stuff and nonsense

Hmm, someone needs to write a toddler taming for older siblings 🙂 Davies and Scarlett have always been very close – best friends I would say really. But suddenly over the last couple of months they have had a few hiccups along the way.

Firstly there is the begining of some fledgling friendships for Davies – which means he seems to need Tarly less and is more aware of the fact she is so much younger and less able to play at his level. Secondly they have both had a bit of a leap up a gear – Davies is suddenly seeming much more grown up and on the cusp of making a bit educational type breakthrough – Scarlett’s speech and stuff like colour reconition, counting, learning ‘facts’ instead of just ‘words’ is making big leaps too. Suddenly they are both wanting / needing lots more one to one time and I can’t meet both needs at the same time. A few weeks ago even we could cuddle up on a sofa with a pile of books they would both get something out of – suddenly Davies wants books with words he can make some sense of while Scarlett wants books she can ‘point and say’ at and talk about – they are not content to sit and listen, they both want to ‘get all the answers’ and are not happy about the other one participating anyway 🙁

The drawn out being ill phase has not helped as the attention focused on them has been a bit skewed the last couple of weeks with Davies getting lots when he had the pox and then Scarlett getting even more last week when she was poorly. The healthy child was getting bare minimum while the ill one was getting all sorts of special priviledges, sleeping patterns are all over the place and both me and Ady are knackered which doesn’t help. Makes me have all the more admiration for juggling and finding the right dynamic in a family of more than one child where one has an ongoing special need of some sort…

I am fairly sure it is a small phase which will even out pretty soon and reach the next stage I have been longing for of being able to do something and have them working although not together as such, at least side by side – but hard to deal with while in the middle of it just the same. Davies is also dealing with it less well and has been displaying some less than desirable mirroring of some of my impatient behaviour in Scarlett’s direction. She just seems to irritate him whatever she does – which she is reacting to by being even more clingy and attention seeking towards him – odd to witness that parent – child type interaction between two children, but that is what it is like…

I sort of feel they need to sort this one out by themselves so aside from stopping him from getting really nasty with her, and her from being unnecessarily irritating to him wherever possible I am trying to leave them to it and let them find their own new equilibrium.

All of the above aside – just wanted to blog it to mark the end of one era and beginning of the next really – we have had a really nice day today.

Davies really wanted to go out somewhere for the day but I was not really up for it having had a bad night going up and down the stairs to Tarly’s room, and I knew she would be asleep within moments of a long car journey which would cock up any hope of a better night tonight so I put him off that idea 🙂 Davies spent some time playing his Thomas game on my computer (which when I looked at the cover of and found was 2+ made me decide he definitely is not being challenged by it at all! Time to ‘break it accidentally so it doesn’t work anymore’ I think 😉 ). Scarlett alternately pottered, watched TV (:-) ), erm decorated the bathroom carpet with baby shampoo (which might prove the TV is evil and encourages rampaging behaviour actually so perhaps I shouldn’t blog it 😉 ) and looked at some books. While I wound myself up by reading lists (Joyce it’s the ongoing sugar is evil one on UKHE (? I think!) which developed from the McDonalds one, which developed from the Jamie Oliver one – does anyone know that Leo – is she for real? and the TV one on MP – which did not actually have anything written by anyone which was particularly OTT but is something I have a personal ‘thing’ about having encountered people before who are so evangelical about the evil box in the corner, whilst often citing radio as the pure and one true path – wft!? – so it wound me up anyway!).

After all that I felt the need to go and buy Heat magazine for my weekly fix of what’s big in celebdom, mindless trash reading and of course the glossy ad fix for what I should be spending Ady’s hard earned wages on in Boots this week 🙂 Also felt some fresh air and exercise wouldn’t go amiss for all of us so I made up a ‘spotter sheet’ for each child, with the intention of giving them each a pen, teaching them how to do ticks and having a bit of a ‘treasure hunt’.

Davies’ was made up of some letters to spot (S, M, R, T, D, L, C, A, F) with both upper and lower case on there and some words of things he had to sound out with my help and then find (red car, man, cat, tree, park). Scarlett’s was just four clip art pictures (bird, tree, car, lorry). Davies loved the idea and was really up for it, Scarlett decided she wanted her pushchair and was not at all into the idea of ticking – she coloured in all her boxes and then refused to bring the sheet with her 🙂

So our usual ten minute walk became a half hour adventure. We spotted letters on road name signs, house name plates, car number plates (a la Richard Herring 🙂 ), water / drain covers, some roadworks signage, some adverts and an empty cigarette packet! While bending down over a drain cover identifying an F an old man came out of his house to talk to us – which was nice and also ticked off ‘man’ :-), the lady in the shop noticed Scarlett’s pox marks so she had a nice chat with Davies about that, our opposite neighbour was in his garden painting a wall so we chatted to him, and his mother came out and joined in, then the other opposite neighbours came out too for a chat – all very pleasant. And they were all so complimentary about my children too 🙂

Back inside we had some lunch then signed up for the free education city trial (won’t bother linking as everyone else already has 🙂 ). For about half an hour we sat together and did it – Scarlett on my lap and Davies sat beside me doing the actual clicking. We started with the reception stuff (which is what he would be, although one of the very oldest in that year) and I was very impressed at him knowing every single one 🙂 some of it has sunk in after all! The only criticism I have of it – and most other such programmes actually – is that it makes getting the wrong answer so attractive. The little animated reaction for example on the meet an alien game is more fun when you get it wrong than when you get it right. Ok so he has to know which is right in order to know which is wrong and therefore select the wrong one but I still am not super keen on that aspect of it. We compromised by him being allowed to select the wrong one to see what happened as long as he could point out the correct one to me first 🙂 Not sure if I think it is worth the money or not really. It’s good, and I have spent more on less worthy causes but it’s probably no better than the cdroms we have already spent money on. Study Dog didn’t appeal to Davies at all and this did, so perhaps if he is up for playing it a couple more times during the free trial period and is still enjoying it I may think about it with the discount – I guess over the whole year Tarly might well be at the stage to look at the reception stuff too (if she was 3 months older she would be reception next year and she already loves playing on the computer so it might be worth it if both of them are going to use it (assuming one subscription can be used on two computers at the same time!)

Davies then asked what treasure there was as a result of finding everything on his spotter sheet so we nipped down to the wizard store and spent a fiver on two loads of plasticine stuff, a big box of coloured pencils, a pack of jumbo playing cards and some number tiles which have occupied them for the afternoon. I have done some pictures copied from Green eggs and ham which I want to colour in and laminate for a planned game associated with the story. Have also booked our new hall for tomorrow, had an email back from Miranda to say the work I turned in for last week was ‘very good’ 🙂 (you can see the result of some of my work here 🙂 ) , tomorrow is new group, Thursday is Legoland and Friday is Scarlett’s TT2 trial – ooh it’s a busy rest of the week 🙂