One word? When seven would do…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or is anyone else sniggering slightly that as soon as the schools break up and children can start to enjoy all the lovely weather we’ve been having, it stops! 😆

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

So, a catch up then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re watching Seawatch and I’ve just volunteered as a volunteer or organiser for our local bit of beach for Beachwatch.

So, anyone want to come stay with us and join in 16 and 17 September? 🙂

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

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

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

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

A very pleasant evening indeed. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Raine 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naturally Smart You’re a naturally smart person. Your intelligence comes to you naturally, rather than from instruction – and you are better with applied or more real-world things… which comes in handy, here in the real world. 20% applied intelligence 80% natural intelligence

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Hours of fun here just pressing refresh to be had!

‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

which was good really, I could have died! 😆

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Which is close to what I thought I might have ‘No tools are stored in this grave overnight’ 😆

Nic — [noun]: A dance involving little to no clothing ‘How will you be defined in the dictionary?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

A lateish start this morning as the children finally slept in past 7am (only 8.30 mind you, but better than it could have been!). I did my usual act of sitting reading emails and stuff rather than getting organised and having read several references to happymais on Merry and Claire’s blogs I followed some links and found the homepage through Beadmerrily including some fab pictures. So I showed them to the children which meant they went straight to the playroom and got out our ELC equivalent and started making various bits. I still don’t think they’ve totally got the idea of quite how versatile they can be so I might well sit with them tomorrow and show them a few more things with them but Davies made a mini mummy and Tarly sat and stuck some on a dinosaur template sheet thingy. I made some banana cakes as I’d rescued 3 very brown bananas Ady was about to throw away last night which really were very past their prime but wanted to make the point they were not wasted ;-).

So we were about an hour later to Lucy’s house than I think she was expecting us and arrived about 11am. We’d only arranged to go there today by a late night email exchange yesterday and she normally has a toddler group style gathering of about 4 mothers and small children there on a Monday morning. Today there was just one other, a very nice woman called Sam with her 1yo son A. She is a nanny, very, very Gina following but also very interested in Home Ed. So Lucy introduced us and left us to it really 😆 She had all the usual questions and some very ingrained ideas, several of which I distinctly disagreed with but one of those situations where someone presents their viewpoint as a fact rather than an opinion. She certainly went away with a lot to think of though and actually wants to come along to local Home Ed group too – ah recruitment for the cause continues 😆 She left and Lucy and I took our four to the local park for half an hour or so where Davies and Scarlett both mastered climbing over the top of the rope ladder style climbing frame. Scarlett with her usual bravery and ‘because it was there’ style attitude, Davies with a lot of coaxing and encouragement and huge pride in himself once achieved. So indicative of the different personalities and tempraments of my children that. 🙂

We went back for some further chatting but Davies particularly was tired and grumpy with the weekend catching up with him and as he had the last Badgers of the term later we called it a day slightly early and came home for a calm down first. He’s not behaved great today generally but I’m prepared to put it down to heat and tiredness and after a chat this evening I think I finally got across to him why I’d been angry earlier. Scarlett brought me an great big pile of books so we sat and looked at them for a while when Lucy was dealing with R or R, Davies did some drawing and writing and Lucy and I had a long chat about adult education, careers for us and what happens when the children grow up and you’ve still got 30 years of working life ahead of you.

Really glad we did come home early as shortly after we got home the doorbell rang. The children had their usual scuffle to get to it first, I was sitting with my laptop and heard them yell ‘Daddy!’ so assumed it was Ady home slightly early. Only realised it wasn’t when a far larger than Ady sized figure appeared in the doorway wearing motorbike leathers and removing a crash hat! It was our friend Matt, who’d driven past on his way home from work, spotted my car in the drive (he reckoned unusually), so stopped to say ‘Hi’. 🙂 And show off the lovely motorbike he is ‘bikesitting’ while a mate’s on holiday. So we sat having a lovely chat about education (his son, same age as Davies is finishing reception year at the local private school as paid for by Matt’s parents), further education for adults, why we both semi-regret not having gone to university if only for the lifestyle and why actually neither of us were remotely in the right time or place to go to university after A levels (we met working at B&Q when he was 19 and had dropped out and I was 17 and was on the verge of doing so). Ady came home and we continued chatting about various mutual friends one or other of us has got up to date news about and I took Davies and Scarlett to Badgers leaving them to it. I think he’d still be here now if his wife had not rung to ask where he’d got to 😆

As it was the last Badgers of the term / year all of them received a certificate and badge for ‘Global Badger’ which is what they’ve covered this term. The assistant leader was leaving to go off to university so he was presented with a toaster and a tin of beans while parents and siblings sat and applauded and took photos. Tarly demanded she take our pictures and she did a pretty good job – I’ll upload some and add to this post tomorrow.

Tomorrow we have Mel coming over in the afternoon with Liam and Lily for tea and playing. I want to do some baking and I want to read some of the library books we’ve got stacked up around the place and maybe even get some of them returned. I have several draft posts in my head just now, either for here or one of the other blogs so if I get the peace and am in the right frame of mind one or more of them might appear too.

Lovely weekend. 🙂

Friday night about 2am (well okay then Saturday morning actually) Tarly appeared in our bedroom not really knowing what had woken her – within a few minutes it became apparent it must have been the first crack of thunder in a terrific thunderstorm. There was almost constant, blue, sheet lightning with loads of really loud thunder and after about half an hour a huge downpour of rain. So Tarly, Ady and I all hung out of our bedroom window watching for about half an hour, then got back into bed and arranged all the pillows so we could sit up in bed and watch. It was a good hour before I fell asleep and it was still rumbling on even then.

Which meant I didn’t actually get up on Saturday morning until nearly 10.30am and Ady, who had been up since about 7am with the children was dozing on the sofa. So our planned fairly early getaway was doomed really. And then while I was upstairs packing an overnight bag for us all the sky turned black once again and easily the most dramatic thunderstorm since I was a little girl proceeded to happen right overhead. The house was shaking with the thunder, there was pouring rain and hailstones, Ady stood on the front door step for about half an hour trying – and failing – to get a picture of the lightning, Candle – the non blind cat – who is terrified of storms dashed round the house trying to find hiding places and the children were utterly thrilled with every bit of it. Ady told them about counting between the lightning and the thunder to see how far away the storm was until finally there was no gap between them as it was right above us and pretty much constant rounds of both. So a bit of talk about speed of light and sound, why the sky went dark, what causes thunder and lightning and a recounting of a story from my childhood when hailstones as big as golf balls fell and smashed loads of greenhouses locally. Ady’d got his car back on Thursday so we needed to put the children’s car seats back in to it and decided to wait until the really heavy rain had passed over to do so.

So we finally set off about 45 minutes later than planned and promptly ran into loads of traffic. After an hour or so we decided to change our route and I had to plot a new one on a map cutting across the country by A roads. Which made me irrationally cross, not because I hate reading maps – I’m actually quite good at it, I just hate having stuff on my lap in the car, and Ady’s atlas is one of those enormous ones that you need two people’s laps to open it across 😆 So I was all sulky and petulant, particularly when I confessed the real reason for not wanting to read the map to Ady and he laughed at me for a full five minutes!

So we spent a lovely afternoon and evening with Chris and Alison. Ady went off to a work party a few motorway junctions further along, Layla, Si and Claudia came along too and we had a really nice time. 🙂 The children did some very scientfic experiments with strawberries in the microwave and spent time in the paddling pool, Lulah and Tarly spent time outside collecting small creatures and pitting them in race against each other, Lije finally convinced Davies in the joys of the X box by virtue of having a W&G game. We had a neccesarily lazy morning with a variety of bagels and reading of horoscopes (necessary due to my hangover :oops:) before heading for home around midday via Costco to stock up on bulk buys of washing powder, peanut butter and coffee.

This afternoon has been quiet with the children taking forever to go to sleep despite being really tired and a lovely roast beef dinner tonight.

This week has something planned for every day but fairly low key, with a visit to Lucy’s tomorrow during the day and the last Badgers of the term tomorrow evening.

Early morning today as Ady left for work before 7am and Tarly was already up so I went and snuggled on the sofa with her, Davies joined us before too long and we watched some Discovery Kids. They started playing with geomags and toy animals (current favourite game again, I really must eavesdrop and find out what it actually involves…) so I went to get dressed. Tarly appeared in the bathroom while I was putting make up on and started to look through my little box of earrings and ask the history behind various ones – none of which had any history actually. So I went and got out my hidden away jewellry box and we sat and looked through the contents. There’s not a lot there really, I’ve never had much jewellry really; when I was younger I tended to wear huge chandelier style odd earrings (I had a friend who did the same so we tended to buy a pair each and swap one) and lots of leather bootlace style bracelets. I did have a fair few rings though but Ady hates jewellry of any sort and as I started to work in jobs where loads of jewellry would be frowned upon I gradually stopped and now wear a gold bracelet my parents bought me for my 21st birthday, a very simple gold necklace Ady bought me for my first birthday we were together (would have been my 20th then), a watch he bought me in Niagara Hard Rock Cafe when we went there and I was pregnant with Davies, my wedding ring, an eternity ring and a ring which was my grandmothers which matches my bracelet and my Dad gave me at the same time as he gave Ady my wedding ring which was also hers. And occasional beaded bracelets made by children for me. I also wear a small assortment of tiny earrings as my final act of rebellion and nod towards not being totally grown up yet! 🙂

So in the box was; a locket given to me for Christmas by my parents when I was 16 – it contained a photo of an ex for a long time and now has a photo of a very young Ady; a gold rope chain given to me on my 18th birthday by my then best friend; a gold 21 key given to me on my 21st by the same friend, a pair of gold hoop earrings from my Mum at some point; a couple of watches – the one I got for my fifth birthday which has been reconditioned over the years and I will probably give to Tarly on her 5th birthday, a fake Gucci one bought as we got off the ferry to the Statue of Liberty from a trader on the docks and we were all proud of haggling with; a watch Ady bought me for our first Christmas together; various rings including the replacement for the one my parents got me for my 6th birthday and I lost, which actually fits Tarly now but would need to be repaired before wearing as it was cut off my finger when I was pregnant with Davies and never repaired; various odd and very large earrings; a shell necklace which must have sentimental value except I can’t remember what it is and the silver bangle style bracelet which I wore throughout childhood and was probably a christening present. Which she of course fell upon in delight, listened to the story all about it along with the story of every other item and then asked if she could wear it now? I said she’d need to check with Ady (due to his hatred of jewellry) and having worn it all day she ran to him as soon as he got home to check it was OK and got the all clear. I imagine it will get lost or damaged really but aside from remembering wearing it myself I don’t know any more details and quite like to see it on her little wrist really. 🙂 Davies came up and was given a small fish charm which had once been on an earring so he was happy too.

Trip down memory lane completed we got dressed and headed out to Tesco for a few bits and pieces. It was heaving in there and took far longer than it should 🙄 They were pretty well behaved though and got sweeties as a reward. Davies also read some of the words on the carrier bags which amused me, he’s starting to ‘want’ to read stuff and at the same time realising he is able to. Definitely the best way possible for the two to happen simultaneously I reckon! On the way there and back we listened to Terrible Tudors which I’d found when looking out our War of the Worlds cd. We got five out of the six Horrible History cds given away with Kellogs cereals last year but have never actually listened to any of them before. Davies was rapt and Tarly listened to it a lot, commenting occasionally. But the funniest moment was when the ‘Henry VIII song’ came on – I had guessed it was a Horrible History song when Poppy and Co sang it at Kessingland so wondered if it would be on there and it was, so I was half watching him in the rear view mirror as it was being sung. He listened, listened harder and then said ‘Mummy, this is the song Poppy sang at camp isn’t it?’ Which I thought was fairly impressive having only ever heard it that once really. So that cd is a hit and we still have the other 4 to listen to. It will be nice to get back into listening to interesting stuff in the car again.

We had some lunch (another self made sandwich for Davies and some self shelled peas for Tarly that she’d begged for in Tescos) and they watched the dvd extras on Madagascar with Davies pausing and playing the bit showing you how to draw the characters. Then Ali and Freya arrived. 🙂

The children were persuaded with ice lollies to go and play outside so Ali and I could chat, then Ady came home and served them ice cream and chocolate sauce. Tarly had a very long bath while Davies and Freya danced to music and watched the musical bits of dvds in the playroom. 🙂 Then I took Freya and Ali home and sat drinking a very small glass of wine, watching BB, looking at and admiring Freya’s collection of My Little Pomies and Princess Magazines and pretending I knew what J was talking about while he fixed my computer’s virus. Which does indeed seem to be all mended so huge thanks and gratitude to the wonderful J! 🙂

Got home around 10.30 and sorted out my curry (Ady had already eaten) and now I’m about to head off to bed. Busy weekend ahead so will probably be back in a couple of days. 🙂