretty pissed off myself. I got a speedy reply from the most senior person to say she ‘d not been aware there would not be a librarian there and had emailed them to find out what was happening and if need be would support the rest herself!

Am calmer about the whole thing now and quite philosophical about my own slightly ambitious ideas and how feasible they are. I definitely have a skewed view of 7-9year olds. Literacy wise my children are way down the bottom end of the ability range but free thinking, creativity and the ability to voluntarily participate and get something out of the sessions they and most of the other children I know are just streets ahead.

The teachers pet, showy off types probably antagonise me more than the ones who don’t join in at all and a definite error, even with a second supporter has been that the group size is too large. I have a plan for next week though and hope that might mix things up a bit.

While I did all this and then got dinner on for the kids they played Zoombinis and then ate – mild versions of the tacos and fajitas Ady and I had later as they have expressed interest in global cuisine.

We don’t have anything suitable for bedtime reading as the most recent borrowings from the library are slave related thanks to a reservation frenzy after reading Michelle’s recent blogpost, so I read some picture books Scarlett had brought home instead.

Bedtime was very protracted as both kids joined me in the bathroom while I was in the bath to talk about what school is like, whether I thought being a parent was better or worse than being childless and the pros and cons of both. Interesting stuff.

Ady and I finally had dinner, watched Australian Masterchef and now I am very yawny indeed.

I woke to the smell of curry this morning, which is slightly odd on a Sunday morning these days (not at all so odd a few years ago) as Ady was cooking up one of the dishes ready to freeze for an Indian Extravaganza of cooking for next Saturday night when we have Mike and Rose over for a night of not swinging with Indian food.

Scarlett spent about 90 minutes in the bath playing, she experimented with some of her bath bombs and took about three cuddly toys in with her to keep her company and get thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed :). Davies, meanwhile was wanting to play Zoombinis. We got two of the three discs working but the third was being very tricky. I finally worked out it was because it was expecting the game to launch from the disc drive it had been installed from several years ago which is now defunct (the first laptop we had which was dropped and the d drive broken so it now operates with an external disc drive), so had to uninstall it and start again which got it working. Am always pleased when I not only manage to fix a problem but actually understand it too :).

Scarlett emerged, wrinkly, from her bath and sat and watched Davies. Between them I think they actually completed two of the whole games. Nice listening to them working together and really grasping some of the concepts. They don’t spent much time at all on pcs which I don’t think it a bad thing, particularly as they do spend a fair bit of time on DSs but it’s good to see them appreciating the resource and it’s possibilities.

We had lunch and Ady got the roast dinner on in a very low oven. I retrieved several eggs from the hen house, they are really getting into laying now and we’re getting a good 3 or more eggs most days, looking forward to that getting closer to 6 or even 8 a day in the height of the summer :). It is nice not to have to buy eggs again.

Towards the end of last year there was a movement in Worthing towards becomming a Transition Town. I looked into it a bit at the time and was impressed and thought I’d like to get involved but it came around the same time as my Lookering and the WPA course so I wasn’t in a position to take on anything else really. Caz and Bid reminded us about the movement last night and told us there was an event on today.

So we went along. It was called Food for the Future and included a film called A Farm for the Future which was excellent, all about the use of fossil fuels in farming and agriculture, alternative methods and permaculture, there was a group discussion afterwards along with refreshments, a graffiti wall to add your ideas and committments to change/ help and a seed swap where you could give in your own unwanted seeds and take away a packet in exchange. We got rid of all the flower seeds we seem to have collected and had no intention of sowing and got a great selection of vegetables and a few more interesting flowers that the kids want to try growing. The plan for next year is that people bring seeds they have harvested themselves to the seed swap as they will be super sustainable, locally grown and so therefore adapted for our area and beautifully complete the circle :).

The idea of the transition town for Worthing is to start making changes now to adapt for the inevitable changes we will face thanks to climate change and peak oil. Todays meeting was about how Worthing will feed itself when we can no longer rely on the unsustainable use of fossil fuel in farming and agriculture for powering farm machinery, adding fertilizer, insecticide and pesticide to the crops, processing and packaging and transporting the food to us. A really interesting example was a pre-packed sandwich from a garage or supermarket. The bread would have used fossil fuel at every stage of production from ploughing and sowing and harvesting the wheat, turning it into flour and then into bread, the ham from pigs fed on grains all requiring the same process, the token salad being flown or shipped from abroad, all transported to a factory to be assembled and then transported back out again to shops. Quite aside from the issue of the packaging of the sandwich it was as the reporter said ‘literally dripping in oil’.

The film covered different alternatives and ways of gardening and growing grops, tending land and preserving bio-diversity, different models of thinking and planning and permaculture. I have seen similar films and felt really bleak afterwards but this was a very empowering film that gave hope and made you feel you wanted to be part of the change and do something proactive. We spent some time chatting to people and coming up with ideas of changes we could make. Davies and Scarlett were particularly inspired by the idea of bartering, I pushed the idea of growing co-ops and sharing crops and gluts, Ady thought we should be finding out whether we can make more of our coastal location and beaches for food. We talked to a few people about Home Ed and it was all very promising and inspiring stuff :).

Caz had come along although she’d left Bid and the boys at home so we all piled round there for an hours playing and tea drinking. We carried on talking about bartering, communal growing and sharing crops, along with educational philosophies and the balance between ideological viewpoints and practicalities work out. All very interesting stuff :).

Back home again to turn the oven up and get dinner finished off, which we ate watching Countryfile. The kids did some drawing while their dinner went down – Davies drew some of the wild boars on Countryfile and Scarlett drew some Zoombinis.

Then we finished the last two chapters in the Creation stories and mourned having finished them, we’ve enjoyed them so much :).

Ady and I had baths and chats about plans and hopes for the future and watched Masterchef.

It’s been a good weekend :).

Friday Oh the things we’d been going to be doing on Friday. First we were going to the RI for a lecture. But then when I checked ‘my RI’ we didn’t appear to have booked it after all and despite emailing to ask if we were booked in or not I never got a reply. I could have chased it up but decided London wasn’t a great idea when we were having a late evening so didn’t bother.

Then we were going to take my car to the garage to have it looked at again. But it’s been fine all week so we didn’t bother doing that either.

We had a half-a-plan to visit Tasha and co but had a list of other things to get done and in the end didn’t manage to see them either – but have rearranged for next week when we have time to visit ‘properly’.

So instead we headed into town. I wanted to see if I could find some new boots and some navy blue mascara and eyeliner, thought we could pop in and see my Mum at work and generally have a potter around the town. So we parked, saw my Mum, utterly failed to find any boots I liked and were about to leave town when we passed a charity shop which had been temporarily opened and was closing that day. And there were the boots I’d been looking for and failed to find, in my size, pretty much brand new and for just £8.50 (rather than the £90 they would have cost new) :). When I say the boots I’d been looking for I mean the boots I knew I’d know when I saw them rather than actual boots I had already seen or even knew for certain existed. Also got my make up from the cheapo brand at Superdrug (hurrah!) and did pick up a pair of ‘jeggings’ (cross between jeans and leggings) which I really should have tried on first as they look dreadful and will need to go back sometime next week.

I’d been feeling all defensive about the kids being out and visible during school hours and sure enough a woman looked at the children for a while in one of the shops before asking me ‘are those your children?’ I was all keyed up ready for a show down and said ‘yes’ and she said to me ‘they are so beautiful, you must be proud’ 🙂 🙂

Next we went to Lancing to collect Scarlett’s ring from the jewellers. It had gotten too small for her and I’d cut it off then carried it round in my purse for ages before finally being with Scarlett near a jewellers a couple of weeks ago so we’d got her finger sized and had the ring enlarged with more gold added. It was not cheap and to be honest I suspect the extra gold and work probably cost more than the ring is worth but it was mine when I was a child, Scarlett loves it and I like seeing her wear it so I was happy to pay for the sentimental value. Yes I know, me, sentimental ;). The jeweller suggested she move it from her ring finger to her little finger before it gets too tight to take off and then next time we’ll have it sized large enough for her middle finger, then she’ll get three fingers worth of growth out of it. We also got a watch battery for Davies’ watch which had stopped working and he gave us discount on the lot along with showing the children how he changed the battery and chatting to them.

A quick stop off at the bakers and then home for a late lunch.

Davies had bought a Simpsons video in a charity shop so they watched that, I brushed Scarlett’s hair and put a plait in the side and helped the kids get their clothes ready. Ady came home and he and I had baths before getting changed and heading out again.

It is Roundstone’s (Ady’s work) 25th birthday so yesterday all of the staff spent the day at Butlins doing team building and fun activities such as go-karting, archery, fencing and football. Then all went back in the evening for a meal / disco. They had said we could bring Davies and Scarlett along and as evening childcare is even harder to find than daytime childcare we did.

Except when we arrived at Butlins they said there was a problem with bringing the children on site. Apparently the camp itself was being used for a 70s singles weekend for which they had a specific licence for over 18s only and could therefore not let us in. We sat for over 15 minutes before being delivered this news by an idiot in a hi-vis vest with SECURITY on it. He even had the cheek to insinuate we should know better than to bring our children into such an unsuitable environment. Predictably I went a bit mad and was very specific about how I was feeling and what was going to happen next. IE very cross indeed and demanding to have the most senior person on site to talk to me in person as soon as possible. He scuttled off and someone else was dispatched to tell us that actually it would be fine after all. I believe a similar conversation was being had with the woman from Roundstone who had organised the very expensive day and evening function there, particularly as it was a seperate entity to the 70s singles weekend with a fully self contained venue within the complex and nothing had been stated about the over 18s clause when it was booked.

So duly allowed in we made full use of the 2 free drinks vouchers. I was given a further 3 from people who were driving and so could only have one drink, I suspect I have some sort of reputation among Ady’s work colleagues ;). I have my small select group of favourites so happily hung out chatting with them. Scarlett very amusingly whispered and giggled to Davies when I got up to give one of them a hug and a kiss hello and when I asked her what she’d said she asked ‘is that your other boyfriend?!’ 😆 😆 😳

It was a ‘hot fork buffet’ which I’ve never heard of and actually the forks were at room temperature 😉 but the food was okay, the kids did a fine job of trying all sorts of things they’d not normally entertain eating and actually liked quite a lot of them. I repaired some of the damage from that fateful wedding with the welcome drinks back the year before last by chatting to the bride and groom in a sober and senisble manner about teaching and parenting. There were some very boring speeches and prize givings and then the dance floor opened up. Predictably no one was up for dancing straight away.

Except for Davies and Scarlett who were straight up there along with one willing parent. Anyone guess who?

Scarlett got the dj to play some Michael Jackson for her, Davies requested some Queen and they danced their little hearts out :).

We left at about 1030pm although it was going on until 1am and brought home large bunches of the fancy helium balloons with us. I was really tired (read into that what you will ;)) so went pretty much straight to bed, Ady followed not long afterwards but as Scarlett was still awake and didn’t want to be left downstairs alone she came up with him, which meant he didn’t last long in our bed before heading back downstairs again to sleep in hers.

Saturday I worked this morning and was very glad of having gone to bed early as it meant I didn’t feel too bad at all. I had a lovely easy morning though, the first hour spent putting up a display of Quick Read books, then teabreak and covering the desk, followed by another hour of display time, this time a Jean Auel one for which I made letters to spell her name in the same font style as her book covers and did chalk drawings of horses and mammoth and bears which looked pretty good. The final hour was spent back on the desk again where I joined a couple of new borrowers, identified a half sovereign with Victoria on it for someone and helped her find out what it might be worth (about £100) and some local dealers to try and tried unsuccessfully to help a man who had found out he was adopted recently, tracked down his (now 90 odd year old) mother and was trying to find more details about his (now deceased) father. And happily printed off loads of Dr Seuss activity sheets for Chatterbooks on Monday.

Home for lunch where Davies and Scarlett were playing Goddardopoly and very impressively working out the bank and money and change. Davies even demonstrated some ‘chunking’ 😆

We had a fairly lazy afternoon although Ady did make some hot cross bun dough in the breadmaker. Then we went to see Caz and Bid (via Sainsburys for some fizz to celebrate them coming home and a large chocolate orange cake just because) who are housesitter while Caz’s parents are away this week. Had a very lovely indeed evening with them and the boys. The kids charged round, joined us to eat, got all fire up with chocolate cake and then charged round some more. We sat, ate, chatted, drank, chatted, ate and chatted some more. We covered all sorts including politics and the weather and the economic climate and briefly felt like proper grown ups. And I didn’t even break any glassware or anything ;). So pleased they are home – and happy to report that they are too :).

Conscious of Archie and Elliots bedtime (they are, like most other children I suspect, earlier to bed and rise than Davies and Scarlett), a second late night in a row for Davies and Scarlett and the fact the chickens had not gone in before we left so while they would all make their way into the shed to roost once it got dark they are not capable of shutting the door behind them so the shed is open should a fox chance by we left at about 9pm ish.

Davies and Scarlett went straight to bed and were asleep fairly quickly (althoug it was still probably gone 11pm), Ady a bit later and myself even later than that.

I had a bad dream last night which stayed with me on and off all day. It was about Scarlett being at a Girl Guide event and Ady and I taking Davies off out somewhere while she was there (some sort of Science thing, I distinctly recall Dr Hal being there) and then forgetting to collect Scarlett. I remembered *hours* after we should have picked her up, was shocked that no one had rung to ask where we were and then struggled to get there in a succession of cars that all kept breaking down. I finally found where she was and the guide leader had taken her home with her rather than ringing me and was very reluctant to let me have her back. When I finally got her back she was all tear stained and had been told I wasn’t coming back because I didn’t want her. Oh it was horrible 🙁 I started awake and laid for ages convincing myself it was just a dream, was really tempted to go downstairs and cuddle her but finally drifted off back to sleep. All sorts in there from this week including breaking down cars, Scarlett deciding against Brownies and an accusation she’s levelled at me a few times lately about always talking in a nice voice to Davies and a normal voice to her (not true, infact I seem to be spending most of my time talking in placating tones to her at the moment). As Alison said in a comment a few posts back I really do struggle with needy and that pretty much sums her up a lot of the time at the moment. She keeps boucing back to the Scarlett we all know, full of sunshine and default state of happy but she’s tired from lack of decent sleep too and quick to tear up at the slightest thing.

Anyway.

An earlier start for all of us this morning as I was off to work so I got the kids breakfasted, the chickens sorted and was making sandwiches to leave for the kids and my Dad and sandwiches to take to work for me when my Dad arrived. I had time for a quick chat with him before heading off to work, via the other side of the chicken run where one of the cockerels was pretending to be the Kellogs rooster and had jumped onto the fence to crow. A hen had followed him and as the fence is deliberately *not* sturdy to discourage them from standing on it they were swaying about like drunkards, flapping to try and keep their balance and he was continuing to crow with a sort of ‘wahey, whoa’ tone to it as he wobbled about. Fools!

Work was good, a real party atmosphere as NC has finally left. There was a ceremonial ripping off her name from her locker and her tray which was all very cathartic. There are changes afoot with regards to opening hours which we will know more about in the next six weeks or so and I still don’t really know to what level they might effect me, if at all, so there is uncertainty about the future but short term at least the mood was very buoyant :).

I did some preparatory work for the next couple of Chatterbooks groups and whilst I didn’t manage to get any good feedback from the group generally I did talk to Davies and Scarlett about the next four sessions tonight and we’ve come up with a plan and some good activities so I have managed to get some child input if not the whole group. For my own reference (poetry, storytelling, tv / film, chatterbooks story).

I spent some time on the counter, lots of time on the desk and some time trying to find poetry related activities for kids.

Home again I beat Ady home by a good hour plus so poor Dad was here all day. He’d played Goddardopoly with Davies and Scarlett had done some bath bomb making (and stayed in her pyjamas all day!) but I’ve no idea what else. All seemed calm, well and happy though :).

I put the chickens away and got drenched in a very heavy downpour of rain so decided to stay outside and chop some sticks as I was already wet. I got the fire lit, washed up the lunch things and cups and glasses from the day (why does noone rinse their glass / mug and use it again next time they have a drink???) and cooked some pasta for the kids’ tea by which time Ady had arrived home so I went and got out of my wet clothes.

Scarlett had a wobble so I talked to her about all the things she has to feel happy about and got her smiling again, then read the penultimate chapter of the creation book and packed them off to bed while Ady was in the bath. He got out and cooked dinner, I got in and spent the whole time I was in the bath on the phone to Julie having a good old catch up. I was in the bath and she was feeding Lorna yoghurt while talking to me so neither of us could get to our diaries to plan to meet up so have arranged to speak again at the weekend and book several get togethers before our diaries fill up with other things.

We watched all the taped Masterchef UK and Australia we’ve recorded this week so we are fully caught up. Ady took the sitting with Scarlett while she fell asleep shift, which was good and now despite best intentions to be in bed sleeping long before it was tomorrow it looks like I’ve not managed it yet again!

The sun was shining this morning, so determined to get out, get the car started and give it a run and not fester in the house moping about feeling rough after breakfast and a bit of lazing around reading my book and watching Wild Tales and then Gastronuts (you were right Alison, it is *totally* up Davies and Scarlett’s street) we got spring coats on and headed off.

I’ve had an email from Hove museum in my inbox for weeks advertising the current exhibit called ‘Precious’ Be dazzled by the beauty in the overlooked and discarded.

Taking a highly innovative approach to contemporary craft, Hove Museum & Art Gallery commissioned ten artists and makers to create new pieces, and nine to exhibit existing work. Precious is the result, produced from objects which have had a previous life.

* 20 unique, show-stopping pieces – precious objects, all have had a previous life. Waste paper and fabric are transformed, landscapes made from computer parts, taps take on a new twist. Books, parts of furniture, drink cans are all reclaimed and re-made.
* 19 nationally and internationally known artists – explore where their imaginations can take you. Coming from all over the country and selected from 300 applicants, the makers reflect all aspects of contemporary craft in Britain today. For anyone who has ever glanced at a second-hand item and wondered where it came from, these artists explore where these objects can take you.

Nothing in this exhibition is what you expect.

So decided a drive over there was just what the car needed, free and a good thing to do and be able to delete the email which I’ve kept to remind me I wanted to do.

It was excellent 🙂 I paid for 2 hours parking and we were in the museum for a full 90 minutes. The Precious exhibit was mostly in two ground floor rooms and included some excellent pieces. Scalrett’s favourites were some cardboard sculptures made from old boxes of an owl and a flamingo (owl was a Cadburys box, the flamingo was rose Blossom Hill wine, I liked that ;)), Davies loved a piece with pieces cut out of a book (hard to describe and of course we couldn’t take pictures) and I was particularly taken with some framed bugs made from various bits and pieces including book spines, clock workings and watch hands. There were dressed made from paper patterns and chopped up pages from Vogue magazine, a rug made from beer cans, a fab spiders web decorated with the little circles of paper from a hole punch, mini creations from computer components and some beautifully painted computer speakers that looked like willow pattern items.

We looked in the first area and all picked out things we liked and talked about them before going into the hands on area for kids (and crafty grown ups). We were approached by a man with a clipboard who works for the museums and wanted to know what we liked, why were were visiting and what we’d like to see more of, so had a bit of a chat with him about museums, Home Ed and recycling generally. Davies and I had a go at some origami and did pretty well to get to picture 14 of 15 before we simply couldn’t work out what to do with the paper any more :). There were various collages on the walls to be added to, a wall of butterflies, a tree full of birds and a dinosaur needing scales so we collected a pack each from the front desk with templates, glue and scissors and all made a bird, then added them to the wall:

all made with recycled museum leaflets, newspapers, toilet rolls and other scraps :).

Next we went upstairs to the ‘Wizards Attic’ which is children’s toys through the ages. It’s a real memory lane trip with loads of stuff I remember from the 70s and 80s through to the likes of the Teletubbies and Toy Story that even has Davies and Scarlett feeling nostalgic :). We spent some time looking at the bedroom which is half modern and half Victorian comparing abacus and calculator, candle and electric lamp, hanson carriage and horse for playmobil racing car, slate and chalk for etchasketch. There are loads of little details it’s easy to miss like little mousehole doors in the skirting boards and so on so we lingered there a while.

We looked at some paintings and then spent some time in the ‘local’ area which talks specifically about history in Hove and surrounding areas. Scarlett listened to an audio talk about bombing in Portslade while Davies and I looked at some old pictures and architecture. Then we sat in the little cinema (only 8 seats) watching some old silent movies from 1900, 1901 and 1903. They included one about a fire complete with hand drawn and horse drawn fire engines, a comedy about someone called Mary Jane who lit the stove with too much paraffin and died and a couple of others. Very charming :).
My Dad used to love watching Harold Lloyd when I was a child and they reminded me of that. A quick look round the old fashioned cameras and then back downstairs for the second half of the Precious exhibition.

We had half an hour left on the car and were hungry (it being gone 1pm and therefore lunchtime) so peeked in at the very fancy looking tea room with proper china and cakes on doilies. It looked very lovely but I only had £10 in cash and imagined tea and sandwiches or cakes for the three of us would be more than that so we left the museum and walked up the road a little way hoping to find somewhere. It was beautifully sunny and a real feeling of spring in the air, the crocus were out in the musuem gardens.

We came upon Tescos before anywhere else so decided to nip in and get some stuff to bring home for lunch instead. I rather foolishly had misjudged quite how far we’d walked from the car and decided to pick up the few items I knew we needed at home such as flour, brown sugar, milk and butter (from my bake-off yesterday) which I regretted walking back to the car again with such a heavy bag.

We were home again just before 2pm so I made a late lunch with the french bread we’d picked up. Then as Chucklevision came on to groans all round Davies played X box for a while and Scarlett made full use of the big bag of bath bomb chemicals that had arrived in the post (finally, over 2 weeks since I ordered them) by mixing and creating potions and fizzing things. I read my book, drank tea and took some tablets for the headache I’ve been battling all week.

It had started to rain by then so I called Ady to ensure he would indeed be home as promised before Badgers so I could use his car and discovered he wouldn’t be home after all :(. So I had to allow plenty of time to get there just in case. The car was fine again fortunately, both there and back despite very heavy rain.

Badgers was really good, we had a visit from some volunteers for Hearing Dogs for the Deaf. I think we had intended to have a talk from them for half the session but due to a late start waiting for latecomers who didn’t come at all in the end, and the volunteers being passionate enough about their subject to carry on talking, plus some (actually very good) questions from the Badgers it took the whole session. They were not that used to talking to children and possibly pitched their talk a bit above them in places, also they were both quite elderly and not terribly animated or concise in their speaking but aside from the odd stifled yawn and a bit of fidgeting the kids all did really well. It was particularly timely for Davies and Scarlett having met Rupert the puppy in training for being a wheelchair assisting dog on Monday and we spent most of the drive home comparing the two and talking about Guide Dogs for the blind too.

Due to their late lunch the kids also had a late dinner with Ady getting it ready for when we got home from Badgers instead of before we went as usual. So I read while they ate and we now only have two chapters of Ted Hughes left. Rubbish gettting to sleep from both again but everyone is up early tomorrow as I’m off to work so perhaps that will help?

nothing to see here.

My feeling rough continued and I felt crap by the time I’d sat on Tarly’s bedroom floor while she went to sleep. She then woke in the night and came into our bed where she lay, sprawled out, hogging most of my pillow coughing and sniffing 🙁 for what felt like hours until finally we got back to sleep.

This morning it was still raining, having rained all night so the idea of driving to Barnham for Book Club was a non-starter. If I’m totally honest I was ever so slightly relieved as we’d not read the book. It was Beedle the Bard, by JKRowling and I was very bitter about having to read any of her work having avoided all the Harry Potter books / films / everything. We read the introduction and the first chapter and none of us enjoyed it at all. I’d said we’d read a further two chapters so Davies and Scarlett could go along having listened to the first three chapters and explain what they’d not liked about the book. They are au fait with HP having seen most of the films and I did try hard not to let my feeling cloud their view. I think making a considered decision to not carry on with a book based on sound reasons is perfectly fine and life is way too short to read bad books. I also don’t buy into the idea that anyone *needs* to finish things they have started necessarily and don’t feel it is a life skill the children need to develop. Infact I think it is a far braver and greater thing to be able to recognise that finishing something you started might be a waste of your time / energy / a pointless exercise / may even do harm and be able to know when to throw in the towel. So we had already talked about what they would say to contribute to the discussion at Book Club but it never happened anyway.

So I did some laundry processing, made some plans for Chatterbooks next week, did some baking of comfort food to make myself feel better (flapjacks, chinese chews, cheese scones) and did some hefty amounts of moping too, whilst drinking tea and reading a book I *am* enjoying myself (One Day
).

Davies spent some time yesterday creating a landscape and some characters for his own version of the creatures in the Hughes Creation stories we’ve been reading so he and Scarlett spent most of the day with the plasticine making more including the whole breathing life into them, giving them names, characteristics and stories. I love it when something inspires them like this into such creativity :). Infact I wonder if maybe I should get some plasticine for Chatterbooks next week instead of drawing?…

We watched a documentary about The Whale That Swam to London which was really interesting (if sometimes a little gratuitously graphic with it’s scientific shots of disection I thought) and as I became ever increasingly crap feeling and the rain continued to fall I decided I was not up to risking my car breaking down on the way to or from swimming lessons so we didn’t go.

Scarlett has decided that Brownies isn’t for her. I’m not surprised, or infact particularly disappointed. She tried it, I could clearly see it wasn’t something for her and would have been more surprised if she’d loved it really I think. I have made contact with a very local street dance class for them both which we’ll go along to when Chatterbooks finishes (it clashes but there are only four more Chatterbooks) and see if that suits them and could potentially be the way to get their back flip ambitions met and I’m looking into athletics for Tarly too. I’m quite happy that they get enough group after-school stuff from Badgers for now with the added things like Wildlife Explorers and other things we attend with Home Edders. I never want to feel we’ve not explored every opportunity but at the same time I can’t deny it’s a relief to have less things of a week day evening to rush about for and feel committed to, particularly in the winter when it’s cold and dark so early and turning out of the house feels like a huge effort.

We watched some of the debates in HoC on Parliament tv which led to interesting conversations about child protection, serious case review, who was ‘Baby P’ and all the details of his case. Tim Loughton, who has been on Tower Block of Commons and was talking a lot in Parliament today is our MP so we talked about him too. We listened to debates about smacking and corporal punishment which were interesting and talked about whether I think it should be against the law to ‘batter’ a child and why. A bit sad that such major issues are being discssued in such a sparsely populated HoC really but good to be able to watch MPs in action. I remember the channel being launched and how exciting it was at the time to be able to see inside the HoC.

I cooked the kids’ dinner, chopped some kindling and got a fire going (which promptly went out half an hour later when I tried to put some logs on that were just too damp 🙁 ) and then slumped. Ady came home and took over dinner preparation and got the fire going again while I had a bath and a couple of the cold and flu tablets he brought home which had me feeling much better.

Watched Survivors (yay, to the reunitedness :)) and had lengthy chats with both children about getting to sleep earlier, which clearly went right over both their heads as they were still awake at 11. If I had the arsedness myself to get them up and out at 6am for drill on the front lawn I would…

Up with the alarm this morning and into the car to head off for a seed bomb workshop. I’m not fully sure what a seed bomb is myself, hence the need to attend a workshop really but as the website advertises it as ‘everything you need to grow a seed except the water’ it seemed rather ironic that it was torrential rain that prevented us from getting there 🙁

I’ve started to take my car starting forgranted again and today, after three solid days of very heavy rain, and not having been started since I got home from work on Friday, it refused to start :(. I was persistent and it did eventually fire up, I let it tick over for a bit and when I was fairly confident it was running okay we set off. I’d allowed plenty of time to get there so the 10 minute delay was fine but as the rain seemed to be getting ever harder I was seriously considering the wisdom of the journey as we still haven’t gotten round to sorting out breakdown cover for the car. It seemed fine and coped with a fair few stops, pulling away and braking incidents which are the usual dodgy bits with a car that might stall so I was feeling confident until we got to the other side of the Southwick tunnel at which point there must have been pooled water on the road, and I picked up speed which would have meant more water splashing underneath and it started to lose speed and power. At a really crucial slightly scary bit of the A27 where the slip road joins and cars often dart across 3 lanes to get to the A23 turn off I was pretty convinced it was going to die, leaving us in the middle lane of traffic doing 70mph plus in very poor visibility. At which point I got slightly wobbly about having the kids in the car with me.

I then made the decision that all the time the car was still running we should probably be heading for home rather than a very expensive per hour on street parking, leaving the car in the pouring rain for two hours and then hoping it would start again and get us home in time for Chatterbooks. Quite possibly the first time I’ve bowed to a sensible decision over an airy ‘it’ll be alright’ type one and we were all disappointed but it was the right, grown up thing to do.

We got home okay with much talk about cars I have previously owned that object to the damp and stall every time you hit the brakes and how I coped with them, what ‘tickover’ means and why Scarletts suggestion that we ‘get a new set of wheels’ was even funnier when Davies misunderstood her meaning and tried to explain to her that 3/4 of the tyres had been changed earlier this month! 😆

Back home again I emailed my apologies and rearranged another date for the seedbomb workshop as they are running over several weeks so at least we’ve not missed out. I booked Okehampton, spent some time discussing ‘making things happen for yourself’ with the kids and a bit of gentle prodding about thinking what they’d like to spend their days doing when they are adults and planning some sort of route to making that happen which may or may not have included Things A Mother Should Say like ‘and if you want to spend all your time sitting playing computer games young man, you are going the right way about it!’ 😆 Honestly I do believe my physical being was inhabited by some sort of Proper Grown Up spirit for a good part of this morning 😆

So Davies did some animation – a really good one using lego figures, while Scarlett did a fab picture of a bear catching a salmon.

We had chicken soup (made by Ady last night) and home made bread (put on by Ady this morning) for lunch which was delicious and seemed to pre-empt me feeling a bit rough later this afternoon with a cough and headache. Surely you’re supposed to have the chicken soup after you start to feel pants? I even took some paracetomol for my headache which is something I almost never do, I hardly ever use medication (mostly because it can interfere with my drinking ;)).

Davies and Scarlett were itching to get to Chatterbooks and I was ever conscious that we may need to walk so we left home just before 2pm. The car started just fine but stalled almost right outside the library in the middle of the road, when I had to brake to let a car come the other way. It simply refused to start again despite about ten minutes worth of trying and one sweet middle aged woman came and offered to push, which was lovely but I declined on the basis that last time we pushed my car three of us struggled and that was without two kids in it too. Eventually a strapping bloke came over and offered and I accepted as I literally needed pushing round the corner into the library carpark. I did say ‘it’s a big, heavy car’ to which he laughingly replied ‘s’fine, I’m a big, heavy bloke, I’ll just lean on it!’ 😆 and as it hit the slight downward slope of the carpark I managed to bumpstart it :). I revved it and let it run for a few minutes before reversing it into a space mindful of potential jump start requirements and content that it could be left there for however long if need be as it was safely in a staff only spot.

We nipped to the pound shop for labels and marker pens and then to the library to set up for Chatterbooks. I photocopied some blank comic strip pages, did a quick 9 section line drawing version of Little Red Riding Hood to demonstrate that if you know the story you can fill in all the words and even missing bits of a story, got the flip chart ready and was reading Davies and Scarlett ‘ish’ when Russell arrived and we had a quick chat about plans for today’s session.

We then became aware of a lady and a labrador wearing a ‘helping dog in training’ vest in the library with a small boy and a man and Scarlett and Davies were speculating on what sort of helping the dog might be doing one day. I started chatting to the woman and she came over to sit on the floor with us, introduce the dog, Rupert, and tell us all about it. He is a dog for people in wheelchairs and will be trained to pick things up that have been dropped, empty the washing machine/ tumble drier, put a credit card into a machine and retrieve cash from cashpoints, press the button at pedestrian crossings and loads more:shock: He was absoluetely gorgeous and even I was more than happy to have him slobber over me :). The woman is a ‘puppy parent’ who has dogs for the first year full time and the second year part time while they spend some time in kennels. Rupert is only about a third of the way through his training and is doing really well. Davies wandered off but Scarlett was enthralled and asked loads of questions about various kinds of helping dogs. We also learnt about various crosses and breeds and what their speciailities are eg German Shepherds are great police dogs, spaniels are great sniffer dogs, any poodle cross (labradoodle and another silly name I’ve now forgotten) are good for people with allergies as they have wool rather than fur, some dogs are slower breeds which is great for people with eg MS, others are more energetic and good for younger disabled people who might need a dog at work with them all day matching their busy pace. Really interesting chat and the woman was equally interested in Home Ed :).

Then children started arriving for Chatterbooks. Another full house today. We started with the book cover jigsaws I’d forgotten last week and recapped a bit on what we’d talked about then. One of the children had brought in a book she’d made which was fab – fully illustrated, a cast list on the inside cover, a really strong story, beautifully written with a happy ending and she’d even ‘done the blurb on the back’ 🙂 Was very impressed :). Some of the children wanted to talk about books they’d read / are reading this week and then we talked about illustrations. I had a whole pile of books with different, interesting or just beautiful illustrations including some that had no words, some that simply went with the words to tell the story, some that strengthened the story or added greater depth and some that told another story again to the words. Good examples included the fab Lauren Child, these Colin Thompsons

and a couple more because he is just such a wonderful illustrator, some George
you can’t talk about pictures without a bit of Where’s Wally, some wordless books including the lovely
and then some books about art including
and
(love Anthony Browne).

So we looked at those and talked about various pictures, how they made us feel, what mood or tone they set for the story and so on. Next everyone had some pens and paper to draw their own illustration. Some copied illustrations in books, some made up their own, some started writing and illustrating. Davies did a full colour story in comic strip, Scarlett couldn’t think of anything but did look through The Flower Man with another girl and they came up with their own version of the story together.

It wasn’t as calm and smooth as last week and I did have to call a couple of them to order once or twice and remind them they were there out of choice, didn’t have to be and could call their mum over and go home if they didn’t want to be part of the group. I have two I suspect will be the tricky ones but have some plans for next week to try and ensure they don’t spoil it for the others, or indeed me.

I tried to get some input from them all about what else they’d like to do but either the group dynamic prevented good thoughts / suggestions or I have a skewed view of how well children can respond to being given wide open choices like that. It’s fine as I have ideas for all the subsequent sessions anyway but would have been more than happy to shelve them in favour of something the children had suggested. They seem to work better when kept busy and not given too much ‘do it your way’ which I find slightly hard given my own experience with my own children but actually I do from the group of friends we have that lots of the children prefer proper guidance so I’m sure I can strike the balance.

Home Ed came up as obviously everyone other than Davies and Scarlett were in school uniform and one of the children asked me what school D & S go to so I explained they didn’t. I’d sort of rather it hadn’t come up as I don’t want them all to go home and talk about that and suspect several of the parents would rather they didn’t either but a direct question requires a direct answer…

We had squash and biscuits and then I read to everyone and we embarked on a group doodle. This involved me doing a random squiggle on the flip chart and then everyone coming up adding something to it. I encouraged them not to talk about what they could see too much and then we went round the circle saying what we thought it looked like. One of the children had drawn a deliberate horses head but all the rest were similarly random marks to mine. We had a great selection of ideas as to what the groups piece could be- some children saw mountain ranges, some clouds, some cars and planes, some satellite dishes, I saw kites and Scarlett saw a planet. That worked really well and everyone was utterly engaged with it and would happily have done that a second time. But we were already a good ten minutes over our hour so I got them all to come up and sign the piece and we finished up. Most of the children took at least one book each, plenty from the pile of illustrated books I’d got in so that was good too :).

After they’d all gone Russell remarked on what a difference there had been with them being cooped up at school all day and how restless they’d been compared to last week. I’d not given it a thought but of course that was what the change in behaviour was – straight from school all day to the library, no wonder they needed some down time. Maybe next week we’ll try something energetic first then follow with a story to quieten them down.

It was another good session though, great feedback from parents, Davies and Scarlett said they really enjoyed it and one of the mums was nagging Russell about the ongoing need for such a thing :).

Back to the car which again took a while to get started but did get us home fine. We’re supposed to be going to Book Group tomorrow over in Barnham (about 20 miles) and I just think we’d be silly to try with it being unreliable in wet still unless the day dawns bright and very dry. 🙁 Will have to go back to the mechanic who did the leads and see what he suggests next, along with breakdown cover so that at least if I can get it started I don’t need to fret so much about it conking out again somewhere.

Home for the kids’ tea and me to slump with a cough and a bit of a shiver. I got a fire lit and drank tea til Ady came home and took over things like hoovering, making our dinner and running baths. I read a chapter of Creation stories and a couple of the picture books Tarly had picked up at the library before proclaiming myself all read out and packing D&S off to bed.

Watched the last of the Tower Block of Commons and then some taped Masterchef, dealt with children who don’t sleep (Davies appeared with a plasticine box containing lumps of plasticine and googly eyes with ‘my making kit’ on the front), ate dinner and coughed.

Friday I worked all day. I did Baby Rhyme time in the morning and it was a frustrating session as a couple of the mums didn’t bother singing along or even paying attention to their babies but instead chatted with each other 🙁 Really hard to deal with that in a non-confrontational way and it is frequently an issue at Storytime but I can understand it then when the older children are engaged in listening to a story, but Baby Rhyme time is all about the adults joining in too, with the songs, the actions, the shaking the instruments and so on.

I employed my usual two default measures which is 1. to sing louder myself, to drown out their conversation, to make up for the dip in volume from the group and to try and get their attention back and 2. to sing stuff like row, row, row your boat and say ‘right, everyone, back on Mummy’s lap’ which means they have to participate too. On Friday I was feeling slightly more evil so I made everyone stand up to do Grand Old Duke of York twice over and Heads, Shoulders,Knees and Toes – 3 times, progressively faster each time! 😆 Definitely a market for a nursery rhyme work out, but given how out of breath I was after that I am perhaps not the person to be leading it ;).

In other work news I got clearance to give away free dvd loan vouchers to all the kids at Chatterbooks so started ordering in books and film / tv shows to give out, probably next week and ask the children to come back having read / been read to and watched the dvd and compare the different types. So far have some Charlie and Lola, some Mona the Vampire and some Horrid Henry for the more modern stuff and Carrie’s War, Swallows and Amazons, Charlottes Web and Stig of the Dump for the older children / more classic stuff. Will need to get some parental input / approval on that before I dish them out though I think.

One of my colleagues had had a cosmetic procedure done on some thread veins in her cheeks and was suffering from bruising and blistering so she was heavily made up and worried about it cracking, holding an ice pack to her face at tea break and therefore the target of much trying to make her laugh 😆 We spent some time ogling Max Beesley on the internet and ordering in anything on the catalogue that he’s appeared in :). The whole atmosphere at work has changed since NC handed in her notice (she leaves this coming week) and it’s a nice place to be again at the moment :).

Davies and Scarlett were home with Ady for the day. He worked from home in the morning on paperwork and emails – his work laptop was taken back last year which he was utterly unfussed about and now they’ve all been issued with smart phones so they can pick emails up again, which he is rather fed up about but does negate the need to go into the office so often. After lunch they went out to visit some stores but Davies suddenly felt unwell and was all cold and shivery and pale so Ady brought them home again. Davies seemed to make a miraculous recovery once home although he was quiet again later in the evening.

I know we had pizza for dinner but anything else that happened other than me reading some more Creation stories utterly escapes me now about Friday evening.

Saturday Davies was supposed to be at YACs but it was an indoor craft event rather than a dig or or site visit anywhere and as it would have meant getting up and out early when he didn’t wake we left him to sleep and he was fine about missing it. Must email them to let them know he will be back next month though. We had a fairly quiet morning, the weather wasn’t great and everyone was happy to just hang out at home. Ady and Scarlett tidied her room up a bit and moved various things into other rooms to make space / remove precious things ready for Em and Oscar to have her bedroom for the night while she went in with Davies for a sleepover.

Davies did some xboxing, Tarly did some DSing, can’t really remember what else. We had lunch and then Ady and Scarlett went off to the pet shop, Tarly armed with notepad and pens to draw the pets she saw she might like (she was veering between turtles and hamsters, she has currently decided on hamsters) just as Em and Oscar arrived. We’d arranged an overnight visit when Em dropped Eve and Rei off with their Dad for the weekend so Em and I could get some proper time together as having been at Christmas Camp, New Years Eve at the Fishes and Centerparcs in recent months we still felt we’d not have much time just to hang out and chat without other people or children.

Davies stayed with us and was excellent at entertaining Os with pens and paper, various soft toys and the spinning octopus they’d brought with them. He is pretty good with babies considering he hardly ever spends any time around them. Scarlett is less good, viewing them as living incarnations of Baby Anabel :lol:No idea where she gets that from ;).

We drank tea a-plenty, Ady was a splendid host serving snacks, providing tea, cooking a delicious steak and offering to delay his own meal and entertain Oscar while Em ate – everyone was lovely really – LovelyEm, LovelyOscar, LovelyAdy, LovelyDavies and LovelyScarlett :).

Oscar had me all gooey by wearing one of Davies’ old bodysuit/vests and then even more so when Em changed him into his babygro and it was one of my favourites of Davies’. I went and found a photo album which had Davies wearing both the top and the babygro and got all misty eyed thinking about how the years have flown – along with relief that he has grown a little bit after all 😉

Davies now, next to a picture of Davies then wearing the babygro that Oscar is wearing now next to Oscar now wearing the babygro, with added Em and Scarlett for glamorous assistant type duties 😆

I sold most of Davies outgrown clothes on ebay once we had a daughter but had always hung onto a few treasured items I couldn’t quite part with for 99p each and didn’t know anyone ‘special’ enough to pass them on to that I’d have been happy seeing wearing them. When Em announced she was having a boy I was thrilled to be able to pass on those items and it’s been lovely to see him wearing them 🙂 On looking at a picture of Davies on his first Easter wearing a cute dungarees and shirt outfit Em said that had been Oscar’s Christmas outfit :).

Eventually everyone else went to bed and fell asleep, despite a couple of currently-typical-Scarlett moments of being upset and needing lots of talking and attention from me 🙁 She’s been even worse tonight and is really acting in a hormonal way I think with mood swings between the happy, carefree Scarlett I know and a sad, not at all the Scarlett I know little girl. I’m trying to be consistent, loving and reassuring while not so indulgent she continues relying on me for her happiness and feeling better. We’re doing lots and lots and lots of talking though and whilst she can’t articulate what the matter is she can at least articulate that she doesn’t know what the matter is, if that makes any sense at all!

Hmm, have just been googling ‘what to expect…’ type stuff about seven year olds and it all sound terribly familiar. Maybe I am having a brief period of a textbook child after all, just magnified all the more by being with her all the time.

Anyway, I digress. Em and I stayed up and really had a proper catch up which was lovely 🙂 And we were in bed before 3am 😉

Sunday I was last up, well actually Davies was last up but we were all up by about 9am. Ady carried on providing food and drinks in the way of breakfast, lunch and countless cups of tea. There was some DSing, Em and I had a PurPals face off, we watched some Winter Olympics, played some snakes and ladders, coming up with a new rule about being able to make your moves in any direction which vastly shortened the game length and made it much more tolerable. Ady and Davies played Goddardopoly which is a make-your-own monopoly kit that we got about 6 years ago and I painstakingly made and printed off but had never really been used. Their game continued into this evening and Davies is now hooked :).

Ady got some of the toy animals out to entertain Oscar although I suspect they were more entertaining for the rest of us. The foam shapes which I then got out on the pretext of being for Oscar were definitely more enjoyed by the rest of us. We built a replica Empire State Building which Davies then noticed Oscar looked like King Kong next to so we tried to recreate the iconic image 😆

But mostly we just chatted :).

LovelyEm and LovelyOs left just after 3pm. Ady and Davies carried on Goddardopolying, Scarlett and I spent some time snuggled up playing on her DS, she did some Big Brain Academy having been reminded of it in a conversation earlier and surprised me with how well she did on some of the tasks including the one where you have to say which box has greater value in coins as she clearly knew all of them and what they were worth.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, we watched Natural World which was very good, then Countryfile while Ady and Davies finished their game. A further upset with Scarlett before bed which she recovered from, then dipped back to before she finally went to sleep – so exhausting – and now, unsurprisingly I am also very tired so am off to bed – busy day again tomorrow.

I had a lovely long lie-in this morning which was much needed after waking with the alarm every other morning this week (I hate waking with the alarm and suspect every life choice in the last ten years has led me to the fortunate situation where I only have to wake with the alarm 2 days out of 7 for work in a sort of reverse weekend type deal. Home Ed has little to do with philosophical educational and parental choices and much to do with innate laziness 😉 ).

Our original plan was to have the morning at home and head out to the Pop Up Play Space this afternoon but a quick text exchange with Tasha revealed she and Toby wouldn’t be there and as they were the main draw we voted and decided against going.

The morning disappeared pretty quickly thanks to geomags, toy animals and playmobil and then we went to Sainsburys for a few bits including popcorn, picked up a dvd -Over the Hedge (we’ve seen it, I think it was one of our first filmeducation screenings but for £3 it was worth it for the second disc full of extras and animation info alone) and cooed over the turtles in the aquarium shop next to Sainsburys. I called in on my Dad to say ‘hello’ and drop off / collect some paperwork from Mark The Plumber about our boiler.

Back home again Davies and Scarlett tidied up the lounge and got the dvd ready while I popped corn and made toffee sauce to go with it. We watched the film then carried on with other things while the extras ran.

I did some diary coordinating and made some plans for the coming weeks, Davies and Scarlett played. They did a couple of board games and then went back to the toy animals again.

I made their tea, chopped sticks and got a fire lit, cleaned up the kitchen after having made popcorn and tea and then read a chapter of the Ted Hughes book about how God got golden hair and the bat was created.

Ady came home, a complicated deal with struck with Tarly regarding a bedroom based pet (she’s torn between hamster and turtle) in return for both getting rid of the plastic dressing table she got for her (I think) 2nd birthday in favour of a desk / more sensible furniture given the limited space in her room and her cracking reading. I don’t like the idea of a reward for learning to read outside of reading itself but I guess I always knew animals would be Scarlett’s motivation, I just thought it would be reading about them rather than owning them! 😆

We also have a plan to get a new netbook for me as my laptop is struggling to cope with the level of use it gets and Davies is desperate to have a laptop, so he can have this one and I’ll get a new one. Oh they’re growing up! 🙂

Bed for the kids, Scarlett seems to be coming down with yet another something and has been complaining of achey legs and has a croaky voice 🙁 She is currently in our bed with Ady so I’m hoping there is room for me!

Davies impressed me at bedtime with his ever more complicated mental maths and his huge levels of enthusiasm for my sponsored swim :).

This week while I was doing my lengths (42 number watchers ;)) I noticed a sign up for the Swimathon. I enjoy my weekly swim, in as much as I know it’s good for me, it beats sitting in the rather nasty, run down, too hot environment of the spectators area listening to the other swimming mums boring conversations and I get to try and beat myself each time.

Last year I set myself the target of 50 lengths and did it fairly easily, I’ve lost a bit of ‘condition’ due to not being as regular an attendee this term but I liked the idea of a challenge so I wombled over to the website to see what it was all about.

There are various challenges including ‘just swimming’ (not enough for me, I need a goal to aim for and some pressure to make me perform), 1.5km (I can do that fairly easily so again not too big a challenge), 5km (would probably kill me and never in the 3 hours would I manage that) or the ‘happy’ medium of 2.5km (75 lengths, enough to stretch me past my usual comfort zone, enough to celebrate if I achieve it and a decent enough level of exersion for me to feel happy asking people to donate to charity in honour of it).

So I’ve signed up, uploaded a picture of me in the pool, set a nice target worthy of 2.5km (£250) and will now have a firm goal to think about on my weekly swims for the next few weeks.

If you could sponsor me I’d be ever so grateful 🙂 Link to my page is here. .

And in addition, if anyone would be up for coming along to the pool to offer some support it’d be great to make something a weekend of it. The swimming takes place between 630-930pm on Saturday 17th April so overnight space here can be found for anyone wishing to stay – I can’t promise I’ll be up for dancing afterwards but I imagine I’ll be happy to celebrate with the odd glass of wine or two. 🙂

I worked this morning. It was busy but went very quickly. Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the morning and dropped them off at the library at midday for the last hour of my shift. Unfortunately they squabbled and I did some hissed grring at them which upset Tarly. Childcare is being problematic again at the moment 🙁

That aside all was well and I had a nice productive morning including some writing up of the Chatterbooks first session for my own records so I can submit some kind of detailed report to my bosses about how it’s all gone when the six weeks is up.

We nipped home for lunch and to get changed and then went up to Rose’s. Rose is my Not-Swinger friend who works 3 days a week as a primary school teacher. She is one of the most ardent supporters of both Home Education generally and autonomous Home Ed specifically I know. And all due to meeting and talking to me and my kids :). She’d sent me a text at the weekend asking if I was free to get together during this week with the kids as she has two dogs she knew Scarlett would love to walk and thought we could take the kids and dogs for a walk on the downs and then go back and watch one of the several books-made-into-films we’ve been talking about seeing together for ages on dvd while the kids played.

We walked up the downs, the dogs had a splash in a dew pond, we looked at the amazing panoramic views of the downs, sea, airport and all around. Rose was saying they try and bring the schoolchildren up there as it shows all of the aspects of the countryside in one quick hit – the river Adur running into the sea, the airport, main A27 road with various bridges, roundabouts and other feats of civil engineering aswell as ferries out to sea and boats on the river to demonstrate transport, open downs and farmland to show argiculture and farming complete with cows, sheep and horses, Lancing college and the amazing chapel to show historical buildings and architecture aswell as Lancing and Sompting bungalows, houses and flats to show towns and villages where people live.

We walked back down the very steep hillside through some woodland where the kids paused for some tree climbing and then paused awhile at the playpark for some swinging and climbing frame activity for Davies and Scarlett while Rose and I sat on a bench and talked about teaching and Chatterbooks.

Back across the fields including one which is full of rabbit holes along with countless old fashioned glass bottles, jars and old ceramic plates and bowls. Apparently it was a tip going back a couple of hundred years ago and is just full of ‘treasures’ to be excavated including all sorts of fancy shaped bottles and jars. The kids and I collected about 10 different shapes and sizes and are keen to go back for me. All currently soaking in cleaning chemicals to bring them back to life they are going to look fab filled with Tarly’s potions. Might try and fashion some stoppers from fimo or similar to finish them off. Photos to follow when they’ve been cleaned up :).

Back at Rose’s we had tea / hot chocolate and cookies, then she showed them the massive stash of lego left from her son Jamie (now 19 and living with his girlfriend) while we watched The Time Travelers Wife which we’d read for book group. Thought it was quite good as far as book adaptations go actually, although it’s been a while since I read the book so can’t recall how true to the format or book it was.

Davies and Scarlett were stars, loving playing with the lego or cooing over the dogs :). We said goodbye and came home about 530pm. I had a lovely text from Rose later telling me how fab my kids are :).

Ady arrived home soon after us and I dashed off to the supermarket for a couple of bits while the kids had tea. I read a chapter of the Ted Hughes book we’re reading and the children went to bed. Obviously not to sleep ;).

As half terms go it’s being quite a good one considering we normally hate them and go into hiding for the week 😉

Early start again for us today as Davies and Scarlett had appointments at the dentist. After we had our six month check up last November / December we had a phonecall offering us Children’s Educational Visits. We’d not been able to make any of the sessions they’ve been running – and they kept trying, I think they have called me with no less than four dates over the last few months but today we were free. I admit to being suspicious about the whole thing but decided to go along and see what it was all about.

It turns out that our local nhs dental practice, which we already knew was a pretty good one, are trying to offer as many services as they can and as such have sent a couple of members of staff on special kids dental hygiene education training courses. I’m guessing they have nvq or similar level in this. It’s NHS funded and is a 20 minute or so session all about education for children on diet, cleaning, how your mouth and teeth work aswell as dealing with any specific problems with the individual children. I did ask if we’d been plucked out for any particular reason but she said all children on their books had been offered the sessions.

So we sat down, the dental nurse was fantastic at addressing Davies and Scarlett rather than me and drawing them out (Scarlett was initially cautious although Davies was chatty straight away). She talked about brushing teeth, baby teeth and adult teeth and asked them some questions. I thought it was pitched really well for them and was quite surprised at how much they already knew. She then talked about it being half term and them not being at school and maybe snacking more than usual to which both kids gave me sidelong glances. I decided it wasn’t remotely important to correct her and let her carry on but after listening to the end of that bit of her speech Davies said ‘oh actually we don’t go to school’ to which she was amazed and asked loads of questions about Home Ed. She is 7 months pregnant (with her first child) and was incredibly enthusiastic, interested and complimentary about the whole idea. That set the tone for the rest of the session :).

The kids did disclosing tablets and looked in the mirror at the bits left behind, cleaned their teeth with their toothbrushes while she observed and offered advice and thet chatted some more. She said she thought Home Ed sounded amazing, she thought Davies and Scarlett were fab and really clever and knowledgable about all sorts of things, including teeth and proclaimed them ‘my best patients ever!’ and followed up with ‘and I’m not just saying that, I *really* mean it’ 🙂 Davies held her to it and asked her to write it on the sticker she gave them both so they now have a tooth shaped sticker with ‘best patient ever!’ written on it by her :). She gave us prescriptions for mouthwash for both of them – a weekly, milder tasting one for Davies who doesn’t like mint and a stronger, daily use one for Scarlett who loves mint and possibly needs a little more help for her teeth. And told us to ring for a repeat prescription when those run out :).

Next stop the pharmacist for the mouthwash. Scarlett’s was there but they need to order Davies’ so we’ll have to pop back later in the week to collect that. While we were in there we looked around and Davies found a ‘Superduck’ bath toy / flannel / exfoliating thing for £1.99 which he really liked. I said I wasn’t going to buy it but when we got home he dug out his money box, dusted off the fluff and emptied it to count out £1.99. He did an impressive count up of 1p, 2p, 5p and the odd 10p pieces and quickly got to £1.99 so I said he could nip back to the chemist and get Superduck if he wanted.

Scarlett was watching Lion Man on dvd (from the library) so he nipped round on his own. He was slightly longer than I’d expected but that turned out to be because the nice pharmacy lady stood with him and counted out all his pennies with him :). So he was happy.

Davies then got the geomags out and was experimenting with how many pennies he could turn magnetic with geomags and pick up in a line when he realised some 2p and 1p were magnetic and others were not. We put them into piles of date order (some were older than me with a date of 1971 on them :)) and worked out that it was coins pre 1992 that were not magnetic and speculated on why that might be. I then googled and we found the answer, which confirmed our suspicion but was nice to have the science bit explained :). (to do with coins being made from copper coated steel after that date rather than the bronze used previously. We also found some of the 1998 batch of bronze ones).

Then I went off to make pancakes for lunch and Davies and Scarlett tidied up and put The Simpsons Movie on. An hour later we were all pancaked up and ready to take on the afternoon.

First stop was the pound shop – we were looking for pva glue to do stuff with the borax supplied by our dealer at the weekend. But the pound shop had none. On the way to ELC we passed my Mum’s shop and she was standing talking to someone looking out of the window so we popped in to say hello and I actually left Davies and Scarlett there while I nipped along to ELC on my own to get glue, and because D&S weren’t with me, glue alone! 🙂 A quick chat with Mum and then off to the Pop Up Playspace where Tasha was being in charge and another Home Ed friend was running a Circus Skills workshop.

Hugs all round for all and then as an older woman gave me a big hug and said ‘hello Scarlett’s mum, I can’t remember your name’ as I realised it was Caz’s mum and I asked whether they were back she said ‘they are and they are right behind you!’ 🙂 🙂 Cue touching reunion for me with Caz and Bid and for Davies and Scarlett with Archie and Elliot 🙂

I sat around and chatted to Tasha, Caz, Bid and a couple of other people I knew, the kids ran round playing together in a big posse and having a whale of a time 🙂 Was very good afternoon :). Caz and Bid talked to me about childcare swaps (yes, yes and yes!) and we all had a chat about a creative skillswap type session for the kids (think latin etc without the latin or the etc :lol:) which I am very enthused about and need to try and get some coherant ideas about in an email to the people who might be interested :). Fab to see Tasha, it’s been far too long :).

We left there at 4pm, paid for parking and drove to the swimming pool for swimming lessons. Davies was wobbling about his burn and sure enough the plaster came off almost as soon as he got in the water but after an initial stinging it settled down. Scarlett had her lesson and then Davies had his while I did lengths – 42 in all which is 1400 metres in just under the hour. I was aiming for 45 lengths as 1500m and could feel I was cruising a bit but did speed up at the end and came out with wobbly legs (still a bit wobbly now actually).

We pulled up at almost the exact same time as Ady so he and I caught up on each others’ day with a cup of tea and coffee, then I left him to bath the kids and get dinner sorted (pancakes again for the kids tea :)) while I went off to Reading Group.

I missed last month but this month we had 3 new starters aswell as a healthy number of regulars talking about Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader. Actually we spent far more time chatting about the consultation for the reduced library opening hours, literacy and reading levels nationally, marketing of books and the whole readers and writers dilemma about whom is more important. An interesting couple of hours :). Confirmed plans to meet up with Rose (not swinger) tomorrow afternoon and generally enjoyed being part of a group of diverse people who are nonetheless a group, some of us having been attending for 4 years now :).

Home again just before 9pm for a bath followed by dinner (trout, very nice :)) and Survivors. Scarlett needed me to sit with her to go to sleep again but she has gone through the night in her own bed for 2 nights and indeed at McM’s too so am hoping the nights are easing. She also seems happier generally which if nothing else makes me happy things are not getting worse.

Very pleased to have Caz and Bid home; we’ve known they were coming for a couple of weeks thanks to facebook, emails and a phonecall but didn’t quite believe it until we actually saw them here today :).

I got the kids up and dressed and breakfasted this morning before any of us were really ready on the basis that we had to be at SJA HQ for planning next term’s programme and tidying out the Badger room and cupboards. I have to say there does seem to be rather more committment to this Badger Leader malarkey than was made clear in the beginning… but Julie, who is 40 this year and old enough to know better sends text messages in txt spk and despite sending me one yesterday afternoon ‘stl on 4 2moro?’ and ‘gr8’ when I replied in the positive, had sent me a message this morning to say ‘sry hv 2 cncl 2day. sry 4 srt notice’. So we were up earlier than required for no reason. Grr.

So Davies xboxed, Tarly played with her playmobil and I blogged the weekend. 🙂 And drank tea :). And tried not to stress about Chatterbooks which suddenly seemed like a really stupid idea.

I processed some laundry and then we nipped up to Sainsburys for food supplies for home and refreshments for Chatterbooks (which reminds me I need to claim that back next time I’m in work) and came home for lunch before going to the library.

Not sure how much I’ve mentioned Chatterbooks on here so I’ll give a potted history of the whole thing, feel free to skip it (like anyone reads the whole blog posts anyway 😉 ).

I’ve always felt the library (specifically Lancing, the one I work in) fails children of Davies and Scarlett’s age rather. We are great at getting them in really young for Baby Rhyme Time (birth-18 months ish) and keeping them for that pre-school, introduction to books age with Storytime (technically for under 5s but in actual fact it tends to be 18 months – 3.5 years when they start pre-school) and until fairly recently we did run a twice-weekly Homework Club for 10-13 year olds (ish) where we gave assisted help in finding books, using the internet, free photocopying and printing and so on although we stopped that last year as we weren’t getting any attendees week in, week out. I think the Summer Reading Challenge is great (despite personal, philosophical stand point on reading for rewards of stickers etc.) but it’s only for 6 weeks of the year and then I feel we leave that age to flounder on until the following summer. Of course schools and indeed parents have a huge role to play in fostering a love of books for kids but I think the library does too. And I think the library role is less clearly defined as it’s not about ‘literacy’ or turning reading into work, it’s about recreational reading, books for the love of books, celebrating reading for fun, for pleasure, for educational value if you like but ultimately being there for whatever reason adults come to the library to borrow books for children aswell. The next generation of library users. I believe that children are the future etc. (I can’t hit those high notes and you’re supposed to be being quiet in the library ;)).

So, flushed with how fab the Summer Reading Game could be after my first summer at the library I started asking about what else we could do for those lost years. I specifically wanted to do a kids reading group, same format as the adult one I go to at the library, maybe without the wine, where everyone reads the same book, or books on the same theme and comes back once a month to chat about it. What you loved, what you hated, whether you wanted to burn the book or find everything else that author had ever written, that sort of thing.

I mooted the idea and was initially supported but quickly knocked back. I then put together more of a proposal suggesting I be paid or come on voluntarily, suggesting a time and day that would suit me, designed a plan of how it all might work. I was again listened to and then knocked back with a sort of consolation prize of maybe one craft based event during half term, perhaps with a Halloween theme? Nothing more was ever said and the Poetry Event for kids I was superficially encouraged on never went any further. I heard whispers that they were worried about setting something up that I personally might not always be around to carry on, that I’d put people’s backs up by getting above myself and suspect there is a level of suspicion around me that I am rather too good at my job and may be after other people’s and that I am a bit of a maverick and couldn’t really just be left unsupervised to do these sorts of things. At the time I was pretty pissed off and said so but left it there.

Fast forward a few months and Davies and Scarlett started a Home Ed reading group anyway which negated one of my big reasons for wanting to do it, but I heard about the Chatterbooks group that Chloe goes to and realised that my idea tied in pretty well with a national initiative that many library services were buying in to. So I spoke to the very young, very enthusiastic librarian that I get on well with about Chatterbooks, shared with her the ideas I’d had before and how I’d been knocked back and off she went championing the cause. I ran a couple of events with her (Halloween last year, the My Story event, two Christmas late night shopping events) and she managed to get the right people on board and push through a Chatterbooks-of-sorts type idea.

So, my motivation for the whole thing is multi-reasoned. 1. As ever, about Davies and Scarlett. I can see that this is something they’d get a lot out of, they love being read to, books are very often the catalyst for art, models and games for them, I think they’d enjoy talking to others about books they liked, it would be great socially for them to be with their peers age-wise locally in an informal, sociable setting rather than the classroomyness of Badgers, but with the structure of organised activities. 2. It’s yet another thing to note down for both the children and I went the inspector comes knocking. Out there, in the community, mixing with other children, doing literacy based stuff, me clearly giving headspace to all of the above and being a Good Little Home Ed Parent. 3. Blatant self promotion – one way or another this goes on my CV for career progression, either in the library or to take elsewhere – I’m being proactive, progressive, inventive, creative, working with different groups of people, increasing business potential, working as a volunteer, increasing my work with children etc. and finally 4. It’s all about Customer Service. I genuinely am passionate about customer service. Every job I’ve ever had, everything I ever take on in life I strive to do to the best of my ability – Home Ed is for me, parenting to the upmost, running Chatterbooks is for me being a Library Assistant to my upmost – I’ve seen something which we lack in our service offering, it’s within my power to make it available and I’m doing so. It’s something I am capable of, will be good at and a new challenge to keep the role fresh and interesting for me.

Of course the library has it’s own agenda and whilst my model was as described above – monthly meet up to talk about a book the powers that be decreed we should run a short burst of book based craft and activity sessions – six sessions in six weeks. Two previous Chatterbooks sessions have run in West Sussex library service – one was a monthly set up similar to what I want to do but over a finite six month period, the second was run in a local school by a library staff member. Neither were very successful for various reasons. The plan is to run this one as another style of Chatterbooks and eventually come up with a model for various types including different age groups, short bursts, longer terms, possibly special needs groups and a variety of target audiences including good readers, slow readers, areas of social deprivation and so on.

So with me as a ‘willing volunteer’ six one hour sessions have been booked, I’ve driven the ages (I chose 7 to 9 years simply because that puts Scarlett at one end and Davies at the other), I’ve produced the plans for the first and second sessions – it’s my intention to plan the further four sessions with the kids themselves although I have some ideas to throw in if needed and whilst I have been told I will always have to have another, more senior member of staff with me I have dazzled them enough with visions of what I aim to achieve that I am being supported rather than directed.

It’s not ideal, I think weekly is too frequent and I think six sessions is too few, given there is an ongoing need and demand for such a group, particularly a free one ;). But I’m happy to give my time for these six weeks and hit them with a demand for paying me if they want to do it again. Or indeed consideration for a proper job role at some future point delivering these county-wide.

So we set the dates, put up posters and decided on 12 spaces. We filled those 12 spaces twice over within a week and have a full waiting list for if we do it again, along with two written requests for something similar for the older age group. I think I have proved my point about demand for it ;).

I decided the first session should be about how the kids choose books. We had various other things to cover too but that was the theme. So Davies, Scarlett and I, along with Russell, who is the senior children’s librarian got busy with setting out various things, photocopying and last minute planning before our attendees arrived. A full house of 13 children (we ended up with a rogue form in the folder which no member of staff owned up to putting in there without writing the name on the list, or indeed informing them that it was already full, so we expected an extra and indeed he came). First we got everyone to make a name badge for themselves, we waved off Mums (we’d said they were welcome to stay but none did), I got an earbashing from a Mum about how one of her lad’s friends should have been allowed to come but he is 7 but not year 3 (or whatever year it is) and they’d been told only years 3 and 4, or 4 and 5 or something were allowed. I assured her that as I know now what any of these years mean it was strictly 7,8 or 9 year olds and nothing to do with school years. She carried on ranting for a bit before Russell stepped in and gently told her I was volunteering for the whole thing too but he would take her comments onboard. It is *free* so I did wonder on quite what grounds she felt justified in complaining on, but she did offer at the end to bring the biscuits next week so maybe we won her over after all ;).

Russell did an ice breaker of everyone introducing themselves and then I led the whole gaggle of children on a tour of the library. We came back to the junior library and I tasked them all with taking a few minutes to select a book off the shelf. It could be one they had read before if they liked but what I really wanted was for them to pretend they were choosing a book to take home today and to select on the same basis they usually did. We then came back to the circle and all held up the book we’d chosen and said why. We had fairy books chosen for the fairy on the front, animal books chosen for the animal on the front, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl books chosen because we liked the author, books chosen for funny looking illustrations, books chosen because the ‘blurb’ on the back sounded good and a couple of non-fiction chosen because they were specific hobbies or interests (horses, planes, chess). We talked about book covers generally; fonts, illustrations, colours, author’s name, blurb on the back and so on and how even in the tiny kids library at Lancing there are more books than anyone could read in a lifetime so a book really has to be attractive from it’s front cover.

We then handed out clipboards, pens and paper and got everyone to design their own book cover to be as appealing as possible. Several children copied the book they’d chosen, some did other things they were interested in, some came up with complete off the top of their head ideas. The first person went wrong (we went straight to using pens, it wasn’t supposed to be about drawing in pencil first) and I said she could have another sheet of paper, screw up the one she’d done wrong and chuck it in the middle. This was met with delight and a feeling of slight craziness which was precisely what I want the group to be about and we netted a fairly big pile of balled up pieces of paper (which I got Russell to gather up as I have plans for them later in the sessions) and some really creative art work and ideas came foward.

As the children drew I offered to read aloud to them and ended up reading 3 different stories – I suspect they’d have happily sat there all afternoon doing that, they all seemed to really enjoy it :). Some of them had finished their pictures so they held them up and talked about them to the rest of the group, we said they could take them home and finish them and if they wanted to bring them back next time they could. We also had some quiz sheets and activities from various kids publishers websites to do too.

There is a Chatterbooks pack with bag, stickers, posters, pencil etc which we’ll be giving away components of over the course of the sessions and today I gave out Reading Diaries along with a questionnaire about their reading habits. We had squash and biscuits and that was the end of our hour. I had prepared a book cover jigsaw activity but we didn’t get round to that. I had some great comments from the kids including ‘this was so cool, not at all like school’ and ‘I can’t wait for next week!’ which was really nice and several of the mums hung back to say thanks at the end. Davies and Scarlett both said they really enjoyed it and thought it was really good – I hope they are a bit proud of me and also enjoy being part of my work at the same time :). One of the children asked me if any of the children were mine and when I said yes and asked her to guess which ones she correctly did :). All the kids seemed really friendly to each other, we had three sets of siblings (including D&S) and 3 sets of children who had come with a friend but the group meshed well together and at the end Scarlett was hanging out with another little girl chattering away while Davies helped Russell and I tidy up.

We had a very quick debrief and the kids and I left at 5pm. I think it’ll be worth getting there from about 230pm each week and being prepared to stay til 5pm although Russell did go to great lengths to assure me as I am not being paid I have no duty to help set up or tidy up.

So I reckon first session a success 🙂 I had a chorus of ‘yes!’ when I asked if the kids had enjoyed it and I’m really happy with my plans for next weeks’ session after which I’m hoping to get some ideas and feedback from the kids themselves. I’ll be seeing the Big Boss tomorrow night at Book Group (the one I go to) so it will be interesting to hear what feedback she’s already had by the time I see her tomorrow evening.

Home for tea for the kids and they watched the Simpsons Movie. We had a copy but it was scratched beyond watching and as it is the current obsession for Davies when we saw it at just £3 in Sainsburys I bought a replacement copy. I managed to light a fire including chopping up sticks and managing without fire lighters of which I was very proud as Ady often struggles even with fire lighters. I’m the firestarter…We read which we all enjoyed and then I declared myself readalouded out so Davies and Scarlett went to bed and I went for a bath.

Of course Davies and Scarlett didn’t go straight to sleep, Scarlett worked her way through about 5 Dick King-Smith audio books before needing me to sit with her for all of about five minutes before she drifted off to sleep. Davies came down to throw Doctor Who (David Tennant action figure) in my bath with me. David tends to be quite a regular visitor with Davies while I’m having my bath, I think he has a crush on me ;). And to present us with pictures of all the Simpsons.

I cooked tacos which were lovely and we watched Tower Block of Commons which has our MP in it so is perhaps more interesting than it otherwise would be.

Saturday I worked Saturday morning, which had led us to decide to make Sunday our day trip up to The Salmon’s Au Revoir Party Weekend but a text invitation from the McM’s on Friday meant we ended up going to their’s on Saturday late afternoon and staying over on Saturday night. Am now regretting not leaving straight from work and making it to the party for an hour or so before going to McM’s (pronouced MacEms) so we could have caught up with all the people we missed seeing 🙁

Work was fine, Yvonne, who thinks it’s outrageous I’m not being paid for Chatterbooks gave me two hours to spend time preparing for it. She’s lovely 🙂 Another Mum I’d have loved to have had, she does so much for her two daughters and two (soon to be three) grandchildren. So I enjoy the little doses of adopted daughter-ness she bestows on me at work :).

Came home, had lunch and a very long bath while reading Chris Evan’s autobiography, which I’m really enjoying despite not being a huge fan of his. Am definitely changing my opinion of him though – maybe people should spend time getting to know people properly rather than making a snap decision about who they think they are or listening to other people’s ideas?….

Then we packed the car up and headed off. A really nice straightforward journey til the very last five minutes when we made what should have been a tiny diversion to collect Chloe from a friend’s house, the sat nav threw a complete fit about it and we ended up doing a huge loop round before getting back on track 😆

Finally arrived, fortified with tea, followed by wine / beer and snacks (but we did have to eat the dips straight out of the jars, we are no longer fancy guests enough to have things decanted – I bet next time we go we’ll be swigging wine out the bottle and water straight from the dispenser on the fridge 😉 ), kids went off to play, with only occassional returns to us from Davies. Don’t think I blogged about it but he burnt his arm earlier in the week, leaning over the rice cooker to get a glass out of the cupboard. The steam burnt a fairly big (about 50pence piece size) burn on his lower arm. He’s been pretty uncomplaining about it and Ady does have a really good burns kit with some excellent cream which we used on it straightaway which helped, but on Saturday it had finally blistered and the top layer of skin had come off leaving it quite raw, red and sore. We bandaged it but it was, understandably, giving him some grief 🙁

Lovely dinner from Marcus and then the children went off again, returning around midnight whereupon Ady and Marcus did putting them to bed, Mich and I visited them once installed to bestow goodnight kisses and further chatting and drinking wine commenced. We were in bed by 3, not much before 3 it has to be said, but before 3 just the same ;).

Sunday started later. Marcus did a splendid cooked breakfast / brunch / feast for the slovenly. And we had chocolate Valentines hearts and Hershey’s chocolate kisses. All about the romance 😉

Further topping up of tea reserves and chatted later we headed off to the Fishes. We arrived to find The Babs and many children – I suspect she was trying to be like Maria and teach them doh a dear, I know I would if I found myself in charge of that many small people 😆

Katy arrived back, as did Bob, Jan and children, Chris and children, Gina and children, Big Alice and Jon and then various other people I didn’t know. Finally managed to hand over Kirsty and Helen’s birthday gifts to Chris and Babs to carry on delivering – another reason I was really sorry not to have made it on Saturday as I’d have liked to hand them over to the actual people, infront of many of the people who they are from but at least we managed to give them the second installment of their joint 70th gifts before they are 72!

Bob gave us a Bob Fact (quite the most gleefully received Bob Fact I’ve ever witnessed infact – as he launched into it, Jan, Babs, Michelle and I were exchanged delighted grins with each other 🙂 ), there was a chocolate fountain
which predictably once fruit and brownies had been dipped was then used for ‘extreme chocolate fountain dipping’ and at SB’s suggestion Megan tried a jacket potato. Don’t think it was delicious 😆

(and the red eye and chocolate looking a bit like blood dripping gives her a rather vampire-y look).

All too aware of the drive back home again we left just after 430pm – quite sad at the thought that we don’t have another group meet up arranged for ages so am trying to think of something to organise for March or April.

Another smooth journey home, arriving just before 7pm. Kids had some tea, we had baths, I was presented with a Valentine card from Davies (and yes that should be ‘me’ rather than ‘my’)

a couple of bath bombs made by Scarlett

(dreadful photo, might retake it and edit)

which had been made over the course of last week in secret 🙂

Oh and a bottle of fizz from Ady, which he kept topping up for me while I had my bath and then cooked me a lovely dinner 🙂

(see I do use the glass Helen :))

And bed.

Thanks for a lovely weekend to all hosts and other guests. Really sorry to have missed those on Saturday we didn’t see.

We’d been planning to go to Paradise Park today with Ali and Freya, as we have only a few more weeks left on our annual pass before it runs out. But Ali isn’t well and it didn’t seem worth driving over there just for the three of us, and it was too cold to be outside for long anyway and when we put it to the vote the majority – well okay, all three of us – voted to stay home instead.

Kirsty had mentioned an interesting programme they’d been watching and of course anyone who calls themself a Home Educator these days has been laminating, hama beading and watching Chemistry, a volatile history so I thought we’d watch one or the other of those and leap on the bandwagon (whilst singing Another Brick in the Wall, what with that being our anthem and that). But the Chemistry thing doesn’t seem to exist on iplayer anymore so I guess we’ll have to remain not proper Home Educators after all. We watched the first episode of the How the Earth made us and Davies and I enjoyed it, Scarlett got a bit restless halfway and wriggled off to do some drawing instead. I think Davies struggled with the whole hour to be honest, it did feel rather stretched out but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

It was nearly lunchtime by that point but I wanted to go to the library to do some photocopying of birth certificate etc to get my (fourth) CRB check form sent off for my Waste Prevention Advisor position – did I mention I got offered the position this week? I can’t remember. And we needed a few bits from the supermarket too. So we gathered up some library books we’d finished with and nipped into Lancing to return them, get some more, photocopy the forms, get the application in the post and have a wander round the Co-Op for various food items.

Back home again I went to make lunch, managed to shout at Scarlett for being careless with her DS (she leapt up when I asked her to give some old manky grapes to the chickens and forgot it was on charge with the lead stretched across her so it went flying) and then spent over half an hour dealing with the fall out from that of her sobbing and saying she was rubbish at everything while Davies and I came up with a huge long list of all the things she is great at. Some of our list had me feeling like I was in a bad Monty Python sketch (Me: you’re great with animals, remember how many baby chicks you have looked after and helped us to rear S: *great wails of sorrow* but some of them died‘). Then her and I went out to the chickens, she brought two of them into the kitchen to show them the house they used to live in when they were chicks, forgot her woe and cheered up and we were able to have lunch. Phew.

Davies did some Xboxing while Scarlett made my Valentines Day present – a hand painted glass bottle 🙂 and presented it to me early :). I mostly drank tea and read Chris Evans autobiography.

I did the kids tea, Davies came and helped me with that and then while they were eating I chopped some firewood for sticks and got a fire lit. Ady tends to always do that task but he’s been getting home later than usual and really once it gets dark it’s good to have the fire lit, both pyschologically and because if it doesn’t get lit til after 7pm it can take a good hour or so before it’s properly warmed up. Unless of course your name is David in which case you simply bank it up til the chimney is lit 😆

Ady arrived home, I read a bit of The Dreamfighter and the kids went to bed. I got a text message which delighted us all and we’re looking forward to seeing friends at the weekend. 🙂

I made pizza for dinner, Ady had to go back out to buy a decent tin opener as our pound shop one died and flatly refused to open another tin can. Ever. We tried to work out which bit of the can to puncture with the small and scarily sharp looking attachment on my penknife, sensibly gave up before one of us got hurt and he went to Sainsburys to buy a new one. It cost over a fiver but we’re justifying it as an ‘essential piece of kitchen kit’ and both agreed our pizza tasted all the better for the tinned pineapple and tuna having been opened with a quality tin opener 😆

I had to sit with Tarly while she fell asleep but she was almost asleep when she called me in so I just stroked her hair and whispered lovely things to her and she drifted off really quickly. Davies then called me up to show me all the Simpsons pictures he’d been drawing and pinning up on his wall. Must photograph them, he’s gotten very good at them very quickly.

Scarlett is having a bit of a hard time at the moment. This makes me feel sad, want to help her and also rather glad that in the main I can be around to support her and try and help her with it. It also makes me rather tired as one of the main things she is struggling with is sleeping alone and being away from me, sometimes being away from me is as simple as not physically touching me. As I commented to Ady earlier this week ‘it’s pretty exhausting being this loved!’.

At any one time it always seems one child is being easier to parent than the other and both Davies and Scarlett have had their turns at being the easy and the tricky one. Davies has had his periods of being incredibly clingy, but those are way off in the long forgotten past these days. He has also had his times of being low on self esteem and emotional reserves but currently he is in pretty good shape, happy with who he is, secure with what he wants and without any great angst or issues. I’m fairly confident this is a short term thing and he is saving up reserves for the bit onset of puberty when he is sure to present me with a whole load more stuff to deal with but we’ll enjoy the respite while we have it ;).

Scarlett has offered all sorts of challenges over the last seven years. She was an easy baby, a stroppy toddler and a very fiesty three and four year old. We navigated all that together and not without mistakes along the way, plenty of reading about ‘challenging’ and ‘spirited’ children and a fair bit of self examination for me and modifying my knee jerk responses to her accordingly to create a more harmonious relationship and remind myself that as her mother who loves her my role is to help her through the rough bits and not add to her woe, whilst remembering that none of this is about me or being done on purpose to piss me off.

I’ve always been honest about the fact that I was terrified at the prospect of having a daughter. Having experienced a less than perfect mother-daughter relationship with my own mum and been aware of the even worse one between my mum and grandmother I was really scared that history would repeat itself. Scarlett came along and has thus far proved me wrong and I adore having a daughter. Having only one of each child I couldn’t comment on whether the unique relationship I have with each is based on anything other than them being two different individuals but I suspect there is some mother-daughter and mother-son stuff happening there too. I think I am pretty intuative and in tune with both children and when problems arise I hope I make a decent job of dealing with them and finding new ways forward. I know that everyone is different and it’s taken me a while to come to terms with the idea that actually finding the best way of helping a child deal with who they are is way better than trying to ‘fix’ them into being someone else instead.

The problem is, and I havve no idea how I slipped up on this one, I thought I’d defined Scarlett and worked out who she was. And indeed I had, except that what I didn’t do was apply everything else I have learnt about people generally and children specifically – they change. I thought those basic characteristics of hers were givens and could be relied on as always what Scarlett was about. I’ve described her as brave, fearless, reckless, confident and feisty so often I’d started to believe the labels rather than checking the child and failed to see that while at 3, 4 and 5 she was indeed all those things but currently, this week, at 7 she kind of isn’t. Not to say she won’t be again,or that deep down she still isn’t but for now discounting her nightmares and worries at bedtime with ‘but you’re brave, of course you’re not scared of monsters under the bed’ is a lie. Because she is scared, she is struggling and she does suddenly need me to sit with her while she drifts off to sleep.

Scarlett was such a contrast to Davies as a baby and toddler. I don’t know if that was personality, a result of me being more laid back about things and positively encouraging and celebrating her daredevil attitude, spending time in the company of her big brother who was able to run and climb and clamber safely or a combination of all of the above but I have been surprised to witness her exercising caution over things every so often. Em commented at Christmas camp that ‘Scarlett has got all sensible’ and it’s true, sometimes she is careful and aware of danger, infact sometimes she overworries and builds fears up to irrational levels. One of her current wobbles at bedtime is fear of crocodiles and sharks. Very rational relevant fears if you happen to be in a shark infested ocean or a crocodile dwelling river but less likely to be real threats in your bedroom in the south of England. We talk through that yes, certainly sharks and crocodiles can be dangerous, can kill people and are to be avoided or treated with wariness. We work through every aspect of her fear, talk it over, unpick it to do a risk assesment and comfort ourselves that the danger level is low to non existant. She goes to sleep but 24 hours later she is in bed, in tears, with me having to do the same process over again even though she could possibly write the script for it herself she’s heard me say it so many times. So every night at the moment she is getting to sleep late and needing me to go and sit with her. She wakes most nights, comes flying up the stairs screaming ‘Mumma! Mumma! Mumma!’ scaring Ady and I half to death, gets into bed with me (which invariably means Ady gets kicked out or decides as it is only about half an hour before he’d get up anyway he might as well get up), snuggles into my arms and goes back to sleep. She claims she’s had nightmares but is unable to describe them at all, either later in the morning or even straight after she’s woken. I suspect it is not nightmares but rousing slightly and where most of us turn over and go back to sleep she is on such high alert having drifted off to sleep with me next to her that she wakes properly and comes to find me.

Scarlett, Davies and I are incredibly physically affectionate with each other anyway and our days are filled with kisses, cuddles, sitting draped over each other and with many random declarations of ‘I love you’ to each other most days but Scarlett is even more affectionate than usual at the moment, which is lovely but tough when translating into clingyness when I do need to leave her to go to work. This I am handling carefully as I can recalle when my Mum was the absolute centre of my world. I remember putting all my energies into making her smile, holding up her discarded t shirt when she wasn’t at home and smelling her scent on it to comfort me because I missed her, thinking that she was the most beautiful / clever / funny / kind / lovely person in the whole wide world. I don’t know if she knew, I don’t know if I ever told her, I do know it was fleeting for her and I but I do know of friends and I’ve read in books and seen in films that some daughters still feel like that about their mothers. I can only hope it will continue for Scarlett and I but while it’s here and she shares it with me I can certainly revel and glory in it, feel wonderful about it and act in ways that mean I deserve such adoration. And let her know that I feel just the same about her. Times two ;).

All of the above I believe can be put down to age / a phase / a transition. It might be some pre-hormonal thing, a reaction to subtle changes that none of us are even consciously aware of. It has certainly been in no small way triggered by her being ill when we came back from Centerparcs and whilst I don’t want to give more gravity to it than is sensible I am equally aware that many big isues in people’s lives can be traced back to one small incident. If there is one lesson I have learnt above all others in parenting so far it is that nothing ever lasts forever, the biggest deals now pale to nothing with the benefit of months or years perspective, she won’t still be waking at night when she’s 18 and that a little bit of caution or sense of danger is no bad thing at all. I need to carry on enjoying the attention, making sure she knows she can rely on me / call on me / need me whenever she wants and I’ll be there. Hopefully it won’t take long before she accepts that as a given once more and doesn’t feel the need to keep testing and proving it.

But the final issue, the one which I’ve had to deal with floods of tears and gentle coaxing over on an almost daily basis is a self esteem one. Every time Scarlett does something wrong or makes a mistake or fails to listen to me the first, second or third time I say something and I end up raising my voice or getting cross or there is an implication attached to one of her actions she just dissolves. Some examples – last night she threw something to Ady but without ensuring he was ready to catch it. It fell on the floor. It was a tin of beans so the potential implications were not good as someone could have been hurt or something could have been broken, as it happened nothing happened other than the tin fell on the carpet. But understandably Ady told her off and drew her attention to what a silly thing to do it had been. Today she leapt up with her DS on her lap, while it was plugged into the the charger, so she yanked the charger lead and the DS dropped to the floor. She can be quite careless with her DS so I yelled at her about taking better care of her stuff, thinking about what she was doing and that if it got broken or the leads came out of the charger due to her not looking after it properly then I wouldn’t be buying her another one. On both occassions she has dissolved into floods of tears and been really down on herself.

I’m spending a hell of a lot of time unpicking how she’s feeling, bigging her up, talking to her about all her many good points and helping her feel better about herself. Explaining that humans make mistakes every single day and it’s not whether we make mistakes or not that makes us good people, it’s how we deal with them once we’ve inevitably made them that makes the difference. I explained that I feel my most important job as a parent is to make Davies and Scarlett realise themselves what amazing people they are and what their strengths and skills are. Far more important than teaching them right from wrong, reading and writing, coaching them in money making abilities if I can help them feel proud of themselves and see they are people worth knowing and loving then everything else should fall into place. Of course that’s a pretty tall order and I might be better sticking with reading and writing really but I like a challenge ;).

Like all children Scarlett is pretty resiliant and before her tears have properly dried she is off playing, laughing and back at her usual default state of happy again but I’m really conscious that this could be a stage we either get through, see the back of and forget about, adding to the long old list of phases we’ve been through or it could be the first identifier of a bigger issue for her. I’ve ordered some books from work Raising Girls: Why Girls are Different – And How to Help Them Grow Up Happy and Confident and Raising Confident Girls: Practical Tips for Bringing Out the Best in Your Daughter for a start. I read Raising Boys and didn’t feel I got much out of it but if they give me some ideas of ‘phases within normal’ that you can expect a girl to go through they may help and I like the idea of some tips to help restore some of her natural confidence, bounciness and exuberance.

Feel free to comment, I know many of you have experienced similar blips or indeed longer term issues so any words of wisdom gratefully recieved.

For the last time ever with NC 🙂 Hurrah and Woohoo and that.

Had an uneventful day at work really today. I spent some time teaching a colleague how to do one of the small jobs I do. I colour photocopied lots of childrens’ book covers to make jigsaws for Chatterbooks next week. I spent some time on the desk, some time on the counter and some time putting books back on shelves. I did lots of ordering in books for me and the kids which always makes me happy as I smugly get to waive the 50pence reservation charge for all the adult books I order and the hire charges for dvds and music :). I spent the first hour or so agreeing cheerily with everyone coming in saying how cold it was outside and the remaining 7 hours agreeing in a less cheery manner while privately thinking ‘well it is bloody February, what were you expecting? Sub tropical conditions??!!’.

And then I came home.

Meanwhile Ady was home with Davies and Scarlett til 10am when Dad arrived, Dad was here til about 3pm with Davies and Scarlett and then Ady came back and collected them and they went off to visit some stores together. In the morning Davies did some Fantastic Contraptions including signing up for an account (still free at the moment, he needs to complete all levels before I pay) so that his progress gets saved as he lost all the progress he’d made yesterday but seems to have motored through all the levels again this morning. Not sure what Scarlett did, I left her playing on DS.

While Dad was here they talked about the Hiroshima bomb and other such ‘olden day’ things from when Dad was a lad.

I got in nearly a full hour before anyone else but spent most of it dealing with the chickens who were being all hysterical and flappy about their perch falling down in the shed, making a cup of tea and opening the post. Then the others arrived home and while Ady made the kids some tea I looked through the huge pile of books about cartoons and animation I’d brought home for Davies finishing with a really good Simpsons book which Davies has already made full use of perfecting his drawings of Homer and Bart with.

We carried on our Ted Hughes homage with which was very well recieved considering I don’t think we’ve ever read poetry before and then the first chapter of which we enjoyed.

After bedtime Davies came and chatted to me for ages while I was in the bath about Badger camp last year, some of the Badgers and our opinions of them (now I can talk to him about individuals which I never could before as they were one mass of kids) including a nice lad who I’ve noted being wrongly accused of being a trouble maker and interesting Davies made the same observation. He is pretty certain he doesn’t want to do camp this year but insists he had a fab time last year and will go again next year. I am pleased, both from the saving the £140 point of view (and the rest as Scarlett and I ended up spending on things we wouldn’t have done if Davies had been around) and from the not having to dread the week and miss him so terribly although I am sure I’d be (marginally) better this year if he did go.

Then I sat with Scarlett for a while and talked through some of the things that seem to worry her when she is lying in bed not being asleep. These include sharks, crocodiles and robbers. Fortunately all fairly easy to talk through and allay her fears about them not being very likely to come and get her in her bedroom. I sat with her til she fell asleep and then came and helped Ady with some work he was struggling with.

We had guinea fowl for dinner as Ady had picked some up reduced to just £1 each, which was nice but nothing amazing.

And I think that brings Thursday to a close.

We were supposed to ice skating today but best laid plans and all that… last week we didn’t go because Davies and Scarlett weren’t up to it, this week I had a phone call last night to say the rest of the people we were planning to meet weren’t going. We will make it before it closes at the end of the month but it won’t be next week during half term.

It’s been a very curious weather day with intermittent snow and sunshine so we didn’t feel too inspired to travel very far really. Scarlett woke me at 8am to say she’d slept in her own bed all night, then she woke Davies and they went off downstairs while I turned over and went back to sleep, having been roused at 5am once again, this time by the cat sharing my pillow with me.

When I came downstairs Davies had booted up the laptop, found google, copied ‘Simpsons hit and run’ off the front cover of the xbox game he was playing and found a page of cheats and he and Scarlett were working out between them which ones they wanted. Am always quite shocked by his sudden leaps forward at such things. I know I shouldn’t be and I’m sure for the average 9 year old none of this would be particularly amazing but given all of these skills are self-taught with no instruction I was pretty impressed :).

Sorted out the kids’ breakfast, was most taken aback by the chickens already being out and scratching around (Ady had let them out as the mornings are lighter now). After breakfast Scarlett got out her bath bomb making stuff and carried on creating while Davies and I looked at Cartoons and Animation (Art and Craft Skills) from the library and talked about the various ideas in it. We then looked at makemovies.co.uk which has some excellent step by step animations on it. We studied that for quite some while and Scarlett came over to look every so often too.

Ady appeared home for lunch as he was passing so we stopped at all had lunch together. Then Davies and I looked at doing some animation on the animationstation and I showed him how to use tracing paper and marker pens to slightly change one drawing to the next and he copied a couple of the examples on the website and created some animations on his animationstation. His first attempt wasn’t great as he’d failed to notice positioning and sizing of each seperate picture in relation to each other but he quickly realised where he’d gone wrong and we looked at in in more detail and his next two attempts were really good. Not able to upload them to share as they are on the memory card in his animationstation still but will look at doing so later.

While Davies was doing that I was reseaching bath bomb ingredients supplies and after lengthly looking I ordered some from an ebay seller for Scarlett to top her up as she’s run out of the basics. I was also still looking for some sort of cosmetic making or perfumery workshop or session for her as I think she’d love it and could do with that sort of learning rather than from a book or kiddie kit but could only find perfume making for hen nights and other adult groups. I did get a very speedy, if not helpful email reply back from Lush giving me some links to look at but saying that regrettably they don’t offer tours of their factory which is a great shame as she loves Lush stuff and that would have been ideal. I’ve also had some email contact with fizzpotzz (beware link opens noisy website!) which looked ideal and had me wondering if I could find enough local children to make it worth booking but I realised there is no local rep. I briefly pondered applying as they leapt on my initial email but it’d be too much weekend commitment and I really do need to remember that I don’t actually like children rather than take on any more activities involving them! :lol:. Will keep researching as I’m sure I can find some sort of chemistry with a leaning towards cosmetics and perfumes for kids somewhere, or go all out flakey and find a local aromatherapist who will talk to Scarlett about stuff like that ;).

Yesterday Tarly and I had been talking about whether her oils were poisonous and I’d said that you could use some essential oils in cooking so we’d talked about what would taste nice in various things and agreed that you could use lemon or lavender in snickerdoodles. So her and I made a batch of snickerdoodles, split the dough and she added lemon oil to her half and then mixed lemon oil with caster sugar to roll them in, while I carried on with cinnamon as usual. She christened them lemondoodles and they are actually very nice, although the commbination of lemon and sugar on the outside puts me in mind of pancakes so much that they just taste of pancakes to me.

While we did that Davies did some fantasticcontraptions and got straight up to the last level really quickly. he’s still experimenting with finishing that level but clicked on the ‘make your own levels’ and saw that you could upgrade and buy it to do more for $10. I said that if he completes the free levels I will get him the full version having spent similar on bath bomb supplies for Scarlett today so I think that is his mission / intention for tomorrow :).

The kids had tea and then it was time for Badgers. We learnt last week that they only have to wear uniform for the first meeting of the month. Scarlett, who hates uniforms of any description was delighted to go in her jeans with unbrushed hair. Davies who says he quite likes the novelty of a uniform once a week (I suspect he is also rather proud of his follow me Badger epilets) wore his. After some consultation I also cut his hair a bit – still very long and messy but it was starting to look a bit 70s cop show so we’ve cultivated the unkempt look he was actually aiming for again ;).

I felt much better about Badgers tonight, the group I was with was bigger this week – 8 of them and they decorated frames to put photos in. I managed to chat to about 4 of them and help them with their frames, encouraging them to all go for very different approaches and getting them to think about what they wanted to make rather than copying each other. I do have some concerns about my ability to fit in with the expectations on a Badger leader, particularly with regard to crowd control but I guess I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it really. The kids and I are going in for a couple of hours on Monday morning to tidy up the resource cupboard and plan next terms badge so my issues may come up then, if not I’ll coast along until they do.

Davies at the moment thinks he won’t do Badger camp this year as it is going to be further away than last year and a big part of his comfort was in only being 10 minutes or so away from home – as indeed was proved when I went up there on the second night. That could all easily change of course and Ady is going to chat to him at some point to make sure he isn’t saying that to appease me ;). Davies is pretty good at testing himself by doing something, enjoying it but being able to say ‘right I’ve done that now, it was fine, but I don’t need to do it again!’ though and I suspect Badger camp could well be one of those instances.

Home for stories – the last three chapters of Tales of the Early World which if I haven’t already done (and I suspect I have) I heartily recommend. We have the third in the series to start next but have loved this one and ‘How The Whale Became’.