One word? When seven would do…

Bid on one of those alleged geomags suitcases on ebay last week – it was a dutch auction and they were £2.49. Stupid, stupid, stupidly didn’t check the p&p before bidding and of course I won. It was seven quid to get it here 🙁

It arrived today and ok it is probably worth £2.49 – it is branded supermag, not geomag, is basically a very crappy quality plastic (as in all the hinged bits have already gone all white where it is clearly not up to being bent) case with sections – no carefully shaped bits to cradle your balls and rods – infact it is a cheaper version of the boxes I have been storing them in and got from Woollies to keep beads in 🙁 That’ll teach me!

That’s the second parcel of the day – one from Amazon arrived this morning with some cds in it – they look fab all classical music for kids collections (majors for minors etc) . I am still waiting for a book order from amazon of the books Merry mentioned on her blog (and a couple more to qualify for super saver postage!) and a Hawkins order from their sale. I love getting parcels 🙂 Oh and the Horrible Science microscope for the kids is due too.

Jenny rang me just as we were about to leave the house to say she is having a viewing later so understandably needed to get the house ready and keep it that way – adding my two into the mix of small people working against this would not have been a good idea!

It keeps snowing then being all sunny and melting it away again here – which although disappointing for the kids who have visions of making snowmen (poor naive fools – I think in my entire childhood it only snowed enough to make a snowman once down here – last year we had loads of snowy days in Manchester so their idea of snow is a bit skewed!) but better for Ady’s job which involves lots of driving about which I worry incessantly anyway so do not need the added mental anguish of adverse weather conditions creating further driving hazards.

Davies is very happily playing on the computer doing mazes and other learning disguised as fun type games, Scarlett is making a mess with one of those candy necklaces and in a bizzare turnabout the kids are both infront of the computer in the playroom while I am sat in the lounge with Teletubbies on 🙂

Pox watch update – Davies has a couple of itchy spots on the back of his neck but they have been there for two days now and no more have appeared so this is either the mildest case in medical history or something totally unrelated to CP like an irritation to the label on his jumper!

Not at all sure where this morning has gone. I currently have one and a half children dressed and two rooms with floors covered in toys 🙁

We have done some seed sowing – cress in decorated egg cups and Davies is currently doing some very creative work with his tap a shape which was one of those things I nearly didn’t buy but has had lots of use so I’m glad I did.

I have rung the library and reported the issue – they have checked the shelves but not found them. They have renewed them again and asked me to have another look round the house and then come in and see them if I still can’t find them. I *know* they are not here so later in the week I will pop down there and see what happens next. She was at great pains to reassure me not to worry and although it was not said I get the impression that if I cannot find them it will be written off, so I feel a bit more reassured about that now. 🙂

Right, I am here under the pretext of making lunch so I have better go and do so. Round to Jenny’s later and out for a meal with my Mum tonight which I am still undecided about my feelings on… may not be back later.

And I really hope it does not uspet or offend anyone who has put a lot of hard work into making it the wonderful thing that it is.

I have been thinking about it for a while and reading Alison’s latest post decided me. I will still be blogging, I will still be reading but I never get round the ring any further than the ones I have put links to on my own, which is not any reflection on the ones missed out, simply a case of being a parent at least some of the time 😉 instead of spending my whole life reading about other people doing it!

I love blogging and although I considered seperating my blog from an HE one it is simply not realistic – both in terms of time and energy and also that we don’t seperate them in real life so it would be unrealistic to do so in cyberworld. I am also intending to either go password protected or create users on the blog so I have some idea of who is reading. I don’t necessarily write stuff I would not tell people anyway but I was a bit freaked out by putting nic, ady, davies, scarlett and our surname into google and coming out with three blog entries straight away. Anyone who knows us IRL could so easily do the same and I would hate to feel that people were reading without my knowledge. I don’t want to censor what I write – the main value for me in blogging is the doing it – I enjoy writing down stuff that has happened during the day, the victories, the crises and the general rants – and I like the fact that there is the regular readers support network to catch me when I stumble and fall – I guess I’d just like to be more aware about who’s arms I am falling into and whether they are friendly or not.

So that’s it. I have actually just put a link on MP list to a specific entry on my blog, I am aware that various people have links to it on theirs and I will keep the blogring box on my blog too (if I may!) so I am not totally going underground. But I did feel I needed to make a choice between being more cagey about what I blogged or being more cagey about who could read it and the option of writing less and thinking about it more lost 😉

Not sure where to put the spin on today really… thrice daily pox check reveals no spots on either offspring still though which has to be a positive.

After yet another night of musical beds I awoke with a pre eye opening stretch which kicked Bedtime Dora in the head and prompted her to say in her cheery voice ‘it’s time to wake up the day’. First thought ‘where the fuck am I?’ followed by ‘and who the hell is that?’ were both quickly answered by eye opening to reveal the vision of pink that is Tarly’s bedroom with Tinker Bell bedding. I could hear CBeebies in the distance so realised there was probably at least one child up. It was infact 7.45am, Ady had long since gone to work, Scarlett was still asleep in my bed and Davies (who clearly had quite philosophically accepted he had been orphaned in the night but was okay about it as Cbeebies was on) was sat alone in the lounge. He always comes into our bedroom first upon waking so must have seen Tarly in the bed alone, come downstairs to find a grown up and been distracted by Clifford the early years or something and decided he’d manage without us!

Managed to get us all to Sainsburys by 9.30am and aside from Scarlett chucking random groceries at Davies’ head they were fairly well behaved in there for once – surprisingly cheap week’s shop too 🙂 Arrived back at our house seconds after my parents who hung around ‘entertaining’ the kids while I put the shopping away and then we all went to Paradise Park. In the car earlier I had groomed Davies by telling him that Grandad had not been to PP before and as he thinks Davies should go to school I wanted Davies to show him round and show him how much Davies knows about stuff and that he doesn’t need to go to school to learn. Davies took this very literally and dragged my Dad round the place by the hand like some sort of junior tour guide, showing off his great knowledge of the dinosaurs, including their names and whether they were carnivorous or vegetarian, he told Dad about volcanos and earthquakes, the ice age, the desserts and the rainforests, fossils and Egyptians. Not entirely sure Dad realised quite how much knowledge Davies was demonstrating but even if we didn’t get our point made I was still very proud of him 🙂

For once Scarlett was quite happy to walk round holding hands with my Mum too – I think having her distracted from fawning all over Davies (Mum that is, not Scarlett) pushed her into realising there is another grandchild on offer and quite a cute one at that! They looked at all the crystals and stones together and enjoyed pushing all the buttons on the interactive bits. As usual I forgot to take the camera which was a shame as there would have been some nice shots from the day.

We had a walk round the cacti and rainforest garden areas and then a very brief walk round the outside area – including a life sized dinosaur section and various Sussex in miniature models. Then to the coffee shop for lunch. Mum disappeared and returned with the owner in tow (very tenuous link that his ex wife is the daughter of one of Dad’s cousins but Mum does like to track these people down with the express wish of showing how well connected she is to people in high places! Sounding like a real bitch about my Mum here – whoops!) who joined us – he spoke to Mum and Dad at one end of the table while I ‘managed’ the children at the other end. They both ate well actually, well enough for me to not worry about cooking a tea tonight 😉 and deserved their cakes for afters!

A quick wander round the shop which netted a stretchy toy each for the kids (a monkey for S and a frog for D) and two kids cds – one fairy story one and one classical music one, along with a severe frown and muttering about how crap with money I am from my Dad and it began to snow as we pulled out of the car park. We quickly drove out of it though and it took a further two hours to get over to our house.

We came home via the library where I had to return a video and borrow a few more books. I got a couple for me including the five people you meet in heaven which has me hooked already. I also got a print out of the books we are listed as having out on loan and as I feared there are five books on the kids tickets which I am totally convinced we have already returned. I have scoured the house and they are no where to be seen and the fact it is FIVE books not just one makes me all the more convinced I am right and they are not here cos I’ve already taken them back. I will ring them in the morning and see where we go from here – I am quite happy to go and look for them myself in the children’s section although I can’t quite see how it could have happened…
Also picked up a few more books from their for sale section including a couple on religion – one of which looks really good as it supports GCSE Religious studies and has lots of comparisons between the main religions, and two books on decades – one on the 1960s and one on the 1980s which might tie in nicely with our timeline stuff later on.

We got home and the kids played noisily and quite violently (in Davies’ case) with the toy animals and dinosaurs prompting the observation from Dad that all of Davies’ games have a destructive or violent undertone. They don’t really, and having watched other small boys particularly it seems to be a fairly ‘normal’ thing and given he was recreating some of the battles of meat eating dinosaurs from earlier today I am not concerned he is showing early traits of a serial killer or anything but I just wish Dad had picked up on the good stuff he was demonstrating earlier instead of the more negative stuff this afternoon. As a result I seemed to spent the rest of the day nagging at the kids for one thing or another – mainly Davies 🙁

It started to snow in earnest at about 4pm and I called the kids to the window to watch it, then shoved a plate out in the garden each for them and brought it in for them to play with when it was full of snow. Highly educational with all the what is it, what does it feel like, what does it taste of, what’s happening to it and why stuff that went on, and also FUN cos it’s SNOW, but again a source of frowing at what sort of lunacy goes on in the house from my Dad 🙁 Mum and Dad both turned into complete old people as it snowed sitting there worrying about getting home (a mile along the road!) and muttering about whether they had enough sugar and tinned goods (well okay maybe not but you get the idea!). What’s even more laughable is that Dad grew up in North Wales and used to tell me tales of walking to school along roads with snow drifts that could bury a double decker bus they were so deep, and you could DROWN IN THEM!!! so to see him sat there fretting about a mere dusting was quite amusing. They left before it settled!

Ady got home in time to witness a spot more irrational shouting at the kids from me before they were packed off to bed. They are both going though a complete turnabout to Melrose week and only want me all the time, which should probably be heartwarming, flattering and cute but is actually quite annoying! They both (shame filled confession coming up) still drink their warm bedtime milk from a bottle (yes, that’s the otherwise scarily mature 4.5 yo and the dry white wine through choice 2 yo) and will only sit on my lap to do so the whole getting them into pjs, milk drunk and into bed is much prolonged by debate on who goes first or if they have it at the same time who sits on the outside side of my lap… sigh.

Ady had come home via a friends with very sad news that they are about to split up – well actually even sadder that she doesn’t know this yet… sounds like a classic case of drifting into familiarity without any spark left but never easy for one person to come out and say it and then all the aftermath and logistics of splitting a life down the middle. I see alcohol fuelled long evenings listening ahead.

And that was us. Have been crap at getting any 100 EL done – D has been playing with his Leappad the last few nights in bed but I want to get back into that again tomorrow, need to sort out the library books and (oh joy for company!) going to Jenny’s in the afternoon to drink tea, ignore offspring and debate our HE group and other chats.

Yesterday – a pretty good day really with an unexpectedly nice couple of hours child-free courtesy of Specsavers one hour glasses service!

We went over to Dad’s via Sainsburys to buy stuff for lunch and had a very nice afternoon there with him and my brother (both kids’ favourite grown up without a doubt!). The blokes all watched football (Arsenal v Sheffield and the result was pleasing apparantly! More to do with Arsenal not winning than anything else I believe though), the kids played and I spent a happy half an hour getting out an old piano book and trying to see if I could remember anything from my childhood lessons. Pretty much the only thing I remembered was that if you don’t practise your scales very regularly your fingers become quite stiff! I then sat and read a magazine for a bit which was also quite nice 🙂

I had an opticians appointment at 3pm for a contact lens checkup – I wear the all day, all night ones which you leave in continuously for one month before disposing of and putting a new pair in – which IMO is the closest thing to getting your sight back without the scary and rather pricey option of laser surgery. Those who spent time with me at Melrose may have noticed that I do have something of an eye drop habit though, as one of the side effects for me is that if I have hayfever or a cold then my eyes get gloopy and dry out. The only glasses I had were at least two prescriptions and four years out of date so I decided to get some updated ones for emergencies like lost lenses and possible soaking of lenses occassionally to remove said gunk build up.

Dad and Frazer were happy for the kids to stay with them while Ady dropped me in town and waited to save me having to try and park (can be a nightmare in Worthing and as I was only going to the opticians I didn’t want to have to park way out of town and walk in). Luckily we got a space straightaway so he came in with me. We had about ten minutes to spare before my appointment so we enjoyed the rare treat of walking hand in hand and not dealing with requests to go in toy shops, McDonalds or stop to look at the pigeons 🙂 Waited in the opticians for over half an hour as it was heaving in there and like everywhere you book appointments for they seem to totally overbook, over-run and be behind. They also had very few chairs in their waiting area, most of which seemed to be taken up with one family who had brought at least three generations to witness Daddy getting glasses! There were several comedy moments such as lots of people brushing by each other and muttering ‘sorry’ which made me want to yell something like ‘did you not see me, do you need your eyes tested, are you BLIND?’ and then the actual optician I saw was clearly quite raving mad as he had this ridiculous overenthusiastic air about him and practically sing-songed his way through the examination, pronoucing everything ‘wonderful, suberb or splendid’. Ady was sat in the room with me but I knew if we looked at each other we’d get the giggles so I tried really hard to focus on not looking at him. Anyway, chose the specs I wanted (with for once some fairly constructive support and advise from Ady about what suited me and didn’t – guess glasses are less of a minefield than ‘does this skirt make my arse look big enough to have it’s own postcode’ – the worst a pair of specs could do would be to make me look old and serious!) and they said they’d be ready in an hour!!!! (I know this is probably completely normal for high street opticians but I genuinely expected them to be sent away for or something.) So we rang Dad who was still quite happy with the kids and went for a hot chocolate 🙂

Last night Mum & Dad came over for dinner – nice enough really, Mum drank too much wine and got all silly, Dad sat there teasing her and I buggered off to bed at 11.30pm in the vain hope they would take the hint and leave – which they did half an hour later when it became apparant that Ady was not going to offer coffee and mints 😉 Mum is on two weeks holiday from work starting tomorrow and we have arranged to go to Paradise Park tomorrow and she is taking me out for a ‘girlie night’ (urgh!) meal on Tuesday night. Shame the sentence ‘how about you go off to work with Ady for the day and I’ll have the kids’ didn’t trip off her tongue really. I’ve asked enough times (he works so close to various big shopping malls that I would adore to spend a few childfree hours wandering round before he picked me up again) for her to know it is something I’d love to do – or even just offer to have them for the day so I can have a day at home to myself, but that would involve all sorts of plea bargaining, trade offs and be talked about for months afterwards so I can’t bring myself to do the begging it would involve to get such a favour. And yes I do know many other grandmothers who would dearly love to have their grandchildren all to themselves for a day, sadly my two children are not in possession of one of them 🙁

Today – after another bad night (will they never end!) which saw Scarlett hurtling into our bedroom at 3am having been downstairs awake with Ady for an hour yelling and keeping me awake anyway practically shouting ‘I NEED Mummy, I WANT Mummy, I NEEEEEEED Mummy’ (sound familiar Alison?!) she proceeded to lay pretty much on top of me for the rest of the night until Davies woke me at 7am whereupon she snuggled back into my space in bed until 9am. Grrr!

Dad came over this morning and he and Ady went out to get some logs but the chainsaw was blunt so they were back within about 15 minutes, Dad stayed for lunch and decided he’d join us tomorrow at Paradise Park which will make it a better day for me 🙂 (Better adult to child ratio and I KNOW he’ll buy lunch!) then we went over to Chris and Julie’s.

It’s been about 3 weeks since we saw them so the four kids were all thrilled to see each other and spent ages dancing round the lounge to a small keyboard which plays Jingle Bells – highly entertaining! Lots of tea was drunk, Julie is still trying to persuade Chris to either come to HESFES with her or let her go alone with the kids. They were really interested in hearing about Melrose and looked at all the photos – I really think Julie might be persuaded to come to Kessingland if not HESFES.

Home again via traditional Sunday dinner of McDonalds for the small people (our traditional roast beef is cooking 🙂 ) which they are still demolishing prior to a bath (how come when they were teeny tiny and didn’t really need bathing that often I did it daily, now they probably warrant one at least every other day I would happily make it a once a week or even fortnightly task?!) and an early night.

Might be back later with some nonsense – if not I will be around tomorrow 😉

A pretty good day today, following another awful night.

All days should start with LI, it puts one in such a good frame of mind 🙂

Anyway.

Funniest moment of the day had to be the four of us playing pass the parcel using a packet of tissues stuffed with ‘prizes’ from the pretend play food while Davies did the music by ‘singing’ tunelessly! Apparantly it was invisible man’s birthday party 🙂

Oh My God moment of the day was Davies calling me into the room shouting ‘Mummy, Mummy, Tarly has chickenpops (sic) she is itching her leg’ she does have a couple of spots on her leg but it could well be some sort of rash so we’ll reserve judgement there until the morning.

Ah bless moment of the day was sitting in the bath tonight listening to Davies in bed playing with his mircrophone leappad book repeating prices for fruit and vegetables – he has this funny precise little voice with a really posh accent which he saves for moments like that and he sounds like a right little aristocrat saying ‘one pound thirty five’ in his cut glass plum in mouth voice 🙂

Arghhhhh moment of the day was Davies interupting me and Dad talking every two minutes thirty three seconds. It is without a doubt his most IRRITATING habit – and he doesn’t even actually have anything to say, just doesn’t like not being the centre of attention.

But on the whole a pretty good day. I managed to change Scarlett’s bed so that just leaves Davies’ to do tomorrow, I have cleared all the Melrose washing and am down to one basket left to do from this week, I have put away the towering pile of clean washing and sent the emails needed to cancel next weekend’s trip up north as by my calculations next weekend is the end of our pox quarantine and I don’t want to be 250 miles and a 6 hour drive from home when one or both of them go down with it and feel dreadful. A real shame as I was really looking forward to it but hopefully we can rearrange it for a couple of weeks time.

Dad arrived mid morning during all this industrious housewifely business so he and I sat most of the day talking and playing with the kids. The playdough came out again and I had phonecalls with Jenny and Karen which was nice – feel like the blogring is suddenly much smaller again 🙂 now I *know* people IRL. Dad left and Ady arrived home just as Davies finished building a shop with all the pretend play food and the ELC cash register and play money. Scarlett has been playing with her dolls and baby bath lots so loads more creative play going on again.

I had forgotten how much I missed having Dad call round when we lived in Manchester. When he is not being opinionated or teasing the kids he is lovely to have around and I think both of us have his age in the back of our minds and want to grab as much time as we can. He sits for hours talking about his life, when he was a child and his parents and grandparents – interesting for me and probably quite nice for him to reminise too. I love the fact that the kids are so comfortable with him now – far more so than they are with Mum and it’s lovely to see him developing relationships with them each individually instead of as ‘the grandchildren’.

Davies has been playing with LP again in bed, working his way through Toy Story 2 and what will you be TS2 in particular has a really good phonics bit and he played with that for ages really reinforcing the EL stuff, which is all good.

Tomorrow we have not a lot planned – Ady wants to clear some of the general rubbish from the garden and take it to the tip, I have an opticians appointment in the afternoon and Mum and Dad are coming over for dinner. On Sunday we are seeing Chris and Julie (they decided to risk it!) but we are both so tired I am looking forward to a fairly quiet and low key weekend.

Lots of leap pad ed happening here today. I really resisted buying LP for ages cos I hated the advert where the parents are hiding round the corner watching the little girl reading and going ‘look she’s reading, shush, don’t disturb her’ WHAT?! But we now have two – the littlies one cos it has a Dora book and the standard one. I really think LP is poorly marketed in terms of its huge educational value as a resource, or perhaps they don’t want to focus on that as it would not be percieved as ‘fun’ or ‘a toy’ if they sold it that way. Whatever Davies has a fair old library of the books now and he spent some time on the Lion King one (a bit over his head really as he has not seen the film, but reminiscent enough of the Jungle Book production we saw at the weekend to strike a chord with him) and then he took it to bed and played with the microphone and book about the circus. I think now he is starting to get a basis of phonics and stringing sounds together from 100EL (which I didn’t bother with tonight in favour of leaving him to play with LP so I could have a bath!) it will be even more educational for him.

We did Sainsburys, came home and I was in the middle of trying to put the shopping away, talk to Julie (SIL) on the phone (missing each other lots after week away at Melrose last week and current enforced pox seperation! Almost arranged to sneak out and see each other without children 😉 ) and chase the kids away from coming in and ‘raaaaahhh’ ing at me while on the phone when my Dad arrived. He stayed for lunch and most of the afternoon which put pay to my plan for calendar activity all afternoon and as Davies was doing his usual attention seeking thing of talking over us constantly every time one of us spoke I set the kids up with some play dough including the new bits and pieces I got from ELC which went down well.

Dad left and I got them to help tidy up and then got out a roll of paper and the pens and set about doing a very basic timeline. It starts at 1938 with Grandad was born and takes in Granny was born, Daddy was born, Daddy started school, Granny and Grandad got married, Mummy was born, Mummy started school, Mummy and Daddy met, Mummy and Daddy bought this house, got married, Davies was born, moved to Manchester, Scarlett was born, moved back to this house, their last birthdays and ends with today. I will take a picture at some point but it is very rough still atm, I want to add some pictures of events and other visual aids as well as letting them do some interpretations.

Next I did a list of all the months with the seasons written above to show the different ways of splitting a year and under each month put something which happens in that month every year (like birthdays, Christmas etc), finally we did a calendar of this month and I showed Davies how the days of the week are repeated within the month and we wrote in what we have done so far each day this month and he drew some pictures on it. Next stage is to break down a month into weeks, then days and then break down a day into morning, afternoon and evening, then hours, then minutes. This will take place over weeks I imagine rather than in one big hit. I think I have finally realised that there is only value in this sort of activity if Davies is a) enjoying it and b) participating in it so we’ll see where tomorrow takes us (if anywhere) with it.

Scarlett has had another couple of truly dreadful nights – last night she watched Desperate Housewives (both episodes!) with me before I went to bed and Ady came down and sat with her. I don’t think any sort of full on sleep programme really suits us or our style of parenting but I do think that we need more than a two hour window between Davies falling asleep and Scarlett waking up again, and we need our bed to ourselves for at least a portion of the night too 🙁 Undecided on how to move forward but aware that we probably need to take some action. As ever it’s the same problem with more than one child that if it was just her it would be easier to either deal with and put up with a couple of really bad nights, or let it ride and sleep in with her in the mornings but as Davies has a fairly good sleeping pattern which I would rather be in sync with it is not really an option.

Anyway, no spots here as yet, no signs of any other Melrose related ills which means I think we are out of incubation for anything other than CP now. I’m torn now between almost hoping to spot spots on them to a) get it over with and b) justify the staying in all week and dreading them incase of complications and dealing with mutilating child Scarlett and her desperate urge to pick if she gets itchy spots all over herself. Sigh, only another two weeks or so :-(, unless of course one gets them in which case I will have to wait even longer before being sure the other won’t…

We are about to go to Sainsburys to buy a few bits I didn’t get in the Boden fest that was Waitrose and then we are coming home to make a calendar. I sort of think I might know how it is going to work but I’ll blog on what actually happened later 🙂

I am down to the last wash of clearing the Melrose clothes (understand the appeal of constant fancy dress a bit more now!) which is good as both the kids beds need changing but I refuse to do them until the rest of the washing is cleared (bad, neglectful mother! They do have at least three changes of bed clothes each, all of which are clean but I just can’t face adding two sets of dirty bedding to the pile of washing before I have finished it. Ady did change our bed but has craftily hidden the dirty stuff at the very bottom of the laundry bin in our bedroom!) so that might be a task for later.

I have a couple of phonecalls and emails to sort out and then I intend to spend the afternoon being a lazy bugger again 😉

is probably in order after the last two posts so here I am back to what I do best.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon 🙂

Today has been day three of our enforced company only of each other and the strain is starting to tell… kids have been shouted at a fair bit today, although they have still played well together the play is of a more destructive, noisy and generally irritating ilk than of the earlier part of the week. Besides which I was trying to post the earlier blog and they kept coming in and interupting me 😉

Popped out this morning to get a few bits including the last in the current bulk buying of geomags (the offer has ended at Woolies now, so that’s it for a bit). That was at least justified by lots of playing with them today! Other than that the kids have been largely left to their own devices with random shouting at by me.

Educationally they have done loads more role playing, been pretty good at tidying up after themselves, Davies did EL # 17 which ends with him needing to read the sentence ‘that rat is sad’ which he managed, so that was nice 🙂 The geomags can be legitimately considered a good HE investment, today he grasped how to make shapes with them and was constucting some good cubes using panels as well. There was maths in there, and a bit of physics too. What else? Well they both refused to eat the dinner I had cooked them (in a shock departure from tinned food along the lines of Mr Greedy hot dog sausages and tinned spaghetti hoops served with white bread and butter and ketchup I tried pasta with cheesy sauce) so I guess there is likely to be some biology there when they wake hungry as a result 😉

I wasn’t at our HE group today, and neither I am told were many other people – infact there were just four families 🙁 I think everyone had apologised in advance and had genuine reasons for not being there but we cannot afford to run each week without people coming – Jenny is putting an email out to say we either need people to commit to coming and send payment for the next month in advance or we simply cannot continue. Which would be a great shame as we both think we are onto something with this but neither of us can take the gamble of paying for half a hall hire if no one turns up. Lots of other places operate on this basis where you have to pay whether you can make it that week or not and although I would rather we didn’t have to do it that way I can’t see any real alternative. We’ll see what happens…

Rest of the week is shaping up to include more of the whole staying in doing very little, can’t believe it’s Thursday already tomorrow. Also this week I took a long look in the mirror and can see real signs of aging – not something I could consider doing but I could see why people have their lids lifted – four years of crap nights’ sleep and 31 years of life have started to take a toll – I can see why people start to think about looking after themselves better and spend a fortune on skin care in the vain hope that they can turn back the tide. Guess it doesn’t bother me that much really, but it is probably the first time I have really noticed any effects of aging – I know I weigh more than I did at 17 but I always kind of thought I was otherwise the same in appearance, and this week I am forced to realise I am not!

Blog below is long and of a planning nature just for me. I have been meaning to write an updated Ed Phil for ages and while this is not it by any means it is the closest I can give time and energy to at the moment! Not intended to spark any discussion (although don’t let that put you off commenting!) but as this blog does form part of a home education blog ring this is probably the right place for it 🙂

Following on from yesterday and further formulating my ‘plan’ for our approach I have been thinking about how we move forwards from here.

I am more than happy not to follow any sort of curriculum. In my ideal world (and I am very aware that it is *my* ideal world, which will not necessarily be the childrens’ ideal world and as such will need to remain flexible) I would like the children to spend their early years at home with me covering the following basics:
Learning to read and write. I am not able to relax into the whole ‘mine didn’t learn until they were 12 and now they are at the same level as their peers’ way that I have read other HEers talking about. Firstly because rightly or wrongly I consider those to be the utter basics of education and learning in the western world at least. I know that these will be the skills that outsiders will judge our success on, I know that if we are to get tangled up with LEAs and the like these will be the first things they ask about. Secondly I think that these are skills so fundamental to further learning, to articulating oneself in life and as necessary in becomming independant as to be the next logical stage on from walking and talking I would feel we had failed if they were not at least on a semi-par with schooled children of the same age in these skills (although quite how I will know this or measure it I am not sure 😉 ) and lastly I also feel that in learning these skills the whole of the rest of their education opens up to them and can really become far more child led and autonomous. If they can read then they can choose what to read, they can do it at their own speed and in their own time, they can be sent off with books to learn whatever it is they show interest in and in the same way that I got hours of pleasure as a child ( and infact still do) from opening the cover of a new book and settling into my own imagination wherever the book takes me I cannot wait to see that same joy on their faces. Writing I am perhaps less worried about – I guess it will follow on almost naturally from reading but I am keen for them to have the necessary skills to write well, by which I mean using grammar, punctuation, paragraphs (yes I know I may have to draft in help for that one 😉 ) and so on.

The 100 Easy lessons, coupled with workbooks (when he is ready for them and wants to do them) and the already groaning bookshelves should take care of this. The main thing to overcome has been Davies’ reluctance to start and my impatience with him once he does, but thanks to 100EL I think we are over the worst and to hear the excitement in his voice when he actually reads those first few words has been worth it all. Scarlett will as ever follow along wherever he leads so I see no issue with that one sorting itself out in the next couple of years if not before!

Maths is an area I am less confident about. I know from looking at the various bits of curriculums I’ve seen that this would not be the way forward and TBH I think I am lacking confidence in my own mathematical knowledge more than anything else. My plan is to read for myself some of the many books I have on the subject and start to build my own confidence in the subject back up until I feel able to introduce mathematics and concepts of it in a more matter of fact way.

Science – is another area I am less knowledgable on myself, but similarly an area which is very rich in resources. We have books to give us ideas for fun experiments to prove scientific theoriesand chemistry, we have loads of books about the human body (including the Usborne skeleton model book) to kick start biology along with stuff like our life cycle bugs and frogs and animals toys, and hopefully a lot of the physics will be covered alongside maths as we go along. Science although something I am mindful of is not something which scares me as there is just endless information to be read / viewed readily available as and when we need it.

History, Geography, Religion (as a concept not as an actual learning of as a way of life) are things which although I may not be rich in knowledge of I am confident and interested in enough to be happy to learn along with the children wherever our interests lead us. I think I would like to do a series of projects – along the lines of dinosaurs, kings and queens, the romans, artists, focus on Europe / China / America etc, type headings which we will work at together finding informaion out by reading books, using the internet, watching TV shows, looking at resorces like the globe, jigsaw puzzles, field trips to places like museums, roman villas, churches and synagogues, art galleries and so on. Bearing in mind the children’s ages (2 & 4) this is something which although I am itching to get started will work when they are both a bit older (and have those basics of reading and writing I was talking about already in place!)

I do have a couple of ideas in mind for stuff we could start now, which is very general and would take in plenty of the above in basic, early years ways. I will talk more about them in a bit.

Music – I would love the kids to enjoy and appreciate music. It will be my goal to teach them as many lyrics as I can 🙂 Seriously though I do want them to have some level of musical ability but again they are far too young to get into anything more than we are already doing. This includes – a big box of kiddy instruments which they regularly use to annoy me and make me once again thankful we live in a detached house otherwise we would be featured on a ‘Neighbours from hell’ type reality tv show. We listen to a variety of music in the house and in the car and Davies is encouraged to think behind the music about stuff like if it is happy or sad, how it makes him feel, what instruments might be playing it and so on. We also have the soundtrack cds to several of his favourite films (Toy Story and Monsters Inc) with a lot of instrumental music which we listen to in the car and he talks about what would be happening in the movie, what the characters are feeling etc. In time I would like them both to learn to read music and play one or more instruments of their choice, but as I had piano lessons and viewed them as a chore I want this to be something they really want to do and not a further cause of nagging and cajoling on my part so that may have to wait.

Physical stuff – currently not an issue at all given the amount of running round the house, leaping off sofas and dancing around pretending to be Bert from Mary Poppins stepping in time over the rooftops of London or Jack climbing up his beanstalk! Davies does his Tumble Tots which I intend for Scarlett to try again in a few weeks time, they are both starting a music and movemet type class for a trial run next week and in time I would be happy for them to have some sort of dance or sport lessons – again all in the future for now.

Crafty and arty stuff – my artistic side was very squashed as a child, and I still would rather they didn’t run loose with glue and glitter as I end up tidying it up! They do play with playdough fairly regularly as well as stuff like drawing (aquamat), magic maize and so on so I don’t feel they are neglecting this area too much 🙂

Drama / imagination / play – the one area I have absolutely no concerns about. The two of them play all day long creating imaginary worlds, situations, role playing of characters they know from TV / film / plays, dressing up, pretending and making believe. They are both able to play alone with their own company, mix well with each other and given time (like a few days into Melrose!) are able to make friends and play with other children.

Socialising – another area which I don’t give so much head space to these days. I have my moments of worrying that all their friends are manufactured blind dates by me, but then I guess school is too to a degree, as is work. You meet people through some sort of connection or coincidence whether it is a shared age and location, a shared profession or a shared friend or acquaintance so why not your parents, their friends’ children or other kids who live locally and are Home Educated? On a normal (non pox quarantined) week we see their cousins, our home ed group friends, two lots of schooled friends and the other children at Tumble Tots – enough for us not to be too worried about whether they are mixing enough or not I would say! 🙂

General life skills – stuff which I would consider very important is probably what we are working on most at the moment. I believe that (despite getting yelled at a fair bit!) being home with the kids and them being part of a family which is happy, affectionate and loves to spend time together over and above everything else will give them the best start in life to growing into secure, self confident, happy, healthy adults. I am keen to teach them good manners and other social skills, deference and respect where due and necessary, while retaining the ability to question and challenge. I watch them learn how to construct an argument, deal with negotiation and tolerance and understanding, empathising and grapsing the concept of their place within the family, society and the world on a daily basis. I want them to feel nurtured, supported, loved, able to achieve whatever they want in life and to reach for the stars and beyond. I don’t know if this is the right route to getting them there but I do know it is the very best I can offer and at this time for these children this is the right environment for them to learn and grow.

Business sense and self discipline / motivation etc – at the moment both the children are of the age where they soak up anything and everything with a greedy lust for more. I am of the opinion that not only does formalised schooling hamper that natural urge but it can also squash it for ever. I do however feel that as they get older they also need to learn the skills to fit into our society and that does, sadly involve sometimes doing stuff you would really rather not, trading in your time and knowledge for money/food/shelter and having the ability to apply yourself to a task. At this stage in our life I am not working, however it does not come easily to me not to and as such I do tend to find other ways to continue that discipline of growing and bettering myself such as my online learning course, doing household stuff and even blogging 😉 As the children get older it is my aim (and financially probably a necessity) for me to earn money in some way. I am still working out what that will be and I hope for it to eventually be something which I love, am passionate about and may even involve Ady too – all of which will be good example setting and role modelsf for the children who I aim to teach the cold hard side of real life to with stuff like managing finances, shopping, household bills, budgeting and so on in the future. Once the children are of an age where they have shown an aptitude or interest or possible career path towards a certain area I will encourage them to study for qualifications in that area as well as getting them to aim for some sort of paid employment in it by either seeking work experience, starting to train for a profession or even just talking to people who work in that line of industry.

So that’s it really. I think there are skills which get taught in school and probably won’t get covered here at home, but TBH I am more inclined to feel they won’t be missed anyway 😉

So back to my plan for now – I have several project type tasks in mind which will span over weeks or even months and hopefully spider web into more things. The first is some sort of project on time. This will initially involve talking about telling the time, then break down into the different parts of a day, week, month, year, decade etc. I want to create a timeline within their lifetimes going back to this morning, yesterday, last week, last year, before Scarlett was born, before Davies was born, before Mummy and Daddy were born etc. The basis of this will create both a family tree using photos and so on and stuff like looking at video footage of them as babies, us before we had them, our wedding day, my own baby photos, my parents wedding pictures, pictures of them as children, talking to my parents and grandmother etc. This should then spin off into what life was like for previous generations and can include stuff like the wars, British history including kings and queens, fashion and other pop culture like music, tv shows and adverts, field trips to grave yards, museums, looking at BDM records etc, taking them to old houses where me and Ady lived as children, our old schools etc etc etc

This then opens into an ‘our world’ type project which using the globe and the world map will give us a starting point for all sorts of geography and history projects. I have several books on different countries, their culture, dress, cuisine etc, there are stacks of TV shows to watch on this one and it opens out to lots of other craft, history, geography etc spin off too. Once we have covered our world with all its people, weather, disasters, history and so on we can also branch out into space and the earth’s place within the solar system.

So that takes care of the next 5 years or so anyway 😉

here on my blog. I know, I can’t quite get my head round it either!

Been thinking on the whole educational thing, mainly being in the company of other families doing it last week at Melrose, then of course there was Katy’s show at the weekend and a further in depth chat with my Mum the day after.

The thing that struck me most at Melrose, educationally speaking was that everyone seemed to have found their way. Some of us were whole-hog curriculum followers, others were autonomous, others pick and choose a little of both. Some of us stress over it all by nature, others although they don’t care less than the stressers seem to take it more in their stride. Sometimes it’s only when you are put on the spot a bit and forced to articulate your position and opinion that you really realise you have one and believe it it enough to convince others 🙂

I spent a fair bit of time looking at all the various curriculum things on offer last week and have reached a definite conclusion that that is not the path for us. There is something inherantly rebellious about me which responds badly to being told step by step how to do stuff. That takes nothing away from the people who do follow them, very successfully, or the curriculum itself, I just know that it would not suit me, nor do I think it would really suit Davies (not sure about Scarlett yet but if she continues her ‘just like her mother’ characteristics then I guess that will rule her out too!). I am inclined to not follow them, then deal with guilt about not following them, then try and force routine on the children, who also don’t like it much and we end up stressed and learning very little other than how to push each others’ buttons.

My Mum was questionning me about autonomous hands off approaches and whether that was simply people who could not be bothered to send their kids to school and whether the kids would ever learn anything. I surprised myself by not only sticking up for and supporting that route, but actually feeling like it really might be a way forward. My example was potty/toilet training which I never pushed Davies into but he did cos he wanted to and actually told us when he was ready. He was not particularly late in being dry at 2 and a half (infact he may well beat Scarlett!) but there was pressure from friends who started their children on their second birthdays and dealt with many more accidents, stressful situations and unhappy children than me. My other example to my Mum was of Davies’ schooled friend E who learnt (under a bit of sufference) to write his name during the summer ready to start school. Davies sat last week at Melrose and very happily wrote his name on his lapbook – it was neat and recognisable and he was very very proud of himself – a direct contrast I thought.

As I explained to my Mum I don’t know how long into the future I will continue to be this laid back about all things educational – it does help having a September born baby who would not be starting school at all until later this year. I overheard someone saying last week that they dislike the whole ‘cooking is maths and science’ style of HE and I can see their point – I don’t want the kids to have huge skill gaps in their teens cos I have spun educational categories into our everyday lives – I think there is a definite place for good old fashioned learning from books, completing projects or set work and so on – but long into the future at the moment. I overheard another person talking about how they value play, play, play above all else. I think that is where I stand at the moment.

Today I have been practising Melrose at home – by which I mean I have largely ignored the kids most of the day 🙂 I got them dressed – although they have since undressed themselves in favour of fancy dress, I have ensured they are provided with a steady stream of food and drink, I helped put one lot of toys away so they could have floor space for something else and they have both been popping in and out of the playroom where I have been all day to spend a few minutes with me, tell me about their game or just appear for a cuddle.

Their games have involved getting all the toy animals out and putting them into some sort of categorisation (not sure what – if I ask it seems to spoil it, but it was definitely happening!) Davies sat for ages counting all the legs on the different insects and spiders,, taking all the sofa cushions off and leaping about on them, being Peter Pan and Tinkerbell / Jane with all sorts of imaginative play going on there, they watched and appreciated Peter and the Wolf at their request and sat listening to and identifying the different instruments, they watched Dora and knew the spanish words for ‘open’ and ‘thankyou’ before they came on the show and have acted like, well children really, all day long.

I have been equally productive in tidying the playroom/office, getting some of the washing mountain moved further along its wash/dry/fold up/outaway procession and spent nearly an hour on the phone to Karen. It would be very easy to feel guilty about being lazy / neglectful / failing in my quest to be providing an education for them, but you know what? Today I think I have been a successful member of a home educating family – and later I will be getting my fix of ensuring some real learning is happening with 100EL so we’re all fine and happy here!

Davies : Let me think for a moment. Hmm, yes I don’t see why not, that would be lovely, thank you.

See the Fretwells had it all wrong, you don’t need to send your kids to a 3 grand a term private school to teach them manners at all!!!

And it’s name was Scarlett!

Just as we finished our meal her bedroom door rattled and out she came. She alternated between my lap and Ady’s ruining any hope of having dessert or other Valentine related activity.

I went to bed at 10 and we took it in turns to sit up with her for one hour shifts – she finally went to sleep during Ady’s 2-3am shift so we were in bed, alone by about 2.45am but sleep seemed the preferable option to anything else – besides which it was not Valentines Day any more by then anyway 🙁

Today we continue our pox quarantine and I have plans:

This is what I will get done today:
– Some more loads of washing and drying and maybe even some putting away of clothes that have done the above done two loads, one is drying on radiators, the other is in the tumble drier
– clear my desk of general and misc. stuff including a vick stick with no lid which no longer has a purpose, three bottles of eye drops in various levels of emptiness, a pile of stuff waiting to be shredded, various catalogues for Bright Minds, ELC etc which I need to throw out before they tempt me into spending money, a half eaten bag of mini eggs, a broken pair of childs scissors, two scottish souvenier teatowels and more. ooh it’s so tidy now! I have moved the tower to under the table which has created stacks of space and it feels all organised and worky 🙂
– c lear the surfaces of the playroom by clearing the units underneath to fit stuff in
– try and find the alleged 5 library books we still have in our house despite me being convinced I had returned them. library books – still no sign! playroom is currently in that state of untidyness that only a really good tidy can create – there is a black sack of rubbish, a pile to be recycled and some stuff which needs a home on the floor, but the surfaces are clear!
– drink lots of tea check 🙂
– get children dressed did do this although they have since undressed themselves again and are both in fancy dress
– provide food for children and self aciheved this one too!
– attempt to provide stimulating toys and activities for children (who actually seem to be doing just fine without me just now so I will not interupt!) no need on this one, they have played bouncing on the sofa games, dressing up, role play and generally entertained themselves with no need for TV other than a request for Peter and the Wolf which I allowed.

What I won’t do today
– blog in excess of 12 times like I did yesterday! well I am making do with commenting on my own posts and editing them instead 😉

I am shutting down for the night. We are midway through a bottle of champagne, have eaten our mussels starter and the main course has just arrived.

The evening is looking promising ahead 😉

Dear Customer,

I can confirm that this package, does appear to have been lost in
the post, and therefore, I have requested a refund for the amount of
22.71 GBP.

This amount will appear on your next credit card statement.

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

Finally got a response from the person who lives in our old house to say that she had never gotten the parcel either. Not sure whether to believe her or not (although she sounded honest!) so emailed Amazon to see if I could get anywhere with them and hurrah!

Anyone else noticed the bunk beds in my google ads?

As Layla quite correctly pointed out you can always tell my daughter apart from the other random messy blonde toddlers as she is the one with a facial scab of some description. We had the nose all over Christmas, the chin is still not entirely healed (and has purple scars when she is cold 🙁 ) and she now has a new small scratch beside her nose which she picked until her face was all bloodied while we were in town today.

It occured to me that if she was to get covered head to foot in itchy spots she will still have them when she is about 13 with how long it take stuff to heal up on her as she picks it 🙁

Oh, and just had a phonecall from the friends we were due to see tomorrow who also don’t want to see us now incase of pox 🙁 Guess we’ll be doing some learning this week when everyone else is on half term after all!

No, not further valentines gifts from my beloved (or even David from Economics who still hankers after me all these years later!) but my prescription from the docs 🙁

Inhaler very welcome if it means I can stop doing my impression of someone about to expire at any second and catch some breath back after a mammoth coughing fit, antibiotics less so if they are going to inhibit my alcohol consumption 😉

Oh and a quick apology to Karen who I believe has just got home and started trying to catch up on blogs – Karen, you may be here some time 🙂 I’ve been making up for that week away!

Was at home when we got back from our trip to the library (which turned into a trip into town actually when the local Woolies didn’t have any of the buy one get one half price geomags I was after) and Davies called me into the kitchen saying ‘Mummy, Mummy, come quick and see how much Daddy loves you!’ Sure enough he loves me enough 🙂 A single red rose, a card, a bottle of posh bubble bath (glass bottle mind:-) ) and the Michael Buble cd I wanted. Love him 🙂

Trip out was fairly successful too although we did have to hide the spoils in the car ’til Ady went back out again! After being at Karen’s house last weekend which is a veritable shrine to ELC I was desperate to go and buy some of the stuff she had – so playdough monster and bug features to stick in playdough creations, a parachute, a Dora totch for Tarly (which I have not given her yet and will save to deflect a tantrum at some future point!), an inflatable water play thing which Davies saw last time we were there and will be much used in the summer so I thought I’d get it now and two of the big boxes of Geomags (the size of the raffle prize!) from the main Woolies have now been snuck into the house 😉 Gotta love that retail therapy 🙂

About to go and play geomags with the kids so I can tick off a few boxes later when I blog.

To all you lovely people 🙂 xxx

Been pondering what V Day means to people at different stages of their life actually. As a child it was always a source of secret wishing and hoping that I would get a card from someone (I never did although I never actually sent one to anyone either!). As a 12-16 yo in an all girls school with no male friends it was simply a quiet day I’d rather wasn’t happening and when I was 17 and had my first boyfriend it was a good one cos I not only got flowers and a card and a meal from him I also got my one and only mystery valentines card. I later discovered that a friend at college had caught a lad from our Economics class sneaking a look through the registers to get my address and when he gave me a ‘joke’ pressie that day of some heart shaped chocolates sure enough the writing was the same. His message inside was ‘I hope you don’t mind too much’ which sort of tainted a bit really as actually I didn’t mind at all and was fairly torn about the fact I already had a boyfriend but was more excited about this card from him. I never saw him after I dropped out of Economics but he did appear on Friendsreunited and was not only doing rather well for himself (well according to his own entry on there anyway which is probably not that reliable actually. I mean who logs on to write stuff about themselves like ‘doing really crap actually, still live at home with parents although I am now 45, still doing that paper-round and lusting over Nic from Economics I once sent that card to – will she ever notice me???’) but also lived near us at the time in Manchester. I did not contact him but did spend the next few weeks giving everyone on the tram second glances incase it was him and also worrying that he was still after me and had only moved to Manchester after reading on my entry that I was living there too!

That was it then until I ‘got with’ Ady and although we always exchange cards, he usually buys me some sort of gift and we make an effort to have a nice meal in the evening as we do romantic stuff at other points during the year (wedding anniversary, first S anniversary etc) we don’t tend to get too worked up over V day. Infact I would actually be fairly horrfied and worried if I got an anonymous card now. Not only would I worry that people in their 30s should not be attractive to anyone other than the person they are wed to 😉 I would worry about what Ady would think, whether it was a joke, a stalker (particularly if it had a Manchester postmark and asked hope you still don’t mind too much) or someone who seriously thought that on the basis of sending me an anonymous card I would be inclined to do anything but worry about who they were.

Anyway, one day I really must either do some home education or at the very least pretend I do and blog about it. More washing mountain reduction work to be done followed by a trip to the library, doctors this afternoon and the friends who were coming decided our possible infection was sufficient to cancel so I might even have to put some effort into entertaining the small people!

Oh just remembered I do have some educational news! Got back to 100EL last night and Davies not only remembered all the sounds he had learnt with his weeks break in the middle he also read several words quite happily 🙂 Hurrah!

to be in bed before 10.30pm, which is clearly now and unachievable dream! So my current aim is to be in bed before I actually find out what number 1 in 100 greatest tearjerkers is. Not that I am actively watching it you understand, I just can’t be arsed to get up and turn it over 🙂

Today has been quite a good one, we had a really good night’s sleep which helped. Kids were both asleep by 7pm last night and did not rise ’til 7 this morning – result 🙂 I myself did not actually get up ’til 9ish but I didn’t make it to bed until at least 2 hours after Ady last night so it’s only fair!

Went off to Waitrose first thing to get food for the week. I like Waitrose, you feel quite posh and M&Sy walking round in the company of people who probably shop exlusively at Boden and do stuff on Sunday mornings like read the Sunday papers in bed (white egyptian cotton sheets natch) while eating warmed croissants and black coffee before getting up to dress in their Boden and come to Waitrose to shop for the week entwined with their very good looking partner (S, definitely!) . Of course I may well have Waitrose all wrong, and let’s face it this is Worthing we are talking about where there is something of a lack of airy loft spaces to live in tucked amoung the retirement flats with wardens built to service the large amount of OAPs who actually live here (and probably don’t wear Boden!) but anyway, you get the idea. It’s better than braving Tesco with all the other harried mothers trailing squabbling children round as they buy bulk quantities of pasta shaped like Clifford the big red dog, chicken nuggets and value tomato ketchup! My point being there was not one child in Waitrose this morning, it was an oasis of calm and order with quality fayre and virtually no BOGOF offers to be had 🙂 (so much so there were at least four things I will need to go to Tescos for now, I am not paying three quid per chicken breast to bung in a curry whether the chicken has led a better and healthier life than me, whilst wearing Boden for anyone!)

So I wafted around buying lots of fruit and vegetables and very little to give away the fact I have children which was a nice hour or so to have to myself. Home and my parents arrived while I was still unloading the shopping and Mum and I made some lunch for everyone. They had watched Katy on TV last night so her and I had a big chat about HE and so on which was nice. She so wants to ‘get’ it and is working really hard on getting over all her preconceieved ideas so she is actually not quite so dreadful to talk to about it all as she was a while back. Dad OTOH just wants to have a big old soap box rant about how crap schools are and what he would do if he was in charge and how it all really should work and blah blah blah but even when I listened to every bit of educational reform according to Nic’s Dad he had to offer was still not quite able to agree with me that despite the fact I totally agreed with him about what needed to change it was not going to happen within my two children’s school age time so surely it would be better to not send them and educate them at home thus negating all those issues within schools (not why I’m doing it, but if it convinces him it’s a good idea then that’s fine with me!). We ended with me saying ‘I can’t change schools but I can change the education my kids’ receive and that is what I am doing’. Good parting shot I felt 🙂

After a typical Goddard family getting out of the house (picture the scene in either of the Home Alone movies where there are various people running around, late, in varying states of readiness and you will have a close mental image of what it’s like!), driving back into Worthing, finding parking spaces and running along the seafront to the theatre to go and see Jungle Book. It was a panto stylee big old musical show production put on specially for half term weekend. Neither of my two have seen Disney’s version yet, which I think was a good thing as it is fairly loosely related to that and it could have confused them if they had seen it already.

Scarlett was okay – it was a long performance (about 2.5 hours with a short interval) and did a fair bit of wandering along infront of the rest of us although she did really enjoy the songs and dancing and entertained the people in the rows infront and behind us by dancing along and singing the songs after they had ended. Davies sat pretty much rapt for the whole thing. He spent time on my lap, Ady’s lap and his own chair and I’m not at all sure he followed the whole story but he loved the theatricalness (not sure that is a word!) of it all as well as the whole experience of going to the theatre, getting ice cream and shouting oh no it isn’t and boo ing at the baddies!

(Bright eyes has just been on and has me leaking onto the keyboard and now it is Gone with the wind which I have never actually watched despite my daughter’s name!)

Tomorrow we are supposed to be seeing Mel and L & L but I have emailed to warn of possible pox infection so we will see where Mel stands on the get it over with / can’t bear the thought of L off school and L off nursery while still paying for her place and me having to take time off work to look after them debate as to whether that happens or not. I have library books due back and I am planning a trip to the docs to get this cough checked out and see if I can get an inhaler for the scary can’t get my breath back moments when I really get coughing.

Right it is at number 11 and it’s Beaches wind beneath my wings tearjerker now so I really am off to bed! Night all xxx