One word? When seven would do…

I could do it, I could. I’ve done all the thorny ones today, how the seed from the daddy gets to meet the egg from the mummy (been fudging that one a while with large amounts of descriptions of menstruation but I was pinned down with a very direct question today 😉 ) whether I personally believe in Father Christmas (infront of a captive audience of children), trying to diplomatically answer a question about whether a birthday in March is before or after Christmas when one child was talking about ‘during a year’ and one was talking about their specific birthday in relation to the next occuring Christmas, oh and Where’s Wally?! 😆

Ady and I have just been watching 8 out of 10 cats too where there was a question about Britains being offered one wish and only 7% asking for world peace. Ady says he’d choose to meet God which I pointed out could prove rather disappointing given both our religious beliefs. We decided that as his intention had been to prove to the world at large the existence or not of God then he’d need to amend his wish to ‘meeting God on live television’ 😆 Although frankly if wishes were genuinely being handed out and granted I might need to rethink my stance on God and Father Christmas :lol:.

This morning started at about 630am when Ady kissed me goodbye, but that was something of a false start as I went back to sleep until about 7am when Scarlett came and started talking to me, which was another false start until just after 8am when Davies gotg into bed with me and then Scarlett joined us. Rather like that Grand National a few years ago. We finally got up around 830am and the children sat with me while I put make up on and got dressed. I have no idea how we got onto the subject but we ended up talking about family size and how come we had one boy and one girl and wouldn’t be having any more. I explained that Ady has had a special operation that means he can’t have any more children, which led to them asking if I still could and me explaining that yes, I could, but would need a different man to help me as it takes a man and a woman – or at the very least seeds and eggs from men and women. Which took various turns via puberty but ended up with a direct question from Davies about precisely how the seed from the man met the egg from the woman. I answered it without actually going into graphic details about intercourse and promised to get a book from the library to explain it better with pictures.

We had breakfast and watched the stair rod rain falling and the road swiftly turning into a river outside the window. We waited til about 1030 watching Sorcerers Apprentice and Stitch Up on CBBC until there was a break in the rain then we headed out to the library taking our four read books with us. We parked in the library staff only parking spaces in the car park, driving past the row of queuing cars, nice to have a perk ;). Both the children were SUPER confident about telling Yvonne about the books we’d read which was nice, as last year they both hid in my skirt when it was time to talk about the books. Scarlett went first with her The Dog That Dug book and would probably still be there now retelling the story, and then Davies talked about Felix the fast tractor and the new building remembering all sorts of things I hadn’t realised he’d taken in such as words like ‘trench’. They got scratch and sniff stickers, their reading game wallets and various activity sheets. I have tended not to take the children into the library much lately, seclecting a huge pile of books for them once a week whilst at work and then taking them back again the following week but actually the fact that they feel at home there knowing I work there, that everyone knows their names and that they treat it like they own the place is probably one of the benefits of my job that I’d slightly under-rated looking at them there today. I am the only member of staff with small children – all the others are childless or grandmothers with grandchildren with other libraries more local to them, with the exception of one of the Saturday staff who has same-age-as-Scarlett twin boys who also treat the library like a second home, knowing how to issue and discharge books themselves, walking behind the counter as though they work there and not being fazed in the least by the air of shushing which adults cannot help but respect, just like Davies and Scarlett. 🙂 They also got a packet of seeds for their first ‘gift’ of the reading game (the next one is a bookmark followed by the medal for completing it) so Scarlett wanted a book about seeds for one of her choices, which we found a suitable one for in the Early Information area, then as they were both rather randomly grabbing whichever book was at the top of the kinderbox for their choices I directed them to the Picture Books For Older Readers section where I usually select books for them from and they found five Where’s Wally titles so that took care of that :). I grabbed two books on reproduction and bodies for them too and we left.

Both childen made me a plastic container of perfume yesterday using crushed flower petals from the garden which are currently residing on the kitchen windowsill waiting to be decanted into spray bottles so I’d planned to get a couple from Boots. Boots in Lancing was shut due to flooding so we walked round the pther shops for a while before heading up to the big Boots on the local Retail Park only to find they are £2.15 each. EACH!!!! Which means it must surely be cheaper to buy some Tesco value beauty product for a quid, tip the contents down the sink and use the spray bottle for the kids perfume really. Will do just that tomorrow.

We came home and as we had no bread defrosted I made some cheese scones for lunch and we read some of the very excellent Lets Talk About Where Babies Come From which means they now know what bodies look like from every age from babies to ‘older grown ups’ having spotted the changes throughout a life, what a period is all about, where girls / women wee from (previously we’ve gone with vagina, now we are specific about how many holes we’ll be talking about urethas!) and the internal organs of a woman. We looked at the bit about what happens when a sperm meets and egg but didn’t get into how it gets there but no doubt that will come. Somehow the whole reproduction chat doesn’t feel as much of a challenge as I’d anticipated. probably to do with a very open attitude to body parts and functions since day one, lots of questions to this point leading to it being asked and the fact they are so young it will be a very basic chat about reproduction rather than sex for recreational purposes – for now at least. I’m torn between feeling pleased they seem to be together for most of these conversations therefore I’ll only be covering it once and worrying that in doing so I am leading them towards a natural ‘you have X, I have Y, let’s see if we can make a baby brother’ type scenario! 😆

We consumed cheese scones and then went to pick Lucy and The Rs up. We drove through rain, chatted about flying lessons having driven past Shoreham airport just as a plane was coming in to land and happened to be one of the ones that Ady and I both had a trial lesson in a few years ago. I’m sure there were further conversations but I can’t recall them and then we arrived at Monkee Bizness soft play. Ali, Freya and Ali’s Mum who is called some name beginning with the letter J were already there, swiftly followed by Eira, Lulah and Tialys from Magical Mondays so we all went in. Davies and Scarlett were instantly swallowed up by the soft play only resurfacing occasionally for drinks, ice cream (provided by Ali – thanks mate 🙂 ) and cuddles or declarations of love for me. Ali’s friend K was there with her two children once they’d been released from school and she was nice to chat to aswell, particularly when she exclaimed about how gorgeous and beautiful my children are, with particular reference to their amazing eyes – none of which I can take credit for either as a result of parenting or genetics but is rather lovely to hear just the same. I think they’re gorgeous too :). It was a very nice couple of hours being largely childfree without any real need for my parenting and whilst observing others who were called upon rather more than me it was also a reminder of how far we’ve come. Once upon a time the idea of sitting in a soft play would have been inconceivable. First of all I wouldn’t have been sitting, I’d have either been coaxing a child into the soft play area or following one round, simply sitting with the occassional glimpse of one of my offspring, out there, making friends of stranger, having a ball and enjoying themselves was very much an alien concept. It’s a bit nice to be sitting back and enjoying the fruits of going through those days. 🙂

We left and had a very good run home, traffic wise. Conversations included birthdays and before / after Christmas status, birthdays generally, age gaps and how they continue to be static even while ages might change, whether I believe in Father Christmas and the varying prices of soft play places in and around Sussex. Thanks to Polar Express and my relunctance to shatter my childrens’ childhoods coupled with no wish to outright lie to them either we have reached a compromise that they both know I don’t believe in Father Christmas but they both do, which we agree is fine. This is very much our stance on God too actually, although I do hope to at some point get across that God is rather more accepted as a genuine belief and indeed following to worship rather than the big bloke with the beard in the red suit :lol:. Apologies in advance to any Santaists that offends ;).

We dropped Lucy and The Rs home and came back arriving a short while after Ady, I cooked D&S some tea then went to clean out the chicken coop. I’ve been enjoying watching the debate on my US chicken forum since I posted some pics of them taken last weekend as to whether they are roos or hens. I have a couple of people convinced they are one and a couple convinced they are the other. Everyone seems to think Wobble – the only one I was fairly sure was a cockerel – is a hen though. I think it is a case of waiting for the egg or the cock a doodle doo to be honest, but I’m pretty relaxed at the idea that there is probably three or four hens there actually and am even pondering where to get a rooster from in due course should we decide we’d like one.

The children looked at Where’s Wally for ages while Ady and I got stuck into Friday night beers and then they finally clicked onto the idea that if they were quiet and out of sight we would be less likely to send them to bed, so they headed upstairs to play in Davies’ bedroom for ages playing with micromachines. We finally packed them off to individual bedrooms about 9pm and have had dinner and watched Torchwood since then while continuing to consume alcohol. See, there’s another reason we’re not at a bookshop about now – we’re too drunk to drive and our children are asleep ;).

My most favourite state to be in is slightly under pressure but managing I reckon. I quite like precariousness and a touch of uncertaintly and I definitely like busyness. For pretty much my entire pre-children career it was a constant state of being really, working initially as a waitress or in the kitchens of my parents restuarant where it was soo much more exciting when a coach load of people turned up for cream teas and we were dashing around trying to get it all done, to being on the refund desk at B&Q with customers queuing both sides, the phone ringing, constant tannoy calls and then moving into management where there was always something pressing happening. I’ve got slightly more protective of peaceful downtime nowadays but my day to day life could be considered fairly frantic at times and I love the feeling of looking at my diary on a Sunday night and knowing we’ve got a full week of ‘stuff’ ahead of us for the following week. So I have found the rather s l o w pace at the library a little testing at times, the day drags, I quicky get demotivated and slope off to try and skive a bit when there is nothing urgent to be getting on with and wish I was at home where I can set myself pressure targets such as getting all the laundry done, leaving getting the kids tea and tidying up the kitchen to just before Ady gets home so it is a mad dash rather than a leisurely exercise and giving myself constant ‘to do’ lists. I’m definitely a performs well under pressure kinda girl – most of the time anyway, before anyone pops up to cite instances when I haven’t 😉

So today was just excellent – in just four days we have signed up over 100 children for this years Summer Reading Game in our library and today far from the staff outnumbering the public three to one we were having people queuing! And I totally knew what I was doing – I joined new borrowers to the library, helped small children find the clues to solve the hunt the characters signs around the place, issued stickers and books, answered ringing phones and generally thrived off the buzzed up atmosphere of it being busy with a very slight edge of only just having it all under control – it was ace :). And then at the end when it all quietened down and I was trying to find a cd with the Big Fish Little Fish song on it to use for Davies’ party we had most of the library staff either singing the song, doing the movements or looking on wide eyed while the rest of us demonstrated it. I Nic’d up the library! 😆 Had no luck finding it, and a bit of googling reveals I’m not the only one searching so far from thinking it would be on a party dance mix album that I could order from work I’ve had to contact the bloke who wrote and recorded it about getting a copy 🙂 Did find some T shirts with it on though which I thought were rather cool (hey Em, when’s your birthday? 😉 ).

Came home to a rapturous greeting from Davies and Scarlett which was lovely – I do miss them lots when I work a whole day. I’d brought home loads of dvds as most of the ones I’d got on order had come in since last Friday so they got straight into a Doctor Who dvd while I cooked their tea. They had a bath which Davies got out of early so he went and fetched the two books he’d chosen for the reading game on Tuesday and we read one together with him reading a few of the words and one with me just reading it. He still really struggles with reading and it is genuine struggle rather than not wanting to put the effort in. He can do it but it is really, really laborious and doesn’t seem worthwhile or enjoyable at all. Some stuff he seems to read effortlessly like words on his x box games but it’s just not clicking for him yet when faced with a whole page of writing in a book. He tried though, seemed to enjoy the idea of him decoding a few words and then reading them when they were repeated through the book so that might be something we do again, but it served to cement my idea that he’s simply not ready, which having watched numbers be a similar mystery to him until fairly recently but have suddenly all clicked, I am happy to trust the process of it and remain hands off still. 🙂 The one thing he always has enthusiasm for is writing and sooner or later the two will merge I guess.

Scarlett got out the bath and brought me a couple of books to read for her and then they chose another one each, so we’ve done six books for them to choose two favourites each out of and maybe pop to the library tomorrow for their first stickers and seeds incentive. They went off to bed, Ady went off to buy cat food and I had a bath and cooked dinner. Tonight we’ve watched the first episode of Torchwood (another dvd) and I’ve spent lots of time on chicken forums :lol:.

Davies has been a bit ‘fragile’ of late. He goes through these funks every so often and always comes out of the other side but it’s bloody hard work while he’s processing it. In a crowd of people he knows well he plays the role of very loud, very confident, very self assured boy very well but deep down a lot of those early personality traits that led us to consider Home Education are still there and whether it’s a growth spurt, hormone rush, too many late nights in a row, phase of the moon, reaction to the tides or simply a reaction to lots of socialising that does it he puts himself in the role of victim, then gets all upset and delicate when he gets treated like one. He is a big wallower and in the same way as he enjoys being happy there are times when he can equally enjoy being miserable somehow. I’ve mentioned before that I struggle with this, I don’t respond well to neediness and clingyness, even when it is my own adored child demonstrating it and whilst I am great at offering kind words, cuddles and answers my patience and tolerance rapidly runs out when none of that makes a difference and the option of simply sitting on my lap looking mournful is taken up instead. 🙄

I’ve bandied about lots of theories the last couple of days, the most feasible is that his normal posse of children, that he mixes with weekly are all younger and he is normally very good at dealing with younger children, leading them in games, suggesting ideas to keep them all occupied and happy. But suddenly there’s been a bit of an upsurge in independant thinking from the ranks of 4 year olds who are rebelling at being told what games to play and are voting with their feet and playing something else instead, which he then struggles to infiltrate and ends up flouncing off because ‘no one wants to play with me’ which accusation is met with incredulous stares from said 4 year olds who all adore him and would love him to play with them, just not necessarily in the role of dictator :lol:. And he is the wrong end of way too many late nights aswell.

He cried while we were out today – genuine, crushed, hurt feelings tears, because ‘the girls’ had said ‘nana na na nah!’ to him and then decided he was a monster and run away screaming – which is a game of his invention. I talked to him about it and said that it was ok to show his feelings and be upset but he couldn’t expect me to tell other children how to play any more than I thought he should be telling them and that normally he would be utterly resilient in dealing with such pettiness. He explained that normally when he feels a bit sad about something he can deal with it just fine, but when he’s feeling ‘a bit delicate it all just bubbles over inside him and makes him cry’ which I thought was very articulate and could utterly sympathise with having had a similar time at Kessingland where just one more small thing would have had me sitting in the nearest puddle wailing!

So, to get back to today, we all rose late and had a mad dash about trying to get last nights washing up done and the kitchen put back together again, a picnic packed for the day out, everyone dressed and breakfasted and in the car within an hour of being up. Lucy and The Rs came over and we drove over to Julie’s who was also running late. We followed her to a Natural England site for a walk up into the downs. It was an Activeo event (specifically listed as Non Activeo Exclusive just so we could go 🙂 ) and there were two other families with us and another joined us a bit later. Davies was in full on clingy mode, wanting to hold my hand and interupt my conversations with adults to debate who loved the other one more out of him and I – honestly, if I had a man that needy I’d run screaming in the opposite direction!) but he did eventually wander from my side and ran off with the others. There were the most amazing yew trees there which were like individual play centres with all sorts of fantastical shaped branches, swirly patterns in the bark and big holes and gaps supporting wildlife. The children clambered over them, named one tree ‘Bug World’ having seen a family of woodlice in it and spotted holes for other bigger creatures. Davies found an egg shell which we deduced had not hatched as it didn’t have the pecked appearance of a hatched one but discussed what it’s fate might have been. We saw loads of beetles, bugs and butterflies (to quote a well loved book 🙂 ) many of which Davies and Scarlett identified. Julie is excellent at all things natural like plants, wildlife etc. and the children regularly bring her flowers or leaves or little creatures to identify. So we saw rain beetles, pill bugs, a walnut tree, hawksbeard, goatsbeard and various other things that I wouldn’t have had a clue about but the children either knew from previous walks with Julie or were able to learn about from her. It’s so exactly how I envisaged Home Ed working, that they have people around them who know ‘stuff’ and are able to ask them sensible questions and process the information they’re given. This week they learnt stuff from Helen at Fishbourne and have learnt more from Julie today. It’s great :).

We sat down for lunch and then the children wandered off to run yelling down the hill many times, search for more interesting things and generally enjoy being outside with loads of space, while the adults chatted. There was then a sudden downpour of rain which sent most of us scurrying back to the yew tree canopy for shelter and started us back towards the car park on a slow return walk. I had a brief chat with Cate, who was one of the first Home Educators I met when we moved back to Sussex and has a boy and a girl about 3 years older than D & S, so would have been about mines’ ages when we first met. She has gone through many incarnations of HE approach including private school, utter autonomy and fairly curriculummy stuff. We were having an interesting conversation about Hesfes and HE in general when Davies came and pulled me away as the rest of our party had started back to the car, so hopefully I can catch up with her again sometime soon.

On the way back to the car the sun came out again and aside from Davies regressing back to clingyness it was nice to walk bits of the way with Julie, Lucy or Fiona (a new HE woman with a 2 and a 3 year old who is just starting out at meeting other HE families) and chat. When we got to the carpark there was a lovely old car parked there which we all looked at for a while before loading everyone back into the car and heading for home. Scarlett asked ‘what are trees for?’ which led to a very long and interactive car-ed session covering uses for leaves, fruit, nuts, uses for trees while alive such as shelter, their effect on the environment and the uses for wood including furniture, houses, pencils, firewood for cooking, heating etc. play equipment, then wood being used to make paper so all the uses of paper for books, newspapers, drawing or writing on and finally bank notes. It was really good with all the children contributing, even Richard and it then led to a chat about where things grow – on trees, on plants, in the ground etc. It did degenerate into arguments about who’s turn it was to shout the next thing out but there was a good 10-15 minutes of pure learning in there first :).

We came home and let the chickens out, Davies and Scarlett stayed outside to play with them, Richard and Rebecca were asleep for a while and then came in and sat with Lucy while we sat chatting and then Ady came home. He put the chickens on the lounge windowsill where they all learnt to peck at the window for attention, so I imagine that will be their new party trick :). Lucy and The Rs went home, Davies and Scarlett had a speedy tea and then we went off to Badgers for the end of term presentation evening.

The Badgers were all playing host / hostess to the visiting families so we were plyed with tea, coffee, lemonade and biscuits while Davies changed from being the boy who’d annoyed me all day and became back to his usual self, proud of showing his drawings and other craft work off, messing about with his best friend at Badgers, taking Scarlett round to show her everything ready for when she starts in December, introducing his friends to us and going and getting more biscuits for us. I think he really likes to be the one in control of a situation actually. He doesn’t abuse the power when he has it, but he likes to know he’s got it. And erm, I guess I have to concede to relating to that rather heavily so maybe he has rather more of me in him than I first though :oops:. Badges and certificates were handed out to all the Badgers, with some of them leaving Badgers to join SJA cadets in September. I do think it’s an excellent group, far and away better than Beavers and Davies gets loads out of it, I think Scarlett will too, it’s a very supportive and caring environment. Julie, the Badger Leader had a baby 3 weeks ago so she was there as a guest star and as Scarlett was very keen to see her close up I accepted the offer of a cuddle and sat talking to Tarly about babies a bit. It was a difficult birth with ventouse, forceps and episiotomy which baby Alice still has a few scabs to prove some of and she is still under 8lbs so tinier at 3 weeks old than either of my children were at birth. I explained to Scarlett about ventouse and forceps, we looked at her little fingers and nails and Scarlett had her grab her finger, we looked at her unfocused eyes and talked about fontanelles on her head – baby ed! 🙂 She was however quite stinky in a dirty nappy and after all, a baby, so once we’d covered all that I passed her on to the next eager cuddler :lol:.

We left there and in celebration of the end of term took the children to McDonalds for an ice cream. Once home Ady cooked dinner while I finally put away the towering piles of laundry, some of which were residual clean clothes from Kessingland, so we all have full wardrobes, enough pair of pants and clothes to wear tomorrow without having to raid the clean clothes baskets, and I have three empty laundry baskets again to start the whole process again! 🙂

Work all day tomorrow so I really should be in bed making zzzs by now. Some pics on flickr of walk and Badgers, Ady has more on his camera of Badgers so I may come back and add them in later.

Snap! and

Maybe not so snap 😉

is what today was 🙂

I was playing catch up this morning having not gone to bed til about 230am and then not got up til nearly 10am. 😳 I then did some speedy housework, rounded up D&S and we headed off to the library. I wanted them to join the Summer Reading Game before it got all mad and busy with school children 😉 so we enjoyed parking in the LIBRARY STAFF ONLY parking spaces in the otherwise very full with a queue waiting for spaces carpark and headed in there to sign up. The children were super confident and chatty, and of course, being my children were utterly indulged by all four of my colleagues who were working today 🙂 They did the hunt the character thing around the library, chatted away to everyone and anyone and chose stickers and their first two books each. Then we popped into the supermarket to get various bits and pieces of food for today where they were both utterly charming, helpful and lovely. Whilst in the queue Helen rang to say they were already at our house and liked our chickens 😳 thereby cementing my position as craphostess 😆

We dashed home, made drinks, let the children do their thing and during the day Ali and Freya, Lucy, Richard & Rebecca and Ros with No Children At All arrived to be part of the day. It was really lovely 🙂 They children mostly played outside, the adults mostly sat and chatted inside, we enjoyed lots of phones trilling at once with twitters, Ros did some NLP(;-)) stuff, well ok it wasn’t NLP it was some sort of mind over matter type stuff, Elinor showed Scarlett a better way to climb up the doorframe than she’d already been doing, Alys was lovely, Freya got the hang of the Shoe Law straight away, Richard didn’t. Rebecca showed us her gymnastics and Davies was Mostly Being Doctor Who Even If No one Else Wanted To Play! 😆 I had lots of various chats in the kitchen with various people which was lovely and enjoyed being hostess without doing an awful lot :). Oh and there was a chicken in the road type incident which resulted in no deaths but possibly answered the ‘why did the chicken cross the road?’ question for us! 😆

Freddie – the first born and by far most adventurous chicken delighted us all by flying up to the washing line and roosting on a pair of my jeans! 🙂

Gradually everyone except Chris and Helen left, Ady came home, we fed the children and retired to the garden while they had baths in various combinations, then ate ourselves, cutting it fine as usual between acceptable eating time and Goddard eating time at about 10pm (we often eat at 11pm so that was almost early 😉 ). C&H left, Davies and Scarlett and Ady went to bed – Ady via Davies’ room, I sat with Scarlett and sang her songs and talked to her about great grandparents. And now I am feeling the effects of decent wine rather than under three quid a bottle wine and really should go to bed given I am due to be walking across the downs in under 11 hours time :). Thanks all who came for a lovely day – it was great. 🙂

We went to Fishbourne Roman Palace today. I went with the school when I was very young along with a trip to Bignor Roman Villa which is also local-ish and another place I’ve been meaning to take the children at some point.

We got there just before midday, having learnt that Chris and Helen were running late and had time for a quick play on the ‘match the symbol to the god’ game and were then invited into the audio visual presentation. It wasn’t really suitable or designed for small children, with Scarlett announcing to the room at large that she was bored about five minutes into it, but I pulled her onto my lap and whispered into her ear my own Scarlett-tailored commentary which seemed to help. 🙂 We then went back round the museum and they were interested in most of the various bits and pieces – mosaics which had been restored to show the patterns, some early tools and jewels and a skeleton as there had been four burial sites discovered there too. We were looking at the mosaic floors and talking about the various different patterns when The Beans arrived so we went back to the picnic area and had lunch. Well we had lunch, the children mainly ran around like loons playing some sort of monster game. They also hooked up with some other children, which was initially fun but ended up being upsetting to Tarly after they seemed to take the game a little more seriously than our four and were being quite scary monsters apparently! 😆 We sat and discussed whether you can indeed tell if children are home educated just by looking at them. I don’t think we reached a conclusion on that but maybe we could have some sort of controlled experiment 😆

We then went back in, Davies and Scarlett got sent back out again as they had now decided to eat their lunch, so we waited outside and then caught up with The Beans inside once they’d finished eating. I have to say Helen is the best person I can think of to visit a Roman Palace with as she was able to answer all the questions from the children – and me! 🙂 and also have an impromptu biology lesson when they were looking at the skeleton. I was glad we’d had that half an hour or so to look at stuff properly as Davies and Scarlett went all crazy the moment they had friends with them and just wanted to run and shriek really, but they enjoyed the roman-ness of the setting regardless and we get a season ticket for our entrance fee so can go again any time in the next year and do the bits they were too giddy for this afternoon 🙂

They did some stuff in the activity bit, matching modern day things to Roman equivalents which we called on Helen for again, some mosiac pattern building, some coin rubbing and some blocks building etc. before they felt the need to run around again so we went out into the gardens for a while. They played hide and seek, found some things to be spotted from a sheet and then requested to play on the hills outside again. So we sat back on the bench, they hooked up with yet more children and had a final play before we parted company and we drove home listening to the Rotten Romans cd all the way home. 🙂

Once home we let the chicks out for a free range wander, the children had tea and then we walked Davies round to Beavers – the last one of the term and a teddy bears picnic theme. I only found out when we arrived that it was ‘bring a guest’ so Scarlett could have stayed, but never mind. We came back and taught the chicks some new tricks – like jumping to get a bit of bread held above them and eating out our hands. Reading on forums it appears eating out of your hand is a big deal for non-hatched by you chicks but all of ours are very used to it. And no, still no idea what they are. With the exception of Wobble – the black one, who looks huge to me but someone said could be a fast growing breed indicating it’s a hen, they all look identical which suggests they are all boys or all girls. Ady reckons they’re all hens today, I’m still undecided.

Ady came home and I popped back to collect Davies and his bear and witness an incident of the Beaver leader shrieking at the boys – which she does all the time- and one of the dad’s pulling her up on it and checking his son was ok. He was really cross – and rightly so, but I’ve done my fair share of ranting at extra curricular activity providers already this week so I just watched and listened. That’s it til September now but he can do a Beaver Hobbies badge over the summer if he wants on a hobby of his choosing that he needs to participate in and tell the group about when they go back, so we’re putting some thought into that one.

The children played with the chickens for another half an hour or so before we shut them in for the night and the children went off to bed. As reported below Davies spent time at his window, but Scarlett was asleep very quickly.

Tomorrow we have lots of people here and if we’re up and about early enough I might take Davies and Scarlett off to the library to sign up for this years summer reading game – Big Wild Read which launched today and is apparently going to blow me away this summer with how mad crazy busy the library will be, so it would make sense to beat the rush of the children breaking up from school and get in there first.

It’s a Nic’s neighbours special post. Ooh what a treat. 🙂

No idea if I’ve kept you all fully abreast of the goings on in our street of late so here’s a nice update. You may want to settle in your chair with cocoa and a nice biscuit.

Don & Maureen, who live opposite and are the childrens’ most regular lavender stall patrons are fine. No news about them for you. Next door to them Owen and Carolyn (the one’s who went away for that weekend and left the car with the car alarm that went off for hours and days behind) are rarely seen. We still maintain low level curiosity about what they do for a living, why they don’t have children and why they never seen to do anything remotely coupley together. Next door to them live The Thank You Neighbours, who several of you have now had the good fortune to meet. We bumped into them today when we were off to Beavers and they were off to the local shop to buy ‘some ham and a few other bits’ which makes me wonder as to the nature of the ‘other bits’ really when they’d been so specific about the ham. I was much complimented on my new shorter hair, which they’ve noticed and decided they really like but not seen me to to talk to to tell me properly. Apparently it makes me look ten years younger, which I hope is an exageration as really I’m quite happy looking 33 and wouldn’t be that keen to be looking 23 with two children the ages of mine and a husband who is over 40 😆

Next to them live the nurse and the policeman – fabulously gender stereotyped couple 🙂 He was out fixing his roof recently – he does lots of outside-y tasks without a shirt on, which frankly he is unwise to do, but then I imagine neighbours think similarly of me dashing outside to get jeans off the washing line in my pants some times or putting the blue boxes out in a vest top without a bra so I guess I shouldn’t comment really! Anyway, he had the chimney taken down and was patching the roof with tarp. as the roof tiles had been delayed. We have a huge great pile of roof tiles in our back garden (where the rats live :roll:) from when we had the loft converted so we gave him a load and he cancelled his own delivery and brought us a rather nice bottle of rose wine to say thank you. The nurse (who never really says much but she works shifts so I assume she is always tired :lol:) went out on a hen night recently and was collected by a pink stretch limo and waved and shouted Hellooooos at us in a very friendly manner so must have been either drunk or well rested as it was very out of character. She’s not done it again since though.

Next to them lives Keith the unfortunately names foxy builder and his ‘missus’, who had a nasty motorbike accident recently and both ended up in intensive care for a while. They seem to be on the road to recovery now and it did lead to Keith answering his front door in his dressing gown and even spending some time chatting to the Policeman neighbour on the front path wearing it, so it wasn’t all bad. Their house has been up for sale for ages – they are apparently buying a camper van and going off travelling, but doesn’t get many viewings and seems to not be selling. Poor Keith.

Further up the road we are not so familiar with the intimate goings on, but it wouldn’t take much effort to learn 😉 A nod to David and he’d be on the case with all the gossip, and Davies’ room is perfect for citing long range binoculars 😆

Across the road lives Dragon Lady and her husband, they aged a lot while we were away and she now walks totally bent over and he gets collected by a community bus each day to go to a daycare centre. They still feed the birds every day though and have had four racing pidegons living on their roof who must have got lost mid flight for about six weeks too. Next door to them live a mad family who have given us many hours of entertainment with their comedy carrying on. They currently have a lodger who works nights at Sainsburys and there is always an assortment of odd characters pulling up day and night for the older man who lives there to look at their cars. They put the house up for sale about a month ago and a sold board went up this week, so we have ringside seats for the new neighbours whoever they may be and their moving in and settling period. Rubs hands together with glee!

And finally, next door. When we first moved here there was a family with two youngish children living next door, we never knew their names but called him ‘Ashington Motors Man’ because that’s where he worked. They split up and she moved out leaving him with the two children, by that time teens. While we were away he met a new woman and moved in with her, leaving his son in the house while he was at uni locally and then selling the house. The new neighbours moved in while we were at Kessingland last year and aside from David (thank you neighbour) accosting them and even inviting himself in when they first arrived, and the whole street talking about them being ‘Mitchells’ which is a well known Lancing Mafia style family we’ve never really heard much from them. The only room you can see their house / garden from is Davies’ bedroom, which means that when they have 3 boys leaping on the trampoline at 9pm and Davies is supposed to be in bed, he is more often than not standing at his bedroom window looking wistfully down at them. I’ve no idea how many of the children actually belong in that house – it always seems to be be different children every time I peek out. He often bangs on the window and waves to them and they exchange hand signals quite often.

So tonight he was trying to communicate with them and find out their names, long after he was supposed to be asleep in bed, he came down with a piece of paper and pen and asked me to write ‘what is your name?’ on it to hold up to the window 😆 and he got some yelled out answers too :). He is now very keen to go round there and play with them, but I’m not altogether sure how we arrange that one, I’ve told him to try shouting over the fence to them next time they’re in the garden at the same time as him and invite them round here first. They are lots older than him and although the idea of having next door neighbours he can play with is quite appealing I am slightly concerned at him attempting to climb out of his bedroom window after he’s gone to bed once he’s been aquainted with them properly!

which we can’t make as I’m working on Saturday 🙁

We’ve just a leaflet advertising loads of concerts at Crystal Palace Bowl including a FREE concert on Sunday 19th August called Noisy Kids.

It was the penultimate swimming lesson for Davies today. I’ve got really mixed feelings about them. On the one hand we don’t do teaching here, so I do appreciate it is not something that Davies is familiar with but he wants to learn to swim and has enjoyed the process and insists he wants to carry on. He has had a variety of instructors during the 12 weeks, some way better than others but actually I think consistency and continuity of teacher is a really important part of learning. The class has varied between 6 and 10 children with some of them way ahead in terms of ability. Davies has always been one of, if not the least able and to my mind has really suffered as a result with the teachers focusing on the more able swimmers. I’m fairly sure if roles were reversed and he was a better swimmer I’d be happy about this and not so keen on the slower ones ‘holding my child back’ so I’m not really complaining but he does tend to get rather ignored and left to his own devices which is a bit of a recipe for disaster really as he doesn’t then pay much attention to what’s being asked of the group, tends to just chatter to the child next to him or play with his float or noodle instead of doing much in the way of swimming. I’ve spoken to him about it several times, expressing that he is there to learn, not play or socialise, the onus is on him to do that and we’re not prepared to pay money for him to mess about, offering the chance to stop lessons if he doesn’t feel ready and just bring him to the pool to play instead until he does feel ready to focus on the learning, but he is adamant he wants to have the lessons. I think he has got plenty out of them, he is utterly confident of putting his face in the water, ducking under and laying right back into the water for back stroke, what it has given him is a great level of water confidence which I don’t have as an adult, but he does need to be pushed or at the very least coaxed along as without that he otherwise tends to mentally and physically wander off and do his own thing.

Last week they had a different teacher again and she was utterly fantastic, got loads out of every individual child, regardless of their ability level, learnt all their names within minutes and really pushed them all, Davies came out buzzing and I really felt we got money’s worth for the first time since he started. Today it was yet another teacher and she was rubbish, absolutely rubbish. Davies didn’t pick his feet up off the pool floor once I don’t think – he either walked along backwards or forwards depending on what stroke she’d asked for, he spent one entire width just lifting the float up and smacking it as hard as he could back into the water AND IT WENT TOTALLY UNNOTICED!!! I got so angry I clambered down to the pool side from the spectator area ready to drag him out of the water and shove him under her nose shouting ‘IS THIS CHILD INVISIBLE???!!!’ at her and quite probably had steam rising off me. There was a final insult of her getting them all to climb out and then jump back in. Davies struggles to climb out and this was also ignored with him trying, falling back in and trying again until he finally got out, by which point all the others had had their first go at jumping in and were having their second go, so he only got one try at that too.

I did some dreadful poolside public parenting and ranted at him in full view and hearing off all the children coming out and their parents and all the children about to get in for the next lesson, also being just loud enough in my ‘and worst of all it went unnoticed, the instructor was oblivious!’ ending to my rant to (hopefully) get overheard by her too. I would have spoken to her if she’d not been about to start the next lesson, so instead having got Davies changed I vented all my rage on the duty manager once we got upstairs. He was equally useless and advised me to email the instructor manager, who just so happens to be the excellent teacher from last week, so we swept out of there, no doubt fodder for the staff room for the rest of the day as ‘that lunatic woman from this morning’ 😳 I eventually calmed down and spoke to Davies about the whole thing, outlining again my expectations on him if he wants to carry on with lessons, but actually he *is* just a six year old child and we are paying money for him to be taught, which the right teacher managed effortlessly last week getting the best out of him. Anyway, a lesson in how not to parent, complain, behave in public for me probably – it’s not often these days I get red mist rage to that degree, although I can think of a couple of incidents just lately 😳 but when I do it I do it properly… About to compose a rather more reasoned and articulate email to them anyway.

Then we headed off to the car boot sale. I think I’d just about stopped shaking by the time we got there. We did well, a few more animals, a pony for Tarly (toy one, obviously 😉 ), a W&G jokebook for Davies and a coat to use for his Doctor outfit for his party for a quid. Oh and Gremlins on video which I’ve been keeping an eye out for. We left there and went to my parents for lunch / the afternoon, which was nice.

They have just bought a massive HD tv, dvd player/recorder and Ady had taken some dvds round to show them what it could do. He is very impressed and envious of it – personally I think they’d have done better spending the money on taking their grandchildren to EuroDisney but then I’ve always been more about the experiences than the ‘stuff’ – I was only saying this week that I could fit all the belongings I’d ever need in one small suitcase if I was ever going to leave home (laptop, phone, camera, make up 😉 – no not about the stuff at all :lol:), but then as I may have mentioned The Littlest Hobo had a big effect on me as a child 😆 So we watched a load of home video of the children from when we were in Manchester and the first few months back here – from the childen being 18 months and 3 years old up to about 2.5 years and 4.5 years, so ending with Davies being the age Scarlett is now. Very nice to watch and interesting to see in what ways they have and haven’t changed.

We left there at about 4pm and came home to find a Doctor Who back to back fest on one of the sky channels which the children dipped in and out of, interspersed with playing outside and hassling the chickens who I’d let out for a bit of free ranging. I was really curious to see the first interaction between cat and chicken and managed to be looking out the window when it happened. Candle was sitting in the bushes, more idly watching them peck about than anything and when they got a bit too close she lashed out without making contact. The chick squawked a bit and flapped away and that was the end of it. Very much a ‘sod off’ warning swipe than a ‘I’m going to have you with cranberry sauce little chickie’ type one which she didn’t bother to follow through with anything. I still wouldn’t totally trust her and will only let them out for a while yet when I / the children are around but it appears promising for future relations.

The children were packed off to bed fairly early, I put the chickens away for the night, we had a roast dinner and watched The Holiday. Well I watched it, Ady deemed it ‘not funny enough and way too girlie’, spent some time researching sonic rodent repellers online and then buggered off to bed! 😆

We’re planning a meet up with The Beans at a nearby Roman villa tomorrow, which should be lovely and a bit of an open house here with them on Tuesday – so if anyone local, or indeed anyone not local but willing to travel miles for our combined company would like to join us, please do so :).

I had an incredibly lazy morning and didn’t get out of bed until about 10am. I’d been awake since before 8am what with the postman ringing the bell to deliver a parcel (thanks Layla, still huge for Davies but if he doesn’t grow any time soon then Tarly will have them, very gratefull received :)), children coming to tell me ‘interesting’ things and Ady bringing me a cup of tea. I was having a really interesting dream which I kept trying to go to sleep to get back to but failed, so gave up and drank my tea and read my book in bed instead.

Ady was having a busy morning doing loads of washing and taking rubbish up to the tip. Davies and Scarlett were having a busy morning making ‘stuff’ out of sticklebricks.

When I finally did get up and dressed I did some more washing, made french toast (sweet with eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon) for brunch which the children adored so might well become a regular foodstuff here and then let the chickens out for a run around free range stylee. They didn’t get a lot of chance to do freeranging as the children didn’t really leave them alone but Freddie (the oldest by a day) was adventurous flapping up to perch atop the coop and run:

Ady got to cuddle Wobble (who is clearly his favourite)

and we generally enjoyed watching them being real proper chickens now. I can’t believe how quickly chickens grow. They could start to lay any time from about 18-20 weeks – or crow as the case may be, which is really quite a staggering quick sprint to maturity – about week for every human year really 😯

We then set off to Lewes to Spring Barn Farm Park where we were meeting Freya’s birthday posse for sixth celebrations. Due to uncertainty about traffic levels we were slightly early so sat in the carpark playing ‘guess Chris’s middle name’ on twitter, which led to a few others joining in. Really like that aspect of twitter :). Ali arrived with her Mum and we lurked awhile waiting for J, Freya and J’s mum to arrive during which time Ali told some random strangers that they were ‘not the right people’, I had to perform emergency pretend-croc repairs on Tarly’s last remaining rivet using a jibbitz nicked from Davies pretend-crocs and we were greatly amused by a sign talking about breeds of pigs and ending with the proclamation that the ginger spotted one was called Kevin Bacon, which was just funny in so many ways. 😆

The second installment of the birthday posse finally arrived and we entered the farm. We were immediately drawn to the poultry to compare comb and waddles sizes and hues for telltale signs of gender for our own. Scarlett was rather bewildered that she couldn’t just pick up every chicken she came across like she can with ours at home and Davies wanted to know all sorts of bizarre things like the names of all the rabbits :lol:. We decided to head into the Maize Maze fairly promptly (I am very tempted to call it the Amazing Maize Maze but actually it was not amazing, I was not amazed. It was very good though and when it grows to full maize height (it was a proper maze for the children but adults could still see over it) it may well qualify as amazing too – a marketing dream 😉 ). We had maps with seven lookout points to find and track down clues for so we set about doing that. It was good fun 🙂

We were also taken in with the beauty of the south downs within the farm setting too – the hills rolled into the background in all four directions and everywhere was just so full of green grass and blue sky. It was lovely :). We complete all the clues and as we had no pen I used my phone to note all the answers down with on the notes feature. Handy :).

We came out of there needing the loo so headed off to find toilets and happened upon a massive area of straw bales which provided much entertainment for me and the children and many photo opportunities for Ady. I probably did start the straw fights but certainly got more than I bargained for taking on Davies and was still picking straw out of my bra this evening 😆 straw in your pants is not a nice feeling I have to tell you!
plenty more pics on flickr should you wish to see them 🙂

We had ice cream, Freya’s birthday posse came and joined us having had their own maize maze experience and we sat and chatted while the children played. There were some kindly adults playing a game of monsters with a huge crowd of children in some more straw bales which they all got involved with (and Davies tried to manage :roll:) and we had fun with J’s hat:
and probably convinced J’s mum that we should all be locked up somewhere with no responsibiliy for our children at all let alone their education following surreal conversations about Springwatch, the children’s individual-ness and my skills as a chicken-whisperer :lol:.

We left there and on the way out Davies found a £20 note all screwed up. There was a little hushed debate about whether he should keep it or not before he was bundled out the door. We were about the last people to leave and while I’d ring to find out if a possession had been found I don’t think I’d even consider whether screwed up cash would be handed in anywhere. So we decided finders keepers on this occassion. My parents will be so proud ;).

We headed back to Ali & J’s for coffee / wine / further chatting / perusing of photos which was very nice finally leaving there after 7pm. After much discussion about what to spend his finding on with me rooting for ‘splurge and enjoy’ and Ady counselling ‘save and savour’ we called into Tescos for some bits for dinner and he spent the lot buying a Doctor Who set containing a Dalek, a Cyberman and The Doctor for himself and a Littlest Petshop character for Tarly. He was so sweet about buying something for Scarlett having been assured by me that it was his money and he should spend it however he pleased :). He is utterly thrilled with it and has fallen asleep surrounded by Doctor Who mini figures tonight.

Home for tea for the children and a bath to wash off farm dirt and straw from their hair before another late night for them. We had baths, I cooked tacos for dinner and I’m fairly sure I’ll be picking bits of straw from my hair for a good few days yet despite a very rigorous hairwash :). It was a great day, lovely weather, lovely location, lovely company – thanks to Ali, J & Freya for a great time :).

Work today. Julie was here in the morning and took the children to the park. They all had a good time apparently. I got a fed-back Scarlettism from Julie that she’d not eaten all her sandwiches and wanted a rice cake so Julie said to her ‘eat another bite or two darling and you can have a rice cake’ to which Tarly replied ‘I’m not your darling!’ in a very indignant tone. 😆 Julie (who is very much a ‘more power to the women’ type of woman) swallowed her laughter and said that while she is here looking after Scarlett then she is ‘her darling’ and it all passed over. On the phone tonight she said it was fab and she loves her attitude which will get her everywhere in life 🙂 I asked Scarlett about it and she was keen to point out that ‘I am only Mummy’s darling, no one else’s’. Okay then! 🙂 I do so adore that girl.

Dad was here in the afternoon which meant more outdoors play and Ady only beat me home by about 10 minutes so he cleared the garden up while I tacked inside. As soon as I saw Scarlett I realised she had had a chunk of hair cut – noone else can see it – Ady can’t spot it at all, and actually it is fairly well hidden as it’s a bit at the front which has previously been a fringe so I imagine not a lot was cut anyway, but I play with that hair every day either brushing it, trying to plait it (well ok those are only weekly occurances) or brushing it out of her face while I cuddle her (rather more frequent) and I *know*. There was flat denial followed by hilarious tall tales about mice cutting it off to give to the rats who passed it on to the birds (we throw any hair caught in the infrequently used hairbrush out of the window for the birds to use for their nests) and talk of her ‘Special Man’ (have I ever blogged about him?) doing it but finally Davies helped her tidy her room and talked her into telling the truth. I know, in true bad mother style I was lurking in the hall eavesdropping on him saying ‘just tell me the truth about your hair Scarlett, Mummy always says she won’t be angry if we tell her the truth. You tell me and then I’ll come with you and we can tell her together’ (oh, bless him) to which she confessed to doing it herself and they came to tell me together as he promised with him holding her hand for moral support. 🙂 Aw.

My day was fairly workaday really. Banking this morning so I got to breeze about doing the banking and the tea bag for the staff room run just after 9am. I love the feel of town centres just as the shops are opening – it takes me back to my ‘shopkeeper’ days when I would throw open the front doors of the shop I was managing to start a new day of trading. The day was slow but steady and didn’t drag too much. I’m not really a new girl any more, I don’t hold much novelty status and I am starting to realise I know ‘stuff’ and can help customers properly. It’s odd, being 7 months into a job but still feeling a bit new, clearly just due to only working 11 hours a week and given the rest of the staff are all about 11 years into the job I am still new relatively speaking, but it’s nice to feel part of a team rather than worrying about being a new face now.

We let D&S stay up late tonight – about 9pm as they were playing with a Doctor Who book Ady had found in a charity shop for 25p still complete with all the activities and a Where’s Wally book I’d bought home from work for them, then they got caught up in some nature show about piranahs. Linda, who used to look after the children when we lived in Manchester rang for a catch up and Davies spoke to her for a bit, so I made dinner talking on the phone which meant for a late dinner.

And that is probably about it actually. Looking forward to a nice weekend 🙂

I just can’t stop – look here, you’ll feel the same 🙂 It’s no Wonderpets granted, but for it’s day it was bloody good kids tv 😆

It rained today, that miserable grey drizzly rain that’s barely even qualified to be called rain but gets you all wet anyway. But never mind that, we were off to Drusillas! 🙂 Packed a picnic and Ady took us over there before heading off to do some stores in that direction. We met Ros and co at the entrance along with about 3000 school children. We’ve rejoined for the year after a year off so the children were really excited :). We hurried through the first bit getting buffeted about by children in pacamacs and decided to have a quick look round the farm bit and get our obligatory egg picture before going to the playpark before the school children got there. The children played (somehow they managed it today, unlike yesterday at the park, thankfully 🙂 ) while Ros and I sat and drank tea, Ros cross stitched and we chatted, it’d been way too long. We eventually moved indoors into the soft play area, had to buy socks for D&S due to a very over zealous woman in charge of the area who kept putting annoucements over her tannoy about how to play – then we sat while all the school trip adults called their charges over it too – very funny 🙂 We briefly lost Tarly – I’d not seen her for ages and then realised her shoes were missing so she must have gone back outside. Spent about five minutes looking for her before finding her holding court in a playhouse with a small group of other little kids. She was quite indignant at being pulled away saying ‘but I was making new friends Mummy!’ so we all went back inside again. Adam and Davies, and eventually the others wandered away again but Scarlett spent ages sitting on the floor looking through a Drusillas book and ticking boxes, writing her name and telling us which bits said ‘yes’ and ‘no’. She’d got a postcard and note from Alex in the post this morning and brought that along with her in her little bag so she also wrote ‘Scarlett’ on the back of the postcard too. 🙂

Ros and co had to leave before us due to their very busy schedule 😉 so we went back into the zoo part and had a proper walk round looking at the animals and talking about various things we saw, looking at the lift the flap bits around the zoo about what groups of different animals are called – like a flamboyance of flamingos, a parliament of owls and so on. We finished up with an ice cream and a ride round on the train which has been rebranded as a Thomas train with various Thomas landmarks around the track. I could probably tolerate that if they didn’t pipe the Thomas song into the train on a loop all the way round, which is still echoing in my head now 🙁 I hate Thomas, round Tidmouth sheds and far away. I couldn’t get any signal in Drusillas, I never can so we walked to the exit to ring Ady and find out how far away he was and he had just pulled up in the car park five minutes previously. 🙂

We popped into Asda on the way, Ady’s found some iron on transfers for t shirts you print yourself so has been printing off things onto them and wanted some plain t shirts for the children to iron them on to, he’s done one for me too, but I’ll wait until I am wearing it to take a photo to blog it. 🙂 Home for the kids’ tea, some chicken free ranging and a quiet evening. I’m working all day tomorrow with Julie here in the morning and Dad here in the afternoon so I’m hoping for a sunny day to keep all the children outside instead of indoors trashing the place for the day. Oh and also hoping that Ady gets home before me to tidy it all up too ;). And then, hurrah, it’ll be the weekend!

Drusillas is a localish tourist attraction to us. We first took Davies there when he was about 9 months old and we had at least a couple of visits there with the children when we used to visit from Manchester. We had an annual membership the first year we moved home, missed a year last year due to finances and have just renewed again today with the last bit of Ady’s bonus.

I think pretty much every time we’ve been there we’ve taken a picture of the children in some giant eggs they have in the farm area – very often with Ros’ children too. Ady laughed at my pictures today and said ‘one day they’ll be too small to fit in there’ so I’ve been off looking through old flickr sets to track down some ‘children sitting in the eggs at Drusillas’ pictures from the past:

Here’s Tarly in July 2005
you may recall that was the year of the scab on her knee (I think she fell over on it something like 9 times before it finally healed).

Davies in March 2005

All of them in August 2005

And today – Davies with a bit of Adam, Ellie’s feet and Amelia’s legs:

And Scarlett:

hmm, that face shape is starting to look a bit familiar…

Work this morning. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually described my workmates here, have I? The whole of West Sussex is split into regions with each region having about 5 branches within it. The five branches have a Senior person overseeing all of them with a Senior Library Assistant working in each branch running it day to day with a team of Library Assistants – which is what I am. The Senior Library Assistant (SLA) at Lancing is called Yvonne and she is lovely. She is my direct line manager. Above her is the Senior Support Manager who oversees our local group of branches, Wendy. Above Wendy is the Operations Librarian, Brenda, who runs the book group I go to, so I know pretty well, certainly better than most of my colleagues and above her is Louise who is the Senior Librarian, who I’ve also worked with when I did the couple of recent evening events. Due to the way my own rota works I end up working 2 of my days with Yvonne and 2 with Wendy so I know them equally well although Wendy is more senior.

We have a new person who will be doing relief work but is in for training at the moment so as it was my turn to ‘do the papers’ this morning I had her with me showing her how to do that (mark them as recieved, stamp them with DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY and the date, put them out, take away yesterdays and file them – all very high level stuff 😉 ). Quite nice not to be the new girl any more and to realise I can acually show someone stuff that I know how to do now, however menial :). I had a glut of training sessions just before Kessingland and we have a pre-training objective setting meeting and then a post training evaluation meeting for each session. With me being on leave and then Wendy (who does the post training sessions) on leave too we had three still to catch up on, so my first hour at work was spent out the back doing that. I like Wendy, we get on well and kept drifting off the subject of what we were supposed to be talking about. 🙂 Then it was tea break time and then I had an hour and a quarter on the Enquiry Desk with Wendy doing training. Then I was doing some book repairs, glueing spines and fitting new jackets, so I didn’t do any of the stuff I normally do on the counter or shelving books. Consequently the morning flew by. 🙂

I came home for lunch – Ady was working from home today and looked after D&S while I worked. I’d brought home a Doctor Who (from the first series with The Ecclestone and Billie, the stuff they’ve not seen yet) dvd so they watched the first one on that while having lunch. Then we gave Ady some peace and headed off to the park to meet Lucy and The Rs. Davies and Rebecca had their bikes – Scarlett decided she didn’t want hers. This was a good choice as I’m pretty certain she’d have gotten bored of it and I’d have ended up pushing it or carrrying it, so I supported her wholeheartedly in her decision. She can run faster than Rebecca and Davies were managing on their bikes so I guess she didn’t need it anyway! 🙂 We began in the playground park bit where I recalled just how much I hate taking Davies and Scarlett to parks. If we go to the beach, the woods, fruit picking, pretty much any outdoor space where they are required to find their own fun then they are very very proficient at it. If I take them somewhere where they need to carry out their play in a dictated manner on specific play equipment then we seem to have problems. 🙄 At their ages, and with their ability I feel I have done my time of standing behind a baby swing and pushing them (and believe me I really have done that, for many hours if you were to tot it all up. When they were toddlers it was something I actually quite loved to do, now it just makes my arms ache), or watching every single slide down the slide they do, or rescuing them from the top of the climbing frame or ‘just standing there’ while they go across the monkey bars. I feel I have earnt my stripes to be able to sit it out on the bench while they play now if we go to parks. But this does not often happen, so as such we don’t often go to parks… Parks are NOT fun, they are dreadful places and I think I may start a one woman boycott of them from now on until they are old enough to go to them on their own. So there. Na.

We left the playground bit and walked / rode a bit further ending up at some rocks. When I was a child the rocks had a slide coming down from them so you clambered up the rocks and slid down the slide. The slide has long since gone but the rocks are still a big draw for the children. Utterly proving my theory above we stood for well over half an hour while they very happily played at clambering over the rocks, finding a game to play using their imagination and then befriended a small boy and started a game of hide and seek with him. We didn’t have to get involved once! Davies and Scarlett were calling the boy ‘Oliver’ and I heard him ask how they knew his name and then they came down from the rocks and said they had seen him there before last summer. This is entirely probable and I could maybe even dig back in my blog and find out but there is no other explanation for them remembering his name so I guess it’s true. Amazing, kids, aren’t they? :). We then wandered on from there, round the lake following the path and then back retracing our steps when the path ran out and D & R couldn’t cycle on the grass. We offered a choice of ride on the train or ice cream and they all chose ice cream so we went to the cafe and had ice creams. On the way to the cafe Scarlett had climbed down close to the lake near some grasses and suddenly screamed in utter terror claiming to have seen a snake. I don’t think I’ve ever heard either of my children cry out in fear before so I guess she must have done. She has now elaborated the story to contain her stroking it, wrestling with it and it being a veritable rainbow of colours so I’m guessing that a grain of truth, like her seeing a slow worm has now escalated into full blown python taming though :lol:.

We had all had enough and Lucy and The Rs were invited back to ours but Davies had Badgers and it would have been a small window of time back here so they declined. We got home, the kids had tea and then Davies and I went to Badgers. I’d taken a book I’d very nearly finished (fell asleep during the last chapter last night in bed) and a new one. The old one I finished quickly and the new one was rubbish so I undid the car windows to let in a lovely breeze and laid back for a quick snooze – it was bliss 🙂 I was only dozing and was still aware of all the sounds around me but I love being able to feel the sun and the breeze and listening to the seagulls calling was just lovely.

After handling the chickens a bit when Lucy and Ali were round yesterday I’ve been feeling bad that I’d stopped spending much time with them and don’t want to lose their tameness so I spent some time with them free ranging round me. They clearly still have the imprint thing going on with me though – they can see me through the lounge window and all come running to one corner when I go to the window, come running when I go outside and I leant out of the upstairs bedroom window this morning and called them and they all came running out of their house :). I’m going to research it a bit but I think we might start letting them free range in the garden during the day if we’re around and not out all day long. Maybe at the weekend we’ll have a go for a few hours and see what they get up to. They can fly probably to my shoulder height now and I think they’d like a bit more freedom than the run allows them.

We watched The Pursuit of Happyness tonight – well I did, Ady got fed up with how long and depressing it was and went to bed, but I saw it through. I won’t say much about it incase people haven’t seen it, but I liked it, thought it was a good story if a little predictable. Like Will Smith though 🙂 which helps.

Tomorrow we’re off to Drusillas. We’ve not had membership for over a year but it has been much missed by me and the children so we’ve kept back a little of A’s bonus to fund annual passes which we’re getting tomorrow. They have a Wallace and Gromit day there in August which it would have been a shame to miss and as membership is only about the cost of 3 visits I know we will get our money’s worth. Going to keep the W&G day a surprise for Davies though, we’ll just turn up on that day and not mention they’ll be there. 🙂

Which is just a line from the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo, which Julie and I were singing at the weekend in a nostalgic and slightly hysterical from too much elderflower cordial on a sunny afternoon type manner and has been stuck in my brain ever since.

I am definitely a ‘better under pressure’ person I reckon. I have a perpetual, rolling list of stuff I really should be doing at all times, which I will never actually complete and that’s fine. As one job gets ticked off the top of the list another seven add themselves to the bottom which of course means I will indeed die leaving some things undone. But as the list is ever evolving and there is stuff which becomes simply too late or irrelevant to complete and falls off undone (things like ‘marry Shakin Stevens’ for example) that may mean the list on my deathbed is as basic as ‘wake up tomorrow morning’ and be the only final thing I don’t quite manage.

So today I really needed to make some level of progress with the ongoing laundry cycle and I did – I moved all the laundry into the correct bedrooms and put all Tarly’s away. I did another load and hung it out. I also got the tent out and put the flysheet on the line, the bedrooms over the wall and the groundsheet out to dry out. Tomorrow I’ll peg the groundsheet out flat and hose the dried mud off it. As I was struggling to get motivated to do all this I had promised myself some baking as a reward. Not the eating of the baking you understand, the actual baking of the baking. I don’t quite know when it happened but I have become someone who actually really just loves baking. I love the satisfaction of pulling stuff out of the oven which is going to be delicious and I made all by myself which others will consume and compliment me on. It’s great :). Davies had the lego out and was making daleks and having played with some ponies for a while Scarlett joined in with him. They did do some token ‘helping’ with the baking but it really only extended to greasing the baking trays, checking that I would make some snickerdoodles and then coming to ensure I was letting them know as soon as things were baked and cooled enough to eat. They did help a bit with the shaping of the cheese scones too. I made some peanut butter and choc chip cookies as well as the snickerdoodles and cheese scones and then as I had half a bar of chocolate left and some bananas on the turn I made some banana and choc chip muffins too. All very delicious. 🙂

I had just finished and the children had just tidied up the lego when Ali and Freya arrived, just as I whipped the hoover out to get shot of all the crumbs of the baking the children had eaten and ritually scattered about the place, which is probably not the most hospitable way to greet guests and didn’t do wonders for me trying to convince Ali that I am serious about experimenting with anarchy :lol:. Davies showed Ali his Wallace and Gromit playhouses and then the children played xbox. It was slightly fraught with turn taking issues until we lured Scarlett away to do jigsaws with us instead leaving Freya and Davies to it. Davies very entertainingly managed to ‘read’ most of the words on a game he’s only played once before leading to me asking if he can actually read now without me knowing it. He didn’t answer which suggests to me he is sneakily ploughing through the collected works of Shakespeare up in his bedroom at night. Or maybe he just plays too much xbox? 😆

Scarlett bored of jigsaws before Ali and I did so she went off to play outside, which happily conincided with Lucy and The Rs arriving, so Lucy joined us in puzzle construction while the children reassembled themselves mostly outdoors. We had a field trip to look at the chickens – and erm the other wildlife we seem to have acquired – eww 😯 put in an appearance too. Aside from a few minor dynamics issues between the children who all have seperate relationships with each other but had never been a group of five before and took a little reasserting of positions a lovely afternoon was had by all. My establishing rules about shoes and areas of the garden which were out of bounds probably did even less for my claims to anarchy but I didn’t finish the last puzzle – I left the piece out before putting it all tidily away proving I can resist the temptation to do things properly 😆

Ady came home, Lucy and The Rs left, I dropped Ali and Freya home and came back to find children ready in the bath. I washed Scarlett’s hair which was becomming some sort of mini ecosystem with wildlilfe habitats and plantlife and brushed it afterwards. Ady got called away to my parents who have had a HD tv with various other home entertainment stuff delivered today and couldn’t get it to work, while I put the children to bed and made a quiche for dinner (I’d made the pastry earlier during Bakefest). Ady returned, a decision on the location for NicCamps 2007 winter camp has been made and from a rather sluggish start I feel I have achieved some stuff today aswell as enjoying spending time chatting with Ali and Lucy. A good one 🙂

I’ve just posted to the NicCamps list details of the five hostels that are currently available with prices and bedroom details etc. There are a couple of people on the NicCamps list who have not said whether they are up for coming this time or not and if anyone else might be interested shout and you can come and join the discussion about where to go. 🙂

Today, today 🙂

Very efficient morning with the children breakfasted and dressed nice and promptly. I’ve not blogged about Scarlett and her milk actually have I? She still has a bottle of warm milk morning and evening. Davies only stopped earlier this year, way past six and totally in his own time. Scarlett also still has a dummy which again I am confident she will leave behind somewhere between now and her 18th birthday :). So, most mornings the children get up with Ady before he heads off to work around 7, 730am ish. I tend to stay in bed until around 8, 830am depending on what we’re doing that day and how late I’ve stayed up the night before. I enjoy at least an hour alone in the quiet once everyone else has gone to bed at night, which often ends up being more like 3 hours and therefore does not mix well with early rising. Scarlett had missed Ady going off early one morning last week so managed to locate her bottle and got the milk out of the fridge, poured herself a bottle and screwed the lid on. She then got the stool out of the bathroom, climbed onto the worktop, opened the microwave, put the bottle in, set it for one minute (I asked her how long she’d cooked it for and she said ‘one minute, I pressed ‘express’ three times and then pressed ‘start’ – blimey, she’s going to teach herself to read by using kitchen appliances!!!), waited for the beeps then took it out, climbed down and enjoyed her milk. I guess I don’t need to worry about it keeping her baby-fied still drinking from a bottle really do I 😆 It has spurred us on to thinking it might be better to just move the microwave down to a reachable level for her (bet if I put this on the other blog someone would suggest we need a table or I should be up with her or something 😉 ) but I was impressed.

Anyway, this morning I was up with them and making breakfast etc, negating the need for circus acrobatics style worktop clambering, I got some washing done and pegged out and got some prices for available hostels for NicCamps which I’ll post onlist there probably tomorrow once I’ve done some maths. The children got into some shows on CBBC which appears to have gone to summer holiday schedule rather than Class TV, so it was programmes like ‘Stitch up’ about playing practical jokes on your mates, which they seemed to enjoy. Oh and I spent some time looking on ebay for costumes for me for the Castle Day – I quite liked the idea of a medieval wench’s outfit for myself but couldn’t find anything under about £40 so gave up and will wear jeans and cleavage as usual :).

We picked up Lucy and The Rs and headed off to Paradise Park driving through some awful rain. It did lead to conversations about why the rain stopped when we went under a bridge, why the rain was running horizontally along the front two windows off the windscreen but not along the back windows and where the rainbow might be. I think there was also some finger drawing on steamed up windows too. As usual we stormed through the educational bit pressing interactive buttons and stopping to look at various bits, whizzed round the cacti gardens and through the outdoor dinosaur walk ending up at the pirate ship area for a little rest and play. There is a bell to ring on a chain which Davies has never been able to reach before and can now brush with his fingertips when on tiptoe so it was an exciting indicator that he is indeed growing. He managed to create an extension to his reach with a stick hooked through the chain and rang it that way :). Have I also mentioned that he finally has his first proper wobbly tooth. I saw proper because there has been a smidgen of movement in this tooth for months but he steadfastly refuses to help it along with regular finger or tongue wobbling so it has only just gotten really wobbly because the new tooth is already peeking out. His trousers and sleeves all seem a little too short suddenly so hopefully he’ll hit seven not still wearing aged 4-5 clothing :).

We mostly ate lunch as we walked round but eventually stopped at the indoor amusements bit where Lucy and I ate and the children played, then we moved outside and then we went for ice creams. Very expensive ice creams but I think we decided they were indeed delicious so probably worth it. We were going to go back through to the park again but it would involve walking through the whole exhibit again and Davies had Beavers tonight so we decided to call it a day then. Davies had found three piles of tickets that the amusements spew out and can be redeemed for a penny a ticket in the shop. He’d counted that he had 51 there which equated to 51 pence (whooppee!) so I said I’d match it when he asked if he had enough to buy sweet for him, Scarlett, Richard and Rebecca. That caused a lengthy totting up of the tickets at the till and then we were off home.

Lucy and The Rs came back with us, where they all mostly went off and played and I bullied Lucy into ringing the doctors Right Now to get an appointment for her poorly throat which she managed and Colin came and picked them all up. I made tea for D&S and then Scarlett and I walked Davies round to Beavers. From saying she was tired and spending half an hour snuggled up next to me on the sofa she suddenly got a second wind and wanted to go out for a walk but I’d had enough so we came home and Ady was not far behind us. He read her a story and got her ready for bed while I went to collect Davies (who came out with two badges – one for Adventure and one for Safety – more sewing, sigh!). There were several new beavers invested tonight, one of whom walked all the way home behind us past our house and said goodbye to Davies as we came into our garden so hopefully lives fairly local. I’m desperate to invite some of Davies’ Badger or Beaver friends round to play so he has some local, same age mates and I’ve managed to extract a couple of names of children he’d like to invite to his birthday party from both Badgers and Beavers.

Tomorrow we’re home all day receiving visitors so I’m hoping to get the tents out to dry / air / clean if the weather stays nice and maybe do a bit of baking too.

I’ve been rubbish lately at inserting photos into posts, which is one of those things which doesn’t seem worth the hassle at the time but I always appreciate when I go back and read old posts. I’m not about to go back and try and do that now but here are some from this weekend which sum up where we are just now 🙂

Here’s D&S sitting on the Very Pink Bench on the newly cleared bit of garden. They are taking it in turns to drink coke and burp. Clearly this went on when I wasn’t home but it was apparently very amusing 🙂

Scarlett is just getting into that little girlie phase of wanting to hold hands with her friends – luckily she has a ready supply of other four year old little girls in the same phase. Here she is with her cousin Maisie:

Off they go, like a scene I imagine The Famous Five might have looked, off through fields to find adventures:

Taking a video of Ady and I wearing Shrek face masks. They were delighted that my hair made me look ever so slightly like Fiona. They were further delighted when Ady attempted a Scottish Shrek accent 😆

and erm, walking with beasts!

Davies would be wrapping up his second year at school about now and Scarlett would be preparing to start in September. Suddenly I am mere months away from having a seven and a five year old, which is proper children rather than babies and toddlers. I never really got my head round Davies being five, I kept thinking he was still four for ages until suddenly he was six, I can’t quite believe Scarlett is about to be five, but it seems a lot more real with her, actually I forget she is *only* four quite often :lol:.

The last six months has been good for them. Childcare wobbles (as in, not having any :lol:) aside it has done them good to have some time away from me in the care of other people. I am getting more relaxed about not being with them every second and am no longer convinced that dreadful things are bound to happen to them just because I have gone out to work instead of ‘doing my job and being at home looking after them’ – yep, even I have my moments of utter irrational fears too ;). They are spending a whole afternoon every week in the company of my Dad which I think has been a wonderful thing for all of them. The three of them have their own unique relationship now and while he would never ever say it (and has more than once assured me he will never say it!) and I don’t think he is utterly won over with Home Education by any means he is coming round to the idea that my children are nice people to be around and are not being harmed in some dreadful way by not being in school. The most recent activity here has been Davies and Scarlett selling lavender sprigs over the garden wall (mostly to our neighbours who they appear to be fleecing of their pension each week in exchange for handfuls of a shrub that they grow plenty of in their own garden :lol:) which Dad helps with by making signs to Davies’ directions and, hopefully supervises that they don’t get abducted over the wall while touting their wares. I suspect he might just be dozing on the garden bench in the sun though :lol:. Anyway, he’s been feeding back to my Mum that he is very impressed with Davies’ maturity, ability to talk to people, imagination and entrepreneurialism. I’ve always known that it wouldn’t be me who convinced my Dad that Home Education was the right thing for us to do, it would be Davies and Scarlett and little by little they seem to be doing just that. 🙂

I was hoping they’d get equal amounts of time spent with my Mum as a result of me working but that simply hasn’t happened. She is about to reduce her working days to 4 a week which she tells me will mean she can help out more with childcare but whether it happens or not remains to be seen. If it does then hopefully it will mean a similar exclusive relationship will develop for them with her too, which would be nice. My brother has done occassional childcare stints too and also has an excellent way with them, doing all the sorts of things a textbook doting, childless uncle should.

Julie has them at least once a month and both Davies and Scarlett have always adored (yes, adored 🙂 ) Julie. She is a real natural with children anyway and her and Davies have always had quite a connection. The last time she had them she said such lovely things about them to me that I am still glowing with pride now. They are very close to Jack and Maisie, their cousins and as neither Ady or I grew up with masses of family around it makes us very happy to see Davies and Scarlett with such close connections to grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. Precious, priceless relationships which have nothing to do with Education, but the fact they are at home means are being allowed to flourish all the more from time spent together that wouldn’t be there if they were at school for six hours a day.

The other regular childcare arrangement is Lucy and the Rs one morning a week. Scarlett and Rebecca are now firm friends, talking about each other regularly when not together and doing the classic little girls best friend thing of disappearing off to play with dolls and make up, holding hands and giggling. Davies spent a long while struggling with the dynamic in that situation, which is probably why it took the girls so long to settle into it but he has now found his role of adopted big brother to Richard. I was watching him yesterday employing all his best tricks to entertain and amuse Richard and thinking that he would have done well as biggest brother to a tribe of siblings. I think Scarlett might have systematically picked off any younger children one by one of course but Davies would have been just fine 😆

Home Education for me has never really been seperate from parenting. Our initial introduction to it came about as a result of a parenting issue (seperation anxiety on Davies’ part) rather than anything to do with education. As we’ve continued with it and I’ve become more and more evangelical about HE and along with it autonomy. With the recent and ongoing murmerings about whether our level of freedom to HE as we please might change, coupled with me being about to be a Home Educator of two school age children I have been thinking recently about Educational Provision quite specifically and aside from general parenting and life however. I’m not going to write an Educational Philosophy, quite frankly it would need to become a monthly exercise as I often debate and reconsider my stance on such things and unless I am required to provide one, which as yet is unlikely for a while as we remain unknown to the LEA, it would seem a pointless exercise.

My educational provision has always been very reactive rather than proactive – we live life, with me constantly talking to the children and answering their questions, listening to their ideas, experienting with things, finding out answers together as we go along and seeking as many experiences along the way as we can squeeze in. I have watched the way they learn things since birth and realised that babies and children are just like adults – some things go in effortlessly while others are trickier but worth putting the effort in for. I have seen how their learning is a combination of mimicry of those around them, trial and error and experimentation, soaking up some things which grab them or incite their passion and excitement and showing tremendous ability for recall and memory. I’ve watched them put their all into something that they have found difficult too – one of my mantras is ‘if you try hard enough you can do anything’ which they have both taken on board and providing it is something they want they demonstrate great perseverance and effort to achieve results. Scarlett has her own, very definite expectations on herself which motivate her to achieve her own goals. She is competitive with herself, always wanting to be better than the last time she tried and is relentless in her attempts to manage this. Davies is more of a crowd pleaser and will do anything for praise or reward. This worries me slightly as at the moment he is in pretty safe hands aiming to please me mostly – in later years I hope the keeper of his self esteem loves him as much as I do. He has come on in managing to be proud of himself and in that being enough for him so hopefully that will continue.

I try and provide a rich and varied wealth of experiences for them, we are out and about all the time with slices of real life; the supermarket, the bank, work interspersed with fun; days out at the beach, the park, seaonsal walks, visits to family and friends and everything inbetween; fruit picking, our recent chicken rearing experiences. Realistically any sort of sit down work or curriculum would interfere or take away from what we are out and about doing. Any time we spend at home is time the children spend playing, or snuggled up watching films or drawing, or making things, or listening to me read aloud to them, or digging holes in the garden… well you get the idea. 🙂

I am confident that we cover everything and more than they would dream of managing in a classroom just by being out and about. I have placed faith in the process with Davies and seen the payoff come true. He can count, add and subtract and multiply – true in small numbers and he wouldn’t know what a number bond or a times table is, but we have posters up about them and one day I guess he’ll just look at them and realise. He is getting good with money and telling the time, and from this ideas like fractions or decimals are being learnt, again without them being named, but if and when the day comes when he does need to have all these concepts explained alongside a syllabus I am utterly confident he will be able to relate them so much better than if he’d been talked to about ‘Johnny’s apples and Rosie’s apples’ while sat at a desk. He is reading bits and pieces and writing as and when he needs to. He often copies words out he finds in odd places and then works out what they say, he recognises all sorts of words from random places like X box games or film credits. His vocabulary is very large and again I’m confident that it will be a small leap one day from speaking those words to reading and writing them when he’s ready. Scarlett follows along a step or three behind, probably more willing that he was at a similar age but under rather less pressure from me so taking several huge leaps forward and then doing seemingly very little for ages. It’s all there though.

All other ‘subjects’ are just in there as part of life, I don’t seperate them or be consciously aware of them but Science, History, Religion, Sociology, Geography etc are all there along with Home Economics, Physical Education and Music and of course healthy doses of socialising. Davies is thriving in his Beavers and Badgers activities and doing well at swimming lessons, Scarlett is already lined up to join Badgers and swimming lessons alongside him aswell as starting Rainbows as soon as she turns five and I imagine will similarly enjoy it.

Autonomy for me is about following their passions and interests, at their speed with as much introductions to ideas, concepts and experiences as I can manage. I attempt to level no pressure on them about how they spend their time, measure them against noone other than themselves and nurture, protect and support anything they choose to put energy into. I try to respect them as individuals and as people and believe that even at their tender ages there is noone better placed than them to decide what they should learn and focus on. I constantly reevaluate and consider this though as without my introductions there are indeed things which would not have entered their sphere of consciousness yet and whilst I think too much stimulus can be as limiting as not enough I don’t want to look back and see gaping holes in my provision. Most recently as a result of a chat with a work colleague and listening to others at camp I realised that languages are something we have done very little ‘introducing’ to. They are both aware that different countries have different languages. They know smatterings of phrases in French and Spanish (thanks Dora! :lol:). In an ideal world we’d whisk them off for a six month tour of Europe and spend time ordering our breakfasts, soaking up the culture and conversing with people to get a real flavour of the languages. Not really an option currently, so I’ve ordered a children’s dvd in French and one in German from work to stick on and see whether they are interested or not. If they are and it grabs their attention then I have access to plenty of resources to take it further, if not then at least I will know I offered the chance and it will be something we can come back to as and when they feel the need.

Another area that we don’t cover and seems to be a popular one in both home ed and schooled circles is musical instruments. Davies loves to plink about on the piano at my parents’ house and can often be found sitting with his toy keyboard playing with the buttons to create sad or happy sounds, but I’ve offered lessons, either with me or my Dad or even an outside tutor (realistically without a piano at home to practise on I think it would be a waste anyway, but I offered) and he is not interested at the moment, but says he might be one day. Which would suggest to me that any coersion on my part would simply result in resentment and angst so wouldn’t be the right thing to do. They both like percussion more than music anyway so in the next couple of years I think joining some sort of music group or sessions like local music school Squeezebox offers would be the way forward as and when they are ready.

I know that my own personal barometer for success is me being happy deep inside. I can have all the outside trappings of achievement but unless I have the right feelings in my tummy, in my heart and in my head then all is not right. I have watched Davies and Scarlett go through various incarnations and struggled already in their short lives and whilst I don’t think we get it right 100% of the time and I am constantly tweaking and readjusting what we do in the main I see two children who are utterly happy, free and enjoying their lives. If we’re managing to pull that off and I can still spot very clearly the ‘educational progress’ being made daily, weekly, monthly, yearly when I have my worried about whether it’s all working head on, then I guess we’re doing exactly what we set out to do and our educational provision is therefore appropriate to their age, aptitude and ability and is most certainly efficient allowing them to live while they learn while they live.

Ady’s been working on clearing a triangle of garden just infront of our house. Years ago our front lawn was split by a stepped path from the front door down to the drive, we took the path away leaving steps up to the front door and a flat path across the lawn but left the raised bed to one side and grass to the other. Ady’s planted many shrubs and bushes in it over the years and although it looked pretty it was a big chunk of garden which we couldn’t use. So this week he’s been gradually digging out all the tree and shrubs leaving just earth there. There is too much earth to be removed without a skip or loads and loads of trips to the skip so we’re going to rebuild the three bricks high little wall and have a raised bit of lawn there instead and put the barbecue and some chairs and a table up there instead. It will be nice :).

So yesterday morning he did a couple of trips to the tip with the shrubs he’d dug out and finished digging out the rest. Scarlett played outside while he did it and went to the tip with him while Davies sat indoors with me and we played gamesgarage and miniclip games on my laptop. We had lunch then Davies joined the others in the garden for the afternoon while I walked to work.

It was quiet, hot and pretty boring in the library so the four hour shift dragged a lot. I’m really not enjoying working the every other Saturday afternoon through the summer as it so hampers any weekend plans. The almost full-time member of staff is about to leave and often they ask if anyone wants to change their hours when that happens, before they recruit for a new person, so I might ask if I can swap to working every other Saturday morning instead. To be honest, I might as well work all day if I’m going to work an afternoon and I can’t do much in a morning when I need to be at work for 1pm anyway. Between my working and Sunday morning swimming lessons all our ‘free’ weekends have filled up for the summer already.

I walked home again to the scent of many barbecues in the air and found the children eating their tea in the garden before coming in to wash all the dirt off them from a day in the garden. They took ages to go to sleep, Ady and I both started drinking very early and were very merry indeed before 9pm with both children still awake and laughing at our antics. I’d brought home a cd of 60s songs which proved popular with everyone. We felt like real proper parents hearing the children singing along to the songs knowing them from them being featured on films or re-recorded with us muttering about ‘remembering the originals!’ 😆 I peaked very early and having knocked over a half full glass of wine and then had a riotous phone chat with Julie, Ady served me a huge dinner which I ate and promptly fell asleep on the sofa by about 11pm 😳 – I’m so wild! 😆

This morning, as seems to happen every Sunday we were woken by the alarm rather than children and had our usual Sunday morning mad dash about gathering things together for swimming, getting dressed and breakfasted and out of the door by 9am – we so couldn’t manage a school run :lol:. It was such a lovely morning and the sea looked like a mill pond as we drove alongside the coast to the swimming pool so Ady and Scarlett elected to go and walk along the beach while I watched Davies swimming. They had a different teacher this week that has not been there before and she was excellent. A real old fashioned, no nonsense, learnt all the children’s names within a couple of minutes and had them all really putting loads of effort in with no messing around type teacher. Two of the children could manage to swim a width unaided so they were kept behind presumable to be put up into the next class now. Out of the other six Davies probably is making the least progress in terms of actual swimming, but certainly is one of the furthest ahead in terms of sheer effort put into it and enjoyment of it. He really, really, really tries and actually he does swim, just not with any style, grace or panache. But he is utterly prepared to go underwater, float, do whatever he is directed to do and puts 100% into it. What’s also great is he appears oblivious to how the others are doing and so is not comparing himself (in this case, unfavourably) to others and then feeling down about it. I did think it must have been just like watching me when I learnt to swim at a bit older than the age he is now though, in that same pool. I tried and tried and it just didn’t come naturally. I can swim, but not strongly or very well and I still wouldn’t dream of going underwater or even having my face splashed, so I’m very pleased that he doesn’t share that with me. Only two more lessons to go and then summer break anyway and I’m going to attempt to change his lesson to a week day evening rather than Sunday morning too.

We met back up with Ady and Scarlett and went off car boot sale shopping. It was a good haul today with about 50 small animals, mostly cats and dogs. for about 2 quid. I did have to rein Ady in from buying stuff we really don’t need such as figures from Scooby Doo which although the kids like the cartoon of would simply not get played with sufficiently to warrant the house room or the pound he’d had spent. Infact I had a tantrum tonight about the amount of crap in the house generally (I’m in one of my mimialistic phases, I have them every so often and declutter all *my* stuff then get depressed about how much stuff everyone else has and stop again), so I think we might give car boot sales a bit of a break for a bit. But then again we might be over that by this time next week and back there again anyway. 😆

We left there and went over to Chris and Julie’s for a barbecue lunch which was very nice. The children played, the adults ate and chatted and looked at a selection of photos of all of us about 12 or 13 years ago. We’d brought over some pictures of Ady and I when we were first together and Chris and Julie had dug out some of theirs, so that was a nice ‘fill in the blanks’ exercise for us all. Chris and Julie had spent some time living in a squat and also some time travelling and living in vehicles, ironically about the same time we were buying this house so that was an interesting parallel. Then Ady and Chris washed their cars (they have a far better hosepipe arrangement than we do, more suitable for washing cars) while Julie and I walked with the children across some fields and through a church yard to a play park for an hour or so. Various pushing small children on swings, cheerleading them down the slide and over the climbing frame interspersed with odd bits of chatting and sitting on a bench kept us occupied and then we walked back again. By now it was gone 5pm so we slowly got ourselves ready to leave and came home for toast for the children before bed and roast dinner for us.

That all feels very brief and I’m sure I’ve missed out loads, but I’ve got two blogposts in draft, it’s already long gone midnight and I’ve got another busy week ahead, so it’ll have to do for now.