In At The Deep End

Determined to catch up, so back again while Bob supervises bathtime J and I have just made up a bath salts concoction to test, so will be getting feedback from that soon, I expect…

Ermm, where was I? A and I were ill, more or less, for a good two weeks - fluey, coldy, headachey, really bad bottom (just A, fortunately) and green fungal infection in throat (just me, thank goodness - I first got it a few years ago and now it seems to recur whenever I get tired, run down or stressed) as well as lost voice, runny nose and all the usual accompaniments on the Winter menu. Luckily the bug seems to have stopped with us, with the others just a little sniffly and grumpy. At least, as far as I can tell - the two weeks are actually a bit of a blur of just carrying on and more or less coping

What else happened? Tuesday 4th December Bob and L had a dental appointment (we did have a big family one, but then Bob got sent to Germany so we rearranged and had to split) which squeezed in just before swimming and was fine, except that Bob needs a scale and polish, apparently and where the old dentist used to just do it as part of the NHS appointment the new one has a private bit as well as the NHS bit and he has to have the s and p there, at rather greater cost While they were with the dentist J was with the doctor and now has some rather lovely medicine which has diarrhoea as a side effect, at least to begin with - so the washing machine has been working beyond the call of duty recently.

Wednesday 5th was one of those days! It was Badgers night for the boys - the last one of term and the one where they found out if they had got their wildlife badges (wildlife? something like that! they have anyway ) Then there were two meetings I should have been at, but I was feeling too wiped out to go to either, so Bob went to the local preaching one for me (bless him) and the other we just wrote off. A third was cancelled - phew! Why is it that we sit here with nowhere to go 360-odd evenings a year, and then the remaining few evenings have the whole year’s meetings and gatherings squeezed in?

Thursday happened, no doubt, but I don’t remember much of it. Friday was a great trip though, thanks to Gina, visiting St. John’s College library. L went to play with a friend, while we took the friend’s brother with us on the trip, which made L very happy and also pleased the boys We saw the oldest, smallest, most interesting (Magic tricks from the 1500s!) and most boring (a Maths textbook with bullet-holes in it) books, but not the largest (it was out of the library, so only the box it normally lives in was there) or the most precious (it gets looked at a lot, so they were giving it a rest) and then the children (and parents ) had a chance to ask questions and have a last look around before heading back out to the courtyard with its oh-so-tempting lawns…
We managed (at last) to buy Minimus (have been holding on until either I had my Camcard or was with Gina to use hers - that 20% discount on CUP books makes a fair difference ) and then went to pick up L and drop off R, stopping for a quick lunch while we were there and then all dashing out to French - no music as that ended for the term with the concert I forgot to blog about on 29th November (J, K and L all took part and enjoyed every minute of it, as did A and I watching - thanks Gina ).

I think I spent most of the weekend in bed - no very clear recollections, so Bob will have to fill in if anything exciting happened - then Monday was CHEF gathering, with a Christmas/holidays theme. We were nearly thwarted by heavy traffic, but managed to find a way round it and arrive only about 40 minutes late so with plenty of time to take part in most of the activities: stained glass biscuit making, cutting out strings of angels, carol singing, Christingle making (good - because we managed to miss the Christingle service at church) and a sort of show and tell/talent show where different families talked about things they do at this time of year. We did a little play, acting out Jesus’ Christmas Party in the style of Don’t Mess with Bess There followed a wonderfully mixed lunch (repast somehow seems a better word ) including a gorgeous chocolate cake (happy birthday Gina) and then some incredibly speedy washing up and clearing away, then we whisked J and E with us to the park (with Susan and her K) to make sure they were completely worn out before coming back home to play and to watch Robin Hood, Men in Tights

Tuesday 11th was the last swimming of the term, so we intended to make the most of it and stay as long as we could, but A and I were still a bit under the weather, L was tired and grumpy and the pool was absolutely freezing (apparently it had been too hot earlier in the morning, so the pool staff had turned the cold tap on and then forgotten to turn it off ) so J was practically blue and not a happy bunny. In the end we gave up and got out to have very long hot showers

Wednesday was Bob’s work Christmas lunch and the rest of us should have been going to a party at a friend’s, but A was poorly and spent the whole day glued to me or screaming or both, with such a sore bottom (her illnesses always seem to lead to instant nappy rash ) that we kept her bare as much as possible - not ideal conditions for a party, so we chickened out and spent the day vegging at home instead.

Thursday was toddlers, as usual, and then in the afternoon the boys had another taster session for gymnastics. It was the first time I had taken them and I was impressed both by the place (it is a serious gym!) and with the boys and how they just got on with things. This is where I would be ranting about the weird system they have for getting places in classes, except that we have just had a phone call offering the boys a place on the day of their choice from January, so I’m happy now and won’t bother ranting We’d better start saving up though - it’s good but it’s not cheap!

We had a Christmas special at Friday Club too, with stained glass biscuits again (they’re my speciality now!) and also mince pie making and a little nativity the children prepared with one of the mums and performed for us all. Sadly we had to dash off to get to French, but it did help us to make a fairly big decision. We have been juggling Friday Club and French for a while now, mostly for the sake of the Music which goes with the French, but since Music is now stopping for a while and I have not been getting any happier with the way the French is done (it’s La Jolie Ronde, which is great, but I don’t like the teacher’s style and it makes me cross to pay large amounts of money for someone else to teach my children when I think I could be doing it at least as well) so we’ve decided to stop doing those sessions and add some French into Thursday P&T and also into our Latin Wednesdays (and make those fortnightly so Latin classes can be shorter to allow time for French, Science and craft activities) instead. Hopefully when the Music restarts at least some of that can also be on Thursdays so we won’t miss out, but in the meantime we gain about £15 a week (most of which will now go on gymnastics instead, but at least it means we can afford gymnastics ) and a free day once a fortnight, as well as being able to stay and play at Friday Club

Sunday 16th was a social whirl L had a Christmas party to go to (with her old child-minder; she has been asking to go back ever since we moved so was very chuffed to be asked to a party) while the rest of us went to church and then met up with K’s godmother for lunch at the grad pad. She had brought crackers and presents so there was a very festive atmosphere, and the children also had a chance to visit Father Christmas, who was sitting in the corner of the dining hall handing out presents Bob nipped out to get L and arrived back in time for her to see FC too, although they were all very aware that it wasn’t the real FC, but just a helper We saw some old friends from student days too, so lots of socialising then went upstairs for cups of tea (adults) and frothy milk (children) and Bob and I read the papers while the children fiddled about on the computers which are presumably supposed to be there for more academic purposes than CBeebies…
The reason for the hanging about was to enable us to get to the carol service at church at 4pm, which we did and very nice it was too Big Alice was singing in the choir, which the children were very impressed by (K: “They chose really well for the choir, didn’t they Mummy? They’re great!”) and over coffee and mince pies after the service we were finally introduced to her parents, who seemed to know an awful lot about us - I guess we’ve known her a long time!

The boys are doing a sports camp today and Bob has taken them into town and then stayed to do some Christmas shopping or something - he got a bit shifty when I asked!

The girls and I have made fudge (bit crunchy though - the recipe called for icing sugar but we need that to decorate the cake so we used granulated; still L says it’s yummy anyway ), emptied and filled the dishwasher, done and hung out a couple of loads of washing, found a home for most of the 5kg of carob chips which came with the recent Suma order (and tried a couple, but they’re unsweetened so actually not very nice as they are - need to find a couple of good recipes to chuck them into to be sure they’re worth having ) and generally pottered, then we decided to snuggle up in bed to watch the Scissor Sisters concert on tv (L loves SS ). This had the hoped-for effect of getting A off to sleep, but also a slightly unexpected side-effect: I woke up at the end of the concert (oops!) to find that L and A were both sound asleep next to me So I tiptoed down here, thought about doing house-work and decided that actually blogging was becoming a necessity before I completely forget everything we’ve done over the last few weeks!

I think the last substantial blog post I did was Meet the Orchestra, way back in November, so there’s a lot to catch up on and I’ve probably forgotten most of it already, but I’m sitting here with calendar in hand hoping to get at least the bare bones down before the girls wake up…

The boys have finally started swimming lessons with the local HE group and K is loving it. J likes the time in the toddler pool afterwards, but I think would happily dispense with the actual swimming bit. Nonetheless he has made some progress - one of the other mums goes in with the children so that the teacher can squeeze another couple into the group and that has really helped his confidence, I think, because he was always rather nervous that the teacher stayed on the poolside rather than in the water. It also means that I can get some idea of what he’s up to and how well it’s going, even though I am in the toddler pool with the girls while the class is happening and so unable to watch. As long as there are enough adults to go round (2 children under 8 per adult) we try to stay and play/chat for a bit after the class too, and I think this time is as valuable to the children as the lessons themselves. They seem to spend a lot of time trying out the things they found either fun or tricky in the lesson
Swimming means we spend Tuesdays on the A14 as well now (it used to be our one and only guaranteed free day in the week) but we’re working on clearing another day or two instead and for me swimming is one of those things which is non-negotiable - as J was informed when he said he didn’t want lessons

Thursday P&t is still going strong, and gives us another day of non-negotiable driving each week - including holidays as well as term-time, because I remember what it was like to have got a toddler into a routine of going to groups on different days and then hit a long holiday period and find there was nothing at all to do. We are quieter in the holidays, as a rule, but there is the occasional parent who is so relieved that the group is on that it makes it worth being there! The sessions have gradually evolved, in any case, so that they are now fairly HE based, with more than half of the families bringing older children (Gina does sterling work producing a craft or similar activity each week to keep them all busy) and most of the baby or toddler only families starting to get interested too We’re hoping to find a space to house some of the local HE group library so that we can also offer a kind of drop-in resource centre for families thinking about HE. This is alongside the slingmeet aspect of the group; when a new person puts their head tentatively round the door and asks for me I’m never quite sure whether it will be for sling advice or to talk about HE! Perhaps I should think about either getting a BF counsellor along or doing some training myself and then we could offer a full granola experience! We used to say we would run every week except the one between Christmas and New Year, but in fact this year we will even do that session, because J will be doing holiday orchestra so the other children and I will have to be in town anyway. If it’s a quiet session then I’m hoping to get some serious toy sorting done and clear a cupboard or two for HE resources.

The week of 26th November Bob was in Germany for work, so the children and I had to manage on our own. This made me realise how much I rely on that first cup of tea in the morning - the one Bob makes and leaves on the table for me to drink as soon as I make it downstairs, even if that means having to nuke it to get it to drinkable temperature. Apart from that the mornings seemed to work okay and the only major problem each day was bedtime, when normally I sit and do snuggles and feeds while Bob does baths and teeth. A bit of forward planning and lots of cooperation and we managed it - J is great at being a helpful big brother when he likes Bob cunningly managed to miss A’s jabs (second lot - we delayed vaxing) and the subsequent 24 hours of grumpiness and 48 hours of sore bottom. That week was also an appointment with Danielle the osteo for J, which was preceded by a visit to B-a-R just in time to sign up for their Christmas party and followed by a trip to Waitrose to get a few odds and ends, including (frozen) sweet chestnuts - a treat for the children and me, as Bob doesn’t much like them Talking of frozen, J has discovered that he loves frozen raspberries - yay!

Friday should have been Friday Club, with us doing a music session, but the traffic was so bad (problems on each of the three routes we could have taken!) that it took us nearly 2 hours to get there (rather than 30-40 minutes) and we arrived too late even for snack and certainly too late to do the music We did catch a fun art session, having a go at making our own cave paintings, which the children loved, so it was not all in vain

Bob has already blogged the weekend (B-a-R party ) then Monday 3rd December was CHEF sport, where J has now started to do the older children’s session and is really enjoying it. It’s a little more expensive, but rather longer and gets him running around a bit more, which has to be a good thing when you spend most of your life curled up in corners with books! K is still doing the earlier session, for younger children, so hopefully I should be able to use the time to do some work with each of them while the other does sport, especially once L starts joining in with the younger session too. Afterwards we had the usual trip to the park, but not for too long this time, as it was freezing and there weren’t many of us around. That evening we had a Friday Club planning meeting, which had been moved and changed and cancelled and reinstated… In the end only three of us could make it anyway and when the two of us who were not hosting got there we found the hostess was not feeling well and her DH had been very ill for a couple of weeks… Actually, I wish she had just told us and cancelled or postponed, because it was not a terribly productive meeting, given that only half of us were there and she was ill, and of course all of us who were visiting, A included, promptly came down with the horrid bug that it had just taken her DH two weeks to shake off Ho hum!

My incompetence produced a late night need of bread and hence I went to the nearest 24 hour Tesco. The local substation had gone phut or something - the street lights nearby were all out, the cinema and restaurants nearby were all dark, but Tesco was battling on. It’s a huge one (Tesco Extra, I think) and yet the woman on the checkout said they had 2 hours emergency power. The only thing they weren’t powering was the heating - the fridges and freezers, the lights and the tills (and the whole petrol station too) were all on fine. It must be a nightmare, losing all that frozen and refrigerated stock through problems outside your control, and then losing time chucking it all away and replacing it with new stuff - you just need to hope that 2 hours is enough for the electricity people to sort it out.

I had to go out to a church meeting, which meant that bedtime routine was not usual and rather rushed. I left while L was in bed but still unsure whether to be happy or cry. Katy was busy with A downstairs, K was in bed and J getting ready for bed. L opted for the crying and so J took her into his bed and cuddled her off to sleep. Proud daddy moment.

The boys have got a proper place at the gymnastics thing for which they’ve been doing taster sessions. So on Wednesdays they’ll be doing gym 4-5.15, eating a packed tea, then walking next door to the St. John Ambulance place for Badgers 6-7.30. We still have a way to go before we get to Off The Path levels of logistical prowess.

Nicely put.

and spend it here on slings - what could be better?

Actually, I’m thinking a pool pouch or a solarweave mei tai could be very useful for when the boys are having their swimming lessons and A, L and I are in the toddler pool - and even more so for the showers afterwards. I might even get to wash my hair with both hands!

I missed doing this earlier, but you’re a time traveller so it’s OK, right? My favourite is the last part of number 2.

What else has been going on? A has been devouring the orange that Katy had planned to eat herself (see Flickr). Colds and sore throats - including A’s first - meant things were more subdued / grumpier than usual. Nice conversation with J at bed time last night. I have realised that while I think they are Father Educating His Son chats, they are actually me fulfilling my destiny by turning into my dad, while J’s eyes glaze over.

I still remember dad asking me to write him a program on our ZX Spectrum to work out some stats for him, but it meant he had to teach me about cumulative frequency first. He would often come to help me with my homework and then continue talking about related stuff he found interesting but that wasn’t actually helping me get my homework done and dad please get I get on with it now?

Last night’s conversation with J was prompted by questions in an advert on the back of the please-give-us-all-your-money alumnus magazine Katy and I get. (It was advertising the Oxford-Cambridge rugby match, but looked like an exam paper.)

So we had a physics questions about two rugby players colliding and with what speed would the lighter player bounce back? I assumed the heavier player stopped still and there was no loss of momentum, so got the answer via conservation of momentum. Many of the people reading this have better maths and physics than me, so please correct me. Actually, I’ve just checked and Wikipedia has done the correcting for me. *sigh* I know just enough to be dangerous.

Then a maths question about the cube root of the Ticketmaster phone number. I had to back-track a bit and explain square numbers and square roots, and then cubic numbers and finally cube roots.

The last one we did was a history one, asking what date would the match be on if we hadn’t switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian one. I had no idea, but mentioned to J that that was one of the things we were discussing at Kentwell in the summer as it was pretending to be 1583 (see the links). He perked up at this - not because of the historical significance or his thirst for knowledge, no it was because if we go back next year he’ll be of the age where he gets to have his own knife as he’d start learning a trade and not be with us all the time. *sigh* again.

Yesterday, after a later start than we’d hoped, we just squeezed in to the post office depot to pick up some undelivered parcels. Some lunch bits from Sainsbury’s included some experimental wasabi and soy almonds, which were Marmite-like in their splitting of people who liked them (me, K and L) from those who didn’t (Katy and J) and those too young to eat nuts (A).

Then back to where we used to live for a Winter Festival. Definitely not a Christmas Festival as it was in the most cosmopolitan and eclectic part - one long street with Korean, Indian, French, Brazilian, etc. shops on it. The mosque’s off a side road, and was having an open day as part of the festival. It was great - they gave a tour and explained what they did, when and how. I hadn’t realised that the times of day for the prayers were based on daylight, so vary by time of year and where you are in the world. They were serving tea and biscuits, so was just like church :). They also had English books - so we went home with the Quran, and a book on prayer and another on the principles of Islam. L got her face painted (which for her always means a butterfly) and K got a spider on his hand.

There were some rather cold (female) morris dancers outside the old people’s home, the health food shop served some reviving food, and a food market from local suppliers. J had missed out on the face painting at the mosque by leaving it too long to say he wanted something, but an Asian-run mini-supermarket was doing henna tattoos, and so he got a nice design on the back of his hand.

It was a lovely event in a great area, although if we wanted to live there we could afford a rabbit hutch with a tiny garden and no parking. Tesco wants to move there and it’s exactly the wrong kind of shop for there. Many of the locals have organised opposition, and quite right too.

Another late start this morning - don’t all parents make their children eat their porridge in the car? Back to the previous place again, for a family service. Then we zoomed to another church for the B-a-r Christmas party. We’ve been going there on and off since J was little and it’s a very nice place, where the vicar and his wife care a lot and they and their army of staff and volunteers always have excellent parties with excellent food for summer and Christmas. More face painting - another butterfly for L, a tiger for K (his usual) and J turned into Harry Potter (very simple but very effective).

Once we’d got back, the children wanted to decorate the tree. I think they got the “wrapped him in swaddling bands” a bit wrong and so strapped the poor tree’s branches to the trunk with all the tinsel and baubles. Katy has had the idea of tackling J’s occasional bad attitude to work and the computer in one go - now people earn marbles through work, then redeem them for computer time. Work done grumpily earns fewer marbles than work done willingly. This seems to be doing some good, but it’s early days.

At tea we discovered that L hoovers up semolina as fast as she can porridge - faster than the boys by far. K learned a minor life skill - he saw the mushrooms that we hadn’t put away and asked for one. Katy showed him how to peel them and so he peeled one and ate it raw like an apple (liking it even more than when they’re cooked).