Mostly stormy, sunny periods later

Wednesday… not a good start! Plan was to do bookwork, then go to B-a-R and say hello, since we haven’t been for months and they always like to see how the children are getting on (we’ve been going since J was 4 months old!) and then get lunch in town and head over to a playdate out of town, after which we needed to get home for an early tea so the boys could get to their first Badgers session 🙂
Alas for the best laid plans…

L was up and about bright and early, as usual, but absolutely did not want to get dressed. K got up and dressed quite happily but was not so sure about breakfast. J got up, dressed and breakfasted but then procrastinated (and then some!) over maths and English. K eventually got on, had breakfast, faffed about a bit and finally did his two pages, L did some bookwork too, J continued to faff about. J had a good strop, stomp and shout and then went back to not doing Maths and English. K and L got bored waiting for him and started to push buttons so J and I both had a good shout 😳 By now we were too late to go to B-a-R 🙁
In the end I started to compose an email explaining why we had not been able to go to playdate. J and I raced to see if he could do his Maths before I could hit send. It turned out that he could 😉
Then there was more stropping. I had the phone in my hand to ring and cancel and suddenly he realised his English was easy (indeed, it took less than five minutes once he got down to it!) – by now we had not only missed B-a-R but were also half an hour late for the playdate (we had said we would be late, so this was not too bad; it was just the wrong reason for being late). Oh, and we still had nothing for lunch because had not been to shops as planned.
Grabbed cheese and crackers to eat in car, whizzed up tinned strawberries and a couple of ripe bananas with a pint or two from our milk lake (over-catered slightly for the christening 😆 ) to make milkshake and foil-wrapped remaining cheesy letters…
Ate lunch en route and with traffic being relatively kind to us made it at about the time we had expected, but without having done the things we had hoped beforehand 😕

Playdate was fun, visiting a fairly new CHEF family with 5 yr old DD2 and teenaged DS and DD1 (both away just now, hence playdate for little sis). The older children had a whale of a time exploring the gardens and building dens, then having a pretend water fight, since they were sternly warned that the weather was too cold for real water 😆 Meanwhile the younger ones did painting and collage in the barn, played with a bubble machine and then had great fun building things with magnetic tiles – and the adults had deep and meaningful discussions (no really – lots to think about and hopefully good things will come of it) about ways CHEF could work.

Suddenly realised it was rather later than we had thought so bundled children into car and arrived home with just enough time to nuke some hotdogs and stuff them into pitta with a little sweetcorn for tea before the boys and bob had to dash out again to Badgers. L had fallen asleep in the car so was full of beans at bedtime, so we girls all went to bed and read stories, then sang our (my!) way through a children’s songbook before reading a few more stories. Lovely snuggles and we enjoyed it immensely, but I’d nearly lost my voice by the time Bob got back!

Badgers was great, apparently, and the boys have homework to do for next time:find out about boa constrictors (K) and tarantulas (J). Late night though, as it finishes at J’s bedtime, so K was an hour late to bed by the time they got home.

Made for tired boys today, and we really struggled to leave the house in time to get to P & T. Then realised heavy traffic on A14 (could see lorries on bridge before we got to sliproad) so had to take slow route, phoning Bob on the way to ask him to get someone else to open up for us – just as well, as quite a few people there already by the time we arrived 15 minutes late! Spent lots of time talking slings and got my purple waves back 😀 (lent a MT to the same lady so she can try that instead – and we’re going to pop by tomorrow morning as she lives near the CO and J has an appointment) and lent Bob’s Mei Favorite (now no longer a favourite, as he likes the Connecta better) to another mum about to go on holiday but struggling with a mainstream carrier (cost her £55, only supposed to suit up to 12kg and actually doesn’t even suit a 4 month old!) – hopefully she’ll love it and buy it and that’ll fund Badgers for a term 😉 Certainly she was liking it a lot at toddlers and seemed to get the hang of it straight away 🙂

Gina did piano with the boys and then a pennant-making/pencil-decorating activity, which the older ones all seemed to enjoy. L and E had a bit of a bust-up and then made up again with very little adult intervention 🙂 Came back and had a quick lunch then Helen and little beans came over and we had a lovely afternoon chatting and eating yummy cake (and again for tea, with custard and it was lovely – thank you 🙂 ) while the children played.

Bob has gone for a “Dads’ night out” at the cinema (Bourne Ultimatum) which reminds me that I must organise another Mums’ night out soon…