Monster & Teeny

Monday My Dad called round first thing so we had a nice hour or so with him before he headed off and we got ready for MM. Teeny was at her most challenging so we had dramas about getting dressed, wearing shoes and finally about getting in the car. She exhausted herself so much with all the upset she slept all the way to MM. Monster had been fairly quiet but I’d thought it was just not bothering to compete with Teeny, but once we arrived at MM he just slumped.

Teeny and I did some painting while Monster sat on a sofa for a while, I think he chatted with one of the other mothers for a bit. Then Teeny went off to play (outside, barefoot, with a rusty barbecue behind the hall - what it is with my children and rusty barbecues? ) so I kept an occassional eye on her popping my head out every so often while making a poster with Monster. There were some lovely huge pieces of card and pens so we decided to do a storyboard of something and I suggested starting with the beginning of time and coming through to today. We had nine sections and took it in turns to draw something. Monster told me what to draw for most of mine with the exception of ‘Man on the Moon’ which he chose to interpret as something quite different anyway! Then he dictated what he wanted me to write under each picture to describe it and then he sat and coloured it in. I moved away slightly to chat and he had a good stream of adults and children coming past and asking about his poster so he was explaining it all the everyone.

We came home and I made a couple of phonecalls I’d been putting off so felt relieved and virtuous having got that done.

Then it was Badgers for Monster. The Badger group that he attends seems to be somewhat under threat. It changed leader just as we started there in the Summer term and as well as personal problem leading to a bit of inconsistency the leader seems to really struggle to get an assistant. There needs to be a certain adult to child ratio for it to run each week. There are also slightly dwindling numbers of children there too - when we started they had a regular 15 or so children, now it seems closer to 7 or 8 most weeks. I usually sit in my car outside the hall which started as a security thing for Monster who was not ready for me to jut drop him off and leave but has actually become something I quite enjoy. It is probably the only hour of utter peace I get all week. Nothing is expected of me, no one can talk to me, I know one child is at home with A and the other I can glimpse through a window having a great time with friends and I am free to sit and read a book, listening to music, twiddle my hair and drift away with my own thoughts or whatever I want. I love it! The Badger leader has asked me before if I’d be interested in becoming an Assistant Leader but I’ve explained that the main purpose of Badgers for Monster is that he gets to be somewhere without me for a while every week so if I was there too it would defeat the object. Also I’m not really willing to give up my hour in the car! This week she’d rung to say she was in desperate need of another adult there and would I possibly come and sit in the hall instead. So I agreed, but am ever hopeful it won’t become too regular a favour.

It was actually quite nice as a one off though to watch Monster interact with the other Badgers and see what his role is within that group. I am used to seeing him very confident, loud and a strong person within most of the groups he is in, where he is often the oldest, so at Badger where he is the smallest and the youngest and gets quite mothered by some of the older girls he behaves quite differently. No less confident but nowhere near as rowdy! Nice to note he has already learnt something about modifying behaviour according to the situation and people though.

Tuesday In the morning Monster and I went into town. We popped to the library to return some books and went to a couple of shops to purchase a few items to include in our HomeSchoolShoeBoxSwap box. This is a great scheme run by a HomeSchooler from the US for HomeEd families to collect together a box to send to other HomeEd families to tell them a bit about where they live, who they are etc. Loads of value in collecting and assembling the box and then of course the excitement of getting one in return to open and find out about where someone else lives. We were paired with a family in Florida in October and despite my very good intentions we were probably not a great swap family to have due to us being away and generally very busy. We will do it again in the new year and I’ll be sure to include the children more in what we collect and send - and the whole educational opportunities of researching more about where our swap family live. But we assembled a good box containing plenty of leaflets of our local area, local attractions, some leaves, some shells and pebbles from the beach, a couple of sticks of rock, some teabags, some photos of us and UK landmarks, a long letter talking about us, our lives and our country and some pictures by Monster of various things including him playing X box, our house, London and it’s landmarks. We got that parcelled up and on it’s way to America and spent the afternoon at home.

Wednesday A lovely morning cuddled up together on the sofa watching films and then we wrapped up warm and headed off to some local NT woods to meet SIL, J & M. We go to these woods a lot and the children are familiar with them and happy to go off down one path knowing it leads back to another. It is a relatively small area of land but has many paths meaning you are still able to have a nice long walk. We walked into the nearby village stopping to look at the church on the way. We explored the gravestones with the children picking various ones to be read out and asking how old the people were when they died. Then we tried the church door on the offchance and found it open. So in we went. Monster and Teeny both remembered various things from a visit to a church earlier in the summer so we chatted about the names of bits of the church and the various ‘furniture’ inside, admired the stained glass windows and sat on the pews.

We left the church and walked through the village to a house which sells and displays a massive variety of pumpkins at this time of year. There were all sorts of giant specimens in lovely shapes and colours aswell as an array of carved traditional orange pumkins.

We wandered back for lunch and then went back into the woods for a last walk round. On the way back we collected firewood for our fire at home.

The children are taking a real interest in our open fire this year. We are trying really hard to save energy generally, from financial and environmental angles so we are trying to get them both to turn off lights, keep doors and windows shut when the heating is on, talking about gas and electricity and they are both learning how to lay and light our open fire in the evenings.

On the way home we called in to see my Dad and brother for a couple of hours.

Thursday Em was staying with Lucy so we’d arranged to get together with all of them today. The weather was still being sunny and very mild for November so we met up at a local park for an hour or so.

When we’d all got cold and hungry enough we decamped to Lucy’s for lunch, playing and chatting. The children had a whale of a time playing inside and outside, topped off with a bone discovery session right at the end of the afternoon. They started appearing in the house with a variety of bones we were all trying to identify that they were digging up from the garden. Eventually we realised they were all either chicken leg bones from drumsticks or pig rib bones from pork ribs buried from barbecues in the garden of years gone by! It was great to watch them all holding bones against themselves and trying to work out which bit of a body they were from though.

Friday After a rather chaotic morning which saw us charging around on a mercy mission to tow my Dad’s van, off to the post office to pay bills and withdrawing cash to fill my car up with petrol we collected Ali and F and headed off to Wilderness Woods where one of the Mums from MM had arranged an Autumn Walk complete with guide to point out various signs of wildlife, leaves, seeds and fruit of various trees, things like fungi and other signs of Autumn and tell us about coppicing, deciduous and evergreen trees and the differences between them and loads more. We collected a bucket full of bits and pieces from our walk including some sweet chestnuts which we plan to roast on the fire.

There was a fantastic wooden playpark at the woods which all the children made full use of. Monster particularly loved the zipwire and had a great time whizzing along on it. I was persuaded to have a quick go at the end and could quite see the attraction

Saturday A nice quiet family morning at home followed by some log collecting in the afternoon.

We dropped the logs home, changed out of muddy wellies and then went over to my parents for the afternoon. There was only Dad there but we had a lovely couple of hours with him. Home for X Factor and early nights for everyone.

Sunday In the morning the children and I cuddled up and read The Gruffalo a couple of times in preparation for the afternoon. We met up with Barbara & Chris, Bob and Katy, Karen and Dom, Stella and Rich and Kirsty and all their assorted children for a Tall Stories production of The Gruffalo. It was quite a journey for us but well worth it as the children really enjoyed it. And actually I think A and I did too. It was a very similar sort of production to Pumpkin Soup which we saw last year by these people but I had been slightly underwhelmed by that and found this better. After a very easy journey there we had an almost twice the time journey home so the children were already asleep and only just roused to be changed into pjs before falling straight into bed. A and I had a (very) late dinner.