One word? When seven would do…

Well there was a ‘revenge of the big brother’ incident following on from Scarlett being a minx all day. I was in the playroom when I heard some various shouting and hollering (Scarlett screaming and Davies yelling at her to stop screaming) getting more and more agitated until suddenly there was a bump and some more crying. I dashed in and Davies admitted straightaway to having thrown the wastepaper bin at Scarlett to stop her from screaming (and it *was* very annoying so I did sort of see his point!). It had caught her on the side of her forehead and scraped her nose a bit too. Bump and purpling bruise on head, screaming toddler and crying older brother who was truly shocked and horrified at what had happened. I sent him away while I dealt with her and deemed it to be a fairly small incident, so I called him back to apologise and kiss her better. After a small chat about consequences of actions and so on we left it there (although I did make him tell Daddy when he got home exactly how Tarly got the egg on her head). He is genuinely sorry and it was not a random act of violence, more him going a bit extreme in trying to shut her up 🙂 So no real harm done. Added to her runny nose, split lip from eating a kiwi fruit (not at all sure what she did but her whole bottom lip appears to be split, there was blood dripping from her chin although she was oblivious – ick!) and snot filled hair she is not at her most attractive:-)

Davies was late to sleep again tonight, he is fairly adamant about the ghosts and has also been asking questions about dying and other such deep stuff recently. I don’t think there is any more to it than a curiosity which has been sparked by something somewhere, but I am being careful as to how I answer his questions as something is obviously playing on his mind.

So in all it has been a pretty good day considering tiredness, injury and cold viruses! Tomorrow we have more of the same planned and if I can face that interesting combination of snot and glitter we might just get some cards made!

Oh the other thing I have been pondering on of late is so called extra curricular activities. Davies is exibiting normal four year old boy behaviour of needing to run around screaming and let off some energy, which is something I am not particularly good at dealing with. I know if he was at school he would be getting his hour a day in the playground and I do wonder if he does need an equivilent really. I have not looked into it properly yet, and am slightly reluctant to start getting tied down to regular committments but we are thinking about some sort of group or activity for him for all sorts of reasons:
*The beginning of being left – by no means a necessity, it would be nice to start getting him a bit more independant, and if he was to find somewhere he was confident to stay without me, or even having me in the background instead of constantly by his side it would be good;
*an outlet for all that energy, something for him to channel his enthusiasm into would be nice, and if that energy could be harnessed I’m sure it would be very effective at something!
*something just for him – everything we do currently is either for all of us as a family or has to fit to become so – he is maybe held back slightly while Scarlett is pushed forward to make a ‘one size fits all’ for them both. It would be great for him if there was something which belonged to Davies;
*all of the other associated benefits of such groups, socialising, mixing with other children and hopefully making friends, learning a new skill or discipline and so on.

The things we have so far considered and will be looking into as possibilities are: cub scouts, swimming lessons, some form of martial art, drama or music and movement type sessions. Any other suggestions, recommendations or ideas gratefully receieved 🙂

And it’s not that warm indoors either!

The crappiest of crappy nights was had, Davies stayed awake til an unheard of 10.30pm insisting he had heard ghosts talking to him and nasty eyes hiding in his Christmas tree (which really freaked Ady out, that man should never have watched Sixth Sense!) and by 10.40 Scarlett was awake 🙁 I sat with her til just gone midnight before bringing her up to bed with me and we more or less slept. Poor Ady was up to work at 6am but me and Scarlett slept fitfully til Davies woke us at 8am. Hence three very tired, in various stages of cold lurgy folk have been here today.

In fairness we have probably all done pretty well considering all the above. Adamant I would not stay in all day with them I braved Sainsburys this morning and whilst they were not angels they were pretty well behaved really. We always start in the fruit and veg aisle as a positive and blissful example of HE at it’s best, with my children naming the produce, helping to count carrots, pointing out the colours of things and putting stuff in the trolley for me. After the cold shock of the chilled section of meat, butter and yoghurts (and generally a couple of ‘no you can’t’s to various dairy related overpriced, Cbeebies character branded desserts things are normally flagging, and by wines, beers and spirits we are in need of breaking something open there and then to fortify us and raise the mood to get round the bakery, morning goods and frozen foods! So today I controlled Davies with an air of menace (well okay a bribe that he could play whatever he liked when we got home if he was good) and Scarlett with a dummy! Managed to get a fair few bits for Christmas too – stuff like chocolate coins, candy canes, some 3 for 2 stocking fillers like Thomas and Fimbles jelly sweets and so on.

Home for lunch and they both ate quite well which makes a change. We then settled down to some fairly educational play with the puzzles. Scarlett due to her cold and mammoth sleep deficit is like a toddler with PMT (and snot!) so veered wildly from being pleased with herself for doing it, to cuddling on my knee to at one point having a total hissy fit about the direction of Pilchards tail on a Bob the Builder puzzle), she is also being really mean to Davies and keeps smacking him and denying him any time with me (no! MY Mummy!), he in return is simply being nicer than ever to her and keeps fetching things to try and pacify her (ooh, that relationship sounds familiar, yes, wait, it’s me and Ady 😀 ) . But we battled on and Tarly managed some transport puzzles, some two piece very basic animal puzzles (but named the animals, the sounds they make and the bright colours on the background) and a complicated 3y+ jungle animal one with help, as well as the doomed Bob puzzle. She is at the stage of being handed the next piece still really as she gets quickly frustrated with it if she believes a bit goes somewhere and it doesn’t, but she is getting there!

Davies has done his big long Space puzzle with all the solar system on it. He did it pretty much by himself with my helping him along by telling him to look at the picture on the box, tell me what colour the next planet is, what letter does it start with (they are all labelled) and helping him that way. All pretty educational I think 🙂

I have in the last half hour managed to break away from being Lap Mummy (thanks Kipper 🙂 ) to write the job list for the week, answer a couple of emails and a phonecall and I think I should now get some tea sorted for them before they either fall asleep where they are sitting or decide they need phyical contact with me at all times again and do the cuddling my leg while I cook thing!

Probably more later…

Yep, he got it! Whizzed over to Argos in Brighton with my Mum this morning to collect the Peter Pan Island for Davies for Christmas. It would appear to have been the last one as when I checked availability in store it was out of stock – so hurrah for that 🙂 It does look quite good actually (if hideously plastic and very overpriced at 40 quid!) but given all the reviews I read on Amazon about it last night while trying to track one down saying that even with their degree in toy construction and plastic engineering for the over 4s it took bloody hours to get the thing together, and given that he is getting the pirate ship from my brother which also ‘requires adult assembly’ I think I either need to choose between spending all of Christmas Day bad temperedly making these toys fielding off all offers of help from overexcited small children or drunken, senile relatives I might just make it up in advance!

Went into Asda for a few bits for dinner tonight and also picked up a pair of rudolph pyjamas each for the kids – we started a tradition the year before last of a Christmas eve pressie just before bathtime which is always some festive pjs. They just so happened to have two pairs left in the kids sizes – so Mum paid for them anyway and I have that sorted.

Home for a bit and I did some Christmas maize magic with the kids – Davies was actually very good at it and created some more than passable figures of a Santa and a snowman with some direction, then a squirrel all by himself. Scarlett sort of helped me make a fairy and a reindeer and a Christmas tree before getting bored and getting as many wet and screwed up as possible before I stopped her. Then we brought out one of our glue pens from Baker Ross, (which I bought thinking would be a bit gimicky but are actually fab) and some sequins.

Then Mum went and collected Dad and we had lunch. Ady brought in the Christmas decs from the garage and I went through them. We have plenty of lights, a tree which was new last year and that’s about it, Mum has loads of decs from when we were little that she doesn’t bother with anymore so she is going to kindly donate some to us to save me having to buy more (things like tinsel and hanging decs) and I have decided to do an ‘edible’ tree again this year – decorate it only with edible stuff like biscuits, chocolates, candy canes and so on, we that will all be home made. The kids trees are both up in their rooms now, which is way earlier than I anticipated but having got them out and started to play with them I ended up putting the lights on and decorating them both and then it seemed silly to put them away again – so very very early but at least hidden in their rooms 🙂

I then took Mum to the local £1 shop paradise unit place on the local industrial estate where we picked up a few cheapo bits and pieces for the kids for stocking fillers and that was pretty much our day. Scarlett is absolutely full of a streaming cold – she was up from 9pm-3am in the night so medised’ed up she was asleep by 6.30pm and hopefully will stay that way for a good part of the night – we were planning to go to an Activeo thing tomorrow but it’s in Portsmouth which is at least an hours drive and I don’t think she will be up for it really. So a quiet day planned with maybe a start made on the kids Christmas cards for the MP list exchange if I can face the glitter in the carpet! I’ve got stacks of stuff I should be doing so will write myself a job list and really try to achieve some stuff this week. And no, we didn’t get the greencone in this weekend either 🙁 But we’ve enjoyed each others’ company this weekend and despite the crap night with Scarlett I feel more relaxed tonight than I did on Friday, and certainly more relaxed than I did last Sunday night so I’m calling it a good weekend!

Not even sure why I started wondering on this one really, but has anyone else noticed that there are way more girls in the blogring families than boys? Can’t think of any families (excepy dottyspots) with more than one boy, but several with lots of girls. With the exception of Debbie’s Daniel all the babies I know of born this year have been girls, in blogland and IRL.

Is there some huge gender swell in baby girls being born which no-one has yet identified? Does anyone know if there is an accessible record of percentage split of girls and boys born each year in the UK? Does anyone apart from me care? Should I actually just go to bed now and get as much sleep as possible before being woken up by my own little girl? Yes, I think I probably should…

First the rant, well plea for help really. Davies has always been in the main a pretty good sleeper. Always in bed for 7 and generally asleep by 8, through the night with very odd exceptions and not too early a riser. Scarlett is a waking nightmare (which is just as well as we don’t get enough sleep to have the dreaming variety!) She is walking asleep by about 6.30pm almost regardless of a daytime nap or not but very rarely goes through the night. She almost always wakes sometime between 2 and 4am and ends up in our bed where she takes around an hour to settle herself down, sort out sending us downstairs for juice, decide which of us she is going to be mainly kicking in the head and whose head she will be mostly laying on top of. Thought that was as bad as it was gonna get but she has suddenly started appearing in the lounge earlier and earlier – tonight she was here by 9pm after just two hours sleep. She is utterly charming, sitting, giggling, cuddling and generally making the most of having both parents to herself without Davies – something she simply never gets normally. And I just want her to be asleep in her bed letting us have our few hours of an evening together without children. And I don’t know what to do. She is not seemingly suffering from not having these hours sleep she is missing out on, she is happy enough all the time, she just seems to wake up, decide its more fun in the lounge with Mummy and Daddy and come on in to join the party – argh! I know its not forever, and I know there will be years and years to come when she spends her time holed up in her room and we would love her to come and choose to spend time with us, but I really just want to drink my wine and eat my dinner and watch stuff on tv without worrying about whether the content is suitable for her or not. No solutions I am sure, well probably none we would be comfortable with carrying out so I guess she’ll have to grow out of it…

So to the rest of the day, and a very pleasant one it has been too – up and out for just after 9am to take the car to a man to check whether the exhaust did need work (which is what the garage told us when they MOTd it) and it doesn’t, which is good. Over to Toys R Us to try and sort out Scarlett’s birthday pressies from Uncle Frazer (probably a garden playhouse) and a ‘main’ pressie from us, which is still being debated as I want to get her a Scarlett sized little girl doll – I had one when I was two and I know I am being romantic – and yes she did pretty much ignore it in Toys R Us but I am sure when she has one in her bedroom at home away from all the other hundreds of toys, that she can swap clothes with etc she will love it (won’t she?!).

Then home for a quick picnic collection and over to Chris and Julie’s for the afternoon. They had their real fire lit, the kids all played really nicely, we drunk lots of tea, talked about Christmas, decorations and other festive stuff and enjoyed being in the snug warmth while the rain lashed the windows 🙂

Tomorrow my parents are coming over for the day including dinner which they are thoughtfully providing the beef for and Mum and I are going to collect Davies’ Peter pan island thingy which I have tracked down and reserved at Argos in Brighton.

Getting bored of myself now, I’m sure there was more I was going to write but I think my posts are probably more interesting when I am having a go about something so I will work harder on getting hacked off about something tomorrow 🙂

Yep, that’s right, it makes absolutely no sense 🙂

Alternative title could have been:
‘and don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’be got til it’s gone’

You know me, I’m Nic, the curvy and voluptous one who is always moaning about my kids right? Well not today – today I was Nic in Lakeside, Nic without a care or incumberance in the world, if you didn’t peep into my very loaden down shopping backs and make a good guess based on what I had bought you would never even know I was a woman with two children. There was no mashed banana on my shoulder, no nappy cream wiped down my jeans, no harrassed and furrowed brow expression on my face, heck for a minute there I was carefree 🙂 Until of course I realised that without the pushchair you can’t buy nearly as much before the carrier bags cut into your hands, you look pretty silly pointing at the Christmas lights and decorations and saying ‘ooh look at the pretty Christmas lights’ when you have no-one with you and actually, although it was lovely to have a day to myself, I did very well with the shopping and the kids were gorgeous on the phone when I rang them at lunchtime (Davies will have a full scale converation with you on the phone, but Tarly said ‘hello Mummy’, ‘love you too’ and ‘goodbye mummy’ in all the right places which was very cute:-) ) I did infact miss them like hell!

They had a great time with Granny, Grandad and Uncle Frazer playing and running around like loons. Mum made a point to tell me that ‘they have eaten very well, and all healthy stuff’ and that ‘I have been down on the floor playing with them all day and we watched tv but only educational stuff and we talked about it afterwards’ – not at all sure whether she is being supportive and a good granny or having a dig at doing stuff that I fail to do, but I’m taking it as the nicer option 🙂

Ady and I were away by 8.30am and in Lakeside by 9.45am. We started in Toys R Us where we got this for Tarly from Uncle Frazer, then had coffee and cakes in Costco for breakfast before he dropped me off and went off to do some work!

I then spent nearly an hour wandering about feeling quite bereft without anybody at all – don’t remember the last time I had at least six hours with no one at all for company stretched out infront of me! I didn’t want to start shopping too early as I knew I would have to carry anything I bought so I rang the kids to check on them, rang Ady at least six times to debate and discuss whether to get the Playmobile, Disney store, official Captain Hook or the ELC Wooden pirate ship for Davies, we eventually decided on the ELC one and I got a few bits and pieces to go with it, including their version of Captain Hook and smee and the croc from The Disney Store to go with it to turn it into Captain Hooks ship. The ship will probably be from Frazer.
Also decided after much deliberation to get him this from us, but nowhere had any in stock! So we will keep trying for that one.

I got Tarly various Dora bits, a bathtime splash Dora and a Goodnight Dora, both of which were half price in Argos 🙂 Some of which I will give to Mum and Dad and Frazer for either her birthday or Christmas – think we now have pretty much all the Dora merchandise available – hope she still likes it in a couple of weeks (seems likely though, her little Dora and Boots duplo toys are still going everywhere with her four months and much tattiness later!). Various other bits and bobs which no one will possibly be wanting to follow links for after all that lot in ELC for them both and I think once we have tracked a Peter Pan island down we are all but done. When they have gone to sleep we are going to get everything in from the car, everything from the various hiding places all round the house I have already bought and decide what is for Tarly’s birthday, what’s for Christmas and what we are giving to Mum and Dad for them.

I also bought a beautiful top for myself from Dorothy Perkins for Ady’s Christmas do which is lovely 🙂 and probably the best part of the day… I still had an hour before Ady was due to meet me, my feet hurt and my hands were about to fall off with the weight of all the carrier bags so I went to Cinnabon for cinnamon sticks and hot chocolate, which I sat for over half an hour with the ELC catalogue and SAVOURED! There were no children clambering up me and asking for some of it, there was no rush to drink it while it was still too hot and burnt my mouth, no one tutted at me for sitting down and doing nothing – it was bliss 🙂 Need more moments like that please!

Ady then came and relieved me of my bags so I could do the last bits in ELC (lots of money and I am very ashamed at not doing it online for 20% off although some of the bits were OOS on the website when I checked, and still not having pulled my finger out and sorted a 10% discount HE card either!) before setting off for home. We arrived half an hour earlier than I had hoped to and that pleased everyone.

Davies has just fallen asleep and I think Scarlett is pretty quiet downstairs with Ady too, so off to sort it all out downstairs and make my final list of bits and pieces to finish it all off completely. Had a lovely day, it’s nice to have the opportunity to miss the kids sometimes eh?

Well not quite a moor perhaps but it’s certainly wild and windy here, and according to the weather forcast and a picture text sent by my ‘friend in the North’ ’tis snowing where we lived this time last year.

Today has been a pretty good one actually. No real education as such, but plenty of socialising, some forward planning and a splash of PE too. This morning Ady worked from home which meant I had a bit of a hand with the whole getting up, getting breakfast, getting dressed bit, and I was able to run round the corner shop to get bread without trailing small people and spending time getting shoes and coats on everyone which was pleasant! I even drunk a whole cup of tea 🙂

Ady left at midday and Julie and the twins arrived shortly afterwards. We started some new ‘house rules’ after friends coming over on Monday and they are : No children upstairs, no children in Scarlett’s bedroom and no running around. I know we won’t always be able to enforce them but for now it does at least mean I am only tidying up two rooms instead of four, and that the bulk of the play is supervised with less chance for mess and destruction to occur. I have also started getting a bit stricter about putting something away before getting the next thing out – little steps, but I feel it helps 🙂 And a bit of a chat with Davies earlier before they arrived along the lines of him helping me make sure the smaller ones obeyed the rules and him being really good and making him and I proud of him seemed to pay off too.

Lunchtime was fairly chaotic as we both seem to have quite set routines for lunch eating – the twins eat all their meals sat a childsized table in the conservatory, Davies and Scarlett eat lunch on the sofa with their laptrays and dinner sitting at their tables and chairs. No room or furniture to acomodate either of these arrangements so we set up a messy mat for them to sit on the floor round and a picnic affair of food with them all having their own plate to help themselves to – the idea is to cultivate good table manners, encourage sharing and eating together – sometimes its more successful than others:-)

Once they had eaten they were clearly needing a way to burn off some of their energy so we took them to the nearby park for a bit. The walk there was quite tricky – Chris and Julie live ‘in the sticks’ a bit and were not very good at the walking along holding hands and not running on ahead that going along roads required so there were a few tantrums from them – I ended up carrying Maisie and holding Scarlett’s hand while Davies was a model child and Julie erm ‘contained’ Jack! Davies and Scarlett are very used to that particular walk and although Scarlett is normally in the pushchair for it we do go out at least three times a week for a walk round here so she is pretty good at holding hands and walking along as long as you are ‘talking’ to her. Davies is very road aware anyway so he is allowed to run ahead to the end of each pavement where he waits for us, or sometimes he holds Tarly’s hand. He had to be stopped from running ahead though which he was not thrilled about 🙁 but it would have caused a tsunami of children so was not an option!

We had a nice time at the park, Davies had a small wobble when he got to the top of the slide, but having Scarlett and Maisie shove past him to go down it soon cleared him of that, Jack would not go down without Julie so that meant we had a little chain of four small people and one bigger one queuing each time 🙂 My two also went on the swings for a bit and then we all played on a train climbing frame affair they have there with Davies being the driver and the guard and telling everyone what station we were at. The park is nice enough, although it is in the middle of the least desirable bit of where we live and all the equipment is much graffitied (I did ponder to Julie on how many teenagers had had sex on the train we were playing on too!), but aside from a couple of pensioners dog walking we had the place to ourselves.

They left for home when we got back and I decided to tackle the playroom again – it’s one of those jobs which I always start off too ambitious with and clear everything out of everywhere, then lose patience, interest or sufficicent time and end up shoving the last bits back in again. As I type the last few bits are still scattered about the floor, but hopefully a black sack and another ten minutes or so and it will be better 🙂 I really want to be sensible about what we buy tomorrow for the kids Christmas pressies (although a text from my brother asking me to get their pressies from him while I am shopping tomorrow, to the value of £50 each is likely to make me less than sensible again!). I know Scarlett is still very small but I think we are done with cheap plastic tat really, I would rather build up more of the things they already play with like the wooden train track, the dressing up box, the toy food and some educational bits. Will report back tomorrow on how well I stuck to that plan 🙂

So Lakeside tomorrow, my Mum rang to confirm it last night (although I admit when caller display showed her number at 9.45 last night I thought to myself ‘I *knew* she’d cancel!’) and we have prepared the kids for spending the day with Granny. Can’t wait for a childfree day of wandering round the shops planning what to buy, meeting Ady for lunch and then going to buy it all – bliss 🙂 We have also planned our weekend with military precision to ensure we get everything done on Saturday leaving Sunday free for some chilling out and enjoying the weekend to avoid a repeat performance of last weekend.

Yep, that’s right, I’m two (large) glasses of wine down, Ady is running me a big bubble bath and my previously monstrous son is lying in his bed next to me (I’m laptopping!) telling me how much he loves me!

I’m in that dangerous place of feeling like I am omnipotent and am inclined to keep this very brief or it’s in danger of turning into an office party where I tell everyone what I think of them before heading off to photocopy my bits 🙂

Just wanted to do a fuzzy blog about how much I have come to rely on the people out there on the blogring (and no, it’s not just the drink talking 🙂 ) for cheering me up when I have a crap day, being there to celebrate with me when I have a good one and generally making me feel that I am not totally mad in this journey and not alone in it, and that I am totally doing the right thing. I have lots of friends IRL but I *know* that they are thinking ‘well send ’em to school then’ when I have a moan about the kids. I love the honesty of blogging and although Ady is great I don’t want to fill our evenings with ‘oh we did this’ and ‘the kids did that’ type stuff. I really value the whole school gate type support and chats we have here and it would be more than fair to say that without it I would quite likely have long since run for the hills or the nearest playgroup anyway.

Not since the days of reading Cathy and Clare in my Jackie magazine have I been priviledged to share my thoughts, dreams and down days with such honest and supportive folk and for that I thank you all.

I can’t wait to meet those who I have not already met at Melrose, thankyou and goodnight. (This post may well be followed by me falling unconscious but you will never know 🙂 )

Well tbh it didn’t get a great deal better really 🙁

Rachel and E came over and I had a bloody good winge to her about everything, Scarlett mainly cried as she was too tired to stand up straight (I had tried unsuccessfully three times to get her to sleep this morning and failed) and Davies was on some sort of high – (picture if you will, a cross between Zebedee and Tigger, with a dash of blue smarties for energy, a glass or seven of coke for sheer craziness and the pitch and volume of a seagull) which meant he had no choice but to run around the house cannoning off walls, toys and other small children shrieking at the top of his lungs about some sort of ’emergency’ (it was part of a very complicated game he was playing along with Roly from Bob the Builder and a toy spitfire plane!). He even seemed to try a couple of times (under great threat from me) but it was no use – he clearly has some throwback kerazzzy gene from one of our long lost loony great grandparents.

For once him and E played well together, there was some hide and seek, lots of tipping out of toy boxes but quite a bit of taking turns, sharing and being nice to each other – they even sat still for oh, about thirty seconds to play animal snap before getting all pissed off with each other about who had called snap first. In the end Rachel was a total superhero and dragged all three of them into the garden while I held a lovely sleeping baby. She ran around with them for about 20 minutes before ringing the doorbell and conceding defeat at wearing them out! It does seem to have done Davies some good though as he is now sitting eating tea infront of Dora and joining in with all the questions while Scarlett is sitting infront of the fridge taking everything out of it (need a fridge lock!).

A bit of self analysis (cheaper than a shrink, no need to delve into my childhood and every opportunity to blame the rest of the world instead of having to look inside myself to explain my rage!) tells me that because we had a crap weekend I have not recharged myself so thank (insert whatever force you like to thank when things are good, personally I would use ‘fuck’) it’s Thursday again already tomorrow! Infact the week does stand a chance of improvement still as tomorrow is yet to be arranged but I should be seeing Julie and on Friday I am supposed to be going shopping without the kids – so you could well see me using that Oh happy day, or even Woo-hoo catergory yet 🙂

So that went well then – not!

Just thought I’d begin the first of our half an hour of schooly stuff and what sort of a fool am I? We had shouting at each other, sending to bedrooms for being distracting, tears, threats of sending to school tomorrow and much flouncing from the room being followed by the others. All three of us were rubbish really, I wanted to become some sort of teacher figure but turned into an irrational bully, Davies really wanted to play with his lego (which probably teaches him more in half an hour about colour, size, counting, construction and motor skills than me stood infront of him shrieking would in a week!) and Scarlett wanted to either scribble in his workbooks with a pink crayon or do toddler acrobatics ontop of her table to attract attention (as opposed to the bruised chin she actually managed!).

In the middle of all this my Amazon order arrived with the Bob books – a quick glance through had Davies naming all the letters he had failed to do on his workbook and all in the snuggly cuddly environment of sitting on my lap enjoying being together instead of the high pressure environment created earlier.

I think it has more to do with me worrying that I am not doing enough educational stuff with him and that we spend too much time gallivanting about and playing instead of actively ‘home educating’ him. I have of course now been brought back down to earth by several home truths:
1. I am not a teacher, nor do I have any skills relevant to being one – what I am is a good mother who can teach stuff simply by living and doing it with them
2. workbooks are great if they suit you and the child, but instead of him sitting at his table for an hour finding all the letters in a picture and colouring them in, we would be better off going for a walk with me and spotting the letters in street names, road signs and the supermarket.
3.He is only four. Even if he was going to school he would still be doing mainly fluffy playing stuff – E is a whole school year older than him and they still have not introduced letters or numbers. I think I already kurb a lot of his natural four year old boy behaviour by stopping him from marauding the house swiping at his little sister with toy swords and scaring the cats. To then make him sit still and do work is just not natural for him (or me – that sitting down stuff meant that two cups of tea went cold and got poured down the sink, and I didn’t check the comments on last nights blog which were telling me I shouldn’t be worrying anyway!).
4. The whole reason I love the thought of HE is that it allows him to follow his strengths – he is good at learning through discussion, ‘field trips’, watching something on TV and following it up and creative play with his toys.
5. On the plus side Scarlett managed at least four of the letters I was pointing at this morning so I reckon if I need to fulfil my Enid Blyton fantasy of little children sat at desks working industriously then she will be the one to help me play 🙂

So, although the whole curriculum based, workbooks, sitting down doing school at home thing keeps luring me back whenever I have a wobble I think this morning has shown me that for us, at this time we were doing it right as we were. When I compare Friday and all the stuff we did on senses in a relaxed, as it happened way, and the debacle this morning I *know* which day I would rather be living in!

Today has pretty much lived up to its promise of being a good day. There has been no shouting, no unruly behaviour (from me or the children!) and plenty of TV watching, which has in turn led to lots of creative play so that’s fine too 🙂

We went to the library first thing where I wanted to look out some possible books for Sarah’s TRB, have a read for myself of Dogger (which as I suspected I did read when I was a child!) and (truly a miracle!) take back some books before they actually ran out or needed to be renewed (this was because one was James and the Giant Peach, which we have now bought a copy of and a stack of parenting manuals which served only to piss me off with their patronising tone, make me feel inadequate and a virtual child abuser or just bore me so much I didn’t get past the second chapter!). We were library pests really, Davies kept doing stuff like climbing into the big board books boxes and shouting ‘look at me Mummy, I’m on a pirate ship’, Scarlett kept acting like the one in a wheelchair in Little Britain, randomly pulling books off shelves and saying ‘I want that one’, I got a phonecall from Ady to say he had heard that talking Dora was down to a tenner in Argos should he get one (well yes!!!) and a return text from Sarah to tell me who wrote Dogger!
We then enlisted the help of the very helpful librarian from helpful land. He was the one who ‘helped’ us when we joined and he tried to help us find Dogger, then got all the forms out to order it before just checking in the pile of returned books from that day and finding it there! He did all this while blushing slightly and answering all of Davies’ many, many questions about why he was doing everything he was doing. (poor bloke must have looked to check we left before going to the toilet incase Davies popped up there too ‘why are you doing that?’) Davies did actually learn quite a bit though about libraries so we may talk to him again! Came out armed with Dogger and a pile of prehaps suitable books a couple of which I have already read to the kids. A quick look round the charity shops yielded nothing of interest so back we came for lunch.

This afternoon they have played pretty well by themselves really, Davies watched Kipper then came and asked for his megabloks out and has built a house for rabbits (cue him now calling it a burrow and a warren after a quick bit of HE) with little mouseholes all around as that was on Kipper. We made a rabbit out of some paper and an empty toilet roll so he is happy with that. This morning I sat with Scarlett and we drew Dora, Boots and co for her to colour in with crayons we named all the colours of so that’s her sorted too!

I have had a long phone chat this morning with J again about the new HE group and we have had emails back with good wishes blessings (and a degree of pissedoffedness I’m sure) from some of the old group who do have different ideas and needs from the group. We are probably going to go for it, we just have to hope that it is not just the two of us who have the same idea and that we actually get some interest from others! I have written up my job list, will swap it with the one J is doing and we will set to work trying to market it to the HE contacts we have. I’m also going to ring Julie tonight and she whether she is really interested in being part of the set up too. SO that is all looking quite exciting too.

And now for the reason I have ticked planning! I persuaded Davies to do a bit of copying (ears, eyes, nose, mouth etc) to go in the scrapbook I have put together on our senses work. He did it but was reluctant and I think for a while at least we are going to start doing a bit of work each day out of his workbooks. Jan told me a bit about how she does it and I really think its a good idea for him to have the discipline to be able to sit down, with an amount of ‘work’ to do and get it done. I know once he has finished it he will enjoy the sense of achievement, I will feel a bit more like we are achieving something in the way of schooly skills and it will justify having the bookshelves groaning with workbooks I have bought over the last year or so! The areas I want to work on (and may do a bit on each day, a rotation on a daily basis, a week of each or a lucky dip!) are: Reading, writing and numbers:
Reading – he is very good at recognising pretty much all the letters and can in most cases tell me a word they are ‘for’. But that is a memory game rather than him knowing or understanding that each letter has a sound as well as a name and that when you put those sounds together that is how words are made.
Writing – he quite enjoys copying shapes and so on, which is how most of the workbooks are designed – copy straight lines and curves as the beginning of letter forming. He does not look at all comfortable holding a pencil and although I tried the ELC grippers they didn’t make much difference, but I think it is only through practise he will discover that it is easier to hold the pen in a certain way.
Numbers – I would love to pretend that reading blogs about same age children being mathematical geniuses does not bother me, but it does 🙂 His counting is wobbly past the teens although he has the idea about 20-1, 20-2, 20-3 and so on so I guess getting upto 100 is the next step, he also doesn’t yet grasp about the concept of numbers being added, subtracted and so on. I also want to work on 1 being a whole number but it being possible to have smaller amounts too. This is the one area I can think of loads of games and examples to show him, aswell as being stuff we can do easily with Scarlett around too (like baking) so I am not too worried about getting things off the ground once we make a start.

I also have ideas for several mini projects all related to us and the world around us which I probably need to plan a wee bit first and then roll out as and when. They include weather; space; human body; our world (globe and atlas type stuff with a bit on different countries) and life cycles. My vision would be lots of scrap books with the starting points of all of these areas which we add to as they get older and we learn more and cover more complicated stuff.

Hmmm, well at various points today I could have blogged (well yes I did anyway but that was about pictures and verse, not about the day we were having!) and you would have been given a wide variety of peeps into our world.

In the main its been a crap one 🙁 But I kind of knew it would be as that was the mood of me and therefore the mood the rest of the world had to fall in line with too. Yesterday was a pretty crap day really with me and Ady not talking to each other which is a very rare and very odd way for us to be. Finally in the evening, just as we were serving up dinner he came out of the blue with ‘Nic, do you think our marriage is alright?’ which totally floored me. I know I can be a miserable ranty shouty bitch at times but in the main I always thought I jollied myself out of it pretty well and was a fun Nic to be around – guess not. I think you guys are getting the best and the worst of me right now.

Ady is doing really well at his job at the moment, which is fab. I am pleased for him and being very supportive of him, but a part of me is jealous as hell 🙁 I told him this and what makes it even harder is that he actually gets very little pleasure out of being good at it. I sit there glowing green when he tells me about his day off in his car, answerable to no-one, popping into B&Qs for a nice old chat with the staff, taking his photos, reporting back, stopping off for lunch and a wander round the various towns he goes to, listening to whatever he wants on the radio and going into the office once a week to be told how well he is doing and how pleased they are with him. Yes, of course there are crap downsides to it, but all the bits about my own life I get frustrated about (not getting any head space, having constant children round me when I go to get dressed, to the loo, to make a drink, to hang the washing out) he is living out day in day out.

What makes it slightly harder is that from day one we always said that I would chase the career and he would be the one to give up work to stay home with the children. When it came to it however, he was the one with the bigger income and better career so it didn’t happen that way. We have talked a bit recently about how different we think the children would have turned out if we had lived that way – we agree they would probably be quite different people 🙂 So the life I am living at the moment, although by no means awful was always the life I imagined never having to live. The catch 22 is that there is no way I could handle someone else being here instead of me now with the children, not even Ady. I think I do need to let go a bit and grab back a bit of being me though, I am getting too wrapped up in the worlds and minds of infants 🙂

Anyway, back to Ady, we sorted it all out and had a long chat. I think I need to spend a bit less time ‘plugged in’ and a bit more time of an evening being his wife really – I don’t imagine he will be as interested in the minutae of my day as I like to pretend you lot are (it somehow has less relevance to him whether we did a project on the senses than it does to you) but we do need to grab at who we are as a couple before we get completely lost in being Mummy and Daddy. So it’s all fine and it’s good we had the chat, but it leaves a bit of a bitter taste that we even came near to having to have such a chat iykwim?

So today I have been in a mopey frame of mind, I spent too long this morning trying to get pics on here (which I think I have finally achieved at the right size and everything although its a bit of a kerfuffle and I may be a bit more selective with how many and how often!) while the kids did a pretty good job of entertaining themselves. We walked round the shop to get bread for lunch and Mel arrived with L and L. After Thursday’s rant I am ashamed to say that it was Davies who spent the whole afternoon rampaging through the house 🙁 L & L played happily with the toys and were pretty tidy in comparison, Tarly sort of enjoyed L’s company but did her bigger girl impression again (she really does think she is 4 like Davies I’m sure!). Mel and I chatted a bit inbetween me trying unsuccesfully to sort Davies out. After they left I had a bit of a rant and made Davies do a lot of the clearing up of all the mess. Ady got home early and took over bathtime and as soon as they had gone to sleep I shot off to Sainsburys. Curry and chatting with spouse on the menu tonight!

The other news of the day is that it looks like the HE group I went to on Thursday has sort of blown up a bit. The meeting to talk about the future has been cancelled as a few of the members decided they were happy at the current venue and that is that. Myself and another member (who is also a MudPuddler although not on the ring – cryptic eh?) have had another phone chat and put forward the idea that if no-one objects we split off, on a different day to avoid issues (so that people from there can come along if they like to both) to do something along the lines of our vision. We are getting together again soon to talk further but I am pretty excited at the thought of being one of the real starters of something new, I’ve got loads of ideas, as has J for what we want and I am going to start ringing / emailing round some of the local names on my EO and HEAS lists to see if anyone else wants to join in with setting up what we think will be something pretty special. More on that as it happens.

So, I think I have worked through my crap for now, the poem is always a significant part of the line drawing underneath process for me and although we have nothing specific planned for tomorrow it WILL be a better day. And sometimes you need these sort of deep chats with your bloke to keep you on your toes 🙂

I never wrote my novel
I never modelled for page three
No longer do I stand a chance of becoming
The country’s youngest ever MP

I didn’t marry into wealth
I’ve no letters after my name
I don’t have notoriety,
Hero worship, cult status or fame

I’m not a famous dancer
I’ve never been on TV
When asked ‘who has inspired you?’
No one would quote me

I’ve yet to find my fortune
I’ve looked under every stone
It’s not in my pockets or under the sofa
I may have to extend my personal loan

I have to accept I’m unlikely now
To backpack the world alone
I’ve far more chance of a takeaway
And a nice quiet night at home

I don’t think I’ll be moving soon
To my dreamed home of NYC
I think I may end my days here
In Sussex by the sea

I’ve used up all my somedays
My one day never came
Somehow each and every day
Turns out the bloody same

That wistful look has left my eyes
My youth has done a bunk
My air of hopefulness is gone
My innocence, defunct

No longer do I daydream
No more hours do I have to while away
My life is what I have right now
And I guess it’s here to stay

And happy as I am with it
I love all I call my own
Sometimes I shed a little tear
For already being fully grown

Still on the same song as for no real apparant reasons I am feeling that way this weekend. You know how you have dreams as a child which somehow you always feel will somehow come true? Various odd things (a film’s title sequence and content, a line in a song, a throwaway comment in an interview with a celebrity and so on) have all conspired to remind me of some of my dreams which have never been, nor are really likely to be realised now. Some are for things I would have liked to do before the age of 30 (all fairly shallow but I never did get them done), some are for the sort of lifestyle I had planned by the time I was ‘grown up’ which I sort of feel more and more these days is something I have actually turned into now, and some are just pipe dreams which I am starting to face will never be a reality without lottery wins or running off with a rich stranger 🙂

Anyway, back to the real life I lead…

Another pretty nice day today although it started horridly with me being given a very long lie in til 10.30am (I guess I must have needed that much of a catch up but I hate sleeping that late in the day; it means I won’t sleep tonight til really late, but have to be up before 7am so will be tired again and back in the vicious circle again tomorrow, I feel like I have missed out on half a day and it did seriously curtail what I had planned for today) which I then made very ungrateful comments about and ended up having a minor tiff with Ady which is not something we do very often – and feeling has been unfriendly between us ever since 🙁

I wanted to get the kids photo for our Christmas card done today – we have got little Santa outfits for them to dress up in – Davies loves his and is quite happy to be dressed up and then pose in all sorts of ridiculous ways to do it but Scarlett has to be bribed into her outfit and is then fairly uncooperative about the whole business – we did take about 25 shots but I don’t think any of them are any good.

I then wanted to get our greencone installed – I managed to get it set up but Ady could not dig a hole with our spade as the ground is too stony and we don’t have a fork (apparantly) so we failed miserably at that, which really pissed me off as we have had it for two weekends now and it’s still not sorted – and it will be another week now before it is as he doesn’t get home til after dark 🙁

Then about an hour later than planned we went over to my parents for lunch. Which was very nice and allowed Ady and me to stay in seperate rooms all afternoon! My parents are so used to constant rowing and atmospheres in the house of their own that they were totally oblivious to the whole thing, which was good! The kids had a great time and my brother arrived just before we left which they were pleased about too. Home for bath and bed and hopefully they will both be asleep soon.

The other good news is that my Mum is probably going to have the kids on Friday so that I can go to work with Ady and he will drop me at Lakeside to do the Christmas and Scarlett’s birthday shopping, which will be fab to get done and sorted. Ady has already bought his own pressie – a digital radio and we have got one for Mum and Dad too, so it is mainly stuff for the kids – which is my favourite stuff to shop for anyway 🙂 Won’t get too excited about it though as it is all dependant on her getting the day off and Ady being able to coordinate his week to go to stores in that area on Friday.

Tomorrow Mel and L and L are coming over for lunch – L (boy) is a bit older than Davies and L(girl) the same age as Tarly so that always works pretty well. I might try and do some senses stuff in the morning with them too.

I have got a great big to do list of my own too – I need to make a start on my online learning course and I really want to do some stuff for an intriguing business idea of Sarah’s too, aswell as plan some more on the senses to be pulled out as and when, the next logical progression to a project on the human body (again something we have loads of resources and books on, just have not got round to doing anything with them) and also want to make a start on the mp Christmas cards too… busy week ahead methinks.

A good day although nothing of real note happened. Davies played up a bit resulting in a bit of a talking to from Ady – not sure whether to feel vindicated that he winds me up sometimes and it’s not just me, or sorry for him that he gets my wrath all the week and then Ady has a turn at the weekend!

I got up with the small people at 5.30 (again – urgh! but I do get to lie in tomorrow!) and did stuff I can’t even recall with them now til 9am when Ady got up, we all got dressed, went to Chichester to take back the courtesy hoover we have been using while ours was being fixed and collected our one back, then went to Chris and Julie’s.

We had a nice time, although it was very cold the kids dressed up in coats and had a good old run round the garden, at one point Ady, Davies and Scarlett spent about half an hour playing with a football, which was lovely to witness – through no fault of his own he doesn’t get enough time with them like that and all three of them really enjoyed it. Much tea was drunk and the whole world put to rights, we talked about Christmas and various other things including FIAR and curriculums in general, business ideas and other HE stuff. We had been looking at Davies and Scarlett’s baby photos when Julie was over in the week and today she dug out the twins baby photos which I had never seen before and stood marvelling at how just two years ago they were all teeny tiny babies (or in Scarlett’s case minus one month from even being born and Davies’ case just two himself) and were now running round the garden, starting to talk and be little people. All very nice and familyish (know thats not a word, but hopefully you all kwim!), then rounded it off with a pop into my parents house with a McDonalds happy meal each for the kid’s tea.

Dad had the fire (real open, log burning) lit which was great educationally – we talked about heat, how to put fires out, what fires could do, how when Grandad was a boy they did all their cooking and heating of water on the fire (remote welsh village with no electricity – as the kids get older and Dad gets his head round the whole HE idea he will be a fab history resource!), how they used toasting forks and copper kettles (both features on the fireplace) and how Grandad used a big tin bath infront of the fire when he ‘was a lad!’. We also talked about how one of Dad’s uncle’s (his Dad was one of 14) had died in infancy through falling into the fire etc. Ady was very very nervous about Scarlett and the fire, but as I grew up in that house with a fire there every winter, and possibly know that even Scarlett would be driven back by the heat long before she got anywhere near the actual flames I just enjoyed childhood memories of sitting infront of it years ago. We actually have an open fire here and have been debating whether to light it this year (chimney needs sweeping) I think we might just do so actually. It all tied in well with Davies having ‘helped’ Chris chop logs for their firewood earlier too, so that was good.

Then home and Ady has cooked a lovely dinner which we ate while watching BJD on C4, having watched X Factor (thought G4 were fab, as were Voices with Soul, Tabby was pretty good too – have just realised we missed the second show and checked to find who left – won’t say who incase anyone is watching it on ITV2 tomorrow but I was quite surprised…)

Tomorrow we are planning to sort out the location of our greencone, getting our Christmas decs from the garage for a sort out and then over to Mum and Dads for lunch… so a pretty lazy weekend really!

Oh and finally… took the kids to have their feet measured today as I was convinced they had both outgrown their but they are both still fine in their current shoes – hurrah! (feel far more justified about following Kirsty’s link to Bob books on Amazon and topping up my order with the Falling Angels book from Jax’s blog too!!!)

That both of my rants sorted themselves out too 🙂 Thanks for the support messages on both counts.

I had a long phone chat with Julie about non-related stuff on Thursday night and ‘got over myself’ a bit on the taking all the toys out issue. Also spoke at length to Ady about it and we have decided to set very firm ground rules that any visiting children stay downstairs, in the playroom or the lounge – kids bedrooms are out of bounds. We will mention it next time they come round as the new ‘house rule’ and Davies will be briefed on it already – tbh with 3 2yos in the house going up and down stairs en masse is a bit of a recipe for disaster anyway, so that’s sorted that one out. Ady also reminded me that Chris and Julie have very different priorities in life to us and that it was not really a lack of respect, more a different level of importance placed on possessions and material ‘stuff’. Which made me relax about it all a bit more and take it altogether less personally.

Secondly I had an email asking me to ring one of the other mothers from the HE group. We had a nice chat and talked about where we want to HE group to head (she has a couple of smaller children too, whereas a lot of the others are all of school age and above). I am going to go along to the meeting on Tuesday night and if what the group wants as a majority is not what we as a family need then we will bow out for now – I do appreciate that preschooled HEers have more alternatives for socialising, less need for any sort of structured group thing, and TBH one of the reasons I love the idea of HE so much is that it does not have to involve group politics – we’ll see but I am feeling much better about both issues now anyway (not to mention guilty about ranting in the first place 🙂 )

Well we started as we meant to go on and we pretty much managed it. There were a couple of raised voice moments in there and Scarlett did get shut in her room for about two minutes, but we had all been up for hours and hours and were all tired and let’s face it who lives with a 2yo and doesn’t end up raising a voice somewhere along the line each day? Davies was also getting very ‘howly’ by the end of the afternoon (he simply sits and wahhhhhs when something doesn’t go his way) but we all kept it together and had a really nice day.

So this morning we did the Mr Potato Head body part finding for Scarlett and talking about what senses those body parts provide for Davies. Then onto the fab scented playdough which was really very successful – Scarlett did colour identifying while Davies enjoyed the whole colour mixing process to make our orange and purple dough (our food colouring palette is fairly limited but we get by with lots of mixing!), they then played with it for ages before I persuaded them to put their coats on and we went for a walk – only for about half an hour, round a very big block with Scarlett in her pushchair but we had extensive conversations about senses. Davies talked about what he could see (that it was daytime because it was light, that the pavements were wet so it had been raining and the trees were moving about so it was windy, that there were fallen leaves and birds collecting together to fly away for the winter so it must be Autumn – hugely impressed with that one I was!), what he could hear (cars going fast along the road, the birds singing, the wind whistling, our footsteps) what he could smell (smoke from a fire, which he deduced must mean it was cold outside and definitely Autumn, petrol burning from a bloke with a garden vac hoovering up his leaves), what he could feel (the wind against his cheeks, then the sun when it came out warming his hair), we struggled with what we could taste so bought some smarties in the shop to remedy that :-), which we then talked about the colours to Scarlett about. We also talked about people who can’t see being blind and people who can’t hear being deaf. Davies decided the sense he uses most is his sight and the one he uses least is his taste – all very interesting and educational and all came from him really so very happy with that.

Back home we had lunch (which Davies managed to stretch out for about 2 hours somehow!) then Scarlett and I (with only a bit of Davies assisting as he was caught up in something on Discovery Kids!) made a very experimental chocolate cake – experimental as we only had three of the four eggs called for in the recipe and we only had Green & Blacks drinking chocolate in the house so that had to do instead of cocoa, we also added over half a big bar of chopped up Galaxy too – very chocolatey! Later we sandwiched it together with buttercream and melted Galaxy – I’ve yet to taste it myself but Davies polished off a large slice for tea! So there was loads of educational stuff going on there, all of which we related back to sense, obviously!

Somehow I found time to do a bit of one to one with both of them today – Scarlett and I sat for a while with some animal snap playing cards talking about all the animals on them, what noises they make and then found some of other things like a watch, a jack in the box and a ball. She then was able to point to the right one when I held up two and asked questions like ‘which one is an animal, a pig or a watch?’ – all very satisying 🙂 I also put together the basis for a scrapbook on our senses stuff – a picture of a face for Davies to colour in with eyes, ears, nose etc labelled, the individual sheets with each sense written at the top, a picture of the body part relating to it for him to colour in and then a dictated by him sentence about each sense. Great plans for loads more on this one – I have found four different ex library books in our stash relating to science experiments to demonstrate senses and so on, so loads of materials to use already in the house.

Total highlight of the day was when I wasn’t even in the room however, I heard Davies say ‘Tarly, Tarly? I love you’ and she replied ‘love you Davies’ (well ov oo ay vis actually!) which was just gorgeous!

And I even took several photos so who knows you may even see us at work if I ever figure out how to post them!

Look into my eyes, and you will see what you mean to me…

Listen. Do you want to know a secret?

So go and powder your cute little pussycat nose…

Reach out and touch somebodies hand…

The taste of your tears just tears me apart..

My plan is to do some ‘worky type stuff’ on The Senses today. They are both pretty good already at what I want to cover – body parts for Scarlett and actual understanding of the senses for Davies.

As we have been up since 5.30am (don’t even ask 🙁 ) we have already made a bit of a start – we used the Mr Potato Head to talk about which bits of the body go where and what we use those parts for. Later I have a bit of a plan to either to life size drawn round shapes of the kids and then get them to stick on body parts I have cut out of magazines in the right places (although that may of course not happen!).

Currently they are playing with some playdough we have made inspired by Jan linked into our senses theme. We made purple lavender, orange mandarin, green eucalyptus and pink geranium with essential oils and food colouring. Davies weighed out the ingredients and stirred the dry stuff, I did the kneading and adding of oils and colouring, Scarlett told us what colours they were and Davies talked about what senses we were using to make them – touch for the mixing and kneading and to determine whether it was hard/soft, cold/hot, heavy/light and so on, eyes for checking what ingredients we used and how much the scales said, and what colour we put in, smell for the different scents, and listening to hear me telling them what to do. (I believe Scarlett may have also used taste to determine that although pastel coloured pretty scented playdough looks and smells yummy it is actually not that nice to eat 🙂 )

I also have a plan to drag them out if there is a gap in the grey drizzle outside (which has called off the potential park visit – oh well!) to go to the shops for some baking parchment to make a chocolate cake for tea.