One word? When seven would do…

The children and I have spent most of the day on the verge of hysteria today, mostly due to possibly the most over-embellished song I have ever heard.

This morning was quiet with the children doing some geomagging and then we popped to the post office to send Christmas cards before heading over to Ali’s.

On the way we put on one of our Christmas cds and track one is ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’. I must try and find a way of getting it online so everyone can share in the hilarity, but basically it is just so messed about with that although the basic song is there somewhere it is totally buried under a pile of vocal whoa-whoa-ing and baby-baby-ing. We listened to it about four times, singing along even more outlandishly ourselves and then turned the music off and tried to over-embellish nursery rhymes in the same style. I did Twinkle Twinkle (twinkle, twinkle , tiny) Little Star (gonna spend the rest of my whole life wondering what the hell you are), Davies did a rather good Humpty Dumpty and Tarly mostly laughed a lot with a few ‘oh baby’s’ added in for good measure. We enjoyed it so much we took the cd in to share with Ali and Freya too and infected them too (bet you’re still whoa-whoaing!).

Lovely visit as usual – there was the cruel subjection to us of a pink and fluffy film, xboxing, pesto pasta and peanut butter sandwiches made in about four different preference styles and bread colours.

We drove home listening to the Wallace & Gromit soundtrack cd which Davies adores, spending the whole time not actually listening to it as such, but giving a full running commentary on which bit of the film it is the music to. Honestly – when I was a kid I used to fantacise about being an actress or a dancer or a singer. Davies is practising being the director and talking over films for the dvd extras! 😆

We called into Tesco on the way home. That’s the All New Tesco which has Been Reopened After Substantial Refurbishment. It was pretty busy and because nothing now lives where it used to, or indeed where you might have temporarily gotten used to it being during the work it was full of people wandering about looking for tinned soups, cat litter and low fat fromage frais. We did a fair bit of that too, in particular spending time searching for ginger wine. I did feel really quite ashamed of that really, like I’d let myself down infront of my children by not being able to track down any given alcohol within a two minute time frame :lol:.

Ady had already gotten home before us, so we did the kids’ tea and then sat watching tv and chatting. Continuing the theme of general hysteria I organised them to bed by way of an empty toilet roll loud hailer all of which probably contributed quite heavily to neither of them falling asleep very quickly. We caught up on 3 mini books from their Christmas Carol advent calendar (it has 24 little books telling the Dickens story which you hang on the tree as you read) and all hid from some carol singers because we didn’t have any change to offer them 😆 Ah happy days!

Happy Birthday Abbie!

Hope you’re having a lovely day 🙂

Love, Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlett xxx

First slight bit of work related fall out with the children today. Entirely my own fault unfortunately although of course Ady pointing that out was rather unwelcome! 😆

I got up later than I’d meant to which meant I only really had time to get dressed, gulp down a mug of tea, gather together some clothes for the kids and spent maybe 10 minutes with them. The last time I really worked was pre-children and I was never out of bed any earlier than half an hour before I needed to leave the house. I can’t be doing with sitting around waiting to go to work, I’d far rather have just enough time to get ready (and make up and getting dressed takes 10 minutes at the most), have a cup of tea and go. But I clearly need to rethink that a little and do a bit of spending time with the children before heading off. Despite the fact I am a permanent fixture – or maybe because of it – when I suddenly become a sort of limited period only type offer I have small people clinging to my ankles, blocking the front door and sobbing with grief at my abandonment – Ady never has such troubles!

I did make the grave error of a bit of emotional blackmail to try and get them dressed before I left for work which utterly backfired and was what pushed them both into wobbly lip, tear streaked faces. But in much the same way I suspect – no actually I know, that they were employing the self same emotional blackmail tactics right back at me. I left them composed, if wobbly and went to collect Lucy, Richard and Rebecca while Ady stayed behind with them, spent the whole time talking at Lucy rather than asking about her training last night and arrived at work flustered having feared I was cutting it fine time-wise but actually arriving in plenty of time.

To give the above the happy ending, I had promised to come home for lunch if they wanted me to, rang and chatted to both children on my tea break and been assured they were both fine and didn’t need me to come home and then rang again during my lunch break and again chatted to them both. Very odd talking to your children on the phone. I’m sure it will be something I get used to but having never done much of it it is very strange to hear how grown up and mature they both sound. 🙂

So, work :). I covered lots more training-y bits and pieces. I adore the order of the procedures there – the whole numerical order for reference books, alphabetical order for fiction filing on shelves, the paperwork heavy working practises but above all I am utterly loving the people watching opportunities. In colleagues, customers and the whole community in general I am seeing constant examples of people and my fingers are itching to type all about every one of them. I have at least three potential subjects for a book I’ve always dreamed of writing, access to some of the most fascinating characters I’ve met so far in life and frankly sod the money, the having a bit of a break from the children, the lunchtime reapplication of lipgloss and the ‘nipping to the supermarket during my lunchbreak for a few bits’, you can keep the name badge, the need for grown up work clothes and even all the no more library fines or charges perks of the job, what I am loving most of all is being someone none of you lot know, someone even Ady doesn’t know let alone the children, I am being Nic At Work and it’s quite some while since I saw her in any mirrors. I’m enjoying watching my colleagues faces as they realise that not only am I likely to be pretty good at all the (let’s face it fairly mundane) work tasks they set me but actually used to be someone in a career a million years ago and that period of exploring and learning about who the new girl is. I am loving dealing with customers again, getting to know the regular faces, learn a few names, exchange banter and become a face people associate with a certain place. Of course the children are in the back of my mind – when I was tidying up the children’s books today I was browsing and gathered up a couple of books for them to bring home with me, today I ‘came out’ as a Home Educator to another 2 workmates and discussed NC with another one and of course I rang and spoke to them twice, but I am not aching for them in the way I fretted I might, I am confident that they are fine and are getting as much out of not being in my continual company as I am.

I’m feeling liberated and although I had tears rolling down my face this morning when Davies was crying and Scarlett’s bottom lip was all wobbly, I learnt a lesson about managing this whole new era properly and I’m confident that this is all going to work out really rather well for all of us. 🙂 All due respect to Lucy for her massive part in this of course. I can’t think of many people I would be quite so happy about leaving them in the care of – infact I could probably list on one hand the people who I would not only feel confident in the ability to be with my children with but actually feel like they are gaining something from being in the company of. 🙂 Hopefully my parents are going to gradually work up to spending more time with the children as a result of all this too. Dad has done two afternoons with them but he tend to take on the role of supervisory adult rather than actively doing stuff with them. It remains to be seen whether my Mum steps up to the challenge of actually doing any of the childcare – I hope she does although I think it will indeed be a challenge, but I think that she will come to regret the very small amount of time she has spent with them in their early years as time goes by if she doesn’t make the effort now.

I arrived home with a big pile of books (I have the entire catalogue of Jodi Picoult that I’d not already read 🙂 ) including several for the children so we sat and read three of those, with a further couple for bedtime reading. I think Ady is planning to bring them to the library on Saturday afternoon while I’m working to choose some films and books. Whilst I don’t want them to be a menace while I’m working the library is already somewhere they are very familiar with and I want them to get to know it as my workplace too over time. Lots of cuddles and declarations of love from them both tonight, which was lovely. 🙂

And now, because of course there is indeed a downside to working I am exhausted, a good two hours before I normally consider it bedtime, my feet ache from total lack of standing up in faintly unsuitable shoes all day, I am planning to go to bed.

Oh and I am also pondering on this years Christmas blog. Two years ago it was my nativity, last year I bottled out and this year I am debating a panto featuring blogring characters or going the whole hog and creating a Stars In Their Eyes Christmas Special with everyone singing rewritten customised lyrics to popular songs. 🙂

Up early this morning with Tarly, so we sat and snuggled on the sofa watching tv together. Davies got up and we sat altogether cuddled up. Lovely 🙂

The children asked to play with the wooden train track today so when I went upstairs to get dressed I brought it back downstairs with me and they sat and set up a track. Lucy arrived with Richard and Rebecca, who both dove straight into the train track playing while Lucy and I stood in the kitchen and I iced some biscuits.

Then it was time for Tarly and I to head over to the doctors to meet our HV for her 4 year development check. Our HV, Jenni, is lovely. I first met her when I was pregnant with Davies and she was pretty much everything you could ask for from a HV for a woman who had never even held a baby let alone changed a nappy or fed one before having Davies. I didn’t have family around to help out or offer advice and Jenni was great with lots of non-judgemental, helpful and sensible advice. She came to HV work from midwifery and between her own children and fostered ones has raised about 10 kids. I know that she is fantastic in being supportive of the young, single mothers in the more deprived areas of the town we live in and although I have heard many horror stories about HV generally I think she is a genuinely nice person in the job for all the ‘right’ reasons. So I last saw her shortly after we moved home for Scarlett’s 18 month and Davies’ 3.5year checks and we had a good old catch up, I sometimes see her to smile or wave to when we’re out and about in Lancing and infact the Health Centre where she is part-based is next door to the library so I imagine we’ll bump into each other there. I was in two minds about the development check really. Partially because I knew we didn’t ‘need’ it, I have no concerns about Tarly’s development, I know the check is mainly a pre-school preparation one so rather irrelevant to us and I remain cagey about the fact we are not known to LEA etc and feel that any contact with anyone could be what flags us up (and I’m not being paranoid, I know of at least one realife case where a well meaning HV refered a family to the Home Ed LEA bod) and clearly however lovely Jenni might be she is part of ‘the system’. But similarly I know I have nothing to hide as such and would rather have gone along and allayed any doubts or fears than prompted non existant ones by not doing so. I still took up Lucy’s very kind offer to stay with Davies while I took Tarly over there on her own though so as to not parade my six year old infront of her and also to ensure it was all about Tarly rather than their usual double act.

So we set off across the road (literally) just before the appointed time, queued at the reception and spoke to the receptionist who gave us a series of blank looks, kept scurrying off to confer with someone else and eventually came back to say there were no developement checks booked in, Jenni wasn’t there today and was I sure I had the right day and right place and right time. I bloody hate doctors receptionists, having had many a row with them over the years so I confess to having something of an attitude back to her and standing there for just a while too long to ensure she had to apologise for the mix up and suggest I ring Jenni rather than just dismissing me without a word as appeared to be her intention. I dashed back home, fished out the letter asking us to attend and rang them. I spoke to another HV who assured me that yes, we were booked in, yes Jenni was on her way to the doctors and that she would ring the surgery and tell them I was coming back over again. So we put our coats and shoes back on and stomped back over the road again. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to the receptionist apologise for the confusion and being all magnanamous and saying ‘oh that’s ok, it wasn’t your fault’ all sweetly to her (which it wasn’t – it was her attitude which pissed me off, not the confusion about the appointment.) and then we sat in the waiting room and looked at books until we got called in.

Jenni opened the meeting with ‘well we don’t normally see children at this age anymore, but I just realised it would be the last chance before I stopped officially being your health visitor and I wanted to see you!’ so she did the checking type stuff in a cursory manner, asked loads of questions about HE, asked after Davies to the degree that I almost wished I had brought him (cos actually, although she has many a baby through her care and clinics she clearly remembered so much about us and all sorts of little details that I think she’d have probably liked to have seen him), appeared reassured at my explanations and ideas on how we do things, seemed interested about the whole national curriculum bashing I did and left me with ‘well that’s it really, but you have my number, so as you won’t have a school nurse please do ring if you ever have anything I could help with’ and that was that. 🙂

She did ask me if I ever get cross. To which both Scarlett and I laughed but it appeared to be a genuine question and she said that in all the years she’d known me I just always appeared so carefree, calm and happy that she couldn’t really picture me losing my temper. I assured her that I do, regularly and Scarlett backed me up that I do indeed shout lots, but ‘I always know Mummy loves me’ :). So either she’s heard me yelling at the kids from across the road into her office and was checking up on it all or she genuinely has only ever seen me on my best behaviour! 😆 Scarlett was looking at a book while we were chatting and kept interupting to either point something out or ask a question and I was stopping my conversation with Jenni to talk to Tarly a lot so I guess I came across at quite patient and child focussed, which I do strive to be most of the time but I’m equally capable of telling them to shut up interupting me when I’m talking and just wait!

Back for lunch and some rapid tidying of train tracks before Colin fetched Lucy and co for Lucy to go and start her new job 🙂 and we wrapped up warm and headed out to meet up with Julie, Jack and Maisie at Highdown Gardens. It was mild and not too windy so we had a nice couple of hours with the children running round and us following at a slower pace and chatting. Although we see each other every week we were saying that it is mostly in the company of other people too which means conversations take slightly different turns rather than our previous cosy sister in law chats, so we caught up properly which was lovely. 🙂 Julie’s also supposed to be staring a small part time job in the new year so although it means our regular get togethers with Lucy might get pushed about a bit hopefully the 3 of us will continue to manage weekly meets and catch up on our new topics of the world of work again. 🙂

Maisie and Scarlett managed to scare us by double backing on themselves and hiding in some bushes. I think it got slightly out of hand from being a little joke which they’d intended to jump out on us with to us fretting that they really had got lost and suddenly we had a full scale search going on for them. There were lots of gardeners in the grounds so Julie and Jack went one way while Davies and I went the other yelling the girls’ names as we went. It was probably less than five minutes but felt longer before I heard Julie yelling ‘I’ve found them!’ and there they were. They had been barely out of sight the whole time and I think as our voices got more frantic they’d started to feel too scared to come out. First time I’ve thought I’d lost Tarly really though, that’s a bloody scary feeling isn’t it?

We left them and came home again. I offered to do Christmas hama bead patterns with them but they turned me down in favour of playing with the geomags together instead so I left them to it.

They both fell asleep really late tonight – gone 9pm. Davies was lying in bed playing with a vtech laptop thing he has typing his name in. He did ‘Davies’ but wanted to know how to do his middle and last names so I showed him.

Off to work tomorrow for the whole day – looking forward to it 🙂

A bit of a mixed day really, mainly due to my own impatience and the childrens’ tiredness rubbing against each other at times. First thing we sat and did Davies’ Christmas scene stickers. I offered to sit and do the Christmas jewellry with Tarly but she wasn’t interested and wanted to play on barbie.com instead. She loves that site and has learnt how to type her name and navigate all around the site from it. She wanted to type ‘unicorn’ today so I wrote that out for her and she did that. She also spotted that the C and the R were also in Scarlett. I should probably dig out some of the software Davies liked playing when he was about her age but I think it is the all things pink and girlie which is captivating her about the barbie site rather than the novelty of ‘playing’ on the computer.

Davies played with the geomags and Tarly kept coming and going between the geomags and the laptop and then Lucy arrived, finding both children still in pjs :oops:. It took some persuading but I talked them both into getting dressed and then as Tarly was being stroppy about anyone watching her on the laptop and Davies was asking to play Zoombinis we swapped over and Davies played Zoombinis with Rebecca as an audience with Tarly and Richard and Rebecca veering between the two playing with toy cars and at being pussycats. We had lunch, Ady arrived home and Colin came to collect Lucy, Richard and Rebecca.

We had some laptop time after Ady went off to college with Davies Zoombini-ing, Tarly Barbie-ing and me catching up my monsterteeny blog which is very boring to write so is probably boring to read. I do want to record our day to day stuff trying to seperate the education and have a record of what we do do as autonomous Home Educators but I’m struggling to keep it even weekly and am sure it is more of a list and far less capturing what we actually do and what gets learnt and lived. Not sure what to do about that really, will ponder further.

I had some biscuit dough left and wanted to make some more mince pies so Tarly and I did some baking and Davies continued on Zoombinis before moving on to X box. He did come and join in with baking for a bit doing some cutting out, greasing tins and putting boiled sweets in the middles of biscuits but soon got bored and went back to his x box! I forgot to mention that Ady gave him a diary yesterday that he’d got free at work and Davies instantly started to fill it with all sorts of drawings and snippets of writing. He called me up to his bedroom to show me some ‘inventions’ he’d drawn last night. Both the children are at really interesting, but very different stages at the moment and I can’t help feeling slightly torn between them, spending time with one always feels like compromising the other as neither of them are interested in the same thing as each other – need to find a way of apportioning my time between them better so they both get the one to one they want at least some of the time with me.

So Tarly and I did lots of baking. For once it really felt very educational indeed in very obvious ways today with lots of counting, adding and subtraction, practical skills like rolling, cutting and filling mince pies. Julie rang at one point so I was in and out of the kitchen a fair bit and Scarlett did really well at just taking over what I’d been doing and rolled out pastry, cut circles and started to put them in a tin before apparently remembering she is only four and starting to stick the pastry brush and a knife in the remaining lump of pastry and making shapes with it instead 😆 Scarlett is a very interesting companion to work side by side with. Davies tends to engage very much in conversation and really spending time in his company is like being with another adult much of the time with lots of observations, anecdotes and on topic chatter. Tarly is rather more random, prone to all sorts of apropos of nothing statements and lots of declarations of love and affection, often in relation to what we are doing. ‘I love these sweeties Mummy’ ‘I like them too, they’re yummy’ ‘I love these sweeties more than anything in the world. I love them millions’ ‘that’s nice’ ‘but not as much as I love you Mummy’.

Ady arrived home, followed by my Mum on her way home from work. Davies, who has the beginnings of a cold and has nowhere near caught up on tiredness from the weekend was starting to struggle with being nice to be around. They had tea, I cut Davies’ hair long, long, long overdue) and they had a bath, which raised his spirits a little again.

Tomorrow Tarly has a 4year development check at the health visitors which I have mixed feelings about but having always really quite liked my HV and feeling quite definant about having nothing to prove I am going to attend with her and weather permitting we’re meeting Julie, Jack and Maisie for a walk in the afternoon which will no doubt do the children the world of good if they are wrapped up warm.

started with getting up late

On the 11th of December things that went wrong for me;
Tarly ate tree decorations
and I started with getting up late

On the 11th of December things that went wrong for me;
children wouldn’t get dressed
Tarly ate tree decorations
and I started with getting up late

etc.

One of those days today. I woke up late, Tarly had been eating the biscuits and candy canes off the tree 🙄 and I had a list of things I needed to do before leaving the house and on the way to Home Ed group. I managed to get a wash on, drape wet washing round the radiators (we are in danger of being either taken over by the dirty laundry pile or simply running out of clean clothes here – my usual laundry obsession abates totally in the winter, particularly now my tumble drier is broken – it’s the line dried freshness that gets me going during the warmer weather :lol:), bung a beef curry in the slow cooker, clingfilm cold pizza and mince pies to take along as our contribution, get hold of Ali, persuade the children to get dressed and then dig out a couple of small Christmas presents to wrap up for the children to be given to them at MM. I had a couple of small gifts in mind so having managed to find them from the various pressie stashes around the house and even managed to unearth some wrapping paper with robbins on from last year (not bought this years yet) I went looking for the sellotape. Now I had a brand new roll of sellotape in my hand last night, I’d found it in Tarly’s room when I was doing a post-houseguest mad weekend tidy up, put it inside an unturned footstool along with various other things that shouldn’t be in her room and bunged the footstool in the playroom ready for putting all the bits and pieces in their proper homes later. The footstool was still in the playroom, but the right way up and with no sign of the various bits and pieces from inside it. I rang Ady to check if he’d put the sellotape somewhere, checked with the children and drew blanks all round. Then I remembered that we did have a second roll of sellotape (sellotape and me have a funny old relationship, a bit like other people and busses. When I don’t need it then rolls of it seem to haunt me, falling off shelves, turning up in unexpected drawers and cupboards and generally making a nusiance of themselves. When I do have the urgent need to afix something using single sided tacky clear tape is there ever any to be found? Nope!) – I knew I had taken a roll to Tarly’s party, ready for sticking tiaras together, I even recall using it. Some of the last remaining bits from the party were still in the back of my car waiting to come back into the house so I went and rummaged through all of them looking for the sellotape. Nope, not there, clearly kidnapped by some evil sellotape baron and being held hostage. Maybe somewhere there is someone with a parallel problem except with scissors or drawing pins, maybe I have what they want and I’ll suddenly start to get small pieces of sellotape sent to me in the post along with ransom notes (made of letters torn from newspapers – they can’t cut them out, they have no scissors – and attached to paper with sellotape asking for unmarked scissors to be left in a briefcase in a phone box and my sellotape will be returned unharmed. Which leads me to wondering whether the only real purpose of phoneboxes now is for dropping off ransoms and teenagers doing sordid early sexual acts to each other, cos surely nowadays everyone has a mobile phone anyway and doesn’t need to use phoneboxes for actually making phone calls). I did find the smallest mini roll of parcel tape during all my rummaging though and sparingly used the last few centimentres of that left on the roll to wrap the Christmas presents.

Then we drove to Brighton, in the pouring rain, listening to Christmas carols played at top volume while I sang all the descant versions :lol:. That restored spirits somewhat and we had a lovely time at MM where we had a Christmas Party. Parachute play, lots of food and Christmas music, the hall decorated with the bits and pieces we made there last week and lots of general festiveness. Saying to people ‘see you in the new year’ when we said goodbye made me feel quite Christmassy too. 🙂

Things went back downhill again from there though really. 🙁 We drove home fine, listening to Stop The Cavalry on repeat because both the children love it (have to say it reminds us all far more of Newgale and the children marching round a table with the Price children in August than Christmas but never mind :lol:), once home I spent ages trying to track down various dvds I’d sold on ebay but the kids had nicked back from the ebay pile. Gathered them all together and started to try and pack them but of course I have no sellotape. I managed an ok job although at least one enveloped needed sticking closed but I hoped the nice lady at the local post office would notice it and stick it shut for me.

The children had strewn their pressies out across the lounge floor ready to be played with when we got home – Davies got a make a Christmas scene kit with various sticky bits and Tarly got a make Christmas jewellry kit with plenty more small pieces. Rather than bother with coats and shoes I carried them out to the car shoe-less and they planned to stay in the car outside the post office while I nipped in with my parcels. I stopped outside the cashpoint to get some money to pay for the postage but it was out of order. So drove to the next cashpoint and got money out there. Then to the post office, where customers were queueing out the door 😯 I sat in the car with the childern for a while but although the queue was moving more people were coming into the post office so in the end I decided I’d have to go and join the queue. I did so but hadn’t been in it for more than a couple of minutes before the children, who could see me through the window, had got out of their car seats, wound the car window down and were shouting at me, drawing loads of attention to us all. 😳 I abandoned the queue, went to find out what emergency it was that was prompting such behaviour only to discover there was no emergency other than they’d been squabbling and wanted to report each other :roll:. Lost my temper completely, in full view of all the queuing post office customers, threw all my parcels in the car and drove to the next post office yelling at the children all the way. 🙁

Arrived there to find the same thing – queue out of the door, but a shorter one cos it’s a smaller post office (the one at the end of my parents road where they have known me since I was four and we moved there and my mum used to go to every week to collect her family allowance with me in tow) – again left the kids in the car outside (no shoes, remember) in full view of the post office under very strict instructions to behave and went and joined the queue. By now the unstuck parcel was very unstuck indeed, particularly having been chucked around by me so I had to buy some sellotape to stick it down with. I asked why all the post offices were so busy and having gotten my lecture about supporting them rather than going to another post office first anyway (I don’t live at the end of the road anymore!) she said it is the busiest day of the year for the post offices – apparently there is one Monday every December which is always bedlam and this is that Monday. 🙄

Having now been out for well over an hour with various cashpoint and post office related incidences we were out of time for doing anything with the pressies other than tidying them up and I had no chance at all of making any food to bring along to the Badgers Christmas party. Ady arrived home, having made a special effort to be there to come along too but ended up having to stay behind doing some emails for work (which made me slam doors and stomp about even more). Me and the kids left the house about 10 minutes late, with Davies having labouriously written a Christmas Card to Lisa, the Badger leader (although he did ask if 2 the number after 1 was spelt the same as to as in ‘to Lisa’). We pulled up outside the hall and found it in complete darkness. 🙁 No idea whether we were the only ones and having been late they’d already given up on us or whether Lisa simply decided not to bother but there were no messages on my mobile or the home phone so I was pretty pissed off about that. Fortunately the kids were not too upset, having already been to one Christmas party today, I was relieved that I hadn’t had time to make a load of food and Ady was most surprised to see us back home again five minutes after I’d slammed the door on the way out.

In the end all was redeemed as I made their tea, Ady finished his work and did all the tidying up while I sat and IM chatted with Lucy and calmed down a bit. Really looking forward to not leaving the house at all tomorrow, we’ve got baking to do, making the christmassy bits, some other decoration making, a possible visit from Lucy, R & R and a generally peaceful day planned. I reckon we are all long overdue it.

Oh and that new roll of sellotape I bought at the post office? I’ve put it in a brand new dedicated sellotape designated area which only I know about. 😆

which is something of a novelty at my house so I’m enjoying the peace 🙂

We’ve had a lovely weekend, Kirsty & James arrived on Friday evening, Saturday morning was filled with making heart shaped sandwiches and transporting all the party stuff over to the hall. I spent a slightly hysterical hour in the hall surrounded by all the various stuff, an empty hall and no real idea of what I was going to do with it all. I faffed about for at least 15 minutes wandering between the kitchen and the hall before finally plugging in lots of fairy lights, arranging a table with chairs round it, turning a very handily available high backed chair into a throne for Princess Scarlett with lots of pink velvet and silver sticky stars, laying out the food and drink and folding napkins into goblets.

I created a cake table on the same tatty wooden table on wheels that held Davies’ cake(s) with lots of pink netting and drapery, put beads into bowls and secretly did some prancing around the place cos I do like to show off in big open private places, particularly ones with a stage that has real stage lights 😳 :).

Tarly arrived first with Ady, Kirsty and Alex

She did lots of present opening and meeting and greeting her princess guests, someone made the first round of tea (Julie I think) and when all but one princess had arrived I could hold them off the food no longer so they all sat down to feast – including a toast to the birthday girl using their jewelled goblets and pink fizz!

Food finished we did various things included Ali’s pefume making, Alison’s beaded braclet making, tiara making (with very carefully controlled glueing ;)) and a not as carefully planned as it might have been making a fairy to stick on a scene for Scarlett to keep forever (cos you know, she might end up being the sentimental type! 😉 ). It was all very civilized and gracious and Tarly really loved it 🙂

Ady and James arrived with Davies and Marcus in time for blowing out the candles

and demolishing!

The princesses were persuaded to line up for a photoshoot

before turning into loons with the addition of two boys and playing a very rowdy chasing game for the last hour! 🙂

Some of the party continued back to our house for xboxing, film watching, further running round like loons, cooking and eating several small pizzerias worth of pizzas and plenty of drinking and baby worship too. 🙂 Oh and some singing of course. A lovely, lovely day 🙂

Today was slightly quieter with a slightly later start. Kirsty and James stayed til just after lunch (cold pizza! :lol:). Davies and Scarlett get on so well with Marcus and Alex, it’s a really nice foursome of children to have around :). They left (with a doggy bag of pizza for the journey!) and we swung into Goddard Christmas Countdown With A Vengence TM. Ady went off to get some logs while me and the children moved sofas around to accomodate the tree and hoovered all the previously hidden by sofa floorspaces that were suddenly exposed :oops:, we got the tree up very quickly but spent ages trying to get some fairy lights working before giving up and swapping some of them for the ones on the kids’ trees. This year we’ve gone for an almost completely edible tree (Davies amused me lots by announcing it – I didn’t know he even knew the word edible!) with candy canes, chocolate baubles and once the tree was up I made some window biscuits with boiled sweets in them. Ady put all the hanging decs up, the children covered all available surfaces with tinsel and then Scarlett cut the ribbon, Davies threaded it, I knotted it and Ady hung the biscuits on the tree while watching Oliver! So very warm and fuzzy 🙂 Davies and I meant to set the camera up on a tripod and do shots at various points to make a youtube offering but we forgot.

Early night for the (very exhausted) children, lovely long bath, relaxed roast dinner infront of the fire and a couple of glasses of wine for us followed by a rather experimental dessert made with the bread and butter offcuts from the star and heart shaped sandwiches at Tarly’s party, two nearly had it but saved from the brink peeled and sliced cooking apples, a tin of custard all constructed lasagne style in a glass bowl with nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top. Really rather lovely. 🙂

A slightly quieter week coming up – Christmas parties at MM and Badgers tomorrow – I have pizza to bring as my food to share offering :lol:, I was going to a FP meet up in London on Tuesday but we’re all too exhausted from such a mad week and I can’t really afford the train so I’ve decided not to go after all so that should be a nice quiet day at home, regular get together with Julie and Lucy on Wednesday morning, work on Thursday and hopefully another quiet day on Friday.

Thanks to everyone who came for Tarly’s party and for all her lovely presents (yes Ali, even those bloody ponies 😉 ) – do you know, I reckon it completed her birthday for her. 🙂

with pink fluffy fairy lights! With apologies for using the same song again!

Party Preparation Day today, so my poor neglected, mother went out to work two days this week children got to play xbox and watch films all day with occassional fob offs of lickin the bowl or getting some microwave popcorn while I did mammoth amounts of baking. The oven went on at around 10am and didn’t get turned off til we had dinner around 9.30pm.

I made jam tarts, heart and star shaped biscuits, pink cheese scones, lots of mince pies and a fairytale castle birthday cake. The cake has been something of an epic really. Scarlett said she wanted a castle cake so I checked in some books at the library (where I am often to be found nowadays) and got a great idea for covering cardboard tubes in clingfilm then making an icing tube around them and slipping it off to make turrets (and she’s specifically requested turrets) so I’ve had icing and cardboard tubes in various states of drying and hardening on my worktops since Tuesday. I made the actual cake bit this morning, jam and buttercreamed it together and attempted to mix some icing to cover it. Which is where is all becomes a bit Classic Nic Trying To Achieve Something Saga – esque really, but I’m not in the mood (Too drunken!) be bothered with such recounting so suffice to say that had to be put on hold til I got to the supermarket for icing supplies.

Dad came over mid afternoon to mind the children while I went to the dentists for a scale and polish – so I’ll be expecting compliments on the whiteness of my teeth from all those of you seeing me this weekend ;). I popped to Sainsurys afterwards to get more icing sugar and Ady and I arrived back home at the same time so he did the chatting an eating mince pies with Dad while I tried very hard to construct a castle. This is my final effort working on the less is more principle and using more cake decoration than Jane Asher on a frenzied day. Its okay – my perfectionist streak could pick a million holes in it but Tarly’s face lit up, it is after all a castle, it has her requested princess peeking out of the tallest tower and it has her name on it. 🙂

We got Tarly to sleep but Davies was still awake when Kirsty and James arrived. I was in the bath talking to a friend on the phone who is having a life crisis for at least the first half an hour they were here. We had curry and watched music channels while the children very s l o w l y wore themselves out. Everyone else is in bed now and I’m about to head that way myself.

First full day at work today and I LOVED IT! 🙂

I had a ‘proper Mum’ spell first thing this morning of trying to get D&S dressed while drinking tea with one hand and checking emails with the other and persuading them to eat toast – and that was with Ady here too! Lucy lives about a five minutes drive from me in one direction and the library is less than a five minute drive from me in the other (I will walk to work when the weather is better and the children are totally OK with me being away and I won’t need to be able to get home in moments). So I collected Lucy, Richard and Rebecca just after 8.30am, dropped them off back here and then went on to work. I arrived with a good five minutes to spare and wouldn’t have wanted more really, but living so near means you almost have to cut it fine which runs the risk of something happening to delay me. All fine this morning though :).

I did lots more basic training stuff – some working on the counter and talking to real customers – didn’t realise how much I’d missed that actually, it was lovely 🙂 and lots of tidying shelves and putting books back. Learnt some more jargon, discovered where various other things are kept and got the hang of a few more behind the scenes type processes such as transfering stuff between branches and so on. Also discovered that not only do I not pay fines any more I also don’t pay charges for reserving or ordering in stuff or the lending charges for films and music – hurrah! Spent a very happy half hour tonight reserving loads of books, films and cds through the website and brought home a film for the kids today. 🙂

At lunchtime I nipped to the Arts centre where Tarly’s party is being held to collect the keys for the hall, browsed the local charity shops, had a celebratory sausage roll from the bakers and did a bit of food shopping for party food. Working in town is going to be great for getting the extra food bits and pieces each week and will mean I can use a greengrocers for fruit and veg rather than the supermarkets :). So nice (and yeah ok, shallow) to be doing the lunchtime reapplication of lipstick before returning to work and hearing the workmate banter between the other staff knowing that it won’t be long before I’m one of them and joining in with it all. 🙂

I focussed on getting to know some of the other staff a bit better today too. I realised pretty quickly on Tuesday that although they are certainly not unfriendly they are not great at putting the big effort in to start conversations about stuff or doing much other than smiliing at me a lot. So I got chatting to one about Home Education, another about her upcoming wedding and just asked them lots of questions about them to get them talking to me. Felt like I made some inroads so that was good. 🙂

The weather has been just awful here all day with the wind howling and the rain lashing (although obviously we didn’t make the news for tornados like they did 50 miles up the road!) and it’s still blowing and blustering out there now.

Lucy stayed til lunchtime with the children, I rang and spoke to them both. Scarlett sounded so grown up I asked her if she was being a good boy as I was convinced I was talking to Davies. That earnt me a ‘It’s me Mummy, Scarlett!’ 😆 😳 but they were happy and obviously in very caring and capable hands. 🙂 Dad came over and took over after lunch and Ady and I arrived home within moments of each other. They’d been eating Monster Munch when I got in so weren’t remotely interested in tea so they had a bowl of banana custard each, Dad left and Davies and Ady played a car racing xbox game together while Tarly and I did some bead threading. I am relieved, thrilled and so happy that they are so unbothered about me working so far. I’m sure there will be times when it is not so smooth but early indications are all very positive. 🙂

Tomorrow I have all the last minute stuff to sort out for the party but I have all day to do it in and I’m looking forward to an at home baking day and even more looking forward to the party on Saturday. 🙂

Happy Birthday Alison, lots of love, Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxxx

ps, do let me know if you want a sentimental post about how I first met you, lots of slushy detail about our friendship and how wonderful you are 😉

Happy Birthday to Jax 🙂

Four.

Whilst there are still many obvious traces of the toddler you have been the glimpses into the past to see the baby I once cradled are more fleeting, more rare and more precious. When you sleep the shadow cast by your eyelashes onto your cheek is still the same, when you curl your fingers around mine although your nails are painted and your hands are so much bigger it is still the same grip as when you were hours old. Although your legs dangle way down to my knees when we cuddle you still fit in my arms the same, although there is frequently an overtone of Barbie spray about your scent, when I bury my face into your neck you still have that same Scarlett smell about you that you did when you were a newborn, and when I look deep into your eyes I can still see into the same soul I gazed at seconds after you were born.

They say you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. I also believe you don’t necessary know what you were missing until it came along and completed you. And that’s what you did Tarly. You completed me as a mother of a son and a daughter, you completed Davies as a big brother, Daddy and I as a family rather than simply parents and all the generations above us.

You are bold, beautiful and brave. You are reckless, feckless and fearless. It’s been a rollercoaster of a four years and far from you being born a blank canvas I feel I have barely scratched the surface so far of who you are. I hope that everyone who is honoured enough to have you in their lives realises how priviledged they are but most of all I hope you continue to be aware of how wonderful you are.

Scarlett, you do indeed bring my sunshine on a cloudy day, the month of May when it’s cold outside and will forever be my baby, my girl, my Scarlett. Happy Birthday Darling, I love you very much. xxxx

Cos, you know, you can’t be all rowdy at the library!

Thanks for all messages, texts, emails and comments – it really meant a lot. 🙂 Not least cos I was actually really quite nervous this morning, partially I’m sure because I hate feeling wrong footed – I like to be super confident, know what I’m about and bluff it if I don’t – which is a bit tricky on your first day in a new job, in a place you know nothing about including how to get in to the building on your first morning when you are starting half an hour before the library actually opens!

So Ady was his ususal husband from heaven and made me tea and almond croissants for breakfast (that he’d sneakily bought and hidden in the kitchen yesterday in preparation), got the children dressed, told me I looked lovely, assured me I’d be fine, loaded us all in his car and took me there incase I couldn’t find a parking space. I waited until someone else looked like they were there to go to work and leapt out the car and followed them 🙂

Fears very quickly were allayed as they told me their names and assured me I would forget them all anyway (I remembered at least four of them out of the five though 🙂 ), gave me a set of keys for toilet, staff room, locker and front door, a badge to mark me out as A Worker and a coat hanger of my own. 🙂

I did lots of adminny new starter type stuff, learnt a bit about Dewy Decimal :shock:, did some putting books and dvds back on the shelves and spent ages chatting to the Senior Library Assistant. I sat for a while as she told me all about Customer Service and The Best Way To Talk To A Customer Including Dealing With Complaints before deciding actually I needed to say something so I explained some of my past career and readjusted the footing slightly – being patronised I can deal with, particularly if the person isn’t aware they are patronising – wasting time telling me something I used to give training sessions on is probably just pushing things a bit too far ;).

So there you go, they seem a friendly team, it’s a really nice working environment, I got my library ticket updated to a Staff one which among other things means NO MORE FINES 🙂 :), enjoyed the library vibe, which is something I have always loved, liked watching the gang of old men who come in every morning to read the papers and debate the news of the day every morning together – Oh how I see them becomming blog fodder for me in weeks and months to come ;). And I was told again about long term career prospects. Obviously very early days but so far, so very bloody good. 🙂

The children were fine – Tarly wanted to come to work with me but Davies just asked me if I’d bring back a library book for them each. And when I said I would he asked if I could do that every time I go to work. So that’s a fairly easy bargain to stick to 🙂 D’you know I reckon there might just be rather a lot of perks to this job :).

Ady came and picked me up at 1pm, Lucy had arrived around 11am and that had worked really well. 🙂 A went off to college, I came in and made lunch and we had a debriefing session, then Lucy kindly let me dash out again to the Wizard store to pick up a couple of pretend Barbies. We managed some more chatting while the children played, I read some Charlie & Lola to any listening children (the books I’d brought home) and there was a complicated and potentially dangerous game involving stunt leaping over two stools onto a pile of pillows and cushions which denegerated into rough play. Which seems to work just fine on two children but gets out of hand very quickly when a third and a fourth join in 😆 Davies had spent time on creating some sort of greenhouse which Luct did explain to me and seemed both complicated and rather excellent – it was all 3D and contained inside bits and accessories. I love how his art and craft has gone to that next level now and how he visualises what he wants to create and works out how he is going to execute it, then does it. He also did some more snowflake making. His scissor control is not a patch on Tarly’s, I really need to get some decent child’s scissors anyway and maybe work on how to hold them with him. But then again his pen grip is still pretty ‘individual’ and I have long since realised that he is capable of quite lovely writing with it when he wants to so it’s sort of irrelevant how he holds it really. I guess the same goes for scissors – however he holds them he is still improving.

I made Tarly’s first birthday cake (there’ll be another one for the party on Saturday obviously :lol:) – a triple sponge with (very) pink icing and lots of sugar flowers and silver balls. Both the children took forever to get to sleep tonight, I asked a very sleepy Tarly at about 8pm how old she was and got the answer ‘three’ for the very last time. Davies and I made birthday cards for Tarly. He did a fab flying horse with a 4 on the front and with only a little help wrote ‘Happy Birthday Scarlett love Davies’ inside. He did six kisses because he’s six and four hearts because she’s four. Then he decided to do some embellishing of the letters and did some vines and flowers on the H from Happy then a heart and a kiss inside the O on love. His letters, although not bad at all, are not quite clear enough to stand up to such messing about with really but given Tarly can’t read anyway and I was so impressed by his idea to do it in the first place I let him carry on :).

When they finally fell asleep I wrapped the last couple of pressies, Ady’s blown up balloons and the house is ready for a four year old.

It looks like an interesting site although the competition is for 16 and overs.

Davies and Scarlett have been really into playing with each other today. They have periods like this sometimes when they just enjoy each others company so much and play together all day, even when there are other children around. I’m sure school attending siblings are close too but I love the fact that not only would they actively choose each others’ company a lot of the time they are also having so many shared experiences and are genuinely best friends.

So this morning they played with some foam shapes in some very imaginative game about a monster fish – they were even talking about it later in the car and planning what was going to happen next. 🙂 I did some sorting out for NicCamps Spring Camp 2007 and wrote out address labels for my ebay parcels.

Then we went off to MM. We were making decorations in preparation for next week’s Christmas party so I took some white paper, a compass and scissors and cut out circles to make paper snowflakes with. Allie had gone one better and printed off templates from an internet site so we had lots of snowflake options available. Kate had brought some ‘corn for popping’ (just like in Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!) which we spent time threading – Davies really enjoyed that, he decided he wanted to do it and went and sat with Kate really happily. 🙂 I love his confidence with other adults nowadays, it’s been hard won at times and still feels worthy of note. Tarly and I ripped up strips of paper and coloured them with crayons to make some paper chains too.

Davies went off to make chocolate crispie cakes with Sam – again, really nice to just observe him from a distance while I sat chatting and threading popcorn and Tarly sat beside me eating it. Interesting chats about the future of Home Ed, times of doubt about doing it and how we would love for our children to have the chance to learn things from people who are passionate and knowledgable about things they are interested in – like the very best teacher you had at school, the one who really inspired you and encouraged you.

Davies and Scarlett both disappeared for a bit and were to be spotted having a great time joining in games until it was time to spray the popcorn threads with gold and silver spray. Lots of spray on the popcorn, lots on children’s hands and enough solvent fumes to have us all happy and chilled ;).

We came home, I had some late lunch and wrapped my parcels while the children carried on their game with the introduction of geomags too. We drove to the post office because the weather was horrid again. We bumped into a neighbour in the queue so stood chatting to her for a while. All of the staff in the post office know us now – so the young girl who works there stood helping them choose some sweets while the older woman processed all my parcels and told me to get them to write to Santa and bring their letters into the post office. I imagine one day it will occur to them that the children are in there at all sorts of hours and are old enough to be in school, but for now they seem to love having them to visit. 🙂

Once home I left the children to get on with their game and went and did some trying on clothes ready for tomorrow. I realised that on some level I must have always known I was going to work in a library as I have almost embarassing amounts of clothes perfectly suited to such work. I have 12 skirts FFS! 😳 Wonder why I seem to wear mostly the same clothes actually now…. Sorted the kids’ tea out and Ady came home.

We’d been watching CBBC (or as Davies calls it ‘green cbeebies’ ) earlier so that got left on and they watched Raven, which Davies claims to love, some cartoon about dragons which I paid no attention to and then Blue Peter which I stopped and watched too. Partially in horror at the crap presenting but mostly for nostalgia when they made the ‘here’s one I made earlier’ stuff. 😆

Read them number 4 in their Christmas Carol advent calendar books, and then Scarlett’s traditional ‘3 stories’ in bed – wonder if that will go up to four from Wednesday? 🙂 I’ve been getting lots of cuddles from her today mindful of the fact that cuddles from 3 year olds are limited period only now.

Part of our ‘shopping list’ this weekend on our charity shop trawl was ‘Barbie stuff’ as Tarly is getting Barbie and accessories for Christmas. We only managed to find one item – a Barbie pushbike. Today though Ady popped into a charity shop next door to one of the stores he was visiting and found two massive bags of Barbie furniture marked at £4.99 each. He scrabbled round in his car and managed to gather together £7.00 so went in and offered them that – which after some heartstring tugging stories of his little girl (probably backed up with pictures from his mobile phone) they accepted. He was still not sure he’d got a bargain but when we opened up the bags and spread it all around he agreed it was £7 very well spent. 🙂

There is loads of stuff there including a couple of beds and wardrobes, a kitchen and washing machine, tables and chairs, a nursery including cot and highchair and some bookcases etc. So hurrah for some sort of CSC type intervention stepping in and paying off all our trawling with pretty much exactly what we were looking for on ebay yesterday and in charity shops today. 🙂

I’m actually feeling really quite nervous about tomorrow, glad it is just a half day and that Ady will be home with the children. It’s been just shy of seven years since I last had a real first day at a job and back then I rarely stayed anywhere for more than 12-18 months so first days were not that rare an occassion. But I’m a bit out of practise for remembering everyone’s names, modifying my behaviour and looking polished so although I’m sure it will all come back pretty soon, I’m feeling a bit rusty and apprehensive about it tonight.

We had storms here all night, kept me awake for hours. D’you know I truly think that very rare but there just the same sleeplessness is easily my most obvious sign of feeling like a grown up nowadays. Mortage, marriage and motherhood never really did it for me, but lying there awake due to the wind or the rain or worrying about money somehow makes me feel more like ‘someone’s mother’ and a proper adult than anything else.

I made our first batch of mince pies today, from my own homemade mincemeat that I made earlier in the week. I was still doing that when Ros arrived so we stood chatting in the kitchen while Davies and Adam played X box and Tarly dragged Ellie around to play. Tarly adores Ellie, she is easily her favourite ‘big girl’ but very amusingly seems to be the one taking Ellie by the hand and leading her about. 😆 Amelia hung out in the kitchen for a while before deciding we were boring and going to play with the geomags instead. 😆 Dad and Ady went logging and came back in time for mince pies.

Ros & co left and Ady cooked lunch while me and the children made paper snowflakes. Tarly did lots of playing on Barbie.com on Ady’s laptop, Davies and I played Battleships and Connect 4 and then they played with the sticklebricks.

We had (a later than planned) lunch and did plenty of lazing around this afternoon. Ady dug out the children’s Christmas trees from the loft and found evidence of mice. They had chewed through a cloth advent calendar and lots of a cardboard box filled with low carb food from when we did The Atkins Diet. He found one and disposed of it, cleaned and hoovered the loft space out and sprayed it with all sorts of chemically sprays so hopefully their stay here is over. Bet I lay awake tonight listening for sounds of scrabbling in the loft 🙄

We put trees up in Davies and Scarlett’s bedrooms, I read them the first three books in our advent calendar with 24 books telling the story of A Christmas Carol. Tonight I’ve gathered all Tarly’s birthday presents up from various hidey holes and wrapped them all.

I had a load of items finishing on ebay today and was bidding for a load more. At one point my paypal balance went down to just 20pence, but then some of my auctions ended and it went back up to £30 odd again. We also found a load more things ready for ebaying that the mice hadn’t touched in the loft.

And now, as the lights and the broadband connection keep flicking on and off (must be the wind!) I’m off to bed.

Today was our day of Christmas shopping. Pre children we would always take the first week of December off work, draw up a rota of where we wanted to go and spend most of the week Christmas shopping. We used to arrive at our chosen shopping destination, split up for an hour or so, meet for lunch, then split up again for more shopping. Once we’d taken care of shopping for each other then we’d join forces to shop for family and friends. It was a week long retail extravaganza.

When we had children it changed slightly inasmuch as the focus became on stuff for them rather than stuff for each other.

Last year it was rather different.

This year it has been different again. Penny watching is something which has become second nature with no excess money for December so I have been doing lots of buying stuff on ebay or in charity shops and stashing it away for the last couple of months, we have whittled down the list of ‘I want’ from watching the TV adverts on Nick jr and traipsed round toy shops with them to determine what they ‘really’ want. I do like the idea of getting them at least one thing each to make their faces light up, similarly I like the idea that they have a couple of surprises and still a decent volume of things to spend time opening. This year, for probably the very first time we’ve finally got the balance right between what they want, what we want them to have and what we can afford. Woo hoo for us :).

Today we went on a mammoth charity shop run all along the south coast. No idea how many miles but certainly well up to our 10000 steps a day as measured by my pedometer on my phone and at least 30 charity shops and a whole load of Christmas songs on the cd player :). We didn’t actually get a whole lot – the children each got a toy today – Davies a Gromit I’ve not seen before for £1.50 and Tarly a toy jaguar (her most favourite big cat) for 50p. We picked up a couple of videos each for them, various other bits and pieces but mostly enjoyed being out in the early Christmas hustle and bustle all together. We had lunch at McDonalds courtesy of Pinecone Research luncheon vouchers. Bargain of the day had to be these boots though – spotted in the second charity shop we went in to and in my size for the bargain price of £3. Slightly battered but I reckon I’d get ten times my money back on ebay anyway, but these won’t be being listed cos I’ll be wearing ’em. Next I want either red or purple ones 🙂

We finally arrived home and had baths before my parents arrived for dinner this evening. Not too late a night as frankly I’m exhausted.

Tomorrow we’re going logging in the morning, roast chicken for lunch and I have some home made mince meat ready for making the first batch of mincepies while Ady and the children set up the little Christmas trees in their bedrooms and maybe the lights outside the house (inside is not being put up until after Tarly’s birthday).

Hey, it’s DECEMBER!!!! 🙂

Deck the halls, open the advent calendar and break out the chocolate liqueurs and brandy snaps!

Had one of those days when it all felt a bit bordering on the hysterical today, I get them sometimes. I’m sure if things had been different I could have been a manic depressive, instead I am a manic normal! 😆

The post brought a couple of board games of Flushed Away which we gave Davies and Scarlett. They included various characters to use as counters which required colouring in so they did that. I cut out the various bits and pieces for them including little dice to make. I made the dice and they spent ages playing with them throwing them at the same time to see who threw highest. Realised that actually Tarly does indeed recognise numbers 1-6 (the dice had numbers rather than dots) during this – I suspected she might but she kept denying it :lol:. Thanks loads Bob for the link about the game – we’ve yet to play the actual board itself but it certainly kept them entertained for a long while this morning – oh and Davies read ‘Sid’ and recognised all the words along the bottom for ‘Wallace and Gromit’, ‘Shrek’, ‘Aardman’ and ‘Dreamworks’. 😉 :).

Finally got them dressed and we headed off over to Ali’s. We collected together a handful of Christmas cds to take with us in the car – it will surprise noone that we are well stocked with them 😳 ;). Tarly is really into ‘Santa Baby’ and wants to learn all the words. I am torn as I have this barely hidden part of me which could so easily turn into pushy US Mom dressing her in frilly flounces, rouging her up and giving her a real Britney training style of childhood – I’m guessing I’ve already failed if that was my plan though as she is hardly likely to be compliant to such crazy notions, and let’s face it she doesn’t need to bother with the child star fame bit as she already has the drink habit! 😆 So we did lots of very loud singing along and in car dancing to festive tunes including me welling up at ‘when a child is born’ just like I did along that same stretch of road pretty much this time last year.

Had a lovely time at Ali’s, there was pesto pasta (which Tarly decided she ‘loves’ and ate most of mine :roll:) and chocolate and chatting and tea and xbox and zoombinis and lego train track and My Little Pony and the odd sudden yelling of one person to be joined in with by everyone else of ‘it’s CHRIIIIIIIIISTMASSSSSSS!’ just for fun. 🙂

Ali and Davies and I played Mastermind for a bit which was cool, and made doubly tricky by a lack of pegs meaning we had to keep nicking them from the row above. 😆 then we drove home again in the dark singing more Christmas songs.

Tea and early to bed for the children, wine, bath, dinner and late to bed for the grown ups. Which is where I’m off to now.

I suddenly realised that all the things on my list of things I needed to get done before December sort of had to be done today today. So we planned on leaving the house at 9am, which was an impressive aim given I didn’t get up til gone 8am. But we would have pulled it off if Julie (SIL) hadn’t rung for a chat at 9am. As it was we were still out before 9.30am, at the library car park, straight into a parking space and taking back overdue books. I saw my new boss but I was all disorganised and trying to persuade one child to put the Bambi video back while agreeing with the other that yes, this is where we have to be super quiet but actually I think coughing is probably allowed so I didn’t do more that smile and say hello. I’ll be so relieved when I actually start working there, it’s been really weird going in and seeing my boss and soon to be colleague without feeling strangely embarrassed – I’ve almost avoided going in, but that would be too weird. 😆

We popped to Woolworths for a quick look round, then to the stationers for advent calendars -this year I was adamant they were not having chocolate ones and even if we didn’t get ones with baby Jesus in a stable full of animals we would have something more festive than Thomas wearing a bit of tinsel. So unlike last year I took the children to a shop only selling ones with pictures behind the doors instead of chocolate and gave them the choice of three or four different designs each. They both went for one with Father Christmas on. Whilst in the queue sandwiched between several old people we talked about why I loathe the chocolate ones and what the actual point of advent calendars are – Davies made me laugh by saying ‘I do agree the chocolate ones are not so good Mummy, but there is one good thing about them you know. When you have eaten all the chocolate you can rip the cardboard off and use the plastic moulds to make more chocolates with melted chocolate’. True point, but not a good enough one to win a chocolate advent calendar :lol:. We then went back to Woolies having remembered that our other task was to get a box of chocolates for Julie for her birthday this weekend. I also picked up a couple of boxes of candy canes for decorating the tree at home which meant we spent over a fiver and could choose a half price dvd. I got the Jim Carey version of the Grinch as it is a book they love and it is festive. Might watch that this weekend :).

Back to the car and off to collect Lucy, Richard and Rebecca. After a stop for petrol and chocolate (thanks Luce 🙂 ) we arrived at the woods and met up with Julie, Jack and Maisie and Elaine, Jessie and Maddy and their mad dog Orlaigh. Tarly instantly remembered the dog from a walk we had with them way back in the spring and was delighted to see her again. Maddy was delighted to see me again and spent the whole walk holding my hand and asking to take pictures with my camera :lol:. Jack was not feeling so well so Maisie stayed with us (holding my other hand) and Julie took him off with her to do a few errands. We had a nice walk although it was very strange to be walking along holding hands with two small girls, neither of whom belonged to me while my own children ran off ahead – strange and not altogether what I was that comfortable with tbh ;-). We paused for a while at one point while all the children scrambled over tree trunks and threw sticks for the dog. Tarly was looking very much like she should have been on a woodland photoshoot rather than a messy walk today, due to wearing the long skirt she’d had on yesterday and a trendy coat which needed a wash anyway so I got her to wear knowing she’d get muddy. She liked the suggestion of a photo shoot though so I got her to strike some poses 😆

Davies was not to be outdone and called me over to take his picture in the tree
but Tarly definitely had the best accessory!

We had lunch, which included Richard falling backwards off a log – heartstopping and one of those moments where everyone stands and flaps their arms rather than actually catching the falling child, but he recovered quickly and was more than happy to sit back on the log. We headed back into the woods again (well Lucy and I did, taking Maisie and our four children) for a short play before deciding we’d had enough even if the children hadn’t. I had to stop in town on the way home to pop to the bank but having Lucy to stay in the car and mind both the car on double yellows and all the children while I ran in made a huge difference.

Once home various bits of post meant I had loads of phonecalls to make but I did manage to make a drink for us both before Ady got home. What it did all show was that Lucy is going to be just fine looking after Davies and Scarlett, they are totally at home in her company and clearly feel very safe and comfortable with her, which is a massive weight of my mind. 🙂 It’s making all the difference to me being able to look forward to starting work next week and worry about trivial things such as what to wear and how to style my hair instead of whether I am giving the children therapy fodder for years to come :lol:.

I dropped them home and returned to bath very grubby children. We all watched Supervets or some other such vet related titled programme which we caught last week too and then they finally had a relatively early night. We had phesant and partride for dinner (lovely) and I’m about to head to bed myself.

Quiet morning planned tomorrow although I have various ideas for films I want to talk through with Davies but I think it might be just too ‘end of a long week’ to try it tomorrow morning with him, and then we’re off to Ali’s in the afternoon. It’s all go here :lol:.

None of the above!

Alison and children arrived (very) late on Monday night. Ady had already gone up to bed and I’d already drunk plenty of wine to keep me awake while listening to all the music videos I linked to (and maybe done some dancing round the lounge too :lol:). Davies and Scarlett hadn’t gone to sleep until about 10.30pm, because they have always slept in their own rooms which since we’ve been back in Sussex have been on opposite ends of the house on different levels they don’t disturb each other once they’ve gone to their rooms regardless of whether they are asleep yet. But they love the idea of sleepovers and often ask to sleep in each others’ rooms which we almost always say no to. I think I’m going to start letting them do it a bit more though as they are so giddy when they are allowed to that it takes them bloody hours to get to sleep :roll:.

The evening finishing and the next morning starting are something of a blur, possibly because there weren’t many hours between the two 😳 😆 so Tuesday was a quietish day marked with a walk to the post office en masse in the middle and some baking of snickerdoodles helped by a changing conveyor belt of helpers at various points. Davies and Lije were not really removed from the X box all day but Davies was loving having someone to play his W&G with and between them with Davies’ familiarity of the game and Lije’s superior control skills they got way further than he’s ever got before so that was nice. 🙂 The dual controls on that game mean you work together rather than in competition with each other. There was also a play put on for us by all the children except Tarly which was most entertaining and amusing, particularly Davies’ reluctance to complete the Happily Ever After by getting married :lol:.

In the early evening Ady and I went off to give blood. When we arrived at the hall we both confessed to actually being slightly nervous as it was a first time for both of us. We were both called into seperate booths for initial finger prick testing and a clarification of the answers on our forms about drug use and sexual history which might put us at risk of diseases. The doctor who saw me was a real comedian, but in a very deadpan manner with a straight face throughout. He asked me to read the questions again to be sure my answers were all as I’d indicated and then said ‘I draw your attention in particular to question 4 – have you ever had sex with someone for drugs or money?’ – that also includes sleeping with pensioners in exchange for Argos gift vouchers’ – I looked at him and he said ‘well we are in Worthing!’. I asked if it also included Ratners coupons and he assured me that was OK and didn’t count! 😆 Which meant that when my drop of blood floated at the top of the test tube instead of ‘sinking like a bullet’ as it was supposed to we both looked a bit concerned. This meant that I had to have a further test to ensure I wasn’t anaemic. At which point I confess to fretting about the volume of alcohol I’d consumed in the previous 24 hours 😳 I got called into the next booth where the next doctor spent ages checking my veins before drawing more blood from my right arm to test some more. He said my iron levels needed to be 125 or something and mine was 126 so I was ok but only just (all went rather over my head but it was nothing to do with the Ratners vouchers or the dry white wine!). Ady and I got called to the beds for the blood-draining at the same time but while his went all smoothly mine was not to be. The guy struggled to find a vein and when he did stick the needle in it really hurt, like REALLY hurt, right down my lower arm with a real tugging feeling. I seriously don’t think I could have managed it for 10-15 minutes. He called over another two nurses and then said to be ‘does that hurt?’ and I admitted it did, so he took the needle out again. He said the vein was very deep and he might have caught a nerve or something. They couldn’t use the other arm because I’d already had the retest from that one so they are calling me back again in a couple of weeks. My arm really ached last night but is fine today, so no lasting damage. 🙂 I’ll probably take the children next time, I reckon they’d find it really interesting.

The children – specifically Tarly and Lulah took forever to go to sleep and Alison and I were almost early to bed ourselves. Almost :lol:.

Today we had a plan to go to the local park and meet up with Lucy but in the end Lucy just came here with Richard and Rebecca. It’s been a really nice day with Davies and Lije playing pretty much non stop X box, Tarly and Lulah holed up in Tarly’s bedroom for hours and all of the others playing various games. Alison cut my hair (under much pressure – it looks lovely but was a trim rather than a restyle) and then did Tilda’s too and inbetween we managed lots of chatting.

A lovely visit, as always. 🙂

The children conked out fairly quickly (unsurprisingly!) and I think I’m heading for bed pretty soon too. More socialising happening in the next couple of days before a quiet weekend.