One word? When seven would do…

Feeling very in the swing of all that is good and fine about Home Education this week, which is probably just as well given the small part of me that is ‘just checking’ it’s all still working well for us in reaction to other friends choosing different lives again. It’s been funny to feel myself and see in others the shock that one of our number has decided that for their family school is the right option. Given that it is actually what most of the rest of the country are doing it really isn’t so extreme and it made me realise just how immersed we are in the Home Ed way of thinking, lifestyle and friendship circles. Oddly the fact that many of our friends are home educators has escaped our notice a bit and hardly seems that much of a big thing about any of them, yet I know that in the social circles where I am the only Home Educator it is generally the biggest defining feature about me ‘you know, Nic, the one who Home Educates’. Somewhere in that paragraph there was a point – you might want to go back and see if you can spot it 😉 I know sort of what it was but I think I made a poor job of illustrating it – anyway…

So we’ve had a good old social week really; the Raines came to stay, we had Ali & Freya over to add to that mix, we had some quiet time yesterday with a spot of nicely demonstrated literacy and art to keep my faith in autonomy and today we’ve done the full on Home Ed group outing thing. Yesterday afternoon Davies played on the pc for a while dabbling with Nick Jr and for once requiring no help at all. I peeked in a couple of times to see him confidently typing his name when required, navigating around the site with ease and clearly ‘reading’ stuff even though it is likely more from memory than actually spelling out the words (which lets face it once we’ve got past spelling out words is how we all read anyway) and he still insists he can’t read at all I am confident there is sure progress happening on that score so will keep the pressure off. While he was doing that Scarlett and I snuggled up and read through the pile of Dr Seuss books again. She was finishing some of the sentences for me even on the books we’d only read once before so coupled with the pictures and the rhyming rhytm of the text she was happily anticipating what words would come next. I was quite surprised at her vocab. on some of the words actually, particularly in Wocket in my pocket where I would not have thought she’d know words like ‘basket’ ‘closet’ and ‘cellar’. We also did some counting of various things where there were several in the picture and she is fairly reliable up to the mid teens with the odd bit of gentle prompting. Davies joined us for the last couple of books and then they had their tea (sausages – and they licked their plates clean!) before both heading off to bed and being fast asleep by 7.30. 🙂

This morning Tarly woke me at 6am which was not too hideous and Davies joined us downstairs around 7am. We had morning cuddles on the sofa then I did them some breakfast and they watched TV while I snoozed 🙂 Scarlett then went on the pc fora while playing on the Nick jr site – not as confident as Davies but more than able to click around it and she also mastered click and drag today too. Davies and I watched Discovery Kids and caught most of some sort of science experiment type show with lots of craft ideas, then he had a play with the red button stuff on cbeebies. They then both started watching schools programmes while I went and put away 3 baskets of clean washing.

We headed over to the soft play near Julie where she had organised an Activeo event and Lucy had come along too. I really don’t go to many Activeo things although I have decided this year I will make more of an effort but I am always chuffed at how friendly the other members are and how included I instantly feel. There are a fair few alternative folk there but also a great mix of really interesting people – real ‘thinkers’ who are up for sitting and having stimulating conversations about life, the universe and education and of course soft play where the children are off safely having a ball (not to mention ticking socialisation and physical education 😉 ) is the perfect venue for such activities. So I had a good old catch up with a few faces from there and arranged to attend a couple of events over the next few weeks. I also spent some time talking to a woman from Worthing who came along once to WAG just as we were finishing up and I had clicked with quite well then. She has a 4 year old daughter and we have agreed to get together soon and also maybe think about holding some events jointly over this way to help bring Activeo further towards us. Also had a quick chat with Julie, which I am always conscious of not spending the whole time doing and sorted out arrangements for our basket weaving course at the weekend.

Davies and Scarlett had a really great time there today, Davies met some boy and they played really well together for over an hour. I remember doing that myself as a child – just teaming up with a random child and having a whale of a time playing with them without ever actually learning their name (might have done the more grown up version of that once or twice in my teens too come to think of it 😉 ) – anyway I am always very chuffed to see that it is certainly not a skill you have to attend school to get, infact maybe in some ways offering children the constant opportunity to make friends over longer periods of time negates the need to ‘get in there’ like the children do at places like soft play. Whatever, it was nice to see him off playing anyway! Scarlett spent lots of time playing with Jack – which was unusual – normally they pair up as the girls – Scarlett and Maisie and the boys – Davies and Jack or they stick to their siblings. Scarlett was very cute with Jack actually she was very solicitously helping him climb up and down and I could see she was doing a fair degree of cheerleading and supporting him too – I was very proud 🙂

We left there having had lunch (Davies decided he didn’t want his chips so Jack had them and Davies shared my panini – chicken and bacon. Ok not the most nutritious food ever but still a big leap forward for him to try it in the first place let alone decide he liked it and eat so much of it!). In the car on the way over Davies had asked to listen to War of the Worlds having found the cd case which has a little booklet in it with all the words and several illustrations. They sat and listened to it all the way there and all the way home and the asked for it to be brought in the house where they listened to the end. For once they listened to it very intently although I could hear them chatting about it too, Davies showing Scarlett the pictures in the book as they got to that bit in the story and Scarlett asking him questions about the martians and the people. They both seem to have a very good understanding of the story and are able to pick out various bits in the music and say what that is representing in the story. We also watched some road works going on on the way over there and as the journey took double the normal time we were able to witness men digging up old road surfaces, men tipping stones out and raking them out and then the steam roller flattening them so we talked about that too. Better to enjoy the educational value than get cross about the delays I guess :-).

When that finished we had some retro TV and watched the Bobinogs which we’ve not seen for ages. It was all about wobbly teeth and teeth generally so having eaten their dinner they are now both sporting a pair of pants over the bottom half of their faces as face masks and are examining each others and my teeth using cutlery as dental instruments. They have opened a box of stickers to give when patients have been good and Scarlett has been told not to have a dummy any more in the interests of her teeth, I have been told one of my teeth is jutting forward a bit but I have been praised for keeping them clean 🙂 I’ve been assured that none will fall out though because I am a grown up and only children lose their baby teeth!

Right, bath and bed for little people and my parents are due to arrive fairly soon. I have persuaded them we should have fish and chips for dinner which should go very well with the bottle of champagne they brought over at New Year and we never drank so is sitting nicely chilled ready for us. And of course you know who’s coming home tomorrow 🙂 🙂

For these Tesco value chocolates last week. The brandy has been kicking around since Christmas but I couldn’t believe it when I saw a box of chocolates in the value range.

I think I’ve only ever bought boxes of chocolates as presents but as strapped as I am I could still never buy someone these as a gift with VALUE splashed all over them. Well except I did buy them for Ady for their pure comedy value and at 99p even we can afford gags that are that cheap! 😉

Barbara did spoil my mirth somewhat by suggesting that actually really grand people sometimes buy boxes of chocolates to put out for guests on plates with doilies on them. Of course really grand people probably don’t shop in Tescos anyway let alone peruse the selection of products with their distinctive No Frills packaging.

Seem to be doing that a lot these days…

Monday

We had a fairly low key morning. Ady left for the week before 6am and as I had been up IMing the night before and not gone to bed before midnight I got up to see him off and then snuck back to bed for a couple of hours knowing that it would be a late night again. We set about getting the house ready for visitors, moving stuff about to make room in Tarly’s bedroom and both of them had various ‘precious’ things they decided they would rather not have out to be played with so we tidied them away. The children watched a couple of films – not sure which ones and I know they did some drawing too.

Barbara, Beth, Ben and Rachael arrived, as expected at about 1.30pm. The children fell on Ben with delight and he was soon spirited away to play, Beth joined in too and Rachael set about amazing us with her sudden leaps in speaking and copying while emptying the cats biscuits into their litter tray (cutting out the middle cat perhaps? 😉 ). Barbara and I started the first of many conversations which we never quite seemed to finish but enjoyed trying to anyway.

Ali and Freya joined us mid afternoon and although Freya was tired having come to us on route home after a weekend away she seemed to mix in with the others pretty well while Ali joined in with as much conversation as three women who are also ‘looking after’ 6 children who seemed to constantly need drinks, food, assistance with bodily functions or mediation skills as their group dynamics veered between pugnacious and comity can manage. We served them tea of tinned goods and some of the never ending birthday cake Barbara had brought with her and then I ran Ali and Freya to the station.

We debated the classic five children in a bath photo opportunity but decided it has been done enough times already to not warrant the inevitable soaked bathroom floor it would result in so did them in shifts with Beth and Tarly sharing and having their hair washed by me, Rachael having a quick dunk and then Ben and Davies having their’s last. Rachael and Scarlett went to sleep fairly quickly, Beth followed and by the time we sat down for our dinner at about 9pm there was only Davies and Ben still awake. Having deduced that it was the fact that they were both awake which was keeping them both awake we brought Davies down to sit with us – where he proceeded to eat a large share of my dinner (!) – which meant Ben fell asleep and we were able to deposit Davies to a peaceful bedroom to fall asleep himself quickly afterwards.

Which probably accounts for a late night really – we started late 😉 Two empty wine bottles and lots more chatting later we headed to bed around 3am…

Tuesday

An earlier start than would have been idea considering 😉 The children woke around 6am, but having imposed conditions on them I think Barbara and I both managed to get back to bed for a couple of hours sleep. I got up at 8ish when Ady rang to say good morning and by the time I made it downstairs Barbara had fed all the children who then scattered off to play again. Scarlett and Beth played really nicely with the Dora house and the Polly Pockets while Davies and Ben played loudlywith pretty much every toy in the house ;-). They were all fairly tired and as Barbara had brought me a pile of books I’d bought from ReadItAgain and had delivered with hers I ended up sat on the sofa with four children sitting on top of me while reading Dr Seuss to them. Rachael had gone for a much needed nap and Barbara was doing the same on the sofa ;-). My Dad arrived to take my car off for a new type so Barbara took over the storytelling while I dashed round the shop for supplied and set about making lunch for everyone including Dad who returned and stayed for a while, mostly chatting to Beth.

Dad left and we decided that whilst they probably didn’t exactly need wearing out due to a sleep deficit already some fresh air wouldn’t be a bad idea having had them house bound for 24 hours, so we loaded them into our cars and went to a local-ish park. We must have been there a good hour and although they were fractious towards the end they mainly enjoyed having the playground to themselves and making up and acting out various games.

We came home and allowed half an hour of Nick Jr and big bowls of fruit before sending them off to play again before tea. Scarlett was fairly capricious not really sticking with any one playmate, flitting from playing role play dollies games with Beth (which were actually very nice to watch), to running around yelling with the boys and then occassionally being very caring and nice to Rachael, whereas Davies consistantly stuck next to Ben.

In the interests of winding them down for an early night we let them eat tea infront of Dora and The Backyardigans before packing them off to various beds and bedrooms in cunningly worked out shifts. And it worked 🙂 Scarlett did end up coming back and falling asleep on my lap rather than in my bed but as I’d already got dinner prepared while cooking the kids’ tea and Barbara was having a bath that was fine. I deposited Tarly in bed just as Ros arrived at 8 and then ducked in for a quick bath myself, so by 8,30pm we had all kids asleep, wine opened, dinner served and choir practise commenced 🙂 – with affectionate mentions to those who would have been worthy and welcome additions to the evening.

We had a lovely evening actually with chatty aplenty before Ros headed off shortly before 1am and Barbara and I congratulated ourselves on our ‘early night’ of 2am having finished the end of the wine!

Wednesday

Nicely self sufficient children got up and entertaine themselves again until I rose around 8ish and sorted breakfast out for them – I don’t think they’d been that far ahead of me actually and then we had a fairly low key morning with Barbara packing everything up and heading off around 11. It’s been a lovely visit – the children have really, really enjoyed having them, I always enjoy talking to Barbara who comes at things with often such a different perspective to me and always leaves me thinking about things slightly differently, particularly in terms of educational approach and so on. It’s also nice to have spent more time learning about each other pre-dating a first meeting and chatting about childhood, families and stuff, cementing friendship type chats. Lovely.

I now have fairly subdued children, but in a good, tired but happy sort of way. I’ve sorted out all the bedrooms and put everything back where it belongs, tidied up the playroom, made a few phonecalls, spoken to Ady (obviously 😉 ), got some washing dealt with and caught up online. The children have played with magic maize, Davies has drawn a picture for Ady, they’ve watched lots of Nick jr and now Tarly is using a magic maize damp sponge bowl as a swimming pool for her Polly Pockets and Davies is playing with some train track. While tidying up the playroom I came across some Letterland flash cards and when Davies appeared in the room we sat together and looked at them. I wouldn’t say he amazed me because I knew he did know all the letters and their sounds but I was surprised that he sat and demonstrated it so happily as he is normally very reluctant to do so. He also have me at least one example of a word beginning with each letter. 🙂 A quondam non-reader maybe we are slowly making tracks…

So I’m pretty much half way through Ady’s absense and despite company have missed him lots – and not just for his hoovering ;-). My plan tonight is early tea and bed for the children, who I don’t imagine will have any objections to that. Then a long, very bubbly bath for me, some indulgent food and a toss up between an early night myself or watching the first in the new series of Desperate Housewives (which actually even if I stay up and watch and then go straight to bed will be an early night by recent standards!).

Tomorrow we’re off to soft play for an Activeo event and my parents are coming over for dinner and then on Friday Ady will be home. Can’t wait!

Happy Birthday Alison (Big) – hope you have a great day 🙂

Just took a little longer than I expected 😉

So a two day round-up then which will no doubt leave out loads of what I had planned to say but never mind.

Yesterday we went into town for various things – Scarlett needed new shoes and I wanted to get something in the sales before it was only hooker boots left 😉 Managed to get some lovely peach suede ones with embroidered flowers on – can’t find an online link so you’ll have to be eagle eyed in future flickr snaps of her to spot them. I think they are nice and appropriate though, and they’ll go with her clothes which several of the other pairs didn’t. There was a lovely pair of bright purple DM style ones which we also liked but they were just too clumpy to look right with skirts, which she wears rather a lot of of, so these seemed the better choice. There were also plenty of black shoes, which I refuse to buy either child on principle as they are ‘school shoes’ so until they beg for black shoes themselves I shan’t be buying them, and several pairs of patent shoes which I just personally dislike and have done since my own childhood – aside from anything else little terrors like Tarly are never going to retain the patent-ness of them so they’ll end up looking scuffed and scruffy far quicker than even peach suede will do.

Davies had a book token which he’s had since his birthday and we kept forgetting to take out with us so we went between the 3 bookshops in town with me trying to persuade him to actually spend it on a book and him adamant he wanted a Wallace and Gromit Activity book with press out characters. I did struggle with it but let him have what he wanted in the end 😉 and I guess we’re not short of books round here, and he has played with it endlessly ever since… grumble, grumble, give in with bad grace, mutter, grumble… Also got some laminator pouches as we ran out ages ago and have a pile of things that Davies is desperate to laminate.

We parked out of town (frugal and good exercise) and walked in along the seafront. The tide was really, really high when we arrived so we went down to the sea to look for washed up ‘treasure’ although there was little there aside from fish heads (minus the eyes and bodies – good for explaining food chain and precisely why the seagulls hover round the sea) and seaweed. There was also seaweed further up on the actual promenade so there had been even higher tides earlier this week.

I love living near the sea, I really missed it when we lived in Manchester and hadn’t really realised what a backdrop to my childhood it provided. I have always lived within sniffing distance of the famous summer stench of the seaweed (one of the less pleasant aspects of it I admit!) and it is literally at the end of our road here (you could walk it in 10 minutes or so at grown up pace, drive it in about 3 minutes). Pre children we often used to go down to the beach if the weather was extreme as it is very exciting to be so close to the sea when it’s tossing about and blowing a gale. I used to drive along the coast to work for a couple of years and watch the seasons and the time of day tell reflected over the ocean – funny how you can somehow tell if it’s spring or autumn just by looking at the sea. The children are endlessly fascinated by it whether it is what colour it is today, if it is low or high tide, what you can see out at sea (boats, swimmers etc) and of course combing the beach for exciting stuff. I think proximity to the coast would factor highly on location for moving if we do – doesn’t really matter which strip of coast and in many ways I’d rather avoid the resort type stretches really but it’s scenery I’d be keen not to lose again.

We came home via my parents on a bit of a whim really and ended up staying ages. I nipped up to the supermarket to get some cakes and my Mum happened to be driving past their house (she was out shopping) and let me out of their road then followed me to the supermarket to see what I was doing, so she came round shopping with me and then came home instead of carrying on shopping. I have to commend her actually on trying really hard with the children – we’ve been there again today and after her fairly bad behaviour with them over Christmas and a bit of a drunken lecture I gave my parents the night before my birthday about missing out on their grandchildren she made real efforts with both of them. She spent time playing with Scarlett and they really seem to have patched things up. If I was being critical I could say she went slightly OTT with the all singing, all dancing, sweetie providing Granny act, but I’ll assume that was a charm offensive to get them back on side before returning to some sort of normal Granny behaviour.

Anyway we got home from there yesterday and I’ve already described the evening I had planned and the evening I actually had so we’ll not go over that again.

Today was a bit of a shadowy start really. Scarlett woke about 4am and came into our bed but she refused to go back to sleep so when she got no entertainment value out of either Ady or I she went and woke Davies up instead to play with her. This was about 5.30am. 🙁 Superhero Ady (oh, how I’ll miss him next week) got up with them and gave them milk then came back to bed and we left them to it. I got up around 9am and they had gotten themselves bread and youghurts (actually we knew about the yoghurts as Tarly had brought them up to our bedroom to check she was allowed them!) and were happily watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and commenting to each other that the Daddy in that was also Bert from Mary Poppins! 🙂

Sat and had some cuddles with them both before Ady got back up again and then we headed over to Mum and Dad’s for lunch. Dad and Ady went out to get some logs so I won’t freeze next week and my Granny came up aswell. Frazer was there but when we left at 4pm he had still not surfaced after a heavy night’s partying – oh to have such freedoms! 😉

Since home Ady had packed up everything he needs for what has turned out to be a full working week away – he leaves tomorrow morning and won’t be back until Friday – I had previously thought he was going tonight and would be back on Wednesday 🙁 I have got a roast dinner cooking (which is smelling fairly ready actually, must get off the computer and go and sort it out) and I’m about to have that long overdue bubble bath and a glass of wine. Tomorrow we have Raine Drops arriving much to the utter delight and excitement of D & S, who will no doubt be fighting over young Ben as soon as he arrives, although I am hoping that Tarly and Beth might just find something in common to bond over and leave the boys to do their thing! Or maybe Rachael is toddler-y enough for Tarly to be persuaded she is not actually a ‘baby’ any more and play with her instead. Whatever I fully anticipate late nights chatting with Barbara and much noise and chaos from 5 children in the house (more if Ros and Ali come too!), so that will keep me occcupied while I pine for Paul 🙂

I was supposed to have had a bath about 4 hours ago, then I was supposed to have enjoyed my dinner, then I was supposed to have sat and blogged – I even had it semi planned out in my head.

But oh what an encumbrance the whole computer thing has become of late. The network wireless connection has been wobbly for ages and today I attempted a quick tweak which went ever so badly wrong. So my bath is sat there gone cold, my dinner was wolfed down, I never did drink more than the first glass of wine I poured and I have no energy or inclination to blog really despite having stuff to say.

It’s my turn to get up with the children in the morning so I plan to have a speedy splash in that tepid bath, go to bed having pretty much fixed the pc problems and when I’m up at the crack of dawn in the morning I will blog about today properly. Was a pretty good one though 🙂

Blah day today really, the weather was grey, my mood was grey. All grey.

The children did a fair amount of playing, as usual, first thing which predictably included watching disc 2 of C&CF and doing more Oompa Lumpa dancing. Tried to explain to Davies about there actually only being one actor playing Oompa Lumpas in this modern version, as opposed to lots of actors playing them in the original. He sort of grasped it but the whole camera trickery / computer generatedness of it was a bit beyond him. Tried to explain further using examples of Monsters Inc and Toy Story etc as cartoon / computer generated but I fear that may have confused the issue further. Hmmm…

Then we headed over to Chris & Julie’s. We had planned to go out for a walk but I confess to having little enthusiasm for it and I don’t think Julie did either. At the point we would have packed them up after lunch they were all playing nicely together so we left them to it and decided if they needed to run around yelling we’d chuck them in the garden. Predictably within about five minutes of deciding this they did – so we wellied and coated them up and chucked ’em out there. We stood in the kitchen drinking tea and watching them through the window which to my mind was far preferable to actually having to be out there – it was bloody freezing ;-). And I’ve come down with a sniffly, sore throated malady too. 🙁

Tarly was being a bit of a horror, she has a tendancy to shove Jack around a bit anyway. She gets frustrated and loses her temper – she does know better though and I always leap on her for it . Then after they’d all come in of their own accord (it really was freezing!) she walloped their dog! She got really leapt on for that and I was really surprised at her. She adores animals, is always stroking and cuddling our cats and has always been lovely to Wolfie (their dog) before. She was wobbly about him when we first got there and said he ‘wanted to eat her’ which I put down to reading her Little Red Riding Hood yesterday but it was still not excusable. 🙁 So that was a bit of a blight on the day really.

We left soon afterwards and the children sat eating fruit while watching the film again and I got the dinner going (beef curry). Ady arrived home just as I reached the end of my good parenting skills for the week and they are now both sound asleep. It’s been a tough one really being home all week with them being ill at the beginning of it and me going down with this (which explains the general headaches most evenings I hope) so hurrah for Friday really! 🙂

Next week, that’s going to be a better one!

I’ve gone to great endeavors to use the word of the day. I have made concentrated and cogitated and contemplated efforts to weave it into the daily musings that are a blog post from myself.

But sometimes a word comes up which simply does not apply to me at all. It is not relevant, pertinent, applicable or suitable. Today the word is sesquipedalian and I just don’t know what to do with it…

I’d meant to come back here yesterday to boast that I had indeed done some thank you cards with the children so we could tick off reading and writing too but wine, a bubble bath, my turn to cook dinner and the last double bill episodes of series one of Lost all contrived to keep me away.

Ady left at 5.30am today for a day trip to the place (in Leicestershire somewhere) he is away all week at next week, I’d asked him to wake me to say goodbye which he did and I had only just fallen back to sleep at about 6am when Tarly woke. She stood at the bottom of the stairs yelling for Ady and shrieked at me everytime I appeared or called to her. After about 10 minutes during which time she stamped her feet, yelled in rage, tried being devastated, gave up and was merely a bit cross and then went silent for a good five minutes before saying in a very sweet and girly voice ‘Mummy? Please could you come downstairs and give me my milk please?’ Noisy but effective 😉 Of course this all woke Davies too so I sorted them out for milk and breakfast and then told them they could watch whatever they wanted on TV if they were quiet and let me doze on the sofa (I am completely ineffective at anything at all before 8am, regardless of what time I went to bed, and of course last night it was later than ususal anyway.). So we did that 🙂

Then Tarly did some painting and drawing while Davies played on the Nick Jr site, the Cbeebies site and Bear & Penguins Maths Adventure in the playroom. Then Tarly ended up snuggled up on my lap so I grabbed some books from her shelves and we read a book full of fairy tales – Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the 3 bears which she really enjoyed.

My Dad then appeared having been in the area and was followed about a minute later by Ady arriving home for the day. We took the opportunity of him being here to ring yet another of the scary finance related people and for once I came away feeling really quite hopeful that all is not as scary as we had feared and at the very least we have bought ourselves some serious consideration time in which to decide what we *really* want to do with our lives. Feeling quite excited although I’m not yet sure what about really! Anyway, facing the whole financial stuff in a renascent way again, which is good – this week has not been a good one for all things cash wise really. Despite only having left the house once and getting my whole week’s shopping so cheap.

The children then played some highly imaginative game involving rearranging their cube table and chairs into a bus and decorating it with wikkisticks. They seemed to have a very clear idea of what their aim was and were working together towards it so we left them to it and watched a guess the year show on one of the music channels.

Then the children had a bath and I read the rest of the bookpeople version of LW&W which Davies has really enjoyed. He was sitting and retelling it to Ady afterwards and aside from a little mix up between the words Aslan and Narnia (and when he explained that he’d thought it was Asland it sort of made sense really!) he seemed to have got the jist of it. Might well see it on dvd when it comes out but I don’t think it would hold him enough at the cinema.

While Ady and Davies were chatting about that I persuaded Tarly to let me brush her hair so she is looking princessy rather than hobo again – well until tomorrow anyway 😉 I’ve sort of given up battling with her and about once a week she will sit and let me do it and will tolerate it being plaited or otherwise tied up in the meantime so I can live with her not being the immaculate little doll I had cherished hopes of! While we were doing it there was a love songs show on the music channel which seemed to mainly consist of couples walking hand in hand along beaches (hadn’t realised quite how overdone that scene is in love song music videos til now!) and she was asking me how come the man was walking along the beach and shouldn’t he be at work!! It struck me that in most of the homes she spends any amount of time in the Daddy does indeed go out to work and the Mummy is at home doing HE with the children – which is not to say that the Mummy’s don’t work infact several of our friends work from home. Don’t know why it made me feel a little uncomfortable that she so vehemently insisted that it is *always* the man who goes ‘out’ to work but I do think I need to read her some stories to redress the princess / mummy / defenceless maiden balance somewhat. Not that I’d be in any way disappointed if she never did anything other than married well and went out to lunch, but it would be nice for her to know she has not failed if she simply has to earn her own shopping money 😉

Early night for both of them as we are indeed venturing out of the house again tomorrow, meeting up with Julie and weather permitting we’re off for a wintery walk. Infact I was looking at an excellent page on the bbc website about outdoor ideas for activities so I might have another look at that in the morning and see if we can do something slightly more obviously educational while we’re at it.

Been a rather good morning thus far. I’m on my second load of washing – after which there is only one more load before I get to the 4 sets of bedlinen which have been building up since the weather changed to make outdoor drying impossible. I hate trying to get duvet covers and sheets dry draped over radiators, but as we are on our very last clean set on the bed now I know it cannot be avoided until Spring – and of course my previous answer of buying another set (which accounts for us having the five sets!) is no longer a possibility! 😉 Anyway, I digress…

Watched The Backyardigans snuggled up with the children on the sofa first thing then they started some game involving baby dolls and a soft toy frog, some tissues and some felt tips where they were decorating pillows and sheets for their toys. I decided that it was not the best use of tissues when the floor started to resemble some sort of blizzard scene so they tidied that up and got the geomags out instead. I went and put away a load of clean washing which had been doing a fair approximation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the corner of our bedroom having grown to about two and a half times the height of the basket it was resting in.

Then we headed off to Sainsburys for a few bits and pieces. The children faithfully promised to behave under threat of being sat in the trolley and they stuck to their promise so well I ended up doing a full week’s shop. I was super extra frugal and managed to bring the total in at just over £50 – then the cashier asked if I was saving my rewards so I told him to take them off, hoping for maybe a fiver off. (In the style of Viz) Imagine my surprise when it brought the total down to just £22 – there were £27.50 worth of rewards on there! 🙂 🙂 Ady buys all his work diesel from BP where they do double reward points, and of course as we’ve been using his work car all the time he’s been putting more diesel in – so hurrah for that! 🙂

Sainsburys are doing more and more items in their ‘basic’ range which has IMO rather clever packaging and marketing. I think Sainsburys are doing some very clever things all round ATM generally but the basics range is very well done. Super cheap and with slogans explaining precisely what the difference is that makes the range so much cheaper. So for example I bought the crumpets from that range (kids adore crumpets for lunch and erm, actually so do I!) and they are about half the normal price but as it says on the packaging they are all funny shapes and sizes – misshapes, which let’s face it, unless you are planning to lightly toast them and serve them with butter curls and the finest loose leaf tea from bone china cups is hardly likely to bother you! Anyway, as I said, I’m loving Sainsburys today! 🙂

The children were so well behaved and I was on such a frugal high we loaded the shopping into the car and then went for a wander round the aquarium shop next door to Sainsburys, which as a free alternative is not too much of a far cry from a Sea Life Centre really. 😉 Spent ages oohing and ahhing at the pretty tropical fish, the coral and the seahorses and so on. Tarly decided what fish she wants for her fourth birthday (which is when Davies got his two – Fred and Albert) and that she wants two, both called Scarlett. We finished up looking at the clownfish, which thanks to Finding Nemo they both knew the name of.

Predictably we got home for lunch and they put Nemo on to watch (we’re now watching it for the second time!). Thanks to the Oompa Lumpa dancing on the second C&TCF dvd disc Davies has started to explore all the addtional features on all his favourite discs. Which gives Ady heart failure as he is convinced he will break the dvd player but I am happy to see as I can convince myself it involves some sort of reading skills. 😉 And erm, fine motor skills with the remote control too! We had our crumpets, I rang Ady to share with him the joy of the weeks food shopping for £22 story, he rang me back to say he’d got his payrise letter – not going to make huge difference but as someone recently said ‘every little helps’! And the children are now eating up every bit of fruit in the house, predictable as I didn’t buy any more…

Davies, who can never seem to just sit and watch a film and always needs something else to be doing at the same time has just brought in our marble run boxes. We’ve had a plastic one for years which gets occassional use before being forgotten about for months again. During the last playroom tidy up I shoved a wooden block marble run in with it so that has been cause for delight and he has spent about an hour now building ever more dramatic runs, testing them and then modifying them. Very interesting to watch (if tricky – I am sitting on my hands to not go over and just do it myself when I can see something is not going to work!!) and he’s coming out with some fantastic words to describe it aswell as talking me through what he’s doing. He’s also brought out his Matchbox Haunted House toy which was probably the only present he actually asked for at Christmas and despite being proudly brought out to show guests has not really been ‘played with’ as such. They are both playing with a tape measure and keep bringing it to me at certain lengths to ask what it says and then telling me that’s how tall / wide something is.

I had planned to do some very overdue Thank You notes for Christmas presents from the children with them this afternoon but I am loathe to disturb them when they are playing and frankly nearly 3 weeks after the event is so late another day or two is unlikely to make much odds!

Today is meant to be return to Tumble Tots day but after lots of thinking about it and a chat with the children this morning we’ve decided to stop going. I’ve chatted to Tarly about going in without me and she is adamant she doesn’t want to move up classes where she goes in without me. I have to say that although I would be interested to see how she did get on without me the skills that it would be growing are ones I don’t place much value on anyway – certainly not in a 3 year old. I’ve known that Davies was not enjoying it as much as he used to ever since he moved up classes in September and it has become very very schooly since he hit five – again something I am by no means desperate for him to be exposed to.

I also cannot deny that there is a cost issue – TT has to have annual membership at about £20 a child and it is £4.50 each per session – for that money I could take them to soft play centres once or even twice a week. Once they had both said they didn’t want to go any more I did tell them that and they were thrilled. As Davies said at soft play he gets to do whatever he wants on the equipment and can play at pretending games too – at TT they have to do everything exactly as they are told. I’ve also decided that if Davies should be focusing on anything it should probably be his dramatic inclinations so we’re going to start going to the Activeo drama sessions which are once a month (and frugally cost just a quid per child!) and if he enjoys them then I might start taking him to the drama sessions in the town later in the year. I will also look into the Badgers for him again and look into the timetable at the local swimming pool with a view to taking them there once a week. So in all feeling quite positive about stuff really.

While I’ve been doing this post Scarlett has disappeared off to her bedroom where she is allegedly ‘cleaning’ her dressing table and Davies has got out his magicians set from Christmas and a magic set he got for his birthday before last and is wearing his top hat and pulling rabbits out of places – yep, definitely think drama is the way to go for that child 😉 .

Plenty of food for thought there. Will come back to it shortly.

So yesterday we had lots of playdough and drawing and painting, they watched Peter Pan and role played at being Wallace & Gromit, Peter Pan & Tinkerbell (which included dressing up) and played with the megabloks, dolls and k’nex. So plenty of boxes ticked there 🙂

I did indeed manage to clear off the whole of the bookshelf which resulted in the two lists posted below and a far more acceptable view of the bookcase which I can see from my normal sofa in the lounge. I also set the printer up to run from the laptop so that’s useful – still can’t get the network connection to behave mind you which is very annoying when trying to IM with someone!

The children were back to normal healthwise really and Davies returned to his usual volume of Very High. Those of you who have spent any time with him will no doubt be aware of what I mean, he is ineffably loud… normally I can either zone him out or encourage him to play out of earshot but I was grateful to the children for keeping out of the way while I managed all the phonecalls this morning so I let them carry on and so consequently had a splitting headache by the time Ady arrived home. 🙁

Managed to update him on the phonecalls, sort the kids tea out which they were esuirent for, cut Davies’ hair and trim a fringe back into Tarly’s so she at least looks less wild from the front, bath them and still get out of the house in time for the first meeting of the new book group at the local library.

Now I had this vague plan of dressing the part – I was going to wear my glasses, hair up, long swirly skirt, little cardi – that sort of thing 😉 But didn’t manage it so the best I could pull off was a clean top (old one had soup splashes and lots of Davies’ hair all over it) and some lip gloss before leaving.

I think there were 13 of us in total. I was by far the youngest, probably by a decade at least. There was a retired bloke who writes poetry and spoke about this at length, at every given opportunity. I need to ensure I never get sat next to him as the poor unfortunates on either side of him were leant towards with asides and comments every time someone spoke. He kept butting in and the first few times everyone listened but eventually we gave up and just kept talking. There were a group of 3 women who came together – career women types, two of whom had teenage children. Two retired women, one very glam and loud and one very plain and quiet, a married couple in their 40s, quite hippyish but very articulate and a couple of other women.

I actually felt very out of my depth really – I tend to read frothy, trashy books rather than anything too challenging. I remember reading that 100 reads that spawned all the reading blogs and being horrified that despite reading a lot I am not very well read. Ady and I were talking about the difference between being intelligent and being educated the other day and this was a perfect example of the difference for me.

To be honest I went along mainly because I happened to see it advertised when I called into the library last week and the book being discussed tonight was My Sister’s Keeper which several of us read during the summer and I had spent a fair bit of time thinking about and chatting to others about afterwards. I have also since read several more of her books and although I could possibly be critical of whether or not they are beatifully written I have enjoyed the challenge to my ideas that each of them has offered. I also went along because I was very curious about what actually does happen at a book group!

Now, it’s not often I put myself in situations where I feel uncomfortable and I don’t actually remember the last time I felt shy or decided that shutting up and listening would be preferable to talking and possibly embarassing myself but as I did sit there feeling like a little kid in a room of grown ups (not entirely unpleasant being 32 now and all!) and was very aware that these were mostly people who devour books like sweets and were tossing words about like ‘Classics’ ‘Dickensian’ ‘genre’ and ‘beautifully crafted’ I felt I had little to add to the conversation. I did speak confidently when it was my turn to discuss the JC book – I had most of them nodding along with what I was saying, I made at least one of them concede a point about the purpose of the book and reading in general and two of the people who spoke after me said ‘well I agree with Nicola’ (yes, it was definitely a place to be Nicola, not Nic! Infact I should probably have been someone far more exotic like Philomena actually), so all was not lost!

I didn’t contribute to the discussion about recommending books for the next few groups, mainly because all of the books I have read and enjoyed have either been made into motion pictures or have brightly coloured covers and are about women who spend too much, have holiday romances, are single but get the guy in the end or involve them having a baby, adjusting to that new state with comic effect and then managing to run a successful business, meet new friends who support and love them and having a fantastic marriage too. Hardly the right sort of fodder to be pulled apart for deeper meaning and character analysis by the people in that room!

The woman who runs all the book groups for the district came along and chatted about how it would all work, gave us a goody bag with a book, a book readers magazine and a voucher for free dvd borrowing from the library and then headed off. She mentioned just how many books are published each year and of course sitting in a library crammed with them brought that home nicely.

So, it will be a couple of hours during an evening once a month. My plan is to give it 3 books – so 3 months. Unless I have a 2 out of 3 hit rate of having gotten something out of the reading of the books I will give up and decide that actually I’m far better off sticking to what I know. I don’t want it to feel like homework – one of the chief reasons that we’re HEing is that I want the children to develop a love and passion for learning things rather than viewing them as work so if it starts to become a chore for me then I will leave it. But weird mix of people, book snobbery and indeed my own dubiety aside I think it might just be something I end up loving.

Happy Birthday Beth 🙂

Look forward to seeing you next week!

Love, Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlettxxx

The Baby Trail – Sinead Moriarty
King of the Castle – Martin Plimmer
Only in America – Dominic Holland
Perfect Day -Imogen Parker
Hubble Bubble – Christina Jones
Fallen Women – Sue Welfare
With or Without You – Carole Matthews
Seven Sunny Days – Chris Manby
Before we were thirty – Katie Agnew
Mr Maybe – Jane Green
Cuban Heels – Emily Barr
A nice girl like me – Abigail Bosanko
Babyface – Fiona Gibson
Funny Valentine – Amy Jenkins
The Wedding Girl – Madeleine Wickham
Dating Big Bird – Laura Zigman
The Reluctant Landlady – Bernadette Strachan
Don’t try this at home – Katie Pearson
It could happen to you – Isla Dewar
Dawn – The new Virginia Andrews

I’ve cleared the bookshelves of all sorts and there are two distinct piles. One is the baby related books that as I now have a 3 and 5 year old and no possibility of any more babies coming along I have no further need for (and it could be argued I didn’t use much anyway! 😉 ) and the other is chick-lit novels.

I’d love to offer them free but I am officially frugal so for a quid a book or 6 for a fiver plus postage if I have to send them to you. (Bear in mind Melrose is soon so if there is a way to get them to you via that then we can sort it out). Not sure if any will be of interest but comment / email if they are:

Potty Training in one week – Gina Ford
Potty Training – end of nappies, start of pants (sponsored by Huggies, can’t find it on amazon but it has £5.99 price tag on it).
The Fat Ladies Club
Help Your Baby to Sleep
Babies! Christopher Green
Baby Wisdom – Deborah Jackson
Wipe – Penny Wilson
A Life’s Work – on becoming a mother – Rachel Cusk
What to expect – the toddler years

Medical update first then – S is fine now, D is certainly better than he was yesterday. They have both eaten, played and been as noisy as normal today, but I’m glad I cancelled our plans as a day at home was much needed all round.

So far they have done some painting, spent ages playing with playdough – we seem to have quite a wealth of playdough moulds and cutters and stuff now as they both had a few related items for Christmas. There is still some of the Christmas stash of ‘real’ playdough too and the combination of stuff to actually make and me saying that as soon as they mush it all together to make muddy brown I will chuck it out has made them a little more creative and imaginative in their play. 🙂

They are now playing some complicated games with megabloks and baby dolls. I’m planning to let them get on with it for another hour or so and then to try and calm things down with some reading aloud before a bath and an early night for them again – they’re both still quite some way from catching up on the weekend’s late nights.

I’ve bitten the bullet so to speak with more financial stuff. Infact with the exception of a phonecall which Ady needs to be sat beside me for I have done as much as I can in that direction. Our loose plan is to buy (ha ha!) ourselves some more time and have some serious chats about what we are going to do long term. Several options and ideas have been tossed around but we need to research them a bit more, maybe chat them through with friends to get some different perspectives and basically take control back for ourselves so that whatever decisions we make are ones we chose to make rather than one’s we felt forced into. Feeling better and more settled about that anyway.

In other news, I can reassure Merry that being 32 doesn’t appear to be much different to 31, from the benefit of my 4 days greater experience than her 😉 I certainly have not managed to pull off being a grown up any more proficiently than I managed at 31 and despite edging ever closer to 40 I still have not turned into the Shake n Vac woman yet, which is what I always assumed would happen at some point in my 30s!

Right, the children have moved onto playing with the Dora house, I’ve managed several loads of washing and drying, washed up the lunch plates and I think I’m going to tackle the bookcase in the hall.

Happy Birthday Merry!

Hope you have a lovely day 🙂 x

I’ve spent the whole of today – since about 5am 🙁 – sitting on a sofa cuddling one or both children, holding a bowl or wiping a bottom. None of which has been a great assistance when I was supposed to be making about 10 really important phone calls today. I’m just about to cancel our arrangements for tomorrow and hope for a decent night’s sleep all round so I can do it in the morning instead.

Suffice to say the only educational value here has been from dvds and some playing from Davies on the pc when he’s felt up to it in the odd half hour interval.

I had a lovely birthday 🙂 Thanks for the various emails / comments / texts etc and if you were one of the lucky recipients of the drunken phonecalls during Friday evening thank you for any birthday greetings offered then too 😉

Right, my attention is being loudly requested again…

Slogging the dead donkey

Furthermore

the recondite diktat is that It’s Margueirta Time

One of those days where you’re not sure where to put the spin really today – I’ve touched depths of despair (well as close as I personally get to it anyway), I’ve had moments of total hope and passion for the future, I’ve spent time with a very dear friend and spent time with my family.

So, lets get the negative out of the way – I chased up some financial stuff by phone and when I finally got the phone call back it was far from the comfortable if slightly unwelcome news I was hoping for – far more like the worst case scenario actually. But I don’t intend to dwell on it, certainly not right now, so I may come back to that at a future point. Suffice to say far more introspection, serious chats and grown up stuff will be happening in real life so I’m sure a proportion of that will be making it across to the blog (or one of them at least! 😉 ). Besides which it’s all so complicated and needs so much further thinking I could really do with some sort of expert or exegete to help me out with some words of wisdom.

So, the children spent the morning watching the original Charlie and the chocolate factory (which I think might be called Willy Wonka actually so perhaps I could discern between them that way?), painting and drawing, playing with K’nex and being generally free range while eating about 4 bowls of cereal each and a couple of bananas! I spent all morning on the phone alternating between mobile and landline until Ali rang to say she was at the station at which point I gave up on all matter serious for the day and we went to collect them. I abandoned her to the mercy of three small children while I ran round the Co op getting stuff for lunch, and then made further use of her fantastic childminding skills while I dashed into the library before returning home. Whilst in the library I put my name down for the Book Group which is starting next week discussing Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. Really like the idea of something like that, it’s free, it’s some exclusive Nic time and it’s a 3 minute drive from home. Have not actually mentioned it to Ady yet however and I know I can’t make the following week as he’s away from home so I don’t really know how feasible it is but if it goes no further than putting my name down I will at least cherish the idea of it for a couple of days!

The children were in full on post holiday mode and acted as though none of them had been in polite company ever, let alone for just a fortnight, but I think me and Ali managed to largely look past or plain ignore it and chat just the same! We ran them back to the station and came home for a Cat in The Hat fest of the animated variety with Green Eggs and Ham and Grinch Night getting an airing. I took down a couple of my younger days diaries from the bookshelf and read entries for 5th January 1992, 1993 and 1994 which were fairly illuminating! Wonder if I’ll be doing the same with my blog 13 years from now? 🙂

Ady arrived home while the children were in the middle of a full on fruit eating competition and was closely followed by my parents. The children took ages to get to sleep, needing lots of reassurance that Granny and Grandad were NOT here to babysit! Finally got them both to sleep and my parents were easily persuaded to stay for dinner so Ady cooked while me and Dad got fairly merry and I made the most of my audience by holding forth about No Regrets and so on!

Right I want to be in bed before tomorrow and I don’t know how much I’ll be around over the weekend, so birthday monitor says HAPPY 32nd BIRTHDAY FOR TOMORROW NIC! I hope everyone has a good weekend and I’ll be back after the break! 🙂

The sine gua non of my word of the day! 😉