Taller and Taller

The girl has been growing when I wasn’t paying attention again.

We go swimming every morning when we’re at kingsdown. It usually goes: mummy gets in shallow kids pool with kids while daddy swims a few laps of the big pool, mummy and daddy swap so mummy can do some laps, rinse and repeat. Then, when I’m in the big pool, the kids ask to come in as well so we spend 10 minutes in the big pool before one of us goes back in the shallow pool with the kids while the other gets some more laps.

Today, while we were in the big pool, the girl discovered that she could reach the floor in the shallow end of the big pool. You could practically see her confidence grow, and the boy soon followed in her confident footsteps (even though he can’t reach the floor).

The four of us then spent an enjoyable 20 minutes, mummy and daddy swimming (slowly) while the kids pulled themselves round the pool on the rails. Then we topped it off with the girl doing actual swimming in the big pool. I nearly exploded with pride.

I can’t wait for tomorrow – I’ll be sneaking a camera in.

(but I kind of wish she’d slow down with the growing up thing)

Bingo

The husband and I have a dark secret.

We go to lots of gigs, usually heavy or hardcore (sometimes both). We’re drinkers and before we had children we both smoked. I’ve dabbled in hard drugs (ok, when I say dabbled I’m bigging it up, actually I mean “tried it once and vowed never to do it again”).

None of that is our dark secret though.

Our dark secret, and I know it doesn’t seem much like one but please re-read the paragraph above, is that we really love a game of scrabble of an evening. Especially when we’re away from home. (New Years Eve is our other favourite time).

I don’t think I’m bragging when I say my vocabulary is better than the husbands. I know more words than him and much more obscure ones. However, the husband is much, much better at finding places for the words. He usually beats me hands down because I have great words but nowhere to put them.

Today I made my first ever bingo. He put down “zoo”. I made it “zoos” and then ran “sparrow” down to the TRIPLE WORD SCORE.

A rare win for me with some hearty kudos as well. I’ll be mentioning that bingo every time I play scrabble for quite some time.

Doe Eyed

We went to Howletts Zoo today.

I should write a well thought through post all about the Aspinall Foundation but I’m posting from the iPhone and I just can’t be bothered. Perhaps I’ll do it when we’re back home and I have a whole keyboard available to me.

In the meantime will big doe eyes get me off the hook?

Last Days

It was the kids last day at nursery today. Ever.

I start work next week and it’s not practical to get all 4 children to nursery just to drop one of them off.

The girl starts school in September with the boy going to his new pre-school in October.

I have definitely left the world of babies and toddlers. I have two children now.

I cried. Like a baby. For a good 15 minutes.

In other news, I started knitting a scarf when I was pregnant with the boy. Grandma very kindly lent me the needles and a pattern. I still haven’t finished it. We’re in kingsdown again this weekend so I’m hoping to get a bit more done. I expect Grandma would like her needles back at some point!

Spot the Difference

The husband has been having a clear up in his study.  He found another camera.

It turns out that it’s my old 35mm camera, still with film in.

The girl was fascinated.  She kept looking through the viewfinder and marvelling at how small everything looked.

Waving, Not Drowning

Although, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure at the moment.

I seem to have an awful lot on at the moment and once again this little old blog of mine is getting neglected.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Somerset.  Granny is much better but I think there’s a way to go there.

I’m in the thick of setting up the new Rainbow unit  which will be starting on September 6th with, so far, no-one to help run the meetings (parents will have to be strong-armed into helping I fear).

I’ve had a run of bad news for people who I love dearly and I’ve been finding that hard.

I’m sending my girl to school in September and my boy to pre-school in October.

Before you cheer and for my new-found free time, I’m taking on a nannying job looking after two boys.  One will be in pre-school five mornings a week until January when he starts school and the other will be with me full-time.  I’m looking forward to it but I’m nervous as well.  I’ve never looked after anyone else’s children for this amount of time, it’s much more nerve-wracking than just looking after mine.  It’s also a bit of an organisational nightmare, albeit one that I know will settle down with time.

Small wonder then that I’ve been feeling a bit peaky of late.  It turns out that, just to put the cherry on the icing on the straw that broke the camels back (if you’ll excuse me mixing my metaphors), I’ve got dyspepsia.  Essentially it’s just bad indigestion but good grief it was painful.  I’m taking some tablets that help with the pain but they are making me nauseous.  Ho hum, swings and roundabouts I suppose.

And finally, to top it all off, I took a lovely shot of the girl but forgot to clean the end of her nose first – I can’t tell you how irritating that is.

Honestly, I’m ok, I just felt like venting a bit.  Come mid-September I’ll be in the swing of the new regime and it’ll all be fine.  I’m just no good at change and the unknown, plus I worry excessively about things that I can’t control.

Visiting

We are visiting my sister and her two children for a sleepover. As I type, four children aged (2, 4, 9 & 13) are playing nicely without any input from me. Yay!

My clever niece has drawn the girl, manga style.

Tomatoes

We ate our first tomatoes this evening.  They taste nothing like the shop bought ones.  They are so much better.

I’m hoping that a whole load will ripen in one go and then I can have a go at Veronica’s tomato sauce.

The Great Potato Hunt

We’ve had a few meals out of our first potato plant but there didn’t seem to be that many potatoes floating around so today we launched our first Great Potato Hunt before we attack the next planter.

They dug deep and searched hard,

at one point we thought we’d lost the girl,

she came up triumphant (and slightly smug) at the end though.

and yes, that is the smallest potato you’ve ever seen.  Never mind, they found quite a few big ones as well, clever children.

Stand Still

“Stand still” is probably the phrase I use most often with the boy.  Usually in car parks, busy supermarkets, queues, doctors/hospital waiting rooms, the kitchen when I’m cooking.  Anywhere a small out of control child might be a problem.

He rarely does stand still.

Today the instruction got slightly more complex.  I was trying to take a picture of him in his new school uniform to show you.  I started with “stand still” but quickly moved onto “stand still and look normal”

He didn’t, of course.