One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday was Hallowe’en Party day at Magical Mondays. I’d made some biscuits (both children wandered into the kitchen first thing and their first question was ‘why are the pumpkins red?’ :lol:) and we had some Hallowe’en music (which never made it out of my bag) and some pumpkin carving kits to take with us but no actual pumpkins so we left early and stopped first at Sainsburys and then at Asda on the way to get some. Sainsburys didn’t have any, which perpetuated my fear of a National Pumpkin Shortage due to unseasonal rainfall during the summer, or something. But Asda were totally pumpkin’d up with crates of the things in the foyer and a couple of blokes rummaging through them to find the best ones (who we christened Crazy Pumpkin Men, which delighted them) dug out good ones each for Davies and Scarlett too.

Once at MM Davies and Scarlett both wanted to start carving their pumpkins pretty much straight away. I’d started helping with peeling and chopping apples for pumpkin soup so set them up next to me on the breakfast bar area where I could supervise. This proved to be slightly misguided as all the cool kids were carving their pumpkins over at the table where they could at least sit down and engage in pumpkin carving banter as they worked. It then all got a bit manic as the people making soup and soda bread needed to dash off to one of their houses to get a whizzer for the soup and I suddenly found myself minding two additional children who both wanted pumpkin carving assistance, some about to boil soup and three batches of soda bread all due to be ready to take out of the oven at different times! :shock:. It was fine though and all was well.

The children disappeared off to eat iced biscuits off string, bob for apples (Scarlett ate about six apples I think – she was over there for ages and kept bringing me cores, totally ignoring all the cakes and biscuits all the other children were troughing their way through :lol:) and generally rampage. We had soup and soda bread – well I did, D &S refused to try either. Ali and Leo read stories including some from T and L which were fab hyrbids of Night Garden and Empty Child from Doctor Who (L) and one about Slitheen and Spiders (T) all done by spooky candlelit pumpkins. Really enjoyed that, particularly the audience participation and sound effects. 🙂

Back for more feeding before tackling the clearing up. It all feel rather frantic and although I started at least 5 different conversations with people I don’t think I finished any of them. The noise levels were very high and there were stacks of people there including some I’ve either never seen before or not seen for ages – which is great as far as MM as a group is concerned but not something I particularly like personally – I enjoy the smaller group dynamics really and sugar-high children with so much going on isn’t a great place to deal with some of the more challenging behaviour demonstrated by some children :?:. Interestingly everyone else was commenting on how great it was to have so many people there, so clearly it was a personal thing to me rather than anything anyone was doing ‘wrong’. Anyway…

We left there and headed into town where I need to transfer money between banks to pay the mortgage and also wanted to get a birthday present for Claudia for next week and the stuff to make a present for Jasper. We had an hour on our meter and did the whole thing in slightly under so that was good, if rather hurried. Once home I hung out some washing, out away all the stuff from MM we’d brought home and had just made a cup of tea to sit down for 15 minutes for the first time other than in the car all day when there was a knock at the door. It was our lovely neighbour Maureen who had brought over a framed picture she’d taken of the first chickens. She’d adored them having been brought up with chickens and pigs and really loved seeing them in our garden. Apparently when Ady told her we were going to get rid of them she’d begged her husband to let her ask us if she could buy Wobble from us as she’d totally fallen in love with him (he was the black cockerel), bless her. The children were delighted with it and wanted to show her the bantams so we all trooped round the side of the house and she got the guided tour and met all the bantams. Maureen is so nice and genuinely adores Davies and Scarlett and often leaves little presents for them on the doorstep and chatters to them over the wall. She told me what lovely children they are, how lucky they are to be getting the childhood we are giving them and how wonderful what we are doing with HE is. She is so full of praise for the children it is lovely to hear and reassures me that none of our neighbours are likely to go calling social services in horror that they are not in school. :).

By the time we’d said goodbye to her and put the bantams away for the night it was time to cook the children’s tea and wash up – so my tea went cold and I didn’t get my sit down. 🙁 After tea we rushed Davies round to Beavers and I defrosted chicken to get a curry on. Ady came home and did the curry while Scarlett and I did some online pumpkin carving in practise for the design she wants on the massive pumpkins (3) Ady brought home from work today. Off to collect Davies and as promised I spoke to the Beaver leader about the boy (s) that had been upsetting Davies with his behaviour. He is just generally rough, disruptive and well, horrible, really. It was not at all specifically directed at Davies and I don’t think Davies has ever even really been his target, more that he’s watched others getting hurt by him and the prospect of it maybe happening to him was enough to worry him. So I mentioned it, they acknowledged it as an issue and agreed that actually the child is very disruptive and does really spoil it for everyone. He whips up two other slightly challenging boys into a frenzy and the adults find themselves focussing on just keeping them in line rather than actually getting on with any of the things they want to do with the group as a whole. Apparently they suspect all of them of being ADHD but have never been officially informed and suspect this is because then a greater ratio of adults (well actually, quite specifically those children’s parents) should be on hand to assist in managing the special needs within the group. Well that was what they told me anyway. To me a ratio of 3 and often 4 adults to a group of 12 boys seems more than enough really and as my only possible form of action at that point was to volunteer myself anyway I left it at that. Davies was placated that I’d mentioned it as promised and hopefully we’ll be ok from here on in. I’ve pondered on it since and I *think* my feelings are that actually for the sake of an hour a week it doesn’t do Davies any harm to have to compete a bit for attention, witness a spot of undesireable behaviour (particularly if that behaviour offends him and he recognises it as undesireable rather than gets hints and tips from it :lol:) and as he came out proudly clutching a very imaginative picture of what Lancing might look like in the future with lots of gold glitter glue. It had a pier (with the word ‘pier’ on it picked out in stickers) because we have previously talked about how in the (distant) future where we live will be under the sea, so he thought a pier would be another option to an underwater Lancing. There was also a ‘law and order enforcement’ device of a pipe which emitted noises which made ‘baddies’ stop what they were doing wrong, which actually pulled out of the picture and was operational (without the noise of course! :lol:). It’s the sort of thing Davies is often engaged in creating really but it’s nice that he got to spend time doing it with a group, inspired by other adults lead and using materials we don’t necessarily have at home (any glitter glue in this house is Scarlett’s domain!). He says he’s happy to keep going so until he tells me otherwise I guess we consider that episode dealt with for now.

Then we headed up to Ikea. I am having all sorts of odd feelings about life generally, but specifically the house at the moment, which seem to manifest themselves in apathy really. The short story is that actually I don’t want to live here any more. The house feels too small, it it scruffy and crammed and doesn’t fit our needs. I want more living space, a bigger kitchen and a garden that enables us to do the outdoor things we want (such as keep more chickens and maybe other livestock). Lancing depresses me, I feel threatened and intimidated if I go into the town after dark (so that’d be any time from 5pm this time of year) and I seem to see gangs of children, barely older than my own lurking on street corners, looking for trouble everywhere I look. The parks are vandalised, the streets are full of litter, every wall is smeared with grafitti – it has all the shite of a city with none of the ‘charm’. I am very aware that there does not exist a place which doesn’t have elements of the above and whilst I would dearly love to hide my children away until they are well into their 30s and capable of making good decisions about not doing crazy teenage stuff I know that isn’t very feasible and I hope I am giving them grounds for making good choices as and when they need to, but I can’t help feeling Lancing just undermines everything I am trying to do for them.

So there are two choices really – we either sort the house out so it is one we are happier living in for now (although I feel like a bit of a hitting my head against a brick wall with that one to be honest – noone else feels as cramped by the clutter as I do and I struggle to get rid of anything without protests from the others), redecorate, make better use of the space we do have, reorganise etc. Or bite the bullet, decide where we do want to live, work out if Ady needs to get a new job or can stick with this one and set the ball rolling by getting this house on the market and seeing what would be left after settling debts ready to start again.

Anyway, I digress, in an effort to run with at least making the house feel like somewhere I am happy to be for now, we’re trying to sort out the playroom after which we can sort out the kids’ bedrooms, so we’re after storage solutions for the kids toys. I want to make everything more accessible to them, create more space in the playroom, put in a table for the old laptop to go on with printer and laminator and stuff and generally make it a room the kids use rather than an excessively big cupboard. So we went to Ikea. The kids haven’t been there for years so thought it was amazing and wonderful and had a whale of a time there. We debated all sorts of shelving and bookcases (within our very small budget) and eventually having scribbled plans and drawings on paper decided that the best option for now was 3 pine shelving units which we could paint to cheer up. Except they were out of stock :(. So we ended up coming home empty handed. We got back at 1030, Scarlett was already asleep, but roused enough to be pj’d and climb into bed, Davies went straight to bed too and we finally sat down to a curry at about 11pm – other than car journeys the first time I’d really sat down all day.

Consequently today has been a late start. It’s already 1230 and the kids are still in pjs having not long since eaten dinner. We’ve got to pop to the library so I can pick up some details of a course I’m on tomorrow that I left at work and to the butchers for the months’ meat shopping but I’m struggling to galvanise myself to action. I’ve been looking at storage ideas on line as I’ve since decided that 3 shelving units still won’t really solve the playroom – I really don’t want it to look like a stockroom – a classroom would be a more preferable look to be honest, with everything at D&S’s level and easy to get at (and most importantly to keep tidy and put away themselves). I think I’m leaning towards putting everything in stackable storage boxes and keeping it round the edges of the room at the moment, which still isn’t what I want but as this sort of thing definitely isn’t within our budget spending fifty quid on shelving that still isn’t right probably isn’t the best idea either.