Hmm, a good stuff / bad stuff type of day today really. I’ve done my share of ranting at small people, but we’ve also done lots of nice stuff too.
First thing we gathered up all the library books in the house (of which there were many, many of), then we all sat down and read them all. There was a quaint mix, some of which we’d looked at before like one about a soldier for Remembrance Day and a couple on the Gunpowder plot too, so we didn’t bother with those again. There was a couple of ones from the main library in town that I’d picked up from the ‘issues’ section so we did ‘Sad’ by Michael Rosen illustrated by Quentin Blake which is about how Michael sometimes feels sad, mainly when he thinks about his son who died and his mother who died, how he deals with that sadness and that it’s ok to feel sad. Not hugely relevant atm but maybe a good one to have read for refering back to one day. Very touching anyway. We also had ‘where do babies come from’ which was another well written and illustrated book, talked about seeds and eggs, which me and D have already covered really, talked about parents meeting, falling in love, making a home together and then deciding to have a baby – they decided to have YOU! They make their bodies fit together (nicely put – and D pretty much ignored that – phew!), it being hard work getting you out of Mummy’s body and then you taking A LOT of looking after but you grew and grew, then maybe another baby came along too. Really liked that one 🙂
Also did a couple of nonsensy books, several Dr Seuss and two enormous big classroom size versions of books – one about a hen who arranged a series of swaps of belongings between the animals so she ended up with the scarecrows hat and one about dancing giraffes, which I’ve wanted to read ever since Sarah interviewed Heather 🙂
The children made some Christmassy mess with glitter and glue and Scarlett came upstairs while I got dressed and put make up on so she wanted to try some too – birthday pressie is so going to go down well then :-).
Then we headed out to the library, picked up a smaller pile of books to borrow and popped into Woolworths to get candy canes and chocolate tree decs for tomorrow. Also got a couple of Dora books for Tarly for birthday / Christmas and then we came home for lunch of cheese toasties.
This afternoon I have been mostly on the phone I think, Miranda phoned me about yet another possible business proposition. She has been speaking to my friend Dayve, who used to be my assistant at Dreamieland about him working for her again on a local project up there so I was getting excited texts from him while talking to her on the phone. She is coming down to Sussex to stay with her parents for Christmas so we’ve planned to get together for alcohol aided brainstorming which may yet result in something exciting happening – another different door and all that! ;-), also spoke to Karen and Ady several times. I also spent about half an hour writing down a very basic beginners guide to HE for a woman Ady works with who is in a desperate state with her bullied primary school age daughter and has been asking Ady all sorts of questions he feels he is answering very badly so asked me to have a go instead at and emailed that across to him to pass to her. Poor woman 🙁
The children took this opportunity to play with some beads which ended up scattered ALL over the lounge. Threats and pleading failed so in the end I set the kitchen timer for ten minutes and all three of us cleared the whole lot up! My plan had been to do a fair bit of baking today but it didn’t really happen so I managed 36 mince pies which the children found utterly boring to assist with (no bowls to lick, no icing to mess with!) so they played with their sticklebricks, which required yet another kitchen timer moment to get tidied up.
Tarly is now asleep, Ady went to Reading to get some Christmas cards from Costco and should have been home about an hour ago, Davies is still chattering away and I need a drink, a hot bath and to get the dinner on soon so I can execute my plan of an early night to fight off Girlflu which has finally made its presence felt in my head, nose and throat 🙁
Tomorrow we’re putting up our decorations, so it will be a fest of Christmas music, mince pies and Baileys, over excited children, fused and tangled Christmas lights, tinsel droppings and the annual hunt for the drawing pins! Oh and ill health permitting we’ve all been invited to a house party round the corner with my parents too, so we could well have a long old day ahead of us.
arrghhh girlflu!!