X Box consultant pays a visit…

Ady worked from home today which initially caused additional stress as the children were constantly trying to leap on him, get him to run around after them and shouting across us whenever we tried to talk. And we fell out over me ‘helping’ him with what he was working on 😳 But we eventually settled into it.

I forgot to mention earlier in the week that Tarly is suddenly into sticker / puzzle books. I have about half a shelf of 3+ ‘workbooks’ largely unused that I bought when we first thought about HE. Davies has never been a workbooky sort of child and I had pretty much reached the conclusion that I was not a workbooky sort of mother really but Tarly is loving them. She’s done some match and sort style mathsy ones although they are very much of the spot the difference, link the pairs, odd one out style rather than anything involving maths as I consider it. Seeing Tarly head bent over a book, getting a bit of attention and support while doing it has sparked a bit of interest in Davies so he has been looking at books like Dinosaur atlas sticker books which have loads of stickers all numbered which you have to put on the right part of the world to show which dinosaurs lived where.

Today Tarly grabbed a first 100 words book so we sat matching stickers to that for a while and I showed her how to match the word printed on the sticker to the word printed on the book and how that word was what the picture was etc. Then we looked at the picture and spotted things in it and did some counting up of stuff too. All very early years education really and something I am so not in the habit of doing I found it nice but odd all at the same time.

Davies came over and started ‘helping’ with the words until I asked him to read ‘hen’ off one of the stickers and he threw a complete looney at me. I would have maybe let it pass but Ady was sitting across the room and waded in with the ‘if you can’t read at home then maybe we need to send you to school’ type chat. Which I am more than guilty of pulling out of the hat myself at times despite having very little intention of seeing it through, or indeed being particularly concerned about his reading. I just hate the attitude he displays sometimes about things which I know he is utterly capable of and get really pissed off when he would rather make a huge drama about it, cry, sulk and stamp his feet while riles me up instead of just doing it, getting the praise and feeling good about himself. Kids eh? I sent him to his room as he was being really arsey and then after a few minutes I followed him up there and we had a chat. I then asked him to choose a book for us to look at together – with the aim of restoring some of his confidence by showing him he *can* do it and feeling good about reading rather than leaving it as a sore point. He chose some of the Usborne Ted in Bed, Big Pig type books and we looked at Big Pig. He did really well actually although I helped him with the sort of where, when, there, shows type words which we’ve never covered before. We did about five pages before we both got bored and stopped but he redeemed himself in Ady’s eyes and was all positive about what he can do again so that was mission accomplished. 🙂

They then got the Happymais out and Davies was playing quite happily with that but being interupted and annoyed by Tarly so I took her off to do some baking with me instead. We made chocolate brownies and rice crispy cakes together and chatted lots about what we were doing as we went. Tarly broke up the chocolate, did some stirring of the hot pan, greased the brownie tray, tipped the nuts, sugar and flour in, did some more mixing and put it in the oven. Then she assembled paper cake cases for the rice cripsy cakes, tipped the marshmallows into the pan and then wandered off again.

I returned to the lounge to find Davies making all sorts of stuff with Happymais, Tarly looking at the Big Pig etc books and ‘reading’ to herself making it up as she went along looking at the pictures – she sat and happily did that with all six books. I do sometimes wonder what would happen if you applied the ‘raised by wolves’ approach to a child like Tarly and didn’t help AT ALL. Would she learn to read eventually just be working out what individual words meant by spotting them against various illustrations in various books? She constantly surprises me with her wide vocabulary and expressions and it is actually very rare she asks what a word means like Davies still does sometimes, she just seems to note it’s use and context once or twice and then starts to use it herself.

Ady had awarded himself a break and found a website of ring tones with loads of old children’s TV shows and 70s / 80s adverts, so we happily played ‘name that kids show of your childhood’ for a while which was cool. 🙂

And then, imagine my surprise (said in best Viz voice) when I spotted Ali and Freya walking damply past the house. So the children let them in and then kept them coralled in a very small area in the hall while they brought them various things, returned borrowed items and bombarded them with X box questions as they tried to remove shoes, outerwear and change soggy hemmed trousers. When we eventually allowed them inside the rest of the house there was a brief period of craziness which was solved by packing Davies off upstairs to eat his lunch in the company of Ady who had scarpered upstairs when they arrived due to not being fully clothed, needing to go and put his boots on to be in Ali’s company and knowing full well I would deputise him to look after and entertain all the children so Ali and I could chat! 😆 Wise man!

Which meant that Tarly and Freya played really nicely together with occassional interjections from Davies when he re-joined us. They did stuff with make up, Polly Pockets and liberated toys from Davies’ bedroom. And then Davies realised that actually it would be far better to hang with the laydeez in the lounge than try and infiltrate the beauty parlour in Tarly’s room. So he sat firing quick fire questions at Ali about W&G X box games and talking us through every stage of his Happymais X box related constructions. He really made me laugh when Ali was out of the room by confiding in me that he’d ‘accidentally said bugger’. 😆 I repeated it to Ali when she came in but stopped short of what he’d said and turned to him to say ‘what did you say Davies?’ He thought for a moment and then said ‘I can’t tell you, but it’s a friend of ‘Oh My God!” 😆

Inbetween chatting with Ali I did manage to suggest and support Davies with creating tartan slippers for a Happymais Wallace, persuade Tarly to paint nails over newspaper and threaten shouting as a punishment for repeated offences in turning lights on in Tarly’s room. Then I escaped for an hour by taking Ali and Freya home.

I came home and Ady had fed the children (easily my least favourite task of the day), we watched the quarter final of celebrity Masterchef with Davies making all sorts of hilariously adult and astute comment on it before trying to get children to sleep. Tarly had mislaid both her remaining (very old) dummies and seemed fairly ‘unbovvered’ about it so I was prepared for this to be ‘it’ and was sitting in her room with her while she kept getting out of bed to look at books, brush my hair, lie upside down on her bed picking at her woodchip wallpaper telling me convoluted and complicated stories until she fell asleep when Ady arrived with a dummy he’d found in a holiday holdall. So she took it and was asleep very speedily afterwards.

Now we are drinking alcohol, watching music channels on TV and playing ‘guess the song title, artist and year first’ while Ady has cooked possibly our latest ever dinner of home made burgers and chips. The mince and potatoes were both supplied by Chris and Julie – the potatoes from their garden and the meat from a friend of Chris’ who had an Aberdeen Angus slaughtered for their wedding reception (pre the event I believe rather than as part of the evening entertainment!) and supplied Chris with various cuts of meat for his freezer from the remnants. The cow was called Pete and we have enjoyed him very much 🙂

Lots of socialising planned for this weekend so I might not be back til after the break. 🙂