Month: October 2006

March of the Penguins and more

First ever trip to the cinema for the children (unless you count J coming in with us aged 4 months, fast asleep in a sling, but nevertheless asked to leave when they realised he was there because the film was a 12 – since it was only about 10 minutes from the end we persuaded them to let us stay and agreed to sneak out through a back exit) found us watching March of the Penguins as part of National Schools Film Week πŸ™‚ We had expected to meet with the Beans, but they got held up in nasty traffic and didn’t make it πŸ™ with the result that L spent a fair bit of the morning asking where SB was; I think there’s a bit of heroine-worship going on πŸ™‚
The film was great and the children really enjoyed it, although L ran out of patience and stillness about 3/4 of the way through and had to go out for a little break. K sat on Bob’s lap and then on mine and did a bit of weeping at various points, with a few whispered conversations about food chains, sad mummy and daddy penguins and so on, but J was just enthralled the whole way through πŸ™‚
After the film Bob dropped us off in the city centre and we went to Bouncearound for the first time in ages, which was great. We really must rearrange our week a little so that we can go more often! Also found out that there was a curry and childcare evening the next day, so signed up for that πŸ™‚
Mid-afternoon we met up with Bob again and went to Jesus to talk about the choir. It soudns very full-on and tbh I’m not really sure, but J is more determined than ever that it is something he wants to do, so I guess we’ll have to give it a go. It will mean a lot of work to prepare for the auditions in March and then there are likely to be at least 2 applicants for each place, many of them from musical families and with private tuition etc behind them… The audition will involve reading, writing, singing back random notes and longer tunes, clapping back rhythms, identifying chords, how many notes are being played etc. Assuming he gets through all that we’ll be given lots of work for him to do over the summer ready to start in earnest in September and there will then be two evening rehearsals a week, as well as a Sunday morning and the actual performance stuff on Saturday afternoons – what on earth are we letting ourselves in for?!

Tuesday 17th October

As blogged for “one day in history”.

The day started at about 6, I guess, as that’s roughly when L came creeping along the corridor and into our bed. Fortunately she agreed to wait for “Mummy milk” until the radio came on (7:00) so I was able to doze a little longer πŸ™‚
B very kindly got the children up and breakfasted, as usual just now, which gives me a chance to start the day a little more slowly, nurse my morning sickness and actually eat my breakfast instead of sharing it with the gannets – Crunchie seems to have more appeal than porridge, although come to think of it when I have porridge they steal that too!
J remembered a conversation last night about Marie Curie, so the first priority for him was looking her up on the internet, which then metamorphosed into lots of Google Images of fun things like brain coral – kept them busy while I dressed anyway πŸ˜‰
Nothing much planned for today, so once B had gone off to work J and K (6 and 4) spent the morning doing a little Maths and English while L (2) ran round the house doing her best to distract them. They all did some colouring for the Nature Detectives competition too and then we decided to go to coffee morning at Castle Street Methodist church. By then, however, we were too late to walk, so jumped in the Zafira (car seats and belts all round) and drove across town to the church.
Made it in time to get warm cheese scones – always a bonus – and a large wedge of Victoria sponge, as well as a nice chance to chat (and, as usual, answer lots of questions as to why the boys weren’t in school) and enjoy a nice cup of tea. J wanted to go into town to spend his pocket money in charity shops (lots of toys for very little money) but I managed to put him off until Thursday when we’ll be there anyway and instead we went to Aldi and Iceland to stock up on essentials while we had the car to get them all home.
We got back rather late for lunch, but I think they were still all full of scone and cake, so we just cooked (defrosted!) some veggies and mash (to make a change from sandwiches) and shared those, then children pootled about (Pc, books, toys) and I searched madly for a Didymos wrap IÒ€ℒve managed to lose  until it was time to take J to French club. He still goes to the after-school club at the school we withdrew him from at Christmas, which is great as he loves his French teacher and gets the chance to meet up with old friends again on a regular basis. I put L in her Cwtshi carrier (handily tied above the bump) and J and K walked Γ’β‚¬β€œ well, ran, as we were late again *sigh*
Came home via the shoe shop on the corner, where all three children were measured but only K got shoes; L hasnÒ€ℒt grown yet and JÒ€ℒs feet are too narrow, so weÒ€ℒll have to hunt around for him. Back home just in time to watch Blue Peter and Newsround.
Pizza for tea (B got home just in time) then bathtime for two littlest while J read and for J while they had stories (K) and last feed (L). All in bed by 8 (late night for J as TV programme on Holbein he got interested in) which leaves B and me free to keep hunting for that missing wrapÒ€¦

Out of the mouths of babes and infants…

This is mostly so we don’t forget them.

Katy was talking about knocking on doors and ringing doorbells and so on and said when the postman comes he’d just go “RRIIINNNNGG RRIIINNNNGG RRIIINNNNGG!”. K said “What, make the noise with his mouth?” (like Katy had just done) :). I can just imagine our postman standing on our doorstep with a parcel in his hand, not knocking on the door or pressing the doorbell, but saying “RRIIINNNNGG RRIIINNNNGG RRIIINNNNGG!” in a loud voice. Then moving along to next door and repeating it…

One Sunday recently we succumbed to the gorgeous smell of curry from the restaurant next door but one to our church and went there for lunch. The children were all a joy to be with – they tried all the food (although we limited ourselves to things we thought they’d like) and behaved very well and also seemed to be enjoying themselves and interested in the pictures on the walls. There was a lady sat near us having her lunch and as we left she commented on the children to Katy. As we were walking down the road afterwards, Katy said “The lady said to me ‘You have the most delightful children.'” (or something like that). K said “Don’t worry Daddy, I think she meant your children too!

This morning the boys had got dressed without any encouragement from me, which was nice. As they finished breakfast J said “I’m dressed!”. K said “Me too!” L said “I dressed too!” Being a boring parent, worried about the literal truth of things rather than seeing the Big Picture I said “No L, you’re completely naked.” She said “I wearing my plaster!” – which is true, she has a lovely pink plaster on that she got yesterday, so she wasn’t completely naked.

In case you’re wondering, the title comes from the Bible, either Psalm 8 or, when Jesus quotes the Psalm, from Matthew chapter 21, verse 16, except you’d need to pick a different translation to get those exact words – NIV uses “babes and children” and the King James uses “babes and sucklings” πŸ™‚

Pasta and skills sharing – and blood tests

Yesterday was a CHEF gathering – a kind of multi-way bring and share as each family brought veggies etc to chop and cook for pasta sauce, then while it was cooking each child had the opportunity to share a skill or do a show and tell type presentation. J made a couple of cakes on Sunday (almost entirely by himself; I was very impressed!) and wanted to describe how it was done as his presentation, but we realised just the night before that the children all had an appointment for blood tests at the hospital (fortunately near to the gathering) right in the middle of the morning. This meant we had just about enough time to get there, chop a few veggies and then head off to hospital (Bob came too so also had to pick him up on the way), where children had numbing gel put on (didn’t realise until too late that this meant an extra 45 minute wait on top of the 45 minutes they had told us the appointment would take) then got to play with fun toys while it took effect. J, who had been the most resigned to it, really didn’t enjoy the experience at all, but I was able to BF L and K while they had theirs done and they both seemed to come out of it pretty much unscathed – the power of Mummy milk! All were sporting exciting plasters, which have been proudly displayed to all and sundry πŸ˜‰
We got back to the gathering to find that they had just finished eating pasta and were doing some singing, but fortunately there was plenty of pasta and sauce left, so we ate while listening to the singing rather than joining in. Also found that they had very kindly delayed the cake and dessert eating until J was there so he could talk about his cake first πŸ™‚
Quiet afternoon once we got back (dropped Bob back at work first) with lots of PC and another episode of The Secret Garden. Only one to go, I think, then we shall have to look for something else to watch…

A pleasant evening

I was reading K his bed-time story tonight and he spontaneously started to read one of the words himself! Once I realised what he was doing, I steered him towards the phonetic ones, and I helped him by covering up everything but the word we were reading, and sometimes showing just a letter at a time. So far he’s managed: Mum, Dad, but, I, can. Proud daddy moment. Katy does all the hard work going through the letter exercises with him, and I get the nice results. πŸ™‚

As I tucked him into bed he asked “Why is it stripey?” and I thought he was referring to the wallpaper but he meant his bed as it’s made of unpainted wood. We had a little chat about how trees grow and tree rings, which was a lovely way to end the day.

Then down to sort out J and we had one of those meandering Home Ed. conversations that are really nice and hard to remember how they start. I think in this case I remarked to J that he was reading a book by himself that I used to read to him, and that soon he’d be reading War and Peace. “What’s that, Daddy?” I fell into the trap of saying it was by Dostoevsky, but Katy and Google to the rescue: War and Peace was by Tolstoy; Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment (among others). J said “Grommit read Crime and Punishment in A Close Shave” (amazing memory!) This then went on to me remembering my first secondary school’s houses, which were famous Europeans like Nobel, Tolstoy, Curie and some others so famous that I’ve forgotten them. (It was a long time ago!)

This then went to talking about the Curies. Another mistake from me – I said they got uranium from ore and it was instead radium. But I got the bit right about Pierre carrying a vial of it around in his jacket pocket because it was nice and warm, and he didn’t realise it was the cause of the large burn across his chest. He avoided dying of radiation sickness by being killed in a road accident first. (Got that bit right too.) I forgot to remember that Marie died of leukemia because of being a pioneer of X-ray photography during World War I – in those days the radiographers would check the strength of the beam by putting their arm in it and hoping it would make their skin peel. Ugh!

I mentioned the unit of measurement named after them, and then the Newton, and the difference between mass and weight with the aid of fictional space ships and weak tables made out of paper. The poor sausage was still going strong and tossed in questions about infinity (“What’s half of infinity?”) so his brain couldn’t have been completely scrambled.

Catching up again

Fortunately nobody else got the nasty tummy bug from me, so Thursday found us once again at parents and tots, although J was pretty much on his own as the other HE children all seemed to be (independently) ill. They both sat and did some work (Maths and English) while I got things ready, which was great and makes me feel less guilty about dragging them along to do what is essentially my voluntary work. πŸ™ Gina came along at the end with J and E (both now recovered; E kindly passed bug on to her brother…) and gave the boys a little bit of piano time while the rest of us did jigsaws. The boys are really enjoying doing this and it’s nice to see how much J has remembered from the few piano lessons he did well over a year ago, before the teacher we had found moved too far away to be worth the journey.
On Friday we had fun with buses to get to Friday club, as a mix-up of paperwork meant we hadn’t realised the car was overdue for its MOT and the earliest we could get it into the garage to be done was over a week away. It was worth the effort to get there as the children all really enjoyed the art activity one of the mums organised, doing doodle pictures with oil pastels and the using paints to fill in gaps (pics to follow, but we had to leave the pictures there to dry as getting them home on the bus in the rain did not seem a good idea!) – we’ve done a couple since and turned them into very effective birthday cards πŸ™‚
The bus back took hours (literally!) as it went further out before it came back into town, then all round Will’s mother’s (as apparently is the local saying πŸ˜† ), including a little trip round the hospital, so we decided it wasn’t worth coming home before J had to go out again to a birthday party and instead we had lunch at Burger King. Nobody ate much (a few chips went down, but the veggie burgers were all passed on to Mummy, who didn’t like them much either – where’s Daddy when you need him? :lol:) but the free toys were a great hit: L got a “Molly-rom CD” and the boys swapped the Batman DVD-things they were originally given for a Bat-mobile-mobile each, which they love and have played with almost non-stop since getting them πŸ˜€
When we got to the party K, L and I were invited in as well, which was lovely and gave me a chance to catch up with the birthday girls’ parents, who we know both from school and from church but rarely seem to have a chance to chat with any more.
The weekend had lots of pottering, including Bob and the boys assembling and painting a new shelf unit for the bathroom and a fair bit of SOTW happening as well.
On Monday we had planned to go to Mustard Seeds again, as L keeps asking to go, but once J and E arrived she decided she would rather just stay at home and play, which pleased the boys, so we made huge quantities of play dough and they spent ages with that, then ran round the garden for a bit letting off steam.
Tuesday morning was spent at home doing lots of Maths, a little bit of English and a fair bit of playing, drawing, computing etc, then in the afternoon we had a long trudge to the doctor’s surgery (because still no car) for m/w appointment, which went well but took ages so we were then too late to get back for J’s French club πŸ™ We went to the park instead and had a long play, then got back in time to watch Blue Peter, so not such a bad afternoon all told πŸ˜‰
Wednesday was Wicken Fen, which Chris has already blogged beautifully, so I shan’t bother πŸ˜› Fortunately E was not going, but J was, with his dad, in a nice big car with enough seats to give us a lift too so we didn’t have to cry off or risk driving illegally πŸ™‚
Then Thursday was back to P&T again, with some fun origami animals for the older ones to make (thanks Gina!) and the chance for more lovely baby cuddles as Rebecca brought baby R in to see us all πŸ˜€
B and F on Thursday afternoon – quite hard work as F very tired and not in a very good mood, but B is almost always chirpy and at home enough here now to just get on with things. They all did Hama beads, except L who tipped them on the floor πŸ™„ and F who drew a picture instead, then we ate early and long and their mum was quite early to pick them up, so everything passed off okay.
Should have been a nice quiet Friday, except that m/w had told me I *have* to have bloods done, even though I have declined triple test etc etc, because they need to know what my blood group is – the fact that I have had three babies already and given blood for years doesn’t tell them for certain, it seems, as it might have changed! Hmmm… Anyway, off we all traipsed again, had bloods done (the phlebotomist was great – I only have the tiniest bruise πŸ™‚ ) and then came home, this time via two different parks and lots of playing, for a nice quiet afternoon. We’ve been watching The Secret Garden episode by episode and the children love it; it’s a great way for me to get a nice quiet cup of tea πŸ˜‰
The car passed its MOT with minimal work (yay!) so Saturday found us filling the cupboards once more and also heading out to Emmaus to look for drawers to fit under K and J’s beds – found one set, but still need another. The great thing about Emmaus is the lunches! We had soup and a roll for £1 (in fact £3 for all of us, as the hcildren shared) and then the most enormous slices of cake, again for £1 each – yum! Made up for cheap lunch by spending a fortune in a nice farm shop on the way home though…

Farewell NTL

Yesterday I finally managed to sever our ties to NTL. We used to use them for phone and broadband, then we switched to another phone service and yesterday I asked them to cancel our broadband.

The people we’re switching to aren’t cheaper, but they’re small and ethical. Also, they’re not NTL. This might seem a bit harsh, but NTL seem to have a knack of fouling up whenever they can. I shan’t go through everything here as it would get tedious quite quickly, but as an example there’s the time when we moved house. We had used NTL for phones at our previous house and wanted to move our number with them to the new house. I gave them plenty of warning and the engineer turned up on moving to sort us out.

Pretty much the first thing he said was “Where’s your box?” – we didn’t have one as none of the previous owners had been NTL customers. “I’m only here for a reconnection; I was told there was an old connection here.” Who, better than NTL, would know if NTL had ever supplied a particular house? πŸ™„

Anyway, NTL managed to go out in style. I phoned up yesterday and got their press-3-for-this system. I pressed what I thought were the right buttons and got through to someone. I told them my account number and said I’d like to stop my broadband and was told “Please hang on while I put you through the disconnections department”. OK, maybe disconnection is rare enough that it’s not something that everyone’s trained to do.

I got through to the disconnection department and was asked for my post code. “Hang on while I put you through to the disconnection person for your area.” Hmmm… this seems a bit poor, but OK. The third person then asked for my account number again, couldn’t find my account details on their computer system, asked for my post code and told me I’d been put through to the wrong area and so transferred me to someone else.

The fourth person seemed to be the right one! He was very nice and asked me why I wanted to cancel. I said it was because I got better service elsewhere, and he offered me NTL broadband free for 3 months if I’d stay. I said I’d already ordered the new broadband. How about super-fast broadband for the price of my current broadband? No, I’ve already signed the contract. OK. Long silent hold later, and all was done.

The irony of having to talk to 4 different people over 15 minutes to execute a really simple transaction was not lost on me.