NotSheep

(title sung loudly with fingers in my ears)

I do not have a child who will be 11 years old by the end of this week.

I do not have a birthday party/sleepover to organise in the next five days.

I do not have all of my Christmas shopping left to do, and if I do, Christmas is not just over a month away.

Right. Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, I can write about what we’ve done in the last few days.

On Friday, Scratchy took the afternoon off work and we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Barney was disappointed - I think there were lots of bits that he was looking forward to seeing, and most of them weren’t in it. It’s an odd movie: the “big” scenes were very well done - I could have watched the Quidditch World Cup stuff for at least another ten minutes - but in-between them was all just rushed through. There were lots of things that are really quite important later on which are just completely left out, and quite a few bits where they put in scenes that seemed a bit pointless. There are lots of scenes that I don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the book will understand. Mad-Eye Moody isn’t “right”, imo - though I knew that before going, as I’d seen photographs - nothing to do with Brendan Gleeson, who is actually very good at playing the character, but just not quite right for it. And I’m not quite sure why Dumbledore occasionally lapsed into an Irish accent…that was just plain weird. I know Michael Gambon’s Irish, but isn’t he supposed to be an actor? I’m afraid he’ll never be Dumbledore to me - he just hasn’t quite got the presence that Richard Harris brought to the part.

We did enjoy the movie though. I did a quick shopping spree afterwards - well, a quick looking-and-trying-to-get-ideas spree, really. And failing-to-get-ideas too

On Friday night it was the Scouts uni-hoc tournament, and Barney was the sub for the junior team from his pack; it turned out they’d a few no-shows, so he did get to play. They didn’t win, but they had fun

Everyone up and out early on a Saturday morning as usual - but wasted, this week, as nobody showed up to open up the leisure centre for the 8.30 classes! It was opened in time for the 9 o’clock classes though, and they did phone on Saturday afternoon to apologise, and said they would be sending out family swim passes as compensation. So Freddy missed his class, but Barney and George got theirs. Barney hurt his foot while kicking to float - so at least I know he’s making an effort

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday tidying up - trying to sort out the spare room in case we need it for that sleepover on Friday, and going through clothes in an attempt to find stuff that will fit Toby (and I did find all the clothes for this age that I knew we had somewhere). Also looked through our stash of workbooks for a maths book for Freddy (found several) and science books for Barney (found one), George (didn’t find anything…hm) and Freddy (found one, but I suspect it won’t keep him going for long). I discovered that the front wall of our bedroom is very, very damp - right above the powder room, where the wall is also very, very damp…I have no idea why this should be, and am almost afraid to ask an expert - though I realise we’re going to have to get someone in to look at it. I just hope it’s not going to cost us a fortune to put right

I took a break from all of that orgo-planning this afternoon to help the kids paint the Harry Potter badges/magnets we made using plaster and moulds a few weeks ago (and about time too!):

After that I tried to go through some potential-Christmas-gifts with Scratchy, but after less than ten minutes I had to stop to read the riot act to the boys, who were all at each other’s throats. Gave them a very loud lecture about it. I don’t know how long it will last, but the level of contrition this evening has been impressive

Misty (the schnauzer) went home to her own family yesterday, and they brought us chocolate from Prague - very nice, thank you

George has been very good about wearing the brace on his teeth, and even about having to clean his teeth every time he eats something - tbh I’ve been surprised how well he’s handling it. The dentist said she thought the tooth would move quite quickly, and she was right: it’s already almost even with the tooth next to it. I imagine George will have to keep wearing the brace for a while to make sure the tooth doesn’t move back, but it’s heartening for all of us to know it’s worked so soon.

I’m sure there’s more I meant to blog about, but I can’t think what now, so I’ll stop doing the balancing-Toby-on-one-arm-to-feed-him-so-I-can-simultaneously-blog thing now, and do something else that doesn’t involve my hands.