One word? When seven would do…

Saturday ended in pretty much the same way as Friday really, we had a lovely meal cooked by Barbara and enjoyed with much alcohol. Kids finally went to sleep, followed by Ady, followed by Chris (who I think was slightly hounded out of his own front room by a devils advoate style conversation about maths and GCSEs and how important they *really* are, which would be a bit close to home given his profession of senior school maths teacher I guess!) and then Barbara and I sat up til 3am drinking the place dry and getting giggly, loud and from my recollections the following morning basically having the conversational equivalent of a thesaurus (you know the type of chat where you are both making the same point, over and over again, using different words to express it and possibly chucking in new validations for your point but really just rehashing the same point over and over again for hours! Even more amusingly we were agreeing with each other so it was not even one of us working to convince the other of something! Enjoyed it though and came away feeling we’d been all deep and ponderous when infact I suspect we were just drunk and disorderly (that seems to follow me around a bit, I wonder if I lead people astray!?).

Sunday morning was very brief for me as I didn’t get up until 10am so I only saw two hours of it! Ady and Chris were doing cricket watching and kid minding, Barbara was at church and when she got back we did BBQ prep before Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex arrived.

James and Ady bonded over having the same phone and spent ages ‘playing’ with them. They now have each others mobile numbers and I suspect aim to become picture text buddies 😉 M & A joined in with the general kids scrum in the garden and Kirsty joined us for musings in the kitchen – all very nice 🙂

Scarlett and Alex seemed to notice each others’ existance for the first time too, despite being a year apart in age they did some bonding and played together for a while before the mix changed again. The 6 older children are staggered very nicely with Tarly at nearly 3, Ben and Alex nearly 4, Davies nearly 5 and Beth getting on for 6 so there was room for all sorts of age and gender split ups and they did happen at various points which was good. Chris did an admirable job with a BBQ and then adults retired back inside for cricket in the lounge and bitching in the kitchen before Kirsty and James headed off, followed an hour or so later by us.

The journey home was speedy and uneventful with Tarly being asleep before we even set off and Davies finally going to sleep (after a catalogue of sleep avoidance questions such as ‘what is dust made of?’, ‘how does salt get into granules?’ and various stuff about caves). Ady and I had a long chat about all sorts of things such as Home education, parenting in general, the internet and division of labour within the home!

So it’s been a lovely weekend. As ever when I spend time with other home educators I tend to come away feeling very positive about the whole thing, reinforced in our tactics and confident about how we are doing. I’ve had some really interesting discussions about learning styles, qualifications and general parenting and it has been valuable and enjoyable in far more than just the socialising aspect, so thanks Barbara and Kirsty for that 🙂

As a result I do have some educational ponderings which I will probably blog at some point, but the sun is shining, the lounge floor is a mess of plastic animals and wooden building blocks from a half built zoo, I have just heard lego being emptied out of its box somewhere in the hall, none of us are dressed despite it being 11am, there is a load of washing ready to hang out and at least four more loads needing to be done and my parents are due here within the hour so I’m off to create the atmosphere and illusion of a woman who knows how to run a home and I might be back later.

and others were also awake but not getting drunk and giggling me and Barbara were doing just that!

Yesterday morning we dashed about collecting parcels from the post office (quite strangely two of the same Rainbow resources catalogue which has taken 3 months to arrive from the states and I now have two of!), having long mobile conversations with Ady about in car dvd players and visiting a couple of places to try and purchase one which was out of stock.

Managed to be all packed and ready to leave with kids lunches and completely hyped up for going to ‘Ben’s house’ (with apologies to the rest of the Raine’s for it being termed as such as I am sure he is the not payer of the mortgage 😉 ) and I actually gave myself a sore throat from shouting at them so much 🙁 Anyway, Ady’s quest to get the dvd played in time for the journey to Sheffield made him over an hour later home that I’d expected (and was fruitless anyway so we are still debating…) which meant instead of leaving at 1pm ish and easily arriving for 6pm we actually left closer to 2.30pm and arrived around 8pm. Both kids fell asleep (eek!) and were refreshed and ready to play again when we arrived instead of being tired and ready to sleep 🙁

Jax was happily still at Barbara’s so we were able to have an all too brief catch up and chat before she headed off into the night with Big and Small. Various who is sleeping where type negotiations then took place with Beth and Ben falling asleep fairly quickly but Davies and Tarly still being downstairs with us while we ate Barbara’s famous lamb stew and couscous (a brand new culinary experience for me, but very nice 🙂 ). Ady finalled persuaded them to sleep around 10.30pm after which he and Chris hung around long enough for Vienetta before heading off to bed themselves around midnight leaving me and Barbara with half a bottle of the big blue wine still to drink and a further three and a half hours ahead of us!

Barbara brought out some of the treasures uncovered from her boxes in the garage foraging and we chatted, sank pretty much the whole bottle between us, moved on to tea and finally called it a night around 3.30am.

Fairly tired today (unsurprisingly!) but we went off to Castleton and some underground caves accessed via a boat and 105 rather steep, wet and slippery stone steps. Very impressive and kids enjoyed being bumped off the sides of the tunnel in the boat and listening to the guide talk about how 10 year olds had been sent down there years ago and the lead miners had blown out the tunnel and mined for lead with a tallow candle held between their teeth for hours each day. Got very cold wet toes though!

We left there and enjoyed a cream tea and chips in a pretty little tea shop before heading back here for kids to play in the garden, Ady and Chris to watch sport on TV (I believe!), Barbara to get dinner on and me to have a quick internet fix 🙂 Have pictures which I’ll blog when we get home.

Planning a slightly less party animal style evening tonight although the first glass of wine or two might change such good intentions 😉 and a barbecue with some other locals is on the agenda for tomorrow before heading for home late tomorrow afternoon.

As always when we come to this part of the country we are reminded of how it feels so different to the pace of life down south, how pretty it is and how well located for so many things. I don’t think we are on the verge of any sort of life changing move but it’s nice to keep options open and keep an eye on what we would get for our money in different parts of the country.

Mixed day really. We had to be out fairly early to meet Jenny to view an alternate venue for weekly Home Ed group. It was not suitable but spawned a couple of other ideas (such as seeing if our current venue is available at other times) which we’ll look into.

Left there and whizzed over to Sainsburys for a few bits including lunch and then home via the library to return some books – for the first time in ages we currently have NO library books in the house – thank you book bag for the victory of keeping them all together in one place in the house and curing the curse of the one lost book which is under someone’s bed! Didn’t get any more out as I was doing a book people order and nearly clicked to order something when in the back of my mind an alarm bell rang and upon checking the bookcase I realised that yes, that set was already among our collection, as was two of the other titles on the order. So I shut that window down and have resolved to actually start looking at some of the books we already own with the children!

The library round up worked quite well actually in that we sat together and looked at all of them before they went back so before 9am (and before I’d even been online this morning!) we had looked at books about fish, nocturnal animals, mammals and cows.

This afternoon the kids veered between playing really well (they build Candyland with sticklebricks, dressed up, played with polly pocket, made some mini beast window stickers) and trying to kill each other 🙁 The most annoying thing was that Tarly was being really irritating but got a rise out of Davies every time who was then in turn driving me mad by whinging and whining and running off in dramatic fashions like some sort of flouncing diva. I eventually seperated them and they then cried cos they wanted to be together! Urgh!

I gave up on trying to actually do anything ‘with’ them as it just seemed to enhance the competition and instead gathered up the two bin liners full of outgrown clothes, photographed them all and have all but finished getting them listed on ebay. 🙂 Whatever doesn’t sell can either go to Julie for Jack (but I’m going to have a go at selling it first as I was really pissed off to discover she has gladly accepted all D’s cast offs before then sold them on!!) or the charity shop. Most of it is very well worn actually, they have gone from growing out of clothes before they are worn to wearing clothes out before they’ve grown – which is heartening in one way I guess!

Had an email from the CV lady to say they had only had 3 cvs to do this week so one is in the post to me 🙁 was hoping for more like 10, but as they want it back for Monday and I’m going away at lunchtime tomorrow until Sunday evening it’s possibly for the best! We missed a ‘too big for the letterbox’ packet today which could well be it I suppose. It is going to be a slow burn this CV writing as they are a new company themselves and couldn’t really start to build their business without people to write them already on board and were dubious about taking people on without having the CVs to write so hopefully it will all come together soon and we’ll be getting the volume coming through.

Must confess to being quite irrationally shouty today but my excuses were hormones, tiredness (Tarly has been sleeping through the night much better of late but has a new tendancy to rise at 5am ish. She ends up in with us for an hour or so til Ady gets up for work which means I do get an hour or so between 6 and 7 but it is still taking a toll – and staying up til gone midnight myself probably doesn’t help!) and them being very sibling-y today and quite loud themselves. I did try a couple of times to engage with them and actually do something but it ended up with them both talking at once all the time and just did my head in so I went back to my ebaying!

In the middle of all this Ros texted to share Layla and Si’s exciting news so that perked me up a fair bit 🙂 🙂

Ady was having some sort of nightmare day at work trying to sort out some H&S issue with a Russian temp so had a very bizzare text conversation with him thinking up Russian words and associations to help him make sense of what the bloke was saying! He was late home from the dentists so Tarly took herself off to bed and fell asleep, Davies followed not long afterwards.

Tomorrow I need to go and collect the parcel from the post office, pack up for the weekend and we’re heading off to Barbara’s for the weekend sometime around lunchtime. Dad has the joy of house and cat sitting but I think his skills will not quite extend to blog sitting too, so I guess I’ll be back on Monday 🙂 Be good now, and Thing 1 and Thing 2? You know what to do 😉

Omitted to mention a huge
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

to Joanna yesterday, so Happy Belated one from me 🙂

Supposed to be a WAG get together at the beach in Climping today. Having spent two days at home already this week Julie and I had decided to go whatever the weather although everyone else dropped out. I rang her first thing and we agreed to bring wellies and raincoats, picnic and spare clothes and go for a blow the cobwebs away hour or so down there.

Davies was on the pc first thing doing some rubber stamp game with which he created a lovely picture (did do a screen print – will get it on flickr later) and Tarly came and curled up with me and fell asleep for half an hour while I was on my laptop (she’d been up since 5am, so it didn’t do her any harm). Against rapidly blackening skies and rising winds we drove over to Climping and pulled into the car park. Julie arrived shortly afterwards and just opening the window to talk to her across the cars was enough to convince us that actually getting out of the cars would be a mental idea 🙂

So instead I followed her to some woods (small NT conservation area with lots of tree cover), dressed the kids up in waterproof jackets and wellies and set them free! They had a great time slipping and sliding about, talking to some of the volunteers about the ditches they were digging around the paths (to create waterfalls during the winter) and clambering about on tree stumps. Excellent place for all weather walks actually and only about half an hour’s drive from home so will plan to come back at least once per season to see how the woods change through the year. There is some sort of mini beast treasure hunt / spotter activity going on there this weekend which looks really interesting so we will keep an eye out for other such stuff going on when we are free.

In the car park the children found a large muddy puddle and after a brief moment of consideration I decided that childhood is all about splashing in muddy puddles in the rain and agreed they could go mad and have a play. So while Julie tried really hard to persuade her two not to do it my two posed for the camera and got themselves as wet and muddy as they could. Stripped them down in the back of the people carrier, changed them into dry clothes and we sat with the two cars parked right next to each other and the windows open, chatting and eating lunch.

The rain got even heavier so our half hearted plan of another walk round after lunch was put off and Julie headed for home while we went off to Jenny’s house to take her up on an emailed offer to come and dry off and drink tea at her house if we’d been rained off.

Spent a very pleasant couple of hours there drinking tea and chatting (oh yes, and eating chocolates :-)) while the children vanished into her house joining her younger three in eating popcorn, watching Finding Nemo and playing with every toy in the house. Davies really likes playing with Carys (I think if he were older he might blush in her presence, but even he doesn’t realise that yet!) and Tarly and Fergus finally realised that they are actually a perfect match in terms of terrorising toddlers with mischief in mind and teamed up to play some game with the cat flap and keep taking it in turns to come in and look cutely at me and Jenny to win chocolates! Very nice 🙂

Home for tea, bath to remove dried mud and other grime and guess what? It’s still raining! About to have a bath to remove my own dried on woods grime and then settle down to watch Lost.

I have been doing a sort of time and motion stylee study on me and the kids today. I wanted to see if we could tick boxes educationally, get some housework’y type stuff done, have some fun together, get out of the house at least briefly, fit in some me time, do some stuff which I had to do without interuption (which will later be writing CVs as I need to see how I can fit it into my day without burning midnight oil on it) and ensure that all three of us felt like we had had a good day by the end of it.

So for my own records really and inspite of what I wrote earlier about not blogging the tiny insignificant bits of my day (although I imagine Jax will enjoy it 😉 ) here is how it panned out:

Managed four loads of washing, got it dried and put away, baked cookies and got dinner on (beef in red wine sauce) cooking slow.

Managed to make a couple of phonecalls including sorting out the venue for the Halloween party (hurrah!).

Had a walk round the block to the shops so I could buy Heat magazine ;-), kids walked there and back holding hands with each other and chattering about what they could see and playing a ‘don’t step on the cracks’ game. We stopped to talk to our opposite neighbour for about 15 mins on the way back too which was nice as she is very pro HE and always very complimentary about how lovely the children are 😀

Made an attempt to keep the house tidy as we went and the children, particularly Davies were actually pretty helpful in this.

Davies spent some time on the computer playing some previously untackled games on one of his play and learn cds. He was introduced to noughts and crosses, four in a row and various other logic games, as well as doing very well on memory games such as find the pair and other visual stuff, which reassured me on the reading stuff too. Must do ‘puter stuff with him more really, as he likes the time alone and seems to get quite a lot out of it and it also allows me to spend some one to one with Tarly.

Tarly and I made some flower people (similar to Fifi flowertot in appearance) from a kit. She likes stuff like that so I should try and do more fiddly things with her and bear it in mind when birthday and Christmas pressie shopping for her. We also played with her aquamat for a while and did some writing, some shape drawing and some stuff like faces, cats and houses.

I did some reading aloud to them – the Enormous Crocodile is Davies’ current fave for this and I aim to do it more as it’s something we all enjoy – I will need to make the selection of book myself though as I cannot face reading the ‘are you my daddy’ life the flap book which is Tarly’s selection one more time!

The post this morning brought the pack for our CP holiday in a couple of weeks time so we all cuddled up together and looked through that – D has been very cuddly today actually, we sat with me on my laptop and him watching TV for about an hour cuddled up together this morning and Tarly is always clambering about on me. Probably the thing I love most about motherhood actually, the cuddles 🙂

Davies watched some show on cbbc and drew all the characters from it then brought them to me to be cut out. I got the laminator out and bunged them in the pouches before making a phonecall to find Davies has laminated them himself while I was on the phone – sod the numeracy and literacy, my HE’d not yet 5 year old can already laminate! 😉 They both did lots of drawing, including Tarly’s party trick of purple felt tip all over her right leg from toes to thigh!

They have played loads together today too, been Charlie and Willy Wonka for hours, built stuff with lego and megabloks as props and generally enjoyed being siblings for most of the day.

I have managed to spent some time online, make phonecalls and read a fair bit of my magazine by doing it when they are occupied doing other stuff. If they have wanted or needed me I have put the computer down straight away and it has really worked today.

The next line is about not counting your money while you’re sitting at the table but I don’t carry cash so that one doesn’t apply to me 😉

The knowing when to walk away is in relation to HE and the kids. Not walking away from HE just having a chill out about the whole reading and writing thing which has been knawing (doesn’t look right, is it?) away at me quietly about D. He runs a mile from stuff like 100EL now, refuses to do overt stuff like a workbook but left to his own devices is slowly getting there and as tough as I’m finding it to leave him to his own devices it is clearly the best way to deal with it. He had a rare bath on his own the other day (the bath isn’t rare, but he usually shares it with Tarly) and sat for ages and ages playing the foam bath letters – he called us in to show us he had spelt ‘no’ although he had actually spelt ‘on’ and today he put a load of foam numbers from an ‘educational’ puzzle in numerical order – except they were right to left instead of left to right. Both times we said well done but explained that writing runs from left to right without making too much of it. I’m avoiding the wild temptation to start considering whether he is dyslexic (not entirely groundless – Ady’s brother is badly dyslexic, I believe my brother is and Ady certainly has lots of problems with his spelling), although I don’t actually know if dyslexia is hereditory and frankly within the environment of an autonomous HE household where I am trying to apply a fairly hands off approach I don’t actually think anything different to what we are currently doing would be in order – I guess if he does have difficulties in that area then they will be more apparant as time goes by. His general knowledge and observational skills, conversation and imaginative play are way ahead of his schooled peers so I can live with a little coasting along on literacy and numeracy for a while longer, and he is surely up to reception year standard from what little of the key stage goals I am aware of.

We’ve been at home lots the last couple of days and I am striving to be available to them when they want it but leave them alone when they are quite happily engaged in something else. There is certainly a fine line between neglecting them, leaving them to make their own entertainment whilst not shutting yourself away and being too proactive with them and taking over. I like the fact that they often amuse themselves for the largest part of the day but sometimes their games would be slightly more productive if I pointed them in the direction of certain toys or started them off on stuff before retreating, or issued them challenges such as ‘build me a…’

Today we’ve done some baking (chocolate chip cookies – and eaten the outcome), walked round the shops and chatted about what we saw, talked to the neighbour and discussed left and right, and north, south, east and west. Davies drew some pitures of people to recreate the characters he’d seen on some cbbc programme first thing, got me to cut them out and then he laminated them himself, they’ve done loads of drawing, built stuff with the megabloks, been Charlie and Willy Wonka, I’ve read a couple of books aloud to them (something I would like to do more of but I need to select the books as I cannot bear to read ‘are you my daddy?’ lift the flap book one more time which is the one Tarly always brings me 😉

I’ve also bored even myself with blogging about when I have got the washing done, the food shopping or made lunch so I am going to start being a little more selective about exactly what I blog about. I intend to make this one mostly about education type stuff and the children although realising that most of what we do in the course of the day is educational in some way I intend to leave the tedium at the door. Also realised just how many smilies I use and fear it has become the new equivalent of too many exclamation marks. I need some new ones to express things more accurately (Jax can you help??) or to stop using them altogether! 😉 😀 !!

Right, off to set Davies up on some game on the pc and Tarly wants to make some flower clothes peg people from a kit we unearthed yesterday, might be back later if I have more to say than simply what we are having for dinner.

It’s not actually eased off here all day – should probably have done some sort of rain fall measuring or something.

Today’s plan was to get the kids’ feet measured. I was anticipating two new pairs each so it could have been £100 worst case scenario (although I think I would have chickened out of two pairs of Clarkes each and gone for one pair and some cheapo trainers) so after chatting to Jenny on the phone about group, CV writing and how stupid I was to be going shoe shopping on a wet day during the summer holidays when Jenny assured me (as a parent who has been shoe shopping for back to school in previous years) would be when everyone was shoe shopping I got the kids dressed and set off for town.

Parked nice and easy as town was quite quiet – with the obvious exception of the childrens department at Clarkes of course 🙁 Took our ticket and the kids who were on all sorts of bribes to behave started very well with Davies sort of lolling all over me while Tarly brought us over loads of different shoes one by one and thudded them on the floor to see if they had lights in them 🙂 We probably waited a good 20 minutes and it was heaving so I was justifiably proud of them for being really very well behaved until our number was called. Even happier to find they are both still ok in both pairs of shoes so that was a cheap trip 🙂 and hopefully means we’ll get away with one pair of shoes and some wellies when they next decide to grow too – hurrah cheapness 🙂

Had a wander round town for half an hour or so, looking for pressies for D’s birthday and checking out the new branch of Monsoon which has just opened in Worthing – salivated over the beautiful jewel colours and resolved to be first in line for their next sale for me and Tarly – oh how I’d love to be Monsoon woman, I’d waft around drinking my early grey out of bone china cups, never wearing jeans again and always having matching accessories and a hat for every occassion. I’d be accompanied by my son in sailor suit for the 2000s style attire and my immaculate daughter with her blonde tresses artfully caught up in dragonfly diamante clips wearing miniature versions of my own flowing floaty skirts and dresses which never dripped in the puddles and had raggedy hems….

Kids both got their cake for being positively angelic and we came home. Played with sticklebricks and duplo and lego for a bit with them and then decided to shut down the computer and Do Something Useful. So finally tackled the playroom storage boxes which housed all the various ‘stuff’ when Joyce came and we did the grand tidy up. Got a bin liner full of harshly decided crap, filled the shelves with science experiments and craft kits which we might even have a go at doing this week and sorted the cupboards a bit. Davies was in his element, bringing one tidied away toy to swap for something else but Tarly was really wanting to be played with and ended up getting shouted at for taking out loads of stuff and just scattering it about 🙁 Somehow felt less guilty about not being available as I was at least doing something for them (making their toys easier to get to) rather than blogging or chatting online though 🙂

Ady came home and bathed them, I cut Davies’ hair and then shot to Tescos for a small food shop for the week. Got some baking provisions and tomorrow the plan is to check emails once in the morning and then shut computer down to do some baking, craft or other activity of their choice with them for at least a couple of hours in the morning. I might be getting some more CVs tomorrow or Wednesday (well done Jenny btw 😉 ) and as we’re away for the weekend at the Raine’s I need to be sensible about how much time I might have to be supermum later in the week!

Impressed if anyone gets that without google…

Whoosh, there went another weekend 😉

Yesterday morning we had had a half baked plan to take D to Toys R Us to get some ideas for birthday gifts for him, but it didn’t pan out like that so we had cooked breakfast instead and I did the first trial CV and emailed it across for approval. It probably took me about half an hour if you factor out the potty emptying, wiping of bottoms, supervising of getting dressed, telling Tarly not to get socks out of her newly accessible bedroom furniture, saying ‘oh yes darling, very good’ to various drawings and other such stuff brought to me and battling against Charlie and the Chocolate Factory dvd being played very loud with two children acting it at the same time 😉 which if you factor back in again still probably only took me an hour and a half!

Went out to get my hair cut and return a library book and returned to find worried people some two hours later – I’m not entirely sure why it took an hour and a half to cut and blow dry it either but it was an entertaining diversion so I didn’t mind too much 🙂 Hairdresser, who I have mentioned before is called ‘Nikki’ (which I believe most hairdressers are called actually) and is 21, still lives at home and, bless her, despite spending most of her day stood infront of a mirror is one of those unfortunate young ladies with a tummy to rival mine after two children but still insists on having it pierced (red stone, barely peeping out from inside the rolls!) and exposed between low slung trousers and high cut crop top. Oh for such self confidence – I am a fully paid up follower of the church of Trinny and Susanah and have identified cleavage as the one single benefit of being very overweight so do the whole low cut v neck, supportive bra and stretchy boot cut jeans as a uniform with occassional seasonal changes and still cringe at photos and my reflection in shop windows at times 😉

So, back to Nikki. She’s failed her driving theory test which has been a knock back and split up with her boyfriend. The story of which I managed to pick out despite her recounting it in a very convoluted manner mainly telling me what texts they had sent each other and a monologue using lots of facial expressions and waving about of hands (a bit scary when they are holding quite sharp scissors!) along the lines of:
So I was like
and he was like
and I was like Noooooo
and he was like er like yeah
and I was like whatever
and he was like
so I went like
know what I mean?

Didn’t require too much response from me fortunately and I do like my regular slice of yoof culture 😉

Got home, applied loads of styling product to hair and messed it all up from the granny style blow dry she had created (clearly being over 30 put me in a certain category and I did the classic girl thing of smiling, nodding, saying it was lovely and almost clapping in delight when she showed me the back in the mirror before getting in to the car and ruffling it about – in fairness the cut is fine and having washed it I am quite happy with it, it was just the curious way she dried it!), got changed out of clothes covered in tiny itchy bits of hair and checked my emails to find one back from CV ady to say my returned one was perfect and she should have more for me early next week (hurrah) and off we all went to the circus.

Dad came with us (Mum was working) and we had front row tickets. Davies adored it and sat transfixed for the entire show, Scarlett was the same for the first half but got fidgety for the second half after a ridiculously long interval (they wheeled out this costume character of a camel with two people inside and encouraged children to come down the front to have their picture taken (polaroid) with the thing for just three quid. Me and Dad found the mad assortment of adults coming up to have their photo done quite hilarious, but Tarly was not quite so entertained!) and didn’t settle again until nearly the end.

There were tightrope artists (including a very very high one which pulled off the obligatory near miss fall which had me convinced), acrobats, muscled men in spangly suits doing this amazing act with a revolving thing like two hamster wheels and of course the clowns 🙂 The main clown came on pretty much inbetween every act as they re set the big top with equipment for the next act and at one point selected Ady as one of his props where he got some bloke to come his hair with a giant comb and then buffed Ady’s head with a cloth, which then appeared to have loads of dust in it so he got out a feather duster and used that on it. My Dad was in stitches – he would walk out or die rather than have something like that happen to him but he adores seeing it happen to people he knows, Tarly took it completely in her stride like Daddy is always part of the circus and Davies was just utterly impressed – bless him! I played giggling wife to perfection 😉

Came home and Davies had decided that the acrobats were his favourite so we made some paper ones, coloured them in and laminated them and they have been happily played with ever since 😉 Might make a big top to put them in tomorrow.

Frazer and Mum both came over after work and we had fish and chips.

Today we went over to Chris and Julie’s and I went car boot sale-ing with Julie. Didn’t buy much (a double sided puzzle with baby animals and their mothers which is wooden, in excellent condition and a bargain at 20p, some girly coloured sticklebricks for Tarly to stop arguments about sticklebricks in future for £1.75 and some playdough accessories to make cars (chassis, moulds and loads of bits like bumpers, wing mirrors etc) for £1.50) although Julie got two trips back to the car worth as she was buying for the toddler group she runs. Had lunch and play for kids, chats for grown ups there til early afternoon before coming home. The kids are changing the dynamic of their relationship again at the moment. Maisie and Scarlett are getting quite close and play really girly stuff together like gathering up all the dolls and babies and setting them up for tea parties and stuff – mainly organised by Tarly who is clearly in charge 🙂 They gave each other a big kiss and cuddle goodbye when we left – so cute 🙂

Jack is very keen to impress big cousin Davies and there is some clear hero worship going on there which Davies is pretty good with in the main – but I guess he is used to being trailed by a nearly 2 year old most of the time anyway 🙂 So nice to see the four of them so close though, I hope they keep that relationship going for many many years 🙂

Came home with plans of finished some work off for Ady (the stuff he allegedly worked from home on on Friday!) and Ady washing his car while the kids played with their new car boot spoils. But our friend Bruce arrived with news that he is getting married so everything stopped for a while. We aree trying very hard to be pleased for him but it is hard as we were very very fond of his ex partner (who he was with for 12 years and I had previously only known him as half of that couple), have not yet met this new fiance and he does look like a man in the middle of a mid life crisis. He is in his 50s but turned up with his very patchy hair (Ady style hair cut!) bleached blonde, his motorbike leathers (he was on his bike so that was ok!) open to reveal a Bruce Willis style vest and boasting about his weightloss (he has slimmed down a lot). Sounds like we will meet his new lady at the wedding! We are of course pleased for him if he is happy but it all feels a bit sudden and he is not showing the sort of excitement you would expect for the newly engaged, also his (grown up) children are not at all happy about it all which obviously adds pressure. Hopefully they’ll prove everyone wrong and be very happy together 🙂

And that was the weekend. Had roast dinner, watched X factor and the follow up Big Brother show for a reality tv fix ;-). Tomorrow is shoe shopping for small people day and further birthday pressie planning and we have a fairly quiet week planned although I imagine it won’t actually turn out that way!

You know when you can just tell where a line of questioning is going with your offspring and you mentally panic as you realise they are about to ask you a question you don’t actually know the answer to? 🙂

And how it is almost always in the car, or certainly somewhere where you do not have access (ie books and the internet) to the places to find the answer? 🙂

Various bits of education happening here today – so that was all good 🙂

I was woken this morning by a huge rolling thunder clap and looked at the clock saying 7.30am. Was tempted to snuggle back down and go back to sleep as I could hear small people and Ady talking about thunderstorms and fork and sheet lightning downstairs so knew all was well but I had a busy day ahead so decided to surprise them all but being up and dressed before 8am. Arrived downstairs about ten minutes later all bouncy and tigger-like to find it was gone 9am and my clock must have stopped during the storm – oops!

Ady was working from home today on some H&S stuff related to his new role so I was able to dash to Sainsburys and Boots sans children, then back to collect kids and picnic and then head over to Chris and Julie’s a mere half an hour late. Realised when Julie handed me a cup of tea at midday that it was my first of the day though which explained my woolly feeling 😉

Row resolved over there we had a really nice day with two other Activeo families coming. The kids all mixed really well and parents had a nice chat too. One of them used to come to WAG (Kathy with Leona and Daniel who wants to be a girl Jenny?) but moved and is now living too far away to come so it was nice to catch up with her as Leona and Davies get on really well (she’s 7 and likes to mother him 😉 ). Also got to talk to her a bit more and understand Daniel too. He is a beautiful little boy who is adamant he wants to be a girl (well actually he’s adamant that he is a girl and dresses in very feminine girls clothes (pink dresses, glittery sandals etc)). She has looked into the whole gender cross dressing and transexual thing and found lots of support groups online and allows him to dress as a girl and agrees that he is when he is getting upset but is reserving judgement as to whether it is just a phase or he truly does want to live as a female until he is older. Strangely the other family there have an older boy (nearly 6 – Daniel is only 3) who is slightly the same but his father will not allow him to wear the nail varnish or fairy dresses he desperatly wants to. Not at all sure I would deal with it as well as Kathy although she does concede it is easier without his dad being around (they live with her mum so he is in a house with three other females). Good discussions though 🙂 Kids all played inside and out in the rain, various games in various combinations of children but all highly enjoyed and with relatively small amounts of adult intervention required 🙂

Left there later than planned and had lots of interesting car ed chats on the way home. Davies told me that the rain which was making puddles would get sucked up by the sun which would give it back to the clouds to fall as rain again (which was not a bad recounting of the water cycle which we only briefly touched on a month or so ago I thought), then Tarly told me – apropos of nothing – that bees make honey. I confirmed that yes, indeed bees did make honey to which Davies insisted that people could make honey too. I said I thought they couldn’t and that it had to be bees. He then started asking exactly how they made it – was not satisfied with my mumbled explanation that they drank pollen and processed it ‘somehow’ to ‘make’ honey and wanted to know out of which orifice it came out as honey and whether it had germs and needed to be treated in any way before being suitable for human consumption (and I have to tell you that his words were not far off of the way I have phrased it either!). He then told me a bit about hives and collecting the honey wearing special white suits and hats to put it into jars and asked again what ingredients (his word) would be needed if people could make honey. Will no doubt have to pick that all up with him again at some point so will make sure I do know the answers by then 😉

Got home to find Dad and Frazer here on their first beer so children were delighted and didn’t bat an eyelid when Jenny arrived to spirit me off an hour later. In the meantime Frazer was looking at my pc (he is midway through some sort of accredited microsoft course and is the resident expert on all things pc related which are way above and beyond me) and getting my printer to work again. We brought my laptop into the playroom to look at side by side – he was uninstalling various things on the pc which were contriving to make it run s l o w l y and I thought I’d get him to exercise the same thing on my laptop when it totally died. I left to go with Jenny feeling really quite bereft that my life support system may be leaving me. I rang when we arrived at Hove to suggest that it might be power supply related (and infact it was – oh the relief!) before going into a truly lovely child-free IKEA stylee flat to get a training session on making a silk purse from a sows ear!

Jenny may well blog about this too, but basically we have been recruited to write cvs. By a private company who offer a professional cv writing service both to private clients (ie professionals who have enough money to pay a cv writing service to do the job for them) and for people who are long term unemployed and are being signed up by government run schemes who have a budget for getting them off the social and back into gainful employment. Given their unemployed status their CV will be a bit light on the employment history section and focus more on competancy based skills, practical life experience and, erm, spin 😉 Suits me just fine as it is not a million miles away from the task I performed as Recruitment Consultant years ago sitting on the phone to a client ‘selling’ someone to them as ‘dynamic, self starting and with excellent interpersonal skills’ as said person sat opposite me with their finger up their nose or picking at a patch of flaky skin on their ear lobe and then sniffing their finger afterwards! Have brought away a trial one to have a go with which looks very similar to the sort of person I used to try and get into ‘picking and packing’ work on production lines in the local frozen chicken factory for minimum wage so should not prove too taxing. Ady is slightly concerned at how ethical it is to ‘talk up’ people in such a way but I have no such scruples as a) We need the money b) It’s just marketing 😉 c) If the potential employers selection process is so patchy that from an interview with the dreadlocked applicant they cannot decipher ‘sales consultant for nationally recognised publication’ as ‘I sold the Big Issue’ then they are asking for all they get and finally d) I don’t have scruples anyway 😉 and I do like a nice bit of creative writing :-).

Tomorrow brings a haircut for me (can’t wait – I love catching up on my teenage stylists wild social life and Saturday mornings normally bring a hangover and tales of her boyfriend’s Friday night drunken stupidity 🙂 ) and then a trip to the circus with the kids and my Dad – they have only been to the circus once before – and Tarly is too young to remember anyway. We went to Blackpool and did the tower then stayed til dark and drove home past all the illuminations the year before last and saw the circus in the tower then which Davies loved. Likely to have parents and brother here for takeaway dinner tomorrow night so don’t expect to hear from me until Sunday pm.

Been to Ali’s today. It felt like a long while since we’d seen them and with various weekends away and visits to other bloggers and of course the final of BB6 to catch up on we had a lovely day 🙂

The children seem to mix well with various pairings off at various times, other times when all three of them play together and of course the times when all three of them get on with their own thing and my two just enjoy playing with someone else’s toys for a while 🙂 The only spats were between siblings and were playdough and tiredness related so that was fine. As an aside another day has passed without shouting so that’s all for the good 🙂

So the kids were inside, outside and quite possibly in the lady’s chamber, they played some train sets, some playdough, some dolls houses, Tarly managed to climb on Ali’s garage roof three times before I decided enough was enough and threatened to bring her inside if she did it again (the steps up to the back garden run alongside the garage so the top few are level with the garage roof and the bottom of the patio is about 8foot below – which is of course where she would have landed, having bumped down a few steps for good measure if she’d fallen – mad daredevil child 😉 They made mud, sand and water creations, drew everywhere with chalk to recreate Christmas (aided by the prop of an old articial Christmas tree which I think Ali had intended to get shot of but now seems an integral part of creative imaginative play round there and I suspect would be much missed!).

Ali and I talked on various subjects including mothers and daughters, marriage and reasons for doing it, blogging and bitching, relationships and childhood, Big Brother and online relationships as oppposed to real life ones. We ended, I believe debating which of The Wiggles we would go out with if forced to and trying to remember all their names. We had to enlist junior help on that as the only one we were all certain on was Jeff (we knew he was short, wore purple and slept a lot). General consensus from small people was that Murray was Red shirt and Anthony was blue (with sideburns) which left camp yellow shirted tall one who when the credits rolled we decided must be Greg.

Quick hose down of my children under the outside tap and off we set for home. Arrived to find Ady about to climb in through one of the windows aided by a ladder as he had arrived home, without keys a few minutes before me 😉

Have not achieved much else today really, I am awaiting apples and pastry to chill before shoving an apple pie in the oven as a nod towards my baking ambitions but it’s been a good day just the same.

Tomorrow its over to Julie’s for an Activeo meet up and then a training session with Jenny late afternoon. My brother is coming to look at my reluctant printed in the evening in exchange for beer and curry and then, hey, it’s the weekend again 🙂

Happy belated birthday for 14th August and consider yourself on the list for next year with no escape 🙂

which our school band used to play every time they were ‘on’ in assembly and would echo round my head for weeks afterwards.

Today, has been a Good Day 🙂

Did a brief online thing first thing and then got everyone dressed and picnic packed and out – having first booked a hairdressers appointment for me on Saturday and left a message for work woman (more on that later) to call me back.

Went over to Julie’s via Tesco for a few more picnic bits and a quick perusal of their kids clothing and managed to totally kit Davies out for autumn / winter taking full advantage of some of their multi purchase offers and full stock availabilty what with us having real August weather and all the clothes being long sleeved so not popular. Also got them both a magazine to be used as bribery for being good all day – if you are good you will get this when we get home type of thing. Tarly, predictably chose the new Dora magazine and Davies chose a Willy Wonka activity type book with press out candyland figures and scenery.

Arrived at Julies to find her having an uncharacteristic potty mouthed day with much swearing – so I felt right at home there 🙂 She’s normally quite prim so to here her saying ‘fuck’ every other word was very entertaining 😉 Two other families arrived – Jenny and Anne. Chris arrived home about an hour or so after everyone else got there so I was chatting to him in the house for a while about his and Ady’s mother who he’d seen at the weekend and some photos that had been passed to him of them as boys which she was able to give him a bit of background on (for information for anyone who doesn’t know Ady has no contact with his mother for various reasons and it is very recent that he has been back in contact with Chris, his brother. They had a crappy childhood spent mainly in foster care and children’s homes and have no momentos or many memories of their childhood. Chris still sees their mother once a month or so but aside from at their sister’s funeral Ady has not seen her for about 20 years) in her typically loony way – eg denying that she is in one of the pictures and saying it was a passerby holding the baby (Chris) while she took the picture despite the fact it is clearly her in it. Weirdo.

Jenny and tribe left and then Anne was in the lower garden with Julie and I and the remaining kids (she has about 8 of her own, she had 6 with her today although I think at least two were not hers – either grandchildren or childminded ones I believe) were running wild in the garden. Chris got fairly pissed off with them wrecking plants and treating J & M’s toys with a total lack of respect so I think he was a bit rude to Anne and certainly prompted them leaving. I hung on for a short while but it was clear that Chris and Julie were on the verge of a huge row so we left shortly afterwards 🙁 Have since spoken to her on the phone and they did indeed have a massive row but have made up again.

Drove home listening to more WOTW which I am really enjoying and telling my children how well behaved they had been today and how proud I was of them 🙂 Got in and Tarly looked through her magazine while I helped Davies construct his Willy Wonka scene which he was delighted with 🙂

Ady arrived home shortly afterwards so I went off to Brighton to collect our reserved order of a new wardrobe and bedside table for Tarly. She has never had proper bedroom furniture as there was an odd built in wardrobe affair in her tiny bedroom in the house up north so we just bought her a chest of drawers, which was a casualty from Pickfords removal when we moved home a year ago and despite repeated patch up jobs has long been for the dump. Also popped into Matalan which was next door to Argos and bought all Tarly’s autumn and winter clothes so that is that task ticked off 🙂

Got home and managed to make the wardrobe quickly and get the old drawer unit out before she went to bed. Also somehow managed to have a bath, cook dinner, arrange training for new employment on the phone, half assemble the new bedside table and be sitting down in time to watch Lost while finishing off the table which is now installed in her room containing all her new underwear 🙂 Looks really nice in there now, when I’ve tidied up the rest of the room tomorrow I’ll take some pictures.

So I have been very industrious today and am feeling pleased with myself and the children for being so good 🙂 I think the only time I have shouted today was at a cupboard hinge which was not doing what I wanted it to do and got called a choice name 😉

So the work I’ve mentioned. Jenny (who is also doing it) heard from a friend about some work putting together competancy based CVs, which you can do obviously from home and pretty much at your own rate. I have said I could manage 10 hours a week which I believe should take in about 10 CVs a week at a fairly good hourly rate. Am going to meet the woman on Friday with Jenny for a training session but given one of my previous jobs was as a recruitment consultant in an employment agency where I used to speed read CVs and application forms for competancy, interview up to 15 applicants a day and try and form an idea of what work they may be suitable for then try to sell them to clients on that basis I reckon it shouldn’t prove too taxing 🙂 (Still Marketing Chris, just a different product 😉 ) . I also managed a play with some other money making stuff today which I had been nervous of and am slowly getting my head round so I think I have achieved lots 🙂 Didn’t manage that baking though!

Been meaning to do a similar exercise for Tarly to the one I did for Davies. Although his education is far more likely to be put under a microscope than her’s I *think* she might be getting towards some sort of pre school groups (3 in December) and is about the same age now that Davies was when I decided on HE so given how much headspace his early years education got back then (although it has of course slid to non existant proportions in the following two years 😉 ) it seems only right to think about hers a little.

Actually I think she might be the classic negected second child in terms of not getting any of the individual attention so learning all by herself. She has amazed me a couple of times this weekend by just ‘knowing’ stuff I have certainly never showed her. In the lifts at the hotel and museum she heard me tell Davies which number or letter to press buttons for and did it first and then she pulled some of Ady’s socks out of the holdall with ‘3’ on them (he has comedy socks with days of the week and numbers 1-7 on them, cos he’s so wacky!), held them out to him and said ‘here’s your 3 socks’.

I have got a shelf full of 3-5 workbooks on reading, writing and maths which Davies has never shown any interest in and if I can get over my feeling that she really shouldn’t be eclipsing him in such matters I think she’d love to be sat down with me doing them with her. I also think she might be ready for 100EL first few lessons. I could be completely wrong but she loves books, craves cuddling up and having individual attention from me (which TBH she rarely gets) so I think it might be good all round. Also it might just be the catalyst for getting Davies to do what he and I both know he is capable of but he lacks the wanting to do (ie start reading) as I imagine he will be bothered by her getting ahead of him.

A friend has offered to take her along with her 2yo to toddler groups which is something Scarlett has never been to so that might be interesting. I am not signing her up for anything additional to Tumble Tots for the time being and of course she comes along to HE group every week, plays with her cousins (same age) at least twice a week.

She demonstrates some sort of imaginative play every day, often with Davies, does drawing constantly (although frequently not in appropriate places!), is fearless, daring and competant in her physical ability and agility, is very sociable, loves to learn, sings all the time, loves to dance and is a happy, healthy toddler 🙂 Long may she continue to live such a life unhampered by the rules of establishments and able to run naked and grubby whenever and wherever possible 🙂

Well today should have been a nice day. The sun shone, we had things to do, places to go, people to see etc.

Davies was irritating me within about half an hour of getting up by being whingey and baiting Scarlett and having to be asked about 15 times to do the simplest of tasks. As so often is the case with my two if one is being horrid the other is positively angelic which somehow perpetuates the problem as you end up showering the angelic one with praise and gratitude which makes the terrorising one all the worse trying to wrestle some attention back and so on 🙁

Managed to get them out the house only about 15 minutes late and arrived at PYO to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily. Tractor ride between fields and we picked raspberries, sweetcorn, cooking apples and strawberries. (Tomorrow I have a sort of plan to do some baking – some meringues to go with the berries, which also means I will have to use the yolks to make Layla’s fab pain au chocolat pudding and some toffee apple pies – might be a bit ambitious though 🙂 )

Then we went to Highdown Gardens for a picnic and run about including some tree climbing 🙂

Mel and I managed a bit of chatting but TBH it was probably more me whinging about Davies than anything else. Came home
and seemed to randomly shout at him some more before sending him to bed in disgrace when Ady got home.

Then in a fit of housewifelyness I went and changed our bedclothes and put loads of washing away, went into his room where he was sobbing into his pillow and did a huge monologue about how instead of lying there feeling sorry for himself perhaps he should feel sorry for me having tried to give him a nice day today and ending up shouting at him instead, how I don’t work because we are HEing instead, how we spent a lot of money on this weekend and he was ungrateful, greedy, unsociable and generally badly behaved and that all I am trying to do is give him a nice childhood but it keeps getting flung back in my face. I told him to lay there and think about that and if he wanted to come and say anything to me then I would be happy to hear it. Within about 5 minutes he was in my room apologising. We both cried, he assured me that he will try harder and I assured him I would too and then I went through all his clothes taking out anything he’s grown out of for an ebay pile and mentally compiling a ‘Davies needs for Autumn’ shopping list which was happily quite a lot less than I had thought 🙂 Will do Tarly’s room tomorrow as we are planning to get her a wardrobe tomorrow afternoon (she has only got drawers at the moment and they are on their last legs).

I’ve been feeling a bit neglectful of everything in my real life (yes I do have one 😉 of late so I think I need to make a bit more effort to get something done every day for both the kids and the house and me. I would pretend I will be around less online but that’s stupid – I will just try and be a bit more sensible about when I’m online so it is not compromising other, more important stuff 🙂

With that in mind tomorrow I will get Tarly’s room sorted, maybe do some baking and make an appointment to get my hair cut and ring the woman who may have work for me which is totally realistic to do from home.

Anyone?

Quiey day today which was just what was required after a mad weekend. Somehow (in manner of all Cupid Stunt’s clothes falling off) I didn’t get to bed until about 1am so was less than pleased to be woken again at about 7am 🙁

Dentist at 10am for all of us, so Ady went off to work then met us there. All fine and kids were supremely well behaved opening and closing at the correct times 🙂 We are private for dentist which has the benefit of being very indulgent towards the children (receptionist complimented us on our well behaved offspring to which I proudly replied ‘well you’ve caught them on a good day!’) and a very comprehensive service with a webcam on the end of his little poking stick projected onto a screen on the ceiling above the chair so you can see exactly what he is charging you extortionate amounts of cash for! It had the downside of being extortionate! Luckily we are covered with insurance so we continue going and sitting in the high class waiting room with very glossy magazines and childrens’ books instead of slumming it and going NHS! 😉 No further treatment required so insurance has gotten off with a very reasonable (!) £108 for check ups for four!

Came home via Sainsburys where we restocked on food. Was torn between economy food at their competitors but additional spending temptation of clothing and electrical goods. Went for Sainsburys as it has no additional purchases but still managed to buy War of the Worlds cd which I have been coveting for a while. Kids were actually very well behaved there so were rewarded with a kinder egg (Tarly – she is cheap and easily bought!) and a remote control submarine (Davies – not nearly so naive and shirked all sorts of confectionary treats in favour of the 3 quids worth of plastic!). Worth the price of under four pounds for such a stress free experience though, hell you pay that to have it delivered!

Filled the car back up with petrol again and left the kids listening to WOTW – which they both adored although I think the narration was bypassing them a little and intended to stick the car through the car wash (it was FILTHY) but it was out of order so we drove along the seafront to the local-ish carwash. Very dramatic turning WOTW up to full blast while the suds and rollers crashed around us – enjoyed that 🙂

Spent way too long playing on the internet with flickr and stuff early afternoon while Davies played a Bugs Life game on the pc and Tarly played with her aquamat. I then got an attack of the guilts for not doing ‘stuff’ with them so the next time they came in the lounge I shutdown the laptop and urged them to bring me books to read to them 🙂 Did a couple of story books then did a count to 100 stickerbook with Davies and a Letterland book with Tarly. Frankly as ever when trying to do something remotely educational (or indeed offering individual attention to one or other of them) they end up just competing for my attention, I get cross and neither of them ends up getting much out of it 🙁 I don’t really know why I bother as they are so self sufficient and happy playing their own games they are probably best left to get on with it while I carry on doing my thing and make myself accessible when they need me. Davies did quite well with his book though and as numbers 1-10 were sat there in a line we talked a bit about addition and subtraction and numbers which add up to 10 etc (played with 2 and 8 so took in number bonds too) and then we did a book with some of the alphabet missing and he was surprisingly good at knowing the alphabet order and writing in various missing letters with minimal help and very impressive letter formation 🙂

Ady arrived home shortly afterwards and read them another couple of stories then it was bath and bed for them. I made a couple of phonecalls and stressed about all the things I need to get done this week before drinking 3 glasses of wine (Ady, who is in charge of the week day ban on alcohol deemed that as we missed out on drinking last night we could carry it across to tonight instead!), cooked a lovely dinner (taco shells and flour tortillas with avocade, onion, mayonnaise, chilli sauce, spicy chicken and cheese) and Ady put lots of photos in his new album. He has intentions of one day putting them on his blog but that’s a whole other thing 😉

Tomorrow we are off to pick your own and Highdown gardens to meet up with Liam and Lily and Mel (school holidays) for fruit picking, picnicking and running around.

This week I must:
– ring CV lady first thing tomorrow about possible employment 🙂
– ring round a couple of places I have in mind for locations for Halloween party
– sort out uploading to website with text (not forgotten Tim 🙂 )
– plan out kids autumnal wardrobe and make a start at getting together anything they need for holiday

are now organised on flickr. You can see them right

here 🙂

Hands up who can guess which movie soundtrack cd we have been listening to over and over again during our many hours in the car this weekend then?

So, due to my own crapness in deleting the wrong duplicate titled post on Thursday here’s a four day catch up 🙂

Thursday

Went off to work with Ady and was dropped off at The Portico for the day. It started well really – Scarlett went straight through the house, into the back garden and weed 🙁 Within about 20 minutes my two and the younger Portico two were naked in the garden and Scarlett announced she had done a poo, which we couldn’t find. It was later discovered by elder Portico child 🙁 So that was nice! So having fully disgraced herself she managed to refrain from expelling any further bodily fluids in their grounds (unless you have since found anything else unmentionable?!) and had a lovely time playing.

Davies OTOH started well but around lunchtime he suddenly developed a temperature and got all floppy and cuddly. He did perk up after half a tube of pringles somewhat and managed to cuddle up to Portico Boy to watch some gaming going on, but by the time Ady arrived at about 5ish he was fading fast again and in the end we left far earlier than planned 🙁

Still a lovely day though, I got to have some nice chats with Alison, saw very brief appearances from Chris who was diligently working from home (although he did seem to have regular updates on blogging activity…) and also saw Layla (and very briefly Simon) which is always nice as a sort of BOGOF type offer when you go to Reading (sort of like me and Ros when you come to Sussex – oh and Jenny and Ali too if they are in good health 😉 ) . Davies later said it was the worst time ever at Lije’s house cos he had felt ill but he didn’t say so while we were there as that wouldv’e been rude! Tarly who does dirty, naked child so well always fits in nicely 🙂

Funniest moment of the day had to be Poppy’s double take when she saw Scarlett and exclaiming how there was something different about her, only to realise it was that her hair had been combed! Layla later made much the same remark so we have strived to brush it at least once during the weekend 🙂

Friday

We had planned to be up and away by about 8am. We actually had a rough night, had not done any packing or anything the night before so had to do all that and then it was so close to 9am we hung back to take a library book back which was due instead of asking my Dad to do it for me. Davies was still not himself and the decision to go at all was a wobbly one but we dosed him up with travel sickness medication and hoped he would just sleep the journey away. He didn’t, but he did well and was actually quite perky all day. We stopped at services for lunch and arrived at the hotel at 2pm, which was the exact time we were allowed to check in, so that was handy 🙂 Quick investigation of the room and then we walked around the retail and leisure park type complex it was on, got a bit of food shopping and then went back to the room for a rest.

Lynda and Stuart arrived at about 4.30pm from Manchester and having promised to take Davies to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the week before with Ros and co and dipping out as he’d been ill then, and also going to a real life chocolate factory the next day and being on the same site as a cinema it seemed like the logical thing to do 🙂 Lynda, Davies and I went and Ady stayed with Scarlett and Stuart.

It started badly as Lynda had not been super keen to come, having exhausted the original Gene Wilder film when her boys were young some 20 odd years ago and promised herself she’d never have to watch it again. I convinced her she should lay Gene’s ghost to rest and come and see Johnny Depp doing his thing so she came but it meant we were a little late. Davies then wanted popcorn and fizzy so the trailers had started and the cinema was pitch black when we got there. I fell up the stairs, taking Davies with me and then when we managed to scramble into a seat he kicked the popcorn over!

The film was one of the most surreal I think I have ever seen. Very much in the style of the Cat in the Hat I thought (same mad bright colours, same very artificial fantasy feel about it, same just for the adults jokes and one liners running through it, same feeling that you have somehow stumbled into someone else’s very bad acid trip!). I *think* I enjoyed it, but I came out feeling a bit bamboozled by the whole thing really – the oompa loompas songs were what really tipped me over the edge 🙂 Will be getting the dvd when it comes out so Ady can experience the whole thing for himself!

Came out all blinky at the sunshine and relieved to see the real world still there after all the craziness and had a late for everyone else but early for me and Ady dinner in the restaurant. Journey, two huge glasses of wine and a baileys, crap night before and spinny head from Willy Wonka all caught up with me and I fell asleep by about 9.30! Ady woke me every few minutes to give me updates on Big Brother and I went to bed altogether when he woke me to tell me Anthony had won.

Saturday

Early breakfast and out to be at Cadbury World for 9.30am. I thought it was a pretty good day out. Fairly reasonably priced, plenty to do, good mix of informative, educational and fun and something for all ages. Quite impressed 🙂
Davies had a great time actually, he sat and listened to the story of the Cadbury family (very interesting, what excellent employers), enjoyed the Cadabra ride (very reminscent of Dreamieland but only about 10% as good as what we had there – made me and Ady all nostaglic for days gone by…), loved the demostrations of cooling, tempering and moulding chocolate and had a try at all of them including dipping fudge..mmm. Scarlett was slightly less well behaved but in her defense she was tired and she always acts up when Ady is around 🙁 She is only two! Quick drink to refresh and revive and then onto Cadbury Land – a littel panto style show and then the rain came so we cut our visit short as all that remained was a magic show in an hour and a halfs time, the expensive cafe and an outdoor playground. Lynda and Stuart left us to return to the hotel and we drove around Birmingham city centre for a bit, randomly following brown signs and yelling at each other for being crap at following them, Davies sat in the back playing with his new toy Cadbury van and Tarly had a much needed nap.

Finally we followed some signs to the Think Tank – Birmingham’s Science Museum. which was just utterly fab 🙂 There was loads of other stuff going on there which we didn’t have time for – and the kids were not in the mood for but what we did see was excellent. The Think Tank bit was all about senses, how our bodies work and loads more. Totally interactive for all ages with buttons to press, flaps to lift and knobs to twiddle for littlies and really interesting stuff for grown ups too. We played in there for ages and then discovered a really cool kids village section. It had water play similar to the London Science museum bit and then a mini village with a garage, post box, road works, cafe, fruit and veg stall, broken down car and more with all the relevant dressing up outfits and props. Davies delivered post, fixed some pipes in the roadworks and was a lollipop man, Tarly played in the cafe, drove a car and worked on a veg stall – they loved it there and could have happily stayed for hours. We then did the eating creepy crawlies display which had fantastic X60 models of a grasshopper and a stick insect which were animated to take off into flight, looked at stuff like giant landsnails and massive caterpillars and went into the reading area where there were puppets and soft toys of all sorts of insects. Davies put on a show about the life cycle of a butterfly which was cool and we read the giant book of The Ugly Bug Ball. Quick look downstairs at the planes, trains and cars engine stuff for Ady’s benefit and then back to the hotel.

Dinner last night was at the Frankie and Benny’s across from the hotel which is one of our favourite restaurants. It was really busy and very noisy but still a really nice evening with lovely food and well behaved children considering all factors (such as dinner being at 8pm when they normally eat at 5pm and are in bed by7pm, extreme tiredness etc). Once again came back to the room before 10pm and crashed out fast asleep. Oh what a different girl I am with no internet access!

Today

We’d decided to plan today over breakfast taking weather into account considering the rain of yesterday. Stuart had been a bit daunted by the city centre driving yesterday so we decided to come out of Birmingham and go to Stratford instead. We love Stratford anyway and have been there lots of times over the years. I first went on a school trip when I was about 14 and saw The Tempest at the Shakespeare Theatre, stayed for two nights and trekked round all the various Shakespeare did this here type attractions. Ady and I went a couple of times pre-kids on the way to or from North Wales and we went at least six times while we lived in Manchester as a stop off to or from Sussex.

We parked up, walked round a bit, watched the canal boats going through the locks and then walked to the Butterfly Farm. We went there with my parents about 18 months ago and were very impressed then and sure enough it was a good way to spend an hour or so again. Very warm and with butterflies from all around the world you just walk round the indoor garden and they fly (and land) all around you. The kids love it as they are just covered in beautiful butterflies and get to see and touch them which you don’t normally get at such attractions. Really enjoyed that 🙂

Then for some lunch by the river, more marvelling at the house boats and speculating on what it would be like to live on one and have a canalboat holiday and we found a street performer show going on with a fire eater and juggler. Watched that for a bit, wandered round the shops and then came back to watch another performer while eating ice creams. By then we had all had enough and had 150 miles still ahead of us so we parted at the M40 North / South junction and headed for respective homes. Journey home straightforward but I was fed up with the children by then and as they took til 9.30pm to go to sleep and all we had in the house for dinner was garlic bread I am keen to go to bed myself. Will catch up with everyone else tomorrow (when handily, my arrangements have just been cancelled by email!).

Writing this and looking through the pictures of the weekend (which I will flickr tomorrow now) it was actually a really nice couple of days. Retrospectively perhaps Davies wasn’t really up to it, and they were tired getting over colds and having late nights and disrupted mealtimes (I do like to keep to a routine 😉 ) but I did get really irritated by Davies this weekend. He had a variety of odd tic like characteristics at times, normally when away from home, and I’m aware I do not deal with them well (should ignore or support them instead of nagging him about them really) and he was tired and still not feeling 100% but I was frustrated that having travelled down to see us and been really excited about spending time with him he couldn’t make more effort with Lynda. He wasn’t rude but certainly not delighted to see her like I thought he would be 🙁 I did apologise several times and she kept saying that she didn’t know quite what my expectations of the children were but she thought they had behaved impecably so maybe I was being unreasonable. Or maybe she was being polite!

The good news is that not only was Scarlett nappy (and accident) free all day every day including the long car journeys, she also decided on Friday night that she didn’t want a nappy at night either and has not had one on since. So that’s that, dry at night too 🙂 And although it was possibly not actually that sensible we also did not have a pushchair this weekend. So there you are – no nappies, no pushchairs, they have not had juice out of kiddy cups this weekend either, they have shared our bottled water or had drinks when we ate so not only do I not have any babies anymore (hurrah – I now have children instead, far more preferable IMO) I also don’t actually need a bloody great big bag with me to house all the various baby type paraphenalia (double hurrah!) so will be streamlining by bag tomorrow and creating a bare minimum capsule type kit to carry round instead – first time in five years I have not needed the equivalent of a suitcase, bliss 🙂

Not sure I can cope with an hour on the edge like that every week though – and the incidental music really messed with my head. Good though 🙂 A worthy replacement for Desperate Housewives to a Wednesday night, and a weekly televisual treat to match Dr Who if it lives up to that first hour every week.

I had a bad morning really, we were supposed to be going swimming with Julie in an outdoor pool and although the weather has been gorgeous here all week I just didn’t think taking two snotty children to an outside pool was a good idea. I also had a thumping headache and a sore throat and simply couldn’t face dealing with a place swarming with children screaming and shouting either. I think Julie was a bit pissed off with me, but I’ve spoken to her again this afternoon and she was fine, so that was a relief.

Davies spent the morning watching Discovery Kids which we have not really watched before – very good channel although he was scaring himself silly watching all these poltergeist and other spooky shows, sat on the edge of the sofa, chewing his sleeve but refusing to turn it over – bless 😉

They’ve also played with geomags for ages today, Davies used them for the first time to make something recognisable and was creating some sort of bugs and mini beasts – should have got a photo really but Tarly destroyed them before I had a chance. He also recreated a motorbike stunt he had seen on TV with some toy cars lined up, books for ramps and a lego bike and had lots of cuddles.

After lunch they were starting to get cabin fever so we all got dressed (some of us were not 😉 ) and went over to my Dad’s. Had a very relaxing couple of hours with him while Frazer played with the children 🙂 talking about all sorts of things, including, coincidentally places we’d like to see before we die – something I had been pondering on myself.

Might be going a bit quiet for a few days as we are chez Portico for the day tomorrow and then packing for being away tomorrow evening. Will be taking the laptop and I believe the hotel has internet access but I don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity to use it…