the time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down

By pure coincidence I’ve done a lot of trawling through memories the last couple of days. Yesterday I was trying to find a disc containing some writing I did about 10 years ago. I didn’t find it but I did come across loads of discs of photos from 2001 – 2004, many of which were previously unflickrd. So I sat and did that, smiling at the chubby baby that was Davies, the practically hairless toddler that was Scarlett (oh how that has changed!) and remembering all the happy days of years gone by with very little children through looking at their images.

Today I was thinking about those first months when we started to think about Home Education. I knew I would be able to chart it by finding archives of the newsgroup uk.people.parents where I’d been posting since 2000 and first met Alison, Chris & Helen and various others who are now real life friends. So I spent a very happy hour finding my early postings from there when I had a newborn Davies, again when I had a newborn Scarlett and a toddler Davies and finally tracked down my first questions on there about Home Education, which led to me finding Muddlepuddle. And the rest as they say…I was actually looking so I could do a post on Monster & Teeny about how we found out about HE, which I did indeed do, but I got more caught up in a trip down memory lane about the things which concerned me 4 and 6 years ago, the toddler years, the potty training, the sleeping and so on. Now of course I have my blog so I can go back and see what I was pondering on this date two years ago or whenever but it’s nice that actually all of the children’s lives are charted by images and my words at the time right from the very beginning.

I’d wanted to do *something* with the children today, having been working for a day and a half last week followed by all of Saturday away and then Davies out on Sunday I wanted to grab some time with them again before I am back at work again tomorrow. There is a localish farm advertising Lambing which we’d talked about taking Tarly to see when Davies was bunny hunting but the shoe hunt meant we didn’t so I had that half in mind depending on the weather for this afternoon. The children played Xbox first thing while I was doing my online stuff, then Tarly played with her Polly Pockets for ages and Davies and I planned to get out his potters wheel (birthday present from Em which we’ve been meaning to do something with for, well six months :oops:) but it needs batteries so that was written off until we get some. Davies had a plan to make bowls to collect easter eggs in on Sunday (we always hide loads of mini eggs around the house for them to find in a drunken Saturday evening annual tradition the night before Easter Sunday :lol:) so I’ll try and remember to get some batteries for it so we can have a go at that maybe tomorrow. So he got down a mecchano kit (another birthday present we’ve not got round to looking at before) and we did that instead. Bloody fiddly stuff that isn’t it?! He did a good job of following the pictorial instructions and gathering the right bits and putting it together was a collaborative effort based on whether it required strength, dexterity or littler fingers in order to do each bit 😆 Scarlett finished with her Polly Pockets and did some more colouring and drawing in her princess book. It was an activity book she chose with her world book day token (I think I put another quid or two towards it) but it has been out pretty much every day since. She has syphoned off her favourite pens and crayons from the playroom and keeps them in an empty chocolate box which she takes off to her room every night to sit and colour and ‘write’ in bed and then brings into the lounge every morning to continue through the day. She is constantly forming letters, writing her name and copying words from things. I’m really enjoying watching it all from such a relaxed viewpoint as with Davies at that age I was still fretting about pen grip, whether he was starting a letter in the ‘right’ place to form it and so on. Her colouring is really tidy and she is constantly amazing me with how many letters she knows and that she knows all the numbers past 10 written down.

Then we had some lunch! 😉

In the afternoon the children wanted to play with the wooden train track and it had clouded over and infact did rain very briefly so I put the lambing plan on hold and had some laptop time while they built an enormous train track round the lounge and shared out all the trains and people.

Another feature of today was Scarlett brushing my hair. She must have done it for a couple of hours in total, spraying it with anti tangle spray and sitting brushing it for ages at a time, then coming back an hour or so later and doing it all over again. I *adore* having my hair played with / brushed so I was in heaven 🙂 I also spent the day wearing my new shoes to check how comfy they were and because like a little kid with new shoes I had to keep looking at them and smiling. 🙂 I’ve wanted some crocs ever since Layla and Claudie got their’s last summer but haven’t been able to afford any. Lucy’s SIL has a lovely green pair which I’ve been coveting having seen her twice in the last week so I looked on ebay and found some very cheap copies so ordered them 🙂 I’ve no idea how they actually measure up to the originals but I’m loving them lots. 🙂 Tarly also fell in love with them so I ordered her a pink pair of copies which should be here tomrrow or Thursday hopefully. 🙂 We’re the pretend croc girls 😆

Ady came home with some ladybird books (we seem to be collecting them – really must sort the bookshelves out around the house properly. I’ve swapped a load of story books over between the children’s bedrooms so they both have some new bedtime story material but I really need to clear my chicklit shelf once and for all, get shot of all the board books and sort the shelves out properly. I feel some spring cleaning coming on :). Scarlett and I sat and looked at a very basic book which had very little writing but lots of interactive stuff like showing four pictures and asking you to tell the story. She really liked that. :). I took Davies up to bed and read him Mr Nosey, a book about a treemouse in a forest which I’m pretty sure we’ve also had a version of from the library (it was a Book People special offer one in a set of 6 such tales IIRC) and then as he was being so lovely and I don’t read him stories anywhere near as often as I should I went and grabbed a load of the books from Tarly’s bookcase and chose The Velveteen Rabbit to read him. I’ve never actually read it myself although I know it’s a bit of a classic. Our version is from M&S (originally, I picked it up in a charity shop somewhere over the years like pretty much all of our books – either book people, ex library or charity shop 🙂 ) and the illustration of the rabbit is all but identical to his current favourite soft toy rabbit (which he’s been taking everywhere saying it’s the Easter Bunny – now it is the velveteen rabbit 🙂 ). He sat enraptured for the whole story, despite the language being very flowery and some of the words requiring me to explain them. He was so taken with the story he has already started speculating what could happen next (he wants the boy to realise that the bunny he sees was indeed once his toy) and he is also intrigued at the idea of an illness called scarlet fever 😆 so I suggested he could write a sequel if he wanted. He is planning one called The Velveteen Rabbit Comes Back and he is going to tell it to me while I type it out, then we’re going to print it off and then he’s going to illustrate it apparently. So that’ll be a nice thing to do. He went to sleep still muttering about plot lines with the intention of dreaming about it so he could get some ideas in his sleep :).