Not a bad day certainly, but a wearing one. Which is sort of a relief as you know you need to pay back a good day like yesterday somehow ;-).
Lucy came round first thing with Rebecca and Richard. Rebecca was not in the best of moods – they moved house yesterday so I think she is slightly unsettled and Scarlett was flatly refusing to share her toys, her room or indeed her brother! So that made for plenty of adult intervention. Eventually Rebecca dissolved into whinging of the loud and parent irritating variety so Lucy plonked her outside in the car so we could finally finish our conversation! But it was one of those wearing mornings when you just keep losing your thread due to constant, for the sake of it, interuptions from the children. 🙄 There were some bright moments of course. Lucy had brought some gingerbread men with icing and sprinkles so the big three sat and did that very happily for half an hour – necessitated a good mid visit hoover true, but worth the peace! 😉 Davies did yet more storyboard style pictures – he’s really got into this and the floor is covered with loads of pages of pictures all telling stories – lovely! 🙂
He also taught himself how to trace. I’d printed out a Wallace and a Gromit mask yesterday but not given them to them. They found them this morning and coloured them in and then Davies realised that if he laid a sheet of plain paper over them the print was bold enough to see through the paper and draw round. Hey presto, autonomous, self-taught tracing! 🙂 I explained about the other sort of tracing with scribbling and tracing paper so we’ll get some next time we are near a suitable retailer. He also drew round some toys in a stencil fashion and then filled in details like faces on them by copying, so loads of art styles and techniques all done via self discovery.
After Lucy had gone we put Fun Radio on Sky and sat down to do some puzzles (me and Tarly) and some geomags (Davies). Unfortunately it was ‘nap time’ so they were playing classical music. I say unfortunately because I’d been hoping for something like a story for them to actively listen to rather than be background noise. It occured to me today that the areas my children are probably most rich in in terms of the resources available and the things which capture them and therefore we cover most are art and music, which is ironic really in many ways, particularly as they would have been the areas I would have felt they could potentially miss out on by not having access to resources at school. There was some conflict with Davies wanting me to ‘only pay attention to him’ as he was doing some sort of recreation of the metamorphasis of Wallace to the Were Rabbit using geomags – which was good admittedly but I think Tarly is entitled to half of my attention for her puzzle making too 🙄
Eventually peace was restored and they returned to playing together so I went off to do some baking. I made various things, some experimental including snickerdoodles – have finally cracked them, but in trying so hard I think I may have snickerdoodled myself out! 😉 I also made chocolate chip rock cakes, fairy cakes and some cup cakes which didn’t work but the kids proclaimed delicious anyway! I had various helpers at various points which was actually quite nice and then I cleared up the kitchen and we all tidied up the lounge together.
Davies had further complaints about me not playing with him enough, which he does do from time to time and can usually be remedied by a little one to one, but doing something I am interested in rather than simply being a captive audience for his geomag constructions for hours on end. We did start to read a Bob book together but he was not really wanting to do it so I suggested he look at his leappad books for a while as some of them have some good pre reading stuff in them. He thought that was a good idea and even suggested which ones would be good for remembering the sounds each letters make so he did that for a while too.
Ady got home just after Tarly fell asleep so I imagine she’ll have a wakeful night to ensure she gets her full daily quota of Daddy!
Glad it was just a wearing day rather than the usual follow up to a “woo hoo” day of a bad one 🙂 I’m expecting a bad one tomorrow following our good one today 😉
Comment by Jules — 14 March 2006 @ 10:21 pm
Yeah you sort of got off lightly I guess. We’ve had a ‘woohoo’ fortnight and are now heading into the whingey whiny underworld of doom probably for a month. And we’ll be bringing it all with us tomorrow, I suspect, so feel free to pretend to be out when we arrive.
Comment by Ali — 15 March 2006 @ 11:31 am
you know Nic, if you aren’t careful you’re gonna turn into a fully fledged Prairie muffin! Glad the day was so-so rather than vile and hope Tarley doesn’t keep you all awake too much!
Comment by Katy — 15 March 2006 @ 7:15 pm