NotSheep

…we have broadband again

We’d actually only had broadband for less than a year before we moved here, but I certainly don’t remember dial-up being so frustratingly sloooooowwwwww before. It didn’t really bother me much then. Now - life on dial-up - argh!

We got an email on Thursday (that was June 9th, btw) to say that our broadband would go live on June 8th. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, Scratchy was determined to get stuck in right away and get the whole network up. I offered to help, but he was in I-am-man-technical-expert-don’t-dare-question-me mode, so I went to sleep and left him to it. And woke up on Friday morning to find that he still hadn’t managed to get connected. During the day on Friday I noticed that he didn’t have microfilters on all the sockets (just on one), so when he got home I asked him…and we put microfilters on all the sockets, and I looked at the modem settings and made one small change - and woohoo! working broadband and network. It probably goes without saying that Scratchy’s feelings about this are very mixed - on the one hand, he’s pleased to have broadband back, on the other hand, he spent two hours mucking about and I got it up in about a minute and a half

What else? Well, we like the house. It’s so much more spacious than where we were before, and it’s bright and airy and we’re slowly getting there with the unpacking. The weather has been wonderful so the kids have been outside a lot, and I’m really liking having an enclosed garden again, because it means I don’t always have to be outside with Jack (3yo). There are lots of children around the area; we got home about 8pm on Wednesday and Barney asked if he could go across the road to where a couple of boys his-age-ish were sitting “to try to make some friends” - I’m pretty impressed by the confidence he’s developed (and without any arrogance, which is lovely). When Jack wanted to go with him, Barney even came back and got him and they sat and chatted to the other boys. Since then, they’ve met about ten other neighbourhood kids - which is fantastic, because one of the reasons we chose this house was that there seemed to be plenty of children around We’ve even had other kids come knock at the door for ours about four times already I’ve always been keen on the idea of other kids hanging out at our house - I reckon that way you know where your kids are and what they’re up to, plus you get to know their friends - and glancing out the window last night there were at least eight of them in our back garden - so I’m feeling really good about all that.

We’ve met the mum and children who live on one side; they seem really nice, the girl is a few months older than Barney and the boy is a few months older than Jack. We’ve only met one of the kids from the other side, but again she’s about Barney’s age or slightly older (and I think there’s a younger girl there too). They all seem fine - a bit baffled by us home-educating, but that’s a common (and fairly innocuous, I suppose) response.

Oh, and I met the local midwives - but I’ll blog about that separately - it was good