The shoe quest continues…

We were all up quite early this morning and breakfast was an easily organised affair as I’d picked up some reduced croissants at the supermarket last night – two almond and two chocolate. I’d have put money on Ady and Davies wanting the chocolate ones, I prefer almond and Scarlett usually has whatever I’m having, but Ady had scoffed an almond one, Scarlett wanted chocolate which left Davies with the choice of one of each remaining and he chose almond. So I had chocolate, and marvelled at everyone doing the opposite of what I’d expected (although Scarlett was indeed delighted that I had chocolate too so her and I had the same 🙂 ).

We were just getting organised to go out when Lucy texted to ask if we wanted to go conker hunting. I really wanted to get Scarlett shod today as the rest of the week is busy and it’s really too cold for crocs with holes in now, so I texted back to say we’d be ready to meet in an hour after we’d dashed off shoe shopping part II. I put a second load of washing on and we headed out. We tried Matalan – nothing, Asda – nothing and Brantano – nothing. All a dire selection of black school shoes, tarty Bratz style boots with high heels (high heels! For a four year old!!! 😯 And a tree climbing, clamering on playground equipment, splashing in muddy puddles, scrambling over rocks at the beach, running as fast as the wind four year old at that – she’d knacker her ankles by age six!) or sparkly party shoes. So we gave up and went to the park instead. Lucy confessed she’d lured me to the park with promises of conker hunting knowing the park would be an outright
‘no’ but actually as we arrived first and saw the park was totally empty I was quite up for a play there instead. I sat in the giant sink plunger style swing watching my children from afar pondering the fact that finally they are the optimum age for enjoying playgrounds. They can go on everything without help, get up, get down and propel themselves. The sun was shining which it’s done very little of all summer, and yet this is when they should be closeted away in a classroom instead – something is surely wrong there?!

Lucy and The Rs joined us and with only mimimal amounts of helping we had a lovely time with Lucy and I going on most stuff – with varying levels of hilarious results. Three out of four children having a whale of a time on the zip wire, Davies showing off his fairly newly acquired swinging skills and Scarlett getting a bit of time just her and I in the middle of it all, sitting on the roundabout chatting. :). Rebecca was due at her Nanny’s and the other children were getting hungry so we decamped from there, with a brief period of conker discovery as we walked across the park back to the car. Davies did various mathsy stuff with the 13 conkers he’d collected. He’s doing lots of that lately, all very practical stuff like telling the time or relating it to money – he told me the other day that 50p and 50p was one pound, which is clearly nothing amazing for a child a couple of years his junior but is not something Ive ever told him, so is a self discovered bit of maths, which has gotta be the best sort :). We also had a chat about singulars and plurals yesterday which I forgot to mention with him asking if ‘one pound’ and ‘a pound’ were the same thing, ditto ‘one hour’ and ‘an hour’ and why we had two names for describing them. I explained that we don’t tend to use the prefix ‘one’ so much as an and a, but we do use numbers when it is more than one: eg there is a dog, or there are two dogs. We also talked about the term ‘couple’ for describing two or three of something. All very low key ways of everyday stuff that just seems to come up and get dealt with at the time, but when I put it all together I realise is his way of getting every bit of information he needs from our day to day lives to build up the knowledge he wants / needs.

Home for lunch, the children played with the chickens while I hung some washing out and then Lucy and Richard arrived. It was a changed dynamic without Rebecca and poor Richard didn’t seem to come off well from it really. The four of them rub along together pretty well and I think the siblings, age gaps, gender mix gets bridged across the way, but taking one child out of the mix meant the whole thing folded rather with Davies and Scarlett a bit reluctant to bring their games down to Richard’s level and possibly seeing him as something of a responsibility rather than a playmate :(. Lucy and I did get to finish our chat though, while I sat and wrapped a load of my ebay parcels ready for the post office.

Lucy and Richard left and Davies and Scarlett fell straight into a game. I’d spoken to Ady – who passed his screen test with flying colours, got really good feedback, complimented on his ‘Paul Newman eyes’ and has his first appearance next weekend 🙂 🙂 🙂 – and he was on his way home so Scarlett and I decided to wait for him to get back so we could take his car and leave Davies behind with him for the next phase in our shoe shopping. On the way over we talked about what sort of shoes she wanted and she agreed she would like boots and red ones if possible. The first shop we tried was Peacocks – a cheapy shop which has often come up trumps in the past for things we’ve failed to find anywhere else. Sure enough there were a pair of lovely dark red, knee high boots with no heel and easy for Scarlett to manage herself zips. 🙂 She ran around the shop in them to practise and decided they were perfect. 🙂 Also in there were fake croc wellies for a fiver a pair 🙂 so I got her and Davies a pair of those each ready for our upcoming Autumn and Winter Walks ;).

On the way home I gave Scarlett the phone and got her to talk to Ady to ask him to get dinner on for the children as Davies had to be at Badgers. He passed the phone over to Davies and the two of them chatted away for ages. Really nice to hear them so pleased to talk to each other :). Once home I quickly wrapped a couple more parcels that had been paid for since this morning and then dashed off to the post office to get them on their way. I was cutting it fine for Badgers really but I didn’t want to spend all of my lunch hour tomorrow in the post office and the one in Lancing town is always packed with queues. Back to collect Davies and off again to Badgers.

I whizzed round to Lidls for a few bits including a particular cereal they both adore which I’ve only ever found in Lidls and then sat in the car reading my book and eating chocolate limes until he came out again. Just like at Beavers he is now one of the middle sized children as the bigger ones have moved on and smaller ones have joined. Scarlett will start there in December, which will be great, there are a couple of other sibling sets at Badgers including the boy and girl who came to Davies’ birthday party and both D&S are looking forward to her being there. :).

Home again to make quiche, wrestle children to bed (and persuade said children that once in bed sleeping rather than looking at Mr Men books would be a good idea – I swear that child is teaching himself to read with sessions in his bedroom every night :lol:) and organising a courier online for one of the bigger ebay sales, giving feedback and general ebay admin. I’ve made nearly £100 from last weeks flurry of listing so I’m very pleased with that. 🙂

Tomorrow I’m working and Friday we’re off to London for the day to the Natural History Museum with various HE friends, so a busy end to the week lined up.