Carb City 🙂

That’s where me and Ady are right now! Ady went to the chip shop for tea tonight and I have eaten chips, 2 x sausage in batter and two slices of white bread with real butter – oh and two rather large glasses of wine and a caramel pannacotta for dessert – am feeling fat, merry and lazy now – and Green Wing is about to start so this will be a quick (by my standards anyway) blog!

New friend Mel and her children Liam and Lily came over – it went well – we had a fair few parenting ideas in common and she was very interested in the whole idea of HE – no silly questions about socialisation and so on – just some genuine interest questions about approach, education content and so on. We didn’t actually arrange another get together but her DD was having a bit of a wobble at taking off Scarlett’s wellies and letting her toy pushchair and dollies go so the goodbyes were not as relaxed as they could have been. Scarlett was very good really considering it was the first time a child the same age as her has come round and wanted to play with all her toys – she was pretty tired by mid afternoon after a really crappy night last night and we heard ‘mine,mine’ a couple of times but if Lily was reduced to tears by not being allowed to play with the toys then Scarlett would not only give in and take it to her she would stroke her hair and try to comfort her – very caring my baby girl 🙂

Davies and Liam played quite well together – Liam is of a similar nature to Davies so after a couple of minor incidents to shake themselves into some sort of settling they took themselves off to Davies’ room for most of the afternoon and played ‘boy’s stuff’ together – which was nice.

Mum called round this afternoon for an hour or so just after tea which was nice – we are getting on better with my parents again at the moment – I think they are responding in a positive way to the ‘competition’ of us spending so much time with Chris and Julie. It would be fab if they were to take a more active role in the children and maybe even offer to babysit / entertain them / actually actively want to spend time with them on their own instead of the very occassional looking after them but it being a bit of a chore but quite frankly its their loss and if they expect to have any sort of close relationship with them when they are older then they probably should be putting in some ground work now – kids can be pretty discerning 🙂

Car in for MOT first thing tomorrow, which means we will have to roam Broadwater for an hour or so at least – loads of good charity shops and sometimes a Saturday car boot sale on the nearby green so weather permitting it might be quite nice. I have had one of those ‘the whole house is a midden and we need to renovate it all in the manner of those property doctor shows on UK Home and Leisure’ type days and have ‘plans’ for the kitchen and bathroom and hall which we may or may not get sorted this weekend depending on how long the car takes…

Off now to watch odd but strangely hilarious channel four show…

Back Pack, Back Pack…

Just been to the post office to collect the parcel and it is indeed the Dora birthday cake candle (very good and well priced) some Dora stickers (well they are just stickers really so not much to say about them!) and the Back Pack (it is quite small – much smaller than it ‘appeared’ on the website but is clearly BackPack and Scarlett will instantly recognise it and it has an integral Map. I probably wouldn’t have paid 15 quid for it if I’d seen it in a shop but she will love it!)

So a mid morning Scarlett’s reign of terror count – so far she has scribbled in black marker pen (it will wash out!) on the only changed after the kids went to bed last night sofa covers – we have two sets and I am always crap about ensuring the spare one is clean, but it was on this occassion – I have been meaning to change them for about 2 weeks as they were quite disgustingly chocolatey so in honour of new un-met before friends coming over this afternoon (you are never sure what level of slovenlyness other people live in, or indeed what they find acceptable in others are you?) we changed them last night. The arm of one now has black scribble adorning it. I think I might swap the sofas over so that it is nearer to the window and then make sure I sit down on that one first so it goes unnoticed 🙂

She also emptied the entire bottle of benefit blusher (the most expensive make up I own – wah!) this morning – luckily it was into my make up basket so I could rinse it off instead of onto the carpet.

On the plus side it is Friday today and I don’t seem to have been shrieking at the kids incessantly all week – infact I feel like we’ve had a really nice week. We didn’t go out too much, more because they were poorly but we’ve had three ‘social meetings’ with other children which have all been pretty smooth, and lots of spontaneous learning has happened. My Dad has promised to repaint our bathroom and refloor our kitchen which will do something about the two rooms we are least happy with in the house, we have cleared all our rubbish / stuff we don’t need anymore from the loft spaces and garage and tomorrow night our friends are coming over for curry and beers and watching X Factor! So all is well with the world!

Several things carried across to my job list for next week of course, but that’s more about not having time than actually avoiding them so I don’t feel too bad about that. Will blog later if this afternoon goes either really well or really badly!

my kids, gotta love ’em!

Scarlett (the smaller one who my dad thought was behind in her talking!) said her first sentence today ‘here you go Mummy, strawberry’. She was supervising Julie cutting the stalks off the strawberries and deciding who they would be for and taking them to them. There even appeared to be some sort of pattern to her decision making – she earmarked a specific one for me and told Julie it was ‘Mummy’s’ then brought it over to me and uttered her first sentence! Very emotional 🙂 She seems to be on a complete talking roll at the moment and spent ages tonight pointing to all her body parts and naming them – words I knew she knew the meaning of but didn’t know she could actually say – bless her.

Davies was also very funny tonight – I was putting away clean washing in our bedroom while he was (supposed to be) going to sleep – when Ady called me downstairs for something – when I went back up Davies did this little disguised voice (sort of a bit deeper) and said ‘Nic, Nic can you come into Davies’ bedroom please?’ hysterical!

We have had a nice day today – spent most of it at Julie’s and we drank tea and chatted about the upcoming holiday while the four children chased each other round in their wellies – the weather had been beautiful – really warm and clear blue skies (the washing even dried:-) ). Ady arrived for lunch as well which was a noce surprise for the kids – all four of them – favourite uncle and Daddy! After lunch Julie got out some crafty bits and pieces and the children made some pictures from sticking various things onto paper – inspired me to do a few more crafty things with my two again. Next week we are going to take over our Halloween craft book and some bits and bobs to use from our crafty stuff stash. The week after that we are away and the week after that we will be making guys for our bonfire party.

When we got home I cooked the kids tea then Ady came home early so I could go along to the scrap store before it closed – never been before and it was on a ‘borrowed’ membership card so I probably won’t go again for a while (its 60 quid to join which is a bit pricey considering we don’t use loads of stuff really) – but I did get a few bits for making things with – some gold card, some pretty metallic blue card (which I have plans to make some under the sea picture collages with in the morning), some material scraps including loads of leather off cuts, some orange foam which I want to make pumpkin shapes from and various other bits and bobs.

Tomorrow I plan a morning in doing some crafty things – although we do need to go to the post office to collect a parcel (which I assume is the Dora backpack, candle and stickers I ordered to put away for Scarlett’s birthday – although I might let her have the stickers now) and then in the afternoon a new ‘friend’ I met on net-mums is coming over with her children (boy a few months older than Davies – started school last month and a girl a month younger than Scarlett who sounds very similar to her in mess making escapades!) which will be nice as Davies seems to miss out on socialising with boys of a similar age (which I know is not imperitive but would still be beneficial to him I’m sure), and then hey guess what, it’s the weekend again already!

Autumn is here….

Which as probably everyone who reads this lives in the UK is a bit of a non title as you would all be aware of it already, but still…

We’ve just been outside in wellies to put the washing out (it joins some soppy wet two day old washing already out there – if it doesn’t manage to dry today then it will be tumble dryer and radiator draping this evening but I thought I’d give it one last chance). The lawn is dew filled, the spiders webs look all pretty and diamond studded, the sky is bright blue but you can still see your breath in the air, everywhere is full of beautiful autumnal colours, walking on any sort of outdoor surface produces very satisfying noises of crunchy leaves, squelchy grass or splashy pavements, although it is not really there you can’t help but smell bonfires and fireworks when you breath in deeply, you can already feel the excitement of darker nights and Christmas lights around the corner, it’s just such a great time of year.

Last night I went to Sainsburys and had one of those deja vu style moments when you are just reminded of another place and time but you are a different member of the cast – I had bought loads, even starting to put stuff away for Christmas (they had these great tins with a book and other bits and bobs and I bought Science tricks , telling the time and space (which has a make your own solar system bit with polystyrene balls – cool! at an introductory price of £3.33 each – will be a fiver, a couple of puzzles – one of space and one of dinosaurs and a logic quiz), had a real grown up chat with the checkout lady about Christmas, children and general life type stuff, then pushed my overloaded trolley (doing that running alongside it holding stuff together so it doesn’t topple out type dance) through the car park in the dark. I just felt like such a mother – not even necessarily my own, just someones – I know that anyone who looked at me would have identified me as such too… and for once I felt quite comfortable with that definition, and quite proud and sure that it is the right thing for me to be at this moment in time too.

Some business stuff too is occuring although I don’t know what will actually come of it – our friend Jim who recently moved to Ireland is still looking for a job and wants to move away from the engineering type stuff he has been doing. He is quite creative and imaginative, a bit of an entrepreneurial (sp!?!) type but he runs ou of steam on stuff after an initial burst of great enthusiasm – rather like me really! He had an incident on the ferry when they moved over which has resulted in a payoff from the ferry company – not enough to do much with (and probably he should use it to clear debts but I know he won’t!) but enough to take maybe 3-4 months off work. We have been discussing things he could do for himself and I said I would use the money for retraining in a new skill / buying equipmet to set his own ‘something’ up if I was him. I then jokingly told him about a business idea I had come up with when very very drunk at Boss Lady’s house which at the time we had all got excited about as a very cunning and lucrative plan but never done anything about when we sobered up. Jim really went for it and has gotten all excited about how its going to make us ‘mill-yon-airs’ so I have bought a domain name and now we need to get together properly to see who’s idea is the most realistic (he has gone off at a bit of a tangent to where I had started and I’m not sure which one of us is making more sense in terms of a real business idea) but I think we could be at least on the verge of starting something.

Kids and I have just spent half an hour on the phone to Lynda (our old nanny when we lived up north) and reduced her to tears with how much she misses the kids so I have lost the thread of what I was blogging about! We are off now to spend some time at Julie’s so I will be back later.

Reasons why we should win the lottery…

  1. it wouldn’t change us; really it wouldn’t. I would still be the same old Nic, we would probably move to a bigger house, but not LOADS bigger, we would still use all the same furniture and have the same clutter issues that we have now. I would still baulk at paying more than £25 for a haircut and probably wear cheap shoes. We would still have all the same friends and not get our heads turned by people who just wanted to know us for our riches.
  2. I could dress Ady and the kids exactly how I want to dress them. We would have a ‘family image’ Ady would be Boden Bloke, Scarlett would be bedecked with Monsoon’s finest (yes she probably would resemble an everlasting bridesmaid and would still be all chocolately and ribenaee but in a charming ‘fallen angel’ style instead of Britney trailer trash chic. Davies would probably be Mini Boden Boy or perhaps Kids Gap geezer. I would create a ‘look’ for myself. It would involve flatteringly cut outfits which drape and enhance my curves, colours which flatter my delicate skin tone and bright hair whilst still conveying my fun nature…or something…
  3. We would enjoy the money – not in a spend, spend, spend manner, rather in a carefully planned – live well now but provide for the future of our children, our children’s children and their children too. We would do all the things that lack of finances prevent us from doing – travel and see all the wonders the world has to show us – taking in the true spirit of each country as opposed to top class hotels (although we would not be averse to the occassional top class hotel too)
  4. We have happiness, health, general personal fulfilment (most of the time) so money would enable us to spend more time enjoying being with each other and watching the children learn and grow without the need to go out to work to earn money, enable us to seek as rich a life experience as we desire and finally allow me to trade my match box BMW Ady got me for my 30th birthday for the real thing 🙂

It’s another Life of Nic comedy moment!

As previously blogged we have fleas. We have tried the herbal stuff on the back of the necks and we have spent a small fortune in flea sprays for the house, but Scarlett still looks like she is a red dot to dot picture and the poor creatures are really miserable and scratchy so today I plucked up all my courage and made a vets appointment (probably need to give a bit of background here to explain my reluctance – the cats were RSPCC rescue cats ten years ago – when we got them they had been at the rescue centre for about 2 months and were cowering in the back of their cages hissing and spitting at anyone who came near them. The woman there told us that they were unlikely to get rehomed due to their semi-feral ness and would probably end up being put down. We had just lost two cats within a month of each other both killed on the very busy road we live on – so we wanted to get cats who would be happier living indoors. We got them and they spent the first month living under a bookcase, only coming out at night, they eventually came round and one of them then moved into the bathroom for a year as they used to fight constantly. They took about a year to settle down completely and then two children and two moves in four years have unsettled them a little again. So as they don’t go out they don’t need all the annual injections and so on from the vet and are very very agressive when they see the cat carriers – it has to be a really justified reason to traumatise them and us to put them in it.) I explained on the phone that I would be bringing my two small children but they said that would be fine.

So…

Half an hour before we were due at the vets I brought the carriers in from the garage. Malice went straight into hers with just a bit of minimal miaowing. Candle, however launched straight into some sort of comedy Tom and Jerry type routine with me getting her cornered then sneaking out, I got her in the case twice and both times she went so mental I couldn’t get it done up properly and she managed to escape. I tried throwing a towel over her, picking her up with a towel, luring her with food and cat treats and even tried reasoning with her (yes, I know she is a cat!).

The kids tried to help…

Eventually after ten minutes of this I put the kids and Malice in the car, keyed myself up with a pep talk and went back into the house with my sleeves rolled up to sort her out once and for all. A few minutes after that I conceded defeat and took Malice to the vets on her own!

The vet was quite sympathetic and prescribed me double treatment for Malice which I used on Candle when we got home. She is now hiding in the bottom of my wardrobe where she will probably crap to teach me a lesson… However Malice, it transpires is also in need of some dental treatment which they have quoted me £125 for and booked her in for next week. Poor Malice for suffering with rotting teeth for some time it would appear and poor us for yet more unexpected expense 🙁

Whilst at the vets the kids were total brats of the sort you would generally tut first at the children and then at the parents before looking away and thinking to yourself ‘those kids should be in school’. Hmmm.

So quite a traumatic morning all round then. Davies seems better, E came round yesterday afternoon and as Davies was in quite a boisterous mood they seemed better matched really and the three of them played really quite well together with the dressing up stuff (swords pre-removed!) and the wooden train set. Apparantly he took a bit of a walloping at school the other day and Rachel used it to demonstrate how others feel (example Davies) when he hits them. He seemed to have got the gist of this and was a bit less rough with him. Today Davies is better but still a bit whiney but Scarlett is very warm and very teary so she is clearly going down with whatever it is 🙁

Last night my parents came over and ended up staying for dinner and we had a really nice evening with them. Dad read Davies his bedtime stories, Mum had brought over some Disney videos (Jungle Book, Snow White, Dumbo) and a V Tech talking whiz kids notebook which is a sort of laptop for kids with a mouse, mouse mat and loads of inbuilt ‘games’ for spelling, maths, trivia and so on. It says aged 7-11 and a lot of it looks way beyond Davies but I am sure some of it would be relevant with guidance so that was cool too.

This afternoon we have played very lazily with the wooden trainset, read a couple of books, done some cuddling, I have perused the Boden catalogue (never really saw the attraction in Boden stuff before but Julie is a real fan and she has a lovely skirt and the twins some nice tops from there so I got a catalogue to have a peep at), Scarlett is now bringing me pretend food and naming it (loads of new words I didn’t know she knew!), Davies is flaked out infront of Nick Jnr. A bit earlier we walked round to the post box and got caught in a very brief, very light shower – we marvelled at the smell of wet pavements, talked about how it was sunny in one patch of sky but rainy and cloudy in another, heard and saw a chinook and then Davies spotted a rainbow. He also told me that there would be a pot of gold at the bottom and asked if we could go and find it – I said no as we didn’t have coats and I was wearing flip flops (unsuitable clothes and shoes do seem to be one of my failings don’t they?!).

Off now to reply to the huge amount of emails languishing in my inbox (including you Karen:-)) and set the next round of the lyrics quiz to Jim.

Never dealt with one of those before 🙁

So after both littlies going to sleep by 6.30pm last night we knew we were probably in for an early morning today – yep!

They woke simultaneously at 5.30am – Davies with a nosebleed. Ady went in to his room, saw blood soaking the pillow, dribbling all down his face and pyjamas, him holding a puddle of it in each hand and with a look of terror on his face. He very calmly said to Davies ‘don’t worry you are having a nose bleed darling’ and swiftly removed the pillow which looked like a horror movie prop by which point I had arrived so he went to get Scarlett. The four of us then sat round with tissues, baby wipes and nose pinching (although not really knowing which bit of the nose or how hard to pinch it) until it stopped a few minutes later.

We then had a peek at the Family Medical Book we have (never sure whether they are a good reference guide or a scaremongering volume you should not give house room to!) before Davies wanted to come downstairs and watch Thomas. Within a few minutes he was fine, quite proud of how much blood he had shed (look Mummy its all under my fingernails!) so I went back to bed for an hour where I lay feeling quite queasy and had a worrying dream about blood everywhere.

He is now fine but I have just come back from the doctors as a precautionary measure (also I have been meaning to take Scarlett for weeks if not months so I booked a double appointment and now feel like a really good mother again!). I think I have blogged before about my reluctance to take the kids to the doctors – I always seem to end up sitting there telling them what I think is wrong with the children and how I have been treating it only to be told that yes, I am right and have been doing the right thing and to come back if it gets any worse – which is of course what I had been thinking myself… but in this instance as neither Ady or I have ever had a nosebleed although we can both clearly recall ‘the kid at school who was always getting them’ cos there was one in every class wasn’t there? So I just wanted to check whether it was quite normal, how we should deal with future ones and if the fact he has had one means they could be a regular occurance (I really do think I may need to alter my stance on carrying spare clothes – poor Davies could end up wet, sandy and blood stained!). So off we went.

Davies is fine, she had a peep up his nose and could see the blood vessel which had popped – she asked if I had any more sinister concerns about what it could be – I said not really… (what else can you say? Is she checking I’m not hysterical, does she have concerns, is she trying to coax a confession out of me that it happened cos I walloped him? what, WHAT dammit!), she said pinching was right and ice in a flannel would be better, yes he does stand a chance of future ones especially in the next couple of days as it heals, no there is no real triggers to avoid aside from preventing him from poking about up there with his finger and that was that.

Scarlett has had a couple of white patches on her skin – one on the back of her leg and one on her shoulder. The leg one has always been there really – I don’t recall seeing it at birth but I don’t remember it not being there if you see what I mean, but I only spotted the shoulder one this summer when she was a bit tanned. As ever I had been looking on the net and in my trusty medical book and thought it could be vitiligo (what Michael Jackson claimed to / does have) but as it said there was no cure and no more appeared I have been lax about getting it checked. The doc thinks its not vitiligo as there are not enough patches and its not accompanied by the other usual symptoms – she thinks its just patches of pigment missing and will stay as it is only really visible in the summer when she is tanned and easily concealable with make up / fake tan if it bothers her when she is older, or wants to be a back of the leg or shoulder model or something…

So relief all round really. Sorry to be morbid here but I have been having a few morbid moments of late anyway – October is always a bad month as it is Breast Cancer awareness month – which I always support by buying lots of associated products / wearing a pink ribbon etc as both my aunt and Ady’s sister died aged 40 of it. It is the one illness which sorts of hangs over women I think – and as soon as I had the children I became suddenly aware of my own mortality anyway – as we all do I guess. Ady’s sister left three really very young children and my cousin was only in his early teens when my aunt died. On top of that my own dad has recently lost a lot of weight (infact he now weighs less than me – which is not any great achievement, but he was always quite large and is over 6 foot) – on purpose and he did look good on it, but he has gone just that bit too far and is looking a bit gaunt and even worse he is starting to look his age – which is scary. Finally Chris and Julie have been doing their wills – spured on by us talking about doing ours although we havn’t and we have been appointed their executors and guardians of the twins if something should happen to them. One of the reasons I have not sorted ours out is that stuff like guardians of our children would be a bit tricky – and the whole HE thing has to come into it too….anyway don’t want to dwell on this icky topic anymore but I think I will dig out the ‘make your own will’ kit I have had stashed for ages and at least make a start on getting something written down.

This afternoon Rachel and E are coming over so I need to pop out and get in some posh biscuits in honour of that!

Nic are you okay are you okay are you okay Nic?

Take a look at your chalet bungalow and the sudocrem on the carpet, then she ran into the bathroom, a creshendo, then she turned the taps on, you’ve been hit by, you’ve been struck by, a smooth toddler!

Almost wasn’t going to blog this as it just paints me in such a bad light as any sort of responsible grown up who should be allowed to be at home with two minors in my care and I do worry that someone could read it and ring childline on my kids’ behalfs for the neglect and ‘leaving them to it’ I seem to be prone to but on this occassion I had only checked a few minutes beforehand that Scarlett was quite happily playing with her Dora and Boots in the lounge – next time I checked her there she was sitting in her bedroom, covered and surrounded by about a quarter of a pot of nappy cream… which she had been using Davies’ Peter Pan sword to scoop out and spread on the carpet (see I told you swords were a bad idea!!). Fortunately we have quite light coloured carpet and I am reliably informed by one of those mummy forums that scraping excess up, blotting with kitchen roll then sprinkling with talc and hoovering up a bit later will take care of it.

So please believe me, I am able to care for the children and don’t snitch on me to Esther Ranzen!

Other news from here today – Davies was up at about 6am with a sore throat and headache. He has been ‘coming down with something’ for a couple of days – at least that is how we have been excusing his whiny behaviour (makes a change from ‘he’s tired’ and he is too old to be ‘teething’!) and sure enough he seems to have picked up a cold. He had some medicine and has been on the sofa with his pillow and blanket demanding bananas and other soft food, till I offered playdough play as an incentive to get dressed and then chocolate as a bribe to walk round the shops with me. He is still a bit hot and cold and hasn’t really eaten much but is happily playing with his wooden train track while Scarlett roams the house trying to find new ways to outwit me, create mess and convince Ady once and for all that he needs to employ a nanny to look after all three of us!

I have been quite industrious this morning on the computer (which is why she managed to make the mess!) – I wrote a job list for myself from last nights blog and have been working on copying down the Early Learning Goals from a link Sarah (I think!) posted so I can create a Goddard Home Ed website – which will have stuff like planning for the next few months, lists of the resources we have, stuff we want to get, links to sites I have used or want to use, our Ed Phil and general progress updates. It is only for me to use and to have as ‘evidence’ if we ever needed to present any rather than me running around in a flat spin if we ever did have a visit. I just want to be able to create the air of a woman who knows what she is doing and engages her children in edcuational, fun and worthwhile activities by home educating them as opposed to a loony who spends most of her day on the internet while one child plays obsessively with dressing up clothes and trainsets and the other trashes the house (so clearly there will not be a link to this blog on the site – rofl!).

Right, off to hoover for the second time today – playdough first thing and now this – and previously I had not touched that bloody hoover in weeks! (Ady does it cos its too heavy for me!)

Scarlet billows start to spread…

My friend Jim and I started this competition when we moved up north a couple of years ago and now they have moved to Ireland we have reinstated it. It started from late night, drunken channel hopping through the music channels on Sky and trying to guess artist, song title and year first. The only way of translating it to an email game was to quote lyrics and get a point for artist and a point for song title – cryptic clues could be given at the loss of 1/2 point!

So Jim kicked off the latest round with something about bitch-slapping I *knew* would be by a group I had never even heard of so I googled it and was right! The googling disqualified me but I got the next one. My one back was the above title which I thought was dead easy but he didn’t get – can anyone else? several artists would be acceptable as it is the song which is well known rather than a particular singer…

So its back to me to quote some lyrics to him and I am looking at my CD collection now and hoping for inspiration…

For what it’s worth this is a game I am thinking of starting with Davies too – he is quite good at listening to, and trying to learn the words to the songs we listen to in the car and this would be a good way of getting him to focus on those listening skills.

All fairly random stuff today!

A real Sundayish Sunday today – my turn to get up with the kids so we watched the early Dora which happened to be a Halloween one – cue much excitement all round about the upcoming party – we keep sneaking into Scarlett’s bedroom where all the stuff we’ve bought so far is stashed and sort of stroking our outfits! Ady got up and him and Davies did some playing with the plastic trainsets while Scarlett and I did some jigsaw puzzles – she loves them at the moment and even more than that she loves the praise and applause for getting them right 🙂

Somehow we then started an exercise in bringing down all the boxes which were stashed in the loft recesses when we moved home and have not been touched since – they were mostly more of the kids outgrown clothes so have been seperated into piles for Julie and piles for Rachel to be doled out this week – this is good as it means the Christmas decorations can now come in from the garage where they are getting damp and mice infested (probably!) – nothing worse than soggy tinsel eh?!

After lunch I started to feel the need to escape so took Davies to Tescos (he was lured by the promise of a pressie for his wooden train track!) where we spent quite a pleasant hour perusing the Halloween stuff (and yes purchasing a few more bits), getting another wooden bridge for the trainset and a beauty case for Scarlett complete with ‘working’ hairdryer and other assorted vanity stuff – which she adored. So back home for some playing with all that, then tea, bath and early to bed – which Scarlett made the most of but Davies was still playing in bed at 9pm 🙁

Have not got so much planned for this week so far, although that doesn’t mean it won’t fill up as we go along. I have decided to try and get the kids along to a few other things – we really, really should find out when swimming sessions are available for them and see if I can start doing that every week – I would also like to get them into some sort of movement / dancing / gym type activity which I think they would both really enjoy – but it needs to be something I can stay with them at, something they can both attend together and only need the one adult for – will look into that a bit more this week. What else? I really need to get an email out around the local contacts to see what interest there is in an under 8s MuddlePuddle type group – and find a venue. I have an idea of how it will be – which I will blog when I get it written down somewhere and need to see how many people are interested in theory before trying to decide on a time and day for it.

I have also done nothing about getting my magazine happening – although Miranda (the lady formally known as Boss Lady) had the fab idea of seeing if I can get someone else to do the selling of advertising space for me on a cut of what is sold type basis – I just need to find someone who is interested in it – will give that some more thought this week too…and see if I can sort out my other website too and form some sort of business plan for that whole idea.

I also want to get some idea of what we want to do when we are in Dorset in a couple of weeks – although I think a lot of watching animals doing their thing on the farm and playing on the beach will be in order I would also like at least a couple of rainy day venues or ideas lined up and I have emailed a friend who lives around that area of the country to see if she is up for meeting up while we are there..

The final thing on my job list is to get something a bit more concrete written down in terms of an Ed Phil – I did write one about a year ago when we first started thinking about HE but have moved on quite a bit in our reasons, approach and ideas since then. I also want to get together some form of inventory of the resources and books we have so far so that I don’t duplicate anything and any big gaps are shown up and can be addressed – perhaps as Christmas pressies!

Ooh frugal day! And I even quite enjoyed it!

Well that would be frugal if you buy into the ‘think of what you saved, not what you spent’ type mentality – like me 🙂

Went over to Chris and Julie’s today – Ady and Chris stayed with the kids while Julie and I went to a NCT Nearly New sale. Don’t know why I never went to one before really as I was quite active with the NCT when we lived in Manchester, editing the newsletter, doing post natal support groups and so on and was aware of them and that they are the place to get bargains, but still, it’s never too late to get converted!

Davies had a bit of a fit about me going – more on that later but it did occur to me as he had to be pryed from my legs crying almost hysterically that it was the first time I have left him without priming him in advance – not written notice weeks beforehand or anything but I should really have told him on the way over there that I would be going out with Julie while he stayed with Daddy and Chris, and I just sort of forgot – so my leaving was quite sudden in his eyes and he was not happy about it (apparantly he was fine very quickly but I did leave with his howls still ringing in my eyes and a tear of my own welling up 🙁 )

So for my first foray into the world of the Nearly New sale I did pretty well – amoung other things I got:
a pair of Buzz Lightyear slipper feet things with lights on which he adores and will be great as Buzz feet to go with his Buzz dressing up outfit (which has feet but is a bit on the short side so these will help out);
a pair of Helly Hansen heavy duty waterproof dungarees for Davies (and latterly for Scarlett) which I really wanted for the holiday – I need something similar for Scarlett too but there was nothing there in her size;
A tigger jumper in bright colours for Davies which Scarlett can also wear after him;
Two kilts for Scarlett – I have been hankering after a kilt for her for a while and spotted some up in London for about £30 – I got one which will fit her now in green tartan and one for next winter in red tartan;
a couple of wintery dresses for Scarlett – some for now, some for next winter;
A disco type outfit in navy with pink spangly stars – a vest top and flared trousers – not the sort of thing I particularly envisage her wearing ‘out’ but ideal for the dressing up box;
a patchwork jacket in red with applique stuff on it – a bit cutesy but it was only a quid and won’t fit her for a couple of years but I just really liked it;
a navy blue woollen coat – in the style of french school girls for next winter – she will look gorgeous in it!
a cardigan from Next with embroidered patches on it;
a pile of books including Letterland parents guide, some educational type Usborne ones;
a couple of games – one with letters to make words to match the pictures, one snap card game featuring Monsters Inc characters and one about telling the time;
two pairs of rollerskates – these were quite a hit but have been left at Chris and Julie’s as all of our paths are sloping and unsuitable whereas they have a long straight path the length of their garden ideal for practising – Chris is a car boot king and is going to find some more pairs so they all have some and we will set about getting them all proficient at skating!
a dinosaur jigsaw puzzle – which I accidentally left at their house too!

Quite a haul – just over 40 quid in all but given I had two massive carrier bags full and lots of clothes for Scarlett, the waterproof trousers which I would have bought something similar too anyway, next years winter coat and the Buzz shoes which were an instant hit I feel quite virtuous at my bargains!

We stayed til 4.30pm with the kids having a whale of a time playing in the sand and mud – Scarlett went through her own trousers and two pairs of Maisies before we came home (anyone see a pattern emerging with my children and needing spare clothes here?) but is now more than happy to wear wellies 🙂

On the way home we called in to see my parents and spent a further couple of hours there which was actually very pleasant – the kids were knackered and fell asleep very very quickly tonight – a lovely day had by all 🙂 Tomorrow we don’t have a lot planned – Ady has PROMISED Davies he will do some playing with him and the plastic trainset – I think he is really craving some one to one time with Ady at the moment, and it will be quite nice for me and Scarlett to have some time to do some stuff together too.

Chris and I had quite a long and deep chat today about HE and school and stuff – triggered by Davies and his big reaction to me leaving – I said to Chris about how although he has moved a long way from the child he was when I first considered HE where he was horrified at the thought of me leaving the room he would still really struggle with being left at school – Chris said that most children probably feel the same but get over it cos they have to – the beauty of HE is that amoung other things they don’t have to get used to it. We also talked about being the oldest – I do sometime feel for Davies a bit as Jack and Maisie are within a couple of months of Scarlett’s age so he is the odd one out – most of the time it is not noticeable but he does sometime spend the whole day being ‘nagged’ for stuff and you can’t help but think it’s because he’s the oldest, should know better, should be setting an example etc. I can empathise with him a lot and we often talk about being the oldest and how I am the oldest and used to get annoyed with my brother when we were kids. I know that he doesn’t actually remember a time when Scarlett wasn’t here anymore but as she is going through a bit of a changing time at the moment – starting to talk lots, being very naughty, throwing tantrums to test the boundries and is coming up to her second birthday Davies is starting to get very aware of the fact that she is no longer a baby and he’s not sure whether he is keen on that or not – she is very good at attention and scene stealing and I want to ensure he doesn’t get too overshadowed and pushed out while she does it. Scarlett has been a sibling since birth – she knows no different and has never had any adjusting to do – Davies has and in his short life he has had a lot of stuff to deal with – nothing major really but we have moved from one end of the country to the other and back again, uprooting him from all the constants in his life except Ady, Scarlett and I, he really misses Lynda, he is not altogether sure what to make of my parents and now one of his constants – Scarlett – is changing before his very eyes from the small one who was no threat to his position as the clever, amusing big boy – to a limelight stealing little girl who suddenly is the one getting all the ‘isn’t she beautiful, oh she’s so clever, listen to her saying her first words’ little minx! Chris is very grounded and has had a bit of therapy and read a lot of self-help type stuff so he is great to bounce these sorts of conversations off of.

Anyway, it’s gotten all late – again! And this blog has gotten all long – again! So I’ll bid you goodnight and go to sleep relieved I don’t ever have to stand at those school gates worrying about what he’s going through and what effect it’ll have on him…

A nice afternoon 🙂

After blogging at lunchtime we did indeed set off out to post a couple of letters and take the thank you note and Halloween party invite round to Rachel and E. I also stashed the latest bag of Scarlett’s outgrown summer clothes to give to Rachel too. Semi – expecting her not to be in and delivering her baby somewhere it was lovely to ring her doorbell and find her not only in, but bored and ready to drink tea and chat for a bit.

The kids played quite well although E was pretty rough with Davies a couple of times – he knows better than to even try and pick on Scarlett though – I’m thinking that if Davies doesn’t start standing upto him for himself it won’t be long before Scarlett is protecting him anyway! He was slightly better after the first couple of incidents though and did at least shout ‘don’t do that’ at him instead of just running to me crying. We talked a bit about my theory that Davies is getting a bit too good at playing ‘the victim’ but as Rachel quite rightly said with any other child the violence would be directed straight back to E – with Davies, who has been taught that you do not hit back it is tricky to ensure he is not just being physically bullied by him. Part of me is tempted to tell Davies to simply wallop him back next time (yes, I know, I know!) but it goes against everything I believe in, everything I have tried to teach the children and how do I ever explain that it was okay on that one occassion but never again? Not going to anyway, but I do get the feeling that E is just seeing how far he can push Davies before he gets a reaction – its like it really winds him up that Davies never retaliates – so he keeps doing it to get some reaction – he did once tell Rachel that he doesn’t like it when Davies shouts back at him though so I must tell Davies that – its sure to give him a boost 🙂

Anyway, we had a nice catch up as it’s been two weeks since we saw them last – told her all about London (both trips) and Legoland and the wet clothes no spares and conditioner on the carpet stories too – which seem to be getting more and more elaborate each time I tell them – sure I have stand up comic tendancies in me somewhere! She is just desperate to have the baby now and said if they offered to induce her tomorrow then she would happily do so – she has not tried pineapple, sex, raspberry leaf tea or curry yet though… I ate four pineapples, had two curries, ran up and down the stairs five times, drank gallons of the tea and yes had very uncomfortable sex in an effort to get Scarlett on the move and she was early so I guess it worked for me 🙂 We have arranged to meet up on Tuesday – unless she is otherwise engaged.

On the way round there Davies was stopping at all the road signs and asking what they said – he recognised about two thirds of the letters on the signs – and he is more used to lower case so that was encouraging and for several he was able to tell me a word that began with that letter too – all very positive! Scarlett was adorable round there – Rachel couldn’t believe the change in her speech in two weeks – she didn’t stop jabbering and kept repeating words we were saying – she also sat for ages playing with some witches fingers E had (Halloween ones with long red nails). She is very girly and loves anything to do with nails and makeup – hmmm can’t imagine where she gets that from (says Nic innocently who was caught by the midwife at my homebirth hiding in the hall touching up a chipped nail between contractions as I didn’t feel able to give birth to and meet my new baby with chipped nail polish!). Really excited about the Halloween party – I hope everyone we have invited can come. As Halloween is right in the middle of Davies and Scarlett’s birthdays and as they are going to be HE it is more likely they will share lots of friends instead of having all same sex same age friends from school we thought it would be cool to have a Halloween party every year and make a big deal out of it as a joint thing. Scarlett’s birthday is so close to Christmas it will probably tend to get swallowed up in other December celebrations so it will be nice to do something seperate. Also the pub across the road (where we had Ady’s 40th party) has put the signs up for their firework and bonfire night display too – which they started the year before we moved up north and was fab – oooh I love this time of year!

Well this is long again (but I didn’t blog yesterday!) so I’m off to bed now – oh and the garage rang to say their emissions testing machine is broken so the MOT is not til next Saturday now – so if you were sending vibes please put them on hold til then 🙂

Like some sort of housewife!

Yep, that’s me today! I have tidied all the coats hanging on the back of the playroom and cupboard under the stairs door so you don’t get attacked by coats every time you brush past them; I have made a couple of phonecalls; done a few bits of paperwork; entertained my grandmother for an hour (who for probably the first time in ten years did not make one single comment relating to my weight for the duration of her visit – I am expecting a phonecall from her later to say she forgot to mention how chubby I am looking though!); made the kids lunch which they both ate all of; peeled a massive bag of veg and have got a beef stew cooking for dinner! This afternoon I have planned a walk to the post box to post the last couple of Thank you notes from Davies’ birthday and maybe a note through Rachel’s door too if the weather holds up. I also need to attend to Ady’s underwear drawer as it is so full of holey pants and odd socks I can’t actually get the clean washing in it! I have also found homes for both children’s outgrown clothes (the ones I had great intentions of selling on ebay!) – their cousin Jack will have all Davies’ and Rachel will have all Scarlett’s for her new baby (still assuming it will be a girl!). So the kid’s bedrooms are looking a bit more bedroomy and a bit less holding bay for ebay – which is nice!

Didn’t blog yesterday as our friend Jim came over for beers and was hysterical with laughter at my story of going to London and treking round with soggy, sleeping children when I should have been on a train home; and the tale of Scarlett and the flooded bathroom and strawberry scented carpet (which incidentally is now silky smooth and looks like its just stepped out of a salon!)

In the morning I had braved Sainsburys with the kids and they had been very well behaved, then over to Julie’s. Scarlett had a MASSIVE tantrum there about wearing her wellies. She had her nice pink boots on and their grass is quite long and very very wet so the twins both had wellies on and I had brought hers and Davies’. He quite happily got his own changed and set about charging around the lawn with the twins – she just went mad! It did reach the stage where I wondered whether it was actually worth pushing the point but I don’t want her to think that tantrums work so I just didn’t let her out in the garden. In the end she was persuaded to wear a pair of Maisie’s wellies which were pink and flowery which I felt was an adequate compromise. And although Scarlett doesn’t know it her nice pink boots were still outside where I had taken them off her to try and put her wellies and so got wet anyway when it rained a bit later – I’m sure that child has magic powers!

The four of them did their normal running up and down the garden path pushing pushalong toys (there are two baby buggies, a lawnmover and a push along trolley thingy), then lunch, then Julie got out some magic painting books, brushes and water which engrossed them until nearly 3.30pm when it was time for us to come home. We are seeing them again tomorrow – Ady and Chris are minding all the children while Julie and I go to a NCT nearly new sale – fab childfree shopping!

The car is going in for it’s MOT tomorrow so please think happy well car thoughts for a cheap pass!

Other than that not a lot going on here really. Davies seems to be in ‘sponge mode’ at the moment, picking up loads of new information and knowledge – but I am trying to stand back a bit – in the past whenever I have leapt on trying to ‘educate’ him he has pulled back so I am answering all his many, many questions, looking at book with him on the subjects if we have them and trying to let things progress naturally. I am lucky really in that the only other children we know around his age are that couple of months older and have started school this year, whereas he wouldn’t have started til next year anyway being a September birthday – so I am quite prepared to accept him being ‘behind’ the only children I *could* compare him with in academic stuff for now anyway. This week I told him about Karma – in a ‘what goes around comes around’ sort of way (an example showed itself where he had done something to Scarlett which resulted in him getting hurt – can’t even remember what it was now) and he has really bought into the idea that if he is good and nice to people then nice things will happen to him but if he is mean then bad stuff will happen back to him.

He has also been quite a handfull the last couple of weeks – partially I am sure as a result of having Ady around more but as Scarlett is gearing up for the terrible twos he is watching almost as closely as she is to see whether crying and making a big fuss gets any results – which is making it all the more important to not give into her. He also has a new trick when he is being told off of crying straight away and demanding cuddles and telling me how much he loves me – which is all quite a blatant act to deflect the crossness. Part of me is very relieved to have a ‘normal’ child after all those many, many months of enjoying his model behaviour but knowing it wasn’t quite right to have such an adult mentality at three, the other part is just harrassed by the challenge! I think he spend quite a lot of time being ‘the victim’ when we first moved back here and all the other children he met to play with walked all over him and now he is more than a match for them but having been instrumental in rougher games he still wants to come and tell tales on other people. (Those who were at the London meet would have noticed he was one of the chief sandthrowers and I tried to stop him on at least three occassions – when we got home the first thing he said to Ady was ‘some people threw sand at me’). Not sure how to deal with it other than to ride it out and keep mixing with other children. I think in terms of his ‘education’ we will just carry on as we are using the resources we have (loads and loads and loads of books, some workbooks and so on) when conversations and questions take us there, his reading and writing is getting there – he has written a fairly recognisable ‘Davies’ on all his thank you notes – at the rate of one a day! and he does recognise lots of letters and some actual words too. He loves books and I think the desire to continue reading something by himself instead of waiting for us to read it to him will spur him on to learn.

Scarlett is really coming along in leaps and bounds. I do recall Davies being the same at around her age – you spend ages wondering if they are ‘normal’ doing enough for their age, speaking enough and so on and then suddenly they start almost talking in sentences overnight! She is very very cute – and knows it! – and is at that lovely age where every minute you spend with her is rewarded by her learning something new before your very eyes. She has started to get into singing – she loves Wheels on the bus and stuff like that and is currently sitting on the floor playing with a toy which plays if you’re happy and you know it, merrily clapping in the right places! Bless her.

Argh The Minx!

That would be my daughter, imp of darkness, doer of wrong!

We have had a nice enough day so far today, another full nights sleep from Scarlett which always sets you up better to cope with small people’s tricks and mischief! Out by just after nine this morning to rush to the bank, only to find it doesn’t open till 10am today for ‘staff training’ grrr. So as a traffic warden was hovering and the only parking outside the bank is loading bays we drove round town for 20 minutes with me trying to convince the kids it was ‘fun’! Back home and we had a couple of letters to post and some biscuits to buy for Rachel and Kerry coming over this afternoon. So we all walked – don’t do it too often with Scarlett but she wanted to walk so we did – at her pace! Davies was really good and ‘big brotherish’ and held her other hand and did our version of one, two, three weeeee without actually lifting her off the ground! Amazing how much you notice walking down your own street when you have to stop at every flower, crack in the pavement and so on isn’t it?

Back home and they helped me make lunch (by sitting on the worktop and eating peanut butter off the knife straight out of the tub, if you can call that helping!) then Rachel rang to say she wouldn’t be coming today after all. It is actually her due date today, E had come home from a morning at school in a really horrid mood and she was going to the doctors for a midwife appointment which they had told her they would do a sweep at so she pretty much felt she would just want to sit on the sofa and cry about not having had her baby yet 🙁 I have to confess to sympathising but not actually having gone through what she is – E was two weeks late and induced and clearly this one will be late too. Davies was eight days early and Scarlett was six so I have not got anywhere near due date either time – which I am sure is very lucky as you tend to spend the whole pregnancy ‘working towards’ that specific date so to sit and watch it go past is frustrating I’m sure.

So it was just Kerry, EL and baby K today, which was a bit less chaotic (although not much!). She had been to Rachel’s last week while we were away and E had been a lovely child, playing nicely with EL and admiring baby K so as I had suspected Davies does bring out the worst in E 🙁 Not too sure how to feel about that other than as I said to Kerry E is not ‘friends’ with every child in her class at school and although they all got on well enough when they were babies they only mix together now cos their mothers are friends – they would not choose each other otherwise to mix with. Davies does not really ‘look forward’ to seeing E either, but I guess as time goes by they will either learn to ignore each other or actually start to get on – maybe the baby will change things – I am sure it will have some sort of dramatic effect on E and hopefully a positive one.

So why is Scarlett a minx then? Well while I was on the phone to Rachel it occurred to me the children (who normally take phonecalls as a reason to chase me round the house – as I try to hide from them and conduct my phonecall in some sort of peace – screaming, crying and generally do everything they can to end the phonecall as quickly as possible – now you see why my selling advertising space for my parenting mag has not gotten very far 🙂 )had gone a bit quiet – hmmm suspicious! I found Scarlett in the hall coming to greet me with the empty bottle of Johnsons Baby Conditioner I thought I had thrown away, which I took off her and did throw away. I finished talking to Rachel, went and made my lunch and realised they were still a bit too quiet.

It had not been the empty bottle, I had infact thrown that one away. This had been the brand new full to the brim bottle which was now empty cos its contents were scattered on the floor, on the sofa, on Scarlett, on the two magazines I had left on the sofa and a little in her hair (to join the nappy cream which was already in her hair from earlier). Scarlett was stripped down and sent to the bathroom to wash her hands while I set about taking the sofa covers off, clearing the conditioner off the magazines and mopping the floor. She cryed out and came back into the lounge with the sound of fast running water coming from the bathroom, but assuming she had just turned the taps on full I carried on mopping. Several minutes later I went back into the bathroom to find it totally flooded! The bath taps had been switched to shower attachment from earlier, which when put on had fallen into the bath, water spraying all over the ceiling, window, wall and sopping onto the floor.

The bathroom floor is covered in towels – already four soaking wet in the bath, another four laid down still won’t dry it, the lounge floor is wet and still a bit slimy from the conditioner, the sofa covers are draped around the place drying and on top of the two loads of washing I am trying to dry on the line (not a hope, will be there for weeks at this rate, it keeps raining) around radiators and in the tumble drier I now have three loads of towels to sort out somehow – and will need to as we now have no clean towels for bathtime!

On the upside the house now smells of strawberry throughout, Kerry went home still laughing at the tale and after yesterday at least I had clean clothes to change her in to!

You may have noticed I have moved away from Monster and Teeny and onto their real names – I have been meaning to do it for a while as given the amount of personal details you could glean from my blog and the fact several of the photos showed their names when you hover over them it was getting too confusing to have the aliases!

The Muddle Puddle London Meet…

So I had this sort of fantasy about how it would go… we would arrive, fresh and feeling all cultured having managed to negotiate both the train and a black cab just me and the kids without supervising grown-ups at the Diana Playground to meet up with my MP blogring chums and assorted others. Particularly looking forward to meeting Alison (as previously mentioned my HE elder!), Jax (computer whizz and sharing of many of my angsts and Sarah (fellow profuse blogger!). After a lovely day where the kids would mix and mingle we would effortlessly hail a cab (see how I say it like I would know for a moment how to hail a cab -rofl!) arrive at Victoria as our train pulled in, board it and be home in time for tea, bath and bed before my mate Dayve from Manchester arrives for dinner.

WRONG!

Train was delayed by 15 minutes – not dreadful but tricky when I had thought monitoring train arrival to clock on station would be a good educational exercise!

Train arriving was an old one with an old fashioned guards van which we had to stay on with the pushchair (and three other women with their pushchairs) but instead of being direct to Victoria due to the delays the train changed at Hove to another one – the platform signals were put due to technical error so I was directed across to the new train by a harrassed railway worker who’s urgency rubbed off on me and we leapt on at a non pushchair friendly bit which once on we were too scared to leave so spent the journey seated and comfy but a bloody nusience to others who tutted as they struggled past us!

Got a phonecall and a text from others meeting us as we were pulling into Victoria and joined the massive queue for a cab outside the station. A really nice mad black cabbie flagged down another cabbie to find us the best entrance to be dropped for the playground in the park and when I tried to tip him (albeit only 50p) lessened the fare by rounding it down! We entered the park and Monster asked a policeman where the ‘Diana bit’ was which was where we got sent on some wild goose chase all around the park for the playground before finally finding it. A likely looking band of folk were stood there who I announced myself to and we all sat down out of the way. It swiftly occured to me that while I recognised all of The Portico offspring I was not sure which one of the women they belonged to – similarly Big and Small were apparant, Jax was not! I seem to be the only grown up who blogs pictures of myself along with my children!

The playground is actually pretty darn good, both kids had a whale of a time and aside from one small mislaying of a child incident on my part although I could see them most of the time they went off and totally did their own things. Within half an hour of arriving both children had gotten soaking wet and sandy in the water area – I stripped their shoes and tights / socks which proved fairly successful in Teeny’s case (we put my poncho over her bare legs for the journey home) but in Monster’s case was too little too late. He was drenched to the point that his jeans held enough water to weigh them down enough for them to fall down and off and be left abandoned in the sand. His pants were also wet – to the point where I felt obliged to trek to Bayswater on the way home to purchase dry stuff to take him home in – more on that later.

As with many HE things I have been to there are loads of people you want to have a real chat with in person having chatted virtually before and the size of the group and the fact we are all trying to at least monitor our children’s location and behaviour means you don’t get to. It was fab to meet Jan and Jonathan – who I foolishly didn’t get any contact details for as they are spending the rest of the week even closer to us in Portsmouth and it would be nice to meet again somewhere inbetween (if anyone has a way of contacting them on the road please let me know!) and to put faces to names for Alison, Jax, Barbara, Layla and Jane and of course Sarah and Steve, but I am looking forward to Melrose even more and the chance to speak to people properly.

Monster was on his hyper play mode given sand and water – his two best mad ‘boy’ behaviour catalysts. He did a bit of throwing sand which I tried to deal with (thanks to Jonathan for his suggestion of pouring dry sand into his eyes -if I get desperate I may consider it 🙂 ) and there was the getting mislaid incident where he was found at the bottom of the pirate ship:
Me: didn’t you hear me call?
Him: yes
Me: why didn’t you answer me?
Him: I was too busy playing!

So in the spirit of being a crap mummy I had not realised there would be water danger and had not packed either spare clothes or anything resembling anything which could be adapted into spare clothes. Monster started fully dressed and left four hours later in wet pants, a top, a jacket and damp, sandfilled shoes. We walked to Bayswater which was quite near and I had a sort of panic attack – I was physically shaking! It was gone 4pm – I had planned on being home by 5pm – we still had to get a cab to the station and the train home (an hour) I had one child wearing only wet pants, shivering and complaining about being cold and tired, one child I discovered had fallen asleep in the pushchair (a whole 4 and a half hours after the acceptable cut off for daytime naps which don’t destroy nighttime sleeps!) and my new shoes were killing me! At this point, like an oasis in the dessert we stumbled (and I do mean this literally!) upon a small shopping centre with an H&M selling a fine line in socks, pants and trousers for small people at a little over a tenner – whilst in the queue I tasked Monster with waking up Teeny and as we left I saw a cab at the red light with its for hire light lit so hailed it and leapt in! We got Monster changed in the back and emerged at Victoria ready to rock again!

We waited about half an hour for our train, which was guards van all the way home again, but we were joined by an interesting variety of folk along the journey for various parts of it! Ady collected us at the station – Dayve had long since arrived at our house – and after speedy baths (you would not believe how much sand was swilling about at the bottom of that bath!) they were both asleep pretty quickly. Had a nice evening with Dayve getting drunk, eating pizza and ice cream and getting an eye opening insight into the life of a young free and single gay man in the Manchester gay scene – WOW is all I can say to that one!

So a long day, my feet are very sore and I would have loved to have had longer chats with people but it was ace – great to meet up with so many people, great to have *done* London on my own with the smalls and coped and great to see Dayve too (a surprise visit – he only texted me to say he was down here this morning). Infact – is anyone up for a museum meet up October/ November? 🙂

I can do this Mummying lark no trouble!

A pretty good day all things considered. A really bad night with Teeny meant Ady went back off to work with no big waving off committee. Monster came to wake me just after 7.30 and having sent him downstairs to check to see if Daddy was still there (I knew he wasn’t but had a faint hope he may get distracted by the telly and give me another half an hour) he came back up and had a right strop about me refusing to get his plastic trainset out (I HATE the plastic trainset – he struggles to construct anything by himself with it, Teeny always breaks it, and his games with it are all reinactments of Thomas having train crashes)which woke Teeny and me abruptly so we all got up and came downstairs with a swiftly sold wooden brio trainset (hey I worked in marketing to children you know, I can change a four year olds mind about what it is he wants!).

So we built a pretty big track which left them amused while I wrote out a job list for myself and set about achieving some of it. Pretty basic stuff such as a couple of phonecalls, booking the car in for an MOT, sorting out Monster’s thank you cards for his birthday pressies and so on. I got over half done which I was quite pleased with, the rest can carry across to Wednesday. The biggest task by far was the playroom tidying – I feel quite virtuous for chucking out a whole bin liner full of rubbish and collecting a second one of nasty plastic happy meal toys and three of the five shapesorters we seem to have to give to a charity shop too.

We also had a quick pop out to Boots and the local Shoe shop which broke the day up a little. Monster is very, very tired. He has not caught up with the last two weeks worth of late nights and hotel stays but was asleep by 8pm tonight which hopefully will make him a bit less whingy tomorrow – he has veered between being excited about the meet up (I know about London, there seems to be lots of children who don’t go to school etc) to worrying about it all (don’t want to go back to London, I’ve already been there, what if I am the smallest child all day long? Why don’t you know any of the children’s names?!) So he will either be angel child or let me down and all the good press I have given him in my blog will be proved wrong when folk actually meet him tomorrow!

He has been on quite an educational kick today though – we did the trainset which is always good for motor skills, planning, visual and spatial awareness etc, he did some great teaching to Teeny of a couple of things, we also got out a big puzzle of space (basically the solar system all correct and to scale in a really long line) that Rachel had bought for his birthday which really captured his imagination and talked about the sun, day and night, how its different times of day depending on where you live on earth and why, why we can’t feel the earth moving, gravitational pull and how it doesn’t work in space, how space rockets can blast out of the atmosphere but helicopters can’t and loads more. Ady and I were talking this evening about how although the kids hold each other back in some ways (if there was no Teeny then I am convince Monster would be well on the way to reading and writing by now, and if there was no Monster then Teeny would be more vocal, more up on colours, shapes etc like he was at her age) they are also very complimentary to each others education too.

It has also been brought home to me (and not for the first time) just how much they can learn from TV when they watch the right programs, for short bursts, with time and resources to explore stuff further. Monster can actually credit Dora and Come Outside (you gotta love that Auntie Mabel) for loads of basic info which has led him to ask further questions, he obviously takes in information really well from a TV – Ady is the same actually, whereas I would far rather read and interpret something myself or be in the classroom type arena with discussions. We don’t use the TV to ‘babysit’ and I particularly am very consicious of ensuring they only watch appropriate TV (aside from the Thomas DVD which is currently hidden!) but I think TV has a very important role in a resource for education.

Anyway, big day tomorrow so I’m off for an early night and hope for a semi decent nights sleep before meeting some of you tomorrow – can’t wait 🙂

I’m so proud!

We’ve always taught Monster that if he does something bad or wrong or naughty he should tell a grown up so we can sort it out. That even if it is really wrong it is better to own up and get it dealt with than to ignore it or even worse to lie and say you didn’t do it.

I do sometimes think he does stuff for the sake of coming to tell me and getting the praise for ‘well done for telling me Darling, now we can sort it out together’ though…

I was just making the kids lunch in the kitchen while they were supposed to be tidying up the toys in the lounge a bit when he came in and announced:
‘I am so so so so sorry for doing this Mummy. I have put a bogey in your drink’.

I followed him to the lounge to find a very old dreg of coffee cup behind the sofa on the window sill – must have been put there by my father as he is the only person who ever sits there and puts his cups with a floatie bogey in it.

Having spolit any possibility of either praising him for telling me or admonishing him for doing it by collapsing in total hysterics we have left the incident for now!

And now, the end is near…

Yep, Ady goes back to work tomorrow and as he and my parents have delighted in telling me I will be left alone with the kids and have to do everything again! Now I openly admit I have totally enjoyed letting him get up in the mornings, doing their lunches and dinners, changing nappies and generally being at their beck and call instead of me, but hey guess what – I do it every other bloody day and I appear to be more than capable so far!

Meant to blog earlier something really funny that Monster said in London. We were walking across the footbridge (the wibbly wobbly millenium one which is wibbly wobbly no more) and he asked me why there were bars / handrails across it:
Me: to stop small people like you from falling in the Thames
Him: but what if a gorilla came along and ripped the bars off?
Me: where would this gorilla come from?
Him: (in a patronising teenage tone) Africa
Me: (glowing from how clever my small boy is) how would he get here from Africa then darling?
Him: He would open the door and come into London…

My cold has not come to much and is not even worthy of lemsips although that may be down to Ady allowing me ten hours sleep Friday night / Saturday morning while he dealt with small people, bless him. Yesterday I spent the morning going round every room in the house with a black sack clearing crap to give to people for their smaller children (that’s crap to me but may be of use to them obviously!), stuff for Ady to take to the dump, swapping over the kids summer clothes for the wintery ones and hanging them all up, putting away the three baskets of clean washing which had accumulated and so on – which made me feel all productive and glowy. Ady then went to the dump, tried to make up the new bed for Teeny, realised the fixings we had were not up to the job so off we all went in the rain to traispe round several hardward and bed stores trying to find some. We ended up at my parents for an hour or so, Dad is going to track some bolts down for me tomorrow so hopefully she will be in her big bed (which I probably quite delusionally believe will help her to sleep better!) by the end of the week. In the evening I dyed my hair (which I clearly didn’t wash out altogether as it came off on the sofa cushions (since washed out!) and my pillow) and was relaxing in my skimpy nightie when a knock at the door announced Jim (our friend who has moved to Ireland), so in he came, I put on some more suitable attire and we consumed lots of alcohol and had a very silly few hours of being all giggly.

Today we have been over to Chris and Julie’s for a birthday lunch for the twins (who were 2 on Thursday). I made a trifle and there was cake, sandwiches, chocolates and various other sweet things. We had a lovely day, as usual over there talking about our upcoming holiday week and generally being one big happy family.

Tomorrow we are planning a quietish day catching up on various things I meant to do over the last two weeks and failed miserably at, Monster has all his so far pretty much untouched birthday gifts to have some serious playing with and we need to prepare for the London trip on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday we have meet ups planned and Friday is as yet undecided… Oh and I’ve tried to keep it brief today, but probably still failed!

sneeze, whine, cough, splutter…

I have some sort of cold virus related London lurgy – well a cold anyway! So am feeling sorry for myself and in need of indulgence and cuddles.

We’ve had a nice day today continuing in our ‘tourists at home’ vein. We have not been to Brighton (which is only about 12 miles away) since we moved back to Sussex so having learnt from treking round The Smoke with Monster we packed two pushchairs and went for a lovely nostalgic wander round The Lanes, up through the main shopping centre bit then along the seafront and along the pier. Its the Labour party conference in Brighton so lots of it was either shut off or police protected which meant that the ‘commercial’ bit of Brighton was even less appealing than usual and the Lanes were all the more charming. Really, really need to do a childfree trip there – I saw at least four shops I want to peruse in further detail including the Bead shop – I have been developing a yearning for some letter beads to make bracelets for me and Teeny with. We found a fab T shirt shop which was doing three of these for a tenner so Teeny got two and Monster got one (check out some of the adult ones, they had us in stitches and may well have solved several Christmas present dilemas!) and found a newly opened cookie shop (there is one in Oxford too – Ben’s cookies) which had closed down elsewhere and been much mourned by us so indulged in cookies for lunch!

We popped into ELC in the main shopping mall and sneakily bought little figures of Dora, Boots and Swiper for Teeny’s birthday and three Dora books too. Her birthday is not actually till December but it will be here before we know it, and I don’t know how many chances I will get to go pressie shopping, and Dora stuff seems to sell out quick everywhere so it was a case of grab it when you see it. Tomorrow we are off to get a mattress and bedding for her new bed which has been residing in the garage as we have decided that she is ready to exit the cot now – yet another sign that our baby is a baby no more…

We have got two things to look forward to at the moment (I have to have stuff to be looking forward to, I love to live in a permanent state of excited expectation!) aside from the London meet next week – first is our holiday with Chris and Julie in cottages here in mid October which should be fab. Ady has used up all his work holiday so he will be coming back each evening to there instead of home. Second is our Halloween party – I went to one once when I was about 7 and it was one of my best childhood memories ever! My mum went all out and hired a proper witches outfit from a fancy dress shop and it was just such a fun party. Now I know the kids are much younger than that and probably won’t really have an inkling whats going on, and yes it is perhaps more for the adults but we are planning fancy dress (for kids and grown ups) with spooky themed food, games like apple bobbing and so on and just general hilarity and laughs – have got the Usborne book of Halloween activities from The Book People which has some cool ideas for crafty stuff to do in advance with the kids and I am hoping it will be something to spark Monster’s interest in a bit of educational stuff too.

Tomorrow is going to be a walk round every room with a black sack and clear some crap type day, unless of course I am feeling too pooh to do such things and have to instead lounge upon the sofa demanding hot lemon drinks, menthol rubs and medicinal brandy laced hot chocolate. Update to follow!