One word? When seven would do…

Yep, got my baby back 🙂

Long story and I may well be without it again at a future point but today I drove through the wind and the rain to collect my lovely laptop rather than wait for them to come deliver it on Monday morning. I simply couldn’t face a whole weekend without it so I have spent the last hour stroking it lovingly, looking at all the sites I couldn’t remember the usernames and passwords for as they are all saved as rows of ***s and I’ve long since forgotten what they all were and emailing replies to people who had emailed me while I was AWOL.

So, a pretty good day today actually. This morning I sat on the floor with the children and we did some drawing – Davies did some fantastic pictures actually, I must photograph and flickr them – one of all of us in London on the London Eye – which was instantly recognisable, one of children playing in a park on swings, slides and climbing frames and then I talked to him about drawing outlines and colouring them in (although he always does grass and sky he rarely colours in the rest of his pictures) so he did a couple of the Dreamieland characters beautifully – he also wrote his name and age on all of the pictures in an ever more confident hand :-).

Then I got out the hama beads which are a very underused resource in this house (sorry Merry!) I bought lots when we first started Home Educating mainly cos everyone on Muddlepuddle told me they were essesntial HE items along with a laminator and a NT membership (got the laminator, still lacking the NT membership 😉 ) but Davies only ever made the car maxi bead pattern over and over again so once we ran out of black beads to do the tyres he was offended at the prospect of having a car with any other colour wheels and refused to do more, Tarly always just scattered them around the place and I have been made very cross with the mini beads on more than one occassion when I have sneezed a pattern away or the cat’s tail has swished it across the floor! So they were neatly stacked in a box, all ordered and tidy but basically unused!

Dragged them out today and Davies started to make a teddy (maxi again, he could not be persuaded to try midi), Tarly started to create a pattern with some pastel beads on a square board, which half way through Davies decided looked like a duck and came over to help her put grass and sky on the board to create a picture. They worked really nicely together on it actually with them giving each other loads of compliments and Davies asking for various colour beads next and Tarly finding them and passing them to him (similar in style to a nurse handing scalpel, scissors, needle etc to a gowned up surgeon I thought!) all excellent for team work, creative artistry, colour recognition and so on :-). I started to make a house adapted from a picture in a book but confess I got bored and tried to persuade Davies to finish mine too but he refused and went back to his car.

Tarly then wandered off and brought back some Incredibles figures which they started playing with instead so all the beads ended up tipped back in the box, but I think we might bring them out again soon – it was a great success.

My Dad then appeared to look at a dodgy radiator and to offer me money for food shopping (bless him 🙂 ) closely followed by Mum with stuff for lunch 🙂 :-). So we all ate together (very well, Mum buys nice lunch stuff!) and then a bit spur of the moment Mum and I headed off to Redhill to collect the laptop while Dad stayed with the kids. It was actually very nice, Mum and I had a good chat and she said some lovely, complimentary things to me which made me quite glowy 🙂

Home again to find Ady had arrived shortly before us and Dad had already headed off (this was good as whenever Dad has the kids they always empty out ALL their toys and Dad never thinks to either tidy up himself or direct them to do it, so Ady had already sorted it! 😉 ), hooked back up to the internet and showed Mum some of Chris P’s photos which I had been telling her about (would link to them but that would be very vain, it’s a particularly lovely one of me and Davies I had wanted to show her!). Kids have finally both gone to sleep (it’s taken about an hour) and I’m off to crack open the wine. I will be toasting a family who have had some sad news today with my first glass and hoping it is not too long in the future before we are able to toast them with happy news.

I have to admit to noticing that the lack of ease in accessing the net in the lounge has made me slightly more inclined to interact with the kids and actually it is only a brief period of my attention they seem to want before they take themselves off and play together instead anyway, but in a better and more inspired way as a result of the positive attention in the first place. Lesson to be learnt and time to be invested a little more wisely in the future perhaps. I have also been spending evenings chatting to Ady and going to bed before the next day is already chimed which has also been very nice and I will be aiming to do a bit more regularly – but never fear I am unlikely to be disappearing off into my real life without a backwards glance just yet! 😉

Just been watching Jungle Book and listening to Baloo’s song about Bare Necessities (although I suspect it’s probably called Bear Necessities I can’t be bothered to check!) which resonated a fair bit with me. All about finding what makes you happy and enjoying it, not searching for stuff which you can’t find and therefore not feeling as though you are lacking anything.. or perhaps it’s just a big fat cartoon bear who can’t resist a good beat and is too lazy to find anything other than what drops into his big old paw – whatever, I know which version makes me feel good today :-).

So today me and The Boy went up to The Smoke 🙂 Ady was able to work from home in the end so he stayed and had a nice Father Daughter day with Tarly (although apparantly she missed me and Davies lots – missed her too actually and spent lots of time talking about her in glowing proud maternal fashion!). They dropped us at the station at 9 and we caught the train to Brighton, then got a cup of tea and a cake for me and a banana for Davies (I know, weird choice when stood at a cake shop concession on the station but who am I to argue! Rare treat to be spending two quid on tea, cake and banana anyway but what the hell, we claimed it back on expenses!) and then got on the train to London Bridge.

So nice to be just Davies and I and be able to give all his questions and observations full attention for once. We chatted about London Bridge and it falling down (inevitably!), looked at stuff out of the window and talked about that, Dreamieland and the stories and the whole TV thing. He also worked his way through the little packed lunch Ady had made for him despite it being 10am!

We arrived in London, found a taxi and hopped in, chatting about general stuff all the way and arrived at the studios to find Miranda already outside. The PR agent arrived shortly afterwards and we went in. I’ve not actually been to a TV studio before but it was exactly as I would have expected with trendy young things running around with clipboards dressed all in black, snake hipped and gelled haired camp blokes calling everyone ‘Dahrling’ and glossy receptionists who already knew who we were before we announced ourselves (which always makes me wonder exactly what description they have been given to make me so instantly recognisable 😉 )

Davies was a total superstar, talked to everyone, was effusive with his pleases and thankyous, sat and drew some beautiful pictures and then described them to everybody in great detail and was just utterly charming. I had my make up done and enjoyed being told my hair was ‘already perfect’ – it wasn’t but clearly in my role as ‘Busy Mum, Nicola Goddard’ I looked suitably harrassed with it all over the place! Also inevitably someone asked Davies how old he was and when he answered 5 he was asked ‘no school today?’. I was having my lipstick done at the time so Davies expertly fielded it himself and then I took over. I’m semi expecting a phonecall from them now actually, so interested in it were the researchers although the channel is really for pregancy to preschool so it’s probably slightly out of their remit. The make up girl was really into the idea and very quickly grasped the concepts of autonomy and child led as opposed to structured school at home.

Ironically the people who were on the show after us were a hypnotherapist who specialises in pain free labour, baby signing and all that jazz and one of her satisfied customers who had her twins with no pain relief and also just so happens to be a sleep training expert too. Both very, very into extended bfeeding, cosleeping, EC and overall APing – one has 4 girls and the other 3 boys. I didn’t speak much to them directly as lots of what they were talking about was either stuff I have a fairly good basic knowledge of or agree with in principle but have not done myself but Miranda was getting very twitchy just being in the same room as them. the funniest moment had to be when we were leaving though. The mother of three who co-sleeps all five of them in a bed (her and her DH and the 3 boys) and was by far the more evangelical about the child being part of your body pre birth and not being cast aside after birth and how society has it all wrong with our parenting seperating our children from us too early and so on stopped me as we left and asked if I was ‘Home Schooling?’ (a term I loathe for some reason anyway!) when I replied yes she said ‘oh we thought about that but decided not to do it in the end and sent them to school!’ Just tickled me somehow. 🙂

The actual interview went well – the set up was that I vaguely knew Miranda through mutual friends and use the website to read the bedtime stories to my children who love them. We pulled it off pretty well, I did my caring Mum bit, Davies butted in to show how much he knew about all the characters and Miranda did her hard sell bit too. Davies had noticed the screen to one side showing the camera angles so spent some of the time he wasn’t being talked to pulling faces at himself or waving the soft toy around but monkey infront of a mirror impressions aside he did well! 😉 It’s scheduled to go out a week on Monday I believe, I’ll update as soon as I know more and it will be on sky channel 285 – more info about the channel here.

We then headed off for lunch where the PR woman (pregnant with third child) quizzed me loads on HE (apparantly she’s been dying to meet me ever since Miranda mentioned me a while back and was expecting some awe inspiring, earth mother type – not sure whether she was disappointed or relieved at the reality! 😉 ) so the word was spread yet further. She, along with Miranda was most amazed at the idea of someone who could have a career choosing to give it up (this is Miranda’s biggest issue with the whole thing I think, but TBH I think she has always overestimated my ‘career’ and its potential anyway! 😉 ) but I think I put across that it is not a forever side effect of Home Ed and that indeed I still feel that somehow a business opportunity will arise as a result of it somehow.

Taxi back to the station and trains home again to be back for 4pm ish. The journey home was equally filled with questions and observations – Davies asked me ‘what’s the very last number?’ which I actually recall asking my Dad as a child. I think I probably gave him the same answer as I got which is that there isn’t one – you could keep counting to infinity and still keep going. Not at all sure I answered it properly and indeed I suspect there is a sort of last number named (might attempt to google it actually just to get my own head round it) but I told him that if for example the last number was a gazillion then you could carry on counting with a gazillion and one, a gazillion and two and so on… I think he grasped the idea if not the magnitude of what it meant.

I’ve been fairly ranty since getting home, partially because the laptop bloke called to say it’s pretty mashed and although I could still access the wireless network using a USB adaptor (or something) really it could still go kaput and I probably need a new motherboard. He’s getting in touch with Evesham for us to get a price on that which I will then take to the insurance company and see whether it’s worth getting fixed or if they’ll cough up for a new laptop if not… so that will be a delay one way or another anyway, and man am I feeling bereft without it!

Tomorrow we’re spending the afternoon with my Mum, which will either put me in a good or bad mood depending on how supportive a mood she is in. But let’s think positive and hope she will be angelic and maternal and lovely 🙂

Happy Birthday Claudia 🙂

Hope you’re having a wonderful day darling, lots of love from us (and some for your Mummy and Daddy too!) xxx

So you know that I haven’t been repossessed and the children posted up on ebay more than because I’ve got anything much to say.

Loads of stuff going on in cyberworld at the moment, none of which I am going to get involved in. Aside from not being emailable I am no mail on all lists anyway and will probably remain that way for a while. I know I was heavily involved in the beginning of all the crap but I am removing myself from any further part of it. I love blogging and will carry on doing so but as someone said to me recently we all have lessons to be learnt from what has gone on and mine is to stick with the friends I know and quietly withdraw from the rest. While all the playground stuff continues I have a real life to be leading, with real life grown up problems to deal with, real life family to be spending time with and real life friends to be socialising with. I am all the more aware of how ridiculous it all is given the real life traumas and problems I know several of my close friends to be going through currently. I am very aware of what a life crisis really is and what it quite clearly isn’t.This is not directed at anyone, if I have a problem with someone then they know about it directly and without audience so please no one get paranoid about anything I have put above, I just wanted to issue a general bulletin about my stance on the whole thing as I imagine somehow somewhere my name is still being trailed through the mud and it does not deserve to be. I never did do anything wrong and I still have not.

So, the laptop. Well another lesson learnt there really. Well two actually – one for me being Do Not Leave Your Laptop Balanced On The Arm Of The Sofa. Tarly’s lesson being Do Not Loll About On The Sofa When Stuff Is Balanced On The Arm Of It!

I shouted, she cried and was very very sorry (and yes it was partially her fault, although it shouldn’t have been there I had just specifically told her NOT to get on the sofa because in a moment of premonition I realised what would happen if she pulled her usual trick of leaping into my chair the moment I exited it!).

So down it fell, landing on its side. The side with the wireless network card sticking out, which very quickly was sticking out no more. The laptop itself seems fine although the card is not working and when I tried to wiggle it about the screen went all funny and it turned itself off 🙁 It is covered on the house insurance and a man is coming to collect it shortly. He has told me hopefully the connection is bent and can either be straightened out or a different method of wireless connection sorted, but worst case scenario something inside is damaged irrepairably. As I say the house insurance does cover it – although there will be an excess to pay which we can ill afford at the moment 🙁

So yesterday was a fairly crappy day really. We were home all day but instead of the delightful happy family day I had been planning we went far from that trail . We did build the city but with lots of infighting between the architect and the surveyor. I withdrew and tidied up the playroom – we cannot find the main adaptor / charger for our portable dvd player which is driving Ady insane. Did get rid of one bag for the charity shop and one bag of rubbish from there though which was good (not sure how really, we’ve not bought anything new since the last time I sorted it out so why did I not see fit to lose that stuff before?) and also uncovered at least four things for each child which have either been given as pressies before and forgotten about in the excess of previous Christmasses and a couple of things which I had bought and stashed without actually ‘giving’ to them (a really nice art set each which I think I bought before we went on holiday once and decided at the last minute to not take) so they have been put aside to wrap for Christmas 🙂 – to quote Heather environmentally friendly and economically frugal 🙂 Win, win!

Mum came over late afternoon and went through the Argos catalogue and the ELC website and I showed her the bits and pieces I had been planning to get for Tarly’s birthday and Christmas (we’d already got most of Davies’ pressies already for some reason) and she is going to get them from her instead. Not ideal as of course they won’t be ‘from us’ but at least she’ll get them and that’s what really matters.

Still going to London tomorrow although that is proving something of a headache too. I’d downloaded loads of stories to read today to Davies about Dreamieland but they are all on the illfate laptop – so we’ve had to improvise and chat about it all instead. He currently insists he’s not going to talk to the TV people anyway although he does want to go and is looking forward to it! Ady was supposed to be working from home to look after Tarly and now he probably can’t which means yet another favour asked of my Dad to be here tomorrow (taking money off him and preventing him from going out to earn it in the first place – such a great daughter! 🙁 ) and I havn’t even considered what to wear yet!

We’ve been to Tumble Tots for Tarly this morning where she did really well and we’re home for lunch, laptop collection and Dad coming over to sub me money for the train tomorrow (which I will get back at least!) and then we’ll be heading back out to Gym Bobs for Davies. The sun is shining and I am feeling positive again after a crappy day yesterday. Which of course means the TV is bound to blow up just as we settle down to watch Lost later 😉

Will blog properly tomorrow but for information, due to a mishap with the laptop I don’t have email access atm. I can access my blog and probably will do again in the morning but any emails sent to me after about midday won’t be read until the laptop is back up and running -hopefully by the end of the week.

I seem to be doing a big old life shake up at the moment. Brought on by the whole finances thing I have decided that a policy of honesty and doing what is right for me, Ady and the children is my top priority. Not sure it’s ever been anything different really but I have been a bit dragged under by real or imagined obligations which needed shaking off.

Last night I sat planning what to take to Home Ed group with the same Sunday night, back to school in the morning dread I thought I’d left behind years ago. This morning I woke up and realised that I don’t have to go to group, we don’t have to stick it out til the end of the year at all if we don’t want to. So I rang Julie to pre-warn her what I was about to do and headed off to group to tell them that it would be our (as in me, Davies and Scarlett’s) last week. As I sat there trying to pluck up the courage to say it Vickie whispered to me that her and her husband had been talking and felt it was pointless just running for the rest of the year eating into the small kitty which remains to pay for a hall which no one comes to so I told her what I was about to announce and when I did Hayley imediately said ‘well let’s just call it a day today then’. So that’s that. I started the group and I finished it 🙂

We all agreed that it would be sad to lose touch and not give the children the chance to continue the friendships so we’ve made an informal plan to meet at the local soft play every other week and maybe various other free or very cheap locations on an ‘if you’re there, you’re there’ type basis. Feel very relieved 🙂

The group, thanks to Hayley, was the best one we’ve had in a while an excellent craft idea. She’d loosely based it on Diwali and using the sticky side of self adhesive vinyl floor tiles we put a coloured card border round and then used coloured rice to create pictures. The rice was just uncooked rice with food colouring shaken in it and left to dry and we made some lovely pictues with really bright colours. Might try it at home, particularly liked the idea of the self adhesive tiles – no mess sticking is always a winner for me! 🙂 Hayley also baked some scones with the older children (Davies included) which we then ate with butter and jam and the smaller ones played with various stuff including our parachute which I bought way back last year and had never taken out of the box before. Not sure when it will have another outing out of the box really, but it went down really well with all the children and has excellent arm workour potential 😉

Back home the children have pretty much been left to their own devices this afternoon while I went through various paperwork and made some phonecalls. They dragged out a box of random toys this morning which included some rod and shapes snap together toys, the sticklebricks, some cuisenaire rods and some threading cards and they have found sufficient in there to entertain them all day.

Tomorrow I have just planned with Davies that we’re going to build a city. We’re going to use the wooden train track, the various blocks and lego to build houses and stuff, the toy cars, the plastic animals and no doubt various other stuff as we think of it. I also really really want to sort the playroom out (again!) as I know there is stuff which could go over to my parents for spare toys over there, there is stuff which could be ebayed / charity shopped and new stuff which has probably not been looked at since it was presented to them last Christmas!

Which was kind of nothing like the last one. On account of not having any parties or houseguests and only the two of us for Ady to produce a roast dinner for tonight!

We’ve spent both days at my parents house as Mum was off yesterday and so was Frazer. So we’ve been fed lovely lunches, Ady’s got to sit and watch Sky Sports with two other people who do give a damn about football results, the kids have enjoyed having additional playmates in the shape of Mum, Dad and Frazer and played the toys over there to pieces. There is a selection of stuff which we didn’t have room to keep over here and some of mine and Frazer’s old toys (playmobile, Fisher Price play people, duplo etc) and loads and loads of space to run around and put on shows and stuff over there so they’ve been in their elements.

I’ve spent most of the two days in the kitchen, drinking endless tea, enjoying the peace of not seeing the children for hours and just administering occassional cuddles when they come and demand them. I’ve been a little vague about it but we are in the middle of a bit of a financial crisis which has been a long while coming really. I won’t say any more only that hopefully it is in hand and my parents are being very helpful so a lot of this weekend has been ‘crisis talks’.

Yesterday Davies and I snuggled up with the computer for a while and I showed him some websites about Bonfire Night and the Gunpowder Plot – which ended up encompassing various other conversations including Catholics and Protestants, Parliament and cellars! Later at my parents I tried to show off and get him to re-tell them what he’d learnt. I asked him what the man had been called and he said ‘James’. No not James said I, Yes actually Mummy, King James – that was who Guy Fawkes wanted to blow up! :-). Ady and Davies spent about an hour in the garden last night watching fireworks and this morning he made loads of pictures and drawings of them and then him and Scarlett did some lego creations too. So plenty of learning through play and general chit-chat ed too.

This week is looking fairly quiet – we’ve got the ill fated WAG tomorrow – I’ve totally decided I’ve had enough and will not be continuing after Christmas – we’ve got an evening meeting on Wednesday night where I will tell the others and I would imagine that will spell the end for it really. I know Julie won’t bother anymore which only leaves 3 of them. Vickie I will arrange to see fortnightly or similar as I really like her and Davies and Scarlett really like her little boy Andrew and the other two I will stay in touch with and maybe try and set up a monthly soft play date or something. That will make our only committment Tumble Tots on a Wednesday which leaves the rest of the week free for various get togethers with friends (Ros, Ali, Vickie, Julie, Lucy, Rachel, Mel) and more time at home doing stuff which I have a bit of a hankering for at the moment anyway and certainly through the winter I think the children will enjoy. They are both showing signs of being ready for something more than unstructured play and I think some more crafts and stuff would be ideal – first project will be handmade Christmas gifts for everyone! 😉

Aside from Tumble Tots the only other thing planned for this week is a trip to London on Thursday for me and Davies. We are going to TV studios for a new Sky channel called Sky Baby to be part of an interview Miranda is doing about nightnight.com. We have to pretend to be one of the first subscribers to the stories and Davies will do his little bit about how much he loves all the characters etc. I’ve not told him yet just incase it is cancelled last minute (as these things so often seem to be with Miranda) but if we go it should be a nice little adventure and great to have a day just him and I. Miranda has also said she’ll buy us lunch which is never something to turn down 😉 and of course if the website really takes off there is always the chance of work for me too 🙂