Have just collected Malice – she seems OK although very probably blind and with lots of expensive recovery still ahead.
But on the way I went to collect my Mum – who was paying half the bill 🙁 and in turning the car round I crashed into a tree. Fuck.
So I go away for six nights and what happens? A bloody whacking great hole appears in the internet again and your best efforst to fix it are listing what’s kicking around in your fridges? 😆 Just as well I’m back eh?
Six nights, four friends, 1100 miles, 4027 ‘are we there yet?’s, more alterations than a bride who falls pregnant with triplets, has them early and goes on the Atkins diet to lose weight for her wedding’s wedding dress and my full text allowance in one week. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the full and unabridged travelog of the Goddard Tour of the North (including Scotland) sponsored by B&Q, Ady’s company car, Pimms, Guinness, British Beef and Indian Takeaways. Any association with vegan or vegatarian foodstuffs is not intentional and will not be repeated! 🙂
Saturday After further Malice searching and some debate as to whether we should actually go or not we decided to listen to all the tales we’d heard of cats who vanish for weeks, nay, months and come back and the reassurances of my Dad that he’d walk the nearby streets daily looking for her and set off later than planned for our first destination in Cheshire – Lynda and Stuarts.
For those who don’t know Lynda is the lady who looked after the children a couple of days a week when I worked when we lived in Manchester. She came to us through a childcare agency but was with us for well over a year from when Tarly was just 6 weeks old and very quickly became considered part of our family. Her and her husband Stuart are about my parents age and have two sons around my age. They became Grandparents for the first time earlier this year but treat Davies and Scarlett as honourory Grandchildren of their own! Since we have been back in Sussex (just over 2 years) they have come down here several times including once over Christmas and we have stayed with them several times too. They live a few miles from the house we rented while we lived up there so it is a very homely place to stay for us as we know the surrounding area so well and have plenty of other friends locally to visit too.
We arrived around 3pm and Lynda, the children and I lounged around in the garden while Ady and Stuart watched football and drank Guinness – the start to what was pretty much the pattern of our week really. 🙂 We ate dinner outside with the children playing out til nearly 11pm when we all retired indoors.
I also had a lovely surprise from Joyce contacting me to say that some plans of another house guest had fallen through and if we could rearrange accordingly we would be able to visit her after all. So a hasty phonecall to all other tour destinations and a rejig of plans enabled that to be scheduled in. 🙂
Sunday More relaxing and lazing around really. I ventured out to the local supermarket (and very oddly felt all nostalgic about it not being our local supermarket anymore, recalling shopping there with a very small and new Scarlett a few years ago) for Sunday papers and that was as energetic as it got. Ah, apart from the badminton! 😆 Ady and I are, as I believe everyone knows, not built for speed, exertion or physical larks in the main, but the sun got to us (or it could have been the Guinness) and we spent *hours* playing badminton in the garden while Lynda and Stuart entertained the children and all of them were entertained by us! We had such a good laugh – and indeed a pretty good exercise too. I had to use my inhaler at least twice and felt the after effects for a good day or so afterwards! Have resolved to buy a cheap badminton set from Tesco though, it was so much fun! 🙂
We also had a lengthy, interesting and lively conversation about Home Education, education generally, school and childhood and parenting which was all very interesting. I explained about autonomy and we all read the Sunday Times magazine article and debated that. Stuart had been talking to Davies in the morning and had already observed how many questions he asks, how he really listens to the answers and continues asking questions. They had also been playing one of Davies’ latest made up games which we play in the car sometimes where you take it in turns to say a word and the other person has to think up a rhyming word. Not very difficult but always interesting to see what word people will think of first. Stuart was really impressed with Davies’ vocabulary on that and how he came up with words which are not the automatic ‘easy’ ones. Which could be one up for not going down the traditional reading route I guess in that he thinks of words he uses rather than ones which are easy to read so have been linked together in an early reader book.
The children spent the afternoon creating a washing up tub full of water, mud and fallen apples so they required a bathing and were both asleep incredibly early after which Ady and I were treated to an Indian Takeaway – oh and more wine and Guinness!
Monday After a lazy start we packed ourselves off to The Trafford Centre. Dual purpose really – we wanted to have a memory lane style wander round and Tarly needed new doodles as she’s grown a half size and the local Clarkes had none to fit her. So we went to the Clarkes where they both got their first shoes and had the little ‘my first shoes’ picture taken and got her a gorgeous pair of flowery, butterfly adorned doodles – quite the nicest pair I’ve ever seen. Covered in mud and grass stains now of course, but beautiful anyway! 🙂
We walked round for a while and then had lunch there before heading over to Miranda’s for destination number two on the tour. We’d changed to just one night there due to Joyce being added back into the tour and as Miranda’s daughter F is nearly 9 and at school it fitted well to only disturb one night of the bedtime school night routine as it happened. A lovely afternoon for the children playing on F’s climbing frame and trampoline but a sleep for both of them in the car earlier made them dreadful to get to sleep so that was a slightly stressy interval. 🙁
Further eating and drinking (Pimms, followed by wine or beer) outside followed by moving indoors to their beautiful dream kitchen with an entired two walls of windows over views stretching for miles and miles watching the sun set and lights go on all over four counties made a lovely evening. I taught Miranda how to needle felt, she went and got out a load of her hand knitted jumpers and gave us an impromptu fashion show and much hilarity ensued. Can’t quite believe she used to be our boss! 🙂 Much money making schemes, business ideas and big ideas fuelled by drink talking later we all retired for the night.
Tuesday Mindful of the next leg of the trip taking us up to Scotland we stayed fairly close to home in the morning and Miranda took us to a very local ice cream farm and parlour where they keep a small selection of animals (donkey, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, farm cats and a few dairy cows). The children saw probably the youngest kittens they’ve ever seen (two litters, one four weeks with three kittens and one about a week old with five kittens) which they fell in love with. Then we were invited to go and watch the farmers wife feed two day old lambs who’s mother was not making sufficient milk for them. It was done by way of a long tube fed down their throats and they were somewhat reluctant but it made for interesting watching! We also saw turkeys, geese, ducks and peacocks and all their chicks / young too. Then we all had one of the made on site ice creams too. Lovel y:-)
We left there and had a brief but lovely walk along a river bank with the children collecting caught up whisps of sheep wool for me to needlefelt (their idea, not mine!) and I showed Tarly how to play pooh sticks, except we used brightly coloured leaves and talked about currents while we did it. :-). Back to Miranda’s for lunch where the dinner table conversation prompted even Miranda, who pays £10,000 a year for her daughters’ schooling and would never dream of such a crazy idea as Home Education to comment that she could finally ‘get’ what it was all about! 😯 We said our goodbyes, having been plied with a marketing proposal for me to read through and comment on 🙄 and set off for Scotland.
It was a straightforward journey with just one stop for sweeties and just as we pulled past the sign annoucing we’d arrived in Joyce’s area and I spotted her road sign the local radio we’d tuned to announced a workday request for someone of The Proclaimers, 500 miles. So, radio blaring with all the windows down so they could hear it we pulled into Joyce’s crescent! 🙂 Ah the Goddards have arrived!
The children imediately decided Hannah was possibly the best possible playmate by virtue of not being a grown up so still being fun, but being bigger and older than then so able to lift them about and make good suggestions for games. Ady imediately realised that Joyce and I wouldn’t mind at all if he took himself and his dinner and (another) Guinness inside and watched the football so Joyce and I could gossip and drink Pimms! 🙂 Perfect evening!
I seem to recall we continued serious and fairly sensible conversation into the night although I suspect we were just making the same point over and over again. When we had drunk a whole bottle and the clock struck 2 we called it a night.
Wednesday The children got dressed into their sun suits and aside from a brief flirtation with her ‘Lulah dress’ as it has now been renamed forever on Tarly’s part they stayed in them all day. They played with sand, water, water, sand, the trampoline, sand, the climbing frame, water, sand, water and the sand. And they could not have been happier children really! 🙂 We started wine at lunchtime and full details of everything are patchy but we all had a good time! 🙂
I didn’t have to eat a single lentil, mushroom or chick pea. And I got to see what has to be the tidiest under the stairs cupboard I have ever seen in my whole life! 😉 Oh and the biggest pile of cushions!
Thursday Another hard to get going morning, Scarlett (usually the noisiest morning child in the world) had managed to sneak out past Ady, Davies and I and we woke to find her happily chatting to Bob and Hannah. 🙂 We set off to Kirsty and James’ for the final destination on our Tour.
We arrived in time for lunch (sandwiches, beer and bacardi breezers naturally!), the children scattered and we had a lovely afternoon with plenty of bouncing on the trampoline and running around in nettles and tall grass. They have a lovely house which is so perfect for HE and I can’t think of a more deserving family to have such a fab location and exciting possibilities infront of them. We had a final meal (another takeaway, how treated and lucky are we? 🙂 ) outside before finally going in to let the children bath in shifts and go to bed, where they categorically didn’t go to sleep 🙄 while we chatted and Ady and James enjoyed a jenga battle. 🙂
Friday After a very nice couple of hours sitting watching the news, looking at pictures and having breakfast we collected ourselves together and set off on our homeward journey. We’d been invited to Barbara’s (which would have been the final two nights of our Tour if we’d not needed to come home for Malice) for lunch but a quick look at the routefinder showed it to be 40 minutes further via her house so reluctantly we’d decided to just drive as fast back as we could. Kirsty packed us lunch and we managed it with three very brief loo stops. 500 miles. It should have taken 8 hours and despite being totally on schedule to do so, which would have allowed a just before the vet closes quick visit to Malice but we hit the M25, not much more than 50 miles from home and stopped. And there we sat for over two hours. The vets closing time came and went and we finally arrived home at gone 8pm – some 10 hours after we’d set off.
I have flickr’d and may well add some in to this post tomorrow but for now we’d all four like to thank everyone we stayed with this week so much for their fantastic friendship, warmth and hospitality. We felt like such honoured guests and it was apparent how much time and thought had gone into catering for our stay. You are of course, all welcome here any time and we’d love the chance to repay your hospitality but your company, homes and kindness were so greatly enjoyed and appreciated. Thank you. 🙂 xxx
And not entirely surprisingly I have a lot to say!
So I think I’ll break it into chunks to make it easier.
Firstly we are actually back earlier than planned as Malice has been found.
She had been hit by a car and taken to a vets sometime either Friday or Saturday last weekend. I’ve yet to get full details of who, what, why and how but it would seem that she was found by someone on their driveway, very injured and taken to the vets who treated her without knowing who she belonged to. Through ringing round all the local vets and asking if an unidentified black cat had been handed in my Mum tracked her down.
She was in a very bad way when she arrived at the vets – both her eyeballs had popped out and prolapsed – she still has one sewn shut and will probably lose sight in that eye. The other is still touch and go but appears to be healing OK so we’re hopeful she will have some, if limited sight. Her jaw and inside her mouth were very messed up and she has been unable to eat or drink due to injury and a wired up jaw so has been tube fed and watered and heavily sedated.
The vet is very hopeful that in having us home and bringing her home for at least the weekend she may well pick up although she will probably have to go back there again on Monday. My parents have been visiting her every day but clearly she will be very confused wondering where the hell we are (if you credit cats with such thoughts and attachments, obviously). Candle, our other cat has also been fairly bewildered with Malice disappearing and us buggering off for six nights so despite it being very sad to cut our Tour of the North (including Scotland) short we ended up coming home three nights earlier than planned for Malice.
So very good news that she’s been found, very bad news that she has been so badly injured and we were not here and very, very bad news that the vets bill is already running in excess of the bonus Ady was so pleased to get in his pay packet last week – ah well… not meant to be obviously. 🙁
We’ve had a lovely if busy day today. An early start due to missing Malice induced loudness from the children. We left home and headed into town to the post office to get 8 ebay parcels on their way and tax my car before going over to Ali’s.
A lovely time there as usual with the children having a great time playing in the garden (with a very brief interlude of them slipping out of the garden resulting in them being slightly restricted as to where they could go after that!), playing with the sandpit, some water, various large bubble making equipment and some time with the gears toys. They all had a great time and allowed Ali and I loads of time to chat about all manner of things. Thanks for a lovely day :-).
Ady’s been at a work end of season bash so I put the children to bed, dealing with Davies’ sudden hysterics about Malice and loads of drawings of her from him. I simply couldn’t be bothered to pack tonight and don’t feel remotely holiday-ish so it will all have to wait until the morning.
And now, cos I am wiped out – I’m off to bed.
She’s still not back and has been missing for nearly 24 hours. I know she may well come home yet, I know she may well be locked in someone’s shed or garage, stuck up a tree, nestled on the lap of an elderly neighbour being hand fed freshly caught fish. But she is 14 to my knowledge, prior to last summer she had a been a full time house cat and never really wandered further than the side of the house where she had a sunny spot in some tall grass so I am slightly less than hopeful that she is about to nochalently walk in having suddenly decided to prowl a whole day and nights worth away from home.
I sincerely hope she does though.
My first experience of grief was when I was about 9 and out family cat Sammy died. I sobbed for hours and had to be taken out of assembly in school two days later when the headmaster read out the lyrics from The Nine Lives of the Ginger Cat from Captain Beaky.
As soon as we bought our own house I wanted two black cats and we had kittens called Colgate and Malarkey who were charming, cute, bundles of personality. They were both run over on the road outside our house within a month of each other just after they were a year old. 🙁
We vowed not to have more cats living on such a busy road but within three months I was desperate to have more so we went to the local RSPCA rescue home and sought out cats who would stay inside. We chose two black cats who had been resuced from the same place and were semi feral. There had been about 30 cats living in one house with an old woman, running wild and continuing to breed and breed and breed. Some had been put down as just too wild to rehome and the two we chose had already been at the RSPCA for six weeks with no one interested in them. They cowered at the back of their cages, spitting and hissing at anyone who came near them with their ears flat to their heads and evil glints in their eyes. We thought that if we gave them any sort of life it would be an improvement so we brought them home. They were already fully grown and had been aged at two although I actually think that Malice at least was older than that. That was 1994.
They were originally called Candle and Bell (from, I assume the film Bell, Book and Candle about a witch and her cat Pyewacket) as they did look like witches cats. We kept the name Candle but Bell was so utterly unsuitable for such a spitting, hissing, ball of black fur that we rechristened Bell with the far more suitable name of Malice. Candle was Ady’s cat, Malice was mine.
For the first six months they only came out from behind the sofa or under the suitcase to eat, drink or use their litter tray. Usually under cover of darkness at night and woe betide anyone thinking they might give them a friendly stroke as they risked having deep lacerations cut into their arm. I very clearly recall the first time Ady lured one of them out with cat treats and got to stroke her while she ate them. There then followed a period of a whole year when Candle lived in our bathroom because every time she snuck out Malice attacked her. She ate in there, had a litter tray in there and simply never ventured out. This went on until one day, just as suddenly as they had started this weird relationship they stopped and got on fine and were often to be found cuddled up together asleep.
Given their history we were slightly concerned when we had Davies that they might attack him or smother him or any of the other horror stories you hear about cats and babies but aside from being very cautious of the new addition to the home they were fine. Candle has on occassions scratched both the children, but never unprovoked. Malice mellowed with age and has been the gentlest, most patient cat who puts up with all sorts of pulling and prodding and frequently is to be found being carried around the place by Scarlett.
Over the years she has gone from a small cat to a small but rather fat cat, her once black whiskers have one by one all gone white and she happily spends her day curled up asleep in a sunny spot. She nearly died just before Davies was one when she walked across a worktop just sprayed with antibacterial cleaner and licked it all off her paws, she’s had all but one tooth removed as they were rotten, she coped admirably with the move up to Manchester and then back again two years later. She sat by my head for the duration of Scarlett’s home birth and has on many occassions purred round my legs and been cuddled and soaked my tears up in her soft black fur.
There’s a lovely pic of her here and here she is enjoying the sunshine last week.
I’m feeling very bad that we’re off for six days tomorrow morning but Dad has promised to keep looking for her while we’re gone and I really hope I’m blogging with happy news about her very soon. 🙁
Can’t find my cat 🙁 She was around last night but went out during the evening and despite me accidentally leaving the back door wide open all night she hasn’t been seen since (although I suppose she could well have been in and out all night).
Our cats have only been going out very recently (they are old and decrepid) so hoping she is just snuggled up in our garage or a cosy hedge or something and will be back soon.
I have also been doing loads of gallivanting about the last couple of days. 🙂
Had a lovely day yesterday in London, via Reading (and no, geography hounds it possibly is not the most as the crow flies route but it was more frugal train fare wise and I am still a bit of a baby about the tube on my own with the children!).
I took precisely two photos – one of the children assembled on a bench on the platform at Reading:
and then one some eight hours later on the train coming home again! (and yes that is a different outfit Tarly is wearing! 🙂 )
so with lack of photographic evidence you’ll have to take my word for it that a) we had a lovely day and b) it was all Davies’ fault!
On the train into London we all had to scatter to sit seperately and I ended up with both D & S on my lap in a small chair. In order to distract them we sat and looked at the on board train safety leaflet and visually located the emergency stop pull cord, the glass breaking hammer, the light sticks and acquainted ourselves with the correct procedures for exiting the train in the event of an emergency. So that was educational!
As always splendid hospitality provided by the Tooth/Price household – thanks for that, your company always gives us a buzz.
We didn’t get home til gone midnight so when I was woken by Tarly at 8.30am asking if she could have a packet of Willy Wonka fruit wobble drops for breakfast and if so could I please open them I took a short while to gain full consciousness (and actually agree that indeed she may! 😉 ) before getting into full on running round like a loon mode to get two loads of washing done and out, a picnic packed, all of us breakfasted (including toast and cereal to have as a second course to the fruity wobble drops!) and dressed and ready to go by the time Lucy rang on the doorbell at 10 to 10!
We loaded Lucy, Rebecca and Richard into our car with Davies and Scarlett and Julie, Jack and Maisie pulled up so we did a convoy to Paradise Park (commonly refered to as ‘the dinosaur place’) where the lovely lady let all three adults and six children in on my ‘family pass’ with just a charge for one additional adult. 🙂 Julie paid for herself and then Lucy paid for our coffees, teas and ice creams later in the day to thank us for the lift and the getting in free so that was a nice cheap day out for us 🙂
We had a lovely day there looking round all of the indoors and outdoors stuff, picnicking for lunch in the gardens, spending time in the amusements and having tea ice cream in the coffee shop. After the disappointment of not getting pressies with Liam and Lily did when we went with them last time I agreed D & S could choose something small each and they had won a few tokens which can be redeemed against toy purchases each in the amusements so I spent less than a fiver all day. 🙂
Lucy and co came back and played in the garden afterwards which was lovely too. We had all sorts of conversations including Lucy’s observation that ‘your kids are so good at being Home Educated, they ask all the right questions!’ to which I of course answered that they would really, having never been taught how to stop asking questions by going to school!
We’d talked about how dairy cows go off to the milking parlour twice a day and how yes I supposed cows milk was made from grass but how cows chew the grass differently to how we eat our food, how they have four stomachs and so on and how the milk mammals feed their babies is not necessarily a direct pass on of whatever they’ve been eating although it does impact upon it. Because Tarly had seen some cows in a field on the way and decided they were ‘marching’ and wanted to know from me where they might be marching to.
We covered dreams and sleep talking, sleep walking and dreaming generally including Davies recounting a funny dream about Scarlett, Jack and Maisie which he had laughed during and woken up still laughing about ‘in real life!’ including how babies can only cry and not talk so if they make a noise in their sleep it will probably be a cry. Because Richard who was soundly asleep in the car had made a whimpering noise in his sleep.
We talked about how liquid is processed by the body and then the waste comes out (of your ‘bagina’) as wee and food comes out of your bottom as poo. Because Scarlett said the lemonade we drank when we got home was fizzing in her throat and then proceeded to track it’s possible journey through her body.
We talked about getting parenting advice from others and how unsolicited advice is almost always unwelcome and how you wish people would actually keep their views to themselves (Lucy has a friend who worked in childcare previously and often offers unwanted advice on parenting tips).
And we all generally had a lovely time. It’s a really nice threesome of adults and a lovely combination of six children too. 🙂
Ady and my Dad went to the cricket at the Rose Bowl tonight so fairly last minute I rang Mum and she came over for the evening and we cooked a late dinner ready for when Ady and Dad got back. Consequently we drank lots of wine and had lots of ‘we’ve uncovered the secret of eternal happiness and educational utopia’ conversations about HE.
Tomorrow I have lots of ebay parcels to post, my car to tax and we’re off to Ali’s. Ady is out at a works do in the evening for which my limited babysitting possibilities of one person is unavailable to allow me to go to aswell so I will be packing ready for the off on Saturday morning for the Goddard Tour of the North!
Stuck five of my maternity / feeding bras on ebay. They were Bravado ones and probably about a hundred quids worth in their day but they’d done me through two pregnancies / feeding and showed plenty of signs of wear.
They just sold for £28 with a right bidding war at the end. I am now fretting that the winner will be bitterly disappointed although I did state they showed signs of wash and wear and had done me two babies. I almost hope they’ve been bought by a weirdo who wants them looking visibly worn. Also wondering whether there is a market here – I didn’t want some odd ball buying Tarly’s old pants but have no scruples about selling my own! 😉
Finished the book I was reading today. I probably covered a good 300 pages and it was no mean feat – I had to keep going and hiding in places from the children and allowing them to eat all sorts of weird and wonderful creations they put together themselves from the fridge. But it was worth it! I’d got it from the library on one of their Top Ten 7 day borrows with no renewing allowed so it had to be back today. I probably have much to say on it but as I know at least two of my readers are hoping to read it themselves I won’t do so just yet and I’ll save my thoughts for in person chatting.
The children watched all the extras on the Were Rabbit dvd again 🙄 and did loads of drawings for each other which they kept going and opening the front door and posting through the letterbox for effect. Some very good art work coming along there. Davies also asked me to do him some ‘puzzles’ which was something I did the other week. I wrote out various easy-ish to read words, draw the corresponding pictures and he has to draw a line to connect the word and the picture. Today I did some fruit (banana, apple, grape, strawberry, orange, lemon) and some objects (hat, glove, man, car, bird, ball) and he did them fairly effortlessly with minimal assistance. He is inclined to look at the pictures and find the word that starts with the right letter rather than read the words and find the right picture but it’s a start. Maybe next time I’ll do words that all start with the same letter and work up from there. He then left me to read a bit more of my book and coloured all the little pictures in. 🙂
I finally finished it just before 3pm so we shot out of the house and round the corner to the bus stop to catch a bus into town. Now I’d looked at the local bus company website and cast back in my dim and distant memory of a very short public transport users period in my life and was fairly sure it would be just under two quid into town – which is cheaper than parking and a mini adventure. But no it was £3.20 return which I thought was shockingly overpriced. Particularly given it’s only a fiver for a travelcard all round London on tubes and buses so WTF is that all about then. Shan’t bother with that again!
The children quite liked the novelty of being on a bus (with Tarly charmingly but rather loudly commenting on every single person who got on or off for the duration! :oops:) and we hopped off in the middle of town and set about the few things we needed to do. These included getting Tarly’s doodles checked for size as I was fairly sure her toes are at the very end of them. And sure enough they are and equally sure enough there was not a suitable pair of shoes in the shop in her size 🙄 The guy agreed that unless they are actually hurting they are fine for another week or so and she does have sandals as well so we’ll scout Clarks on our Tour of the North as most of the Doodles seem to have gone into the half price sale so we might get a bargain.
Whilst sitting in Clarks (not looking my best having dashed out of the house without looking in a mirror with my hair scraped back and Tarly’s artwork adorning my toes (one purple with pink sparkly nail varnish daubed on top, the other purple with peach smeared all over the nails and toes, all prominantly on display!) trying to contain two small children in a shoe shop I saw two women I knew – one the daughter of a friend and ex colleague who I’d actually have quite liked to chat to but when I finished sorting Tarly out she’d gone and we only managed a quick ‘hello, how are you, don’t they grow up fast’ over the heads of two children each and another a girl I went to school with and have not seen since. We did that smiling in recognition of having realised it was each other thing but as the guy who served us went on to serve her and her small daughter it was not feasible to chat. Ah well.
A quick peep in The Works, a stop in Woolies for some sweeties and we headed up to the main library to return the book. We stopped in a couple of charity shops along the way and on route I must have dropped my library ticket as it was clearly in my bag at Woolies but clearly gone by the time we reached the library. So a lengthy and tiresome with two small children wait at the desk to get a replacement with me doing lots of shushing and wide eyes glares at the children followed by Scarlett messing around in the revolving entrance doors while I was trying to sort out which of the pile of books to leave behind as I already have a pile of books at home on my ticket so two of our choices had to be left. The other librarian left her post at the in desk to dash out after Tarly yelling ‘NO! DON’T PLAY NEAR THE DOORS!!’ just to draw the attention of every person in the library who hadn’t already noticed my inadequate parenting earlier. So that was nice. 🙁 But it made the decision on which books to leave easier as she lost her choices…
Ady was practically passing the town centre on his way home so rather than catch the bus home with all the finishing work people he detoured and picked us up and we got chip shop chips for the kids’ tea on the way home.
Read the children this rather good book we got from the library to fit in with all of Davies recent ‘what’s it all about then?’ questions and packed them off to bed. Lost! night (and I need to watch next week’s too as we’ll be with Miranda this time next week and she definitely won’t be a fan) and I really should plan to pack a picnic for tomorrow as we’re off at stupid o’clock to London via Reading for a get together with various friends.
Busy day today. I did a couple of loads of washing which promptly got rained on 🙄 and made some banana cakes with some very brown bananas which went down very well with the children so will doubtless by the fate of all past their prime bananas from now on.
Granny arrived and stayed for a couple of hours, but as I gave her a big wad of photos of camp to look through and instructed D & S to tell her what was going on in all of them and then buggered off to make said cakes, put on said washing loads and change Tarly’s bed and tidy her room up a bit I didn’t really give her much time to mention whether my arse looked big as it swept out of the room :lol:. She did comment on how happy all the children looked at camp and said (almost with a lightbulb hanging over her head as she did so) ‘and of course they are learning all the time aren’t they!’ And she loved the idea of the Goddard Tour of the North (including Scotland) too! 🙂
The children then got the geomags out to show her and I brought tea and fresh from the oven cakes in which always impresses ( 😉 ) and we made a collaborative geomag campsite with tents, tables and chairs and Tarly made a duck! Plenty of excellent demonstrations of all sorts of skills and knowledge being shown by both children with the geomags too so that was a good PR job all round I thought 🙂
Shame they didn’t maintain it really 🙄 as when Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived they managed to prove all I was trying to tell Lucy about how much easier it all gets and how little supervision they require by continually being loud, squabbling with each other and generally interupting every time I got midway through a sentence! Rebecca also reverted to shy and scared and Richard managed to uncover every single baby-unfriendly aspect to the house. :rolls: Never mind, we’re seeing them again later this week. (I think she may well be a blogger in the making Helen and I’ll certainly pass on your hello, she was very full of how lovely SB was when you arrived at Kessingland and said she’d like to spend more time getting to know you. 🙂 )
They left and the children almost instantly became ‘normal’ again, not requiring any input from me at all so I made a couple of phonecalls and pottered on the laptop while they played with lego and watched W&G Were Rabbit and all the dvd extras for about the millionth time.
Ady arrived home and they instantly started again not letting us complete a single sentence but it was time to take Davies to Badgers anyway so I left Ady and Scarlett to it (I think they did some colouring followed by a big bubble bath for Tarly while we were gone. We’ve started letting them have baths to themselves on a Monday which although they enjoy their baths together normally seems to be a ‘treat’ to have once a week alone.
I took Davies in, he didn’t want to kiss me goodbye so I happily went and read my book in the car for an hour. I’m finding that peaceful hour very precious and was sad to realise that for a good couple of months each year it will already by dark by 5pm and therefore slightly less cosy and easy to read in the car. Hopefully by then he will be fine about being dropped off and I can sneak off to the library for an hours’ peace – I’ve certainly got no intention of going home again! 🙂
When I collected him I hung back to tell Lisa (Badger in charge lady) that we won’t be around for the next two weeks and she started telling me that she’ll really miss Davies, he is ‘my star’ and what a lovely, sweet, lovely, lovely, LOVELY boy he is. All the while cuddling him while she said it. She was also saying how much her and the lad who assists her were praising ‘home tuition’ if that is how it effects children. So that was a bit lovely to hear 🙂 🙂 I told Davies how proud that makes me feel and how happy I am that he is loving it so much and is clearly so happy there. Hurrah for Badgers eh?! 🙂 He came home with a passport he’d made there this week with a little self portrait he’d drawn and at one point I had glanced up through the window from the car to see one of the older children helping him with his chair. If he is not the youngest (which he might well be actually) he is certainly the smallest and I imagine he is the darling of the group – and I know how well he responds to that role so I really think he is in his element there – the best possible outcome for his first away from me experience really. And he does look very cute indeed in his little uniform too.
We came home via the shop where I needed a vital ingredient for dinner and spotted a range of old fashioned kids sweets including fizz bombs which had been a childhood favourite of mine. I bought a pack and me and Davies sat in the car in the drive eating them, blinking like mad as they are so fizzy and sour and giggling away. Moments like that are what I’ll treasure forever about motherhood – the smell of their hair when I cuddle them, the feel of their skin as I smooth on suncream, the shared glances between me and Davies when Tarly does something silly, the being there for the ‘firsts’ from the milestones like steps or words to the small but never insignificant first word they read, first realisation of who they are independent of me and being the one to introduce them to sugary teeth rotting junk food! 🙂 I don’t know whether it is them getting older, me getting more into my current role or just a general shift in what’s important to me but I’m getting a huge amount of pride and pleasure out of being the mother to my children just now and I’m really, really enjoying it. 🙂
Tomorrow we need to return library books and I need to pop into town to sign a form at the optician. I think we might go into town on the bus as the cost of the fare (given Davies will be free, he’s short enough and not in school so I reckon he can pass as four!) is not much more expensive than parking and we might be able to go to the main library then instead. With the exception of London buses and open topped tour buses I don’t think Tarly has ever been on one for the sake of transport so that should be fun.
Granny is arriving in half an hour (which means I need to get me and the children dressed really rather than sitting here blogging!) to give me a hard time about why she didn’t actually see me on her birthday and how fat I’m looking 🙄
Lucy has just texted me to ask if we want to go to soft play so I’ve said I can’t but they are coming round after lunch instead.
And then this afternoon we have Badgers…
Ridiculously early start this morning when Tarly woke me at 6.20am. Urgh! So much for new routine giving lie ins all the time 🙄 I actually felt quite rough (and deservedly so given quite how many empties I stuck in the recycling bin this morning but there was six of us for most of the evening :oops:) so I made a cup of tea and we cuddled under a big pink blanket for about an hour until Ady and Davies came downstairs. Ady had a bath while I continued cuddling with both children, I jumped in after him and a very hot bath and a second cup of tea seemed to restore me sufficiently to get myself and the children dressed while Ady packed up a picnic. And then a mere 40 minutes after I’d planned we set off for London.
I don’t think I’ve ever driven so far into London before, amazing how very specific the feel and culture is as you drive through each borough – so we did lots of people watching as we went, loads of very dressed up people spilling out of Sunday morning services at various churches as we drove by giving us lots to point out to the children.
We parked right next to the London Eye, and coincidentally the Travelodge we stayed in when we went up for a few nights back in 2004 so felt quite at home. As we wandered across the green Alison yelled at us so we joined her and a couple of other FP people in the playpark with more joining us after a while. We had a lovely picnic and a very nice couple of hours chatting to people I’ve met previously like Em and a couple of other brand new IRL people too. I thought I’d found a new toilet trip partner in Em but sadly blew that 😉 and Ady spent the whole time taking loads of pictures with his shiny new camera. You can see them here.
Mindful of the slightly cheaper than we’d been expecting but rather expensive nonetheless parking charges we decided not to go over the 3 hour mark so bid everyone farewell and headed for home. On the way past a Chinese Supermarket along Purley Way in Croydon that I have looked at every time I’ve ever gone to Ikea and thought we really must go and look at we decided to do just that so had a very enlightening half hour or so browsing the exotic shelves including peering in at the live lobsters and crayfish. We bought a couple of bits including multi coloured prawn crackers, a massive bag of cloves and some green noodles, all for the princely sum of £1.58 and came home in time for the last half hour or so of the football. Which as it happened was when everything that was going to happen did happen so that was good. 🙂
Tea and bed for the children, roast dinner and taped Dr Who for us and I’m fully intending to be in bed before 11pm myself. I think I need some catch up sleep and a couple of teetotal days. Bloody hell, when did I grow up then? 😉
A lovely sun kissed day today. 🙂
It started with a lie in, Tarly brought the post up to me around 8am and I turned over and went back to sleep until gone 9.30am :-). I was woken by Julie ringing to see if we wanted to have a barbecue this afternoon so got up, put some washing away and went to admire Davies’ bedroom which Ady had been working on all morning. Since the new fishtank we’d been working out how to rearrange furniture in there so he could have them in his room and have a major tidy up in there at the same time. I’ve been fudging actually doing it all week but Ady sorted it and it looks fab. 🙂
We headed over to Chris and Julies (for the benefit of new readers that is Ady’s brother, his wife and their same as Scarlett twins – Jack and Maisie) where we had a lovely time in the garden. Barbecue, chatting and playing and lots of laughter. 🙂 While over there I realised that as we are away from next Saturday we won’t see my parents for a couple of weeks so I rang and invited them over for dinner tonight.
We came home and Ady and the kids were in the garden for an hour or so then my parents arrived. Children had a bath and were packed off to bed. I was having a bath when the doorbell rang and Ady’s oldest (quite literally, at 10 years older than Ady he is 52 later this year! 😉 ) and best mate and his partner arrived having been at a nearby anniversary party for the day. So they came in and joined the football watching, beer and wine quaffing that was already going on, the children were allowed back out of their beds and a very merry evening was had by all. 🙂
Kev and Sue finally left around 10pm with Mum and Dad leaving around 11pm. Ady’s already gone up to bed and I am about to follow. Tomorrow we are off to London for a FP meet up which I’m really looking forward to. Another busy week scheduled in before we head off next Saturday on our Goddard Tour of the North! 🙂
My Dad has always, always, always gone out on a Friday night, since before he even knew my Mum he’s gone to a mens club locally with a couple of friends. There are only the two of them now, although from time to time Ady has gone with them and I imagine two men nearing 70 have a slightly less wild night than they used to 30 odd years ago and over the years it has gone from being something my Mum loathes with a passion to a night of the week she actually looks forward to for being able to watch whatever she wants on TV without Dad’s constant sneering comments (BB being a case in point, although generally I have to agree with Dad, my Mum does watch crap!). So he always used to get home around midnight. When I was very young Friday night would always be the source of arguments – tension before he went out leading to him coming home drunk and beligerant and spoiling for a fight with me trying to get to sleep before the rows started. In latter years so had the good sense to go to bed and be asleep herself before midnight so Dad used to come and talk to me. He’d sway into my bedroom, perch on the side of my bed and regale me with what we both used to call his ‘when I were a lad stories’. He’d tell me about his childhood, talk about his both dead by then parents and share tales with me I imagine he never really told to anyone else. Certainly my Mum and brother would never have been interested let alone been priviledged to hear them. Fast forward a few years and as Friday night became a night out for Dad and I the first home would often wait up for the other and we’d share countless drunken chats. He’d tell me the bloke who’d hurt hurt me was worthless, cuddle me while I sobbed about how much I loved him anyway and we’d swap crazy drunken stories. We used to test who was the most drunk by coming up with a silly word which we had to remember in the morning. I bet if I was to say ‘shampoo’ to my Dad now it would make him laugh and he’d know exactly what I was refering to! When I was little my Dad always used to say he was the best friend I’d ever had and d’you know, I reckon he is. Hope my children realise the same about me one day eh.
So tonight, after Davies had gone to bed and Scarlett was long asleep, Davies came back down to have a wee, came into the lounge where we were drinking wine and beer and eating dry roasted peanuts. He sat down and shared the nuts, refused a taste of the wine or beer which made us laugh and we started talking about how as a child I’d been just like Tarly and loved to slurp from my parents glasses. I was telling him how my Dad had let me try brandy and whisky when I was not much older than he is now and how I’d spat it in the sink cos it was so horrid! Which led to a whole hours worth of ‘when I were a lass stories’ from exploits at playschool, memories of Saturday night steak and chips and Dr Who, my parents orange 70s kitchen, naughty things I did (it started as a how much like me Tarly is conversation) and more. Clearly a Friday night Davies tradition coming through. 🙂
What else then? Dreadful night with Tarly and a musical beds game during the night, not at all sure what that was about which led to a late start to the day. After a very slow start we got out of the house to go to Sainsburys for food shopping which was busy and slightly fraught, came home to drop the food off and shove some stuff in the free cool bag I’d got for buying five stickered items and we drove nearly to the seafront (only about a ten minute walk but very whiny and tedious with small people), parked down a side road and walked into Brooklands, which is a large green area across the road from the beach with pitch and putt, a miniature train, ice creams, a lake and so on. We found a good spot for eating and had our lunch, then Davies wanted to do some climbing on some huge ornamental rocks they have there. Scarlett had clearly discovered her sense of danger which has been absent thus far and refused to climb them incase she fell off!!! 😯
Davies then needed the loo so we traipsed over to the toilets, passing the train on the way with me promising that if it was at the platform when we came back we’d go on it. And there it was so we did! We then walked back to the rocks at which point D said he needed the loo again, went very pale and then green and confessed he actually felt ill. So we called it a day and came home. Briefer than planned but we might go back again on Monday if the weather is ok, or we might do the beach actually, complete with buckets and spades. 🙂
Once home D recovered so we had popcorn and they played Zoombinis, we did some drawing and watched some Discovery Kids. There was a big shouty interlude (mostly me :oops:) and then the children went to bed, Davies came back down which brings us back to the beginning of the post. He is also now asleep, I have drunk a bottle of wine and am fighting the urge to text / phone all my friends and tell them how much I love them (yep I’m at that stage of being drunk!) and watching Lisa come out of the Big Brother house.
We were geared up for another at home day today but a text message from Lucy at 9am to see if we were free and wanted to get together was very welcome and after some debate as to what to do when we were both broke we ended up heading round there for the day with options of the beach or the park if needs be. On the way there we had further chats about creation vs evolution which has really captured Davies’ imagination atm, I did a very brief summary of Genesis for him with a promise to dig out a bible (which I’m not at all sure we even have a copy of here actually) and read him some of it to explain it all a bit better. I know we have got various bible story books here but we might have to have a trip to the library for a childrens’ bible I think, or even a standard one actually!
Usually Rebecca is fairly shy around us even though we’ve been meeting up for a year and as they are more usual to come to us than us to them she is frequently wrong footed by being in Davies and Scarlett’s home and finding it more tricky to break into their sometimes inpenetrable games.
Today though the three of them found plenty to play and were off pretty much the whole time as a trio, with Richard toddling behind while Lucy and I managed some really lengthy conversations about all sorts of things which was lovely. One of the nicest things about Lucy is she knows my parents so well, and has known me since we were 17 so is easily the oldest friend I am still in touch with, despite a massive 10 year plus gap in the middle so loads of background stuff you would normally need to cover in such deep life chats is not required as she already knows it all. 🙂
Colin and her and the children had a fab time last week and left with a really positive image of Home Ed (despite Colin still not being fully aware that it was a Home Ed camp :lol:) and were of course privy to some of the chats and opinions I missed out on so that was interesting 😉 and I was able to explain some of the in jokes to her too, which she found reassuring that we don’t just sit round talking about people who are not there :roll:…
We did have a brief jaunt to the local park but in a huge departure from the self entertainment of last week’s gang of children when I certainly saw very little of mine and had to wrestle them in to the tent to get dressed / eat / go to bed they were all four of them wanting to be pushed on the swing, held hands with round the balancing bit / sit on someone’s lap, so we ended up taking them home again where they happily played in the garden with some pretend food and a jug of water. 🙄 kids eh!
We finally left there around 4pm with a plan to try and meet weekly from now on as Lucy is where I was two years ago and feeling that she really needs to set out her and the childrens’ social lives in order to answer people’s socialising questions about HE and to convince herself it is the right decision as she is still wavering at the moment. I also told her that she doesn’t need to only see Julie when I’m around as they get on well and Rebecca and Maisie are very similar children who get on well and would probably bond even more without my two around. She is keen to start a blog and get more into the MP ‘gang’ too so expect to start hearing about the pursuits of Lucy and gang sometime soon :-).
The children and I had a very protracted putting away the toy animals and dinosaurs session where we announced what each creature was and what noise it made before putting it back into the box, made up songs about them as we went and were generally silly, which was fun. I sang ‘Mud, mud, glorious mud’ to them which they’d never heard before and I told them about how John (who died last year) used to sing it to me and Frazer when we were little.
They went off to bed at about 8pm after a bath and were both asleep by 9pm so that continues to be working well :-). Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ve promised we’ll take a picnic and walk to the beach / the pleasure park place next to the beach and Ady can come and meet us after work and bring us home. If we scout round loose change round the house I reckon we can rustle up enough for ice cream, a ride on the train or the pedal boats and maybe even chips for tea for them before we come home. And I think I might just slip a book into my bag so I can do some sitting around reading too. 🙂
Remember those tadpoles we had months ago? We all long since lost interest in them and they moved outside with Ady fishing the dead floating ones off the top of the bucket every so often. And then today, Ros’ Pea comes along and peers into the bucket and spots some swimming about. 🙂 They are now residing in our old sandpit with various rocks and other luxurious features to aid them in their next step frogdom. Which probably means that in the same style as children offered structured schooling versus benign neglect they will all be dead by morning 😆
Did lots of not a lot this morning including watching some Cbeebies which we’ve not done for months, before heading off to the park at midday with a picnic to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie. The children played while we caught up and then we went and took it in turns to push children on the single, much argued over, swing there.
Came home and the children started playing with blocks until Ros arrived with children. The boys imediately got lost somewhere in the house and garden and the girls drifted away eventually leaving Ros and I to catch up too. Ady came home just in time to offer hello and goodbye kisses (;-) ) along with hanging baskets and bedding plants.
I dashed round to my Granny’s, whos birthday it is today with some more plants and a card but she had already gone out for the evening so I left them on her doorstep and came home again. We read the children a library book they’d chosen without me really looking at it which turned out to be quite poignant and possibly not the best of bedtime reads but a nice book nonetheless and off they went to bed.
Dinner is the last portion of the lasagne Chris never had and then I need to finish listing all the clothes which are sat in the hall having beeen photo’d ready to go on ebay.
It’s been quite a nice day today really. Very laid back and relaxed.
I’ve done lots of washing and putting clean washing away, blogging, photographing stuff for ebay and listing far less than I’d hoped to (why does listing take so long?) and needle felted a belated birthday pressie for Ros’ Boo 🙂
The children watched Scientrific, Cre 8, Dr. Dog and Crash Test Danny on Discovery Kids (Love that channel and happily so do they, it’s soo educational 🙂 ), they did some drawing, some playing with alphabet
letters (including Davies working out how to spell ‘box’ and finding the letters to do so) and the continuation of their plastic dinosaurs and animals and geomag game from yesterday. I meant to do some reading aloud to them today and only managed a little bit of Winnie the Pooh with Tarly.
Around midday I finally parcelled up a denim jacket which has been sold for over a month and the payment finally arrived, amid many excuses while we were away so we walked to the post office. It’s not far, ten minutes or so walk at child pace so we had a lovely walk in the sunshine spotting things in people’s gardens as we went, chatting about the flowers and all sorts of various other things. They were both so utterly charming in the post office, making their voices sound like aliens by talking right infront of the big fan so the vibrations made their voices funny and entertaining the PO clerk that having cashed the postal order payment and paid for the postage I let them choose some sweets each. Tarly chose a bag of rainbow chocolate drops but Davies spotted the loose sweets – in my day called penny sweets but now at least 2 pence each so he got a little bowl and counted out 21 of them and then counted them out with the shopkeeper woman too, so we walked all the way home with them clutching their bags of sweets. I can’t think of a single example but I know I have refered back to my own childhood several times in the last couple of days and it is funny to hear the children getting their heads round that and picturing their Granny and Grandad as a Mummy and Daddy and likening me and my brother to the two of them (albeit with the age gap the other way round). I was also reminded of Milly Molly Mandy last week when someone was talking about skeins of wool which just always makes me think of the MMM stories when she was sent to the shop to buy them and walking back from the shop with paper bags filled with sweets was just so MMM and my own childhood it was lovely. 🙂 Kessingland last week had lots of shades of a ‘real’ childhood as I remembered it too, with endlessly long summery days, the beach, groups of children making up their own games as they went along, very little adult intervention, sand in your shoes and a new adventure every day making friends with every child you came across. Ah the nostalgia!
On Saturday I’d replied to a freecycle offer of a small hexagonal fish tank with light, gravel and filter and the freecycler had asked me to ring her on Sunday afternoon to arrange collection. When I did she sounded terribly vague and suddenly burst out that it wasn’t a good time as she was at the local hospital as her daughter had just taken an overdose :shock:. She emailed me this afternoon so I rang her and went round to collect it. Her daughter is still in hospital but recovering although she and her husband still seemed utterly in shock as they showed me how to set the tank up. We brought it home and have set it all up and transfered a very cheery Fred2 and Albert3 to it. Unfortunately it will necessitate a move round in Davies’ room so he can have them back in there again but his room is long overdue an overhaul having been repainted while we were at Melrose and then left with nothing more having been done so some serious sorting out in there is planned for this week.
I had Reading Group tonight but it was very brief as a) no one had anything much to say about the book other than it was ‘alright’ and b) the men in the group, and one of the women were desperate to get back for the football anyway. Next months’ choice is an Ian Mckewan who I have never read before so I’m quite looking forward to that. I picked up a Dr Seuss book for the children while I was there and as I was back before the children went to bed we sat and read it together with Davies spelling out / guessing most of the words. They went off to bed adhering to the new ‘routine’ beautifully.
Ady’s booked the time off work, I’ve cleared the backlog of washing from camping last week and we are already turning our thoughts towards our next expedition. Our travelling and accomodation is now set but as it occured to me last week that we may well be going past the front door so to speak of various other friends dotted around if you are somewhere on our route and would like to offer us a cup of tea and home baking as we go by please feel free! 🙂
We head off on Saturday 1st July from Sussex.
Sat & Sun – we’ll be in Hale, Cheshire which is just south of Manchester, travelling to a small and very exclusive location near Macclesfield, Cheshire on Monday morning.
Mon & Tues – near Macclesfield, leaving Wednesday morning to travel across the border to Kirsty’s in Falkirk.
Wed & Thurs – staying with Kirsty & James, leaving them on Friday to travel to Joyce’s in Ayr.
Friday & Saturday – staying with Joyce & Bob leaving them on Sunday to travel back down to Sheffield to stay with Barbara and Chris.
Sun & Mon – staying at Babs’ leaving them sometime on Tuesday to travel back down to Sussex again.
Back to life, back to reality today for all of us.
First thing we all had the dentist – Ady went off to do a couple of local B&Qs first while me and both children stayed in bed asleep 😳 Davies woke me at 8.30am, Tarly had arrived in our bed sometime during the night and was curled up asleep next to me, so we dashed around trying to get breakfasted and dressed ready to go in half an hour. 🙄
We changed to a NHS dentist last year when we realised just how broke we were and having only ever gone to a very posh private one before I confess to being prepared for the worst when we first went. A far cry from the waiting room as big as the downstairs of my house, with a box full of wooden toys for the children to play with, delightful collections of Winnie the Pooh books to read, well lit oil paintings on the walls, huge squashy sofas and a grandfather clock, while classical music was piped in to a small waiting room with four chairs for the 12 people occupying it at any one time, a small box of broken plastic toys and nothing to read but oral health leaflets but at just £31 for all four of us to have a six monthly check up rather than the nearly £150 we used to pay I reckon this is a frugal move I can manage with little effort! (To justify that somewhat we used to pay into a private health care scheme which covered my contact lenses and all our dentistry so the bills never seemed quite so scary, plus I had no idea it was quite so overpriced!).
The childrens’ teeth are all fine, D might indeed have a bottom wobbly one as we suspected camping last week but only very slightly so not official yet ;-). I was quite ashamed to be told that the really bad staining on my teeth (too much red wine and tea) was actually perfectly possible to remove with better brushing – I’d been told at my private dentist it had to be done six monthly with their special whizzy whitening machine so never really bothered that hard to get it off at home. I was really conscious of it last week actually and was checking out everyone elses’ teeth colour all week, so will be far more consciencious with my brushing in future, but they are nice and shiny white again now anyway. 🙂
Ady went off to work and got his next holiday (Tour of the North – two weeks time!) OK’d so the countdown starts all over again 🙂 He had a pretty good first day back as his new camera arrived at work for him to collect. He’s been ogling it for months and months having first seen it in Belgium last year and convinced work he needed a smaller and more discrete one for taking his covert shots of bedding plants. 🙂 It is quite lovely, purple and with lots of gimicky gizmos which I’m sure will be available to enjoy the results of on flickr sometime very soon.
The children rediscovered TV watching a couple of hours of Discovery Kids and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on dvd and had a mammoth session of playing with geomags and plastic animals and dinosaurs. We had lots of random conversations as they went along including one about what will happen after people – Davies wanted to know if it would be ‘a circle, with another big bang and it all starting again with dinosaurs?’ so we chatted about theories on stuff like that and how it all started etc. This moved fairly logically to space with Davies then wanting to know if our world ended would another one begin and I shared with them my own childhood imagining that our entire known universe could be no greater than a marble in the pocket of a small boy for all we know. We talked about endlessness, unchartered space and how actually no one really knows, but we are learning and proving more all the time. We talked about the first men on the moon (which led to Davies asking if that was why Buzz Lightyear was called Buzz!) and I ended up by saying that all we know now is only because children like them asked questions and carried on asking them as they grew up and set about finding out the answers. Davies wanted to know how to go about becoming an astronaut when he grows up. 🙂 We touched on how the world as we know it cannot possibly remain forever and various other deep and mindblowing stuff as far as it is possible to do with my own limited knowledge and a five and a three year old. 😆 I heard a few bits and pieces from last weeks Africa Alive! visit and talk creeping into their play too and plenty of them telling each other facts and figures as they played. I’ve mentioned before how lovely it is to watch them reestablish their sibling friendship when we leave the company of a big group where they have not spent so much time together and I enjoyed witnessing that again today.
And me? Well aside from dentist visits, odd chatting with the children and providing them with their food and drink I have spent pretty much all day online 😳 but I did have lots of catching up in various places to do. I also spent ages looking at needlefelting stuff and was inspired to make a small rainbow bracelet with some of the wool I bought off Steph. It started out very small for Scarlett, grew bigger for Davies and ended up fitting me 😆 I’ve promised them one each too when I master sizing! Inspired to do some serious ebaying this week as I found several bin liners of outgrown children’s clothes in the garage when sorting out camping stuff which could raise a few quid so must make a start on that tomorrow and then I can maybe spend some of the paypal pretend money I make on needlefelting ebay stuff. 😉
Davies had Badgers this afternoon, I took a book and read in the car. He even had a quick glance about to see who was watching before kissing me goodbye so I reckon his days of needing me within his vision are slowly but surely coming to an end. He’s so a part of the gang there at Badgers and having watched him last week performing to an audience and simply playing as part of a group I am filled once again with total belief in Home Ed as the right path for Davies having allowed him to reach his true self in his own time and be confident and comfortable in who he is. 🙂 Not even sure what they covered in there today but he came out with a fab picture of the weather and there was plenty of thudding about in team games which he seems to adore. He also brought home a letter about an outing to Shoreham Airport in a couple of weeks time. It will be a guided tour of the airport including a look in the police helicopter if it is not out flying. Ady wants to go along himself which I will check to see if possible but I think Davies might well be ready for this on his own even if Ady can’t go. We’ll probably plan to stay somewhere on their airport ourselves to bolster his confidence if he needs it but it’s a huge change already from the outright NO in relation to a proposed Fun Day that we wouldn’t have been able to attend a month or so ago.
A couple of other mentions are that Davies and I played Zoombinis for ages yesterday and worked our way through all three discs getting through the levels on them all although of course you can continue to go back and carry on. We also played with Green Eggs and Ham for ages too. Davies did all of it with very minimal help from me and I noticed his reasoning, logic and general maths stuff is coming along well. Ady and him have been working out sums up to ten using fingers and he is getting very proficient at that so I’m leaving them to that and will step in later when fractions and percentages are required ;-). He also tonight was talking about letters and how different letters make different sounds depending on what letters are before and after them. Lots of sounding out and playing with rhymes being done atm so even if we are not at the cusp of a big leap forward he is certainly getting the foundations very well laid. Tarly is also obsessed with what everything written says at the moment so I want to capitalise on that by doing some more reading stuff with her – she quite liked 100EL so we might pick that up again, or just do lots of Dr Seuss type stuff.
And that’s about yer lot!
Now I know plenty of you ‘don’t do Fathers Day’ or indeed Mothers Day for that matter and probably not Valentines Day either. We do ‘do’ them here although not to the excessive level we once used to. We also make a fairly big deal about birthdays and anniversaries including celebrating two anniversaries a year – our wedding on 9th September which will be 7 years this September and 17th June which is the anniversary of our becomming a couple 13 years ago.
We don’t exchange cards or gifts and being in a field meant I didn’t bake anything either 😉 but we did take a moment standing on a bridge each carrying a child to speculate about how we’d never have looked 13 years into the future and predicted ourselves married with two children, home educating or camping. For now I am unable to speculate even six months in to the future let alone 13 years but I hope we find ourselves similarly blessed when we do reach that point in the future as we considered ourselves on Saturday morning.
And Father’s Day? Well Ady was celebrated by more than one person last week as ‘SuperDad’ so I guess he has very little work there to do. He enjoyed some precious one to one time with Davies a couple of times last week and is exactly the father I thought he would be and indeed daily proves my theory that to marry him and deprive him of fatherhood; and potential children of his love, care and guidance would have been wrong. I quite simply would not have had children if Ady had not so desperately wanted them and whilst I know his vision of fatherhood is not always a reality last week it was in full glorious technicolour so Fathers Day at the end of the week was very fitting. 🙂
I sat considering my own Dad yesterday too as he sat in our garden, visibly aging and becomingly more mortal, human and finite with every passing year. He has always been my strongest judge, the milestone I measure myself against, my harshest critic yet the most comforting arms to run to. His love has always been the thing in the world I am most sure of and it is this security I credit with all the successes in my live – my marriage included. I’ve stumbled a fair bit this past year and I see some of my failings reflected in his eyes just now but I also feel his confidence that I can right myself again and I know whichever path I choose he’ll follow me ready to catch me again if I need him.
So no, we don’t need a day to remind us of these things but I’ve enjoyed taking time to focus on them anyway.