just another morning here

Fine names for guinea pigs, yes?

Best not to ask just why and how we have managed to end up with guinea pigs in addition to a hamster and a fish. Anna says I am working up in pet sizes and that one day I’ll manage to convince Steve to have another baby! (I think not.)

Not much else going on here other than the excitement of the guinea pigs. A couple of music lessons and a bit of music practice, but other than that we’re still on holiday so have been doing nice things like baking, seeing friends, etc. Although the other day Anna did get so bored that she picked up a spelling workbook and started doing it! She is the world’s worst person at finding herself something to do

The other two are very happy bimbling about together, lots of games of Scrabble (great for spelling practice and maths too!) and Mindbender going on, and drawing, and other bits and bobs.

Last night Joe’s violin teacher measured him up with some bigger sized violins and pronounced him ready for a 1/4 size so he’s excited about having a new violin. I’m jolly glad that from the 1/10 we were able to skip the 1/8 size and go straight to the 1/4, as it will last for a good 2 – 3 years and therefore make it worthwhile buying one.

Today we had one of Anna’s friends with us, and took her into town to do a drop-in craft workshop at the museum. We had to wait a while so spent the time doing one of the museum quizzes in the Egyptian Mummy section, so that was interesting. Back down to the activity room – Abbie’s choice of the workshops on offer this week was felting, and all three girls came away with great felted pictures. Joe opted out and sat doing jigsaws in the museum instead.

Followed that with sausage rolls from the bakery eaten on the Cathedral Green. I love our Cathedral Green, it is always packed out with people sitting around on a beautiful day like today, and such an eclectic mix of people – from those sitting outside the cafe of the poshest hotel in town, students, business-people on their lunch hours, mums and dads with buggies and small children, to the Big Issue sellers and today some drunk person singing very loudly entertaining (or not!) the rest of us. And there is something about the cathedral being right in the middle, accessible to everyone … I dunno, I just like it! You can almost always meet someone you know there as well. And for some reason the children love it too. Just another part of my ongoing love affair with this city …

Some artistic licence is required with today’s post, as despite an absolutely terrible morning with Joe we did actually manage some nice stuff too.

Started off with some pattern block play, and followed that with violin practice (surprisingly enough, this is where we skip a few details. How a 10 minute practice can sometimes last an hour and include so much stropping and rolling around the floor I never will know. And yet when he actually manages to play something he’s really good ). We talked about doing a bit more science; I produced some books for ideas and Josiah pronounced them ‘stupid’ without even looking at them. At which point I decided to call it a day and give up on him to do my own stuff instead.

Went to Sainsbury’s then into town for lunch with Steve at the garage. When we got home Josiah got his bike out again while I was hanging up washing (oops, forgot to bring it in) and fiddling around with old bikes that we’re giving away via freecycle. He did even better than yesterday – now confidently starting, stopping, and even turning corners! Then he came in and drew a bird from one of the Draw Write Now books, and managed to write one of the sentences from the page without too much trouble. The nice afternoon just about compensated for the awful morning!

The girls appeared home and we played Wii Sonic together for a bit before going to try and sort out the hamster – he’s made his nest under the wheel which is a bit daft really and I’m paranoid that he’s going to get too cold there. Still not sure he’s been persuaded to nest in the little house in the cage but there we go. The kids watched a dvd together and then we had a late tea.

Always trying to catch up here, it seems!

On Tuesday … erm … I really can’t remember what we did. Oh yes, Josiah went to Nippers for a very long overdue haircut (now I really must get mine done too). We visited our favourite shop in town and came home with Sonic and the Secret Rings, which kept us both busy for the rest of the day. It’s a good game Anna came home and had a cello lesson, Abbie came home and painted. Abbie has been painting A LOT recently, in addition to the step by step drawing that she and Anna have been doing.

Wednesday’s activities elude me now too. I know we went to the library, because it’s not open on Tuesdays. I think I might have got Wednesday and Tuesday muddled up actually, in which case I *really* can’t remember what we did on Tuesday! I’ve been muddled up about my days ever since I realised that my calendar’s weeks start on a Sunday not a Monday like last year’s, it keeps throwing me out even though it’s almost 3 months into looking at the new one! Anyway whatever we did, it ended up with the usual Wednesday routine of piano/recorder/violin/Stage by Stage/Wind Group.

On Thursday we found ourselves in Plymouth on car-related errands, so took the opportunity to walk on the Hoe, which was lovely (photos may follow if they’re any good, or even if they’re rubbish but I haven’t got them off the camera yet). Tried to remind Joe about Francis Drake but he’s completely forgotten anything he ever knew about him (it was a long time ago for him!).

Picked Abbie up from school later as Anna was staying for a new table tennis club, which she loved, incidentally.

I’d been worried about the new hamster having not heard it for a couple of days, so we went up to check on it, and as I suspected, it had died. Anna was really upset when she got home and sobbed uncontrollably. I wasn’t going to replace it but just gave in when I saw how upset she was, I didn’t think she’d been that attached to it. We think it must have had something wrong with it; it never seemed normal, was always very jittery and nervous, and wouldn’t let us handle it at all without it screeching and making strange noises. I rang Pets at Home and they said they’d let her have another one, so she recovered after that, but was still a bit teary about it when she talked to Steve later on.
Steve took Abbie and Josiah to swimming lessons, and I took Anna to ballet.

I decided that the girls’ bookshelves needed sorting out on Friday morning so started that task, with Robyn and Josiah surrounded by piles of books, so they both did lots of reading As a result, there are a couple of boxes ready for the charity shop, Robyn went home with a bag of my favourite books that I couldn’t bear to completely get rid of, Josiah has new books on his shelf, and the girls’ shelves are lovely and neat and alphabetically ordered, and they can actually see all the books they have Anna is a librarian at school so with all those librarian skills she really ought to be able to keep them that way! I congratulated them on the fact that I *didn’t* find any manky pants or socks hiding there this time, as I usually do!

We spent an hour and a bit at Crealy before lunch which was nice as usual, they have brand new piglets and goat kids which were really really cute. Both children raced around and came home suitably tired.

Popped round to pick up the girls again; Abbie had had a bit of a meltdown about school in the morning so I’m trying to work out if she was just tired or if she is genuinely changing her mind about school. I think it’s a combination of both; she often complains that some people in her class make life difficult and spoil things for the rest of them – yet on the other hand she loves her friends too, and likes the work/structure as well. I don’t know – again I sometimes wish that my kids didn’t know they had a choice, because they can often think the grass is greener on the other side to wherever they are! Anyway both girls were inordinately happy when I told them that we were planning to go to Muddle Puddle Camp at Kessingland this year I’m not going to mention it again though as I really can’t stand any more renditions of Sparky’s Krew Club’s song!

Finished sorting out the girls’ room after they came home from school, had tea, and then headed out to pick up yet another hamster. This one is black and white and has been called Gizmo. He seems absolutely fine so far, and I will be watching him like a hawk. Well not quite like a hawk, as I imagine a hawk might fancy eating a little hamster, but you know what I mean.

Today we popped into town first thing to pick up a few essentials for Anna’s dance show; the rehearsal is tomorrow and I’ve been very lax and not bothered sewing ribbons on her shoes or even getting her the uniform tights up until now, I’m a very very bad ballet mother! Joe, meanwhile, has perfected the art of walking into town with one game under his arm, and back from town with another, which he did today – as long as you swap for something pre-owned you can manage this relatively easily, he’s found!

Then we spent the rest of the day celebrating Steve’s Aunty’s 60th birthday with his extended family.

We went out for lunch and then later on Steve joined us after work for tea together. Anna and Abbie both dressed up, did their hair specially, and wore well-applied makeup – they looked lovely.

Steve’s cousins both have children around the same age as our girls so I think the girls enjoyed spending time with them; Josiah had his nose in his newly acquired Lego Star Wars 2 on DS so he was happy too. I have eaten far too much.

Just so I don’t forget … Josiah did lots today, or it felt like it to me anyway …

First piano lesson – he’s just mucking around on the drums and piano at lunchtime and suddenly he decides he’d like to learn piano as well Quite easy actually, as we’ve been doing so much theory already it’s just a case of getting his fingers to learn to do something different. He was pretty good at it! Will be interesting to see connections being made across both the instruments, iyswim.

In addition to facilitating all of that, I made pumpkin scones (very yummy) and pizza for tea; Anna had a friend round after school and along with Abbie they did lots of drawing, playing, got the hamster out for another run around the bedroom … and then danced and sang very loudly to the sound of Motion in the Ocean.