One word? When seven would do…

As we’ll be away for Tarly’s birthday next week. We’ll be sharing the occassion with some of you, which will be lovely 🙂

Tarly was born at home at 1.51am on Friday 6th December.

Davies slept through the whole event and woke at about 4 am just as the midwives left. He was pleased to meet his new sister, but slightly more excited about opening the next door on his chocolate advent calendar!

From the very beginning Scarlett was part of the family, as though we couldn’t quite remember what life was like before she was with us. She was your classic second child, easier and calmer than her older brother had been and probably the product of more relaxed and confident parents. She did the nappy ad baby thing of lying under an activity gym and kicking and gurgling for ages.

On her first birthday my parents came up to stay for the weekend and we went to the local working farm for a very very cold Christmas event. There was a choir, a Father Christmas and icicles forming on our eyebrows! 😉 Her birthday pressies included lots of FP Little People stuff like a dolls house and a train set.

During Scarlett’s second year we moved back to Sussex and she got to know her grandparents properly. She’s always been a Daddy’s Girl and now she became a Grandad’s Girl too 🙂 She also spent lots of time with her cousins and was a huge mix of girlie girl and utter tomboy!

Throughout she and Davies have always been best friends 🙂

By the time Tarly was two she was hugely into Dora The Explorer. It’s been an enduring obsession! With the exception of a playhouse from my brother I think all of her pressies had a Dora theme, including the much laboured over birthday cake!

This year Scarlett’s personality has developed even further, she has likes and dislikes (and hates with a passion!), she is fiercely independant, challenging, adorable, loving, charming and bright. She is the little girl who receives compliments from strangers :-). She loves me and her Daddy, her big brother and our cats. She loves Dora and Barbie Girl, she loves to sing and dance and climb, she loves babies and pink, she loves to sparkle and twinkle, she loves to play in muddy puddles. When she grows up she is going to be ‘just like you Mummy!’ she likes to have her nails painted and then she picks it straight off, she likes to wear pretty clothes and then take them off and run naked.

Every moment I spend with her makes me wonder how someone so much a person in their own right can stay so much a part of me. She makes me laugh a hundred times a day, she melts my heart with her kisses, she’s a princess, a minx, my biggest ever challenge, my biggest ever success. Happy Birthday Scarlett Teeny. I love you very very much xxxx

I’m fairly confident that today has been lovely, I just don’t feel like I’ve been participating in it much in spirit, although I was there in body.

Crap night with Tarly who arrived in our bedroom before 1am. 🙁 After about 15 minutes of her trying to engage me in conversation I snuck off to her bed and left her with Ady, which I believe meant she gave up and went to sleep too. I didn’t sleep well in her bed and Davies woke me about 7 I think. We had a cuddle and then decided to make her some birthday cards, so we did some drawing, some writing and some cutting and sticking. Quite pleased with the results actually and Davies’ writing was really good.

Tarly appeared downstairs then too so she joined in and decided what she wanted a picture of on her card – her choice was herself and our cats, so that’s what she’s got! I’ve left the sentimental wording inside to Ady to complete, feeling I’ve done enough of it with my blog post, making the card and the two cakes really ;-). I ran them a bath as they were both fairly grubby and Ady appeared downstairs so I left him to bathe them while I went and got dressed.

We headed over to my parents where I made a party food type lunch, looking back, rather dismally helped or supported by anyone else really but never mind! Then Chris and Julie and the twins arrived, followed very shortly by my Granny. The children all ate and played really well with only one accident or spillage (which was not down to either of my children so I had not part to play in clearing up or apologising for!) then they headed off home again. It was Julie’s birthday yesterday and her Mum arrived from Germany as a surprise so they were keen to get back and spent time with her.

The weekend before Davies was 3 we came down to stay with my parents (we were living in Manchester at the time) and Davies threw all his dummies in ‘Grandad’s’ dustbin. Not sure why we decided on that cut off point really although I know it had been delayed from being 2 because of Tarly being born, so we have talked for months about Tarly doing the same. She has duly repeated, like a little blonde parrot that she will be throwing her dummies in Grandad’s bin when she is 3, so this morning her and I collected them all up and when we arrived there we had the dummy chucking ceremony, exactly the same as 2 years ago for Davies. She threw them away, we all clapped and cheered and because the official line is that she is ‘not a baby anymore she is a big girl’ I had brought out a sparkly pink box with various bits and pieces of Big Girl stuff in it (some old nail varnishes of mine, a sparkly bracelet, some lipgloss, some body glitter etc) so she got that in honour of being a big girl now. Her and I sat at the kitchen table and she painted my nails, rubbed glitter on both our cheeks and smeared lipgloss on anyone who came within lip smearing distance (including my Dad!) – I’m probably the only Mummy (with the possible exception of Ros) who rejoices in such huge girliness but I loved it! 🙂

So Chris and Julie’s present of further lip gloss and sparkles was very well recieved. And Frazer’s present given when he got home from work of a dressing table and stool was fallen upon with true delight!

We had a pleasant enough afternoon, I played on the piano with Tarly for a while, we made up a story about a giant (left hand keys) stomping around trying to find a fairy (right hand keys) who was flying around and hiding, then Ady came in too so I played chopsticks and they had to dance according to the tempo. Everyone else watched Willy Wonka which was on one of the kids channels and then Mum brought out some dominos which her, Ady and the kids played with. That reminded me and Dad of the set of dominos we used to play with when I was a child which had been made my his father for him when he was a child, so Dad went and got them and we had a match going on too – all very Sunday-ish. Finally we had some jigsaw puzzle activity with Mum doing them with Tarly and me doing some with Davies. In all the day had a real feel of Christmas about it.

We hung on for Frazer to come home from work, by which time I was fading fast and was only really capable of watching football with Dad and Ady (I quite like watching football on TV, I find it very lulling watching the ball sail up and down the green pitch, I used to love watching it when I was a child, although I don’t actually follow the game as such, otherwise I imagine the lulling would be nullified if I cared about the result!). The kids had some tea there and then we came home.

Ady’s got out dinner on, I made the dressing table up and the children played with that for a while and now they are both in bed. Tarly did really well until Ady said ‘do you want to take your dollies to bed with you?’ she misheard, said ‘I don’t have my dummies anymore’ and then her little face crumpled and she started to tell me that ‘I’m not ready to be a big girl yet Mummy.’ with the saddest little look 🙁 I can hear her still downstairs although she doesn’t sound upset she is obviously going to take longer than usual to get to sleep without it. I do of course have an emergency one but as we’re away for a week and she won’t be having any sort of bedtime routine anyway this is an excellent chance to break the habit as by the time we come home she should have gotten over it. I know it was really easy when Davies stopped so I am tentatively hoping it will be the same one tough evening here and that’s it… fingers crossed!

I’ve not prepared anything for tomorrow or going away yet but as we don’t need to leave until about midday I will do all the packing in the morning. I need to wrap Tarly’s presents tonight, so I hope she goes to sleep fairly soon as they are all on top of her wardrobe at the moment so that will be tricky! All my Christmas cards are written and with the exception of the stuff still whirling round the tumble drier everything is pretty much ready to be slung into a holdall in the morning. Mum gave Davies the new Willy Wonka dvd as a Tarly’s birthday present so that’s the in-car entertainment sorted for the journey, I’ve given up on the idea of baking so it’s just copious volumes of wine and song sheets for the karaoke night still to organise! 😉

fuck

Spectacularly unsuccessful four f*cking hours spent in the kitchen baking. I made two birthday cakes for Tarly, both of which rose beautifully and then stuck to the tins, I knew I could cover the damage with icing but put too much food colouring in one of the batches of icing so it is a very garish shade of pink. I *think* I’ve made them look ok now and Tarly is delighted with them so that’s the main thing I suppose.

I also tried to make some window biscuits (with cut outs in the middle filled with crushed boiled sweets which melt and create a stained glass effect, can look beautiful if done properly) which either burnt, crumbled, fell apart when I pricked holes for ribbons to go through or simply didn’t hold any sort of shape and looked like splodges rather than festive creations of any description. The last four batched were pretty much OK as I abandoned the cut out shape idea and just baked stars with the intention of making them pretty with icing later. Except then I used up all the icing sugar on Tarly’s cakes and then when I was balancing on one of the kids stools to put something on top of the kitchen cupboards to tidy up the stool slipped and I fell on top of the cooling rack and smashed about half of them. 🙁

Kids are driving me insane with added tinsel and I feel crap 🙁

Might be back later as I’ve cancelled going out to the party tonight, I am the most dreadful company imaginable, Scarlett has lost her voice, Davies is a one boy snot factory and Ady’s holding it all together. Bet you can’t wait to spend time with me next week 😉

My blog is censoring me!

I have found three words it simply will not let me post and can’t work out how to stop it from being so Mary Whitehouse about the whole thing!

Hmm, a good stuff / bad stuff type of day today really. I’ve done my share of ranting at small people, but we’ve also done lots of nice stuff too.

First thing we gathered up all the library books in the house (of which there were many, many of), then we all sat down and read them all. There was a quaint mix, some of which we’d looked at before like one about a soldier for Remembrance Day and a couple on the Gunpowder plot too, so we didn’t bother with those again. There was a couple of ones from the main library in town that I’d picked up from the ‘issues’ section so we did ‘Sad’ by Michael Rosen illustrated by Quentin Blake which is about how Michael sometimes feels sad, mainly when he thinks about his son who died and his mother who died, how he deals with that sadness and that it’s ok to feel sad. Not hugely relevant atm but maybe a good one to have read for refering back to one day. Very touching anyway. We also had ‘where do babies come from’ which was another well written and illustrated book, talked about seeds and eggs, which me and D have already covered really, talked about parents meeting, falling in love, making a home together and then deciding to have a baby – they decided to have YOU! They make their bodies fit together (nicely put – and D pretty much ignored that – phew!), it being hard work getting you out of Mummy’s body and then you taking A LOT of looking after but you grew and grew, then maybe another baby came along too. Really liked that one 🙂

Also did a couple of nonsensy books, several Dr Seuss and two enormous big classroom size versions of books – one about a hen who arranged a series of swaps of belongings between the animals so she ended up with the scarecrows hat and one about dancing giraffes, which I’ve wanted to read ever since Sarah interviewed Heather 🙂

The children made some Christmassy mess with glitter and glue and Scarlett came upstairs while I got dressed and put make up on so she wanted to try some too – birthday pressie is so going to go down well then :-).

Then we headed out to the library, picked up a smaller pile of books to borrow and popped into Woolworths to get candy canes and chocolate tree decs for tomorrow. Also got a couple of Dora books for Tarly for birthday / Christmas and then we came home for lunch of cheese toasties.

This afternoon I have been mostly on the phone I think, Miranda phoned me about yet another possible business proposition. She has been speaking to my friend Dayve, who used to be my assistant at Dreamieland about him working for her again on a local project up there so I was getting excited texts from him while talking to her on the phone. She is coming down to Sussex to stay with her parents for Christmas so we’ve planned to get together for alcohol aided brainstorming which may yet result in something exciting happening – another different door and all that! ;-), also spoke to Karen and Ady several times. I also spent about half an hour writing down a very basic beginners guide to HE for a woman Ady works with who is in a desperate state with her bullied primary school age daughter and has been asking Ady all sorts of questions he feels he is answering very badly so asked me to have a go instead at and emailed that across to him to pass to her. Poor woman 🙁

The children took this opportunity to play with some beads which ended up scattered ALL over the lounge. Threats and pleading failed so in the end I set the kitchen timer for ten minutes and all three of us cleared the whole lot up! My plan had been to do a fair bit of baking today but it didn’t really happen so I managed 36 mince pies which the children found utterly boring to assist with (no bowls to lick, no icing to mess with!) so they played with their sticklebricks, which required yet another kitchen timer moment to get tidied up.

Tarly is now asleep, Ady went to Reading to get some Christmas cards from Costco and should have been home about an hour ago, Davies is still chattering away and I need a drink, a hot bath and to get the dinner on soon so I can execute my plan of an early night to fight off Girlflu which has finally made its presence felt in my head, nose and throat 🙁

Tomorrow we’re putting up our decorations, so it will be a fest of Christmas music, mince pies and Baileys, over excited children, fused and tangled Christmas lights, tinsel droppings and the annual hunt for the drawing pins! Oh and ill health permitting we’ve all been invited to a house party round the corner with my parents too, so we could well have a long old day ahead of us.

the kitchen timer!

Not for being some sort of Nigella you understand, but for giving added gravity to my threat of ‘anything not tidied away in the next five minutes will be going in the bin’!!!!!

Ady bought the advent calendars for the children this year. I’ve not said anything but I don’t really like his choice although I do understand why he got them. When we were children we shared an advent clalendar, it always had some sort of festive scene on it, sometimes it was a nativity, sometimes it would be something like Santa’s workshop. I don’t even know if they made chocolate calendars 20 odd years ago but we never had one and they always, but always stopped at 24 and it was always, but always a double door for 24.

I know in recent years we struggled to find anything similar in the shops and this year Ady came home in about October with two identical Disney Pixar chocolate advent calendars. They feature Nemo, Monsters Inc, Buzz Lightyear and Mr Incredible, there is not so much as a holly leaf or a santa hat to be seen. They contain a chocolate behind every door and not only do they not stop at 24, they go right past even 25 and take you all the way to the new year.

I don’t do religion but even I feel slightly spiritual at this time of year, I think there are lots of tender messages about humankind and peace and goodwill and stuff to be cherished and last year we did lots of chatting about baby Jesus, read a couple of stories based on it and generally tried to infuse the whole time of year with more than what Clinton Cards and Toys R Us have to offer.

So far from today’s first door opening being the exciting countdown that I recall December 1st being in my childhood with the chance to talk about what Christmas means as well as the enormous educational opportunities of days, weeks, months, counting down, looking for numbers etc it was a scuffle to wrench the door situated on Mr Incredibles unfeasibly large bicep and wolf down the chocolate as quickly as possible before getting all stroppy that they couldn’t open another one straight away. And of course the instant my back was turned, that was exactly what Scarlett did. 🙁 Luckily DC Davies was on the case and came reporting to me, so her’s was put on a high shelf, has now been set up high on the door to be brought down once daily and when she reaches the 8th she will be reminded again that the excesses of the first mean regret at a later date.

For once my Mum has unwittingly saved the day by bringing round a fantastic Christmas Carol book advent calendar which has a tiny book for each of the 24 days, which is set beautifully into a scene and is read on the relevant day then hung onto the Christmas tree with a loop until the whole of the Christmas Carol tale is told, then put away again for next year. Will really look forward to reading them both today’s and tomorrow’s in the morning as they munch on the chocolate tucked behind Sully’s right ear from their other calendars!

We went to soft play today where Julie and I had a nice catch up and moments of total hysteria over a builder who was there constructing some sort of grotto affair for their Christmas party in a couple of weeks time. He started off wearing these dungaree style overalls with a checked shirt and a banadana, and then suddenly he reappeared having removed the shirt! I was laughing like a drain at his blatant lack of sex appeal and thought Julie was too until she confessed she was actually quite enjoying it! He then spoilt it for her too and reduced me almost to tears of laughter by putting Madness ‘Our House’ on the duke box and sort of strutting around with his power tools to it! Classic!

It was a too expensive to be worth it day out though really. 🙁 It’s £8 to get in and then we spent another £7 on lunch and several cups of tea for me. It did mean the kids didn’t need proper tea at home having had a cooked lunch but neither of them were up to much still being quite skulky and needy of regular cuddles in their recovering from illness states so they certainly didn’t get 15 quids worth of value from the couple of hours we were there.

Came home and the children, having argued all the way home about the music (James Blunt again!) with each other decided they simply had to play castles together and dashed off upstairs. It was shortlived peace however and within about half an hour Tarly was downstairs to report on Davies for some misdemeanour and then he followed to defend himself and then we ended up doing a long winded chat about the weather.

I was going to get Davies to dictate what he’d learnt but he ran out of enthusiasm for further structure, so here is pretty much what he repeated back to me at the time, some of which has hopefully gone in permanently. We learnt that the weather is controlled by the sun, the earth is surrounded by an atmosphere and the bottom part closest to the earth (6-10 miles above) is called the troposhere and that’s where the weather happens. Above that is the stratosphere (which is also the name of a hotel in Las Vegas with a very mental rollercoaster ride which Uncle Frazer went on!). The sun warms the earth. Closer to the equator is closer to the sun so it is hotter – deserts etc, farther away from the equator is farther away from the sun, north and south pole etc. As the world orbits the sun we get nearer and further from it at different times of the year, when we are closest it is summer, when we are furthest it is winter. When it is winter here is is summer on the other side of the world. As it is winter here now it will be summer in Australia.

The sun warms the land and the sea but the land warms up faster which creates different temperatures in different places, the warms air moves to mix with the colder air and this creates wind. It also creates fronts and different pressures but we only very briefly touched on that.

We then tested this theory by holding a piece of cellophane above the radiator and watched it move in the wind created by the hot air trying to move into the room to mix with the cooler air, we looked out of the window at the howling wind bashing the washing line against the window to see how this worked on a bigger scale.

Next we talked about clouds and water. Davies gave me examples of liquid (the sea), solid (ice) and vapour (steam from a kettle) water. We talked about how steam is tiny droplets of water being carried on hot air moving about. We had previously talked about the water cycle so we just reminded ourselves of that.

We then stepped outside to ‘make’ some clouds by breathing out to make ‘dragon’s breath’ and talked about how that was water vapour.

I looked at a couple of books and websites to find some further experiements which we might well do another time.

Davies drew some pictures to show some different weather (a snowman, a tree being blown about by the wind complete with swirls to represent the wind, the same tree in the summer with fruit and blooms on it and some dark clouds with rain pouring out).

Then he got bored and asked if we could all make a picture of underwater together. We all got two sheets of blue paper taped together and drew some underwater stuff. Davies did a shark, a whale, an octopus, various small fishes and some coral, Tarly did a shark chasing a smaller fish to eat him all up and I did an octopus, a clownfish, a shark, a whale, a starfish, a jellyfish and a mermaid. Then we taped them all together to make one long underwater scene.

Then they had some soup for tea and Ady and my mum arrived home at the same time. Mum bearing the advent calendar gift and wanting to watch the dvd of Davies and me on TV as she’d not seen it yet. Mum and I then popped to Tescos as I needed a few bits not available in Lidl, she offered to buy the Willy Wonka dvd for the children to save us buying it ( 🙂 ) and we needed to get a few bits for Sunday as Chris and Julie and Granny are all coming to Mum & Dad’s house for an ‘official birthday’ for Tarly as we’re away next week and won’t see them all on the actual day.

Tarly has a really bad, barking cough and is lying in bed, half asleep making scary gasping and spluttering noises, Davies is hideously tired and grumpy but still wasn’t asleep before about 9pm. Tomorrow we are home for the day, I want to do some baking (mince pies, birthday cake etc) and I think we’ll aim for a nice low key day.

more on this later, but wanted to note this link while I remember:

As in Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat (although actually that could be less in relation to the goose putting on extra pounds itself and more that the Christmas shopping list has been shared out between all the creatures and they are all off out making purchases –
Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
the oxens getting sprouts
and the stuffings down to the cat,
Christmas is coming,
everyone is coming here to stay,
best get on the internet
and buy all the pressies from ebay,
Christmas is coming,
do we really need nuts and dates,
no one ever eats them,
or that turkish delight everyone hates,
Christmas is coming
the lamb can get the crackers
the pig can bring the cranberry
the turkey? well he’s knackered
Christmas is coming
wrapping paper from the dog
partridge will bring peas and carrots
the donkey’s got pudding and yule log

etc.)

Ady worked from home this morning which was excellent as it meant I got to take Tarly to TT without dragging Davies along. And it was my last ever one with her too. Next week we’re away and then the following week is the last one and they’re doing some sort of Christmas party – we are not around that day anyway but my parents are babysitting so migt be persuaded to take the children along to that. Then when they return next year she goes into the next class up and goes in on her own. I only realised all this on the way home so didn’t manage to infuse this end of an era with the correct gravity while it was happening, but never mind.

I then dropped Tarly home and set off to The Wizard store to get some bits such as wrapping paper and a few cheapo pressies for the kids to bulk out what they’ve got. Then came home so Ady could go off to work. He’d taken the opportunity of being home to light a fire which I then had to try and keep burning all day (I failed!) and having dug all the Christmas cds out (and believe me we have *loads*) weeks ago he decided today was the day to start playing them. I’ve heard Mel & Kim sing Rockin’ around the Christmas tree enough times to last me this festive season already and it’s not actually December yet. On the plus side we do have the Pop Idol Christmas cd from series 2 which is actually very nice so that’s got a bit of airplay. In the Wizard Store I heard Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses which always tells me that a) It’s nearly Christmas b) there is still a huge gap in the market for decent Christmas songs and c) I will be struggling to get the lyrics out of my head for weeks to come – infact until about Febrary!

Boyflu continues here for Davies, Ady’s Manflu seems to be slowing abating , I can’t decide whether Tarly’s had it, is having it or is about to have it and I have the most unbelievably stiff neck and shoulders which I think might be the beginning of something horrid 🙁 I woke Ady at about 5.30am to get him to rub tiger balm on it cos I couldn’t move at all so we lay there holding hands and being all excited about Christmas like the parents on the Disneyland advert!

There was debate this afternoon as to whether we should venture into the town centre for glitter and card making supplies or to just go to Lancing. In the end we went into town and I got a few more bits for the children’s Christmas pressies in ELC at the same time, which financially and in the style of our new low key lifestyle is my Christmas shopping pretty much done :-). Came home and they were issued with a set of felt tip pens each (50 p from the Wizard store) to keep nicely as their very own. Showed them how to put the lid of a pen on it’s end to keep it safe and told them that keeping lids on and pens back in the packet is their responsibility. Clearly more for Davies’ benefit as Tarly was a) oblivious and b) doesn’t care anyway! Buy hey 🙂 So we went into Worthing and we have totally done with the pushchair if we can do town centre in full Christmas shopping mode. They were actually really well behaved and Davies even did the averting his eyes while I bought presents he clearly knew would be for him, bless 🙂 We had a funny conversation about Father Christmas on the way into town actually where he clarified what has always been our official line about us buying the presents for the children and then Father Christmas delivering them. He came as close as he ever has to asking a question which I am not intending to lie to answer by asking if anyone had ever seen him. I answered ‘no’ (true!) and he then asked how I gave him the presents then. I replied that I left them somewhere and he collected them, he asked where and I told him it was secret and I couldn’t tell him. He was cool with that and knowing Davies I reckon that’s as far as this years questionning will go. I fully expect him to tell me next year he knows its all tosh actually! 🙂 In ELC the woman serving me read my discount card and asked me what a Home Educator was, I explained I HE my own two children (one of which was standing next to me, the other was playing with some small boys on a Thomas brio table and announced to the world at large that they were all her new friends!) to which she sighed and said ‘I’d love to do that with my daughter – she’s so unhappy at school. How does it work?’ Bearing in mind I had instant audience of the other cashier, the customer she was serving and the three people behind me in the queue I did a hasty ‘there are 1000s of us doing it, you don’t need any training, it’s perfectly legal’ and ended up with checking she had internet access and told her to google for ‘Home Education’ and ‘Education Otherwise’. I came away feeling I could have done so much more but it was a real wrong time, wrong place type of situation. But at least she is a whole footstep nearer knowing there are choices.

Came home and they did some colouring in of Christmas cards before we headed off again for Davies’ Gymbobs. He’d already said he didn’t want to go and he so clearly didn’t. He really struggled to participate and as I peeped at him through the door I thought I probably should have skived off and not bothered actually as he probably got less than nothing out of it. We had a minor chat about it afterwards actually – he has struggled with the new class and doesn’t really have a friend in it – he really likes Andrew but he is not always there and he seems to be a real outsider in the group generally otherwise. He says that the little children (of which he is one actually as they only go into that group at 5) mess about and don’t listen to the grown ups (bit of a sin in his eyes!) so he keeps away from them and the older children sometimes bump into him. Which reminds me once again of why my little boy would not necessarily be ok in a playground even if he assumes the leader role in a group he is comfortable with. What I so celebrate about Davies is that he is Davies and he is quite happy to just be Davies, which let’s face it, many an adult struggles to be (I certainly was not Nic when I was 5, it took me at last another 10 years or so!), if people like him then great, if they don’t then he moves on and finds someone who does. My plan is to give it another term or so, which takes us to March I guess and see how Tarly has gotten on with her new group and whether Davies has any enthusiasm for it. If I start to feel that the year or so we’ve done has served it’s purpose then I will be quite content to call it a day really. Davies has various other possibilities to consider such as Badgers and Drama and Tarly is suddenly desperate to be a ballerina, which I have firm reservations about but similarly don’t want to quash so we’ll see. I don’t really think she has the personality for it regardless of talent and I’m somehow reluctant to groom my wild little fairy accordingly but if she hankers after a tutu and a bun then who am I to stand in her way (aslong as she understands the tutu cannot have mud and chocolate splashed on it and the bun needs to stay in and not be falling down into a tangle of dreadlocked blondeness!).

Davies continues to have an interest in the weather, or more specifically the process and skill of predicting the weather. It’s one of those tricky interests that I could overkill leap on and wither up or I could leave alone to do as he will with it, or I could attempt to tread carefully and foster it in a gentle manner. I think I might just read around it a bit around it and be the resident expert he can learn from in bitesize chunks chucked in as and when he sees fit to listen. A weather forecast at the end of the news can stop him at 20 paces though, and of course science and geography are being nicely ticked off as we go 🙂

And I think that’s about it. Tomorrow is soft play with Julie and the twins which is always a good day all round 🙂

When I was a just a little girl I asked my mother what will I be? Will I pretty, will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me:

Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be
The futures not our’s to see, que sera sera.

Or will it?

I’ve never subscribed to any life philosophy wholeheartedly – in the same way as I never read any one parenting book and thought ‘ah yes, there’s my bible!’ some stuff I read made me feel great, all smug and self satisfied that in this specific chapter at least me and the author were totally on the same wavelength. And as they were a published author and generally had letters after their name and a whole host of celebrity testimonials on the back of the book they must know what they were talking about, which meant I did too 🙂 This would generally last until the following chapter when I would fail to recognise myself quite so clearly within the pages and start to feel a slight unease. If I managed to reach a third or fourth chapter it was only in the interests of proving once and for all that the author was clearly a complete idiot who have never even met a child let alone parented one themselves, and if they had then they must have had an army of childcare to assist. The only book I ever started and never got cross with on that basis was ‘I’m okay – you’re a brat!’ which was excellent and still sits on my bookshelf but I stopped reading because the author identified with me to such a degree that I started to dislike her for being so sycophantic! Actually that was when I still only had one child who was under two so there is every chance I’d hate that one too if I started to re-read it.

Anyway, unusually I digress ;-).

So I quite like the idea of believing in fate, what will be will be and all that. But in the same way as I like autonomy I can’t help fiddling a little so leaving fate to get on with all on it’s own seems a tad risky. What if fate’s having an off day? Or prefers blondes? Or is busy with the calculator working out who’s number is up and forgets about me?

I quite like ‘Life is what you make it’ too. Except I can think of far too many examples of people who simply cannot be that messed up that they have made such utter rubbish existances for themselves. So I can’t subscribe to that one either really. There are friends of mine who just keep getting poo thrown at them day in day out and I can’t see why they deserve it and I certainly don’t think they subconsciously chose it so that theory doesn’t pan out for me.

I think I probably could best describe my view of it all as similar to the opening credits to Monsters Inc. If you’ve not seen it there are just loads of doors swinging by. All different colours, shapes, designs and sizes. Behind each one is a child’s room with scaring potential to make them scream to get the power generated by a scream. Clearly there are far, far too many to open all of them and take a peek, and you could just stay where you are watching the doors go by and enjoying the really rather funky soundtrack by Randy Newman and let someone else go exploring all the doors.

I can actually pinpoint most of the doors in my life so far that I opened. Some of them I slammed shut again, having either got scared or realised that I’d opened them in error, a couple I went quite far into the room and found an alternative exit and many, many more were exactly the right doors for me to choose and I loved where they led me.

Right now we are standing in a bit of a corridor. There is no way back to the original room we were in but there are a fair few doors to choose from to decide where we go next. We could go through the one which actually takes us back to a point back in the past, having decided that we took a wrong door somewhere and have another bash at it, climbing back up again to be where we *should* be now if we’d not gone wrong. But I always swore I’d never go back… This door is grey, safe, it’s as comforting as a cuddle and as familiar as watching Friends for the 17th time – you know all the jokes but you still laugh, you know how it all ends in 3 series time but you still gasp when one of the couples falls out and cross your fingers for it all to work out ok.

The next door is wildly exciting. It is sprayed with graffiti flowers and all different colours, it has windchimes hanging on it which tinkle tantalisingly in the breeze and would sing out with all their might if we opened the door and went through it. There are rainbows coming from underneath the door and other, unfamiliar scents and sounds. I know that if we go through that door we will experience things we’ve never even dreamt of before. But there’s a hitch with this door, it comes with a CAUTION sticker firmly applied. Come through here and you can’t come back, everything you know will be gone. It’s a gamble, a risk and a leap of faith. It’s the same sort of door that I went through when I fell pregnant with Davies – I knew that I’d never return to normal, I’d find a new normal – and then just when I thought I’d gotten used to that normal it would turn upside down and inside out again.

Inbetween these doors are a whole host of other doors – some of them will need some help to open them – you need to ask others for the key, or get someone stronger to hold it open while you drag all your suitcases through it. They are a combination of old and new, challenging and comforting, alien and familiar – they are like going to the same indian resturant you always go to but ordering something slightly different to normal.

Once before I’ve stood in this same corridor and we took the sparkling door, we opened it and stepped inside, but we did a bit of a Hansel and Gretel and we left a trail so we could find our way home again. We didn’t quite sever all ties. So when that path looked a bit rocky we headed back for home. Even as we did it we wondered if it was the right thing to do – should we have ventured further still or should we cut our losses. We went back. It was almost against our better judgement and we took a long time to accept and life with our decision. Suddenly we find ourselves with the opportunity to leap into the unknown yet again and this time we know that to do it properly we need to REALLY do it. And you know what, I have this funny feeling that we just might.

Doris, you might just have got it wrong after all, sometimes maybe life doesn’t happen to us, we grab it by the tits and shake it all about…

Is what Tarly wants to know, having listened to the song on the way over to Ali’s today she got out of the car, looked up at me with her big blue eyes and asked ‘Mummy, where did all the good ‘peoples’ go? Davies paraphrased yet further and said they were on the TV shows. Which reminded me of a song I loved a few years ago Where have all the cowboys gone? which I must see if I can find somewhere and play to her – now there’s an anthem for feminism if ever I heard one 😉

This morning we did some drawings, Davies has been after making a Backyardigans puppet theatre he’s seen shown on the nickjr site but my printer was protesting so I ended up drawing the characters for him to colour in and then I cut them out. We couldn’t find the pack of lolly sticks we both remain convinced we last saw stuck to the cork wall in the kitchen so we used pencils to stick them to. Gave up on any further developments due to lack of craft materials so he just played with them on their sticks. Which of course meant Tarly wanted to play with them too 🙁 Ended up drawing a set of Dora figures at her request for her to colour in with a view to making puppets for her too. She did fantastic colouring in – really neat and pretty much stuck to the right colours – almost as tidily and accurately done as Davies I would say, and I always think he’s pretty darn good at art. Glad they both have various art sets for Christmas, I think it’s something we might focus on and develop a little more – maybe a joint project of some description. We also watched Smarteenies as part of our retro revisit to Cbeebies yesterday and were inspired by that a bit. I think a trip to the Wizard store for some cut price glitter, glue and card is in order tomorrow to set them off on some festive craftiness 🙂

It’s been ages since we last saw Ali and Freya although we do keep in touch via IM 😉 so it was nice to have a proper catch up. Davies did very well despite Boyflu and played for a good while before retreating to my lap to watch Backyardigans. Tarly was also a bit hesitant at being sociable really and poor Freya who just wanted to play with her got told to ‘leave me alone’ a couple of times. I did explain that the novelty of having someone to play with is somewhat lost on Tarly for whom not having someone to play with is sometimes a more treasured novelty, but she came round in the end and they spent a very happy hour throwing stuff down the stairs together, cackling like harridans and then coming into the lounge to leap off of the sofa! Davies also impressed all of us by being rather excellent at a microscope matching thingy that Ali had printed off and laminated – pictures of everyday items and then pictures of them under a microscope to match up. He always responds really well to that sort of thing when it’s sprung on him (and even better when it’s not from me!) – lovely to see him so proud of himself 🙂 He then impressed me further all the way home by counting up the various numbers of children in various families, adding two together and then splitting them into boys and girls and so on – all using his fingers which is something I’ve never suggested so must be an innate skill!

They were both fading fast on the car journey home and as we got stuck in traffic as it got dark around us I was coming up with ever crazier ways to keep Tarly awake and thought it would be a very rapid tea, bath, bed routine.

They had tea and then both got a second wind so we did some puzzles for a bit – Davies brought out a matching words puzzle which Tarly also got the idea of and was pretty good at (snake connects to cake, ring connects to king and so on) and then we did a mix and match people set with heads, bodies and feet to sort out for various professions.

Bath, where I drowned Tarly’s very matted and rapidly becoming dreadlocked hair with conditioner and we all gave Davies lots of sympathy over a bruise sustained on his leg at Ali’s (by a cruelly planted doorway as part of Ali’s teach them about hazards campaign 😉 ). Ady arrived home and I’m currently cooking spaghetti while blogging (multi tasking lady!). So lots of educationally valuable stuff going on while I also got to do some colouring and drawing and sit chatting to Ali. Pretty good day all round then really 🙂

About to send the list out by email but wanted to offer to any last takers. So far we have:

Me, Alison, Kirsty, Joyce, Sally, Merry, Helen, Karen B and Sarah.

Basically its on the same principle as the MP one, send me your address and I’ll add you to the list, then you send Christmas cards to everyone else on the list.

I’ll probably send it out on Thursday 1st so you have a couple of days to decide whether you can face the glitter in your carpet that this activity will create! 😉

Kids not up for much at all today. They were still on Reading time last night and didn’t go to sleep til about 9.30pm but still managed to get up by about 6.30am. Davies steadily declined throughout the day and by mid afternoon it was clear he was not just tired, he also has Boyflu 🙁

So he spent most of the day on the PC. He played on the Nickjr site, which he can totally navigate his way round and read rather a lot of the text on, some Zoombinis (he played one and decided it was too hard, so put Mountain Rescue on and then called me to say it must be broken as it’d gone somewhere he’d never seen before. Turns out he’d completed it, within about 10 minutes. I think it was a saved game from before but I was still pretty impressed. He also played his Thomas game, Bugs Life games and ended up with Green Eggs and Ham. Finally he came and sat on the sofa snuggled up to me.

Tarly spent some time watching him play, some time doing some foam floor puzzles (rather well actually now I think back), some fuzzy felt, a very recognisable picture of a cat, lots of coming for cuddles and then had some retro time watching Cbeebies which we hardly ever watch here. She danced along to Boogie Beebies, loved Tikkabilla (which Davies came to watch too and we all enjoyed singing along with the songs), she ate soup for tea and then we all snuggled up and watched Charlie and Lola, adapted from the books and that was fab 🙂

I spent some time on the phone, I updated Buy Me Love and Near The Knuckle and gave out lots of cuddles. Love my babies lots today 🙂 I also washed at least 4 loads of washing and got most of it dry (some still tumbling, some still on the line, none as yet put away!) and we did nip to the post office to get an ebay parcel on it’s way.

Ady came home and I popped out to my parents then me and Mum went to Lidl. Sooo cold tonight 🙁 Called back in again when I dropped Mum home for a chat with her and Dad and then came home for a nice hot bath and a curry. Am now very tired and wondering whether I’ll be getting Girlflu any time soon – hopefully earlier this week rather than later! Tomorrow, ill health permitting we’re off to Ali’s. It’s been a long, long time and we have lots of catching up to do 🙂 Oh and finally Ady’s at last sorted himself out on flickr and is enjoying taking and uploading pictures each day. His username is adybloke if you want to have a peep .

This amused me greatly today. Infact I really did LOL

There should be friends, singing, laughter, plenty of alcohol, lovely food cooked, drunken and riotous behaviour (which to really qualify as drunken and riotous must be offensive to at least two other people), no objections from anyone to children remaining naked or pj clad for the entire duration of the weekend, a touch of voyeurism potential, a few of your deepest darkest body image worries reassured, a few tears, a fair bit of nakedness, a woman who loves to clean, perhaps some vomit, various lost property being redistributed.

Death of a national treasure to whom tributes should be paid and glasses raised, perhaps a little bloodshed, some domestic disharmony and maybe a touch of mutant creepy crawlies.

A little bit of kung fu fighting to add to the mix and frankly, the whole world smiles with you 🙂

Happy 8th Birthday Poppy Pip 🙂

Hope you have a great day!

From all here: Ady, Nic, Davies, Scarlett, Chris, Alison, Poppy, Tilda, Elijah and Lula xxx

Not interested in learning about weather from a book he demanded his pirate ship be brought downstairs to play with so he’s been using his imagination all creatively with that for about an hour, watching Lazy Town as he goes. We did learn a bit about weather and temperature anyway as we suddenly had lashing wind and hailstones here which he and Ady rushed out to watch, and then he helped lay the fire and light it to warm up the lounge. It’s freezing here today, infact I’m off to get socks and a jumper on – it’s so cold I’ve even had to cover up my cleavage! 😉

A fairly educational day here today although I really should be following a few things up with Davies as I promised instead of sitting here 😉

First thing the children played with playdough while watching Class TV. There was a really good programme on about an apple tree which told the story of the seasons changing and had all sorts of ancillary facts such as a puppy and a kitten playing together in the spring and then being grown animals by the following spring, a bee landing and the man talking about the role of bees in apple trees and also honey production. Very good 🙂 So we chatted a bit about the things raised by that as they happened and then I wandered off to do other stuff while they carried on playing and watching. There was some show about storms including some footage of the 1987 storm and a weathergirl stood infront of a weather map talking about weather forecasts. Then Davies started watching a thing about Shakespeare which he showed a fair bit of interest in too, particularly when I told him that Stratford, where we have been several times is where Shakespeare was born – need to dig out the Shakespeare children’s version books from Book People (Merry, if you remember can you bring the Ant & Cleo one to Okehamton? 🙂 ). I also had a bit of a browse on the BBC website and we played a couple of the maths games, Scarlett really surprised me with her mouse pad and button clicking skills and also recognising numbers when Davies called them out. I also googled for my answer to the largest number – I think I can explain it a bit better now next time that one comes up. 🙂

We headed off to Julie’s then and on the way Davies told me it was supposed to be windy and rainy today (it was) and he’d seen it on the TV saying it was going to happen before it did. How did they know that before it happened? Explained my sum total of knowledge about meterology and promised to catch up on that with him again too – which would obviously tie in well with the temperature stuff then wouldn’t it really 🙂

Nice couple of hours at Julie’s – the children have all reached that age where they disappear into their playroom together to play so me and Julie get to drink tea and chat, which is always a bonus. 🙂 Talked about money, lifestyles and alternative lives – interesting stuff.

Left there slightly earlier that I’d planned to as Tarly suddenly got all whingey and just wanted to come home so it seemed pointless to string it out for another half an hour. I managed to keep her awake all the way home by me and Davies singing songs to her but she has just curled up and fallen asleep on the sofa next to me – ah well, sleep routines likely to be shot to pieces at the weekend anyway 😉

Right, going to see if I can interest Davies in a book about the weather.

Just been reading the Dr Seuss Book of Sleep (or some other such story) as a bedtime story to Davies. It touched somewhere on the concept of minus two and he roused from his near-asleep state to ask what that meant. Erm!

Very easy when you know but one of those situations where I am left stuttering like a too advanced thesaurus when he asks the meaning of a new word and all I can offer as explanation is a series of other words he also is unfamiliar with. I need an example… I tried asking him what he would have if he had two and then took away three but he was having none of that. He told me that if he had two and then had two more he would have four. He told me that if he took two away from four he would have two and then if he took two away from two he would have nothing. And of course you can’t take anything away from nothing can you Mummy?!

Clearly not a bedtime friendly concept to start explaining anyway but would appreciate anyone’s tried and tested examples for minus numbers.

The book then (and at the back it says ‘This book is to be read in bed!’ clearly it is lying!!) goes on about numbers like millions, billions, trillions and zillions so I had to explain about them being ‘really big numbers’ to which he pounced back on his unsatisfactorily answered question from the train journey the other week about what the ‘last number’ is. I repeated that there isn’t one, to which he said ‘of course there is one Mummy, it’s just that no-one knows what it is yet!’

Just as well we’re off to Reading this weekend then, Lije can take over some of the HE for me 😉