Wonky radar

I’ve been really frustrated at myself the last week or so for either utterly failing to just say what I knew full well people wanted to hear, or for not managing to articulate what I wanted to say. That, coupled with way too many incidents (many of my own making, clearly some sort of self-destruct hormonal thing been going on with me this week) of holding my lifestyle and beliefs up for others scrutiny and a few real life ‘things’ have had me all over the place today.

Thankfully I have good friends – one spent time with me online, listening and reassuring, and illustrating to me what I already know really. Another listened to my ‘and another thing’ style reporting of that, I sat and watched Supernanny all snuggled up with Davies and Scarlett and we talked about stuff like naughty steps and treatment of people you love and then finally I read yet another chunk (practically at the end, but must confess to having stretched it out by limiting myself to not consuming it whole and savouring it instead!) of Skylark which had just the right paragraph or two to set me back on track again. So all is well again :).

I’m not at all sure I’m ready to blog it all. Some of it I will simply cock up further by trying to write it anyway, some of it is not right for the ‘audience’ of this blog and as a lot of it stemmed from my own crapness in getting my points across I’m probably better having a go at managing that before doing a stream of consciousness type blogpost and muddling it all up again.

Anyway. 🙂

This morning was a fairly lazy one. I had various phonecalls I needed to make which seemed to take forever and require phonecalls back to me again. I offered some reading aloud or film watching but Davies and Scarlett seemed to feel the need to play so play they did. They got out the blocks for a while and then Scarlett brought out various Barbie bits of furniture and clothing and dolls (of which she has quite a collection). This inspired Davies and between them they set up a whole houseful of furniture and had the barbies acting out something or other with songs they made up.

We had lunch and they both decided they did want to go out – I’d offered them the choice of going out and meeting up with Lucy, R &R, going out alone or staying in and they chose meeting with R&R. They tidied up, we loaded Davies’ bike into the car and headed off to the park. Davies is confident enough on his bike but probably nowhere near ready to be without stabilisers. In the same way as I don’t worry about academic stuff I’m starting to be of the opinion that when he is ready to ride a bike he will do it pretty much there and then so I’ve not mentioned this being an issue to him and simply enjoy watching him getting a kick out of the wind in his hair and going as fast as he can.

We met up with Lucy at the (empty) paddling pool and we stationed ourselves on the rocks and let the children play, which quickly turned into a rock clambering exercise until they realised there were ponies nearby at which point it became a pony worshipping exercise :lol:. They gathered around the ponies and the woman running the pony rides and seemed to be engaging in conversation about all sorts with her so Lucy and I did lots of smiling and kept our distance. She seemed quite happy to answer their questions without expecting us to fork out for rides and we did work our way over to say hello and thankyou before following the children back to the rocks again. We worked our way onto the park and finally down to the icecreams where Lucy kindly treated us to ice creams. We ended in the carpark where the children started a game of going to the top of the hill and then following Davies on his bike running back down again. Davies did lots of daredevil style bike stuff actually, bumping down steps, haring down hills and maintaining good control of the bike’s steering and brakes, which is probably way more important to get straight first than the balance on two wheels bit actually.

We came home and had a quick turnaround of Davies getting changed for Badgers, Scarlett packing up some stuff to take to keep her occupied in the car while Davies was at Badgers and me trying to get the dvd recorder to record. Which I couldn’t. And actually, while marriage, mortgage and motherhood have failed to give me the feeling of being old being unable to get the dvdrecorder to work succeeded big time 😳 and the idea that rather than show me how to do it Ady should show Davies and simply let him do it probably cements that really :lol:. Ady was at QVC again today, not presenting yet, his screen test is in a couple of weeks. So far he is sitting in the green room, getting a feel for the behind the scenes stuff, learning the lingo and soaking up those broadcasting vibes. Oh and meeting the celebs of the home shopping channel world – today was Joan Rivers! Apparently after a bit of a chat she told him he should ‘always be yourself. Oh and always wear a blue shirt, blue will make your eyes look gorgeous on screen’. So there you go, sound advice I’m sure 😆

Off to Badgers where the two friends who came to Davies’ party from Badgers were already there playing and came running up to the car with cries of ‘Davies is here! Hello Davies!’ and who’s mum came over to thank me for a wonderful party that they’re still talking about now :). Scarlett and I walked Davies in and Scarlett very actively joined in with all the pre-Badgers dashing about in the hall and looked very at home. I checked to ensure there is no waiting list for when she hits five and she will indeed be there in her black skirt and shoes for the beginning of next term. She can’t wait :). And of course the idea of that whole hours freedom each week to read my book or walk down the beach is rather appealing to me too :).

Scarlett had, predictably without my intervention packed a full carrier bag of soft toys and a couple of My Little Ponies so was not really up for playing with them while I read my book. Instead we named some of the previously anonymous soft toys, had lots of cuddles, chatted about random things, none of which I remember now, made up some songs and ate lots of humbugs. We went back in to collect Davies, had a bit of a chat with the Badger leader who always seems to want to chat but never really has a great deal to say bless her, I’m always waiting for whatever it is she seems to be leading up to saying or asking but never quite seems to get to, but perhaps she really is just friendly. It looks like a good program this ‘term’ anyway, plenty of activities Davies will enjoy and with 4 of the older Badgers leaving at the end of the summer to go to cadets and an influx of newer smaller children coming in suddenly Davies is very much in the middle of the group rather than one of the ‘little ones’, which will of course be further perpetuated when his own little sister joins next term. Another good thing about it :).

We came home, I did some hormonal ranting about Scarlett’s bedroom, we recovered from that and they sat and watched ‘crisis at Jimmy’s Farm’ while I assembled a lasagne, ran a bath and hoovered and then we all watched Supernanny together. That was very interesting with us chatting about Naughty Spots at length. Ady came home in the middle of that, children went to bed, we bathed and ate dinner and now I’m sitting here trying to decide my favourite children’s story and nursery rhyme ready for my Storytime training tomorrow for work and whether asking Scarlett to choose me a soft toy to take along is a recipe for disaster. I’m quite looking forward to this training actually, both out of curiosity at the schooliness of it and simply because I love reading aloud and am quite looking forward to doing it at work although the nursery rhyme element to it is something I am not so thrilled at the prospect of.