One word? When seven would do…

I keep watching programmes about different lifestyles and hunter/gatherer outdoorsy type of pursuits and deciding that although what we have is less than we used to we still have way too much. Really hankering after a camping trip and some time away from all things electronic and plastic :lol:.

Scarlett was awake again in the night, coughing. They are both still fairly miserable although it does just appear to be a cold so I had pretty much decided not to go out today which was decided totally be realising one of their car seats was still in Ady’s car anyway – so no MM for us today. I’d already offered the children the option of going out to group or staying home and watching films and they’d gone for the films option anyway. So we / they have watched Shrek 2, something with Barbie and a Brum video. I made some cheese scones for lunch and some flapjacks. I read a book for a while although it was stinking of cigarettes (one from the library and funnily enough one of my colleagues was talking about how some books come back reeking of smoke and I said I’d not noticed it before. I could smell cigarettes in the bath last night and couldn’t work it out, deciding it must just be the fire, but realised this morning it would have been the book I was reading. Made my fingers smell too – urgh 🙁 I then felt the need to do something other than sit behind my laptop so I got the hama beads out ( very boosted by some donations from Alison a while back and Merry last week 🙂 ) and we all did that for a while but got bored around the same time as each other so tidied that away again. This time of year always makes me wish I had some sort of crafty hobby like knitting that I could be getting on with – I love to read but it always makes me appear absent to A and the children as I get immersed in it – something to fiddle with while still able to talk or watch tv with then would be ideal – and something non messy like my papier mache or modelling projects so I can still sit on the sofa with it. I think I have some knitting needles and wool around somewhere, might dig it out and have another go or try and come up with some sort of sewing project again.

Right, need to go and sort out some food for the children before Beavers for D. Oh and Dr Dog is on with a hypnotiser, just incase D had forgotten all about that. 🙄

We are sliding ever more towards later bedtimes for the children, the knock on effect of which is that they tend to sleep later in the mornings too – all good :). Scarlett has had a couple of disturbed nights though this week and last night was one of them. Both the children seem to have gone down with a cold in the last two days and she was awake last night complaining of being cold. Ady dealt with it although it kept me awake too so I was glad that no one woke until 8.30am in the end. Ady slept in while I got up with them.

We snuggled on the sofa and watched Croc Files (oh Steve 🙁 ) and chatted a bit about that then we made a wacky wiggler thing together. We’d made one following the instructions yesterday but had clearly not pushed the bits together firmly enough as it kept falling apart – this time we got it spot on so all took great delight in that. Davies and Ady talked a bit about the whole gears side of it and the part of each individual cog in the whole thing being so small and yet so important. Davies read the names of the various creations in the instruction book with minimal help. I’ve noticed a real leap forward in his working out words – for ages he would just repeat the individual letter sounds and not really blend them, now he seems to break them into syllables fairly easily and then blend those – all steps forward :).

Ady got up then, I got dressed and the kids and I made pancakes together while singing ‘Fiesta‘ very loudly in the kitchen – perfect pancake making sound track that 🙂 put me in mind of that Morcombe and Wise breakfast making to music sketch from years ago. Until Davies took the whizzer out of the batter mix while it was still whizzing so he could see how it whizzed 🙄 Fortunately it cleared up pretty quick and I calmed down sufficiently to show him how it worked and explain why it was blades and how I’d originally bought it to whizz up his baby food long, long ago but it also served the purpose of mixing and blending too.

Ady went off to collect some logs while Tarly played on the pc (My Little Pony, Barbie and various other pink and very fluffy websites :)) and Davies and I had a go at draughts. I used to love playing with my Dad when I was little and Ady and I have gone through phases of draught playing championships over the years too. I’ve tried to show him before but he always gets bored of the rules and tries to create his own game loosely based on draughts which I run out of patience for. We managed one game with him getting some of the idea of thinking a move or two ahead and tactical playing. The set also contains chess pieces and he decided he wants to learn that but as I do not know how to play that (my Dad didn’t so I never seemed to learn that one) Ady will have to do that.

Ady brought home a couple of grabber things (the sort people who collect litter use to grab it from the ground and put it in their sack) from the trade show he was at which have proved a great hit with the children so we were reaching things on high shelves with them today. 🙂 We got down a Kitchen Science kit which is from at least three Christmasses ago and had a play with some of the experiments in that. There was a cold tea (from the teapot 😉 ) one where you added various acids and alkalines to it and tested them with litmus paper, mixing oil and water and then adding things like syrup, food colouring etc which was very pretty and has possibly inspired us to create on of those egg timer style lava lamp thingies if we can find a suitable container and finally an experiment on mould where we have put two pieces of bread in sealed bags in the fridge – one with salt and one without, and two pieces on the mantlepiece as a warm place, again one with salt and one without to see which conditions are best for growing mould in. Felt a bit contrived really as it was all very following instructions and what they actually wanted to do was just mix up loads of stuff and not really care about the scientific explanations but somehow because it was a proper set with test tubes and everything I couldn’t bring myself to allow that 😆

Davies then played X box, Ady cooked dinner and Scarlett and I went out for a walk to go and buy some wine. We walked into Lancing (about a mile) chatting as we went about all sorts of things. She is a very different child to Davies and where conversation with him is as easy as with another adult and always seems to have been so I tend to get more childlike responses from Scarlett and conversations are more along the usual walking down the road with a four year old variety of observing things along the way and asking random questions as you go. When we hit the main street she suddenly started letter spotting everywhere – road markings, road signs, drain covers etc and was 100% reliable in spotting the letters in the word SCARLETT and also found a couple from other words such as a D for Davies and a N for Nic – she knows A, B and X from the x box controllers and knows the names of several of the letters in her name too. We went round the shop, queued for ages it’s a little Somerfield which is always busy no matter what time you go in there, and then walked home again. Scarlett did not stop talking for the entire time we were out. 😆 She takes the term ‘chatterbox’ to a whole new level that child. We agreed it had been a very nice walk and arrived home to find a motorbike in our drive announcing a visitor. Tarly predictably tried to climb onto it but was persuaded into the house to see who it belonged to. It was our friend Bruce, who’s wedding we went to nearly a year ago. He was deep in conversation with Ady in the kitchen which seemed very confidential and stopped rather when I came in, so I busised myself in the lounge with the children doing online colouring in of ponies with Tarly and left them to talk.
Lovely roast beef dinner then a peaceful afternoon / evening with more pc games. I showed Davies some of gamegarage and we played several logic and platform games requiring thinking moves through before making then which he seemed to enjoy, there is no doubt that his xbox gaming has brought out a new level to his skills in that area. He has also been asking and talking lots about numbers, playing with multiplication and addition lots and counting up ever higher. He asked me today if there was such a number as 2001 and how long would it take to count to it, so I explained where it was and that actually he could count to it himself if he wanted to, he’s also been adding up 11s. I overheard Ady counting in 3s earlier (no idea what he was counting) and Davies saying ‘you’re missing out numbers Daddy, that’s not how you count’ so Ady explained and I’m sure that will have gone in and resurface at some future point too.
Ady took Scarlett off to bed with bedtime stories while Davies and I watched Ray Mears together, then we have had bath, toast for tea and various bits and pieces of tv watching. It’s been a very nice weekend. 🙂

Just watched – finally – the last episode of Dr Who. For some reason we missed it when it first went out and never managed to catch up on the repeats. So I borrowed it from work and we’ve just watched it. Ady has gone to bed, still laughing at me for crying at it. 😆

It’s been an interesting week really. I had a bit of a house of cards (or so it felt to me anyway, maybe I’m rather too used to being let down) arrangement set up for childcare for my one and a half days working but that all went splendidly. I had a couple of lovely evenings in Merry’s company, got to drink wine around the children yesterday with Ali (love proper socialising with someone I only really get to see in daylight hours normally 🙂 ) and had an excellent day at work yesterday. A few new faces have been put infront of me at work the last two weeks and broadened my horizons slightly with regard to the whole thing so that is making me feel rather more positive. There is a particularly interesting woman who normally only works weekends but has been around a bit during mid week and I am finding really lovely to be getting to know and yesterday I felt much more like I was getting immersed in the whole job generally. So that’s all positive – will blog about that a bit more maybe soon as I have more to say but will save it for a post all of it’s own. 🙂

We had Class Visits yesterday though with children from year one – Davies’ age and that was rather illuminating 😯 rather too many shades of battery farming for my comfort levels. The most shocking bit was when they needed to make all the children be quiet at the end of a story and the teacher announced ‘one, two, three, RABBITS!’ and they all fell silent 😯 Again something I anticipate coming back to and I know the ratio of adults to children requires some level of crowd control but still…

It’s been a good week generally for Home Education. I’ve done a lot of talking about it, some of it preaching to the converted, some of it telling the curious but doubtful and some of it defending in the style of an online rant. As ever when I have talked about it a fair bit I am feeling fired up, passionate, zealous and empowered by the whole thing so prepare for plenty of evangelical ‘ I have found the one true path’ style blog posts :lol:.

Lucy was here with D & S in the morning, handing over to Ali and Freya in the afternoon. The children seem to be actually be positively thriving on the childcare arrangements so far which is good. 🙂 I’ve done some very productive ebaying getting a pair of replacement boots suitable for workwear, wedding outfits for me, Davies and Scarlett (none of which have arrived or been tried on yet so are subject to change 🙂 ) and the Wacky Wigglers all with the proceeds of my ebay selling so that is good. 🙂

Today we have caught up with being just the four of us and this particular four of us given the array of people passing through the house this week, caught up on sleep, popped out for a few bits of shopping supplies and generally lolled about. More of the same planned for tomorrow. 🙂 Oh and maybe some baking, been ages since I did any of that. 🙂

Blogging from work in my lunchbreak 🙂

Ady back tonight so may not be around online 😉

Having a lovely morning so far and can’t wait until I am important enough to use the computers whenever I like. Can you imagine the blogging potential?

‘Just had an old woman in returning the latest Danielle Steele novel – she says it’s good but not as good as that Titanic one she wrote. Right off to put some travel guides to Latvia back on the shelves now’ 😆 It’d be great :).

Does mean I need to sort links back into my side bar so I can find everyone else though – oh and get used to IE again!

Went the wind and whoosh went the week. Can’t believe it’s Thursday already.

Merry and girls arrived on Tuesday afternoon and stayed until after lunch today. It’s been a lovely couple of days with all the children seeming to get on really well. Lots of dressing up, playing with the castle and colliseum, Barbies and Polly Pockets and a fair bit of film viewing. There was some sort of Fimo masterclass for Tarly with Fran teaching her to make fairies (Davies just got on with it and made a Wallace and a Gromit :lol:) and I think pretty much all fall outs were between siblings.

Lucy, Richard and Rebecca joined us today which was nice and Lucy stuck around after Merry and co left and helped me work round the house restoring order and collecting lost property (three socks, two tops, two pairs of trousers, that angel teddy (which Scarlett is convinced is a ‘dead teddy’ :lol:, a wooden doll – will bring them to Sheffield unless any of it is desperate to be posted?).

Merry and I managed 4.30am on Wednesday morning and 3.30am today before retiring to bed. Not so bad this morning as I don’t think either of us emerged much before 10am although I know I was getting visited by children so I’m fairly sure she was too. Yesterday was slightly less sensible as I worked in the morning, so was standing behind the counter in the library a mere 4 hours after having gone to sleep feeling every one of my 33 years 😆 and more!

Merry bought a lovely selection of her new beads and bits to coo over and play with which was much enjoyed and I am now sporting my new liquorice allsorts bracelet having made and baked fimo around 1am this morning. 🙂

Davies had Badgers yesterday evening which he really enjoyed again, he is getting loads out of Badgers and Beavers and in some ways they almost seem to be complementing each other too so that’s all good. 🙂

Ady is loathing being away, it is loads of corporate entertainment which is so not his thing – I believe he got to bed even later than melast night which is hitting very hard for a never seen after 11pm sorta man like him. He’s desperate to get home tomorrow and I imagine will need the entire weekend to detox and recover!

This afternoon we watched Bagpuss with Tarly and I snuggled under a blanket and Davies playing with the Gears! Gears! Gears! Wacky Wigglers that I won on ebay after Helen naughtily reminded me of how I’ve been meaning to get a set by blogging about them, but I did get at a bargain price and he has been attached from the instant the door closed behind Merry and co (it arrived this morning and I told him not to open it until everyone had gone home. 🙂 ) They had soup for tea and Tarly was asleep well before 7pm, Davies hung it out a bit later but was at least tucked up in bed playing by 7 too.

I’ve bathed, fed, spent more time on ebay bidding for things for me and the children to wear to K&J’s wedding. We need to be up and about early tomorrow as we have to pick Lucy up at 8.30am to drop her and all the children back here and be at work for 9am, Ali and Freya are coming over in the afternoon for second shift of childcare and Ady will be home in the evening :). Looking forward to a quiet weekend and having had one or both children in my bed for the last couple of nights I am shortly about to go and savour the whole bed to myself before Ady returns to it again tomorrow ;).

Alison (Big) – who at 7 today really is getting big!

Quite enjoying the solitude. 😆

We had a nice afternoon and Tarly and I dropped Davies off at Beavers. We came back and I read her a pile of books all cuddled up together as I said I couldn’t do bedtime stories tonight as Daddy’s not here. I also lit a fire. Ady tends to have problems with lighting our fire but it’s one of those tasks that it never really occurs to me to do (a bit like hoovering 😉 ), anyway I laid it just like I watched Dad do every winters night for years, lit it and away it went – I felt just like a first former lighting one for the older girls at Malory Towers 😆

We went to collect Davies, stopping to look back at the house and see the smoke coming from the chimney on the way. I’d pretty much abandonded him really given last week was his first ever week there and he knew no one but the thought of trying to contain Scarlett while 15 boys ran around playing games was too much to consider so we’d just dropped him off and left – they have my phone number and obviously I could have been back there in less than a minute (it is literally at the end of the road) – I even kept my shoes on just in case :lol:. Anyway we walked in and he was quite happily messing about with one of the other lads and sitting in the middle of a group looking more than happy so no worries there then. 🙂
He came dashing over to tell me he had learnt something new which he *needed* to demonstrate and as they had announced that ‘Oliver is going to say a prayer as we are doing our faith badge this term’ at the end I was semi anticipating either a psalm or indeed a demonstration of hypnotising the room enmasse 😉 but he dashed to the end of the hall, took a run up, dropped to his knees and spread his arms out to skid across the floor towards me. With utter delight 🙂 He said the others had all been doing it so he’d watched them and had a go and couldn’t believe how you kept moving on your knees. So another great milestone moment there. 😆 I told him that it is a child’s solemn responsibility and contribution towards the couple’s future happiness to perform this act at wedding receptions while the adults dance to High Ho Silver Lining and Love Is All Around so I imagine he’ll be trialling that at Kirsty and James’ next month. 😆 He did ask if we could refloor our hall (the only area in the house with the length to perform such manouveres but I said not so I expect he will take every shiny smooth floor opportunity he can get to hone his skill – won’t be taking him to Tesco’s any time soon then. 😆

They rang Ady to say goodnight – Davies’ first sentence was ‘Mummy’s made a fire and it’s really good!’ then went off to bed with fairly minimal fuss. I hoovered in honour of Ady and then had a bath by which time both of them were asleep. I had a dinner that Ady doesn’t like so is my stalwart in his absence dinner and am enjoying the peace, my lovely fire (which I have sent him a picture text of :lol:) and listening to Kirsty MacColl.

cos the alternative is too bloody awful to contemplate 😆

Yesterday was pretty good, lovely roast pork at lunchtime, did a massive overhaul of Davies’ bedroom, got rid of piles of crap, stashed loads more stuff in the loft space, finally said goodbye to some toys I’ve been trying to edge out for years and got it ready for having guests to stay in with plenty of floor space. It needs redecorating but that’ll have to wait until I get the urge or we’re away and Dad does it. Then I did the same to Tarly’s room. Got all her Barbie furniture in a wooden crate which makes it look really tidy, took great pleasure in putting all her Barbies into a big box like a cardboard coffin, got shot of some stuff and cleared out under her bed. There is still stuff under the bed but now it is arranged there ready to get out and play with rather than serving as another cupboard. She has a slat bed which I’d put together upside down so the slats were on the bottom of the frame rather than the top. It made sense at the time as there is a recess that way for the mattress to drop into but as two of the slats have broken it is clearly not the designed way. So we took it apart and put it back together again mending the slats at the same time. So the house feels sort of spring cleaned inasmuch as every room has had crap and clutter removed or at least sorted through in the last few weeks.

Today started badly, when I got up there was a massive puddle of water and soggy loo roll (just tap water and on a mat so not dreadful but still the first thing I saw as I came downstairs) and the lounge floor was a sea of videos that Davies had tried to use as building blocks for something. So they set about tidying up those messes while I got some washing sorted, then they messed about over their breakfast and faffed about over getting dressed. Outside I discovered the blue box men hadn’t taken a heap of cardboard we’d left out for collection 🙄 they always leave at least one token thing in the box, a single envelope or one plastic bottle for some reason.

The children were really squabbly in the back of the car which always drives me insane so when we ground to a halt on the road over the downs with traffic infront as far as the eye could see I knew my limited supply of patience was running low. We sat for over half an hour with most of the cars infront of us turning round and double backing, but we were probably only a mile or so from group and although I know an alternative route it would take the best part of an hour and use up loads of petrol so I decided we were so close we might as well sit it out. By then enough cars had gone by that we were close enough to see a lorry had collided with a motorbike and about 10 emergency services vehicles were on the scene dealing with it. The road finally reopened after I’d reduced both children to tears and assured them as soon as we were out of the traffic jam we’d be going school uniform shopping ready for them to start school tomorrow 😆

Group was good, they made masks with letter stickers, feathers and sequins then they joined in with running around and general craziness. Ali and Freya were there so that pleased them as it’s been weeks since we saw them last. There were membership cards being made and laminated too so I made one each for us as the children didn’t want to it themselves. It was most amusing this week to walk in and find laminating and membership numbers, mission statements and Allie with a clipboard happening at MM 😆 all very official ;).

The children were equally as squabbly on the way home and in concentrating on keeping them in line rather than the speedo I screamed past a speed check which I’m fairly sure would have clocked me doing around 80 :(. I guess if I get the points and fine then it will at least be the third self inflicted annoyance in a week (buggering up my blog, sending an ebay parcel to the wrong address which then got lost and I had to give a refund for and now a speedy ticket) so I can finally put my own ability to cock up behind me and start to focus on always being right again ;).

We got home and the children were fairly contrite, we had cuddles and they promised to behave this afternoon which they have more than managed to do. I’ve sat quietly and drunk tea while they played together really nicely and harmoniously. Guess I wouldn’t value that if they did it all the time so maybe we need to take the crap with the good eh? My parents flew off for three weeks yesterday with my Mum ringing me in the morning and asking me to keep an eye on my brother (who is 3o!!!) and to ring my granny at least once a week as she is poorly (having flown back from a month in Amercia for Christmas she’s gone down with what sounds to me like no more than a bad cold – wonder if she asked Frazer to keep an eye on me alone with my two children with Ady away this week, or Granny to ring me to check I am ok – I suspect not. Sometimes it’s shite being the capable one :lol:)

Off to walk Davies round to Beavers in a minute, forced to stay without me on just week two by me needing to take Tarly with us and not being willing to sit and try and keep ger quiet in the hall while all the lads run around playing. So we’re walking him there and then going back in an hour, think I’ll read her some stories while we’re home along which will negate the need to read them to her at bedtime 🙂 I’m hoping for an early night for them both tonight so I can have a very long bath and pretend it’s not Monday so I can drink anyway 😉

Davies has got from somewhere some information about hypnosis and wants to get either film or a book to learn how to do it :lol:. Aware of what a crazy idea this could be ‘you are feeling very sleepy, when I click my fingers you will be appauled by the very idea of your laptop, your fingers will not move over the keyboard and your eyes will hurt when you look at the screen. 3 2 1 you’re back in the room’ he doesn’t seem to be giving it up any time soon. So I’ve done a quick google to find some childrens books or films on the subject and found a series of books about Molly Moon which I’ve reserved at work but I think they are more stories than a how to guide which is what he is after.

Anyone got any ideas?

It might be here awhile 🙂

In the words of the much quoted song I did indeed have a bad day. It’s been a bad week really, not all of which will make it to be dissected here but by the skin of my teeth I think I pulled it round at the bitter end and I’ve got the weekend to work on improvement techniques.

Today Scarlett played with a space jigsaw for a while until Davies’ game got more interesting looking so she decamped to play with him instead. He had got out the big play mat with road, hospital, school, police station etc. and set up all the various emergency services vehicles from the toy car box. He read a few of the various words on the mat as he went – he is coming to terms with the idea that actually he *can* read and that this is A Good Thing rather than something he should be denying. Slow and steady definitely, but getting there all the same :). He then wanted some people to play with on it so I suggested the lego people might be about the right size so he dug a handful of those out of the lego box and set it all up. That was the point Tarly decided it looked interesting and went to join in, taking soft toys with her and totally buggering up all the carefully laid out dimensions :lol:.

I packaged up a load of ebay sales – I sold ten items in the end for nearly £70, not quite as much as I’d have hoped but a pretty good conversion into cash from things hanging in the wardrobe. :). Took forever to do that and then we walked in the drizzle and wind to the post office to send them.

We came back for lunch and then Tarly put a Barbie film on (12 dancing princesses I think – I can’t quite bring myself to watch :lol:). Davies watched for a while – it is a film after all 😉 but he gave up too and gathered up various pens and paper and props and turned an old Stella bottled beer cardboard box into a TV set complete with various backdrops, scenery, characters and floors. He made up three ‘films’ with rabbits starring in the first and second and an alien in the third. He showed them to an audience of Scarlett and various soft toys, then me and later when Ady got home he saw them too. In terms of plotline and dialogue he remained about the same all three times proving he did at least have some sort of plan rather than a totally ad lib performance. 😆

It was tea time by then so I put on Carrie’s War which I’d picked up at the library on Wednesday on dvd. Scarlett asked a few questions about evacuation and made a few observations such as ‘they’ll miss their mummy and daddy’ but them lost interest but Davies saw it through and ended up sitting on my lap for the last half hour or so. He asked loads of questions and clearly remembered bits and pieces of chats we’d had about some of the issues refered to in the film before. My Granny was evacuated to Cornwall during WW2 and kept contacts with the people who took her in for some 40 years afterwards and my Dad had cousins evacuated to North Wales from London to stay with them (he recalls nicking his cousins sweet rations :lol:) so it is something we have touched on before. And of course it is refered to in Peter Pan II (known in this household as ‘The Jane One’).

I sat with them both as they fell asleep tonight – some two hours apart 🙄 so although we’ve had our moments today I know we ended the day and the weekdays on a high. Tomorrow will be better 🙂

1.2.3

better? hate it? still need to play but that’ll have to wait til tomorrow. 🙂

column two seems to wander about a bit in IE but looks ok in firefox. also the title seems to only be there when you pass the mouse across it.

Beth 🙂 7 today!

It won’t stay looking like this 😆

But if I don’t actually do some blogging it’s a bit pointless having a blog really no matter what it looks like!

So yesterday then. Dentist first thing for Ady and the children – I was excused by virtue of being so frequently during November and December with my troublesome wisdom tooth but went along as Ady is scared enough of going to the dentist let alone being sent with two small children. 😆 Davies practically leapt in the chair first, his bottom two teeth are on the way to being wobbly apparently 🙄 and otherwise all fine. Tarly’s were all fine too and Ady’s the same. All for the bargain price of £15.50 🙂

Once home Ady went off upstairs to do some college work, I did a tidy up job on the playroom (again, sigh) and the children played with the toy animals. I’d imposed an xbox ban for the day and intended to do some stuff with them in the afternoon, including the lemon powered clock kit Davies got for Christmas. I’d got the lemon ready and everything. Except I can’t find the bloody kit anywhere 🙄 Did manage to get shot of two bags of board books from Tarly’s bookcase, replaced them with some story books and uncovered the dolls houses in the playroom which promptly got played with loads.

Ady went off to college and we broke for lunch. I thought I’d check emails while they watched TV eating lunch, had this wild idea that I’d upgrade wordpress on my blog and did some very loony things in places I really should know better than to touch resulting in pretty much killing the blog dead. 🙁 Emailed my technical support hero and spent the afternoon fretting about over 3 years of lost blogging disappeared forever. I was seriously bereft. 🙁

As a result of that trauma and not being able to find the lemon clock I was short tempered, anxiously checking my emails and the blog every three minutes and did nothing with the children except sigh and growl at them. Davies, desperate for some gaming experiences trawled the dvd extras of Willy Wonka (current fave film again having got the xbox game) and found some games on disc 2 so was playing those. I did help a bit and one of them was a logic game which talked about rows and columns so I explained what those were and how the logic element of elimination worked.

Then followed a ridiculously late dinner caused by me avidly watching my blog reappear having sat with Davies for ages too. He got this little W&G filofax type thing for Christmas with a diary, address book etc in it and a load of little puzzles like spot the difference, quizzes etc and was looking at some wordsearches and anagrams. The anagrams were too tricky to explain properly but we looked at the sillouette pictures of various characters which you were supposed to match up to the unscrambled anagrams and we looked for letters we knew would be in their names in the scrambled up words instead. He was pretty good at working out how to spell most of the words. Then we looked at the wordsearches. I was slightly reluctant on this one, partially because it was getting on for 9pm and partially because I am unsure of the wisdom of words being spelt backwards, diagonally and vertically for a child who is not yet reading but he was adamant he wanted to do them so we read the words together and then looked for them. He proved surprisingly able to read the words such as carrot, cabbage, marrow, potato and equally able to find them in the wordsearches. So I was proved wrong and pleased to be :).

Scarlett woke up at 3am which was bad as I’d only been in bed a couple of hours and she was totally awake and wanted to get up and have breakfast. She couldn’t be persuaded to just play in her room / stay in bed so came into our bed but she kept chattering and wriggling about so I think Ady took her back to her bed around 5am and then went off to work. I was woken by Davies around 8am getting into my bed and chatting and when Tarly woke I persuaded them to go downstairs and come and wake me at 8.30am. They organised their own breakfast (bread and water :lol:) and put Willy Wonka on and came and woke me when the big hand was indeed pointing straight down – but the little hand was on the nine rather than the eight!!! 😯

I somehow managed to get them drinks, make me a cup of tea, hang washing out, do the washing up from last night, defrost beef and get it in the slow cooker with onion, garlic, red wine and stock for dinner tonight and get us all dressed and out of the house in just over an hour.

We picked Lucy, Richard and Rebecca up and headed off to Fun Junction soft play. We met Julie, Jack and Maisie there and had a great time. The children got instantly lost inside the mazes and slides, we sat and chatted. We had lunch and then went back in for another couple of hours playing. I nipped across the road to the main library without children (bliss!) and we finally left there almost having to bodily drag the reluctant children away! Dropped Lucy, R & R home and then came home to watch Willy Wonka again.

Ady got home with precious Costco supplies – we’ve been out of Skippy peanut butter since before Christmas, I was down to the last couple of scoops of washing powder and Ady’s filter coffee was about to run out so the children celebrated with skippy sandwiches then I took Davies to Badgers. This week I literally walked him in, kissed him goodbye and left to sit in the car with no fuss at all. I sat and read my book in complete peace and silence under the interior light of the car eating sugared almonds (as close as I could get to bonbons!) and then popped back in to collect him. On the way home he was telling me that they had made first aid kids (they are doing First Aid Badger this term) with green card and would be putting crepe bandages, triangular bandages, alcohol wipes, safety pins, scissors, eye wash in them. They making a lid with a white cross sticker on top because first aid kits are green with a white cross. I was stunned at how much he’d taken in in one hour there 😯 he also said he’d been chatting to another boy who is also six but is even smaller than him (I know who he means) but he didn’t know his name, so he is clearly getting in there with the other children. 🙂 He said he really enjoyed it and is looking forward to going next week. Hurrah!

Tomorrow I’m working all day – for only the second time ever due to all the reduced hours over Christmas. Lucy is here in the morning and my Dad in the afternoon. My parents are coming for dinner as they are jetting off on Sunday for a month long holiday to South America. So you might have to get used to this pink for a couple of days before it changes again! 😆

Merry 🙂

Anna! 10 today 🙂

oh yeah.

It’s rained pretty much all day today.

I’m cold and although we can’t really afford the bill I’ve had the heating on all day, I could put more clothes on but I need to dry the washing.

The house is full of washing, dirty washing that I can’t get washed and wet washing that I can’t get dry.

I’m sooooo tired. I meant, really meant to go to bed early last night to recover from Saturday night, but online car crash rubbernecking kept me up way later than I meant to be. And then the kids were both up at 7am when Ady went to work, so I had about 5 hours sleep – not nearly enough for one night let alone to play catch up from the night before.

Kids are really tired too and have ‘wet play syndrome’ which in Tarly comes out as acting as though the world has ended over the tiniest little event. In the space of ten minutes earlier she cried because I wouldn’t buy her anything in the charity shop at group (she couldn’t find anything to buy), because I made her go back into group (she didn’t want to go back to group, she thinks group is horrid), she didn’t want to go home (as she sat wailing in the corner and said to Kate ‘NO!!!!’ when Kate asked her if she was ok and did she want her Mummy? so I decided to take her home) and that I hadn’t let her play enough 🙄

So I’ve no idea where the morning went given we were up so early. I realised it’s my friend Miranda’s 40th on Wednesday at the weekend so we decided to make her a calendar with some of the photos of her gorgeous house, so I spent ages setting that up and emailed it across to Ady at work which made us 40 minutes late for group (and when I got home it had bounced back anyway :roll:).

The hall that MM is held in has been all Changing Rooms style makeover done up over Christmas and now has gorgeous bright coloured soft play style shaped bits of multi purpose style furniture and a posh floor and a special ceiling. Which looks fab and makes it the sort of place people who are pretensious would call ‘a positive space’ but they’ve taken away all the tables for drawing at and the stools for sitting at the worktop, drinking tea and chatting at. I assume they are hidden and will be returned but it meant leaning against the worktop to drink tea instead and it’s at completely the wrong height for leaning. And I got called Nikki again, and I was so tired I spent most of the time I was talking to people concentrating really hard on not yawning in their faces instead of paying attention to what they were saying and was utterly crap at talking to the couple of new people just smiling vaguely at them and saying ‘my name’s Nicola’ which will confuse things even more as I never call myself Nicola normally but I’ve got into the habit from being at work and meeting new people. So now people will be talking about Nic, Nikki and Nicola and not knowing they all mean the same person. 😆 I paid for the years membership though, me and Tarly not being in the right mood today aside it is a good group, I’m glad we’ve found it and it feels like the right place to be making our local HE contacts, the children seem really happy with the mix of people there and although it isn’t actually in our local town it takes no longer to drive there than it did to get across town to some of the venues I hired for the Worthing group. And oh, how lovely it is to just turn up each week instead of worry about whether enough people will come to cover the rent 😆

Came home for late lunch (must get more organised at sorting out lunch to take with us to group, it cocks up the whole day eating lunch at 2.30pm) and more drudgery with wet and dirty washing, washing up and getting dinner on. Kids played and it all calmed down to normality again. Sometimes I forget that most kids their age wouldn’t be up til midnight with a houseful followed by a birthday party on Sunday and Home Ed group on a Monday – if they keep our socialising hours I guess they do need downtime. Poor over socialised HE kids! 😆

Ady came home in time for me and Davies to walk round the corner to the Beavers group. Predictably the Beaver Leader fell over yesterday ice skating so it was being run by the Cub Leader and the Quartermaster instead – ably but without any ability to tell me stuff I needed to know as a new person. However it did contain 15 little boys aged 6 to 8 who all live within about a mile radius of our house so that’s a bit good 🙂 There was one other new boy but at least half the others already knew him from school. I didn’t find out anything like where to get the t shirt from, whether it’s better to buy the sweatshirt through them (they might offer discount, if not I’ll get it where I used to work), whether he has to be invested before he gets a woggle and scarf, what the subs are and so on. But I did get asked, before they even took Davies’ name if I’d be able to help out once a term and when I said ‘er ok I guess so’ was told they’d bring a CRB check form for me next week. And my library one won’t be any good. So they can do one for Ady too and he will do a session a term as well (which he is already excited about :lol:). They did some ball games including heading and catching, some general running around, some drawing and some circle time type stuff all of which had me inwardly cringing on one level but I won’t normally witness it and Davies was fine with it. He integrated straight away actually, easily with the adults and fairly effortlessly with the boys. He’s a real people pleaser and watches how others act and then emulates them, just like Ady, so he quickly blends in and looks like he belongs. He initially said he didn’t want to come back as it was lots of running around and that had made him really tired, until I pointed out that it was practically bedtime so he was *supposed* to be tired. So he’s agreed to go back next week and I’ve already won a Beaver sweatshirt on ebay (it’s a colour that suits him anyway so if doesn’t get worn for Beavers it’ll get worn) so I’m pretty pleased about that. Got him sorted I reckon with Beavers on Monday and Badgers on Wednesdays. Scarlett can start Badgers too when she turns five and I’ll look into the girls version of Beavers at the church hall – Rainbows? And also gymnastics for her for a future date. I don’t think dance will be her thing as much as gym and unless she begs me to be a ballerina I’m avoiding that one like the plague ;). I also signed Davies up for swimming lessons a while back so must chase those up for him but those are a 12 week only thing. I reckon 2 nights a week is more than enough for ongoing activities but both have healthy doses of running around being sociable rather than anything structured so they should be exactly what he needs.

I finally made full use of my two big baskets crammed with lush stuff by having a bath bomb in my bath, using a face mask, shampoo and conditioner which was all lovely :).

And now look, it’s 11.30pm again already. Grr. Tomorrow we have absolutely zero things planned other than the dentist first thing in the morning so it’s a no laptop day and we’ll see where the day takes us.

Thanks for all the messages and birthday wishes. 🙂

I had easily my best adult birthday and a definite contender for Best Birthday Ever (although my 18th probably beats it still).

I had a lovely long lie in followed by tea, toast and presents from Ady, Davies and Scarlett. I got a gorgeous set of underwear, chocolates, bath stuff, a beautiful wine glass which Davies had specifically instructed Ady to get, some fimo beads made my Tarly which I have now strung onto thread to make a bracelet and home made cards from the children. Davies’ has a picture of me on the front and lovely writing with loads of kisses and hearts, Tarly’s contains her first ever writing of her name all by herself so is very special 🙂 Apparently Ady went out of the room for something and when he came back she’d written ‘Scarlett’ all by herself. I admit to being slightly sceptical as although she’s been typing it for a while and spelt it out with the foam letters last week her actual writing was fairly non existant. But in the car yesterday afternoon she wrote it again on the steamed up window 🙂 She’s now picking out the letters of her name everywhere and is dead chuffed with herself 🙂

Then my Mum arrived to take me over to Brighton to the Lush shop. Every year my parents spend lots of money on things I am not particularly bothered about having been bought (not to sound too ungrateful there 😉 ) so this year Ady had said to them that one of the things I was really missing being able to spend money on was nice bath stuff and the very best present they could get me would be Lush products. So she took me over there and when we got in the shop told me I had £50 to spend 🙂 And because they had their January sale on for every £15 spent I’d get a free gift too. So I spent nearly an hour going round filling my basket up and got nearly £80 worth of stuff in two massive bags which is now all beautifully arranged in the bathroom scenting the house.

We went back to my parents for lunch where Ady and the children were already waiting and had lunch and pink fizz, then came home. Layla, Si, Claudia and Jasper arrived and we had a lovely evening. The children all played really nicely, Jasper was gorgeous, Ady cooked a lovely curry followed by Thorntons birthday cake, loads more fizz and general chat. So nice 🙂 We all went to bed around midnight I think. I took Tarly to bed, got in with her for a quick cuddle and woke up around 1.30am having fallen asleep with her 😳

This morning we had a birthday party to be at for 10am which was a bit of a struggle but we managed it. It was Lily (as in Liam and Lily, our friend who go to school and some of you would have met at our parties) and the party was at a local sports centre in a big room with a bouncy castle and various climbing and soft play type stuff set out. There were probably about 15 children there – mostly Lily’s age (4) and then Liam (7 tomorrow) and Davies. The children found energy sources from somewhere on their 8 hours sleep and raced around climbing, bouncing and leaping about for an hour and a half and had a whale of a time. Ady and I sat watching them speculating on how different a child Davies is now to the 3 year old he once was. Neither of them show any signs of shyness or self consciousness in envrionments like that anymore, they get stuck in and have a good time, playing with any available child they come across. We left there and popped into Sainsburys to get a chicken for dinner. Ady popped out to get some logs, I got dinner on and we all ate together around 4.30pm.

The children had a bath and were asleep really early, we watched Confetti on dvd that I’d borrowed from work and I’m about to head off to bed, even later than last night (how did that happen then? :lol:). Tomorrow MM starts up again and I’m taking Davies along to see what happens at Beavers in the evening, so right back in the swing of things again. 🙂

the 33 years ago today post, mostly because although that was a pretty big day for me I don’t remember it, there don’t appear to be any photos of it and actually it was more about my parents than me really wasn’t it.

So to blog the day before the clock struck 12, this morning we were nicely lazy with lots of tea drinking (I made a whole pot just for me :)) and TV watching. I discovered that Fred2 (see earlier Fred & Albert post for the story of Fred1 and Alberts 1 and 2)had expired. Now Fred2 has not been quite himself for a while. He lost his fin a while back and in recent weeks has lost his tail too so he was basically just a fish body – the Boxing Helena of the aquatic world if you will. We were unsure as to whether he had some sort of fin rot type disease or if perhaps Albert3 had been eating him. Thing is, when we bought Fred2 and Albert3 in the summer they were both the same size. But Fred2 never grew – infact if you take his missing apendages into account he actually shrunk, whereas Albert3 grew like an overeater on steroids, like someone on Atkins supplementing the diet with toast. So about 2 weeks ago we seperated them. Albert3 got to keep the spangly tank with the light and the stones and the pump (mostly cos even we’re scared of him, he’s BIG!) and Fred2 got the old fish tank from the garage and was placed next to Albert3’s tank so if he had been eating him he would be able to nananananah at him through two layers of plastic (aswell as a fish with no fins can do nananananah!). He seemed to be doing OK , as far as a fish without a tail or a fin can do anyway, but this morning he was, well, dead. So I came downstairs and broke the news to Davies. Who dashed upstairs with Scarlett to go and look and then came back down again. We chatted about it, discussed what fish heaven if there is such a place might be like (lots of talk of fish cafes, all you can eat fish food buffets and an endless sea with loads of plastic treasure chests and pretend divers to swim around) and then Davies asked if we could bury him in the garden near Malice. I agreed but said Daddy would need to take care of that as I hate touching fish at all, dead or alive.. Dead cat corpses I can cuddle but fish are not my thing. So D asked to draw a picture of Fred2 in his former glory with fins and tail to bury with him. While he had the pens out I got him to make a thank you picture for the Thank You Neighbours too. We’ve decided not to replace Fred2 until the summer. Albert3 is already big enough to make the leap into Granddad’s pond so as soon as the weather is mild enough for that to happen he will be taken over to my parents and set free and Fred3 and Albert4 will be purchased together. So far Barbie & Unicorn are doing well you’ll all be pleased to hear. 🙂

Then in order to persuade D & S to get dressed around 10.30am I promised Davies I’d show him the cool animation site and Tarly I’d read her stories. They got dressed but Tarly decided to look at the site instead of having books so we all cuddled up together round the laptop screen and looked at basis rollers (2 picture animations). More about what we did over on Davies’ monster movies blog but that was a nice productive hour or so.

I made lunch and then Frazer arrived for childminding duties while I went off to work for the afternoon. It would normally be a full day for me but it was pro rataed for the bank holidays so I just worked a half day and got paid for a full one – result :). I did 1 3/4 hours on the counter, which I really enjoyed, two hours of shelving / tidying which I enjoyed rather less and a quarter of an hour at tea which was lovely as there were still plenty of chocolate liqueurs to eat with my cup of earl grey. 🙂 I came home with a couple of dvds and several more cds too – loving that perk :). I realised today I’ve been there a month today and thinks are starting to click into place. I was presented with a list of training sessions for me to attend for this year which I’m looking forward to and it’s all starting to feel quite familiar and normal. 🙂

Home to find Davies snuggled up watching Discovery Kids on the sofa with Frazer and Tarly being crazy. Frazer said she’d not stopped talking all afternoon but much of it was nonsense 😆 I think they’d all enjoyed themselves, we’ll have to see if Frazer’s up for childcare ever again ;).

Don’t expect I’ll be around much until Sunday – I’ve got a pretty full day booked tomorrow 🙂

We went to Lucy’s this morning. Davies and Scarlett enjoyed exploring all the new toys Richard and Rebecca had had for Christmas while Lucy and I chatted. One of the (many) topics of conversation that came up was school and how HE children being ‘school curious’ is probably a totally natural and normal thing. I recall being ten or so and every kids tv programme or book I read was about school, best friends and first interest in boys, parties, sleepovers etc. Even the happiest HE child must be swayed by that whole other world which other children their age inhabit and spend most of their waking hours at. Even if I’d known about HE when I was a child, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy school I doubt I’d have wanted to have been Home Educated simply because I couldn’t imagine not being at school. I assume that for a Home Educated child, being different is an everyday part of their life and they must ponder what it would be like to join the rest of the world for a while. My favourite TV show was Grange Hill, my favourite books were the Malory Towers series – I reckon I’d have been pretty desperate to get to school and grab some of the promised action. 😆 I think the whole friendship thing is possibly something girls are more likely to fret over too. I recall so wanting to have a Best Friend when I was younger, someone to share secrets and make up with, whereas my brother and indeed Ady so he tells me, simply had a pack of mates they hung around with. They might have had a best friend but really it was being part of a team or gang that was more important. Very generalised I know but even from watching Davies & Scarlett I already notice that Scarlett tends to pair up with one other child to play whereas Davies is happy running round with loads of other children. Home Ed for us has always been about the children, not me. It suits us as a family but only because it has shaped our lives since we started out, if it was no longer part of our lives then family life would take on a different shape. I always think that if I’d never had children I wouldn’t have missed them because all of the positives about not being a parent would have compensated for what I didn’t even know I was missing. I think school vs HE would be the same sort of thing really. There obviously are benefits to school and that would be what we focussed on if the children ended up there.

All that said, I can’t see it happening here any time soon, it would have to 100% come from the children and at the moment I can’t think of much other than idle curiosity which would sway them. Lucy and I concluded that it is definitely the better way to approach it to have tried HE and decided school might be an interesting option for a confident, happy 10 year old than to send a 4 or 5 year old with the option of HE later if school didn’t work out though. And then carried on drinking tea and chatting while the children played. 😆

I’d arranged to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie at Highdown this afternoon with the possibility of Lucy, Richard or Rebecca or two or three of them joining us. In the end just Rebecca came along but unfortunately once there she decided she was missing Lucy and ended up a bit teary. We rang Lucy so she could talk to her and then as she seemed OK but just a bit subdued we carried on. Davies, Scarlett, Maisie and Jack were all really enjoying being there. They played for ages setting up some sort of complicated assault course to race round and then did a show based on ‘four little men in a flying saucer’ which they’d seen on TV this morning. Julie and I sat on a bench and chatted, Rebecca sat on my lap and dozed a bit. The children wanted to move on again so we walked a bit further before finding another bench so they could play in some trees.

We’d arranged to meet Lucy at Sainsburys but as we were working our way back to the carpark Scarlett disappeared. Her and Maisie ‘got lost’ last time we were at Highdown and had been hiding rather than lost but as she was alone it didn’t occur to me that she might be doing the same so there was a frantic five minutes of calling her before she finally answered from out of a bush right next to where she’d disappeared 🙄 must read her the boy who cried wolf. 😆 We drove back listening to Tumble Tots Action Songs which Davies suggested Rebecca might like (Tarly suggested War of The Worlds which was slightly less suitable I thought :lol:) and met Lucy in Sainsburys car park. She kindly offered to have all the children in her car while I dashed round Sainsburys which was great as I did it in record time and felt very smug when I barely recognised my friend Rachel who I’d not seen for a few months and was looking very very thin and quite drawn and dealing with her son in school uniform and her toddler daughter throwing a spectacular supermarket tantrum and was able to smile, say hi and ‘I’ll leave you to it’ before swinging off with my basket! 🙂 It transpires that Rebecca was actually feeling poorly and by the time I got back to Lucy’s car she was crying with pain of earache so I hope it had not been too traumatic for her and that the next time she spends time with us without Lucy it is happier for her.

We came home and I got out some foam letters which I’d covertly picked up in the Wizard store earlier when we popped in to get birthday presents for Liam and Lily, who’s birthday party we’re going to on Sunday. Davies has been really into his writing and spelling this week and Tarly has started spotting letters from her name everywhere so I thought maybe some letter tiles to play with would be good. These were a quid each and are foam puzzle pieces with push out letters and numbers. I would have got just one set but it occured to me that Scarlett wouldn’t even be able to spell her name without a second set for the second ‘t’ so I got them one each. As they opened them I suggested they try to find the letters from their names. Davies did his, then said that was excellent as his name has six letters and six foam squares would make a cube, so proceeded to do that. Scarlett shocked me by gathering the letters and spelling her name straight away. 🙂 (Davies lent her his t). Then she looked at Davies cube and said ‘three of the letters in Davies’ name are in my name too’ and pointed to the S, A and E. Then even more staggeringly they both tidied them all up ready for dinner. They put A Close Shave on while they ate and then I suggested Henry’s Cat which I used to love when I was a child and they both like now. While it was on and they were watching I googled it and happened upon the official Henry’s Cat website and then followed links to this totally excellent site by Stan Hayward who created Henry’s Cat. HC was one of the first characters I learnt to draw (did you know his face is made of the letters Miiow?) when I was probably not much older than Davies and that site looks fantastic for Davies to spend some time looking at. I then followed further links to Stan’s blog which is worth reading for various nuggets of film and animation related tidbits. I was so impressed that I emailed him and he’s emailed back already so I’m feeling quite starstruck at exchanging emails with HC creator 🙂 and he says he’s looking to make the makemovies site even more child friendly soon too with a large animation database to be added. Ady’s leaving his laptop here tomorrow so I can just set Davies up on it and let him explore to his heart’s content. 🙂 I’ve also found some other software which should let us make the length of each frame on our animations shorter so the movements are more fluid between shots.

I’ve been thinking about the structure of our weeks moving forward. We have MM on Monday, I am working alternate Wednesday and Thursdays and every other Friday which only leaves Tuesday definitely free each week so I am determined to make that the day we spend time doing stuff together. That means no sitting behind my laptop all day and actually planning a few options in advance of things to do even if it’s just cuddling up with a film, reading a pile of books or stuff like doing some animations with Davies or some other crafts with Tarly. The children adore their time spent playing together and I’m never going to intrude on that but they are starting to get to the age where plenty of the things they’d enjoy doing are things I’d like to spend time doing too so just for that one dedicated day a week I’m going to try and claim their time and let them claim mine. Tomorrow I’m only working in the afternoon so I can do some stuff with them in the morning too.

I had a message on the answerphone today from the local Beavers group saying there is a space for Davies now available on a Monday evening. I first rang about Beavers when I found out about Badgers way back this time last year and as the two were on the same evening and Badgers came up first I never gave Beavers much more thought. But now Badgers is on a Wednesday it would make sense to give Beavers a go too – it is held in the church hall literally around the corner which aside from being convenient to get to will also mean that all the attendees are fairly local too. It would be great for Davies to get to know some same age children who live really local and from working for The Scout Association for a while a few years ago I know a well group scout group can be an excellent thing to belong to. He’s not super keen on first mentioning, but I’m going to ring back and see if we can go along on Monday and see what it’s all about so he at least knows what he’s refusing the chance to try. And I guess that brings this post back full circle, so it must be time for bed ;).