One word? When seven would do…

As I’ve mentioned previously my Mum is currently on a Being A Good Mother To Nicola kick which makes me go on a Being A Good Daughter To My Mum kick so I rang her the other week to arrange a few days out with her. This is always slightly awkward as I don’t want to suggest places that are expensive as I can’t afford to pay and whilst she can she will quickly resent doing so and get arsey (which is fair enough, I want to see her for her company not her purse) but the sort of free stuff that the kids and I enjoy isn’t really her sort of thing either so it ends up feeling like she’s tagging along as a spare part.

We’d arranged to get together today to go to a local museum but I realised last week it’s not open on Mondays which left us with a day together planned and nothing particular to do with it. Luckily it was a beautiful day which lent itself to being outside so we went to collect her at 10ish as arranged and I had two suggestions for her – Arundel (very pretty local historic town with various free or chargable things to do) or Paradise Park which I’d recently decided we’d get an annual pass for having missed a year last year so given the place space to look forward to going again.

Davies and Scarlett both wanted to go to Paradise Park so naturally Mum decided she wanted to go to Arundel. She annoyed me by calling me ‘Mum’ to the children lots – firstly I hate that sort of thing anway and secondly the kids don’t actually call me ‘Mum’. Scarlett protested about not wanting to go to Arundel loudly which only really put my mum’s back up and made her all the more adamant to go there while Davies was quiet and when she asked him said ‘well I’d rather go to Paradise Park but I’m trying not to make too much fuss about it!’. That sealed it and to Paradise Park we went. Not with the good grace one should probably give into a six year old with and I suspect when I filled the car up with petrol my Mum probably made that clear to Scarlett as they were both a bit tense when I got back in the car but never mind.

Everyone was cheered up by the time we arrived and I sorted out the annual pass, the woman on the counter very kindly gave in to Tarly’s request for an entrance sticker for her toy parrot (called, you guessed it, Parrotty) and we were all very impressed with the new bits through the Planet Earth walk including a large area about water and sealife

Both the children correctly identified various fossils, rocks and minerals and then again in the dinsosaur bit between them they knew all of them. Davies did loads of incidental reading and then in the outdoors area when my Mum commented on the two ducks being ‘very odd how two totally different breeds stick together like that!’ Davies corrected her that actually they were both mallards – just a male and a female. He then went on to tell her that most birds have males with bright plumage and females with duller colourings as she needs to be camouflaged on the nest while he needs to attract a mate competing with other males. She genuinely didn’t seem to know any of that and was very impressed with him. If nothing else spending those couple of hours with her would have done her good in terms of seeing just how much general knowledge they both have :).

The outdoors has also had lots of work done and several new areas put in. It was beautiful there in the sunshine 🙂

We would normally either eat in the cafe or have taken a picnic and go to the amusements and play area – they have token operated amusements at really cheap prices which the children love and a small soft play area and crazy golf. Both the children really wanted to do that but Mum had had enough and wanted to go ‘somewhere nice’ for lunch and suggested Brighton Marina. It took some perusading (which I thought was understandable) but we did just that via the shop where I gave them a pound to buy some sweets and left them to it but she felt the need to stand in the queue with them and take over the transaction when they got to the till. It sounds like I’m just slagging her off and really it was a lovely day, and she is trying hard but she is just really rubbish at being unselfish or remotely child-focussed. But then when we were children we were never taken out to places designed for children or families, we always tagged along with whatever my Mum and Dad wanted to do. She doesn’t really have time or patience for their interuptions and questions and observations or seem to get the same pleasure out of just being with them at their pace and seeing things through their eyes as I do. Guess that’s why I do what I do and she did what she did really…

We headed to the Marina, parked up and walked to the restuarants quay and chose the one that the kids most wanted to go to – Frankie and Bennys. The food was okay although the service was very slow but they kids got activity books and origami sheets each so they were happily occupied and they both ate everything including pudding so that was good :). We had a wander round the shops afterwards, half looking for shoes for Tarly who’s boots are falling apart but it’s not worth buying more winter shoes for now. Didn’t find anything and she’s fairly adamant she wants pretendy crocs again so we’ll sort that out later this week – today would have been perfectly warm enough for crocs so we may as well have them now and stick to wellies for colder / wetter weather.

The day seemed to have gone pretty quickly and the drive home was edging towards rush hour and heavy traffic. We got in and Davies and Scarlett showed Mum some of Davies’ many drawings and illustrated stories while I sorted out some washing. She came downstairs impressed again with him and we had a cup of tea while the children disappeared off to play. Ady arrived home just as Davies was getting upset with himself at not being able to build an x wing fighter out of junk boxes and sellotape exactly the way he had it pictured in his mind. Mum and I went off to the pet shop for sawdust bedding and Sainsbursy for food where we parted company (they only live across the road from there so she was walking home afterwards) while Ady, Davies and Scarlett built a magificent machine with flashing lights and flaps and everything :).

Back home Davies put on a show for us (complete with microphone) about not putting all our cardboard in the recycling but asking him first if he could use in in his inventions and then we had several chapters of the fourth Mr Gum book – Mr Gum and the Power Crystals. Infact we had 12 chapters because at least 5 of them were repeated one page chapters 😆

I’m still suffering with sinus pain from my long cold / virus / infection / whatever the hell it was and have hormonal reasons to add to feeling slightly sorry for myself but it’s been a nice day, in the sunshine, with lunch out and a good feeling about having got the annual pass to make lots of use out of and a glowyness about pulling off Being A Good Daughter even if I have had to come here afterwards and snipe a bit ;).

Just wanted to post up some pictures of the display Davies and Scarlett did for the library as part of their RSPB Wildlife Action Awards. I took the display down on Saturday as it’s been up for the 2 weeks we had the space booked for. I’ve had loads of direct compliments and nice comments made from other people passed on to me for the children so it’s been very well recieved.

It ties in really nicely as 3 of the other activities to do are pick up litter, write to your MP and get in the local paper so we’re going to carry on with the same theme and contact the council to see if we can borrow litter collecting stuff and then do the same walk and pick up all the litter we see. We’ll write a press release and see if we can get some coverage from the local paper and also write to our local MP about what we’re doing / have done too. I like the idea that we can tie it all together into a mini campaign and that it is something they are genuinely passionate about and have wanted to do anyway regardless of the WAA.

Here is the writing from the display:

Then they had a selection of photos that they’d taken, some drawings they’d done and some mixtures of the two (photos with drawings stuck on and drawings with photos stuck on) – a selection:

And Davies has compiled his favourites (ie mostly his own) in a display in his bedroom 🙂

I stayed up way too late on Friday night crying and laughing at Comic Relief and then had to get up for work yesterday morning so felt rather spaced out for most of the morning.

Infact most of the morning passed in a bit of a blur. I like my two morning shifts – Wednesday and Saturday the best. Not just because they are half days although obviously that helps but because they are the two busier days out of the week and although I’ve adjusted to the pace of the library now and it doesn’t often seem agonisingly slow any more like it did when I first started I’d still rather be busy and have plenty to do than be kicking my heels.

I came home and everyone else was out in the garden. My Dad had been here for most of the morning and there had been gardening, bug hunting and general outside-y stuff happening. Our plan had been to spend the afternoon at the allotment but when they finally came in they hadn’t yet had lunch so it was already about 230pm by the time we were thinking about heading up there. Davies wasn’t keen (I think he’d had his fill of outsideyness by then) so we decided to put it off til today instead.

We’ve been meaning to get along to our local Emmaus for ages as I’d told Ady about it and he wanted to have a look, I thought there might be stuff useful for my knitting / rag rugging etc and then during the houseclearing that’s going on across the road at Dragon-Lady’s house one of their vans pulled up during the week to take out some of her furniture which reminded me so we decided to go there.

Davies and I had had a long chat about giving to charity on Friday night when we made an online donation to Comic Relief so I gave them both a pound each to spend in the shop. Ady and I didn’t find anything there this time – I suspect it is one of those places where on a good day you find loads of stuff you want and other times there is nothing. Scarlett found 3 soft toys she wanted but headed to the tombola stand (which was raising money for Comic Relief) and handed her pound over she thought to pay for her toys but they thought to buy 5 tickets for the tombola. I went over and realised the misundertanding on both parts just as she was pulling her second winning ticket out – she got a packet of pens and a little salt and pepper shaker set which she was delighted with. When I explained to her what had happened she imediately said ‘well I need another pound to pay for my toys then!’ even thought she’d already put them in her bag so she went off to do that. That meant I had to give Davies another pound (he’d found a Feathers McGraw rucksack to buy) but he didn’t win on the tombola anyway.

We had a walk round the ground of the place which used to be a nunnery and is very pretty with lovely gardens. We left and Ady and Davies went into Sainsburys on the way home where they were ages. Scarlett and I waited in the car; her playing her DS until I realised Davies had left his too so I played that.They were ages though.

Home for tea for the kids followed by a bath. The book I fought to get the library to order – Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics had finally come in and I’d read it earlier in the afternoon and then read it to Davies and Scarlett. Scarlett is being tricky at the moment in a very non-confrontational way which means she isn’t directly challenging anyone but is not acting in a very desireable manner so her and I have been having lots of serious chats. I’m trying very hard to talk everything through with her and be loving and supportive rather than alienating and punishing. It’s fairly exhausting for both of us though and slightly hard on Davies who is being a star but I’m trying to make sure doesn’t get sidelined or left out with her taking up so much of my time. The book actually touched on a couple of things we’ve been talking about which was good though.

We then had the first couple of chapters of the third Mr Gum book – Mr. Gum and the Goblins

I made a carrier bag ragrug (that brings my count of ones made ready to sell to a whopping 2 but at least it’s a start). Ady dug out the mincer attachment for the kenwood chef and re-minced some mince I’d bought that was really thickly minced which I hate, which much improved it and he made a lovely pasta bolognaise and we watched some old Ed Burn standup on a sky channel which was very funny.

Today I had a lie in without really having a lie in if that makes sense. It was only 9am which isn’t very late anyway but the radio had been on in both the lounge and the kitchen which drifts up the stairs and into my sleep since about 7am so I didn’t feel like I’d had a proper lie in. Also no one was dressed or breakfasted when I came downstairs so I was grumpy about that and we didn’t end up getting out til nearly 11am :rolls:

We went over to my parents first to collect some frogspawn from their pond. We take it every year as the fish simply eat the whole lot otherwise. One year we did get to about five froglets but they all died while we were at Kessingland :(. Another year all of the frogspawn died overnight before even turning into tadpoles which led me to suspect the bucket they’d been in hadn’t been washed out properly from whatever stuff was in it before and last year there were none at all. This year had a healthy amount and we took it all to the allotment for our wildlife pond along with a handful of watersnails which Dad had in abundance in his pond. We all stood chatting round the pond and could happily have stayed longer but wanted to get up to the allotment really. I’ll blog about all of that properly over in the relevant place to save repeating myself.

I wasn’t really in the right mood for it today though and we’d not thought to take more than bottles of water so started to get hungry. I also need to take some handwash and hand cream as although I have gotten over getting my hands dirty in the first place once the dirt starts to dry and cake on my hands I need to wash them. I must make a list of all the things that would be useful to have up there and make sure I gather them altogether to take next time we go.

We came home and the kids wanted to stay outside so they played in the garden while I got the dinner on (ham in coke with roast potatoes, mash potatoes, parsnips, peas, yorkshire puddings and gravy. Well gravy for some of us, others had ketchup ;)) and downloaded photos.

Scarlett had a bath while Davies and I went to the shop together, then played with the magnetic letters (he wrote ‘I love mummy and daddy’ I wrote’ Davies is 8, great, a bit late and my mate’ for him to read and then we cooperatively wrote ‘the truth is a lemon meringue’ which we’ve left up on the radiator :))and then did a Where’s Wally puzzle. Davies then went out in the garden with Ady while Scarlett continued having her very long bath indeed. Sometimes, just sometimes, she’s a bit like me that girl ;).

They came in, she came out. Ady brushed her hair and Davies had a shower while I served up dinner. Over dinner we talked at Davies request about ‘things we like but other people don’t’ and had to go round the table naming something each that we liked but at least one other person round the table didn’t. Inventive, if rather random 😆 We finished the Mr Gum book and then I went for a bath. I was supposed to be peaceful and relaxing and I wanted to finish the last few pages of my book. It was sort of relaxing and I did finish my book but both kids followed me in there and begged to wash my feet (I had some foot scrub stuff and a face pack I wanted to do) so I had both legs stuck out of the bath in different directions while they scrubbed and then Tarly peeled off my face pack which sort of got in the way of reading my book. They finally went to bed – Davies to listen to You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum (BBC Childrens Audio) “>Mr Gum audio book which he is listening to on average 3 times a night since I brought it home on Thursday :).

Tomorrow we’re spending the day with my Mum although we’ve yet to decide exactly what we’re doing. Don’t want to jinx it but it would be nice to finally have a Monday morning where noone is feeling too ill to go somewhere…

Scarlett did indeed continue to have a rough nights sleep and ended up in bed with me while Ady decamped to her bed. Not at all sure what that was about and she’s been slightly wobbly today too.

I was up earlier than normal as I registered in my half asleep mind that it was later than it should be to still hear Ady around in the house so got up to check why he was still here and stayed up. Which meant I was early up enough to have a fit of efficiency in housekeeping and Home Ed and did some washing, packed a picnic and was on my second cup of tea by 9am suggesting we have a real proper look at the geology loan box.

There’s about 15 fossils and rocks and minerals in there all in little labelled bags with a print out describing each one, a time line about periods and how long ago they were (cretaceous, jurassic, triassic and so on), a page all about things like lustre, cleavage and streaks (in relation to rocks, not just generally ;)). We went through every single one, opening it, passing it around, smelling it (one of the rocks was iron pyrite (or fools gold) which has a smell about it and the sheet said to smell it) and generally exploring it. I have to confess to getting bored about half way through. I did chivy them along a bit but tried not to let my own lack of interest show too much as they were both very enthused, particularly Davies. As I said later to Davies, it’s the first time one of them has had a real interest that I just don’t share at all.

I had time for another cup of tea and they did some DSing before it was time to leave to go to Highdown Gardens to meet up with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. The weather looked a bit iffy but it didn’t rain and we had a really nice couple of of hours wandering round chatting and playing and generally catching up with each other. I did feel a bit uneasy at one point as the gardens are ornamental and seem to have ever more signs up every time we visit about all the things you aren’t allowed to do. The latest include ‘Do not let your children go to the toilet in the gardens, there are toilets at the entrance’, ‘Do not pick the flowers’ and ‘No ball games’. I’m not sure if they are because there are huge amounts of people coming and abusing the gardens or whether they’ve got a new laminator and gone sign crazy but it did feel a bit oppressive and I was conscious of the children running and playing and kept feeling the urge to shush them and get them to walk in an orderly fashion whenever we walked past anyone else.

Julie hadn’t brought a picnic and they needed to get back as they had friends coming round after school so we headed for home. We debated going somewhere else but none of us could come up with anything so we came home. The kids both did some drawing / painting and I threaded up and wove a rag rug ready for selling in shades of pink. It’s more large doormat size than the bigger sizes I’ve done before but it only took a couple of hours and I reckon I’m better having a few different sizes to offer with a view to taking commissions if people are after something more specific and bespoke.

Davies did a fab picture of rocks and fossils with charcoal and pencils – will get a photo of it in daylight. He then decided to label it so using a mixture of looking at the print out from the loan box, some help from me and his own spelling he did that too.

Ady came home and the kids both spent some time in the cupboard under the stairs trying to find our laminator. They did but the cupboard then needed a major tidying up from Ady to put it all back together again :rolls:

Scarlett and I went round to Rainbows. She decided she needed me to stay again after all despite being fine last week. She then got upset because another girl came to join the game she was trying to play with me (tossing hoops over cones) so she went off to get more cones and then the leaders said everthing needed tidying up. They did some planting of bulbs (mothers day gifts, assume they are making decorative pots next week for them) and then some skipping but Scarlett’s heart wasn’t in it and she ended up sat next to me wanting to cuddle. I suggested we might as well go home really than sit in a hall cuddling and she agreed so we left! It was only about 15 minutes early and I wasn’t really expecting her to agree but it seemed a bit pointless sitting there.

Back home to drop Tarly off and I nipped back out to get some mushrooms for Ady’s pizza then came back to help tidy up, make pizza, have a bath and watch Comic Relief. Scarlett went to bed / sleep pretty early, Davies stayed up until the viewing got too inappropriate (just before 11ish I think), we donated online and now despite feeling tempted to stay up and watch the last hour or so I really need to go to bed as I’m working in the morning.

Work all day for me. It went fairly quickly; I spent some time on the enquiry desk but didn’t really have many enquiries as it was quiet while I was on there. I spent some time chasing up reservations that have been outstanding for over a month (we get a print out) and some time printing off reading group questions and discussion ideas for next weeks reading group which I’m running. It’s a book I suggested but we struggled to get hold of copies so I’ve not actually read it since I read it back at the beginning of last year so I wanted to refresh my memory. It was one I really enjoyed but for several personal reasons so I’m hoping it was still a good read for people who haven’t worked either in retail management or in a large shopping mall – What Was Lost

Sian and I were deeply entertained by reading passages of a delightful book called ‘Peter and Pamela Grow Up’. It’s writen by ‘HW Tame, the Headmaster of a large mixed primary school and a marriage guidance counsellor’ who has ‘for the last few years given a series of lessons on the facts of life to his school leavers aged between 10 and 11 years’ because ‘he feels that if a child is not given some form of sex instruction before he leaves his primary school there is great danger when he comes into contact with much older children at his secondary modern or grammar school, that he will learn about sex in a way whihc can easily lead to his adopting a wrong attitude towards it’. It is an hilarious read and if I get time I may well type out some it’s wisdom so I can share it all with you 😆

I enjoyed most of my lunchbreak alone in the staff room with a cup of tea and a magazine but then the tutor who runs computer classes came up and shattered my peace with his inane chatter :(.

The afternoon went quickly as I was weeding out old dvds and cds which always whiles away the time quickly.

Back at home Ady had been here in the morning and among other things had been showing Davies how to use word as he wanted to type up some of his Star Wars stories. In the afternoon my mum was here and I think they mostly did lego.

I got home and was pissed off about Ady and even my Mum messing about with the laundry (Ady had washed pretty much all the dirty washing in the house, and possibly even some clean stuff too, there’s so much of it) but without actually giving much thought to getting it all dry. Then Mum had taken a load out of the machine and left that in the basket (would have been better left in the machine until I could deal with it) so there was wet washing everywhere and all of the dry stuff was still waiting to be put away, curse, mutter, gripe). I made the kids’ tea and sat down thinking there is no bloody way I could have this as my all-the-time life only seeing the kids for an hour to feed them, coming home after work to deal with housework and cooking etc.

Davies was doing lots of tic like noises while he was eating and I quickly realised there was something upsetting him. He didn’t seem to know what it was himself but we unravelled it in the end. He worries that Mum favours him over Scarlett and is really hard on Tarly. He hates it and feels uncomfortable with the favouritism, guilty about Scarlett being treated unfairly and doesn’t really want to be fawned over by my Mum anyway. Also he’d overheard me telling Scarlett yesterday that the crossest my Dad had ever been with me when I was a child was when I let Frazer take the blame for something I’d done and just stood by and let him get into trouble when I was the one who’d done the ‘crime’. This was designed to make Tarly feel sorry for something she’d done yesterday but actually made Davies feel bad today when he used a bit of lego Scarlett wanted so she made a fuss and then got shouted at by Mum as he felt he’d got her into trouble by something he’d done.

Scarlett, predictably didn’t even seem to have registered any of this but it had made Davies feel guilty and therefore stressed and tic-prone. I can never decide whether I am too in tune with him and pick up on things that he’d just learn to deal with or whether if I didn’t step in and help him all of his little things like this would get worse and out of hand. Ah well, it’s academic anyway really isn’t it.

All of that thrashed out Ady arrived home and we finished the Mr Gum book we’re on and Davies took the first one on audiobook up to bed with him to listen to (about 4 times I think as A turned it off when he went up to bed at 11ish) as read by the author which is always my favourite way to listen to a story as you get to hear just how they wrote it.

Scarlett is very restless and keeps calling out and crying in her sleep but not waking up. It’s days like these when Ady doesn’t get home til gone 7pm because he’s been home in the morning and I only get a couple of hours with the kids during which time I spent in the kitchen or dealing with the fallout of not having been here myself that I question whether work is worth it 🙁 which is a shame as I had a good day and was only being asked by my boss when I thought in the future I might be able to increase my hours… Surely there’s enough call just between us lot for development of a clone machine to be justified? 😆

Watched Comic Relief does The Apprentice and am looking forward to the real Apprentice starting again soon :). And now I think I’m ready for bed too, I had a night of very vivid dreams which had me waking up feeling I’d not rested at all but actually ben incredibly busy all night!

I had a plan to take Davies and Scarlett out for the day somewhere today. In celebration of everyone finally feeling better (see how I’ll jinx that for tomorrow now ;)) I decided last night in the bath to go somewhere with them. I rang my Mum who is currently on a Being A Better Mother To Nic drive which pushes me into a Being A Better Daughter To Mum drive to ask if she wanted to come too.

My two possible ideas were a local working museum which I know is very good but is also very expensive so we never go to but has an offer running currently for cheap entry for local people or Paradise Park the dinosaur place where we’ve not been for ages and is a good day out and also has a fair bit on fossils and minerals which fits in with stuff we’re talking about at the moment.

Mum couldn’t do today but said she really wants to go to Amberley so we rearranged that for a different day next week. Ady reckons he can get discount on an annual pass to Paradise Park as he sells to them and is going there on Friday so told me to hold off and he’d see what he could set up. Which successfully scuppered both my plans really. So I went to bed deciding to see what the weather was doing this morning and make a decision then.

The weather was nice but I slept in and so was still pottering about dealing with breakfast and clothes and chickens at 10ish when Lucy sent me a text and we arranged to meet at the park. We were predictably late as I foolishly only allowed the 5 minutes it should have taken to put shoes and coats on, get into the car and drive the 2 minutes it takes to get to the park and it somehow took closer to 15 minutes :rolls:

The four kids all played really well, Lucy and I got to chat and when they started to get hungry an hour or so later they were all keen for everyone to come back to our house for lunch. Scarlett’s been a bit of a minx today, behaving trickily and then saying an airy ‘oh sorry’ and expecting that to put things right which has made me cross with her. I also totally overreacted to walking into the lounge and finding Davies touching a blanket which had been put over the telly, which is stupid enough on it’s own let alone the fact the box of museum fossils had also been put on top of the TV and fallen down the back 😯 I sent both my kids to their rooms and went to get the full story. Scarlett said she’d put the blanket on the tv as Davies had turned it on and she didn’t want to watch it. I stomped upstairs to find Davies sobbing because he had just been trying to put right the fact that the blanket was on the TV and the fossils had fallen down the back (Lucy had moved the fossils which were on a chair and didn’t realise what they were or consider putting them on top of the tv might be a bad idea :rolls:).He was really upset about getting the blame for something he hadn’t done and was trying to actually put right. 🙁 I managed to calm him down, apologise and get him to concede that while I’d been wrong to do so jumping to that conclusion was easily done and that he should have come and told me what was going on rather than trying to deal with it himself.

Peace was restored. I made some cookies because we didn’t have anything ‘nice’ to offer everyone after their sandwiches but I don’t actually think any of the children had any in the end. They mostly played in the garden and aside from Tarly doing a couple more unthinking acts and Richard struggling to keep up with the older ones a bit it all seemed to go okay. Which was nice, I’ve missed sitting and chatting to Lucy.

They left, and the kids and I went into the kitchen to wash up and cook their tea. While I was chatting to them Scarlett suddenly said ‘oh look, there’s a pheasant on the garage roof’ in a fairly casual way. I was halfway through saying ‘well obviously there won’t be a pheasant on the garage roof’ when I too looked out of the window to see a pheasant on the garage roof! It them got spooked and flew down onto the patio.

We raced upstairs with the camera to see if from Davies’ bedroom window and then went downstairs to look at it. It seemed fine, was a cock bird (the pretty coloured ones, hens are just brown) and wasn’t quite as giddily scared of us as pheasants normally are. Scarlett had a theory that maybe one of the ones Ady’d brought home hadn’t been properly dead which made us laugh! It then went through the hedge into the chickens area causing mayhem in there and flew off from the front. No idea where it came from or indeed where it went but the children are hoping it returns with a hen to live in our garden! 🙂

The kids had tea and got ready for Badgers. We had to put the chickens away as it was still daylight but would be properly dark by the time we got home so that was a comical few minutes as they kept jumping back out again as we put them in so in the end I stood holding the door shut and Davies and Scarlett grabbed them one at a time so we could shove them in.

They both seemed to enjoy Badgers – not sure what Scarlett did but Davies learnt about the Chinese years and what animal they all were (he’s a dragon) then they had to pick up sweets using chopsticks. He has managed to befriend the two boys who were causing him some strife (proper word, strife ;)) and was full of happy chatter about it.

Ady met me there and we went for our usual walk about taking in the Co Op (where I bought some socks for Davies who never seems to have any and a few sewing / knitting bits which were reduced to pence each including a mini sewing kit each for the kids as Davies has been asking for one since he made his ewok) and then Waitrose where we got loads of reduced to clear bread rolls from the bakery and some almond croissants for breakfast in the morning.

Scarlett went home with Ady and Davies came with me (hence I know what he did but not what she did) and we enjoyed a surreal moment when he told me I should over take Ady so we could beat them home while we drove down a 30mph road with a speed camera. I asked if he thought that was safe or sensible and he replied ‘of course not, but probably worth it for the fun!’. He then reminded me that we’d been overtaken by someone on that road coming home from Badgers once and said it was really bad and we should report him. I asked quite how he thought we should do that and his reply was ‘well just, you know, tell everyone’ so I wound down the car window and yelled it out into the night which had Davies giggling hysterically and wondering whether it would make the news! 🙂 I love my boy:)

Home for a few chapters of Mr Gum & the Biscuit Billionaire then bed for them (Davies took sewing to bed, not sure H&S Ady would be happy about that if he’d realised. Needles? In bed?!), bath for me and then I made toad in the hole and we watched Location, Location and Grand Designs. I love Wednesday night tv :).

During the week I mean. We seem to manage fine during weekends but I’ve been hankering after our weekday lifestyle for, ooh, days ;).

So we breakfasted and dressed and headed over to Littlehampton museum where I’d arranged by email to collect a loan box on some geology exhibits. We found the museum really easily but had to drive round for a while to find a parking space. I wasn’t sure how big the box was but figured a box full of rocks wasn’t likely to be something I’d want to carry very far.

The receptionist at the museum said the curator had just gone into a meeting so we arranged to pop back in an hour and went off to have a look round the town. We were just killing time really but managed to go to a bookshop selling the WBD books and got a Mr Gum one for Davies and a Julia Donaldson one for Scarlett. We had a peruse round some charity shops but didn’t find anything to buy so headed back to the museum as the car was in a space for one hour only.

Fortunately the curator had just come out of her meeting so was around to hand over the box (fairly small) and for me to fill out the form which I’d suddenly been worrying about the level of information required on and whether it might be something passed to LA departments – hate the level of paranoia the recent stuff is creating in me. It was very brief and just asked for name and phone number though so I needn’t have worried and spent all that time creating false identities and dates of birth for the children ;).

We had a very brief look around the museum as I was worried about the car but it looks excellent so we’ll ensure we have time for a proper look around when we return the loan box.

On the way home we called into Broadwater to get some french bread for lunch and pay a quick visit to our favourite old fashioned sweet shop for a quarter of something each :).

Home for lunch and a read of the Mr Gum book Davies got which was very good.

Scarlett has been pretty much back to normal today but was adamant she didn’t want to go swimming today so I agreed. I’d rather miss swimming and have her properly definitely better tomorrow than push the issue and maybe set her back. We left home slightly early to pay a flying visit to the allotment to check on recent plantings. Planning a few hours up there at the weekend to get some more plantings in.

Davies had a good lesson, Scarlett sat and DS’d and as I’d predicted wobbled about not having had her lesson after all. Home for their tea and a bath and hairbrush for Tarly which took ages. Ady came home, we started exploring the geology box but put it aside to look at properly tomorrow and we had some more stories – Scarlett’s WBD one, a Barefoot book called Faery’s gift and the first couple of chapters of the next Mr Gum book we’ve got (biscuit billionaire – no idea if there is an order to them, I suspect not).

Ady cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner and we watched Bridget Jones, Edge of Reason which happened to be on.

I woke up this morning long before the alarm and was up and dressed and throwing back the curtains with vim and vigor and appreciation of the glorious sunshine and full week ahead starting with a walk round Pulborough Brooks with friends.

Then Scarlett came shuffling into the room all bright eyed, flush cheeked and scratchy voiced saying her throat hurt :(. We came downstairs together and I pondered the wisdom of chivvying her along to get dressed and go out but decided if she really is ill I’d feel dreadful for dragging her out and mixing with other people and that she’d probably be really miserable and bad company anyway. So a mix of good mothering and selfishy not wanting to be out all morning with a whingey child won the day and I texted Tasha to say we wouldn’t be going so therefore couldn’t take them. 🙁

And moped.

I’m fairly sure she is just very tired from a full on weekend. She so doesn’t do late nights and had 2 very late ones in a row, plus we seem to have some sort of Monday morning = ill child thing going on here at the moment too. She spent the day in her pjs either sitting snuggled into me under a blanket or having short bursts of energy and doing a bit of drawing or DSing but her heart wasn’t in anything for long. She had no appetite and was asleep really early tonight so hopefully she’ll be rested and recovered by the morning.

Davies was lovely all day :). He made Scarlett a get well soon card, spent hours drawing various Star Wars things including a 6 page picture story and copied some of the characters names from his DS. He was really gracious about not going out today and very patient with Scarlett trying to cheer her up and offer her lots of things to do and play with :).

I did loads of washing, chased the broody hen out of the coop, made some banana cakes with some squishy bananas, did some unpicking (which is called frogging but always sounds a bit dodgey) and did some knitting. Also did a bit of online stuff and when I nipped round the shop to get some honey for Tarly’s requested hot honey and lemon drink I posted a couple of letters that have been kicking around for ages. I was reluctantly productive I think would be the best description ;).

Tea for Davies, the homecomming of Ady which meant they both had to show him all the art stuff they’d done today and finally we settled down with a book – You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! which we’ve had a while but been sidetracked by Humphrey. Scarlett slumped and took herself off to bed about halfway through but a combination of Davies having been such a star today, no books over the weekend due to visitors and the fact I was really enjoying reading it aloud meant we carried on and read the whole book! Have just ordered all of them from the library via the website too :). All of us were giggling and it was a really nice to book to read :).

While I was in the bath Ady had a long phonecall with Miranda and then as I’d been heckling from the bathroom he passed me the phone and I spent about half an hour chatting to her too. We covered all sorts of stuff ending up on home ed (us) and her daughter (11) starting weeknight boarding at a school from September. Miranda went to a very posh private boarding school and hated it and has always sworn that F would never board but this is where she wants to go, has been offered a place and will clearly thrive so she’s going. Miranda thought I would be really down on her about it but actually we are coming from the same philosophy of treating children as individuals, facilitating their following their passions and things they love and listening to their voice and respecting their choices. Very different outcomes but from the same basic starting point really. Really nice to talk to her, we both said how much we miss seeing each other regularly and promised to go and stay in the summer with them.

The rest of the week will obviously depend on the health of everyone concerned on a daily, nay hourly basis so I won’t go making any more wild claims about busy days ahead!

Tasha emailed me last week to say there is a local craft event happening the first week in April for local folk to sell their handmade / home made crafty stuff. We’ve been talking about doing something like that together anyway and so we’ve booked a small table between us to get us going.

I really enjoy the odd bits of crafty / home madey stuff I do and think I’m fairly good at it but I don’t actually have anything made ready to sell, I’ve only ever done stuff for me / the kids / to give as gifts.

I like the idea of being quite ‘green’ about it and using recycled / reclaimed stuff plus I don’t think my knitting, which is the thing I’m doing most at the moment but uses new stuff, is good or quick enough to be worth selling yet.

Some ideas then:

So I’m left with papier mache, which I enjoy but is quite lengthy and it’s sort of the wrong time of year for that. Might be worth taking a book of photos of some of the stuff I have made to see if I can get commissions for it though.

Rag rugging – have loads of rags for that and can also use carrier bags for making things like doormats and shoulder bags which I think might be popular, as well as themed colour rag rugs. This is quite quick to do and I have all the stuff so might be my best bet. No idea at all how to price it. Could also suggest ‘memory rugs’ like Tarly’s made from people’s own clothes they can supply me with.

Knitting small stuff like hats and gloves, maybe from reclaimed wool (stuff I’ve unpicked) and then customised with either material or needle felted scraps (I have an idea for one with flowers, bees, butterflies etc which might be nice). I’ve also started knitting a doll for Scarlett to look like her which we can then make clothes for and other accessories. I think they might sell well if made in the form of the child they are for and then customised accordingly but again no idea how to price.

So do I go for diverse mix of stuff I can do, make one or two of everything and a portfolio of other stuff I can make and try and take commissions or focus on one type of item and make as many as I can to sell on the day?

S and I were in the bath together last night chatting. We’d been talking about school earlier in the day and I asked her if she thought she’d ever want to go to school.
S: No, never. Well I might go there one day as a worker.
N: A worker? What do you mean?
S: You know someone who works there,a worker. A teacher!
N: Really!? You might want to be a teacher?
S: Well only if I got fired from Drusillas!

and a bit of wind too. Oh and some rain.

Only a slightly later start to this morning including the sad but expected news that the chick hadn’t made it through the night. Having all dealt with it sadly but stoically Ady and the children opened the egg which had pipped and stopped too to investigate inside and find another fully formed but dead chick. I think the mix of acceptance tinged with non-hysterical sadness is the right reaction from the children really and Chloe had a very similar one which was good.

We had a lazy morning chatting, drinking tea and coffee, eating croissants and banana sandwiches, having baths and Ady and the girls spent some time planting up some sweet peas and carrots which they seemed to enjoy. He is an excellent host is Ady, which is good because I’m inclined to be on the slack side and assume my sparkling wit and company is sufficient effort ;).

Ady had mooted Shoreham airport as somewhere that might be interesting to visit and Marcus had found a couple of geocaches to attempt in the vicinity too so we headed off to the airport and parked up. We explored some pillboxes and then went to the Shoreham tollbridge which opened having been restored last year. I’ve never been across it despite it being a bit of a local landmark and quite newsworthy during the fundraising efforts to ‘save it’. It’s actually a very nice, basic, wooden bridge but has fab views north and south over the river Adur and downs and out over the airport to the west.

We spent quite some time searching for a very small geocache, unsuccessfully. The children just enjoyed the bridge and the sunshine while we got progressively less secret and furtive about our search eventually ending up on our hands and knees looking 😆

We didn’t find it but on the plus side I found a quid which had fallen between the slats and a penny aswell and the children found a pidgeon which had a nest just below the slats

and the bridge was very pretty too.

We moved on to the second cache which I was fairly sure was one we’d found with Chris and Alison a few years ago as the clues sounded like the same place although it had been a scoubidou cache back then (it was the final resting place of that thong I made for Ros) infact the reading back old blog posts and finding old photos that today’s geocache has inspired has made me all nostalgic! It turned out not to be the same cache but one just a tiny distance from that one (as recognised by Chris on my flickrstream)
2005

(Chris has better pics here)
2009

Everyone was cold and hungry by then having been very windswept on the rather exposed path so we retired to the airport for a look round and some refreshments in the cafe.
(A photo that doesn’t actually flatter anyone!)

and then we said our goodbyes and headed for respective homes. Ours being rather a lot closer of course ;).

We had a quiet afternoon including very long baths each for Ady and I, some playing draughts and a W&G board game (called Going Crackers or something similar) for Ady and Davies followed by tea and an early night for the kids. We managed a very late dinner due to some bombay potatoes which refused to cook and assuming that everyone remains well we will be back to our usual levels of gallivanting next week kicking off with the monthly HE walk to Pulborough Brooks tomorrow.

Thanks M, M and C for a fab weekend, really enjoyed all your company 🙂 xxx

Either way we did very little or none at all of either!

I think we were all paranoid about oversleeping so all ended up way earlier than we needed to be. Still managed to scramble to Pulborough Brooks five minutes late though although I blame myself for not factoring in time taken to all get into the car when I decided what time we’d need to leave by. Seven in Ady’s Touran does go but it’s a bit tight and doesn’t really allow for anyone to be deciding (Scarlett) they don’t want to be sitting where they are sitting!

Davies and Scarlett had Wildlife Explorers. Last month’s was cancelled due to the snow so they’d organised for this months to be 90 minutes long rather than the usual hour and for the older and younger groups to have a half hour crossover to celebrate that Pulborough Brooks had won the club of the year award. The kids came out with a certificate each (although it said they had ‘taken part’ rather than won) and a really nice little book each with loads of wildlife information and blank pages for writing notes / drawing sketching of wildlife they spotted while out and about. They’d also had cake :).

When the kids joined I was really pleased at the idea of Ady and I having an hour on a Saturday morning once a month to wander round the reserve without the kids and maybe have a drink in the coffee shop there too. We managed it once and I think it rained, last month it was cancelled and of course yesterday we had M,M and C with us. They were a very welcome addition though of course :). Davies and Scarlett went in and we headed off round the reserve. Not very far into the walk Marcus and Chloe broke off from the rest of us to head down a public footpath that bisects the reserve which had a geocache down it. Michelle, Ady and I continued round the rest of the walk. We went in 2 hides and saw deer and a few birds although it was fairly quiet on the waters but we did see two adders :).

We’d just said to Michelle that we were coming up to where we’d seen adders there before but didn’t expect any this early or this cold when we’d had a heavy ground frost 2 nights previously when we tried to overtake some slower walkers who shushed us and told us to wait and look. And there was an adder! 🙂

A bit further on we saw a group gathered round a second adder too. Very exciting 🙂 I love Pulborough Brooks :).

We got back in plenty of time to collect D and S and had a brief break in the play area as the sun was shining. Michelle and I showed our age (35 years apiece!) by both making old women taking the weight off their feet with relief type noises as we sat on a bench 😳 Scarlett took her shoes off to play barefoot as one of her boots was falling apart. She was in stark contrast to a very overmade up woman berating both her smaller children for what appeared to be no more than playing. I later walked behind her husband, well spoken in a sports jacket and slacks telling the boy not to walk through a puddle despite him wearing wellies. I had a big splash in the puddle myself but sadly wasn’t close enough to get any on the back of his slacks ;).

We left as we were all feeling hungry and decided to make the most of the sunshine with chip shop chips on the beach for lunch. Scarlett had announced she was desperate for the loo in the car and we were stuck in Saturday heading into town traffic for ages. Then as she’d taken her shoes off, against my advice we had to wait for her to put them back on so her and I dashed through the chip shop restuarant to the loos with Chloe in fast pursuit. Fortunately we were at the beginning of what ended up being a very long queue in a very small corridor and I think the others probably thought we’d got lost!

Eventually we did indeed manage to sit on the beach, eating our chips watching seagulls and crows swoop around. It was lovely down there if a little cold and my enjoyment of what are very lovely chips was tarnished by me realising I was sitting with my boots in a pile of vomit. I managed to ascertain it was only on my boots, kick some stones over it to cover it up and wipe my boots with some napkins without alerting anyone else and causing mass turning off chips which was good. We did end up spending about 10 minutes discussing at length who might have caused the vomit afterwards though. From now on all silly questions from children about who did something when we can’t possibly be expected to know the answer will be replied to with ‘Charles Johnson’ thanks to Marcus. Davies managed to get most of the gist of this but did substitute it with both Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin which might cause confusion if he tries to use the technique himself 😆

Back home for restorative cups of tea (and sitting down complete with ‘ahhhh’) and to check on the progress of the pipped eggs. A second pipping had started but neither was getting very far and indeed the first pipped egg seemed to have stopped altogether. 🙁

The kids played outside for a while but I was being horrible (in much the same way as annoying parents at Pulborough Brooks actually :oops:) and wouldn’t let my two put waterproofs on and play with mud and water (cold, not completely over being ill, didn’t really want to go and find waterproofs or clear up after them for what I guessed would be a five minute wonder) so they came back in again.

We decided to go and visit St Mary’s church which is very local and has lots of historical value with parts of it over 1000 years old with a saxon tower. There were two nearby geocaches too. We failed to find the first one in the carpark but had a wander round the graveyard and then went inside the church. Scarlett installed herself in the children’s corner with a pile of books about ‘Baby Cheeses’ and happily sat looking through them. Davies walked round with Ady and I and we were joined by a very friendly woman who I now suspect may even have been the vicar who wanted to tell us all about the place pointing out various bits of saxon carving, a grave which had been uncovered and the font which Davies and Scarlett wanted to see as we’d been talking about Christenings the other day while reading the Humanist book.

Davies asked what the wooden boards on the wall were for – the ones they slide numbers into for psalms and hymns so she went off and got the box of numbers and the list of hymns for Sunday’s service and said we could set them up. The irony and humour of this did indeed strike me ;).

Back outside again we managed to find the geocache we’d not found and then headed off along a footpath which leads steeply uphill to find a second one. It’s a path we took on the start of a very long walk over the downs we did a couple of years ago with my parents:
2006

2009

weather is bleaker (March vs July) and kids have grown but otherwise landscape is identical.

It was however through a field of cows which seems to have been the case with about 50% of the caches we’ve done with M and M so there was already a bit of diversity within the group about whether we should carry on or not. Ady, Marcus, Davies, Scarlett and I carried on assuming the cows would move away from the corner we needed to get to as we got closer. We were telling Davies and Scarlett the story of the cows who killed as we went and then realised one was a bull who was squaring up to us and making a low moo rather than going away. We still intended to carry on until we noticed a very small dark thing in a group of cows huddling together and realised it was a calf. A very new calf. That was probably only minutes old and hadn’t even got up yet (although it looked fine). On that basis – giving them respect as it *is* their field and they are supposed to protect their young and we didn’t want to either risk getting hurt or them abandoning the calf and not returning to it – we retreated instead.

Back home again for wine c’clock, pheasant for tea and assisted hatch delivery. The egg which had been pipping and stopped really had stopped and the egg which was pipping seemed to be labouring really badly and not making much progress. I’ve never intervened before with the incubated eggs but having lost one already I decided it was worth trying to give a chance to the one still going and helped clear the eggshell that it had broken but not hatched from. The membrane was still fairly intact around it’s body although it had broken through it around it’s beak. It seemed very weak so I took a decision to carry on and moistened it until it came away. The chick did carry on breaking out itself, it was very much a joint effort.

Unfortunately it didn’t pick up as I’d hoped it would once hatched and despite drip feeding it some water when it seemed to be struggling to breath and making a clicking sound I am fairly sure it wasn’t properly formed and one of it’s legs wasn’t set right. I didn’t really expect it to last the night and sadly it didn’t :(. All of the online advice about such things strongly recommends against intervention but I’m still confident under the circumstances we did the right thing and it would have died regardless. What we did get was an interesting educational experience and a reminder of the precariousness of life I guess.

The kids had a dvd up in Davies’ bedroom – Scarlett fell asleep, Chloe came down to go to bed and Davies fell asleep soon afterwards, again with no need for us to deal with any of them :).We saved our intervention for hatchlings rather than our own children this weekend ;). Before they went to bed though Michelle had mentioned a sketch with Ronnies Corbett and Barker and John Cleese about class so Marcus had found it and we’d watched it which inspired the children to have a go themselves with very funny results 🙂

Another very nice evening of chatting, drinking wine and enjoying M and M’s company. Michelle and I sat up later (but still not terribly late) chatting about mothers and daughters and being both ourselves and the relationships up and down a generation.

Friday I worked all day. I still wasn’t feeling 100%, blowing my nose and coughing loads so Yvonne offered to do Baby Rhyme Time and I gratefully accepted. It was nice to overhear mums asking where I was and several of them came to find me afterwards and say they hoped I was better soon :).

I spent a couple of hours on the counter, a couple on the enquiry desk, some time ordering children’s books on spies (fiction and non-fiction) ready for a display in April and did a display for ‘Skills for life’ courses that are being run for adult literacy, numeracy, English as a second language and skills for the workplace that the library is supporting.

I had a little spend up in one of the local charity shops at lunchtime getting a jumper, a jacket and a pair of trousers for Scarlett and a top for me all for under £8 and all with stripes funnily enough.

Back at home there was an air of general excitement when we realised one of the eggs in the incubator was pipping and cheaping. They were several days late and I’d almost given up on any of them hatching. Ady had moved the ‘bator upstairs out of the playroom where our weekend guests were staying so I moved it back downstairs again into the lounge.

My Mum kindly stayed with Davies while I took Tarly round to Rainbows – she’d decided last week she would start staying on her own from this week and did so without a single wobble :). Mum showed me how to use the unpicker that had arrived in the post and then headed off. She is really trying hard at the moment and I’m making similar efforts in return :).

I made up some pizza bases from the dough Ady had made and left to prove and made up some more dough and caught up with Davies before it was time to head round to collect Tarly. She’d asked that Davies come with me to pick her up and in the end he had to as Ady wasn’t home. I did offer for him to wait at home but he wasn’t keen on the idea. Scarlett came out bouncing, saying she’d made another new friend and wanted to ask her round to play so I think she’s going to take a note in to give to her next week with our phone number so her mum can ring and arrange it :).

Back home Ady arrived at the same time as Michelle, Marcus and Chloe shortly after we got back. The kids imediately disappeared with DSs, came back down to be fed and then disappeared again. It was all very harmonious and pleasant :). Marcus and Michelle, Ady and I all stood in the kitchen drinking, chatting, eating snacks and preparing pizzas for us for later before retiring to the lounge. The kids eventually all went to their own rooms to bed without any intervention from us and we all had a relatively early night with me staying up the latest all alone.

A day at home today.We’ve had a lot of them lately and I don’t really like them. I don’t feel particularly motivated to do loads of ‘at home’ stuff and I tend to end up either sitting on the laptop, reading or knitting while the children entertain themselves. I’m sure all this is fine and noone seems to mind or feel they are being hard done by I just feel we have better days when we’re out and about more.

Hatchwatch hasn’t provided anything in the way of entertainment either – they are due to be hatching pretty much now and if I watch the eggs for long enough they go all blurry like one of those magic eye pictures and I start to become convinced I can see them wobbling. I suspect I can’t though. 2 more days then the ‘bator goes off.

So, I’ve done precisely what I said above today – ‘putered, knitted and read. I did offer to read to the kids but they politely declined. I did several loads of washing, kicked a broody hen out of the henhouse about 4 times much to her squawking indignation and put away the MASSIVE internet food shop that arrived at midday. £300 worth of food to last a whole month and it too over an hour to put away. I was feeling that having put it all away I should be excused from cooking any of it for the month but then remembered that it used to take that long and more just to walk round the supermarket to buy it let alone drive home, unload the car and then do all the putting away so I stopped feeling quite so hard done by.

Davies and Scarlett watched some Ben 10, some Clone Wars,played with the wooden blocks, (Davies built a maze, Tarly built a farmyward), played with the lego and Davies read us the beginning of the first book at bedtime.

I’m sure a quiet day at home has done us all good with regards to recovering from our lurgy but I’m looking forward to a more sociable weekend and a back to normal week next week 🙂 .

We all had salmon for dinner – them about 4 hours earlier than us and we read a pile of picture books at bedtime in an effort to gather some that can be returned to the library tomorrow. And that’s probably about it.

Just out of interest because I have no idea how long it takes me to blog.

Work for me this morning. It was a usual busy Wednesday. I spent the first hour taking down a display ready for someone else to put one up tomorrow. The second hour and a half covering the enquiry desk (which barely lived up to it’s name as I had hardly any enquiries 😉 – I spent some time checking the order of a set of Star Wars graphic novels for a particularly anorak-y regular borrower. Felt a bit busmans holiday that given how much Star Wars talk I listen to at home at the moment. Checked to see if we had a Haynes Manual for a Mercedes Sprinter van (we didn’t) and spent an inordinate amount of time helping a colleague ringing from home trying to find a direct dial number for payroll.

I had teabreak with my newest colleague who is very nice and has a same age as Scarlett daughter who sounds similarly individual and fiesty so we like to trade stories about them. The last hour was spent on the counter and was the busiest.

All 3 of the other staff working took time to compliment Davies and Scarlett’s display and say how eye catching and well done it was and how impressed they are with it. As two have similar age children and one has similar age grandchildren and they all seemed very genuinely impressed I passed the compliments onto the kids who were very pleased to hear such glowing feedback :). Fingers crossed it makes a difference to people dropping litter…

Meanwhile back at home Ady and the children had planted up some carrots (seperated some plugs into larger 9cm pots ready to think about putting in at the allotment in the next few weeks).

I came home, Ady went to work and the children carried on with whatever it was they were absorbed with – ah yes, DSing and lego. I checked the incubator eggs about 27 times as they are due to start hatching but as yet no pipping (the first tiny cracks) is evident.

I made myself a bowl of pasta for lunch as I was starving. I must be getting better as I also made a huge curry for dinner and ate the lot, appetite well and truly returned :).

We spent the afternoon in companiable getting on with our own stuff really.I amended an online food shop to add a few things having menu planned for the month, started knitting my next project and read some of my book.

Ady had taken a chicken and noodle ready meal out of the freezer for the kids’ tea that he’d bought reduced to clear ages ago but neither of them really liked it. We ran out of time before Badgers for anything else so they had toast when we got home instead. They both enjoyed Badgers – Davies tried pretzels, bagels and various herbs and spices as part of his Hungry Badger badge. I had a wander round CoOp and Waitrose rather than sitting in the car all alone and then spent the last 10 minutes or so playing Davies’ DS.

Scarlett got all upset when we got home about how noone ever listens to her so we had a bit of a chat about that (her and I, not all of us, it’s not a genuine complaint although I wanted to make sure she felt I’d heard what she was saying) and then we read the first couple of chapters in Humanism What’s That?: A Book for Curious Kids which is one of the books I’d ordered specially from work and they’d bought in for me.

It says on the back it is for ages 10plus and it’s in the style of a play with just dialogue although the teacher explains lots as she goes along. So far I’ve not skipped over any of it although it has raised loads of questions as we veer off of the book and into discussions. We’ve talked about heresy, religion of a country, censuses, birth, death and marriage certficiates (must get out birth and marriage ones for them to see tomorrow and also find some census online for them to look at), briefly touched on abortion and contraception (suspect we’ll be returning to that one), christenings and other religious ceremonies and loads more. I think it’s excellent, possibly a bit old for D and definitely for S but as always they will take from it what’s relevant and makes sense and come back to the rest as and when. It does seem to be very balanced and reasonable although I am conscious it is a bit on the anti-religion side so far but suspect it will be more positive about that further into the book. We’ll probably finish it during the day tomorrow rather than continuing with it as bedtime reading though as it’s a bit heavy going and it would be better to have time to go off at tangents as we read.

So, children to bed, bath and curry for us and a blog post within 15 minutes. Which is just as well considering how many of them I have got ;).

We didn’t get to London this morning. 🙁

Davies woke up around 3am and told Ady he wanted to go and snuggle up on the sofa and watch TV. I’d have either told him to go back to bed or told him to go right on ahead but either way I’d have gone back to sleep myself, which is infact precisely what I did do. Ady on the other hand got up with him. He came back up to tell me and offered to make me a cup of tea which I graciously refused.

I am rubbish at broken night’s sleep. I stay up very late but once I’m asleep I need to stay that way. I’m sure Scarlett would have been far less of a dreadful sleeper (she was way past 3yo before she reliably slept through the night) if Ady hadn’t been quite so tolerant and willing to put lights on, put the TV on and sit with her in the middle of the night like it was some sort of adventure. I am very grateful that Ady did pretty much all of the getting up through the night once the kids went past a certain ‘only Mummy will do’ age but also of the opinion that it wouldn’t have continued for anywhere near so long if it were me getting up and being grumpy and intolerant in the early hours.

Ady woke me at 430am so I could do ‘my turn’ downstairs with Davies but I lasted just a few moments before deciding the dreadful Baby TV channel he was watching with primary colours and plinky piano music at high volume was some sort of torture which I was not prepared to subject myself too and proclaimed it madness and said he could either come back to bed with me or go to his own but the way to feel better was NOT to be sitting up watching TV through the night! He came with me and we cuddled for about an hour before we fell asleep again so I turned the 7am alarm off decided we wouldn’t be getting up to catch early trains to London after all.

He’s been definitely not right but certainly not dreadful either today so who knows what that relapse was all about. I suspect the middle of the night waking was just that he’d gone to sleep too early last night and so had woken after his 7 hours or so sleep.

We spent a couple of hours finishing off the display and then went along to the library to put it up. I still don’t think it is the very best they could have done but it does look very good and I think they both learnt lots from doing it.

We headed for home and had popcorn and watched The Bee Movie which we’ve seen before but only watched once so I’d got again with the weekends’ car journey in mind but hadn’t been watched in the car.

Davies and I decided he’d be better off not going swimming today – I think the exertion of the lesson and the being out in the cold with wet hair wouldn’t have done him any good so he brought along his DS and watched Tarly’s lesson with me instead. They both asked for fish and chips for tea but we’d forgotten we were half an hour earlier than usual with not going to Davies’ lesson so the chip shop wasn’t open when we left swimming. I did a circuitous route home past 6 chips shops but the only one open had no parking spaces outside. Finally we double backed to one past home and it had just opened so I got them a meal each from there. It’s one we’ve used before and is all but walking distance from home (as in easily walkable but the chips might have cooled down rather before you get them home) but does kids meals with cod and chips as an option complete with fizzy drink (which I’ve stashed for future consumption) for £1.80 each -bargain!

Scarlett likes the fish skin and the batter whereas Davies likes the actual fish and leaves the batter so we talked about them being like Jack and Mrs Spratt. They had a bath and we finished the last 3 chapters of Humphrey – that’s all 3 books read and we’ve enjoyed them 🙂 We’re starting Mr Gum next I think.

Ady came home with some little carrot plants ready to be planted so that is tomorrow’s task for him and the children while I’m at work in the morning.

It’s dreadful weather here, blowing a gale and pouring with rain and has been for hours. I’m still not feeling 100% and am easily tired and cranky. Maybe we all need a holiday…

friends, parties, food, chocolate, games -got ’em all yesterday :).

We managed to get out nearly an hour later than I’d hoped for due to faffing about from everyone except me. I do get fed up about our inability to get out of the house and the lack of foresight from everyone else about things like knowing the postcode for where we’re going, ensuring we have drinks for the kids and so on. It shouldn’t *all* be down to me surely? :rolls:

Anyway, we had a smooth journey to Godmanchester (which never sounds like a proper place name somehow). The kids DS’d and watched dvds and I did some more unpicking. We arrived in time for lunch (although the kids disappeared into the depths of the house and I refused the kind offer of pulse soup on the basis that none of it’s ingredients had ever infact had a pulse ;)). I had an amusing conversation with Rachael Raine when I went to admire the four fantastic birthday cakes. She was in the room alone playing and looked up when I came in:
R: Hello. I didn’t know you were coming here
N: Hello Rachael. How are you? I’ve come to look at the cakes.
R: I can show you those. This is Libby’s, it’s a Barbie, this is Kit’s it’s dinosaurs, this is Jonathans and this is Anna’s. I like the Barbie one best.
N: they’re fab.
R: Where’s Scarlett?
N: she’s off in the house….

R runs off to find Scarlett. They have a very nice friendship which is very reminiscent of their older brothers’ albeit a couple of years later than the Davies / Ben one started (I think D and B were 3 and 4 rather than 5 and 6 like Rachael and Scarlett). It’s definitely the most R has ever talked to me :).

We decamped to the party (Davies held the playmobil cake and I held the Barbie cake in the car. We were both very scared :)) where a great time was had by all. Loads of photos on flickr but highlights included the treasure hunt (although Scarlett most enjoyed the running around and Davies said he most enjoyed the team he was in tricking the team of girls he claims were following them round copying their answers by making one up :lol:), the parachute (which is ours. We’ve had it years but I don’t actually recall ever using it before) and the chocolate game.

I enjoyed seeing friends – The Babs, the Beans, the Fish, Merry. It’s felt odd seeing pictures and reading about Melrose and Elinor’s party and knowing lots of our friends are together and we are not there 🙁 so it was good to catch up with at least a few of them :). Poor Ady still wasn’t feeling 100% and at one point when he was being followed around by a group of small girls poking and prodding him he confided to me ‘I don’t think I’m feeling well enough to be Ady today’ 😆

We went back to Bob and Katy’s for a cup of tea and slice of cake and to entertain ourselves dipping the Barbie recently relieved of her cake skirt into a bowl of jelly along with some playmobil and plastic dinosaurs. We extracted reluctant children and headed for home around 630pm. We had another straight run back and aside from further faffing at Lakeside services (I was desperate for a wee so ran in and the toilets were downstairs. I got back to the car and both children wanted to go and Scarlett had no shoes on so I had to piggyback her and have Davies follow me back into the services, back down the stairs…. you get the idea).

Back home the kids had toasted bagels and went off to bed. Ady wasn’t long after them and I sat up flickring and re-joined facebook which I’ve been meaning to do ever since the consultation which seemed to have a lot of discussion taking place on facebook and made me think perhaps I should be on there if only to keep abreast of stuff like that. I won’t be throwing chickens or other such stuff although I did spend some time today checking my typing speed :).

Today I was woken by Ady telling me the boiler had gone out again. A quick phonecall to the plumber had him promising to come over within the hour and sure enough he was here and replacing the part he’d got the other week before my second cup of tea was finished. My Dad almost followed him in so he stood and chatted to him while he sorted it and was conveniently around to pay half too ;).

Dad stayed for the morning while Davies and Scarlett did some drawings for their library display.I am slightly cross with them about this as I booked the space about a month ago and have been on at them almost daily to do the stuff for the display but predictably they have always put it off til later. I refuse to make them do it as the whole WAA is something they want to do rather than something I have decided they should do and while I’ll happily remind, assist and otherwise facilitate the activities I am neither doing it for them or insisting on them doing it. I do a fair bit of reminding them of things they have committed to do and talking through with them why they should see things through and why they wanted to do them. Scarlett was moaning about it today so I told her she didn’t have to do it at all and could stop now if she wanted. She thought about it and decided to carry on . If we were following a curriculum or workbooks or anything any of us percieved as something they *had* to do though it is clear they’d be in school before you could say SATS tests though! 😆

We’d been invited to Lucy’s for lunch so waved Dad good bye and headed off round there. D and S took their DSs and sat playing them for the first hour or so. Richard went off with Colin for a while and Davies and Rebecca played on the Wii then Scarlett and Rebecca went off to play and Davies sat next to me while I chatted. It was all very friction free and while the kids clearly aren’t delighted to be in each others company they are at least tolerating and being nice to each other rather than at all out war like they were last year :). Whilst I imagine it is frustrating for Rebecca I am very proud of Scarlett’s loyalty to Davies :).

Davies started to complain that his ‘joints hurt’ while we were there and when we got home he continued to wilt until he suddenly dissolved into tears about something minor and confessed he felt really ill :(. We managed to all but finish the display stuff ready to put up sometime tomorrow but Davies went downhill fairly rapidly then and just wanted to sit and snuggle up with me. Scarlett had tea but Davies didn’t want anything (he’d not eaten all his breakfast and none of his lunch and his breath was really sweet smelling which has always been an indication of him being poorly since he was tiny.) and he veered between being okay and giggling and playing DS with Tarly and flopping about all pathetically.

Ady came home, I read a couple of chapters of Humphrey and they both went to bed and were both asleep before 8pm! 😯 Davies roused again crying and I sat with him for a while until he was properly asleep although I am half expecting to be up in the night with him. I’ve no idea if he’s having a relapse of being ill last week as he was the first of us to be ill last Monday, whether a full on weekend at the end of a week of late nights has finally caught up with him or whether he’s managed to go down with something new. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had a good night’s sleep and woke up in the morning feeling fine again! We’re supposed to be at RI in the morning so I’ll have to make a decision based on how he is when we wake up.

Back to work for me today and it was a busy and bustling Saturday morning to return to. It went very quickly. The senior was the children’s librarian for the area and I had tea break with her including a nice chat about SATs and schools and HE. I spent an hour printing off and cutting out tickets for an author event in a few weeks with Anne Perry who is a very interesting crime writer by virtue of also being a convicted murderer! I think I might well go along to that one.

Home for lunch and then back out again to Magic Lantern for Davies and Scarlett. They’d spent the morning with Ady outside in the garden creating a flower bed alongside the drive and planting sweet peas in it.

They really enjoyed the film and came out buzzing as they always do :). Ady and I had a walk round Shoreham where the theatre is looking round the charity shops. I bought several jumpers for £2.00 each that look easy to unpick so I can use the wool to knit something else. I might need to perfect my unpicking though as it’s not proving quite so easy as I expected.

Ady spotted my Mum and her friend in the window of a cafe at the same time as they spotted us so we went in and sat down and joined them for a coffee / hot chocolate as they had just ordered a second drink. It was nice but we both felt quite odd sitting with two such ‘high maintennance’ women in our scruffy jeans while they chatted about hairdos and nails and holidays in Dubai and spent most of the time trying not to catch each other’s eyes and giggle like children :lol:.

We were supposed to be going up to Bob and Katy’s after Magic Lantern but Ady has come down with the cold that the rest of us have had and although he doesn’t feel as rough as Davies and I did he decided he’d rather have a good night’s sleep in his own bed and a quiet evening aswell as not feeling like he was taking a germ to someone’s house for the whole weekend so we’ve decided to just go up for the day tomorrow instead.

The kids were disappointed but we mollified them with a sleepover in Davies’ bedroom tonight instead – I went up at 11pm and took Scarlett’s DS, still going, out of her hand as she was fast asleep. Davies was still playing his, zombie-like, under the bedclothes.

Home for tea (this post is jumping about all over the place, it’s like an episode of Lost, sorry!) for the kids; Davies had a shower, Scarlett had a bath and I did some baking for tomorrow (chocolate chip cookies and mini lemon meringue pies) before having a bath myself and cooking toad in the hole for our dinner.

I’ve done some unpicking and am going to have a quick game of picpic on the removed from the sleepover DS before heading to bed.

I didn’t get to sleep til about 3am (not going to bed til 2am probably had something to do with it, must get back into better nocturnal habits) so it was gone 9am when I woke. Davies and Scarlett both came upstairs while I was getting dressed but I heard Davies’ bedroom door shut and assumed they’d gone back downstairs. When I passed it on my way downstairs I heard low voices so opened it and peeped in to find them both sitting on his bed deep in conversation.

The sun was shining and they were trying to work out how to use mirror and other glass things like photo frames and the clear plastic end of a metal detector to beam the sunlight onto the bedroom door so they could reflect it into our bedroom. They managed it in the end bouncing it off the metal detector Scarlett was holding on the bed, into a mirror on the wall, onto a mirror Davies was holding next to his dalek and out of the door onto my bedroom wall. I think if I’d let them carry on the plan was to see if the could bounce it down the stairs but they were hungry for breakfast so came downstairs with me. I love moments like that though :). I love the impromptu challenges, the team work, the working out how to make things happen and gathering together all sorts of odd stuff to assist and of course all the incidental learning that goes along with it.

So breakfast, dressed and pizza dough on for dinner then off to Tasha’s. They were supposed to be coming to us but were having a new boiler fitted so needed to be home – what it is with boilers at the moment? That’s the 4th including our own I’ve heard of playing up in the last few weeks. We got there just after 11am and aside from a brief wandering downstairs to claim they were hungry before eating and disappearing back upstairs again we didnt’ see Davies, Scarlett and Toby for the whole 5 and a half hours we were there :). Tasha and I sat and chatted, I knitted and it was all very nice. For all the things about Tasha and I that are very different we also have a lot of things in common and today sat and chatted about baking and crafting and potential business opportunities from either or both.

We came home to get Tarly ready for Rainbows – she claims it is the last time she’s going to need me to stay, which will be nice :). I did some making up of the jumper which is finally finished and drank tea as the plumbers at Tasha’s had meant a ration of just one cup as they were in the way in the kitchen preventing her from making more – she usually drip feeds me tea for my entire visit :). The kids got the lego out for a quick play before Rainbows and Ady got home in time for me to take Tarly. I sat and read my book while the Rainbows did an assault course. I noticed Scarlett being a lot more confident and vocal which is good but I suspect she will come into her own just before she turns 7 and is due to leave :lol:. We fell out in the shop on the way home where I called in to get some eggs but she apologised when we got in (I will tolerate a lot of things that many parents wouldn’t accept from children but rudeness is something I won’t tolerate from anyone. Question and challenge by all means, act ignorant or plain rude and my back will be well and truly got up) so that was quickly forgotten.

They had tea I read them the booklet for tomorrow’s Magic Lantern club which is screening The Princess Bride and talked about genres and parodies and what both mean. It’s been a real find that club, they love going :). Then we had a chapter of Humphrey before bed. Davies reappeared downstairs several times including while we were eating and led to him working out what time it was (didn’t realise he knew all the roman numerals on my big clock) and disciphering words such as ‘late’ and ‘bedtime’ when I spelt them out to him. Hey if he’s going to be around he needs to work for it ;).

Pizza for tea for us too and as it’s back to work for me tomorrow I really should try and get to bed at as respectable an hour as I can.

I managed a fairly good night’s sleep (aided by drugs) and woke feeling much better this morning. I was definitely right not to be at work today, I don’t think I could have pulled that off but I had lost all my acheyness and inability to do more than make a cup of tea without needing to sit down to recover.

I’ve been coughing and sneezing lots and am still far from 100% but it does appear to just be a cold, albeit one that strikes you down badly on day one (much as it did with poor Davies on Monday). Davies was cross with me for not being at work as he’d said to me yesterday I should have waited til this morning to see how I was feeling. He said he was pleased to have me home but the boy clearly has a strong work ethic and didn’t like the idea of me skiving 😆

I got several loads of washing sorted including hanging them outside (it’s been lovely here today) and made some flapjacks. I finished the first sleeve of my jumper so that is almost complete too now :).

Davies and Scarlett made a start on their display for the library drawing and colouring some animals – foxes, badgers and hedgehogs and Davies did some rubbish too – a crushed drinks can and a toothpaste tube. I chose the pictures to be printed off and they’re planning some Charlie and Lola style mixed pictures of drawings and photos together which I think will look really good.

We had lunch and my Mum rang to see how I was feeling and tell me that my brother has been offered a job :). This is excellent news as he’d been out of work since just before Christmas when the long term agency job he’d been doing (for about 3 years) finally came to an end as the company closed it’s UK branch having outsourced all the work to a Korean firm or something. He’s been feeling pretty low I think so this was great news :). It sounds like a job that will be interesting and offer him something of a challenge and prospects of a proper career too which is excellent, I’m really pleased for him :). Mum asked if she could come over as she’d been due to look after D and S today anyway and didn’t see them last week as Ady had them for the full day I worked. I think a 2 week break was enough for everyone and she is currently on a mission to improve relations with us so is trying very hard.

In the end the kids disappeared upstairs pretty much as soon as she arrived (at my suggestion, they were connected on Lego Star Wars DS which involves lots of noisy interaction and is very distracting when you’re chatting). Mum hadn’t long been here when the doorbell rang and it was my Dad calling in to see how I was having been told by Mum last night I was poorly. Odd how hard it can be to get either of them here for childcare when I work but they both ended up here on an afternoon when I was off sick :lol:.

We had a nice couple of hours chatting while the children remained upstairs having moved onto playing Star Wars with a ‘Star Wars playset’ created by Davies. It was so lovely to hear their chatter and laughter drifting down the stairs and I think it did my parents good to see how life here generally is as often they see the worst of the children when they are vying for my attention because I’m chatting to my parents. They came back downstairs and Scarlett told my parents all about a salmon she’d drawn and cut out and showed them it leaping ‘upstream’ all around the house avoiding bears, then the kids brought in a load of teddies, a blanket and the pretend food from a Very Hungry Caterpillar game and proceeded to set up a teddy bears picnic while I got their tea ready.

They sat down to eat and my parents headed off together. Davies and Scarlett ate dinner and then disappeared back upstairs together again.

Ady came home, I coughed my way through a couple of chapters of Humphrey during which Davies lost a tooth. It’s been wobbly for ages but only in one direction so I told him to push it as far in the other direction as it would go and out it popped! He’s put it under his pillow along with a note he wrote himself ‘To Toof Fery. I nid a poont’ (to tooth fairy, I need a pound). He knew he’d spelt pound wrong and asked for the correct spelling. I told him, along with the suggestion that a ‘please may I have?’ might have been more appreciated by fairies ;).

The kids went to bed, we had baths and dinner and watched the Margaret Thatcher programme which swooshed me right back to where I was and what I was doing (and with whom) back when all that happened. Can it really be that long ago?

Davies was upstairs in bed making up a story about fairies for Scarlett – so far all I’ve seen is the first page which is setting the scene of a fairyland with little houses inside toadstools. I told him he really should be doing these things during the day and going to sleep when he’s in bed at night to which he replied ‘I can’t sleep! My head is far too full with all these stories and pictures I have to do!’ – who am I to argue with creative genuis like that I guess!!