One word? When seven would do…

Last week I flicked channels and hit upon ‘what the ancients did for us’. It was about water carrying systems and mentioned the complicated irrigation systems which must have been in place for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Tonight, many years after he last enjoyed fame with Green Door, Julie and You Drive Me Cray-ay-ay-ay-zee Shakin’ Shaky’ Stevens won his heat of ‘Hit me baby one more time’.

Coincidence? I think not.

when I’ve been drinking wine sir,
my tongue can’t do the twist
when it’s on the way to getting pissed 🙂

Been drinking wine whilst watching Dr Who (Christopher Eccleston – S definitely 🙂 ) and was then called upon to read Fox in Socks to Davies – erm quite tricky that actually! 😀

An OK day today – got up very late (nearly 10am!) which is a nice luxury but tends to throw me off for the rest of the day and cocks me up for getting to sleep much before about 1am tonight (well tomorrow morning) and then it’s my turn to get up with the kids in the morning at 6ish. Ho hum.

Pottered about doing not a lot this morning, made some cakes and some choux buns at lunchtime (which turned out pretty well actually!) and then Chris and Julie and the twins came over for a bit. Ady gave me some grief about being a crap hostess – and he is right really but if I don’t let my own kids jump on my sofas and they are not going to tell theirs not to then I am going to tell them myself! None of the four kids were really up to the company actually – Scarlett was totally anti anyone looking at, talking to or breathing near her let alone trying to play with her toys or sit on *her* Daddy’s lap (which both the twins like to do) and Davies, bless him, has had a pretty crap week so he wasn’t really up to being told to share his stuff either – at one point he simply told Maisie to go away and leave him alone as he didn’t want to play with her. He said it quite mildly and not nastily but she ran off hysterical and D got black glares as a result – which probably wasn’t that fair really. Both the twins have had some sort of bug this week which they didn’t really seem to be over so the combination of four fairly fractious and delicate children with four sleep deprived adults who have been caring for them all week didn’t really make for a relaxed and carefree meet up! Won’t see them during next week due to Legoland trip so perhaps the space of a full week ’til next weekends get together will do everyone good.

Ady and Davies then set off for the cinema to see Robots – but despite it showing shows at 4.30 and 7.30pm on their website when they arrived it was not on. Ady rang me and I phoned their box office to double check and got a really stupid person telling me it was not on and ‘someone’ had forgotten to change the website and ‘something else is on at 4.30 instead – erm, well it’s not Robots’ I hung up and started drafting my complaint letter! Ady took a very disappointed Davies to Woolies to pick a toy and then to McDonalds instead.

Meanwhile I stayed home with Tarly imagining we would snuggle up on the sofa and watch something sedate on TV – wrong! First we played a game involving her jumping off the windowsill and me catching her – I figure it will be good for swimming pool games! Then we played a sort of Whats the time Mr Wolf type thing peeking at behind the cupboard in the playroom, her making a roaring sound and us running back into the lounge and hiding – all totally her instigation and ideas. A bit boring but it was nice to give her the attention and see her back on form a bit.

Tomorrow is still a bit undecided. I don’t really want to fall out with my parents so I imagine we will end up going over there in the afternoon and I will endeavour to control my emotions and act normal. As it goes S is fine, I got through the week and although the help would have been nice I was probably being foolish to imagine it would have been forthcoming – it never has been before. I guess they give the best they know how to give and that is all anyone can expect of anyone else eh.

Oh, yes. Probably about the same place as we are just now actually.

I quite missed my parents while they were away. Worried about them when the earthquake happened, cherished this foolish little idea that I would not have had quite such a bad week last week if they’d been around to ‘help’ a bit. I even had this plan for approaching them for a bit more support and help than they have been giving. I had a speech planned and everything…

So when they came home on Monday night, spent time here including staying for dinner on Tuesday night and were a bit sympathetic about the stress of the previous week (I seem to recall my Mum even saying something along the lines of ‘well never mind Darling, we’re back now’) I had somehow morphed them into the sort of parents who do help and are handy to have living just a mile down the road.

So off they went into the night on Tuesday – just as Scarlett woke up at about 11pm with fast developing pox sprouting everywhere. Have I heard from them since? Have I fuck.

The first night (Wednesday) I was a bit surprised. I thought there might at least have been a phonecall to see how Tarly was? Maybe a quick check that there was nothing they could drop round. Nothing. Well, they are just back after nearly 3 weeks away, I thought. Back to work for Mum and so on. Excusable.

Yesterday I was actually fairly pissed off not to have heard from them at all.

Tonight when it reached 9pm and the phone had rung twice tonight, both times with Ady and I saying ‘oh that’ll be them’ and it not being the issue was raised between us. I said I was really upset by it – he was just cross. OK I know they don’t *know* how bad she’s been with it, I know they are rarely help at the best of times and I know I could have rung them and told them (which was actually what we were saying – I bet Mum is saying something to Dad like ‘well they havn’t rung to let us know how she is’) but, you know, I’ve been pretty busy actually, Ady has been out of the house for upwards of 12 hours each day and we have been getting little or no sleep all week so I think we have better excuses than them.

Finally at 10pm tonight the phone rang. We had just sat down to dinner (with our evening companion firmly installed on the sofa next to Ady demanding he read her Dora books aloud) so I let the answerphone pick up. I did ring back and despite recounting to both of them that she has been really quite poorly, Davies has struggled with lack of attention, Ady has had three high profile meetings determining his career future this week and I am running on no sleep the best I got from either of them really was an ‘oh dear’.

We fell out quite badly just after Scarlett was born on a similar sort of issue and I swore then I would accept them for who they are and what they are prepared to offer – guess I fell back into the trap of listening to others talk about their parents support and caring and got side tracked again eh? 🙁

And a pretty good morning at that 🙂

Scarlett went to bed at about 5.15pm yesterday but woke up when she heard Ady’s voice at around 7pm – and with a few small naps when we thought she’d gone back to sleep only to reappear ten minutes later she finally went to sleep at about 10.30 and slept through. Somewhere in the middle of all that she pulled round from the floppy, feverish, itchy and uncommunicatative little girl she has been the last few days to being back to herself again. Very relieved… I was seriously starting to worry that it was a worse case of pox than I should be dealing with at home with calpol and cuddles and I was going to make a doc’s appointment this morning if she was no better. So that was a relief 🙂 This morning she has been very bubbly only relapsing slightly when I told her off for something and she collapsed into sobbing (and it was quite a mild telling off too really) then put herself to bed and slept for a further couple of hours.

The pox are scabbing over now and some of them do look quite icky and infected – will give her a bath later (with one of a vast selection of recommended additives – oats / bicarb / salt / lavender oil) and get a real idea of how bad they are and if any look likely to scar.

Been watching lots of Nick Jr the last couple of days while sat on the lounge floor – and to my complete shock and surprise I have grown quite fond of the Wiggles – I even have a favourite 🙂 (still singing hot potato, hot potato under my breath!) The Garden Dance on the other hand – and the two presenters who erm, perfom it have incurred my dark feelings though – argh!!!

So following on from last nights ponderings Davies-wise I dug out his Usborne Early Beginners series (second one down on the right) and asked him which subject he would like to do a lap book or project on. He chose Space so we dug out all the books on Space we have in the house (and yes it is quite a pile – I knew my future use booking buying would one day prove itself worthy 😉 ) and had a flick through. Tarly was not so keen on this idea and we reached an uneasy compromise of one book of her choice, followed by one on space which sort of lost the continuity I was hoping for. So I suggested to Davies that we did his Space puzzle and then made a big picture of it by copying it. So he made the puzzle while I stuck 7 sheets of black paper together and gathered pens and crayons, then with fairly minimal help he created a pretty good replica of it on his paper. My help was along the lines of suggesting he drew a circle for the planet first and then coloured it in and so on. By this time Scarlett had gone back to bed so when he had finished colouring I sat with him and helped him copy all the names of the planets to write underneath them. This did entail a fair bit of sighing. slumping, moaning about being ‘sooooo tired’ and generally putting on quite a song and dance about the whole business but he did do it 🙂 To celebrate I got out some sticky stars and he stuck them on to finish it off before putting it up on the wall to show it off.

There was a bit of coersion and tbh all the idea of doing it came from me rather than him but he has churned out a really nice piece of work, done some ‘reading’ (well letter recognition) some writing, some Science and astonomy in the shape of talking about the planets, space and so on, some art o and had some one to one with me too.

And now our Book People order has arrived so we are off to investigate that. Back later 🙂

…Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Been quote surfing today to find something suitable to send to Jan along with a bead and some sparkly stuff. Found what I was looking for and a few other little beads of wisdom too! I have a book on the shelf called ‘pocket positives’ which I picked up for 99p sometime somewhere and the above is a rather nice quote for getting through those darker days I thought.

So how has my day been then? Well luckily for all concerned that I am having it this week and not last week when it could well have been the day to finish me off 😉

Scarlett was back out of bed again within half an hour of my post last night and I sat up with her ’til gone midnight. Ady did a shift ’til 2am and then she came into our bed. I don’t think any of us got more than about 2 hours sleep. Surprisingly I have coped today without feeling too groggy but it is just starting to catch up with me by way of a headache now.

She has slept and dozed all day and is in bed again now – doubt she’ll stay there too long but it’s too difficult to even attempt to keep her awake and hope for a routine or a nights sleep, so better she gets the sleep while she can. I have been giving her piriton today which seems to have eased the itching – she was clawing at herself through the night 🙁 Both my two are so rarely ill that when they are it really scares me how little I am able to do to ease their suffering – I imagine this is one of the worst parts of having a seriously ill child – I am so used to being able to ‘kiss it better’ or cuddle away the tears that when I can’t – and they still expect me to be able to – it is really hard. 🙁 I started to count her spots this morning and gave up when I reached 70 odd just on her face – they are starting to crust over though so hopefully today has been the end of them appearing and tomorrow will be the start of them improving.

While she was asleep this morning i thought it would be the perfect opportunity for me and Davies to try reading the Bob books – well he did managed the first one but with huge reluctance, much wriggling and fidgeting and a very thinly veiled dose of impatience from me. Its so hard, he *wants* to read, he has the mechanics there to do it and he is really good at letter recongition and remembering what sounds they make, but he just fails to reach that final step – today I have sat next to him faced with the word MAT
D: Mmmm, Aaaaa, Tttttt
M: okay, so put them together….
D: MmmAaaaTttt, MmmAaaaTaaa?
M: Yes, now say it a bit quicker….
D: MmmAaaaTtttt – Sam?

WTF????!!!!

Two more totally out of sequence Horrible Science mags arrived so the freebie gifts were played with and I read him a bit of one of them for a while then Scarlett got up and we had some lunch.

Then he played his Thomas cdrom for a bit on my computer while Tarly did some colouring and I wrote some cheques out.

After that I thought I could persuade him to come and do some more cdroms on my laptop in the lounge so we could all sit together and perhaps get him to do something vaguely educational. We did Zoombinis, which he was pretty good at although again made some wild and silly guesses which always serves to really annoy me. I tried to persuade him onto StudyDog but he was having none of that (too repetitive for him, or slightly too hard – either way he gives up quickly), then a bit of Bear and Penguins Maths Adventure, which went down quite well and he appeared to get the gist of – again slightly too much repetition for him and he got bored and started being silly. I can’t decide whether this is a problem or not. OTOH life can be full of stuff which is a bit repetitive and we have to stick at it (although I realise he doesn’t need to fine tune that skill just yet at 4.5 yo!) but without repetition how is he going to grasp these things? When he does do something he is so thrilled and proud of himself but it is still not enough to spur him onto trying more. 🙁 He truly needs to percieve something as fun for him to stick at it and I am struggling to make reading fun really I guess… maybe I need to find something which inspires me more than MmmAaaTtt and see how we get on – also – deep sighs – I know I will be doing it all again in a year or so with Scarlett so that just compounds my weariness with it 🙁 100EL has been great for that letter sounds learning and we will stick at it on our current once a week ish basis til we eventually get all the way with it – just wish something a bit more inspirational to get him over the next step with accessible to him.

When he got bored of Bear and Penguin I refused to load any more games onto my laptop so we looked at the nick junior website and he played a few of the games on there – his numbers are getting really good actually – i ordered a dot to dot book from the book people last night (along with a couple of other things 🙂 ) which I think he will really enjoy so I’m less stressed about maths and numbers atm anyway. There were a couple of good games on the site including one about the alphabet of ‘face’ which involved clicking on a letter and face acting out something beginning with it, so that was good.

I’ve been pondering on what Davies’ skills and things he enjoys are actually (lots of time to think when sitting on the floor next to one child playing zoombinis with the other asleep on your lap!). He is a total sponge when it comes to learning anything and everything about something which interests him – a case in point being dinosaurs, or certain stories which grasp his imagination (I printed off the bits that Sarah linked to about the very hungry caterpillar and he LOVED them and played with it for ages), his memory and imagination is amazing – he plays made up games, tells stories and recreates films he loves for hours (quite theatrically actually!), his thought processes are awesome, the way he processes information, constructs an argument or point of view are impressive and he articulates himself so well (today he said to me when I had been out in the garden putting some washing out ‘I have just checked Scarlett and she is still fast asleep. Now, I can’t seem to get the TV to work’ – his phrases and ways of speaking can be so gentlemanly and old fashioned – he is such a showman!) and he is quite artistic too.

I think perhaps I need to find some sort of inspiring project for him which uses these skills and see if I can sneak in some reading as a result – a lapbook type thing perhaps with some models or similar to go along with it and maybe a poem or something to learn and recite or story to act out…. hmm will keep thinking on that when I am on cuddling on the sofa duty either in the middle of the night tonight or tomorrow!

Despite the self pitying slant of this post I am actually feeling quite upbeat generally, just very tired and ready for a break – oh and it’d be nice to have Ady out of the house for less than 12 hours a day too 🙁 but other than that I am feeling far more at peace than I have been for the last few weeks so that’s all good.

cos he says I need comfort food after my, erm, challenging day!

Scarlett is up and down – spots still coming out (I now understand that expression about not fitting a pin head between them 🙁 ), has a slight temperature and is veering between clingy and ratty. She finally went to sleep (but is still muttering and fitful and I don’t expect it to last) at 8.30pm.

Davies is trying really hard bless him – he told me today when he heard me agreeing with Scarlett that ‘we don’t like pox’ that he ‘did like them actually because when he had them everyone was really nice and kind to him and when Scarlett annoyed him she got shouted at!’. Bit of a heartwrencher that eh?

Have spent most of the day sat on the floor with one child sitting behind me on the sofa offering cuddles on demand and the other sitting with her head in my lap, laptop to one side doing odd bits and pieces of work, Legoland trip details, sorting out a gas bill which is still cocked up from the crossover of previous tennant, us moving back (why does that seem to confuse everyone so much – we always owned the house, we lived in it for 8 years, moved out for two and a half and then moved back in again), taking to Jenny about WAG group, getting some prices for hall hire and generally tending to the poorly.

Somewhere in the middle I went from small scale sniffles to full on cold 🙁 and my own tummy is doing a fair bit of churning which I am ignoring as I don’t have time to be poorly! Washing machine is still there but has not been doing washing or other communications today – thinking about capitalising on it’s powers with some sort of ebay based business 😉