NotSheep

No! It can’t be Thursday already!

But somehow, it is.

Okay, so how did we get here?

On Tuesday, we spent the day at home, kids did some work, I spent the day feeding Toby and trying to manage everything else one-handed. Call it what you will, the process that resulted in the design of the human being went completely wrong when it didn’t arrange for new mothers to grow extra arms. It might even have been a good idea to provide one extra arm for each child. By now I’d have seven arms…yeah, that would just about keep me on top of things, I think.

Freddy went to his new Beavers pack on Tuesday night and had a good time. I had to hurriedly pin on all his old badges because I had never got to actually sewing them on (despite having had them since April - see above paragraph re not-enough-hands issue, and add in that I’m really, really bad at sewing and also hate doing it - I can knit anything, but even sewing on buttons often defeats me). Some of his badges will be replaced when he joins this pack properly - his district badge and his pack badge will be new, and I’ll move the old ones down his sleeve to below the new ones - so truthfully, it would have been a waste of time to sew them on. Also, I always use that iron-on stuff first so the badges stay straight while I sew (because otherwise we get lots of…um…jaunty angles) and it leaves a horrible sticky residue if you have to take them off, so it was much better just to pin them on for now. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking (no pun intended) to it.

Yesterday morning they did some more work, but the afternoon was busy. Wednesdays are going to be like that, it seems. Barney, George and Freddy have archery from 4.30 to 5.30. They can’t go to the earlier class at 3.30, because we’re taking another boy - friend of theirs and son of a friend of mine - with us, and he’s in school until 3 pm. So we registered for the 4.30 class. The problem is that the archery club is about 40 minutes away. (There are other clubs which are closer to us, but they don’t take children until they’re at least 12 years old, plus this club is a/ excellent and b/ incredibly cheap). The timing isn’t a problem for getting there, but it makes getting back a bit tight, because George has Cubs starting at 6.30, and in between archery and Cubs, I have to drop off the other kid and pick up Scratchy - which involves doubling back on myself, because there isn’t room in the car for Scratchy until we’ve dropped off the friend. And then we have to get to Cubs - we arrived at about 6.33 yesterday. I stayed there with George while Scratchy took everyone else home (except Tom, he stayed with me) and made dinner, then came back at 8 pm, we all went home except for Barney, who has Scouts from 8-9.30, then Scratchy went back to pick up Barney. If I wasn’t staying at Cubs, one of us could do the 8 pm run alone - but since I’m supposed to be a Leader for at least one group, that’s not going to happen. Will have to think about this one some more.

George enjoyed Cubs; most of the other boys are head-and-shoulders taller than he is but he didn’t seem bothered They all started working towards their Athletics badge. Barney enjoyed Scouts too, and has come home with a note about Camp already - I’d forgotten that Scouts camp quite a bit more than Cubs. His old Cub pack didn’t get to camp this year at all, so they’re camping at the end of September instead, and all the newly-ex-Cubs are invited back, so Barney will be camping for two weekends in a row - the first with old Cubs, the second with new Scouts. He’s thrilled. Scratchy’s jealous. I did mention to Scratchy that if he got himself warranted (i.e. became a proper Leader instead of just someone who hangs out and helps), he’d be able to camp too - that might be the deciding factor for him, as it’s definitely his side that Barney gets his love of camping from

We also made it to the library today (before all the busy-ness) and left with a Sainsbury box piled high with books and a few audio-books. Barney will probably have read everything he borrowed by this time tomorrow, and will then start reading everything I borrowed…that might keep him busy until the weekend…

Off to visit friends today if I can ever put Toby down long enough to get dressed.