Meaner than a junkyard dog…

A highly productive day today. 🙂

First thing the plan was to sort out the playroom. It started as one of those mammoth tasks that half an hour in you wish you’d never started as the first task was to go through all the dressing up stuff, bag up anything outgrown ready to be cleaned, photographed and stuck on ebay. The rest had to be matched together into outfits, hung on hangers (and finding child size hanger was enough of a problem – most of Tarly’s clothes are now in a heap at the bottom of her wardrobe!) and put onto a clothes rack. We moved both big units to the same side of the room and cleared some of the unused toys. There’s still plenty to do in going through cupboards and clearing more but for now it looks hugely better, far more like a playroom than a rather large cupboard and a room I go into and smile rather than feel slightly depressed in. It used to be Ady and my bedroom many years ago and as the chiller with the wine and beer lives in the understairs cupboard which is accessed from that room I go there often and used to get really fed up with it being such a tip all the time. Fingers crossed it has moved into a new phase as the children are slightly older.

The kids veered between very helpful, not quite so helpful and downright hindering but when I called them in to try on some of the dressing up clothes so I could work out what did and didn’t fit any more Tarly had us all in hysterics when she insisted on putting on a Mother Christmas outfit and then pulled on a scary Halloween mask and said ‘look, I’m the nightmare before Christmas!’


She chose her outfit for Halloween this year (the one she wore the year before last) and then spent ages flouncing about in a bridesmaid dress that Ros gave us ages ago, teaming it with a red flashing nose, knee high white socks and various comedy hats! She does make me laugh loads that girl 😆 Davies sat and put loads of number puzzles back together in the right order – always makes me smile to see that despite very little in the way of formal number recognition work he manages somehow. Tarly really is ready to learn to read though so somehow I need to combat my utter lazy-bugger-ness and set about doing that with her. I can’t pretend to be autonomous any more if I’m actually ignoring my children even when they beg to learn 😉 !

We had lunch and then headed over to Chris and Julie’s for a couple of hours. Davies was in a fairly boisterous mood and despite Julie and I taking the children off for a walk round some nearby fields he remained such for the rest of the day. I’ve made email enquiries about the ‘under sixes’ football team for him come September. I looked into it last year and it runs to school years so despite the fact he actually hits six two weeks into September he would still fall into the under six team for the coming year. It runs on a Saturday morning at the very nearby school for an hour and Ady and he could go along together for an hour. They don’t play matches but they work on basic practice and aside from good physical activity, the chance to make more friends, learn some sporting skills and spend some time doing something just with Ady I think he is ready for a bit more of the whole rough and tumble type side of being a little boy. He has suddenly grown a bit I think too – I was watching him and Tarly run down the road together yesterday and realised that the gap between their heights which had lessened (to the point they are both wearing some clothes age 3-4 at the moment!) as Tarly had a growth spurt fairly recently seems to have opened out again. Which is just as well – I was starting to worry he must be smoking in his room at night and stunting his own growth! 😆 The gap between them generally has widened again as it does every so often and I realised today that we really only tend to play with younger children that him – must remedy that a bit more from the Autumn and the football may well help.

While we were at C & J’s I mentioned that we were looking for a bike for Davies. We have a bike that our friends gave us (along with Davies’ bed and various other bits and pieces) when they emigrated to NZ four years ago – their daughter is four years older than Davies almost to the day and it was hers – albeit a very unisex multi-coloured design. He’s been riding it but despite having the saddle and handlebars up to the max it is really too small for him. Chris did a bit of a ‘ta dah!’ from a caravan which lives in their garden with all sorts of garden toys and pulled out a car boot sale bargain he’d bought for ‘Jack – one day’ for £4 and is perfect for Davies now. 🙂

So we brought it home, the multi-coloured one officially changed ownership to Tarly and we spent a happy half an hour with them gaining confidence in riding up and down the slight slope on the pavement outside our garden.

Tarly utterly mastered steering although her pedalling is a bit wonky – but then so is the pavement! Davies totally got ‘the bug’ for it and was begging for ‘one more go down the hill’ by the time we came in. I’ve tasked Ady with getting him sorted without stabilisers by the end of the summer and told them they can bring their bikes to my parents tomorrow and ride them on the same path I did as a child round my parents’ house. It’s my Dad’s birthday tomorrow so the plan is to have lunch and then go out for a Downs Walk but I think we may be able to persuade everyone to wander down to the nearby park (the same one we have Home Ed meet up at each week) for some cycling practice instead.

And that’s about it really. Davies went to bed listening to Cat in the Hat on tape following it along with the book, borrowed from the libarary – I’d not realised before that the audio books were FREE. I followed Alison’s links and signed up for free Tescos dvd trials and laughed at myself for struggling to think of any films I’d actually like to watch and am on a total high having been told by Ady to go away for a weekend (my first ever since children) sometime soon and do whatever I want with myself. 🙂 🙂 He’s clearly very trusting of the friend he specifically told me to arrange something with however 😉 – not at all sure that trust is justified! And I have an 8 year plan! Which I will no doubt share at some future point when I have it at a point to put down in a post.

Other than that the sun continues to shine, it looks like there is some slight change in Malice’s eye which is good – we’ve done very well with her eye drops and antibiotics tablets, although I have to say it is infinitely easier to medicate a cat when she can’t see you coming :lol:, it’s been a lovely week with lots of friends packed in and I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weeks with lots more of the same. 🙂

Some photos of stuff this week

First of all Lucy on her birthday in the park with her cake.

Ben, Beth, Davies and Tarly sitting playing with a magnetic drawing toy. Davies was telling the story and Beth was illustrating it. It kept them amused for ages:

Yesterday at Ali’s Ali made bath bombs with the children. We used the little fizzy red creation with added glitter tonight in their bath – thanks Ali 🙂

Afterwards I had a deal with Davies, Scarlett and Freya that I’d read them two Elmer stories and then they had to go and play for the last half an hour so we could chat. I didn’t take my storytelling quite as seriously as Ali took her science however and was mainly telling it for Ali and my own amusement giving the elephants regional accents as we read. I think all five of us ended up slightly hysterical, albeit for slightly different reasons! 😆 Ali says she has pics so you’ll have to add her to your flickr contacts and obsessively keep refreshing the page until she posts them!

I’ve some pics of today too but I’ll post about that and add them in the relevant places.

Ffffriday

A mixed bag of a day really. Last night I noticed that Malice’s very bad eye (the one that had been sewn shut as opposed to the one that simply doesn’t work) which had been a bit discharge-y for about 24 hours had stuck shut with gunk. I bathed it open and realised it was very unpleasant underneath as in pretty much full of pus. Sorry if you’re eating, but I imagine very few people do eat while reading my blog nowadays – frankly if you do then you get everything coming! 😆 So I rang the vets and got an appointment for first thing this morning.

As suspected it is very infected and the nurse we saw pretty much expected it would need to be removed. It is actually more for cosmetic (ha!) reasons that it has been left in really as it is totally non-functional and I guess even a non-working eyeball is preferable to no eye-ball. But given she can’t look in a mirror anymore anyway, is unlikely to need to pull tom-cats by looking gorgeous anytime soon and any guests of ours who are likely to be offended by a one eyed cat would probably also be offended by all sorts of other things in our house first. Anyway I left her there for the vet to look at and make a decision. The decision made was to bring her home again for the weekend with antibiotics and eyedrops to be administered (nightmare!!) and take her back on Monday for another look. I think we all expect her to be kept in to have the eye removed on Monday really but it’s worth a try. And of course that’s another £25 on cat drugs today with potentially hundreds more next week if she needs further operations. 🙁

In other news we’ve been over to Ali’s today. Davies particularly has been in a challenging frame of mind the last week or so and continued in that vein (sorry Ali!), Tarly did the classic sibling thing of being all charming – til we got home of course, when she did something wrong which I flew off the handle over and then she sobbed for ten minutes because she thought I didn’t love her anymore 🙄 But it was lovely to have some chatting time with Ali and I managed to spew out all sorts of things which have been on my mind lately so very cheap therapy with nice tea even if I did have to tolerate soya milk in it! 😉

Back from there to collect Malice from the vets and home to find Ady already there. I had reached the end of a long week’s worth of patience with parenthood so left to go to Sainsburys for an hour and came back in time for bedtime.

Tomorrow we start phase one in Operation Playroom. We have a plot to sort out playroom out, get shot of all the stuff which is outgrown, never played with, never likely to be played with, was bought in one of my indulgent ‘I want my children to play with toys like these’ phases when actually my children have no intention of playing with toys like these or qualifies for the category of ‘nasty plastic tat’. The incentive for all of us is a tidier, more crap-free home for me and Ady without constant reminders of where at least part of our debt has come from and for the children the promise that any money we raise from selling anything saleable goes towards a ‘gaming fund’. Yep, you read that right a gaming fund. We have always been a game free household. Mostly it has to be said because we were a game free household before the children arrived and as such having not been parents for six years yet it hadn’t really seemed essential ‘kit’ as yet. But I am starting to become aware that most of Davies’ peers have such stuff in their homes, as is he and whilst I am not about to change my views on ‘adult’ or ‘violent’ stuff as such I can see a value to the film-related type stuff that he has played on in friends houses. Coupled with the fact it is something he would really like to have and at six I think the reasoning of ‘because’ starts to wear a bit thin really.

So I’m in the market for a bit of gaming advice really. My Mum has said she and Frazer will contribute to the Gaming Fund for Davies’ birthday. Davies initially will be wanting Wallace and Gromit games although it would be a rather expensive indulgence to merely have it for that I don’t anticipate us buying new games very regularly or particularly fretting about having the latest titles. So, Playstation, X box or something like a DS? All views, opinions and advice gratefully recieved, aside of course from anyone who thinks for one minute I will play on whatever we get and will therefore be available to trade turnips with or anything like that! 😉

Books, books, books…

This morning for some odd and unexplained reason the children played with the Bob the Builder toys. Well actually they didn’t really, the BTB toys (as in the plastic versions of Scoop, Muck and Dizzy and Roly too, Lofty and Wendy join the crew etc.) are in the same box as a set I picked up at a car boot sale ages ago containing a boat, car, motorbike, truck etc all made of chunky plastic components held together with nuts, bolts and screws which can be dismantled and rebuilt by use of some battery powered drills and screwdrivers. A good example of how age guidelines on a toy are totally subjective as these are for age 3 but actually most children would be unlikely to be interested until older, whereas we have other toys here which suggest they are for age 8 plus which are firm favourites even with Tarly.

I put away the towering pile of clean laundry and then gathered library books from every corner of the house and assembled a pile to rival the clean washing of them. We found the children’s Reading Mission cards and they both chose a book from the ‘already read it’ pile of books to enter as their first ones. Davies chose Mog’s Bad Thing which we’d read ages ago and Tarly chose the Charlie and Lola book we’ve read at least seven times. Then Tarly was persuaded to have Monkey Puzzle – by The Gruffalo people as a second one we’d read, we did that the other night when I read them stories in the bath while Ady was away and she’d really enjoyed that, joining in with it lots. Then we quickly chose another one from the ‘not read yet’ pile. Davies chose The Ice Child which was quite a powerful one and followed it up with Knock Knock, who’s there which was rather babyish but made us laugh. Which meant we had to do one more for Tarly which we just had time for and she chose The Glass Heart from the pile which had beautiful illustrations and a somewhat familiar fairy tale line to it. We loaded ourselves and two bagfuls of books into the car and waited for Julie to pull up and follow us to Lucy’s.

Once there we unloaded ourselves and children and walked to the local library arriving just in time for storytelling sessions. Davies was pretty much the oldest and it was very predictable with storytelling, some singing of nursery rhymes and some colouring in at the end, so I didn’t feel at all bad about leaving them to it and browsing the adult reads while Julie and Lucy sat with them and enjoyed clapping along to ‘wind the bobbin up’ and the like (never my strongest area of parenting that really!). Then I whispered Davies out to come and talk to the librarian about his three books. He was fairly reticent about talking about them, which always semi amuses and frustrates me given how able he is to talk to people normally, but he managed it and got a couple of sheets of stickers, some colouring in sheets and a bookmark. He was fascinated with the bookmark, particularly when I demonstrated how it worked and he said ‘but you usually just fold the page down don’t you Mummy?’ infront of the librarian 😳

Then I pulled Tarly out, I was surprised at how well she’d snuggled in between Maisie and Rebecca and looked for all the world like a little girl at nursery actually, but she pulled out her shy act for the one to one of the librarian and actually only nodded and whispered to her about the books we’d read. She still got her stickers and colouring sheets though and was suddenly confident enough to chatter to the librarian again at the end. 🙄

We stayed for another half an hour or so, Tarly played on the kiddie computer and me and Davies pulled various books of their brand new books shelf and read a couple there and borrowed a few more to bring home.

Then back to Lucy’s via a couple of shops for various bits and pieces.

We had a lovely afternoon actually. Lucy and Julie have more than enough in common to not actually need me there for them to chat for hours anyway and infact if it were not for my SIL status with Julie and long historic friendship with Luce I would probably be the odd one out there. We have progressed from general child related chit chat to all sorts of girlie chatter and honest revelations so that was all fun 😉 The children had a whale of a time in different combinations too so it was really nice.

We left and came home where the children were inspired to get out the pretend food and lay out loads of odd meal combinations aswell as getting lots of water from the bathroom and pouring ‘tea’ from toy teapots into various receptacles. They also got out the toy till which has kwizinair (lost interest in attempting to spell it right so am henceforth going to go for twee/cutesy/funky misspellings of that word instead) rods, pretend coinage, n ELC set of scales to balance numbers on and a big chunky ELC calculator. I’d been testing my mental maths trying to work out amended balances due for Nic’s Halloween Camp so it was funny that today was the day Davies asked all about calculators! He started by asking me my mobile phone number and punching in as much of it as he could before the screen ran out of space. I showed him how to do a decimal point so he could do the zero first. Then I wrote him a page of sums to do on it and we did them together. He knows about adding together and taking away but we’d not talked about the more technical terms so we covered that and what the +, -, X and = signs meant with some handwritten examples of ‘times’. Then just as I was expecting to have to explain division he asked about the square root button so we talked about that a bit too. I suspect it was all rather too abstract but he was very interested and I guess we’ll come back to it again sometime. I then showed him number bonds up to 10 on paper and on the calculator. I like the idea that he is proficient with using one but I’d hate to compromise on a basic comprehension of numbers, what they look like and how to manipulate them without such an aid.

They then ate their tea while playing with Davies’ leappad which is enjoying a renewed lease of life again and then Ady arrived home so all the Reading Mission stuff was brought out to show Daddy. Ady read Davies a Wallace and Gromit book we’d fallen on with delight at the library and I read Tarly Thumbelina which I’d spotted and picked out for her as bedtime stories.

Davies didn’t go straight to sleep of course. He appeared back downstairs ages afterwards to show us an ‘experiment I’ve done’ with a magnet, a tin box and a screw. He explained it all very clearly and with obvious understanding of magnets and their properties so we let that one ride 😉

Can’t quite believe it is Friday already tomorrow, but rather glad it is just the same. 🙂

First the worst, second the best, third the one with the hairy chest!

Yep, it’s the school summer holidays and the school children are out in force everywhere! 😉 Eavesdropped with mild amusement to all the chants, goading and teasing I recall from my own playground 20 odd years ago.

So, a catch up then.

Monday Barbara, who we affectionately know as ‘The Babs’ and family were coming to stay. Babs will be reading this so if anyone wants to wave or say hello feel free to use the comments box 😉 😆 Now Babs will be the first to admit she is not known for her being on time. Therefore I felt perfectly safe heading off to Tescos for last minute bits and pieces, stopping in the M&S next door to try on some bras (never such a great activity with a loud and descriptive audience in a changing room with no soundproofing! :lol:) and coming home to get dinner (spag bol in the slow cooker) sorted and on before they arrived. I got a text while trying on the bras (just to add to the loudness eminating from my changing room! :lol:) to say they were about 1.5 hours away so they actually arrived while I was still chopping onions for dinner and had put a box of Rice Crispies upside down back in their home on top of the microwave and had several bowl fulls tip all over my head and everything underneath the microwave.

So the rest of Monday passed in a haze of chatting, drinking tea leading to drinking wine / beer /cider, playing, running around and rather a lot of not sleeping! 😆

Tuesday Lucy had invited us all round to descend on her for the day which is exactly what we did. Her house is perfect for lots of people with a biggish lounge leading through patio doors straight into a safe, visible and enclosed garden. So the 7 – growing to 8 when Lucy’s nephew arrived – children and 4 – growing to 6 when Colin got home and Lucy’s Mum called in – all fitted very nicely and got on with things for a good part of the day. 🙂

We came home for a planned quiet and early night for the children and did everything ‘right’. They had carb heavy dinner, watching a quiet film, followed by baths and bed. And although it felt like something of a ‘process’ they were indeed all asleep by 9pm. We’ll gloss over how long it was before we were all asleep too but suffice to say it wouldn’t do any good to my reputation! 😉

Today Babs and co were amazingly efficient and were away by 9am. Don’t think we’ve ever had guests leave so early or so on time :lol:. I continued the theme and did bed stripping, washing, drying and re-making, cleared all the backlog of washing, tidied except the playroom – which needs a severe going over at some point, utterly unrelated to guests and but long overdue. Oh and I made a cake! Lucy’s mum let slip yesterday that it is Lucy’s birthday today and as we were seeing her for Home Ed group meet in the park I made her a cake and took along candles, matches and a cake slice.

Lovely to have Babs and co here, lovely chatting about HE and otherwise. We realised that our five children stagger very nicely with a 2,3,4,5 and 6 year old currently and it was lovely to see them find extra friendships besides the Davies and Ben combination. Tarly spent some time with Rachael and I watched Beth and Davies find more in common too. 🙂 Thanks for coming 🙂

The rest of today was spent meeting at the park as previously mentioned. Lucy was there with R and R and Julie came along with Jack and Maisie. It’s a really nice combination of 3 adults and 6 children that seems to work really well. So much so that we’re all getting together again tomorrow for story time at the library. 🙂 We were there for 3 hours or so, the children played, we chatted, we couldn’t light the candles for Lucy’s cake cos it was too windy so she had to mime blowing it out for the camera 😆 and as the weather has changed here we all trekked over to our cars for extra clothing. There are several ditches filled with either sand or dirt and the children had played in them gathering sticks and containers to build all sorts of dirt creations so were filthy.

So I made a deal with D&S that they could have a really deep bath with every single bath toy they own right up until teatime (about 45 minutes) if they didn’t splash and didn’t argue. Which let me make the beds back up, cook their tea and spent some time on the internet aswell as having a cup of tea. 🙂

They were both asleep pretty early tonight, unsurprisingly and I’m about to follow them myself…

Some Scarlettisms

We’re listening to Terrible Tudors lots still and have learnt the words to the Henry VIII song that Poppy sang at camp. Except Tarly, who has not had occassion to come into contact with the word eighth before insists it is a song about ‘Henry the Wolf’.

Is doing lots of math-y stuff. Yesterday morning while sitting on the worktop she told me how she had made her marmite on toast with Ady. Daddy cooked it and then I spread the butter all by myself and then I spread the marmite all by myself. And then Daddy cutted (sic) it. Hey, we both did two things. That’s sharing!’ Asked how many things that was altogether and aided by some fingers she deduced it was four. 🙂

At Lucy’s house yesterday she asked me for a drink of water, which I got her. She then added a drink of orange juice to her hoard that Lucy had got for her. ‘Look I’ve got two drinks now Mummy. Water and orange juice. The water is first’ and when prompted as to what the orange juice would be ‘It would be, erm second’. Didn’t know she knew that word. Guess she’s not so far away from eighth after all. 😆

Amused us all last night when I served the children pizza and garlic bread for tea. Davies doesn’t like pizza so he got to be ‘in charge’ of the garlic bread. I told them all to have one slice at a time and then go back for another afterwards rather than pile plates with food. Tarly echoed me with ‘Yeah. Have a bit of pizza, then another bit of pizza. When that’s all gone have a slice of garlic bread. When that’s all gone, go to bed!’ 😆

We were at the park today and there were lots of children there. One of them was calling another; ‘Charlie, Charlie’. Tarly stopped what she was doing and said ‘ someone is calling me Mummy’. ‘No’ said I, ‘They are calling ‘Charlie’, you’re called ‘Tarly’. It does sound the same though’.
‘Oh I see’ she said ‘Like Lola sounds a bit like Lulah?’
I agreed.
‘So Charlie and Lola is a bit like me and Lulah then isn’t it. Tarly and Lulah!’ She seemed very pleased with that. 🙂

And….

For anyone who doesn’t obsessively visit all the links in the side bar of my blog go and check this site out.
I don’t often recommend links and given I was a ‘plus size lady’ even before I had children and OK with that I don’t want anyone to think I am justifying obesity or unhealthy living but it is one of the most honest, frank and refreshing things I have read in a long, long while (and believe me I read a lot! ;-)). Ironically only last week I was bemoaning to a couple of friends that the one area of my body which offends my own eye more than any other is the ‘damage’ done by two pregnancies. This site has shown me that far from that being what I should concern myself with it is that very area of which I should be most proud. Now maybe I should think about the rest…

Feed animals in the zoo, and then later a movie too…

I can’t manage this blogging infrequently business, I forget all the tiny trivial bits that make up my normal posts! The days seem to merge together (oh yeah, two of them did :lol:) and I forget all the details.

Friday I wanted to do some baking so I made a few batches of banana cakes and to make them more party-tastic I added chocolate frosting and sprinkles. I also made some rice crispie cakes which I’ve not actually ever made before. They tasted lovely but utterly failed to set so were tricky to eat but worth the effort (I thought so anyway!). At that point I decided it was far too hot to be in the kitchen with the oven on any longer so left the breadmaker to do it’s thing with the pizza dough and my Mum arrived with some nice food for lunch (stuff like posh ham and cheese from the deli, french bread, expensive crisps and chocolate eclairs – all well beyond my reach nowadays!). She’d wanted to take it out as a picnic with the children to the park but I was really not in the mood and had other stuff to be getting on with at home. She semi-offered to take them on her own but I don’t think the children were that fussed about going really, they were playing quite happily with the lego and it really was pretty hot out.

As people who don’t go swimming very often we are distinctly lacking in pool stuff like arm bands, rubber rings etc so we did pop out to the Wizard store to get them a £1 rubber ring each to take to Freya’s party on Saturday. I put these purchases carefully with their goggles – all of which I forgot to actually take on the day! 😳 We also went to the post office to send a couple of ebay parcels and I nipped into the local library as I’ve heard so many people talking about the various things laid on local to them through the summer holidays and it occured to me that D & S are now both probably old enough for all these various things, so I wanted to note a few events down in my diary which look interesting and have available as options. Picked up loads of leaflets and the free local parenting magazine with a full ‘what’s on’ listing so I will sit and go through them all later and list all the things we might try and get along – loads of free and very cheap stuff too :-).

We came home and I sent Mum and the children out into the garden with ice lollies while I sat and got on with the stuffed Puss in Boots from Shrek 2 which was Freya’s birthday present. (Typically I forgot to take a photo of it, if you get a good one Ali can you email it to me – if not I’ll bring the camera along next time we come to you!). Ady arrived home (hurrah!) and Mum eventually left. We blew up readybeds, tidied up, cleared floor space for blow up beds and I made pizzas ready for Chris, Alison and co to arrive. The children had just gone to sleep when they got to us which was good as I think the arrival of four more children would have been enough to persuade them to stay up for hours more. Maybe even all night, but that would be a crazy thing to do! 😉

A very pleasant evening indeed. 🙂

Saturday Off to Freya’s pool party to celebrate her fifth birthday. Ali had got exclusive use of the fab Pells pool for an hour between 10.30 and 11.30am which was probably about the most perfect place to be on a hot and sunny Saturday morning. It was just lovely 🙂 Davies borrowed Lulah’s armbands and did a pretty good job of getting around the pool mostly under his own steam. He loves the water and it spurred me on again to sort out some swimming lessons for him. It would be lovely for him to be more self-sufficient in the water and add to his enjoyment not to mention being one of those lifesaving skills all children should have. Scarlett enjoyed paddling around in the shallow pool and being pushed round on a mat by Ady.

After the hour was up we decamped to the park next door for a picnic. We’d brought along our gazebo to offer some shade so we got that erected, Ady went off with J to get some drinks, Davies amused himself with bubbles and Tarly had probably one of her most impressive ever public tantrums. She even needed to be held as she was trying to do a runner out of the park. 🙁 She eventually sorted herself out and was very apologetic and loving again. Ady came back, the gazebo was sorted and we relaxed into a lovely couple of hours. There was plenty of playing, ball games, exploring the edges of the park, eating vegan party food and so on. Most of which I ignored and sat chatting 😆 I tried to go to sleep at one point with my head in Ady’s lap – he just took unflattering photos of me until I sat up again! 😆 Ali’s bubble thing was a huge hit until the massive amounts of bubble mixture ran dry.

We left around 3pm ish I guess and as we felt the need for more water we headed off to our local beach. I was persuaded to go in the sea – it didn’t take much persuading given how much I’d sat there two weeks ago wishing I’d brought a costume and could go in with D & S when we were were with Julie. So I headed back to the car to get it. I had this cunning plan that rather than try and negotiate my way out of jeans, a complicated and potentially revealing at the best of times top and underwear and into a still wet swimsuit on a beach infront of random stranger and Chris with his everready camera just waiting to ‘capture moments’ I’d get changed in the car in the carpark instead. So I pushed D’s car seat out of the way and shuffled down low in the back seat. A car came and parked right next to me at a rather crucial nude moment but didn’t happen to glance across into our car so I was safe there. I’d just got the swimsuit half on, my bra off and my top all tangled up round my head and shoulders when I sat on Ady’s car keys and locked the car. Fine I thought, at least I’ve done it when I’m in the car this time but clearly my far from graceful writhing about either set off some motion sensor once the car was alarmed by being locked or it has some sort of offence alert cos suddenly the very loud car alarm went off complete with flashing lights! So everyone nearby looked over, including the people parked next to me who were just getting out of their car! They obviously all deduced that your average car thief is usually fully dressed and getting in the drivers door rather than the back seat so thankfully noone tried to approach and conduct a citizens arest! 😆

Once decent (ish) again I headed back to the sea and Davies and I joined Alison and children in the sea. It was lovely :-). I really enjoyed it. Davies loved it too, despite being freezing – need to keep an eye out for a cheap wetsuit for him so he can survive for longer in there really – because he was just holding onto me he quickly got cold and his teeth were chattering despite insisting he was fine! I can easily see why people go swimming in the sea every day now – it’s years and years since I’ve been in the water other than waist height paddling – the display at Kessingland where Ady dragged me out was way further than I’d normally go. Far nicer than a swimming pool too. But doesn’t seaweed get in all sorts of places! 😉

Eventually we’d all had enough and were in need of baths / showers, food and drink so we headed for home. A quieter evening with a curry which turned out rather hotter than I’d planned and we waved goodbye around 9.30pm. I think I was asleep within the hour! 🙂

Sunday We’d planned to see Chris and Julie this afternoon but they rang to cancel so we headed out to a car boot sale this morning. Davies got a Shaun the sheep bumbag for 10p, Tarly got some hideous fluffy poodle soft toy also for 10p and I picked up a fish tank with pump / light etc the same as the one I got from freecycle for Davies ready for Scarlett’s birthday. Davies got his (original) fish for his 4th birthday and that is what she wants too so now we have the tank ready – for the bargain price of a quid :-).

We then went into the PYO farm which is in the adjoining fields to the car boot sale. We started to pick strawberries but there were lots of nettles in the field, it was hot and the pickings were a bit sparse so we quickly lost interest in that. We did pick onions, carrots and beetroot though for tonights dinner. I’ve not really picked root vegetables with the children (or indeed myself :lol:) before so that was educational for all three of us with Ady showing us what to do!

We came home for some lunch and then Ady and the children went in the garden – Ady to do some gardening, the children to catch grasshoppers which they kept insisting on bringing in to show me; That’s lovely darling, yes isn’t he green, doesn’t he have long legs, yes he is so much bigger than you’d expect a grasshopper to be in real life. I think you should take it outside now. NO I DON’T WANT TO HOLD IT – take it out quick before he jumps!!!! and I had an ill fated attempt to have an hour or so peace and quiet 😆

Tarly is long since asleep, Davies is nearly there and Ady is single handedly cooking a very lovely smelling roast chicken that he spent ages creating a home made stuffing with herbs from the garden for earlier AND fixing my washing machine which died this afternoon. We had a look at new ones in the Comet leaflet that came with the freebie local paper, we looked at second hand ones in the Friday ad and I looked at call out prices for engineers and despite barely knowing one end of a spanner from the other Ady pulled the thing out, took a look at it and having already correctly diagnosed that it was working aside from not spinning round, but was able to spin round if done by hand then the driving belt thingy must be broken he was correct and found it had come off. He’s forced it back on, dealt with the wooden flooring that was put down after the washing machine was installed so prevented it from coming out easily 🙄 and it is now spinning away happily again. We’ve noted the part number printed on it and are ready and waiting (spanner in hand) for it to stop working again so we can buy the part for mere pence and call ourselves Goddard Washing Machine Repairs & Son. Or something! 😆 I love it when he is all capable in around the house bloke type tasks 😆

Tomorrow we have Babs, Chris, Beth, Ben and Rachael arriving for a couple of days so I really need to try and have an early restorative night to prepare me for further hardcore socialising!

He ain’t heavy…

I had a variety of back up plans to resuce today if needed but in the event we had a nice day without having to.

Davies woke me at midnight last night with a nosebleed – he is having several a day at the moment which I put down to the heat. He is very calm and matter of fact about dealing with them which I very much put down to our relaxed attitude. I was telling my Mum about them tonight and she was all horrified and gasping about them – which leads me to hope he is never in her care whilst having one. He deals with them precisely so well because he has never had cause to see them as anything to panic or be hysterical about.

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa while trying really hard to stay awake to see the end of a documentary on TV. So we sorted out his nosebleed, cleaned him up and he came and slept in my bed with me. He woke around 7.30am but as I was right in the middle of a dream I really wanted to know the ending of (that ever happen to you?!) I persuaded him to give me another half an hour and go and watch TV for a bit. When I finally came downstairs him and Tarly were sat with their glasses of orange juice and straws, bread and butter sandwiches, a snickerdoodle each and very satisfied expressions at having sorted out their own breakfast. Bless them! 🙂

They decided to play with Davies’ remote control Herbie car so I suggested making an assault course for it to be steered around. They used the foam jigasw pieces and created a garage and a path for it when it became apparent that the steering was not tight enough to slalom round obstacles. Then Davies started making cubes with the pieces and building pyramids to knock down with the car. They got the plastic animals out and they became part of the game too. Then Tarly brought me a Bob the Builder annual so they did some of the spot the difference and other similar puzzles in that for a while.

I’d got a bit of a plan to walk to the library – we need to take some books back and they could have told the librarian about the books I’ve read them recently and got stickers etc. But suddenly the sky darkened and although we must have only been at the edge of the storm as we saw no lightning and had only a few spots of rain there was thunder rolling around for about an hour so we decided a walk was a bad risky idea.

I got really stuck into a couple of articles in Juno which arrived in the post. Very thought provoking and inspiring – and quite in line with some of our own thinking at the moment – must pass it to Ady to look at when he comes home. Must also look at some of the websites mentioned for further details on a few things.

Eventually we had lunch and then I worked out menu planning for next month, created a shopping list and we decided to go food shopping. So we headed off to Sainsburys. It was a mammoth shop for the whole month with only fruit and veg top ups required weekly and the trolley was brimming with all three of us carrying bits we couldn’t fit in by the end. I was so proud of them as we were shopping among various on school summer holidays children all driving their parents insane and squabbling and fighting with each other – just like me and Frazer used to do if ‘forced’ to go food shopping. I know my children are not perfect, they certainly have their share of sibling scraps and public showing me up but they behaved so well there and were actually quite shocked at one pair of similar to them age siblings who we went round most of the supermarket near to. They were being really violent with each other, getting in all the other shoppers’ way, driving their mother mad and generally being horrid. She ended up one till away from me where they continued to be mean to each other and drive her mad as she was saying to the checkout woman about how they’d only been on summer holiday for two days and were already driving her mad, she couldn’t wait for September etc. I could hear echos of the same conversation two tills away with another woman and a sulky looking child, while a pair of older brothers ran around the back of the tills narrowly missing getting hit by trolleys. D & S helped load the food on and then stood fairly quietly while I had help packing and as I’d needed a second trolley was followed to the car with a helper pushing the trolley along.

All the way home they talked about the other children. What amused me most was that they were most shocked about how they had treated each other. They were sitting there listing all the nice things that they do for each other because they love each other so much and how they are ‘good brother and sister to each other’. Watch how they’ll hate each other all day tomorrow! 😆

I counted 37 bags of shopping as well as a crate of Guinness and a six bottle wine holder, a bag of cat litter. It took about 15 minutes to bring it all in from the car and a further half hour to unpack it all and put it away. The garage freezer is now brimming with milk and bread, the fridge is groaning with a month’s worth of cheese, butter, meat etc.

I’d barely finished when my parents arrived. Mum helped the children finish tidying up the playroom and then Dad took Davies to bed and Mum took Tarly while I showered, hoovered and got dinner on. The children took ages to get to sleep – the novelty of Granny and Granddad here coupled with the heat and a decent nights sleep last night.

Tomorrow I’m baking, tidying and sewing. Almost like a real housewife 😉

End of year report then?

Back in September 2005 I wrote this post on what would have been Davies’ first day at school.

And now I am sat here on about what would be the end of his first year at school.

I don’t know what he would ‘know’ or have been ‘taught’ if he’d completed reception year – I have no idea what would be expected of him if he were about to embark on ‘year one’ in September, I don’t really understand what all the different ‘key stages’ are and the idea of an ‘enriched curriculum’ sort of makes me snigger really. This is indulged ignorance on my part, in the same sort of way as I am quite proud of never having read any Harry Potter and I never read the ‘Contented Little Baby Book’ that a friend bought me when I had Scarlett and looked hideous from lack of sleep when she met me for lunch on my third day of being a ‘mother of two’. Indulged ignorance on enjoying not needing to know, quite liking to brag about not knowing and also a bit of ‘what I don’t know can’t hurt me’ as in, if I am not aware that he ‘should’ be able to read a certain 100 words, count from 1 to 20 backwards and forwards and jump through certain coloured hoops in a certain order then I will feel no obligation to ensure he can, does or feel lacking when he doesn’t.

So I can’t round up what educational value this year has had for Davies, I can’t list all the workbooks we’ve completed, demonstrate a balance of literacy, numeracy, science, humanities, languages and art with a side helping of physical education. I can’t list the books we’ve read, the educational teachings or approaches we’ve followed. I flatly refuse to belittle all the great times we’ve had this year with friends, attending parties, camps, get togethers and so on by putting them in a ‘socialising’ box or the travelling we’ve done under a ‘geography’ heading.

What I can present, in answer to how our first official year of Home Education has gone is Davies himself. He is a happy, healthy, loving, curious, inquisitive little boy. He has great passions and interests, plays endlessly, approaches every single hour of every single day with enthusiasm, a zest for life and learning , a confidence and sense of self, an ability to articulate himself and talk to anyone he meets with the same confidence whether they are adult or child. He can make friends, negotiate, justify and argue, fit into a group, play with a handful of children, entertain himselfm make his voice heard, lead or follow. Davies knows who he is – I know many adults who have been ‘through the system’ and had that ability eroded from them.

Our whole lifestyle is shaped by Home Education but Home Education simply slips into our lifestyle.

There are times that I question whether this path is the right one for all of us, times when I know unquestioningly that it is probably not right for me, personally. I don’t think there has ever been a time when I could have seriously and honestly said it was anything but the absolute best path for Davies though.

A walk in the park…

Not really sure where this morning went. The children did some stickerbooks – Davies started on an Usborne dinosaur atlas one but could probably have done with some support and Tarly did a ‘my first 100 words one’ which again she was capable of but probably needed slightly more cheerleading than I was up for giving. They did end up working together on the first 100 words one after Davies realised he could probably read the words for Tarly to find the stickers for, but they still wanted constant ‘well done’ and ‘hurrah’ from me 🙄

They then went off to Davies’ room to play with the wooden traintrack – Brio – alike stuff. Which geomags aside probably represents the biggest amount of cash spent on kids toys in our house and is really quite underplayed with actually. I packaged up some ebay parcels, packed a picnic and we headed off to the park via the post office.

At Tarly’s request we listened to ‘the Martian song’ – War of the Worlds in the car on the way and then some Vicious Vikings. We arrived at the park before anyone else so we sat in the car for ten minutes or so listening to a bit more about the Vikings until the heat overcame us and we needed to get out of the car. It was allegedly Home Ed group today but only Julie and Lucy had confirmed coming and indeed that was all that arrived. Which was fine as it goes as the six children all get on well as do the three of us.

We sat eating picnic food while the children played. I was hugely proud of Tarly who managed to climb through a sort of climbing frame tunnel, turn round and climb down the other side, which was slightly heartstopping to watch but impressive in a ‘my brave baby girl’ sort of way. True to form having watched Tarly do it Davies decided if she could, he could so he did it too. Love their relationship and the way they challenge and bring each other on. 🙂

We left around 2.30pm as Lucy had somewhere else to be and Maisie was not feeling well. Once home D & S played in Davies’ room for a while with the train track and then they went to Tarly’s room and played with her make up. They both reappeared with faces painted – Tarly like a ‘lady’ and Davies like a ‘clown’ complete with vivid nail varnish each 🙂 They had some toast for tea while I cleaned the nail varnish off Tarly’s carpet 🙄

A big bath to wash off two days worth of yuck and as I am ‘home alone’ and couldn’t face two sets of bedtime stories I read them a book of their choice each and one of mine in the bath instead. Tarly chose a Charlie and Lola/ Lulah book, Davies chose a story about a spider and I chose Monkey Puzzle by the ‘Gruffalo people’.

They were both asleep by 8.30pm and I’m enjoying a dinner Ady would hate (pasta with pesto, parmesan and pine nuts served with home made garlic bread) and watching whatever I want on TV and sitting with my laptop without having to pretend to listen to work related conversation 😉 . Ady meanwhile is living it up in a hotel, ordering whatever he likes off the menu with beers paid for and a night’s sleep with a guaranteed no middle of the night children but has texted me to say ‘whatever I want from the menu, beer for free and I still miss home. It must be love’ which of course made me melt and wish he was here…

And that would be about it for today :-).

Mental Tupperware…

Is what I feel the need for right now. Lots of stuff going on in my head which I’m trying to sort through, categorise and organise – nothing bad or negative and I’ve a feeling it will all lead to positive stuff actually but a deep and ponderous time right now nonetheless.

We did loads of reading this morning, a big pile of library books and then Davies asked for some ‘spot the difference’ – I did him two pages of pictures and words to match up instead. On the first I did rat, mat, cat, bat, hat and on the second I did man, banana, moon, sun and house. I’m trying to make them easy enough that they are within his reach and tricky enough that he has to work rather than guess. He followed me upstairs to get dressed so I told him to get a red nose reader book from his room and bring that to me to read. With a combination of guesswork and memory of having the book read to him coupled with an amount of reading he got through most of it. He is starting to have a desire to read, to crack the code and decipher what things say. Every single night in bed he sits surrounded by books endlessly looking through them and whilst he still enjoys having the odd one read aloud to him he tends to enjoy them more as a solitary exercise which suggests to me that he may well be sitting there sounding things out to himself too.

We came downstairs and Tarly disappeared for a while whilst Davies and I were chatting. When I went to check on her she’d cuddled up in bed and was fast asleep, so I left her to it figuring she’s capable of putting herself to bed so she’s capable of knowing when she needs the sleep and let her have an hour or so.

Meantime Davies and I did some baking. I’ve been meaning to try cooking chocolate brownies for ages so I have that a go and by popular request we made some snickerdoodles too. Davies did lots of the weighing and mixing and then when the brownies were ready we woke Tarly and she helped with the rolling in cinnamon sugar of the snickerdoodles. I offered to read them some more stories while we ate some of the brownies but they declined and watched Discovery Kids instead. 😆

This afternoon they played with the geomags for ages, making space rockets and space robots
Geomags are easily one of the most played with toys here and as such it’s easy to chart the changes in their play with them accordingly. I love the deckopanels sets you can get where you can insert your own printed or drawn artwork into panels to create great effects. I think they may well be something we think about asking grandparents for for Davies’ birthday as I can imagine they would get a lot of use.

After school Mel came over with Liam and Lily. Liam, Davies and Scarlett disappeared off upstairs for some riotous and very noisy game while Lily was iin a quieter mood and wanted Tarly’s Dora house to play with, to watch Boobahs and to dress up – pretty much anything to get Mel’s attention really. We had a variety of strange dressing up combinations when the others came downstairs with Tarly prancing round in high heels, a fairy cape and wings and bunny ears, Davies dressed as a traffic warden carrying a Roman shield and wearing a gladiators helmet and Liam wearing a Buzz Lightyear suit with a Peter Pan top and hat 😆 Lily in a Belle dress was fairly normal in comparison!

They had tea and then disappeared for further playing while Mel and I chatted – further adding to my odd state of mind in many ways. Ady arrived home and they eventually left. The children took forever to get to sleep tonight which I hope means they will sleep in a bit in the morning. Ady is off tomorrow for two nights away with work which as usual I am not looking forward to – expect much online presence to fill the gap…