It is the Day Of The Cough. Joyce’ll know what I mean. I’ve had the Day Of The Croaky Voice already where I like to sing Bonnie Tyler songs and admire how like her I sound, now I’m paying the price. But I also seem to be feeling a bit crap again tonight with a runny nose too. And am generally a bit shivery and grumpy. All can be explained by hormones though I reckon so hopefully I’ll be feeling better again tomorrow.
I did a quick dash into town this morning to move money about in bank accounts as Ady was working from home before going to college this afternoon and then Lucy came over with Richard and Rebecca for a few hours too. I was feeling fairly intolerant of four children talking over our conversations so tried to banish them to the playroom or their rooms (which actually I don’t think is that unfair really given they do have a bedroom each AND a playroom) but Davies made me laugh by suggesting that Lucy and I went somewhere else and they put the TV on because ‘that might keep us quiet!’ 😆 We ate popcorn, plenty of playing did go on although Scarlett failed in her efforts to get Rebecca to play with her which was a shame as she did try really hard. I’m sure it will all turn round again tomorrow though – those two rarely seem to want to play together at the same time :roll:. I’m rather playing up Davies’ ‘big boy’ status at the moment as he is by far the better for feeling older and more grown up than trying to bring himself down to the 2, 3 and 4 year olds so when I had a brief chat with him about understanding he didn’t want to play with the ‘babies’ all the time and that it was fine for him to find something he’d rather do and get on with it we created a little partition for him to do some unhassled colouring and dot to dot behind. It didn’t really work but I can see he is starting to want / need to seperate sometimes just as I have seen the older children do within our social circle when they were around his age and he and Scarlett were a couple of years younger. When it is just Scarlett and Davies at home they often play together for hours but it is always at a far ‘higher’ level than the games that get played in a group of younger children and actually I was watching Scarlett playing with her Barbies earlier and thinking that she is already far more creative and imaginative with her play than even Davies was at that age, so she is good company for him. But just as often they play apart and when playing alone his games are far more complicated and intense so I’m going to encourage him to feel free and happy to go off and do just that even when there are other children here rather than join in with the more babyish games and end up getting told off by me for adding a boisterousness and silliness to them which needn’t be there. Not sure if that makes sense really, but I know what I mean and it’s probably more an observation that he is needing to not be held back when he would rather not be than anything else I guess.
Lucy, R & R left, Davies xboxed, Tarly played with her Barbies, spending ages dressing and undressing them and then making them talk and move around – I love this age of unselfconscious play :). My laptop came back with the report to say it is definitely a fault with the machine and not something I had done to it, so that will be posted off tomorrow and hopefully a replacement will be sorted out soon. 🙂
Davies continues to play with numbers lots. He was telling me in the car yesterday all the number bonds to ten although he didn’t know that’s what they were. He knows that 5 20s make 100 so he counts up to 100 that way and has learnt to use his fingers to count all sorts of things. He is really enjoying playing about with numbers at the moment and finding patterns and ideas with them so that is nice to be watching. Scarlett counts along with him a lot of the time and demonstrates what I noticed in her from a fairly early age which is an ability to count things without actually counting them – she could look at 4 or 5 of something and know without starting at one and pointing to each of them that there is the right number just by sight. She is also better at adding one or two to something by continuing from her previous total, something that Davies has only just started to do – so if she had 4 and then you gave her 2 more she’d be able to say ‘five, six’ whereas he’d have had to have gone back to one again to count his new total. Fascinating stuff to witness. 🙂
And now I’m off to bed. I’m working in the morning and I have told my Granny that Scarlett and I will call round to see her while Davies is at Badgers tomorrow evening so that’s going to be a long old day.
So if your voice was still at the croaky Bonnie Tyler stage you’d have been able to say to Davies that you understand why he doesn’t best enjoy the younger children’s play because:
(all together now)
It’s a fool’s game
Nothing but a fool’s game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown
Lyrical asides aside though, I completely understand that stuff about joining in/not joining in – it’s very similar to what I’ve been trying to work through with F that I mentioned the other day about play/friendships/groups/individuals.
Comment by Ali — 31 January 2007 @ 2:09 am
How do hormones give you a cough? Isn’t it more likely that you’re being exposed to a lot more germs at the library and it’ll take your immune system a while to toughen up a bit more?
I have never spent one second considering whether Violet is playing at her “level” or at that of her siblings! You really do think too much sometimes 😉
Number stuff sounds fun 🙂
Comment by Alison — 31 January 2007 @ 3:23 pm
See none of that made any sense did it? 😆 I meant grumpiness can be excused by hormones (it’s the hormones, nothing but the hormones as Bonnie would sing). And yeah the other stuff seems like fingers running away with themselves over the keyboards reading it back today!
I’m just aware that he is spending lots of his time mixing with R&R, J&M and S who are 1, 3, 4, 4 and 4 and that he is far happier playing with older children and being himself than being constantly reminded to be ‘gentle with the little ones’ or dealing with responses to himself that he wouldn’t have to cope with if they were his equals. He is fine with Tarly but the R&R, J&M company definitely needs to be offset with some bigger kid company. As soon as he is able to take himself off with a book or something (which Violet has done for as long as I’ve known you when she gets bored of the smaller ones) I’m sure it will pass but for now he sort of feels like he should hang about with and play with the younger ones although it tends to disrupt their play and whip him up.
Comment by Nic — 31 January 2007 @ 4:35 pm
Ours really enjoy having separate group things to go to, which I think is about getting to play with people more their own age.
We seem to be in a phase of constant bubbling fights between the two of them at the moment, which is more than a bit tiring – for the whole street 😉 They have developed a new arguing style involving imaginative insults, ‘warty’ being the current favourite. I get cross but cannot help but find it funny when P shouts:
“You evil, warty little boy!”
We can’t go to groups the whole time, so they’re going to have to sort it out because “Every now and then I fall apart…”
Comment by Allie — 31 January 2007 @ 5:57 pm
I know what you are saying because I witness it too. It would be wonderful if there was a 6yr old boy around because I’m sure they’d take themselves off and not want the younger ones to disturb them which would leave the girls to do their thing and Richard to sit and be a baby with us. Maybe we need to kidnap one? Sorry I can’t add any lyrics in a clever and witty way.
Comment by Lucy — 31 January 2007 @ 8:14 pm
Yeah, let’s nick a 6yo boy Luce, we could lurk outside Freshbrook on Friday lunchtime and grab one!
That’s a rockin’ good way 🙂
Comment by Nic — 31 January 2007 @ 11:18 pm
Looks like you and me are falling back in sync again Nic! Hormones make me catch colds by the way, definitely.
Comment by t-bird — 02 February 2007 @ 11:52 pm