Ever get the feeling…?

you watch too much kids TV? Today I found myself getting all offended and affronted by the fact that the new babies on Dora are way too advanced for their age. They can’t talk and they still eat baby food but they are able to row a boat, oh and of course, courtesy of their capes they can fly! Why Dora has not annoyed me before with its assorted talking, accessory wearing animals (does anyone actually know what sort of creature Tico is? and why he/she wears that odd waistcoat?) I am not sure but the whole baby thing did!

And is it a new Josie Jump in Balamory? Julie reckoned it was last week (we saw a bit on BBC2 does Cbeebies!) but after much debate we decided we were imagining it until today Mel said ‘and it’s a new Josie Jump!’….hmmm…

On the upside I don’t watch any soaps so I guess between Auntie Mabel’s jaunts to ‘through the round window’ type places in her spotted plane and the insiders peep into life on a remote scottish isle from Balamory (why is no one married? who do all the children who attend the nursery belong to? Why is Miss Hooley called Miss Hooley but everyone else is afforded a first name only – except for Penny and Susie and Eadie of course, oh and PC Plum, how would you find Archie in the phone book?) I am educating myself aswell as the kids!

why does my blog have more ‘nice’ s than your average episode of the Fast Show hmmm?

Just a quick mid afternoon blog to say what a nice day we are having so far today. This morning started with both kids arising at about 6.45am – yep that’s right folks Scarlett went through the night in the (now very correctly assembled, very prettily and expensively linened) bed. Up and dressed and ready to go just after 9am we went into Lancing for a few bits and pieces (Charity shop trawl but nothing there) and then on to the drive through car wash to removed a weeks worth of Dorset dirt from the car. Salty sea air, mud, rain, wind and the couple of hundred miles done meant it was less a sparkly white Sharan than more like one of those white vans people feel obliged to write ‘clean me’ in the dirt or other such witty comments like ‘i wish my girlfriend was as dirty as this car’. The kids love the car wash so that was all good fun.

The other big news I forgot to blog is that we took delivery of a Vax over the weekend. Don’t actually know how we have managed nearly 2 years with Scarlett without one to be honest. All the sudocremed, hair conditionered, benetint blusher and various other Scarlett created patched on the carpets have been washed and sucked out of the floor and poured down the sink with the (very very) dirty water – the shame! The car is due a vax over the weekend methinks!

So back home and a small housewife moment where I got another load of washing on and draped one around the house to dry, peeled and chopped veg to get a beef stew cooking for dinner and made a mountain of sandwiches for lunch. Mel and her two children L and L came round for the afternoon to play. I met Mel on NetMums – a website with a local meet a mum section. Her son is 5 in January – so a fair bit older than Davies but they get on really well and her daughter is a month younger than Scarlett.

Sandwiches were largely ingorned in favour of wotsits so have just been chucked out of the window for the birds but otherwise a very good afternoon. Mel is really nice, we don’t have loads in common but enough to chat for a couple of hours, Davies and L disappeared upstairs, have made surprisingly little mess and played really really well for the whole time with no fussing or fighting or grown up intervention required. It’s so nice for Davies to have a real friend who is not just the offspring of someone I am friends with, or someone who is not really his age or is only mixing with us cos they are HE too (important but not enough for them to bond yet at this age). Liam is at school mornings and starts full time after Christmas so I don’t know how long it will last or how we co-ordinate it after that but it’s nice for now anyway.

Scarlett seemed to realise that she wasn’t playing with Davies suddenly and got all bossy and powerful with L downstairs. She was not being nasty as such but she was quite physical with her, pulling her around a bit to try and get her to do what she wanted. L didn’t react too well to this but as she goes to nursery two days a week and Mel said it was the first time she had ever seen L pushed around and seemed quite unworried about it we decided to pretty much leave them to it and let them sort themselves out.

They are now both playing on their own really nicely – Davies is up in his room playing with a trainset that him and L set up and Scarlett is sitting on the lounge floor playing with her puzzles.

I have made a real decision during the holiday that I need to modify my behaviour with the children a bit. I am in a real cycle of just screaming at them and aside from the fact I hate viewing myself as a yelling old nag it doesn’t work anyway – Davies just flinches and looks really scared (and I don’t want to really scare him) and Scarlett is so used to it she is oblivious. I need to find some more constructive way of disciplining them and break the cycle so that we enjoy our time together rather than me resenting them for disturbing me from everything I try and do and them just having to put up with a shouty mummy all the time. There must be some sort of balance whereby I dedicate some time to them both every day but also get a bit of uninterupted time to myself when I *need* it – whether its sorting the dirty washing into piles without it being unsorted behind me or having ten minutes to drink a cup of tea and read my magazine.

I have a brimming bookshelf with parenting manuals which I once read and then forgot about so I am about to dust off Toddler Taming and see what the local library has too in the way of books – I think I just need to take a step back and calm down a bit – which last week really helped me to do and I want to make use of to move forward in a positive manner – maybe then I can get my head round doing something workwise too. I have also signed up for a free course on becoming a web entrepreneur which will give me something to set my mind to and maybe even lead to a feasible business idea too.

Who gave that man a screwdriver?

Now it’s not often I’ll blog ranting about Ady – he is generally an all round top bloke / love of my life / fantastic father etc etc etc….but, frankly he should stick to his pinny and leave the tool belt to others. We all have strengths in different areas, some men are a dab hand with all things DIY and others, well they really should just get someone in who knows what they are doing with the power tools. It doesn’t make them any less of a man, infact the real strength is in knowing when a task is beyond you!

So yesterday the ‘project of the day’ was to put together the new bed for Scarlett, buy a mattress and some bedding for it, get in some food shopping and entertain my parents for dinner in the evening. Davies woke up again and was sick which sort of dampened the day – he was sick again later in the day but then seemed to perk up and even ate some dinner – he’s been fine today so clearly just a bug of some sort which did its thing and was gone again!

So Ady dug out the bolts my Dad had managed to get to fit the bed (we hoped!) and realised they needed some ‘modification’ to get them to fit. I went off to buy a mattress, came back for lunch and then went off again to Tescos to get some food shopping and bedding (they were sold out so she’s ended up with some rather expensive but really very pretty Tinkerbell bedding from M&S which is next door to Tescos!) and when I got back Ady entered her bedroom armed with a hammer, the toolbox and every swear word he knows! Admittedly his cause was probably not much helped by me taking a phone call from Rachel halfway through and allowing the small people in to ‘help’ him but after nearly two hours and a shouting match I went in to reassemble everything else in the room in a layout to accomodate the rest of the furniture and make up the bed – only to find he had made the bed upside down! So I redid it and was still barking orders to get the kids in their pyjamas, get them washed, and DON’T FORGET THEIR TEETH! etc when my parents arrived thrilled to find the ‘happiest couple we know’ in the middle of a slight domestic!

All sorted in the end and she spent at least the first half of her first night snugly tucked up in her new bed – which she adores! More for jumping on and pointing at and saying ‘mine’ it has to be said than for actually sleeping in but at least no tears have been shed for the end of the cot (except by us as the very end of having a ‘baby’ in the house – sniff!), and a nice evening with my parents ending with me falling asleep on the sofa by 10.30pm!

Today we woke late as a result of being awake for lots of the night with Scarlett who came into our bed at about 3am. Ady spent at least an hour sleeping with one leg out of the bed as he thought she was lying across him and didn’t want to stir incase it woke her – he suddenly realised it was not her lying on him but her dolly 🙂

We spent most of the day at Chris and Julies with the kids playing in the garden and doing an autumnal sticking session with some leaves and other assorted pine cones and bits we had collected last week. The grown ups did some chatting, tea drinking, piss taking of each other (always nice when you know people enough to do that I think!) and Julie and I did some colouring in in the kids bumper colouring books after they had abandoned them. We do that a lot and both find it very enjoyable – infact its quite competitive to see who can achieve the best arty effects with blending and colour shading – all using the broken crayola and ELC chunky crayons they have in an empty ice cream tub!

Home again via McDonalds drive thru for the kids tea (Davies asked the man at the drive thru window if he was lovin’ it? hilarious!), bath and bed for them, roast pork and ITV2 reruns of X Factor for us.

This week is looking like a busy one with at least one thing planned every day – some HE related, some not and of course we have the Halloween party next Sunday which I want to make some decorations and party food with the kids for in advance too.

Yoo-hoo, we’re back!!!!

Below you will find the ‘you knew they were coming, after all we’ve been away for a whole seven days and Ady was there with his camera, his children and rugged coastal scenery to capture’ load of photos! and a day by day account that I sat and did on word each evening in an attempt to decieve myself that I was still in touch with the world via my blog! Feel free to bypass both as they are fairly lengthy!

So I won’t go into any further detail about the week – we had a fab time, it was relaxing, bracing and invigorating. The cottage was lovely, the scenery was amazing, the sea and sky and stars were awe inspiring, it was lovely to spend quality time with Chris and Julie, especially the child free evenings, Davies and Scarlett loved the adventure of seaside trips every day and being allowed and even encouraged to splash in the sea and the puddles, I totally relaxed most evenings with wine, nice food and conversation instead of being on an IV drip to my laptop (no mobile phone signal so no calls, no texts and no chance of a blue tooth hook up to get online!). In short I am currently enjoying a sense of wellbeing 🙂

The journey home today was uneventful, the house and the cats are all still standing depspite our absense, Dad has even managed to repaint our bathroom (it looks really nice and way brighter and airy-er) and refloor our kitchen (looks better, is so much more hygenic and lifts the small room too). No scary post to return to, Scarlett seems better now her cold has come out and although Davies just threw up everywhere before he went to sleep I am more convinced its excitement, two and a half hours in a car, eating too much tea followed by a bath, followed by running around than anything more sinister or bug like!

Off now to finish unpacking, phone for a takeaway before starting to trawl round the blog ring – I have peeked at Caroline’s (its the one after me!) and read the fab news about growing wellboots tribe and realised there may be even more monumentous news to follow from others so stopped there in order to savour catching up on what everyone’s been up to in our absense!

Goddard’s Do Dorset!

Thursday

A really nice end to a lovely week. Ady took the day off and we decided to do our own thing for the day with the intention of meeting up with Chris later to go round the floodlit gardens. Jack was not feeling well so they decided to stay in anyway. Scarlett finally went down with the cold she had been fighting all week so was snotty but happier J. We went back to Lyme Regis as our favoured place of the trip but it was so blustery that Scarlett flatly refused to get out of the car, Davies loved being blown all about but it was quite tiring, as a final blast we then went back to West Bay and spent a totally hysterical ten minutes trying to stand up in extreme wind conditions! We gave up and went back to being grown ups again when the kids started to get whipped by the tiny stones the wind was blowing up and Scarlett’s hair stuck to the snot on her face J

We then drove to the Gardens and found Chris and Julie’s car in the carpark. Davies and Scarlett walked the whole way round the gardens holding hands which was just totally cute – and also enabled me and Ady to do the same – a rare pleasure indeed! Just as we were ending a circle of the gardens Davies found Jack – huge delight all round from the kids! So we all walked round again together. We then went back to the cottage for the kids tea and to put on our beef in red wine before heading back to the gardens again as it got dark. Chris decided not to join us after all so the four of us had a lovely hour in the dark walking round the gardens lit with coloured floodlights and candle torches – it was beautiful, magical and the children adored it. We went back via the shop and discovered that Tarly had her wellies on the wrong feet and had done all the way round!

The kids both fell asleep as soon as we got back, Chris came over for a bit, then Julie did and we drank red wine and thoroughly enjoyed our beef in red wine – the perfect evening to end a lovely week.

Wednesday

Probably the only real ‘disappointing day’ of the week really. Julie had come over for wine and chats last night and we had decided to go to West Bay beach in the morning, eat picnic lunch there and hopefully be joined by Ady in the afternoon (he was off to Bristol in the morning). From there we were all going to Abbotsbury Sub tropical gardens to let the kids have a wander round, before Julie took the twins home and we fed ours in their café before walking round the gardens again after dark for the Floodlit and Candle event which sounded really magical.

Ady duly left fairly early and the kids and I wandered over to Chris and Julie’s cottage with our picnic packed to find they had changed their minds and were off to Bridport for some shopping and wanted to meet up later at West Bay. This was the point I should have sent a text to Sarah and packed me and the kids up and off to the recommended Crealy Adventure Park for a nice day out…. But I didn’t and we went back to our cottage and ate our picnic infront of the TV while I tried to read a couple of the books in the cottage bookcase and gave them all up as either too heavy, too religious or too difficult to follow the plot of with two children constantly demanding attention! I ended up with a Mills and Boon (Oh the shame!) which I also cast aside as too predictable and too erm, well just too!

We then set off to meet Chris and Julie at West Bay. Me and the kids had a great hour, all wellied up we went right down to the sea and played chase the waves, did a bit of HE about how the waves washed away my smiley faces from the sand, and our footprints and smaller stones but not the bigger ones, then we did some digging for fossils in the pebbles followed by some Mummy instigated serious puddle splashing (hey, I’ve not worn wellies for years I wanted to have some fun in mine too!) which was all most enjoyable. We were then all so soggy we needed to go straight back to the cottage for warm dry clothes and that was the sum total of our day really. Jack and Maisie are of a less adventurous nature than Davies and Scarlett and had not liked the sea or the pebbles so had stayed right up near the car with Chris and Julie, (and were not allowed to splash in the puddles as much as us either so they didn’t really enjoy it that much L ).

Ady was very late home so in order to recover from being multiple personality mummy (leaping in puddles and actively encouraging splashing to screaming at them for interrupting me and my Mills and Boon – consistent parenting? I think not!) once the kids were asleep I shot into Bridport to Safeways where I stocked up on wine, magazines, a hairbrush (yes I had forgotten to pack one and managed without til that point – I like to think of my look as dishevelled! ) and some clotted cream (a must in Dorset!) which calmed me down nicely!

Tuesday

No real plans made for today until this morning. There are three attractions in Abbottsbury (very nearby town / village) which the leaflets promise joint discounts on. There is a Swannery (which would have limited time appeal but probably be quite impressive if we caught mass feeding time at midday), a children’s farm and some tropical gardens. The gardens start a floodlit and candles after dark event from tomorrow til Christmas which we want to go to, so we thought we’d brave the rain to do the children’s farm this morning. Ady set off to Taunton with the intention of returning after just the one store today so I left a note for him to come and find us there and off we set. My two clad in their waterprood trousers and wellies over their clothes. We arrived to find the children’s farm is only open weekends during winter time so gave that up and drove back the other way to Lyme Regis (famed for fossil and other dinosaur finds) which is a very quaint and picturesque little town on the sea. Ady joined us there and we ate our picnic on the beach, the weather had improved (naturally, my children are always either under or over dressed so it seems!) so we thought we’d make use of their waterproofness and let them have a play right on the shore. Chris and Julie did start to join us but had some sort of domestic and stalked back to their car not talking to each other (quite a regular occurance and one which we have very quickly learned is best ignored and allowed to pass unmentioned!). Lyme Regis is a lovely beach and postcard type view so Ady got busy with his camera, the kids had a great time running into the sea and back out again and we walked slowly back to our car.

Ady and Chris have now indeed gone off to West Bay for a spot of fossil finding, we were going to stay at Julie’s cottage but Davies wanted to watch Thomas again and I wanted to do some more baking (we got this organic fruit and veg box which needs using up!) so we are back at our cottage now sitting watching the sun begin to descent over the sea. It’s one of those places in the world where you can’t help but be inspired into creativity – drawing, painting, novel writing, poetry – whatever your thing is you found find the vast expanse of sea, sky and rugged beauty moving enough to get the creative juices flowing round here.

Not sure what is planned for the rest of the week – we definitely want to do the floodlit gardens tomorrow evening and Ady will probably take Thursday off so we are considering Monkey World in Weymouth as a possible day out venue, although as Chris and Julie are not so keen it may be a trip we make just the four of us while they do their own thing.

So far it’s been a lovely few days, the scenery is beautiful, the cottage is ideal, the weather has totally been on our side and although I am really missing my computer and mobile phone having a signal it really has been a switching off from everything, relaxing, runaway from all the crap week. I have enjoyed being with the children (although there have been shouty moments they have been fewer than usual) and the fresh air and exercise have been a bracing and worthy feeling inducing break from the norm too… maybe I need to apply to the Dorset tourist board for a post extolling the virtues of the place as an off season break location J

Monday

Ady set off this morning at about 8.30am with great intentions of returning at around lunchtime – which considering he was going to Wales was always either ambitious or foolish – in the end due to traffic he didn’t actually get back till gone 6.30pm! I had a lovely hour or so in the morning with the kids – we all sat on the sofa, with them snuggled up eating cereal and me reading the Sunday Times Magazines bits from yesterday. We eventually roused ourselves to go over to Chris and Julie’s cottage where Chris suggested a trade off of me and Julie going shopping so that he and Ady could go fossil hunting over the next couple of days. We left Davies and Jack with Chris – they watched Thomas dvd and wandered around the garden, while Julie and I took Scarlett and Maisie back into Bridport. We had a nice couple of hours being ‘four ladies’ together while picking up various bits and pieces we had forgotten to pack / weather meant were needed / stuff for lunch and dinner. We got back and split up again – my two had some lunch and some playing until they came back over to our cottage about 3.30 with scones, jam and cream for tea.

Having hovered up the mess that only four small children and three big ones can make with scones, cream and jam I got a beef stew cooking for dinner and pottered around being (and even shock, horror actually really enjoying) all housewifey! I washed up, dried up and put away, tidied the fridge into date order dinners, fed the kids and bathed them before Ady arrived just as I was starting to worry about him a bit. We then wrestled the smalls into bed and enjoyed our beef stew and top Monday night TV (Buzzcocks, Room 101 and Early Doors). An early night for me which was scuppered by Scarlett waking soon after I retired and a night of musical beds followed. Me, Ady and Scarlett in our bed, at least two awake at any one time, followed by me in Scarlett’s bed cos she had woken Davies up, followed by him deciding he wanted Ady after all meant although I woke back up in my own bed in the morning I was on the wrong side of it with Scarlett sleeping where I should be!

Sunday

A much better night last night with both kids asleep much earlier and one small incident of a wandering round the hall wondering where the hell she was Scarlett at about 5.30am but she was persuaded to come into our bed and snuggled back down to sleep. Ady got up (again) and we had a cooked breakfast of sausage, egg, bacon and toast before baths all round and then off to the dinosaur museum in Dorchester. I had a pretty shouty moment before we went out. Davies and Scarlett were quite specifically dressed for going out for the day (i.e. not in old raggy clothes which I am quite happy for them to get wet and muddy in) and round the back of our cottage is a path covered with slimy moss. The path leading away from the cottage is also covered in fallen wet autumn leaves and is very steep. I am not a particularly over cautious mother but I don’t really want to acquaint myself with Dorset A&E either so I told the children they had to either play on the (vast) lawn infront of the cottage which is a) damp rather than sodden and not dirty if fallen on and b) unlikely to result in serious injury. I shouted at least twice before simply grabbing Scarlett and putting her back in the house as she just ignored me. I perhaps imagined the other grown ups raising eyebrows and exchanging looks or maybe I am just paranoid but we set off shortly afterwards!

The Dinosaur museum was quite good, not very cheap really as Davies being 4+ was payable for. There were quiz sheets on offer which under different circumstances he would probably have been more than happy to work on with me with but he did demonstrate his excellent general knowledge on all things dinosaur and Tarly enjoyed running round making dino ‘roarhhhhh’ noises too. Chris and Julie had spotted a play park (playground) along the way that they thought the twins would enjoy but we decided to make more of the fact we were away from home and drove on into Weymouth. I have happy memories of a long weekend spent in Weymouth (long before Ady’s time) so it was lovely – not to mention a little odd to be trailing round them with my husband and two children – to revisit some old haunts. There was motorbike racing along the sandy beach going on so we bought chips and went down on the front to watch that before coming back to the cottages via Chessil Beach.

We were only on the beach for about half an hour but we played chase the tide and managed to get none of us wet which was a result! The kids (and us actually) love playing with the sea and pebble collecting and simply enjoying nature and the vast expanse of sea and sky and weather, so that was a lovely half hour. We got back and went to Chris and Julie’s cottage for a cup of tea and a play. I came back to our cottage to get dinner on (organic roast lamb from the farm here) and peg out another load of washing. Kids were both asleep by 7.30 and Chris has just left following his joining us for dinner and deep conversations about him and Ady’s parents, us as parents and people, their sister and her death, religion, home education and various other light topics!

Ady is back to work tomorrow although he plans to do short days all week so me and the kids will go to C&Js cottage when he has left for work with our Dorset attractions leaflets and start to plan the rest of the weeks activities.

Saturday

A really nice day today combining all my most favourite things: (in no particular order)
Shopping;
Curry and wine;
Talking with Julie;
Being nice to my children (!);
A few child free hours;
Bracing walk in inclement weather conditions;
Plenty of tea;
Home baked bread fresh from the breadmaker lavishly spread with real butter;
Being with my family;
Beaches off season… and more.

Started after a very very very very poor night with Tarly (she woke at midnight and went back to sleep at about 4.30am) but as the sky was filled with stars and Ady and I were in good ‘holiday’ humour we just kind of all stayed in our bed giggling at each other and marvelling at the night sky. Ady got up first and put the immersion on for a bath, put bread in the breadmaker, made tea and real coffee. Julie and I went off into Bridport for a couple of very nice (and hand crippling from too many carrier bags!) shopping – nothing exotic just some health food finds (Green and Blacks Hot chocolate mix, mmmm), pound shops for some pressies for the kids and some bread maker mixes for the cottage breadmaker, but as ever it was a real treat to walk round the shops unencumbered by pushchairs (although they would have been handy for loading up with the bags!), toddlers and people asking to be carried!

We got back in time to put wellies on the four children and trek down to the beach for a walk. The intention was to wander along the shore for a bit before having tea and cakes in the beachside café, but the walk down to the beach was slightly more involved than anticipated with treks through muddy fields and over styles/ stiles before finally reaching the sea. It rained and we tried to take cover under some bushed which deeply offended the children so we carried on! We went down to the sea collecting interesting stones as we went (pockets and washing machine full of interesting stones already by day two!) and I took our two right down to the sea to play running away from the tide – a great favourite of mine in my early teenage years! Due to a freak wave incident (Julie went so far as to christen it a tsumani but perhaps that was going a bit too far!) Davies, Scarlett and Maisie all got knocked over by a wave, I got soaked to the knees, as did Julie and the whole seaside trip was cut short as we had to trek back to the cottages to dry off! Don’t wellies with half a pint of seawater in make a great squelchy noise?!

Kids dried off okay and playing with pound shop loot very happily Ady proudly pulled his second attempt at a loaf from the breadmaker and Scarlett was asleep by 6.30, Davies is still going strong from his makeshift bed on the sofa being distracted by us laughting at Busted getting the Ant and Dec treatment (I HATE Busted, they make me so cross, they really need to go and work on the tills at Tesco or something and get a taste of what real life is about!). Curry is a cooking and nearly three glasses of wine down I love the world and his wife!

Friday

We’ve run away! High drama first thing when Julie rang to say Chris was ill (he’s got tonsillitis) and she didn’t know whether they would be coming or not. It totally threw me out and my last minute packing was a mess as a result. Me and the kids left pretty much on schedule anyway before 10am with lots of frantic handsfree phonecalls between me, Julie, Ady and Chris. Tarly slept most of the way and Davies was really, really good. We listened to all sorts of ‘Music to watch girls by’ type music and a bit of Will Young and he was a star, singing along and really enjoying it – he didn’t ask for Peter Pan once! We stopped at about midday to fill up with petrol for the car and crisps and chocolate for me and the kids. We managed to find the coast of West Bexington by pure chance and spent a happy half hour splashing in puddles before going to THE most stereotypical seaside café in the world ever! It sold everything including fishing tackle and seaside type paraphernalia such as buckets and spades and inflatable beach balls and things for the holiday cottage trade like individual jaffa cakes, washing powder and tea bags. The woman who runs it was straight out of a sit com on 1950s Britain and it was just generally fab! We had tea and shortbread for me and juice for the kids and charmed the other couple who seemed to have also happened upon the café into talking to us. It really did feel like one of those novels where a woman and her two children just run away from society – everything from the offpeak beachside location to the steamy windowed serving tea in mugs café to the deserted beach complete with lone bloke walking his dog! Infact I kept mentioning how ‘Daddy will be here later’ to the children just to make it real that we hadn’t run away!

Just before 3pm both children had splashed in puddles over the tops of their wellies (resulting in having to take them off to literally pour the collected water out of them!) so I decided to find the cottages and get in and unpack. We found it no problem and were taken to our cottage and shown round. I then left the kids in the cottage while I went backwards and forwards four times with a wheelbarrow up and down the steep path with all our stuff and then they ‘helped’ me unpack it all so that by the time Ady arrived an hour or so later we were totally settled in. The cottage feels so like home, it’s small and a little tatty round the edges but it feels like you are staying at the home of a really hospitable old friend. It is decorated in chintzy floral curtains and cushions and rugs, there is an oil burning stove providing heat and hot water, kids are in one bedroom with a single bed and bunk beds (neither of them are brave enough for the top bunk and it is Scarlett’s first time in a bed anyway), our room is very small but cosy, the bathroom is all there but snug in proportion and the living area is long and thin with a kitchen area and dining table at one end and sofas and TV at the other. The gardens are fab with rabbits on the lawns, washing lines strung up and fresh herbs growing ready to swipe for cooking.

Chris and Julie and the twins arrived a bit after Ady to stay in the cottage next door which is along similar lines. The kids took forever to settle to sleep especially as I did it alone while Ady went to Bridport to get some food shopping in. Glad to be here, glad Chris and Julie made it and the cottage is just ideal for the relaxing and switching off type week I am craving.

Blogger did it again – wordpress is looking more likely by the day!

Did a big old post late last night and it came back as server not found and then the whole thing just got lost off in cyberspace somewhere…:-(

Anyway, it was along the lines of:

Signing off for a while for the Dorset trip. Sure I have packed my laptop and the blue tooth thingy doobry wotsit connector thing but that is only for downloading pictures and playing games and the blue tooth thing is just in the bag anyway, I have no intention of hooking up at ridiculous dial up speed and cost to a mobile phone to blog or check the blog ring, really I don’t!

Had a pretty good day yesterday at Julie’s. I had taken along some Halloween craft ideas but was thinking more of Davies’ age and ability than Scarlett and the twins so tbh it was more of a mess with potato, hand and finger printing mixing the orange and black paints together than a fest of pumpkin, bat and witch related art but hey, they all enjoyed it anyway! Julie and I did some holiday chatting and tea drinking – all very nice. I also took over the Opitech and Baker Ross catalogues which I am going to bring with me today so we can cobble together a bulk order to share between us on the basis that Julie cannot call herself a ‘real home educator’ until she can tick off pretty much all of the following:

  • at least £100 combined first orders of crafty stuff from schools catalogues
  • Hama bead selection purchased, dropped by either you or the children and ages spent collecting them up (and in my case colour sorting them too!)
  • a laminator either bought, borrowed or coveted;


Then we came home and Ady had already beaten us home which meant I was able to fly up to Sainsburys for some cupboard supplies for the week, then back to the vets with Malice for her checkup (she’s fine!) and home again to help put small people to bed before packing up for the week. Well that was the theory. It all went well up till getting Scarlett to sleep when Rachel rang in the middle of it so she was a bit later to bed, hence packing, bath and bed were all a bit later too – but they all got done and Ady has gone off to work with a loaded up car and my very loaded up car is sat waiting for me and the kids to lever ourselves in and set off within the next hour or so.

So Rachel – Merry look away now…


She gave birth to a baby girl in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Amber Nicole, just 1/2 oz off 8lb. But it did take two failed ventouse attempts, an episiotomy, forceps, a tear and too many stitches to count to liberate her into the world…..ouch!
Rachel is fine, very tired (naturally, and good practise for what’s to come 🙂 ) and delighted with her girl (she really, really wanted a boy and was upset at the 20 week scan when she asked the sex) who she said is ‘just perfect’. I’m really pleased for her, really sympathetic about all the stitching and sad that I won’t get to see them until we get back and by then Amber won’t be a ‘new born’ anymore!

So a better end to my crappy week, I have already arranged four meet ups with people for the week we get back, I know that my entire days conversation being 75% shouting at children, 20% being nice to or reading to or answering questions to the same children and 5% very tired talk to Ady along the lines of ‘who’s doing dinner’, ‘can you pour me a wine’, ‘who is having first bath?’ and the classic ‘it’s your turn, I got up last night’. is not for me. I have been longing to put on a suit, wave goodbye to the children for a whole 8 hours and go to a workplace, any workplace, get a paycheque and feel worthwhile again this week. Hopefully some adult conversation and other children for the kids to run around with will make those odd (well they are odd aren’t they, longing to be at work surely?) feeling disappear again. I want to enjoy being there for the children and have them be a credit to me, but I don’t want to put on their heads the burden of making my whole life a worthwhile one – that’s not fair on them or me, I need to get my self worth some other way too.

So off to Dorset for what could be either a bracing, refreshing and relaxing week or a muddy, wet and damp experience!!

Argh, bloody blogger ate my post 🙁

Well I had been talking about how digging our your ‘How To’ manual on Ark building and finding a matching animal to yourself was in order here in Sussex today. Last night saw an okay end to a pretty crappy day. After my grey post we walked round to the shops , did some cutting and sticking, did some train track building, did some colouring oh and I shouted loads at the children (and sometimes it was even justified instead of random and irrational). By about 3pm even Ady decided I had had enough of them and started to make his way home – sadly he got caught up in a serious traffic jam trying to get onto the M25 and actually walked in after 8pm but that’s another story!

I had wrestled Scarlett to bed and was trying to convince Davies that after all the screaming I had done at him all day wouldn’t it be better if I just went downstairs and drank wine while he went to sleep when my parents arrived with Malice (who they had had to collect from the vets for me) so he ended up coming back downstairs again. He has been saying ‘No – ah’ all weekend instead of No which was really annoying me so when he said it again I went and dug out a bible story book on Noah and the Ark and read it to him to show him who Noah is/was/might have been. And aside from a brief one hour window this morning it has not actually stopped raining here ever since! He was then read the story by Dad, then Mum then Ady arrived home and took him back up to bed to read it again.

Mum and Dad ended up staying for dinner which was all quite pleasant. Malice now has one remaining tooth to her name but is otherwise fine.

So this morning after yet another crap night with Scarlett (she told Ady her tooth was sore this morning so I am guessing she has a biggie at the back coming through which is causing all her early hour restlessness) this morning we walked to the library to take some twice renewed books back and got a haul from the removed for sale section as follows:

Ecosystems and Environment
A Taste of Britain (excellent book this with all British dishes, the history of them and the recipes)
Musical Instruments
Brass (about musical instruments)
Focus on China (all about the place, the people and the culture)
Spring Festivals
Mouths
It’s Science – Water
Usborne book of Acting and Theatre
Which guide to children’s health
Cameras

all for the bargain price of £3.90.

On the way home we decided to have hot chocolate and toasted teacakes for lunch and Dad arrived just as I was toasting and boiling milk so he stayed too and played with the kids for a while. I am still feeling a bit grey but tomorrow we are at Julies making Halloween crafts (which I need to get my arse in gear and assemble ready to take over there!) and Friday we are off so I guess the clouds are about to part…

It’s all grey 🙁

My frame of mind, the weather, the finances, the children’s ability to play nicely or without constant supervision, the amount of sleep I’ve not had and finally whatever the next few months brings….

Self pitying whine ahead, you may want to hit next right now and go see what cheerier stuff Wellyboots have been doing instead really!

A truly crappy night with Scarlett who woke around midnight, came into our bed and kept us awake til at least 4am – whereupon I drifted off for a couple of hours but Ady dealt with another nosebleed and Scarlett making a break for it into our bathroom – argh that child! Davies is very proud of the fact that he knows what to do with his nosebleeds himself – he pinches his nose and says that now they are only a little bit scary…

Malice is at the vets having her teeth sorted – more money we can’t afford and a poor little cat who is too old for such shenanigans really 🙁

The weather is just miserable. Now I actually like the winter, I like cold rather than hot, I like darker nights and mornings, I like wearing warm socks and jumpers, I like puddle splashing and so on. I like the colours of autumn and the excitement of Christmas and my birthday (well I did as a child obviously – being born within 2 weeks of Christmas as a child means all you have to look forward to is the winter really!), I like crackling real fires, rain drumming on the window while you sit watching old films and eating crumpets…. well I would if the children weren’t mithering me every few minutes with a constant round of ‘I want’s’ ‘Tarly’s annoying my game’ ‘mummm meeee’ and so on. There is washing backing up that I can’t get dry, the house is a midden as we are spending too much time in it getting stuff out to play with and entertain us then leaving it abandoned on the floor as it has failed in its mission, and well, basically its all grey.

We have been living off an endowment payout since we moved home and I stopped working and I am very aware that it is dwindling and will last about 4 months only now – and that doesn’t include the cost of Christmas. We have not been careful with it and are probably still in denial about our finances really. We both thought that by the time it ran out something else would have turned up and erm, well it hasn’t. I have had one business idea which came to nothing as I simply cannot make the professional phonecalls it would take to get it off the ground on a monthly basis with the kids in the background. I have a couple of other ideas which would require some sort of capital and as we are all too likely to be needing to go to a bank in the new year and sort ourselves out once and for all now is not the time to start borrowing money for a possible business venture.

This is the longest period I have ever not worked for. I worked full time until I had Davies, part time ever since with a very brief couple of months of nothing just after we moved to Manchester. We have been home since May now and I am really starting to lose confidence in myself to be able to juggle HE and working anyway, wandering what on earth I think I could offer someone with all the other committments I have with the children and of course as its a grey day wandering also whether I am doing the children any favours with trying to HE them in the first place. In short I am feeling sorry for myself and a bit redundant really.

Three days till we go away for a week and there is no point in doing much before then really. I think I might try and plan in some stuff to work on when we get back, then go off and enjoy the week away and come back in a better frame of mind and with renewed hope of starting something which fulfils me and brings in a bit of money too…

Today we have been mostly playing at home…

I havn’t even been on my oncooter much (Davies’ word for the computer).

First thing (and as we were all up by 7 it really was by 9am – truly first thing!) we shot into town for a couple of hours. It was really pretty cold (even I would have worn gloves and I am a bit of a one for not even wearing a proper coat unless it is actually snowing!) so we rushed in and out of shops. I had a couple of things I actually wanted to get and a bit of browsing to get out of my system too! I wanted:

  • A copper bracelet. Ever since the London MP meet I have been suffering with a very painful wrist. I had put it down to having pulled it somehow whilst carrying Davies in that arm but three weeks later I am starting to realise it also co-ordinated with the change in the weather, three weeks is a long time for a sprain and as both my parents and three out of four of my grandparents suffer with arthritus it seems more probable that it is that. As a first resort I thought I’d get a copper bracelet and see if that had any impact – I’ve been wearing it for about 5 hours now and so far it is just annoying me!
  • Some stuff from ELC – almost nothing specific although I wanted some glue (as sticking is one of the crafty things I want to do this week) and some of the easy writers pencils I have seen talked about on MP group and some chunkier crayons for Scarlett who always just snaps the crayola ones we have got. I also wanted some alphabet beads as both littlies have shown interest in threading beads and I thought we could do some of that together.
  • some trainers for the kids. Brantano do kids trainers for a fiver. I have always been quite obsessive about ‘Clarkes only’ shoes for the kids except wellies and Davies always had a pair of their shoes and a pair of their trainers in winter, but to have £100 worth of shoes kicking around when they might only fit for a few weeks seems extortionate so I decided to stick with Clarks for the shoes and go for cheapo trainers as their back up shoes incase the others get wet etc (also Scarlett’s Clarks shoes are very pretty pink ankle boots which don’t go with some of the clothes she has like bright red tracksuit pants!). Brantano didn’t have either of their sizes at the weekend but Woollies came up trumps with fiver trainers for them both – hurrah!

We also came home with some felt and other bits from the fabric shop so I can make a Captain Hook to go with the Peter Pan I made for Davies last year (which also needs some repairs now I have needle and thread again – the previous ones have yet to be rediscovered after the move!)

I got the dinner on for tonight – beef stew – and as always seems to happen when I am distracted from the children for worthy reasons (instead of reading round the blogring or emailing Jim over the lyrics quiz) they sat like little angels and ate all their lunch. Davies then requested the wooden train track to play with instead of sticking, Scarlett did some rubbings (I got some chunky crayons and some embossing plastic textured sheets to rub with from ELC), we all had a play with threading the beads and then they had the choice of doing some sticking or some magic painting. The chance to have water won them over for magic painting so we all sat and did that for a bit. As ever although I fully expect Scarlett to just make a bit of a mess and be quite random about what she is doing I do get frustrated with Davies for not at least trying to make a bit more of an effort with painting. He got out a kit the other day of make your own planes someone had got him for his birthday which involved painting the bits of the planes with a little watercolour palette included with the kit then once the paint was dry assembling the bits together. I stayed with him for a bit but he was getting annoyed with me standing over him so I left him to it, only to come back and find he had abandoned any semblance of painting it properly, had mixed all six colours together into one big brown splodge and was daubing it everywhere without using the lines or patterns on the plane. I am probably a bit anal about colouring in the lines anyway, and as a child my paint sets were always kept immaculate with me wiping them to ensure the colours didn’t get all mixed up. I know that colour mixing is educational but I really think he has now proved to himself and everyone else that when you mix all the colours together you get brown. It ain’t gonna change, it ain’t gonna suddenly become purple, it’s time to move onto the next experiment or how’s this for an idea – USE THE BLOODY PAINTS PROPERLY!

So magic painting runs along similar lines. We all did some so I could show him how if you just brush water on one section at a time and rinse your brush each time and don’t simply waterlog the page and rub the brush all over it you end up with lots of colours all over the picture as opposed to a very weak brown everywhere. Nope he still appeared to not really get the hang of it and when I started to do a picture of a tower of blocks he lost interest and went off to get the blocks from the playroom to build with them instead. Scarlett was left with a brush and water – I reasoned she could do quite little damage with them and was to be found ‘painting’ herself with water which is fine.

So quite a bit of educational stuff going on, I’ve had a small amount of retail therapy, dinner is on, and we’ve done messy play – not a bad day really!

Top Weekend!

We have had a really nice weekendy type weekend. Cos Ady (and for many years me too!) have always worked at least every other weekend having two whole days off in a row is still a real novelty for us – the concept of ‘Friday night’ as the end of the working week is a really cool one.

Saturday
The day started early at 5am with Davies waking with another nosebleed – very freakily just as happened with the first one the other morning as Davies woke up and cried out Scarlett woke up crying too – their bedrooms are too far away from each other for them to actually wake each other up – very odd!
The car went into the garage for it’s MOT – we walked round Broadwater for a bit, bought Davies a hat, scarf and gloves from Woollies as he was cold – and I hadn’t bought him any for this winter yet, then a few books from the charity shops (there are at least four all in a row in Broadwater and they always have loads of books and kiddy toys), also some waterproof dungarees type trousers for Scarlett so now they both have a pair for the holiday, and this for Davies (couldn’t find a better link!) for the bargain price of £2.95. I was very reluctant as I *hate* Thomas and thought we would just be cluttering the place with yet more trashy plastic under the guise of being a ‘very useful engine’ but it is actually fab and has been played with for hours already!

We then walked to my parents to wait for the car to be ready. I have got a pedometer which I had managed to put on and reset so I got an accurate reading for the day – except for letting Davies wear it for a short time and as he makes more steps per mile than me that probably bumped up my daily total 🙂 We had a really nice day with my Dad and brother – who the kids adore. The car passed although the garage tried very hard to persuade us to have the exhaust done – it is apparantly ‘going – and will last three months at most’ – guess we’ll keep using it for the next three months then and payout the 200 quid for it then :-(. Then last night our friends Bruce and Jean came over for takeway indian and plenty of beers – a nice, silly night with me dancing round the kitchen doing a rap about curry while the others served it up (I had drunk rather a lot of wine on an empty stomach before the dinner arrived!) and watching part 2 of X factor while very loudly voicing our opinions on the contestants before an earlyish night for us all.

Sunday
I was up early with the kids (7am – yuck!) and we stayed in the playroom as Bruce and Jean were asleep in the lounge. Everyone was awake by 8.30am though and we sat around waking up with tea and toast watching the Thomas set again and marvelling at how clever it all was! Then Bruce and Jean left and we packed up a picnic and headed off to Amberley Museum where there was a vintage vehicle show going on. Chris, Julie, Jack and Maisie were there with Julie’s gran and aunt and cousin who are here visiting from Germany for a few days. We had a wander round, trekked up to the train platform and back down on the train, queued for AGES to get tea and cake before heading back to Chris and Julie’s for a couple of hours playing for the kids and tea drinking and chatting for the grown ups. Food and alcohol consumption was planned and discussed for the holiday next week and a nice time was had by all. A few photos follow below. Home for tea, bath and an early night for the kids (both asleep before 8pm – fab!) and roast dinner for us.

This week I have deliberately not planned much – Rachel is due to be induced on Tuesday so we probably won’t be seeing her this week, Malice has her teeth op at the vets on Tuesday and I have a stack of things I have been meaning to do with the kids for ages (crafty things mainly) which I really want to make a start on this week. I also have a few things on my own ‘to do list’ which I really, really want to get ticked off before we head off to Dorset next week so a busy ‘at home’ week planned instead of a busy ‘gallivanting about meeting up with friends’ is on the agenda for us.


My babies in their wellies (note Scarlett has got over her welly issue now she realises Boots the monkey wears them, also note the poncho!) Posted by Hello