One word? When seven would do…

Friday I worked all day. I did Baby Rhyme time in the morning and it was a frustrating session as a couple of the mums didn’t bother singing along or even paying attention to their babies but instead chatted with each other 🙁 Really hard to deal with that in a non-confrontational way and it is frequently an issue at Storytime but I can understand it then when the older children are engaged in listening to a story, but Baby Rhyme time is all about the adults joining in too, with the songs, the actions, the shaking the instruments and so on.

I employed my usual two default measures which is 1. to sing louder myself, to drown out their conversation, to make up for the dip in volume from the group and to try and get their attention back and 2. to sing stuff like row, row, row your boat and say ‘right, everyone, back on Mummy’s lap’ which means they have to participate too. On Friday I was feeling slightly more evil so I made everyone stand up to do Grand Old Duke of York twice over and Heads, Shoulders,Knees and Toes – 3 times, progressively faster each time! 😆 Definitely a market for a nursery rhyme work out, but given how out of breath I was after that I am perhaps not the person to be leading it ;).

In other work news I got clearance to give away free dvd loan vouchers to all the kids at Chatterbooks so started ordering in books and film / tv shows to give out, probably next week and ask the children to come back having read / been read to and watched the dvd and compare the different types. So far have some Charlie and Lola, some Mona the Vampire and some Horrid Henry for the more modern stuff and Carrie’s War, Swallows and Amazons, Charlottes Web and Stig of the Dump for the older children / more classic stuff. Will need to get some parental input / approval on that before I dish them out though I think.

One of my colleagues had had a cosmetic procedure done on some thread veins in her cheeks and was suffering from bruising and blistering so she was heavily made up and worried about it cracking, holding an ice pack to her face at tea break and therefore the target of much trying to make her laugh 😆 We spent some time ogling Max Beesley on the internet and ordering in anything on the catalogue that he’s appeared in :). The whole atmosphere at work has changed since NC handed in her notice (she leaves this coming week) and it’s a nice place to be again at the moment :).

Davies and Scarlett were home with Ady for the day. He worked from home in the morning on paperwork and emails – his work laptop was taken back last year which he was utterly unfussed about and now they’ve all been issued with smart phones so they can pick emails up again, which he is rather fed up about but does negate the need to go into the office so often. After lunch they went out to visit some stores but Davies suddenly felt unwell and was all cold and shivery and pale so Ady brought them home again. Davies seemed to make a miraculous recovery once home although he was quiet again later in the evening.

I know we had pizza for dinner but anything else that happened other than me reading some more Creation stories utterly escapes me now about Friday evening.

Saturday Davies was supposed to be at YACs but it was an indoor craft event rather than a dig or or site visit anywhere and as it would have meant getting up and out early when he didn’t wake we left him to sleep and he was fine about missing it. Must email them to let them know he will be back next month though. We had a fairly quiet morning, the weather wasn’t great and everyone was happy to just hang out at home. Ady and Scarlett tidied her room up a bit and moved various things into other rooms to make space / remove precious things ready for Em and Oscar to have her bedroom for the night while she went in with Davies for a sleepover.

Davies did some xboxing, Tarly did some DSing, can’t really remember what else. We had lunch and then Ady and Scarlett went off to the pet shop, Tarly armed with notepad and pens to draw the pets she saw she might like (she was veering between turtles and hamsters, she has currently decided on hamsters) just as Em and Oscar arrived. We’d arranged an overnight visit when Em dropped Eve and Rei off with their Dad for the weekend so Em and I could get some proper time together as having been at Christmas Camp, New Years Eve at the Fishes and Centerparcs in recent months we still felt we’d not have much time just to hang out and chat without other people or children.

Davies stayed with us and was excellent at entertaining Os with pens and paper, various soft toys and the spinning octopus they’d brought with them. He is pretty good with babies considering he hardly ever spends any time around them. Scarlett is less good, viewing them as living incarnations of Baby Anabel :lol:No idea where she gets that from ;).

We drank tea a-plenty, Ady was a splendid host serving snacks, providing tea, cooking a delicious steak and offering to delay his own meal and entertain Oscar while Em ate – everyone was lovely really – LovelyEm, LovelyOscar, LovelyAdy, LovelyDavies and LovelyScarlett :).

Oscar had me all gooey by wearing one of Davies’ old bodysuit/vests and then even more so when Em changed him into his babygro and it was one of my favourites of Davies’. I went and found a photo album which had Davies wearing both the top and the babygro and got all misty eyed thinking about how the years have flown – along with relief that he has grown a little bit after all 😉

Davies now, next to a picture of Davies then wearing the babygro that Oscar is wearing now next to Oscar now wearing the babygro, with added Em and Scarlett for glamorous assistant type duties 😆

I sold most of Davies outgrown clothes on ebay once we had a daughter but had always hung onto a few treasured items I couldn’t quite part with for 99p each and didn’t know anyone ‘special’ enough to pass them on to that I’d have been happy seeing wearing them. When Em announced she was having a boy I was thrilled to be able to pass on those items and it’s been lovely to see him wearing them 🙂 On looking at a picture of Davies on his first Easter wearing a cute dungarees and shirt outfit Em said that had been Oscar’s Christmas outfit :).

Eventually everyone else went to bed and fell asleep, despite a couple of currently-typical-Scarlett moments of being upset and needing lots of talking and attention from me 🙁 She’s been even worse tonight and is really acting in a hormonal way I think with mood swings between the happy, carefree Scarlett I know and a sad, not at all the Scarlett I know little girl. I’m trying to be consistent, loving and reassuring while not so indulgent she continues relying on me for her happiness and feeling better. We’re doing lots and lots and lots of talking though and whilst she can’t articulate what the matter is she can at least articulate that she doesn’t know what the matter is, if that makes any sense at all!

Hmm, have just been googling ‘what to expect…’ type stuff about seven year olds and it all sound terribly familiar. Maybe I am having a brief period of a textbook child after all, just magnified all the more by being with her all the time.

Anyway, I digress. Em and I stayed up and really had a proper catch up which was lovely 🙂 And we were in bed before 3am 😉

Sunday I was last up, well actually Davies was last up but we were all up by about 9am. Ady carried on providing food and drinks in the way of breakfast, lunch and countless cups of tea. There was some DSing, Em and I had a PurPals face off, we watched some Winter Olympics, played some snakes and ladders, coming up with a new rule about being able to make your moves in any direction which vastly shortened the game length and made it much more tolerable. Ady and Davies played Goddardopoly which is a make-your-own monopoly kit that we got about 6 years ago and I painstakingly made and printed off but had never really been used. Their game continued into this evening and Davies is now hooked :).

Ady got some of the toy animals out to entertain Oscar although I suspect they were more entertaining for the rest of us. The foam shapes which I then got out on the pretext of being for Oscar were definitely more enjoyed by the rest of us. We built a replica Empire State Building which Davies then noticed Oscar looked like King Kong next to so we tried to recreate the iconic image 😆

But mostly we just chatted :).

LovelyEm and LovelyOs left just after 3pm. Ady and Davies carried on Goddardopolying, Scarlett and I spent some time snuggled up playing on her DS, she did some Big Brain Academy having been reminded of it in a conversation earlier and surprised me with how well she did on some of the tasks including the one where you have to say which box has greater value in coins as she clearly knew all of them and what they were worth.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, we watched Natural World which was very good, then Countryfile while Ady and Davies finished their game. A further upset with Scarlett before bed which she recovered from, then dipped back to before she finally went to sleep – so exhausting – and now, unsurprisingly I am also very tired so am off to bed – busy day again tomorrow.