Do you suffer from long term memory loss?

I can’t remember.

Blog titles have been a bit boring of late – especially since the demise of google ads and my HGOB quest, so I’m going to start quoting a song lyric instead of putting ‘A nice day’ for my titles…for a bit anyway.. til I get bored of forget – hence the long term memory loss. If anyone wishes to take up the challenge of giving me the artist and song title then feel free (see me there, positively courting comments!) but no googling allowed – you either know it or you don’t.

So, a pretty good day today really. I had a lay in (or should that be lie in) till gone 9am, then up and out with Scarlett by 10am – we dropped by Rachel’s first as she had come round in a very nice Next Directory poncho on Wednesday and when I commented on it she said she had the bigger size at home waiting to be sent back if I wanted to go and try it on – so I did, and its nice and I now have it 🙂 Hilariously I said to Rachel that Scarlett and I would look like those Fast Show sketch people (Mexicans, Ecuadorians? Not sure) who come on in their ponchos and play panpipes if we went out together in our ponchos (which is a probability as Scarlett can’t actually be prised out of hers – I can only wash it on days I know we won’t be going out!) and then later in town we walked past a bloke wearing his poncho, playing panpipes for money in town, who was joined as we walked past by another bloke wearing jeans and T shirt who came over, put his own poncho on, picked up his panpipes and joined in with the harmony. Oh how I wished Scarlett was awake instead of snoring in her pushchair so I could pretend to be laughing with her instead of laughing out loud in the middle of town all by myself.

So onto town where I picked up a couple of books in Smiths, some more Halloween tat in the pound shop to further decorate our house, some smarties for Scarlett (who woke up and demanded sweeties!) and a jacket potato with thai curry to takeaway home for Ady from his favourite shop. Couldn’t get the santa suits for the kids I had gone into town for but it was a nice morning anyway. Also bumped into a friend who I have been meaning to ring/text since we heard her and her husband have seperated – so good to see her and get the ice broken – she will hopefully pop round for ‘he was a bastard’ type drunken evenings now I’ve seen her!

Back home and Ady and Davies had been having a great time in the garden mowing the lawn, pruning stuff and pressure washing the paths. Davies was muddy (despite wellies!) wet but very happy for some one to one time with Daddy – and Scarlett delighted me over lunch by coming and sitting next to me, stroking my hair, kissing me and saying ‘ove oo mummy’…. heart melting – she can come shopping again with me anytime!

This afternoon I have been playing with Ady’s work presentation to get it looking all professional and hopefully earning more brownie points with his company MD in the hopes of some sort of employment with them one day. Kids are now asleep, we’ve had curry and watched X Factor, I really should be finishing preparing for the party tomorrow but can’t be arsed – also can’t get my head round whether clocks going back is a good thing or not (basically the kids don’t know they have gone back so when they wake at 7ish it will be really 6ish which will mean although I’ve had as much sleep as normal I will be up for more hours tomorrow instead – or will it?) so instead tomorrow will just be really busy with decorating the house, sorting the games and music and cooking in the morning, lunch and some sort of Halloween craft in the early afternoon when Chris and Julie come over with the twins, then full on party late afternoon before collapsing into bed and trying to work out whether it is an early or late night! Oh and the challenge of perusading Scarlett into her Halloween outfit has yet to be faced too – expect lots of photos at some point in the next couple of days anyway!

Busy as very busy bees from the hives of busytown…

That was us today!

Davies has been having an ‘all by myself’ type of day. He got himself dressed totally today (even socks!) and has been little Mr Independant all day long wanting to do everything ‘all by myself Mummy’. He also told me before he went to sleep that he was proud of himself today – bless!

I have veered between being lovely HE Mummy and Grring wildly at various stuff which has to coin a phrase made me cross (or pissed off depending on your take on swearing 🙂 ). So Good Stuff:

Went to Sainsburys this morning and bought various happy Nic making stuff – some baking tools such as a loaf tin and two sandwich cake tins (not normally the sort of stuff which would make me happy it has to be said but I got a glow when the checkout woman asked if I was ‘doing baking’ as my children sat all nice and good in their trolley – housewife moment!), also got some cool clothes for Tarly in the TU range which was reduced to clear – a long cardi and a skirt and top which hopefully will do her next winter as well, and the ingredients needed to make Pumpkin Cake (as mentioned on Sarah’s blog – thanks Sarah!). Kids were actually really well behaved in there and didn’t insist on ‘their’ music in the car instead letting me stick on a singalong CD of my own (Davies went to bed singing ‘it’s got to beeeeeeee, perrrrfecttttt’) – also nice – little things eh?

We got home and packed away the shopping, then began the task of pumpkin carving / emptying / preparing flesh for cooking with. Realised I don’t actually have the faintest idea which bit of the bloody thing you would use to get the 1lb needed for the recipe (well actually it said 2 cups but I googled to get an idea of what size cups it meant rofl!) so did another google and could only find lots of ‘cut pumpkin in half and boil for x minutes type things, so in the end I chucked the seeds and the really stringy bits and dug out as much of the rest as I could. Made two pretty good lanterns and Ady wants to have a bash at the third one tomorrow. Huge amounts of mess prevailed with Davies sitting on the worktop ‘helping’. Ady came home midway and took Scarlett off to watch Dora in the lounge which meant me and Davies were less hindered, Scarlett got to enjoy extra Dora and Ady got to sit down on the sofa – win win situation! We bunged the cakes in the oven and they would have been dandy if I hadn’t taken them out a bit too early and they sunk in the middle – one is okay, the other was rescued by my ‘wife’ Ady cutting it into squares and sprinkling it with icing sugar – what a man!

My Mum then arrived with some Halloween type stuff – a witch decoration, a flashing pumpkin light and an oddly attractive soft toy pumpkin which makes scary woo hoo noises and vibrates when you wallop it (very appealing to Tarly that one!) which decided us as we were having a Halloweeny type of day to go the whole hog (origin of that one anyone?) and get the decorations out for the party and start decorating now – so the lounge is partially festooned with pretend spider webs, hanging bats and skeletons, the cotton bud skeletons are up, as are cardboard skeletons, pumpkins, ghosts, banners and various other bits and pieces… more to follow tomorrow. Davies also got to try on his little fancy dress outfit which he has been dying to do since we bought it. So all set for the party and ready to spook!

Grr things about today then:
cannot get powerpoint on my laptop – it’s on the pc but I really really want it on the laptop, am buggered if I can remember where the disc is from putting it on the pc and can’t get it to share it properly on the network (and even that sentence gave false impression about just how technically crap I am with all things IT!)

county count up – love that game but its a time waster! Good one for the kids when they learn to read though!

Shouting – well my fall from grace has come but not too bad really – I have shouted today but only for very justified reasons – Davies nearly shutting Scarlett’s fingers in the cupboard (not on purpose but through being giddy and not watching what he was doing), Scarlett empying a whole packet of Doritos on the floor for no apparant reason and so on. But on the plus side having not shouted for a couple of days I only raised my voice slightly and it had immediate impact on them – Davies stopped and apolgised and Scarlett actually cried and came over for a cuddle – so the moral of the story is shouting does work if you use it little and for good reason…

Tomorrow we are reaffirming gender stereotypes in the morning (I am taking Scarlett into town for some shopping and Davies is staying with Ady to help mow the lawn) before swapping over in the afternoon with Ady looking after both kids and probably tidying and cooking dinner while I do some work for him on a work presentation! We are hoping to have friends over in the evening for beers and curry too.

For those who work…

cos us Home Edding types simply wouldn’t have the time rofl!

Where exactly did these phrases come about from then?

-Life of Riley
-Make a bee line / B line for
-donkey’s years
-living on a shoestring

Almost afraid to jinx it as it’s still only Thursday…

But we’re having SUCH a good week!

Another crap night with Scarlett who fell out of the bed and then woke again at about 5am but as Ady dealt mainly with all that I didn’t feel too tired 🙂

So off to Julie’s this morning to make a guy for the Bonfire and Fireworks we had arranged for next week – which they have now cancelled on the basis that the twins and their dog don’t actually like fireworks all that much (a point which Ady and I had only been discussing last night so I was not hugely surprised!) so it looks like we will be attending the local pub display afterall – which is fine by us:-) We made the guy anyway – Maisie kept jumping on it, Davies wanted to bring it home to sleep with him in his bed as it was about the same size as him and qute cuddly due to the many layers of outgrown children’s clothes we had made it with!

So as usual a good day over there, the kids all played really well tearing up and down their garden – they have turned their sandpit into a gravel pit for the winter which has proved a real hit with the kids (they love playing with the diggers and tractors in it) and with us (was easier to wash slightly dusty clothes than full on wet baked sandy ones!), while Julie and I talked about shopping, babies and other ladies type stuff.

Then home and as Ady has been working from home today he was able to assist with the whole tea time thing. Scarlett dug out a pack of Monsters Inc snap cards I had got from the NCT nearly new sale and her and I sorted through them matching them up (there are 36 – four of each of nine character pictures and words) and saying the names of the characters. Then Davies came down and wanted to play too so I gave them one of each then held up one at a time and they had to race to hold up their one the same first. Scarlett was actually not that far behind Davies, then we did it where I didn’t show them the picture just called out the character name. Davies actually said to me ‘this is a really good game Mama (he sometimes calls me that!)’ and then Ady came along and tried to join in by putting the Monsters Inc dvd on to play the music to acompany us – which of course meant that they straight away lost interest in the game (which was very educational as well I thought!) and wanted to watch that instead, except it was time for Dora which HAS to be on for them to eat their dinner (we have quite a strict dinner time routine!!) so then I was the baddy for saying no and our game had been ruined too 🙁 Grrr.

Anyway they had dinner and watched Dora but then Ady put Monsters Inc on anyway which blew out any chance of a bath for them as it got too late and they were both asleep just after 7pm.

So in all another very good day. If I had wordpress and funky little catergories and stuff I would be able to tick off loads again today, and I have been involved in a great email debate with my mate Jim about careers, Home Ed, fulfilment and parenthood which has been fun and finally and this I am really quite proud of I have not shouted today. Again. And who knows whether I have not shouted cos the kids have been good or the kids have been good cos I havn’t shouted and really who cares anyway?!

Tomorrow we are carving our pumpkins, using the flesh to make a couple of the recipes Sarah linked to and generally prepare for the Halloween party.

In reply to Jax’ s post…

My comment just got too long so I thought I’d do a round up of what we do here instead!

We do less than Jax – neither of mine go to any ‘external’ things at all – although it is something I have considered it’s hard to find things complementary to them both, which is what I would want. Have thought about tumble tots or swimming though and may rethink them again.

We don’t do any formal learning as such although I have all the stuff to do it with we never seem to get round to it.I know I spend too much time on the computer although the kids tend to entertain themselves playing (or mess making in Scarlett’s case!_ while I do that – and as long as the TV they watch is Cbeebies or Dora I consider it learning anyway (I know for a fact that Davies has gained LOADS of knowledge from watching these shows and they are age appropriate and educational – it’s just another resource – and Auntie Mabel and Pippin can tell him so much better about recycling and take him on a virtual field trip and everything than I would do with a book!)

I guess it’s about deciding with your child what is the most important thing to be focusing on at the moment and running with it. Davies particularly had a few ‘mixing with others’ type issues which we have been working on by seeing people pretty much every day – he is now capable of playing with other children, dealing with any smallish incidents by himself, sharing, negotiating, swapping, playing with another child and team work in that play such as not being ‘in charge’ all the time but not being ‘bossed around’ either. He now enjoys going to other people’s houses and having other people round here.

He is bright, but his skills lie in soaking up information and talking about it, he is super keen for praise – which probably makes me more discerning with when I dish it out otherwise I feel I am patronising him and lessening the real effect of it. He is probably still not ready to be left somewhere without me on any sort of regular basis and goes pale at the very mention of school! Starting to get him used to being left will be the next thing I work on, but it will be when he is ready rather than when I am (which tbh was about 3 years ago -lol!) Not pushing this issue has created a confidence in him, a security for him and an environment he is comfortable in in direct contrast to how he was when he attended a nursery. It’s taken some while to ‘repair the damage’.

In terms of his reading, writing and maths he will get there when he is ready. He knows most letters by sight, can give me examples for most of a word they are ‘for’ (A for apple etc), can count reliably to 14 and recognise most 1-12 numbers written down, he has the basic idea that numbers can be added together and although he can’t read as such, he will sit with a book he knows well and ‘read’ from the pictures (Mr Men books being a good example) so he is familiar with the concept and wants to learn to do it. He can write his name and I am sure would be capable of copying letters I had written if we tried to do it.

I suppose I have the relative luxury of having a 4 year old who still wouldn’t start school til next September thanks to being just 2 weeks younger than the cut off date for starting this year. That does take the pressure off quite a lot for me. Davies is pretty aware that if he doesn’t go to school then there is pressure on him to achieve stuff that he would have learnt there. He does understand that him not going to school means he needs to let me have time to do other stuff (he doesn’t always like this, but he does understand it!) and he is very keen to learn, but one of the benefits to me of HE is that learning is not forced or timetabled, it happens naturally and organically through just living. He has great knowledge in some areas he would not have touched on at all in a school environment and his great love for chatting and reiterating his knowledge would be very frowned on by one teacher trying to control 30 children – he demands attention when he wants it – and 90% of the time with me he gets it – that would be a much lower score in a classroom.

So Jax, I think you are doing fine, infact better than fine. 🙂

Ahh babies!

I have just held a very new baby (2 weeks today) which is not my own for the very first time. Rachel came round with baby Amber (normally would only name her by initial but it’s such a pretty name I thought I’d use it this once!) and E and Kerry came over with EL and baby K – so a houseful at mine this afternoon!

Kerry is moving on Friday to Norfolk so her life is total chaos just now – I am torn between relief it’s not us living round cardboard boxes and planning to pack everything into a van or slight envy that they are off for a new adventure moving miles away which is what we did three years ago! They are coming back to Sussex to collect K and EL who are staying with her mum on Sunday and going off via our Halloween party to start their new Norfolk life!

Rachel arrived slightly later, in floods of tears! She had been to baby clinic at the doctors across the road (which is where we first met 3 years ago when Davies and E were babies) and the HV had made her cry by saying she looked awful and she was worried about her and she needed to stop doing everything and get her husband and mother to help more. She did this to me the first time I took Davies to baby clinic too and I am sure it’s her way of ‘helping’ of the common sense tough love variety as she is actually a very nice lady and her heart is in the right place but sometimes you don’t want/need to be told that by a HV. Kerry confirmed what she was quickly learning which is that after over 4 years with just one child a second is bloody hard work. I was able to give the perspective of 2 years down the line which is that it does get better and she is only two weeks in after all, but she does need to a) realise that this is the way life is with two children and it does start to become a juggling act a bit and sometimes you just need to pull yourself together a bit and get on with it – yes you can go to Boots with two children and even more so if one of them is 4 and a sensible lad but b) you shouldn’t beat yourself up over not getting everything done, you only had a baby two weeks ago and something has to give! She left a couple of hours later in much higher spirits, having virtually chucked Amber at me, E went off upstairs with Davies, EL and Scarlett so she sat baby free drinking tea and getting it all off her chest. I have reminded her again that if she needs shopping, someone to take EL off her hands, hold Amber while she sleeps / showers / gets a load of washing on or whatever it takes to make her feel better to ring me and I’ll be there.

So after a lovely morning with Davies we had a really nice afternoon too – tbh I didn’t see a great deal of my two as the kids all played upstairs but they both came down at various intervals and were generally cute – Scarlett is talking so much at the moment and she is very affectionate aswell as being naughty, she is at that lovely age when suddenly every second you put in is magnified back to you tenfold – sit with her for ten minutes doing a simple jigsaw puzzle and you come away all glowy that she knows the names and sounds of all the animals, kisses you and tells you she loves you and is just soooo cute when she completes something, beams from ear to ear and says (a la Dora) ‘I did it!’ I don’t think I have raised my voice once today – as the ‘more experienced’ mother today with two children playing independantly instead of a babe in arms I felt very in control, I listened to Rachel and Kerry talking about their worries about E and EL learning to read and write and settle in school etc with a lovely feeling that I don’t ever need to worry about such things.

I have pondered the age gap thing a fair bit recently – looking back it was bloody hard having Davies and Scarlett just two years apart – especially living up north with Davies going through his hating nursery and being seperated from me at any time and no friends or family to help out and Ady working long hours and me working too. On the other hand I was still in ‘baby’ mindset with Davies still in nappies, just out of the cot and so on so it was no real departure from the norm to add another one, Davies and Scarlett are very very close which helps a lot and has to be at least partially down to their closeness in age and our closeness as a foursome family. TBH although it was lovely to have a little taster of cuddling a wee one again I am so glad to be out of the baby stage and having had a really good day with my two today I wouldn’t want any other children, gender or ages than the two I tucked up in bed tonight 🙂

very quickly!

First of all normal non-worrying service has been resumed here. We walked into Lancing (I wanted to visit the self help for parents section in the library – don’t know why I bothered there was bugger all there – I guess Lancing parents either don’t care, can’t read or are all great anyway!) and with the library, a couple of charity shops and a detour to the newly opened bakery round the corner for cakes we were out walking for two hours. Scarlett (who was freezing as she now flatly refuses to wear a coat other than the poncho!) and fell asleep but Davies spent the whole time chatting to me and being really good company. He told me loads of things which we have obviously talked about in passing and he has recalled- we discussed the sun, the planet earth moving round it, space, how there was no gravity in space, how it’s morning on the other side of the planet when it’s nighttime here and various other things – very little input from me really – mainly him talking through stuff he has learnt, trying out a few ideas to see whether he has grasped it or not and asking lots of clarifying rather than information seeking questions. He walked all the way without moaning or whinging, didn’t ask to be carried or to sit down or any of that nonsense, although he did say afterwards that his legs had gotten quite tired. So the reading, writing and maths may be taking a back seat but the general knowledge and interest in the world around him is certainly not suffering – and remind me again of how it would be the other way round at school – forcing him to sit still and repeat stuff he is clearly either not ready or interested in doing just now, while halting the interest and questions and need to chat which is all he wants to do just now….yep, we’re doing the right thing 🙂

So the library did do what it seems to do better than provide books to be borrowed which was to have a brimming books to buy section as always – for £1.60 we got the following:

  • Living with light – very basic book about light sources – sun, electric light bulbs etc
  • Plains Indians – along similar lines about indians which looks really good with stuff about how they get their odd names, things to make and so on
  • BBC Fact Finders Explorers and Discoverers – self explanatory really!
  • Starting History – Shopping! book for KS1 History and of course something both my two have plenty of relevant first hand practical experience of witnessing!

In the charity shop we also picked up:

  • Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits
  • Classic fairy tales of Hans Andersen

We are really hoping my Mum will come and babysit one evening this week while we shoot up to Ikea to get a bookcase which will revolutionise our lives in taking every book in the house from the scattered corners they currently take up freeing up space for other stuff and making all the books more accessible to the kids. I am also thinking the time might be right to start putting Scarlett to bed awake with a bedtime story type routine (currently she falls asleep in our arms and is transferred into bed – which could be why she has such crap nights – although it might not be!) so we need to take all of the bedtime stories out of Davies’ room and maybe start a new routine of them choosing the book they want read to them each night in bed.

This was supposed to be quick! Rachel is due to arrive soon with E and new baby A, and Kerry has just rung to say she is coming too with EL and baby K – so I really should go and prepare the house for visitors by forging a trail through the toys so they can all reach the sofas without too many trip hazards!


Striking a balance…

On the downside (I always get the bad news first when offered the choice!) I have done a bit of shouting today, but not loads and I don’t feel quite so out of control or liable to be opening the door to Esther Rantzen and the Childline team come to berate me and snatch the kids just yet (anyway, didn’t I see her doing some dressed up in spangly gear dance stuff with Julian Clary looking very very odd at the weekend?).

On the upside we have had quite a nice day really. Our meet with two HE girls and their mum was cancelled today due to some domestic issue or other with the teenage daughter so aside from a brief trip into town to the bank, calling in Co-op on the way home for some frugal food shopping bits (and two more pumpkins!) we spent most of the day at home. We made some cotton bud skeletons – well I made some, Davies did pretty well til he started to get bored then it went downhill a bit and Scarlett mainly spread glue everywhere and then squeaked when it started to dry on her hands ‘Mummy, glue, sticky, yuck!’, then some wooden train track making, some puzzles and a whole lot of talking from Scarlett who is really coming on very quickly now. Also forgot to blog that the day before I drew Davies and Scarlett sized Dora characters on some lining paper for them to colour in and that was a success too – they do both really enjoy arty stuff but I often can’t face the mess so refrain from doing it – which is probably not fair really. We’ll get Halloween over with and make a start on some home made Christmas cards for the lists (assuming that’s happening again), we already have our family cards planned – last year we got a really nice shot of them both with Father Christmas (from work’s grotto) and had it made into cards, this year we are getting some festive dressing up clothes (and I notice in the Wilkingsons leaflet posted through the door with the freebie paper last night they are doing Mr and Mrs Christmas for 2 quid each in their sizes!) and Ady will get a nice shot of them both for the cards. Costco do them for 40 for a tenner (although you do have to sit and put all the photos in yourself!) so that’s generally all the cards sorted for 20quid except the posh family ones. Cos I worked in Clinton Cards for a couple of years I have the reputation in our family for always choosing and sending really nice cards which is a bit of a bugger now they have reached the £6 each mark – don’t think we will be quite so extreme with our personal card selection this year somehow!

Anyway, I once again moved far away from my subject matter there! I have been getting a bit uneasy of late reading the blogs of same age as Davies children who are making great leaps and bounds in their reading, writing and maths. He can quite reliably write his name, with me reminding him of each letter and he can recognise most of the alphabet and tell me a word beginning with that letter – but I think that is more a good memory than any sort of understanding of how each letter sounds. Maths is something we have done very little on – he can count to 12 no problem, is aware of up to 20 but often wobbles in the teens and can count alongside me well up to 100 with joining in the whatever -one, whatever-two but would not be able to do it alone. I did print and laminate numbers for each step up the stairs which started well but became more of a game for Scarlett to pull them off and hide them so that sort of fell flat. I guess having a nearly two year old in the house does not complement a quiet and calm learning experience type environment! I’m not worried in terms of whether he will get ‘behind’ really, mainly cos he would only have started pre-school anyway being a September baby so he would not be learning anything much yet even if he was ‘in the system’ it’s more that I feel he has the ability to be doing it and perhaps isn’t getting the chance. Both my children seem a bit oblivious to the fact that are different ages and kind of compare themselves with each other – which for Scarlett means she has high standards but for Davies is a bit limiting!

I do have the resources here in the house for starting letter and number work – plenty of workbooks, several of the Letterland books, a couple of CDRoms for the computer about shapes, numbers, colours and letters but he does like to do them ‘with me’ which means we either put up with Scarlett trying to grab the pencil off him or run off with the cordless computer mouse, or I try to engage her in something distracting before we start – which is only usually possible if I give her mess-making activities to do 🙂


Anyway, too much dwelling on stuff going on here, don’t know what time this post will show as as I started it in the early hours of this morning before I went to bed and am finishing it now on Wednesday morning when I really should be doing something educational and constructive with the small people – so I’m off!

a quick ps to add I have started Toddler Taming again and hurrah for Chris Green I feel like the mother of a totally normal child again instead of feeling I had spawned an imp of darkness. Just need to work on that whole ‘children need consistancy from their main caregiver’ thing now!