NotSheep

I’ve not blogged much in the past few days - Toby has been coughing and hoarse and just-wanting-to-be-held so there hasn’t been much typing of any kind done. I can surf with one hand, and I can even do some blog-adjusting (themes etc) with one hand, and I suppose I can type one-handed, but it’s just so much faster and easier with two … anyway, after sleeping almost all day until about 4 pm, Toby woke up this afternoon and was much more cheerful than he has been for the past few days, so I hope he’s on the road to recovery. It’s so nice to see his lovely smiles again

The rest of us seem to be recovered; Scratchy sounded awful yesterday, but seems a lot better today, so fingers crossed. We’ve had two weekends of getting very little done now - the first when I was ill, the second when Toby was - so I’ve a long list of want-to-do’s for this weekend.

Right … so what has happened in the last few days that I’ve meant to blog about? Well, apart from the usual round of swimming, trampoline, Beavers/Cubs/Scouts, Community Circus and Ju-jitsu (and I did manage to blog about that last bit), we haven’t done much, to be honest. With Toby out of sorts, I haven’t been organised enough to do any of the things we’d planned to do this week. I did sit down to do some schoolywork with the boys yesterday, but then a quick phone call to a friend turned into one of those hour-and-a-half things, and the only input they got from me was when I pointed to stuff and mouthed “do that” at them. And this system worked unexpectedly well - Barney did some English, maths, practiced playing recorder and guitar, and learned how to tell someone about his school day in French George did some history plus all of the above except for guitar practice. Freddy did some English, lots of handwriting practice (unfortunately still practiced writing his capital N’s backwards :-/), some science and played his recorder. Jack has been doing lots of “what’s this letter? what’s this number?” and surprised me last night by starting to point out and identify letters on a packet of biscuits.

Today there’s been almost nothing done. I did manage to nit-comb them all again (and I must have done a better job than I thought on Freddy on Monday, ’cause there was nothing to be found today!) and I fished yet another dead neon tetra out of the aquarium; I really think we’re not meant to have neon tetras. The rest of the fish are doing well, but the tetras don’t seem to cope at all for some reason. We’re now down to three I’ve been given the opportunity to buy a substantially larger tank - 125 litres (compared to our current 58 litres), and have suggested to Scratchy that it would be a good Christmas pressie We’d be getting it for about half of what they sell for; it’s second-hand, but from a company who set up and maintain aquaria in leisure centres and nursing homes etc, and has only ever been used for display at shows. Comes with a stand too - I’m very tempted.

Our half-cat doesn’t seem to have been around for the past couple of days - I’m hoping this is because he’s found somewhere warmer to sleep, rather than because something nasty has happened to him One of our two indoor cats has been staying out at night quite a bit, though it seems to be nearly always on the weekend; I’m wondering if there’s some kind of cat nightclub around here…

It sounds pretty wild outside, and I’m glad to be here in a nice warm house. Scratchy has taken the three older boys - they’re dropping off George at Cubs, then he’s doing a couple of errands before going back to pick up George and drop off Barney. Freddy’s just along for the ride. Jack has fallen asleep, and Toby’s asleep in my arms (well, on one of my arms, which is why I’ve got two hands to type with :lol:) And I think I’m going to settle down with a good book, the best way to spend a cold windy evening imo