One word? When seven would do…

I took a lot of getting going this morning – caffeine definitely has more of an effect than I’d given it credit for. Davies was already stuck into Were Rabbit on the Xbox, getting loads further than he’s ever got before so he was less than keen to do much else other than explore previously unchartered territory on that and Tarly was content to play with her Barbies. I offered them the choice of Home Ed group or Sainsburys for their choice of food for lunch and they went with Sainsburys. It occured to me the other day that it’s quite some time since they got their current shoes and Tarly has a mark on her heel from where her boots rubbed which I assumed was due to wearing them without socks but felt bad incase it was just that they were too small. So we went up to Sainsburys, via the cashpoint and got various supplies, including TEA 🙂 Whilst I was perusing the tea aisle the children saw the PG tips with free monkey packs and persuaded me to get a couple of packs so they could have one each (frankly I didn’t take much persuading and the idea of them being as happy to bring home tea as I was, albeit for different reasons was quite attractive – spread the joy and all that 🙂 ) and given the choice of anything in the store for lunch they chose a Dairylea lunchable each so their happiness was cheaply purchased :). Then to the shoe shop where I was pleased to learn and they were disappointed to learn neither of them needs new shoes just yet. This is good news, not least due to meaning we don’t need to buy shoes this month but also means we will probably be into sandals and doodles type weather before they need to be reshod.

Home again for lunch for them and tea, tea, tea, tea, tea for me. I delighted them by taking the series of self timer shots below, which Davies felt bound to recreate for Ady when he got home (if nothing else it means next time I run out of tea it may well be worth checking behind the radiator as I’m sure at least one bag got chucked behind there 😆 ) – poor mites are bound to need therapy in future life, bet Mummy chucking t bags about while taking self timer shots will be among the incidents they recall 😆

Tarly did some jigsaws, Davies Xboxed and then as we had to pop in to see my Dad we had a quick look round some charity shops near my parents specifically looking for puzzles for Tarly and Snoopy videos for Davies. We had no luck on either count, called into see Dad and then came home for their tea. Both children are on a real bacon kick at the moment so they had bacon and various other odd accompaniments for bacon at their request while I drank more tea :).

And that was us 🙂 Brought to you with a nice cup of tea!

I’ve not really blogged about this but I have hinted at having struggled a bit lately with Davies. I’m not going to detail the whole thing but I did want to record a few general things, more for my own honest record of our relationship than anything else really.

When I found out I was pregnant with Davies I really, really wanted a son. Actually, the truth is if I was going to have children at all I only really wanted sons anyway. I was fairly sure he was a boy and we had it confirmed at the 20 week scan and I was delighted. There were various reasons for wanting boys rather than girls, not least the repeated history of my Grandmother and Mother both having a boy and a girl and so clearly favouring their son that I was terrified of repeating that situation yet again. I quite enjoyed my position of being Ady’s and my Dad’s and my brother’s ‘princess’ and was not particularly keen to breed my own replacement and of the few children I knew I far preferred the little boys to the little girls. I recalled from school days how tricky girls could be and was not at all keen to have the house cluttered with Barbies, pink and fluffiness. Of course that all got blown out of the water two years later, but that’s a whole other story! 🙂 Suffice to say I’m over my worries in all areas on mothering a daughter and such trivial concerns soon got put to the back of my mind when faced with a real live girl anyway!

So, Davies. He was a tricky baby but as I was expecting no less than utter chaos and bedlam to come along with a new baby that was no great surprise. He was a model toddler, an excellent big brother when Scarlett came along and a mature, trustworthy and helpful 3, 4 and 5 year old. I do look at Davies and think he would be such a different child if he’d gone to nursery at 3 or 4, gone to school at 5 and was sitting here next to me on half term, exactly half way through his second year at school instead of the product of four years active Home Education. I guess the true answer is ‘we’ll never know’ but I certainly have my suspicions and am supremely confident that there is nothing negative in not having sent him to school.

Sometime in the last year though he has changed. Of course he’s changed I hear you say, and you are dead right, of course he’s changed. It’s just that my expectation of him took a while to catch up with those changes. I think it is a parent’s job to view their child through rose tinted glasses to a certain extent – I hope I always see the best in my children and whilst I might be aware of the worst it is not what I choose to dwell on, to articulate too often or too form too big a part of how I see them. I don’t think I’m blind to my children’s faults it’s just that I see them as far outweighed by all their many good points to focus on them too heavily. To be honest I view most of my relationships in life like that – if someone is worth bothering to have in your life then you must see more about them that is desirable than is undesirable – I see the faults in my husband, my friends and myself but I consider them far outweighed by what I love about those people so why spend time focussing on the negatives?

But Davies has become slightly more challenging, I have been less able to view his positives, less able to curb my own temper in reaction to him and less tolerant of his behaviour. I struggle almost daily to deal with him being a six year old boy. And actually that is all he is doing. He is loud, boisterous, inquisitive, bossy, sensitive, sometimes aggressive, quick to act but slower to think, unable to keep still, likely to start the squabble with his sister, annoying and full of energy even after having been out for a (winter) walk all day. He is also like pretty much every other healthy, normal six year old boy I have ever met! 🙂

After a particularly bad couple of episodes the week before last involving a very poetic Aesops Fable type lesson in telling the truth otherwise next time you do people may not believe you, punishment of x box ban (I’m not at all sure I believe in punishments and actually he seemed fairly unfazed by it anyway) and general shouting and bad temperedness from me, a whole host of tics from Davies (he is prone to such things when tired or upset) and some serious threats and consideration of school – on the basis that I was not prepared to compromise his and my relationship for the sake of Home Education before realising that actually Home Education is a massive part of our relationship and forced entry to school would likely do a hell of a lot of damage particularly when it was being as a punishment. I concluded last week that it was time for me to roll with it a bit, accept this next stage rather than fighting it, reevaluate who I think Davies is and put some of the effort, time and energy into our relationship that I did with Scarlett last year to quite some level of success. Time to put aside the whole ‘but Davies is X’ thoughts I had and accept some of the responsibility of being his mother, the grown up, some one who loves him and needs to work with him rather than constantly finding faults and picking him up on them.

So first steps, talking to him, establishing whether there is anything going on that he is not happy with? Plenty of his behaviour comes quite neatly under the attention seeking catergory. I have always felt that if a child is being attention seeking then the answer is simply to give them attention. I agree that there is some bad behaviour which shouldn’t be rewarded but I think acting out to gain a parent’s attention is not really bad behaviour as such. I am aware than me working will have had some impact on the children. I think it’s been pretty low level, they like and enjoy the company of all the people they have spent time with while I’m working and it has not felt too disruptive. Davies has started at (new) Badgers and Beavers since January and possibly most key to a lot of his behaviour, we are spending huge amounts of time with children far younger than him. In the main I think a lot of good has come of Davies spending so much time with younger children, many of the positive aspects of his personality have been honed from being the ‘big one’ in a group, but that is only good when there is the balance of time spent with peers or older children. Some of his previous freedoms have had to be limited by being with 3 littler children, for example when Lucy is housesitting and here alone with D, S, R & R. Little things, but hard to deal with perhaps in amongst other challenges at the same time. It’s winter and although we do get out and about a fair amount I bet we don’t clock up nearly as many outside, active hours per week as we do in the summer. For a six year old boy with ‘excited puppy syndrome’ and certain amounts of energy needing to be exhausted every day this can pose problems. He insists he’s happy with everything in his life and actually in those odd snatched moments each week when he and I are on our own, just chatting straight back comes the Davies I know so well.

Phase 2 would normally be to talk to people in similar situations. Thing is all my friends who have boys either have same age ones but they are not their first child or don’t have boys at all, or their boys are in school. But I did chat with a few people, all of whom simply agreed that six year old boys do a fair old bit of acting like six year old boys :lol:. Next came doing some reading. I’ve always read around subjects when issues have arisen. I read loads about pregnancy, babies, toddlers, siblings, education, recently loads about spirited children but never specifically boys so I got a copy of Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys – the pertinent bits of which I read in one sitting last night (didn’t bother with the bits about teenagers, I’ll deal with that when we get there 😉 ). I’m not going to say it’s changed my life, or Davies’ or that it is the answer to all our woes – I’ll leave silly claims like that to the dust jacket, but it did give me several ‘oh yeah!’ type moments, I’ve chucked it at Ady and told him to at the very least read the bit about Dads and in the same way as one single comment from Alison taken from the Spirited Children books she recommended changed my whole approach to Tarly I think this is going to do the same, for now, for me and Davies.

I do think birth order – which is not mentioned in the book, plays a big part in children’s behaviour /personality. I can certainly identify with things related to being the oldest which Davies get’s frustrated with and he gets being the oldest perpetuated even more by the posse of smaller children we spend lots of time with whereas most children would at least get a bigger taste of being the same age as everyone else for most of their day at school. I think Beavers, Badgers and MM gives us a good weekly dose of that, as does the various get togethers we have with HE friends but I’m going to try and foster some more one to one time with other same age boys for him too – watching him with Liam last week, where he got the chance to do all the classic laughing at things to do with toilets, brandish swords and be generally loud in the company of someone doing the exact same thing and with noone frowning or telling him to hush demonstrated to me that he needs more time to do those things. I’m also talking to him lots more, explaining that aslong as he is trying to behave and is attempting to rein in his craziness when the situation calls for it then I won’t be cross with him (or send him to school!) and hopefully in giving him the opportunity to work off the stuff this age dictates he needs to do, provide a bit more for his needs we can move forwards to the next stage with as little fall out as possible. 🙂

which is of course what I should have titled the first post 😉

Right, about to contact Legoland to clarify their HE pricing but on their website they are showing educational rates now of £5 per child and £15 per adult with one adult free for every 10 kids – which has hiked up somewhat from their previous £7 per person if you’re an adult heavy family (POO, POT, POLAG etc). And that’s just on certain days – which in April is:
Tues 17th
Wed 18th
Thurs 19th
Fri 20th
Mon 23rd
Thurs 26th
Fri 27th
Mon 30th

We could move it into March but it would mean being the week after NicCamps which I’m not too keen on (and can’t do the Wednesday anyway) – Legoland is closed on Wednesdays all throughout May. So if we’re going for a Wednesday it pretty much decides us on 18th April really 🙂

How does that date work for everyone and assuming the costs are as above can I have some provisional numbers while I wait for Legoland to get back to me about how it all works (paid up front or on the gate etc.).

And Tuesday 6th March for the Tate? Any takers?

ETA : Legoland have confirmed it will be £5 per child and £15 per adult for us. They could do a group educational workshop for us at 50 pence per child, some of them look pretty good but we can decide that once we’ve settled on a date. Further looking at Wednesday 18th shows it to not be the best of days for me – I’m supposed to be working in the morning with the dentist in the afternoon and Badgers in the evening. Is there any chance of a different day of the week for you Helen? Ros, as they are having £5 entry for that week I assume it is only Devon’s odd school holidays happening that week so aside from lots of folk eating clotted cream teas we are probably more at risk of flocks of children in school uniform 😉

Was lovely 🙂

The weather looked a bit grim but as we drove over to Slindon it brightened up and was dry if not particularly sunny. It was so mild today too – no need for hats and gloves and actually barely a need for coats. 🙂 We arrived a bit before Chris and Julie so we went into the woods and found a fallen tree which Davies tried to climb up. He got a fair way up so I had a go but used the wrong technique and tried to climb up rather than walk up. Ady had a go and did it straight away, leaping off just before Chris and Julie appeared to witness his splendid feat!

The children all ran ahead, Ady and Chris walked on talking about work and benefits and Julie and I walked together chatting about various things including her offering a morning a month childcare to help me out with my library childcare issue. 🙂 This is very good news as it leaves me with just one morning a month not properly covered, which hopefully between Ady and my Mum is manageable. I have emergency care sorted for any afternoons my Dad can’t manage and I’m feeling hugely more settled about it all than I did this time even last week. 🙂 Chris headed off halfway round the walk and the rest of us carried on to our camp where we did a bit more camp building and then at Davies’ request carried on with our music making from last time. Except this time we had the camera to capture it all 🙂 I debated gathering likely looking leaves to brew up with but decided it would be equally lacking in caffine as my hippy teas already at home. We were so caught up in our hiyayayayaing that we sort of forgot we were in a public place but Ady said at least three lots of people walking their dogs heard the noise and took a different path through the woods rather than walk past us – no doubt picturing goats being sacrificed and a cauldron bubbling in the middle of our teepee structure! 😆

We left and came home to get roast dinner on. There was much debate about what to watch on tv which meant we ended up watching nothing – Ady spent some time in the garden mowing the lawn and chopping up logs for the coming week – we’ve started saving the sawdust from chainsawing logs and using it as cat litter for Candle, which is saving money and surprisingly efficient – far better than the shop bought cat litter we were using. Oh how we’ve taken to this frugality ;). I cut Davies’ hair and at her request cut a fringe into Tarly’s (which she has already pushed off her face so many times it has gone back into her hair, but I do have some locks to keep forever now 🙂 ) and they both had a long bath. Then Davies, Scarlett and I all got out a jigsaw puzzle each and completed them (Davies did a Dora one – very easy and then an alphabet one. We debated how he didn’t know alphabetical order and I called it out as he found the letters – later when he was playing on the compuer an alphabetically ordered keyboard came up for him to enter his name and it was very funny to watch his fingers automatically going to where the letters would be on a qwerty keyboard instead – although I can see the purpose of the alphabet for filing, dictionaries and alphabet puzzles I reckon learning letter placement on a keyboard is probably a more important skill today actually.). Scarlett did a Wallace and Gromit 100 piece puzzle and I did a schmuzzle puzzle where every piece is the same interlocking shape. The children ended up coming over to join in with mine. Really must add to our puzzle collection – they are both into them at the moment and easily able to do 100 pieces and above – another reason to get a table eh?! 🙂

We had roast dinner while watching The Cosby Show which I used to adore and the kids really liked, I drank lots of cherry Coke to bring my caffine levels back in line, then Davies played Zoombinis and Tarly watched Aristocats (her current favourite film). I joined Davies in playing Zoombinis – he’d chosen to try the hardest of the 3 discs and was making an admirable effort and didn’t take too much assistance to get some of the trickier logic bits. Tarly did some more jigsaws and then there was a brief interlude of Goddard family craziness (possibly brought on by caffine rush in my case) of us all singing various songs including Lion Sleeps Tonight and U Can’t Touch This (MC Hammer) which led to me finding that on youtube to show the children the crazy trousers and has possibly coined the phrase ‘Stop. Hammertime’ in our house for the coming week. 🙂 They went to bed, we ate toast and I watched Lost.

I’m now killing time until the breakmaker finishes a loaf as it is smelling quite strongly and I’m concerned it’s overheating so want to wait until it completes the loaf so I can unplug it. And tomorrow, tomorrow I shall drink tea!

We’ve run out of tea!!!! 😯

We still have our seven pounds in coppers, we didn’t get to the bank to change it into ‘real money’ yesterday, so we’ll have to pay for our potatoes and parsnips we need to go with our roast dinner all in coppers later, but yesterday morning I used the last tea bag. I’ve still got lots of my fancy, hippy teas but they just don’t cut it first thing in the morning and most of them don’t have anywhere enough caffine.

* disclaimer: I do realise this is still not properly poor – I am using artistic licence and also am caffine deprived so likely to be irrational and feel my woes trump those of all others! 😆

We’ve got mice at our house. Did I mention that before? We knew we had them in the loft from when we got the Christmas decorations out last year but we cleared out the whole area and put lots of cleaning chemicals around to scare them off. But this week we discovered evidence of them in our under the stairs cupboard. We have a very big under the stairs cupboard and as well as housing our chiller we also kept all the excess tins, packets and dry food that our very small kitchen can’t house when I do a full months food shopping. So yesterday morning was taken up with Ady emptying out every single thing from the cupboard, which also included the last 3 boxes of things we’d never unpacked from moving back to Sussex nearly 3 years ago. We’ve taken out anything even remotely edible for mice and used lots of bleach to clean up in there which will hopefully make it a less attractive dwelling for them until we can get something a little more conventional in the mouse eliminating stakes. Our cat clearly doesn’t cut it! I did wonder if perhaps this was the cosmic supply company sending me meaty morsels in our lean time of the month but mice really are too tiny to be worth the faff of cooking ;). Found a few more things for the ebay pile which I’ll try and get listed later today.

In the afternoon we went over to see my Dad. I’d expected my Mum to be there too but she was out with a friend (which when she rang me later she insisted she’d mentioned on the phone in the week, but I’m sure she hadn’t). We came home via the downs to collect some logs to keep the fire burning for another week (loads up there, we’ll get some more again today). The children had tea and then played together for ages – their ‘holiday’ game which they have been playing for years now. I think in last nights version Davies was the Daddy and Scarlett was the child as he kept calling her ‘Darling’ which was cute. 🙂 They also did a load of dot to dot pictures which seemed to be part of the activity packs they give children in some restuarants in their game as they had pretend food straight afterwards. They went to bed and we had a very late dinner and watched an ‘ok but wouldn’t go recommending it to anyone’ film which was in the pile that Ady brought home (actually 3 out of the 4 films he brought have Matthew McConaughey in them and I don’t find him remotely watchable).

And now, curses to the weather for clouding over and ruining my Pre-Spring Walk ideas we’re about to head off for a Late Winter Maybe With A Bit Of Rain And Certainly Some Cloud Walk.

Planning a few days out with the children for the next couple of months. We’ve not been up to London for ages and they’ve both been asking to go. I’m quite tempted by the London Aquarium but it’s not cheap so I reckon we might do the Tate modern instead – I really fancy a go on those slides!

I’ve got a couple of dates in mind but wondered if anyone else was wanting to join us before I make concrete plans?

The other day out, which I’ll open out on Early Years and also on some local lists is a Legoland visit. From their website it appears they may have changed their educational pricing rates so I’ll email them and get their new rates confirmed but anyone provisionally interested in a meet up there?

and quite wildly inaccurate 😆

you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful…

I worked all day today which was very nice. 🙂 It was fairly busy and I spent lots of time stamping books and beeping things and feeling quite efficient. My favourite colleague, who I should name really – F was in in the afternoon so I spent time chatting to her. I like that getting to know workmates type chatter where you learn all sorts of stuff about people. There is a real mix of people there that I wouldn’t come across in my normal day to day life, some of whom, as nice as they are would be no great loss and a couple of whom I really like and am enjoying getting to know. F is one of them. I’ve also now been there long enough to recognise the ‘regular’ customers and get the low down on them. There is ‘Bucket man’ so called because he came in with a bucket for many years leading them to assume he worked as window cleaner although this was never confirmed. He no longer has a bucket but the name has stuck. What he does have is a strong aroma of alcohol wafting around him at all times, a magnifying glass which he whips out to read the Large Print books he sits in the middle of and a presumptious comment for anyone who goes near him. I am yet to be on the recieving end of any such comment (‘you’re no Marilyn, but you’d do’ is one such quote from him previously!). I can’t help but sing Elton John’s Rocket Man using the words Bucket Man instead whenever I see him now. We also have the Waldorf and Stadtler -esque two men who come in every single morning and read the papers together, debating the news of the day including a surprising knowledge for pop culture and rehashed Celebrity Big Brother every morning after while it was running with surprising delight in all the salacious gossip of it all. One of them borrows really quite girly book choices too which he comes in and gets when his friend has left the building, double backing back in to get his Judith Krantz novels :lol:. We also have the Beige Man who dresses head to foot in a selection of beige garments looking like he may have stepped from a safari into Lancing. He never borrows books but spends ages on the internet and reading the papers, staring at anyone unlucky enough to have shelving of books to do in his vicinity but never actually addressing any of us directly even though we all call a cheery ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to him just to see if he might ever respond. But enough of this, I must save these details of the Lancing Library Weirdos posse for later blogposts when I am feeling lacking in other things to say!

I spent half my lunchhour on the computer reading Sarah’s blog which I can’t access from home and enjoying the novelty of spending time on the internet uninterupted without it being nighttime. Oh and I went to the bank to get some coin bags which Ady and I have filled with a load of saved coppers totalling over £7 which will fund the vegetables for our roast dinner on Sunday, maybe a bottle of wine and keep us going until child benefit gets paid on Monday – we’re so classy ;).

Ady was home with the children in the morning, Dad was here this afternoon and although he was gone before I got back (I worked an extra half an hour to cover so Ady beat me back home again) they all seem to have had a good time so maybe some of my rather direct comments to my Mum about not cocking up his relationship with his grandchildren just because he is not supportive of Home Ed (don’t think I blogged about that did I? One of the many things getting me down the last couple of weeks, but hopefully we’ve moved on so I won’t dwell on it now) have filtered back and sunk in.

And now, hurrah it is Friday and hurrah we have nothing too taxing planned for the weekend, except for our Pre Spring Walk on Sunday. 😆

taken from the theme tune of which show of your youth?

Seem to have forgotten to blog yesterday. I am suffering a bit of blog apathy at the moment, not that I don’t have anything to say or record, not that it’s all good or all bad, simply that I just can’t be arsed to sit and type loads. I know 😯

So, yesterday was Valentines Day wasn’t it? Not something we do a great deal for here really. Infact with the exception of my husband I have only ever had two Valentines Day gifts – both on the same day – the VD I was 17 and was with my first boyfriend, Will, who took me out for dinner and bought me a ‘To My Girlfriend’ card, thus spoiling the mystery a little and some red carnations (I *hate* carnations!). The other was from the boy I sat next to in A level Economics (it will surprise no one that I dropped A level Economics after the first year 😉 ) – David. Was just about to retell that story and went and searched to find I’ve blogged it before here which saves Chris the job of going to find it and me the job of typing it again! 😉 There you go, I’ve actually already told you everything about me once already, if not twice – I need to reinvent myself and get some new anecdotes! 😆 Our first Valentines Day together was two weeks after we moved in here – we have it on home video somewhere. A was working late, I made him a meal and dressed up including high heel shoes which was even more comedic as we only had bare floorboards at the time with big gaps which my heels kept getting stuck in. Our entire furniture at the time comprised our bed, my Granny’s old dining room table which lived in the kitchen as our only work surface and her 4 chairs which were our lounge seating along with a boxing glove shaped beanbag from my bedroom when I was 10. We sat eating at one small chipboard occassional table and ate spaghetti bolognaise and a lemon meringue pie which I’d tried to make from a packet mix in a heart shaped tin I’d bought specially but was too big for the mixture so was all very thin layers. I didn’t whisk the meringue enough and coloured it with pink food dye which made it all the more runny so it just set like a biscuit on the top 😆 It snowed that night so the end of the video it cuts to the outside of our house with snow falling. Ah the romance!

So yesterday A sent me a very romantic text message complete with a picture, I sent him one back and he presented me with a box of chocolates in the evening. He also bought home a big pile of films including a couple of romcoms so we watched one of those together. And that did us for hearts and flowers really. 🙂

I worked in the morning, fairly busy which makes the time fly by and Lucy and the children walked to meet me. D & S chose some books each so I got those out for them along with a pile of films and cds I’d already chosen then we all went back to Lucy’s for a couple of hours. Scarlett and Rebecca are playing nicely together at the moment – it is very clear that they are both making huge efforts with each other rather than a genuine connection at this stage, but hopefully the fact they are prepared to make the effort will forge a bond for the future. They are very much hampered by the dynamics of having their brothers around – they both enjoy playing with each other’s brother but then get jealous of that happening. And Davies is cunning enough to capitalise on this when it happens to stir things up a bit too. For all her bravado Scarlett is a very compassionate child who thinks a lot of others and regularly talks about her friends and things that remind them of her. She is aware of their favourite things to do, colours, games they like to play and so on and will refer to that a lot, so she has spotted what Rebecca likes and is very capable of drawing it into a conversation to find common ground and Rebecca is much the same, knowing which of her toys Scarlett might like and showing her them and letting her play with them. Its nice. 🙂

We came home and I cooked the kids’ tea which they had to eat quick to get Davies changed and ready for Badgers. Ady got home just in time for us to leave Scarlett with him and I sat in the car with my book and a bag of sweets while Davies went in and learnt magic tricks! On the way he noticed how it was much lighter than it had been last Wednesday when we’d driven to Badgers and I explained about longest day and shortest day, daylight hours, and sunrise / sunset etc. I did that way of explaining things where you act like some sort of thesaurus simply stating the same thing using different words rather than actually explaining it more fully, but he demonstrated he’d grasped it by telling me it was like steps going up a hill, getting steeper and steeper (lighter and lighter) until they reached the top (longest day) and then going back down again (getting darker and darker) until they reached the bottom (shortest day) before starting again. I told him that the gap between his two hills was called a valley, which he liked and later in the bath showed me a valley of an upside down humped bridge between two islands on Tarly’s Dora bath toy. He also explained it all to Ady too, pretty much word perfect. 🙂 We’re planning to note how light or dark it is each week on the drive to Badgers. 🙂

Today we were up and off and out to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie at Highdown for a walk. I noted with some delight that the daffodils are very nearly out and as soon as they are I will be classifying our walks as Spring Walks – just to delight Chris ;). I spent my last fiver on petrol which barely took the gague off the red – it’s been a lean month 🙁 and we listened to our Hooked On Classics talking about how so much of the music has been used in adverts and films. We listened to the Swan Lake and Nutcracker music and I explained how the music was used for ballets and how the Barbie films are based on those ballets. Tarly said she’d like to go to the ballet so I promised to keep an eye out for Swan Lake near us – I assume it will not be a frequent occurance!

Our walk was lovely, the sun was shining, it was mild and still and signs of spring were all around. For the first time ever the sundial in the millennium garden there was readable and showing the right time. 🙂 D was delighted, I was cross that I’d not brought my camera! (just sticking this link in for future reference, might be a cool thing to make.) The four of them ran around having a great time for an hour or so, Julie and I caught up with each other and arranged to meet again at the weekend with men, for another walk.

Our plan had been for us to come home for lunch and then drop Tarly off to Lucy’s for a chance to play with Rebecca while Davies and I spent some time together. Davies painted a flat piece of wood last week with the intention of making Shrek’s swamp and wanted to make a house for it and some characters. I’d said we’d make them from fimo when Tarly wasn’t around so that was our planned activity. Unfortunately despite being really up for it earlier in the morning Scarlett suddenly got cold feet about not being with Davies (a little bit about me too, but less so), and started to get quite upset when pushed on it. As the idea was for it to be a treat all round I called that arrangement off and Tarly stayed with us and we all fimo’d together. We google image searched and I made Shrek and Fiona while Davies made Donkey, Gingey (gingerbread man) and Lord Faarquad (which yes, he does pronounce in an innocently amusing way :lol:). I actually thought there was very little to choose between them (more a testament to his skill than my crapness obviously!) and Tarly made a little me while being very eagle eyed managed to ensure she didn’t waste a scrap! That got baked while they got out Barbies and Rita and Roddy from Flushed Away (one of the films Ady brought home, already watched 3 times!). I took a load of black and white pictures of the children, trying to capture them playing and as they are with their many expressions. I didn’t manage it but will have another try at that soon.

The fimo was ready so that came out and was introduced into the Barbie meets Flushed Away game adding an even more surreal twist. Lucy arrived with R & R who played more alongside D&S than with them as they were pretty engrossed in their game already.

And that’s about it really, it’s been a good day today. Davies has been far happier for some exercise and out and about ness in the morning, followed by some good sit down focussed time with me and some nice playing with Tarly. I’ve been pondering about various things to do with him of late and will no doubt blog about them at some point but I am feeling like we’ve come out of a small and tricky phase having learnt and readjusted once again. I also talked to Julie about my job and childcare and she reiterated her offer to help all of which reassures me that it is possible to carry on without having to resort to proper paid childcare with all the crap and hassle that could bring.

Working all day tomorrow – Ady is home in the morning and Dad is here in the afternoon and then, after that, woo and also hoo, it’s the weekend! 🙂

A what? Bet Chris gets it!

Made some cakes with the children this morning in a desperate bid to not only have cheap white and slightly stale bread for sandwiches for lunch. So we made fairy cakes – Scarlett set out the paper cake cases, Davies did some stirring and they had a spoon each to lick (integral and necessary part of baking :lol:) which I topped with green butter cream and dolly mixtures for a really classy cake ;).

Mel, Liam and Lily arrived dead on time at 10am – guess it’s just us Home Ed folk who run to a different time zone then? 😳 The children scattered, Mel and I chatted and we regrouped two hours later for lunch – cheap white and slightly stale bread sandwiches followed by the cakes 😆 They started to watch Ice Age 2: The Meltdown but wandered off again. Probably for the first time ever Tarly and Lily seemed to actually enjoy each others company and played together in Tarly’s room. I’m not actually sure they were playing the same game with each other but they seemed to happily coexist in a fairly small space so that was good.

Mel and I had a couple of good chats about HE including a bit of a revelation for her about how it all works with me agreeing that there will indeed be gaps in D&S ‘s education but in just the same way there will be gaps in Liam and Lily’s NC prescribed education too – its just that they’ll be different ones. I told her a bit about the sorts of conversations we have and assured her that not being able to answer all a child’s questions without having to google most certainly doesn’t mean you can’t HE. I explained that actually we don’t finish school aged 16 complete with all the knowledge we need ready for life and never learn anything else and that actually learning about the stuff that interests us just as it comes up and without ever having to contrive or plan things nets just as much educational value as a classroom full of lesson plans. I gave a few examples including Davies’ recent question as to why a spider doesn’t get caught in it’s own web and yesterdays chatter about classical music and Italian names for pasta shapes and then Tarly wandered in with a geomag structure and proceeded to stick various metal hairslides to it giving a commentary on why the plastic ones wouldn’t stick. Love it when you get an impromptu real life example of what it’s all about.

When they left the children put a dvd on – more Charlie Brown / Peanuts and I got out some pens and paper and drew round all our hands for the handsup4homeed blog. I decorated mine, Tarly did hers, and Davies did some but managed to obliterate his name by colouring over it so I think he wants to redo it.

We’ve been debating reclaiming the room currently used as a playroom. It was our bedroom when the house was still a bungalow and although it has been made smaller to put the staircase and under stairs cupboard in it is still a double bedroom sized space – it had a spare kingsize bed and wardrobe comfortably in it when we only had Davies before we moved to Manchester. It is now more of a glorified cupboard and contains the bulk of the kids’ toys, the dressing up rail and various dumped things like the hoover. But despite being called The Playroom children never actually play in it, Davies and Scarlett have decent sized bedrooms and during the day are in the lounge with me or if they have friends round they tend to disappear off to the bedrooms. We have a dining room table and chairs in our garage from when we had a dining room in Manchester and were talking at the weekend about when we will be able to turn that room into a dining room. We still have too many toys to lose them into the children’s bedrooms without utterly cluttering them up but I do think we could maybe make a better use of that space so talking will continue as it would be good to maybe get a table into the house.

Anyway, when Mel left I went into the playroom to tidy up a bit and had a bit of a tantrum about the state of it generally. There being no other adult around to tantrum at I decided to do something about it myself and tugged out various things to put them away more tidily. Also dug out two lots of Letterland things (a game and a set of fridge magnets) to stick on ebay. At this rate I’ll be totally HE resource free within the year ;).

Lucy, R & R arrived for a flying visit, having been invited by text during Mel’s visit when I realised they would not be staying all day. Lucy joined me in the playroom while R&R joined D&S in the lounge (see, I told you they never play in the playroom 😉 ). Unfortunately D&S appeared to be all socialised out and were really annoying me by going on and on about the remaining cakes (only 3 left so not enough to offer round) including S having one for herself after I’d said no and D going and nicking the sweets off the top of one. There was also some fighting – play fighting as they both seemed to be enjoying it, but I was getting reported back to by Rebecca so I eventually lost my temper about that too. They got a dressing down after Lucy left and were contrite and apologetic for the remainder of the day.

Fired up I rang my parents to talk to them more about a few things which I’ve been brewing on. Still a bit more talk required but I think I got some results and at least a few answers so that was a positive if not totally resolved thing. 🙂

Tomorrow I’m working in the morning so I should probably go to bed to be all fresh and ready for the compliments bound to be lavished upon me whilst I’m there ;).

Oh how I whooshed today. Here, there and everywhere, with a whoosh and a swhoosh and a sizzle.

I tried to have a lie-in and told the children I’d get up when Wonderpets started but Scarlett wanted me to get up NOW when Ady left to go to work around 7am so she was bribed by sitting on the end of my bed and watching Trap Door until Davies got up. So that intruded rather on my dreams (I do like Trapdoor lots but NOT at 7am and NOT with the theme tune repeating at the beginning and end of 10 episodes played back to back 😆 (cos there’s something down there!).

I did indeed get up when Wonderpets was on and there was comedy moments aplenty with Sainsburys own version of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. Most of the time the children eat their cereal without milk (through choice) so I tend to let them have as much as they like and then pour any leftovers back into the packets. D got a pasta bowl out and filled that up and not to be outdone S got a HUGE pasta serving dish and filled that (with about half the box of cereal!) – no, she didn’t eat it all and yes, I did pour it all back into the box again. I’d planned to do fimo-ing with them this morning but I had quite a job list and they ended up playing X box together (monkey ball thing) so nicely that I just left them to it while I; sewed Beaver badges onto D’s Beaver sweatshirt – five of the buggers and I had to check on the website to work out where to sew them all, got a bolognaise on for dinner later, fed everyone lunch, wrapped two ebay parcels, did two loads of washing and draped it around the house (we now have jeans and vests again – children have been wearing t shirts as vests all weekend! And yes, I know, I am the only mother I know who’s children even wear vests :roll:) by which time it was time to leave the house to pick up Ali and Freya, going via the post office to post said ebay parcels.

We have gone through spates of listening to lots of classical music in the car over the years. I am rather ignorant about classical music generally, knowing nothing about composers or names of pieces but I do like to listen to it and both the children do too – we had a full set of the ‘majors for minors’ type cds and things like Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals. I remembered that my Mum had had a ‘Hooked on classics‘ tape that I’d liked as a child so I got a copy from work and we played that today. It was an instant hit with Davies renaming all the pieces of music with suitable names to suit the mood they evoked and them ‘ta dumming’ along with the tunes they recognised from previous cds, adverts, film scores and of course the Barbie films featuring Swan Lake and the Nutcracker. I did lots of steering wheel drumming :).

Ali and Freya joined us, we tracked down the mis-spelt soft play centre oddly located on an industrial estate and sat in the car park waiting for someone to come out so we could park (as directed by a car park attendant type bloke). Our wait was not too long and there we were, having been treated by Ali (thanks mate 🙂 xxx) we burst forth through a small doorway into a full unit full of bedlam. 4000 children all on half term were all screaming at the tops of their voices and throwing balls as hard as they could! 😆 There was brightly coloured die cut monkeys swinging from signs, primary coloured soft covered frames with netting, lots of tables, chairs and beanbags and a decibal level to rival a Spice Girls concert in the 90s. Still the leaflets on the tables claimed that this was where ‘Kids can become Kidz’ so Scarlett became Zcarlett, Davies became Daviez and Freya did her own thing with her ‘Z’ and off they went! 🙂

Zcarlett had a great time, mostly investing her energy into learning how to climb all the way up the very steep, very long, wavy slides. First she observed, then she spent ages experimenting with approaches before finally finding the technique that worked for her using the netting as a way of pulling herself up. She graduated from this to a bent over, using hands for friction on the slide surface method and the joy on her face as she slid back down again every time was a testament to the effort she’d put in and how it had paid off. Until ‘the man’ came back and told her to stop climbing up the slide :lol:.

Daviez did plenty of the same but as a Mature Six Year Old he felt the need to come and chat every few minutes including asking us to count, asking how many he’d have to count to before certain things, creating elaborate ways of communicating whilst drinking – leading Ali and I to go off on one of our weird fanasty flights about spending a day communicating only by the use of cymbals – I could youtube blog and everything :lol:. We had some games of paper, scissors, stone including one with him in a plastic bubble about 30 feet above me and one where he tried to get me to play his made up version which included elements such as ice and fire aswell as the traditional paper, scissors and stone.

We had expected to be called out as the children had a small coloured stamp on their hands and due to the busyness they were calling people out by colour after about an hour and a half, but although our colour got a 15 minute warning we never actually got called out. Which meant we got to see the start of ‘Dancing in the middle court’ which involved a woman in a fleece directing 22 small children ranging from about 18 months to 7 years in a rather too complicated dance routine to ‘Chico-time’ – me and Ros could so make a living from doing that job, we’d be loads better :lol:. So we dropped Ali and Freya home, via our traditional lost in the one way system in Lewes detour and then came home for more enforced whoosyness in getting Davies fed and changed and at Beavers in time.

We listened to more hooked on classics on the way home until I turned it down to ask them what shape pasta they wanted with their bolognaise and we got into a long discussion about the different names of the different shapes of pasta. I told them the names for spaghetti, tagliatelle, fusilli, penne, farfalle, lasagne, linguine, conchiglie which were all I could recall offhand and delighted them into thinking up their own heavily Italian accented pasta names. Davies came up with ‘poulet’ which I told him actually is a word – chicken in French, so he says he’s going to impress everyone by calling chicken that next time it’s appropriate – be interesting to see if he remembers. So Tarly had conchiglie with bolognaise which she pronounced ‘delicious’ and ate a massive helping of, Davies had tinned pasta which I don’t believe has any such fancy name 🙄 but meant he was served it and ate it quick which was essential on our schedule. He was dressed in Beaver uniform, both of us with coats and shoes on ready to run round to the church hall the moment Ady came through the door. I dropped him off and then came home to snuggle up with Scarlett and read her a couple of stories – there was a paraphrased version of ‘we’re going on a bear hunt’ on TV on something which was a favourite book of Davies’ when he was a bit younger than she is now but I don’t think she’d ever registered seeing before so we read that which she really enjoyed. Then I went to collect Davies. Scarlett was ready for bed first, (Davies was eating custard!) so he and I watched Junior Mastermind while Ady read Scarlett some more stories in bed. Davies watched one of the earlier heats of JM a few weeks ago and was really interested to the point that he had Scarlett reenacting it with him for a few days afterwards. This was the final so there was a short film for each of the five contestants going on some sort of field trip to do with their specialist subjects and another short film about how the production team toured primary schools looking for contestants and holding heats. Clearly these five 10 years olds are exceptional characters but what struck me about each of them most was that in having such passions that they followed so closely and revelled in being ‘experts’ in it gave them such alive and interesting personalities when they talked about their chosen topic. They varied from Liverpool FC – a fairly common passion I assume, to the work of Jackson Pollock, to Tin Tin, to a cricketer (I forget his name) to The Battle of Hastings. All of them had fantastic general knowledge levels too of course, but what a wonderful demonstration of the ability in a child when allowed to specialise and spend time on their passion at such a young age. Davies counted up their scores as they got questions right or wrong and then guessed at what sort of score one of the contestants would get and generally showed a great understanding of how the game worked and what it was all about. We have a Disney trivia game in the playroom, I wonder if he’d like to play Mastermind with me asking him some of the questions from that? 😆

Tomorrow looks set to be long and tiring – Mel, with Liam and Lily is coming over as it is half term. In the style of a woman who is rather terrified at the prospect of having children off school for a whole week she has said she’ll be here by 10am 😯 so I imagine an equal time period to that they spend here will be spent after they’ve gone on Operation Clear-up, unless I can think of something constructive for them all to do, or the weather is friendly to us and we can go for a (winter) walk to the park.

I have an outstanding order from Jax and I know Kirsty wanted some bits. Will do an order early March which I can arrange dispatch via NicCamps for so does anyone else want anything? Website at susumama.co.uk – sale items will not be wholesale price but will possibly be cheaper than the sale price advertised. Jax, can you email me details of the jumper again – the carefully saved emails from before died with the laptop and I don’t have your email address to email you.

More groundbreaking stuff happening this week 🙂

Last night I had my first EVER night away from my children. Ever. Not the longest I’ve been away from them, and we once left the house at 6am and didn’t come home again until midnight, so technically I didn’t see them for a whole day, but the first time I’ve slept anywhere where my children were not. Not remotely ready to leave them with anyone other than Ady yet, or go too far away, of for more than a night, but it was a lovely little taste of freedom. 🙂

Oh and I cuddled a dog! 😯

Yesterday day I went to Tesco in the morning as I had some upholstery underwear to return (I used the M&S one I’d bought instead) and I’d intended for that to fund alcohol purchasing for last night. Unfortunately I’d lost the receipt so I could only exchange for clothing, which meant Ady and Davies got a pair of Tesco value jeans each, Tarly got a two pack of leggings to wear under skirts as she refuses to wear tights and I got some new pants. 🙂 Had an embarrassing moment at the till when I realised I’d picked up more expensive potatoes than I’d meant to and had to take them back as I didn’t have enough money for them (and witnessed the scathing looks from the checkout woman and the customers in the queue behind me as I kept the 8 tins of Guinness but swapped for cheaper potatoes 😳

I worked in the afternoon and it was easily the busiest Saturday afternoon I’ve worked – it was good 🙂

Then Layla and Si arrived, I kissed the children goodbye and Si ran Layla, Jasper and I over to Ros’, collecting Ali on the way. Alison was already at Ros’ and we had a wonderful evening of singing, dancing, eating, drinking, laughing and baby cuddling (when Layla could bear to allow it 😉 ). We had a phonecall with Joyce, who was so missed that we nominated a cushion to represent her in spirit (which got up to all sorts of wee tricks :lol:), we watched Beaches and Beverley Hills 90210 – oh Dylan still has ‘it’ 😆

Ady and Si had a more sedate version with added children back at our house (but with even more curry than we had I believe 😉 – and the Guinness!).

This morning Ady and Si arrived with children at Ros’ slightly earlier than expected so we all sat round together watching music TV, eating croissants, drinking copious volumes of tea and coffee and showing ‘Joyce’ a really good time 😆 Photographic evidence of some of the evening can be seen here 🙂 – thanks for a lovely time ‘sistas’ 🙂 xxx

The afternoon has been a fairly lazy one. Scarlett watched Rainbow for ages having been inspired by us singing the theme tune on the way home after spotting a real one. Davies watched Shrek 2 and then decided he wanted to make a Shrek house and characters – he painted a flat piece of wood we’ve had kicking around from one of our Winter WalksTM and I’ve promised to make some fimo models with him tomorrow for it. Ady went and chopped logs and I cooked a roast dinner (Nigella’s ham in coke) which we all ate together. Bed for the kids, baths for us and Ady is in bed while I’m watching Lost before heading off to bed myself.

But far more entertaining that continuing with the whole Winter thing I have greater news. I have a revelation that may shock you to the core, tip the world from it’s axis, make you question everything you knew to be true. Every certainty you held dear, everything you felt was a given, something you could rely on. Things that would never let you down, where you rested your laurels, hung your hat and felt the ground was firm beneath your feet.

Today I went on a bus.

😯

I know, I could have blogged about sending my children to school, buying the sonlight curriculum, becomming a socialist, turning vegan and eshewing all that is material in life and you might just have accepted it, but me, Nic, using public transport? ‘Never!’ I hear you cry. But It Is True. And I have bus related anecdotes and everything 😆

Ady woke me at 6.40am – yes that’s right, not even during the hour before I am supposed to wake up but the hour before that one, we got the children breakfasted and dressed and were away, a mere half hour after Ady’s latest time he wanted to be away by and on the way to Reading. I’d got 3 Snoopy / Peanuts dvds from work thinking that Davies might like them and he adored them so they were a hit 🙂 Scarlett spotted planes at Gatwick and Heathrow and the (winter) snow on the way. Davies suddenly recognised a building and said ‘oh we’re in Reading – that building is near the big metal person in a circle’ just as we rounded a corner to the big metal person in a circle thing’ and then asked if ‘Reading is the north’ because of all the snow. I explained it was north in terms of Sompting, but not exactly The North.

We got to Alison’s and Davies was imediately introduced to the Wii while Tarly sat on the floor and did puzzles whilst eavesdropping on adults conversations. Then we went to the bus stop and my adventure truly began. 😆 We went to ERAPA which is a real thriving group with a good mix of HE folk with different approaches, some of whom I even talked to for a while 😆 Davies spent *ages* playing outside and enjoyed being with the older children/teens, Tarly did some more puzzles and spent some time in the soft play area.

We got the bus home and arrived to find Ady already at Alison’s. More Wii and puzzles and chat before it was time for us to start for home (by car, but it was still winter so it was a winter journey!). S fell asleep before we left Reading, D was asleep not long after getting home and we had bath and dinner and wine.

Stay tuned for more such thrilling episodes in the Nic Goes To Public Places series with a laundrette as next week’s location :).

Rather later than I should have done what with me needing to get to work and all. 😳

The children had a winter drink and dressed in their winter clothes while I put my winter make up on and got dressed too. I’d very sensibly covered my windscreen this morning in preparation of all the winter weather we had been forecast but we’d had nothing except winter rain so my blanket was just soggy!

I went to sort out car seats ready to put Richard and Rebecca in when we got to Lucy’s but found that although my Sharan had six seats in it the rear passenger one was in back to front. And was rather firmly wedged there. Possibly by taking out the seat infront I could have worked it free but I was now running late with just half an hour to get D&S into the car, drive to Lucy’s, get Lucy, R & R in the car, take everyone back to my house, unload Lucy and all the children and then drive to work. On a winter day. I did make a cursory effort which simply resulted in getting winter mud from the kids wellies from the winter walk yesterday all over my smart winter work trousers. So I loaded the kids into the car and drove to Lucy’s anyway deciding we’d have to draw straws as to which one of us would sit on the floor of the car / run along behind it / work out some complicated fox / chicken / grain boat trip on the river type thing to get children with adult carers all transported back to my house. Or indeed not and go and collect D&S on my winter lunch break to bring them back to mine and hope my Dad (afternoon childcare) would arrive before I had to be back at work for my winter afternoon there.

Lucy instantly suggested she sit on the floor of the car which felt dreadfully naughty but considering it is less than a mile and we never go over 30mph it seemed a sensible, if illegal option. And despite it indeed being winter and despite us being forecast very wintery weather we never had it so road conditions were perfectly safe for such shenanigans. So we managed to get everyone in to my house and me off to work arriving with plenty of time.

Had a good winters day at work and am really starting to feel part of the gang. My favourite colleague (the one I cocked up my speech about Home Ed with who has 4 children and wears really cool clothes – she inspired me to wear my patterned tights to the wedding as she often wears them and looks fab) was working this morning and is always really chatty and friendly. It is slightly akward atm as she had a 40th birthday recently and had a party which everyone at work was invited to, but clearly had been long arranged before I started there, so last week that was talked about a lot and next week another colleague is getting married and they are all full of chat about her reception which they are all invited to. I imgaine if I’d started just a few weeks earlier I would have been around for the invitations and been part of the chats about it a bit more, butI am definitely feeling more included in the jokes and workplace banter, which is lovely. 🙂 This week we are doing a head count of people coming in with the very high tech equipment of a hand held clicker which we click for everyone coming in and then log the number every hour before resetting it and clicking again. So that has been the cause of much ‘oh sod, I forgot the clicker for the last 15 minutes, here, stick about 20 people on it!’ type nonsense with people randomly clicking it when it’s not their turn to be in charge of the clicker and so on. I did miss the childishness of adults when I spent all my time with children 😆 I’m feeling more and more capable at knowing what I’m doing with every shift which is really nice and Yvonne, my direct boss said to me the other day she is very aware that she is leaving me to get on with things much earlier than she would with a normal new starter but is confident that I am fine, so that made me feel all glowy. 🙂

I spent my lunchbreak as usual perusing the charity shops and speaking to Lucy, Davies and Scarlett on the phone. Scarlett is very cute, she spends most of the time telling me she loves me, Davies tells me every detail of everything which has happened in my absense – the telephone equivalent of one of my blog posts really :lol:. Then I came back to the library and had half an hour on the internet. Lovely 🙂 The afternoon passed in a similar vein and then it was hometime. I gathered together six dvds for the kids to watch in the car tomorrow and with Ady on Saturday night (such a fab perk that 🙂 ) and came home to rescue Dad from the four year old demanding he read her princess stories and the six year old creating complicated games with geomags.

I made the kids some tea and then Davies showed me his geomag game which appeared to be based on Super Monkey Ball on X box. I ‘played’ that with him for a while (not sure who was humouring who really!) and we looked at some road signs I’d photocopied from the Highway Code book for him then Ady arrived home.

So there you go, I forgot to winterise the second bit of the post, but I’m sure ‘Nic’ can put that in himself 😉

We met Julie, Jack and Maisie for a winters walk at Slindon today and it was lovely. 🙂 The sky was blue and it was a clear, crisp winters day, cold but perfect to be out and about in. Most of the mud was still frozen hard (although the children managed to find every soft bit left :roll:) and we had a lovely couple of hours walking round with them running, clambering on trees and generally enjoying being out and about. Julie and I had a good catch up on each others lives and shared a couple of dilemmas / parenting nightmares which made us both feel loads better. She’s full of honest common sense at times is Julie and pretty much entirely agenda-less so her slant on a few things was much appreciated and made me feel very reassured. 🙂

We walked round one circuit including feeding the ducks before going back to the carpark to sit in our cars for lunch and then headed back out again towards the ‘camp’. It is a crater type hole with a big tree offset to one side which way back last year someone had started to build a teepee like structure with tall sticks around and the children really enjoyed playing in. When we went there last a couple of weekends ago it had all been dismantled / blown down so we started to rebuild it. Today we spend a good half and hour or so there gathering more sticks and making it stronger and building two benches inside for sitting on. The children worked on digging out toeholds / steps to make it easier to climb in and out (with Scarlett singing ‘what’s going to work? teamwork!’ from the Wonderpets as she did so :lol:). We walked back with me, Davies and Scarlett slightly ahead of J, J and M so we sat on a log and waited for them to catch up and then as it was so nice sitting there in the sunshine we sat there a bit longer. A lovely couple of hours 🙂

On the drive home Scarlett sat really quietly eating chocolate chip rock cakes and looking really comfy in her new car seat while Davies and I discussed every single traffic sign we passed (and we passed a lot!) and what they meant. He was so interested in it that I’ve promised to get him a book on it from work tomorrow (I’m sure there is a whole section on highway code and signs etc.). Once home I dashed around getting washing hung out while they tidied up some paper and pens from this morning – they are both really into cutting out things at the moment and had been playing a game where the scissors were crocodiles (after Davies cut out and coloured in some Wonderpets for me :lol:) so there were lots of little snippings of paper on the floor.

Lucy arrived with Rebecca for a catch up play and chat which also made me feel better with some mutual moaning about families (thanks Luce x) then Ady arrived home, Lucy and Rebecca left, I served the kids a hasty tea then Davies and I headed off to Beavers. The traffic was awful and as I’d been running on fumes driving to Slindon and back and had to take my car as Ady’s was full of plants I had to stop for petrol on the way too. The petrol station was heaving and I tried to be clever and use a wrong side of the car pump (petrol cap is on drivers side as most cars seem to be but if you park forward and close to the pump you can usually stretch the pump over the car and into the other side) but it wouldn’t reach so I had to reverse and turn round as I’d lost my place in the queue to get to the right side, then I joined the very long queue to pay 🙄 We were 15 minutes late for Badgers and had to knock on the door to be let in 😳 but I did get to sit in my car and finish my book in peace and quiet.

On the way there and back Davies was asking me all sorts of questions about light, why the sky is blue, how rainbows work etc and having given lots of half and uneducated answers I really must keep my promise to follow up on all that with him too. Oh how busy we’re going to be ;). Home for a bath for Davies and continued turning the house upside down to try and find Davies’ camera which seems to have gone AWOL. Frustratingly we all seem to recall having seen it lying around ‘somewhere’ but none of us can quite recall where. We’re almost certain it hasn’t left the house so is lost somewhere in here, tomorrow the search continues!