NotSheep

Hm… two days without posts. That might be a record around here. Did you all miss me?

Thursday was a vast improvement on Wednesday; most of us had had nearly enough sleep (rather than about-seventeen-miles-from-nearly), so we were all a lot more fun to be around. I spent half an hour in panic-mode in the morning, when I discovered that I couldn’t login to Flickr - I knew I’d changed my Yahoo password, but I hadn’t saved it in my password-saver-program - and I knew the new password had been randomly-generated so there was no chance of guessing it! Yahoo’s “retrieve your password” system involves confirming lots of information like birthdate and postcode - things I probably made up when I registered After a frantic email to the Yahoo Helpdesk (otherwise known as the auto-reponse-then-ignore-you-desk), I realised that my instant messenger program might have it… and whew! there it was. Have now very carefully saved it

We had more friends visit for lunch and the afternoon - with it being the last week of August, we were trying to squeeze in last visits with all the schoolies Barney went off on his bicycle to get milk; he had to turn out of our street and cycle straight along the road, no turns at all, until he got to the garage, but somehow he managed to get “lost” on the way - about twenty yards from a road he knows. He can cycle to the leisure centre without a problem - a journey which is twice as long and about eighty times as complicated - but not the garage It didn’t help that when he rang me to tell me he was “lost”, he would respond to all my questions (difficult things like “are there houses on your left and fields on your right?”) with total silence. Hm. Right.

Friday was a bit of a lost day, to be honest. I had a headache all day so spent most of it trying to avoid anything that might involve movement, and the boys spent most of the day on the computers - a bit more Internet Romans, but mostly playing games. I had a bit of a rant when, 45 minutes after Scratchy got here, he was already having a go at me because I wasn’t rushing in to rescue him from demanding children. (When I say “having a go”, what I really mean is “muttering but not quite quietly enough that I couldn’t hear him” - big mistake there ;-)) He went to basketball with Barney, and I took Toby to bed and abandoned the others to their own devices.

This morning is dull, grey and very wet, and it seemed a good idea to get the boys involved in something that would prevent as much getting-on-each-other’s-nerves as possible, so we’ve (finally!) opened the K’nex Arcade set that they got last Christmas. It’s been sitting in the hall since then George jumped into it, with occasional assistance from Freddy, and Jack has also been “helping” (a term which definitely needs those quote-marks in this case).

Barney has spent most of the morning doing Kakuro. My friend K (the one who was here with her children on Tuesday and Wednesday) tried to get me hooked on yet another type of puzzle: Hashi - but I resisted. My addictions to Sudoku and Kakuro were entirely her fault, but this time, I was strong

We had a phone-call from the French exchange organisation this morning, and there is a possibility that we might have a French child here within a few weeks! Of course it’s also quite possible that the whole process will never go any further, so we’re trying not to get too excited about it - but all the same, we’re all a bit

…hate me because I’ve just done 90% of my Christmas shopping.

*Deb tries to avoid the rotten tomatoes everyone is chucking*

So having made myself the most unpopular person on the blogring - I’ll blog what we’ve been up to!

We went out to look for shoes for the boys, shoes for me, clothes for me (I think I’m down to two pairs of trousers without holes in them now, and one of those is a pair of sweats). There’s one of those outlet-malls not far from here - mostly it’s shops where the prices are too high for me even when discounted, but anyway… we got shoes for George and Freddy, couldn’t find anything at all in Jack’s size. Seriously, not a single pair! Maybe that “avoid the shops in the weeks before school starts” thing wasn’t completely thought through… how long do you think it takes for them to re-stock after a run like that?

There’s a reasonably good toyshop there - not big, but it often has bits and pieces I haven’t seen elsewhere, and it also often has K’nex things on sale - and an interesting bookstore, as well as a Game outlet, so those are where most of the money went. I think perhaps an order from The Book People and a few Gameboy bits from ebay and we’ll be set

We had fast-food for lunch (so I’ve probably gained back all the weight I’d lost), then went off to collect a baby-gate from someone on Freecycle - so as I type, Toby is standing at the family-room door hanging onto the gate and yelling at his brothers After that we considered stopping somewhere on the way home, but we were all too tired and the weather wasn’t good and so we just headed back.

I realised last night that I never said anything here about Jack being “school-aged” now - he’d have started school last week, if he’d been going. I can’t imagine him in a classroom; he already runs this place, and I don’t expect a teacher and 30ish kids would slow him down! Anyway, what would I do without him to tell me everything about everything?

He’s insisting that he’s requested books from the library: “I’m waiting for a French book, and a fiction book.” - this is because Freddy got a letter from the library to say a book he’d requested was waiting for him. Now he can’t wait to go and collect it, so we might do that tomorrow.

More communication from the French exchange family - they’ve received our file and like the look of us so far They say they know nothing about home-education and have lots of questions. I expected that, to be honest - home-ed isn’t something most people “get” unless they’re doing it or know people who are doing it (and sometimes not even then). I’m hoping we get their file tomorrow too. We were looking at photos of the family today and talking about how different it would be for the boy to be here, with five other boys, when he’s used to having just one sister. George said that maybe we could do an exchange with a girl sometime “so we can find out what it’s like to have a female in the family”. When I pointed out that I’m female and I’m in the family, he replied, “I mean a young female!” - er… digging yourself deeper into that hole there, George!

Must admit to having my doubts about having another child here this morning, when it was Bicker-City! Things improved once we settled down to some work, though we did struggle with Barney’s maths - it was Pythagoras, which he understands and can work with, but he wants to answer the questions without reading them first! George and Freddy did some maths too - operations and using calculators respectively. Freddy learned about word processors (I must be hungry: I wrote that as “food processor” first LOL) and how to move around in them. They all did some handwriting practice and we read about thunder and lightning. Barney and George read from the Usborne Art book and wrote letters in French. Freddy started to write a story about finding a time-capsule which had been created 100 years ago, and that led to him searching on-line for information about Victorian times. We had a chat about today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day - Scratchy phoned me to find out what the URI was because he was telling someone at work about it, I looked it up and said “ooh, today’s is a good one!” and four children promptly descended on me and my laptop. It’s a great site - I’ve used lots of their pics for my desktop at various times (right now it’s this one) and it’s set as the homepage on the kids’ account on one of the desktop computers

Dentist for everyone tomorrow, and we must run by the library too, to collect Freddy’s book and to gather some more reading material for me - I’ve finished The Kitchen God’s Wife (which is definitely a contender for my top-five-ever list!) and am nearly finished with my last library book - though my reading has been slowed down a bit recently while I’ve been distracted with Kakuro… With any luck we’ll come home with a pair of shoes for Jack too!

It’s been a fairly quiet weekend around here; lots of “getting organised” type stuff, like going through the boys’ clothes to see what still fits who, putting away some of the summer stuff, etc. Next weekend might be a bit more eventful though:
a) swimming lessons start again on Saturday morning, and
b) we could have a French family visiting, and going home without their son if he decides to stay…

This has all happened astonishingly fast (the exchange thing, not the swimming lessons!) Normally it takes several months between applying and an exchange starting, but for a variety of reasons, this one has been arranged a bit differently. The organisation hasn’t even received our references yet (both the friends who were filling in their forms for us posted them on Friday), but the French family would like to start an exchange as soon as possible. Their son is keen, but also anxious, which I think is reasonable - I’d be anxious and I’m a grown-up (allegedly)! Of course it’s entirely possible he (or the family) will decide that he should go back home after the weekend, though we hope not!

Barney and George are very excited; Scratchy is freaking at the notion of his little boy possibly going away to France next year. I’m dealing with the slightly more pressing issues, like where everyone is going to sleep, and wondering how fast I can polish up my extremely rusty A-level French! It’s all a bit… well, I don’t know what to call it! But I do hope it all works out

Just got home from a meeting about Beavers - the Scouting type, that is, not the animals. I didn’t do anything for Beavers last year, since Toby was so little, but this year I’m ready to go back - and it’s just as well, as our colony is down to one warranted leader. In the Spring, there was a parents’ meeting to see if anyone else was willing to volunteer, but while a few parents said “maybe”, none of them went any further. Tonight there was another meeting, to see if we could round up a few parent-helpers. A grand total of three parents showed up: two mums who agreed to help out once every four or five weeks, and one dad who made the usual excuses.

I get quite cross when people can’t be bothered. Every week, parents drop off their sons for an hour. Is it really so much to ask that those same parents stick around and help out for that hour, once every few weeks? There are only about 36 Beaver meetings a year - probably less - so if we had five parent-helpers, each of them would only be asked to do one hour, about seven times a year. And what on earth are they doing with that hour anyway? They can’t be getting that much done between leaving the kids off at 6.30 and collecting them at 7.30!

St John Ambulance also started back tonight - Freddy went to Badgers with George since there wasn’t a Beaver meeting (just the parents’ bit), and Barney went to Cadets and met another home-ed boy he knows there, which pleased him.

The rest of the day was spent moving beds and bedroom furniture around. George moved into the back bedroom a few weeks ago, claiming he wanted a room of his own because Jack was always messing up his room (which he’d been sharing with Freddy and sometimes Jack). As it turned out, once he moved into the back bedroom, it was the messiest of the lot - and after getting fed up with finding 600 pieces of Lego, 600 pieces of K’nex, 600 pieces of Monopoly/Scrabble/various other board games, and 600 Trivial Pursuit and Mindtrap cards all over the floor (yes, all at the same time!), I finally sent him packing back to the bigger bedroom with his brothers. There was talk of moving Barney into the back room and giving George the small bedroom, but I’d been putting it off: I hate moving furniture around, it makes you realise how dirty your house is As of last night, however, there was some urgency to the situation, because from Friday until Monday, we will have four extra people staying here - with the possibility that one of them will stay on for the next six months, if he is happy to do so.

If he does decide to stay, I’ll have a lot of admiration for him. It’s a huge thing for an 11-year-old to leave his family for six months, and when you remember that he doesn’t speak a great deal of English, and had never heard of us until just over a week ago - well, I’m not sure I could do it. It’s all been astonishingly fast - it’s only five days since we received their file, eight days since we first heard of them, and less than three weeks since we posted off our file.

Scratchy was expecting to be doing all the furniture-moving (including taking some beds apart and reassembling them in other rooms), and was quite astonished to find that the boys and I had done 99% of it by the time he got home today. I think I might have earned quite a few cups of tea there

Anyone know how I can become fluent in French by Friday? Or where I can pick up a vehicle that seats eight for about, oh, about £500?

Do you think you’re eagle-eyed?

You do?

So did you notice the addition to the cast-list in the sidebar?

Full report is below in a private post - you’ll have to be logged in to see it!

Henry’s parents left this morning; Scratchy drove them into the city to catch the bus back to the airport. His mother was teary when she left - understandably; I’m sure I’ll be ten times worse if Barney decides to go to France next year

Henry had a bit of a cry in bed after they left, which wasn’t surprising. After breakfast he came to me and asked if we were going to do some schoolwork; he’s brought his English and maths books from school. I think the English will take care of itself but the maths one was useful to let me see where he is. I think Henry expected to do more work today - he’s asked if we can do more tomorrow - but he also said, during dinner, that he thinks “house-school” is good We did a little bit of number-work together while Freddy and George did their own maths and Barney did some writing. After lunch there were a few more tears and we sat together for a little while, then I suggested we could watch a DVD - in English, but one that he’d already seen, so that he didn’t have to understand everything to follow the story. He was happy with my suggestion of Madagascar, and laughed along with the rest all the way through that, and then we all spent the rest of the evening with sporadic rounds of “I like to move it move it!”

Henry and Barney spent the rest of the day playing games, both on and off the computer. I think we’re all still suffering the effects of fatigue, and of course the first days and weeks will be the hardest. It’s a brave thing that he’s doing! I think it will be best if we try to keep busy for the next few days, so that he can adjust as much as possible without thinking too much of home. His parents have the URI for this blog, so *waves at Henry’s parents*

Dinner went well; lots of conversation around the table in both English and French, and the verdict on the food was “c’est bon!” We ate in the conservatory; it was raining heavily at the time so quite noisy, and we taught Henry to say “it’s raining cats and dogs”. We also spotted a rainbow, so that was a good opportunity to review colours, and Henry explained that in France they say you should look for two rainbows - so we did, and we spotted a second one!

Freddy went to ju-jitsu this evening and Henry went to watch - if he’d like to participate, we’ve already got a gi that should fit him, thanks to a friend with slightly bigger children than ours. I’ve also promised to take him to the science centre soon, as he’s seen the photos from last time and is keen to go

And now… I must disappear and plan a programme for Beavers tomorrow evening!

It’s been a good day today. All the boys did a little work in the morning, including Henry, who was struggling a little with decimals and fractions, but I hope my half-French-half-English explanation helped! He wrote an email to his parents and made a list of people he wants to send cards to; we’ll have to buy some stamps for sending letters to France so he can walk or cycle to the mailbox and post letters whenever he wants, without needing us to take him to the post office. Not that we mind doing that, it’s just that I think it would be better for him to have that bit of independence.

He also helped me make spaghetti sauce this morning, and I’d been told by both him and his parents that he was a dab hand at pasta, so I told him he could be responsible for dinner this evening The weather was warm and sunny (if windy), so after lunch we all headed out to walk to the leisure-centre and go for a swim. I added Henry to our family membership there; they put him in with our surname, and he was delighted to see his membership card with that on it We all had a really good time in the pool, even Toby, who wasn’t very keen last time. Today he laughed and splashed and tried to leap out of my arms to catch balls, and he thoroughly enjoyed a game where he sat in one of those baby-floaty-seat things and we pushed him around from one of us to the other (the other boys enjoyed it too :-)) He even tolerated having his face ducked in the water a couple of times. After our swim, we went to the cafe and I treated everyone to a cup of hot chocolate. Scratchy collected us after work, but since we’re still one carseat short, he took Barney and Henry home first, left them boiling spaghetti and re-heating the sauce, and came back for the rest of us.

Dinner was a quick affair, as three of us needed to be delivered to two different places by 6.30 - George to St John Ambulance Badgers, and Freddy and me to Beavers. It was my first night with this pack, and my first night of planning in over a year - and the first night back after the summer. We played a good active game - one in which everyone ended up on the same team, so they all won - then talked about summer and seasons and all the Beavers made giant paper sunflowers to take home to remind them of summer. It all went very well; I think they’re going to keep me We had a couple of new Beavers; one of them was a bit tearful at the beginning and I asked Freddy to befriend him. Coming home, Freddy told me that he made sure the new boy had a good time and that he was going to make sure he’d a good time next week too - then revised that plan to “I’m going to make sure everyone has a good time every week!”

Scratchy picked up George from SJA and left Barney and Henry at Cadets; Henry seems to have had a good time, and particularly mentioned two of the other Cadets. He was pleased to find an email from his parents waiting for him when he returned home, and has gone off to bed in good form. I’m sure there will be difficult days, but today wasn’t at all

Oh, and one month into this “I’m going to lose weight and get fitter, yes I am, no I really mean it this time” thing? I have lost 11.5 pounds (the 0.5 is important LOL) I’m very pleased with that, because I haven’t actually denied myself much at all. So a good day all around

It’s been quite a lazy day here. It’s been rainy and cold and in keeping with the wintry weather, we’ve got sick children: both Henry and Jack have been coughing, Henry has complained of a sore throat and Jack has been wailing at the top of his voice every time he remembered he wasn’t well. I gave everyone a multivitamin this morning, and have been tossing vitamin c at them all day every time I thought about it.

Because of that, and because we were busy yesterday, and because we’ll be out all day tomorrow (assuming the sickies are no sicker), we took things very easy today. Or rather, the boys did more or less what they wanted, and I limited myself to moving the table in the conservatory so I could add another leaf (and thus seat eight people more comfortably), drying one mammoth load of laundry and washing another, vacuuming the kitchen floor, and doing the usual daily essentials required for the care of a house and six children

Barney and Henry spent part of the morning playing computer games, but at least they’re sticking to games which will help Henry improve his English. We read together, with me reading each sentence out loud and then Henry repeating it - one of En Famille’s suggestions - and he asked if we could do that again tomorrow. Lunch was leftovers, but then I remembered I’d plain, cooked pasta in the refrigerator, so I made some pasta salad - which worked out quite well because I’d a bowl of it for lunch, and there was enough left to go along with burgers and hot-dogs for dinner. Henry polished off a large burger and two hot-dogs as well as some onion-rings - obviously he doesn’t lose his appetite when he’s ill (he must take after me then ;-)) He was very pleased to discover he’d be getting pocket-money from us too - I’m not sure what he was expecting, but he certainly seemed very cheery when he heard about that, and if the speed with which he worked out that the amount we’ll be providing in pounds is more than the amount he’s used to getting in euros is any indication, there’s nothing wrong with his mental arithmetic

I think he’s still in “best behaviour” mode: every time we ask if he’s okay, if plans are all right, if there’s anything he needs, if he likes the food… he responds that it’s all fine. I haven’t noticed any more tearful moments, and I’ve been watching out for them - but I know it can’t be this smooth… I tried to tell him today that he should always tell us if there’s a problem or if he needs anything, but I wasn’t quite sure if he understood or if he was smiling and nodding in order to be agreeable Still, I have five children of my own five other children and I know that on-your-best-behaviour eventually goes away, so I won’t be surprised if we get a massive tantrum or meltdown at some point - in fact I’d be surprised if we didn’t, and I’ll be quite glad when it happens, because it will tell me that he’s feeling secure enough to throw that at us! I will admit, though, to having taken advantage of his current willingness to please: when he asked if he could be on helper-duty like the rest, I promptly re-wrote the schedule to include him

George is at Cubs now, and Barney and Henry are on their way to Scouts. Freddy is entertaining Toby on my bedroom floor, and Jack is asleep - best thing for him, I think. I’ve just had an email from the DVD rental company who last week refused to give me two months free because I’d already had a free trial with them - now they’re offering me three months for the price of one if I come back - so it looks my evening’s activity will be listing the DVDs we want to rent

We’ve had a pretty good day around here. Jack is much better than he was yesterday (if you don’t see the post about yesterday below this one, you’re not logged-in); he’s still coughing a bit but is back to acting normally. Henry’s also still coughing, though I think a bit less than in the last two or three days. In the morning the boys puttered about and did bits of writing and drawing and computering and I tried to clean up the kitchen a bit. My friend T arrived with her son C; he’s a lovely lad and promptly made friends with all the sons he didn’t already know - even Toby was willing to give him a cuddle. T and I sat and chatted and the boys kept themselves busy, then when T went off to do a school run at lunchtime (she’s a childminder), C stayed and had lunch with us. I can’t believe how much those seven boys ate: a tray of potato wedges, a bag of oven-chips, about eight spring-rolls, and 20 sausages! I cooked extra sausages thinking I could use them over the weekend in a sausages’n'mash-type affair I sometimes cook - but there were only two left, and they were polished off at dinner!

After lunch T came back for C, but we managed to squeeze in another cup of tea before I had to round everyone up for going swimming. Barney, George and Freddy are doing soccer school on Friday afternoons again, and they get a free swim with each class, so they didn’t have to pay for swimming. Jack and Toby don’t have to pay because they’re still too young, and I had one junior swim left on a ten-swims-card I bought a while back, so that covered Henry… so I only had to pay for me: seven of us swimming for £1.90 - not bad value

During swimming Henry lost most of a toenail - I think from having hurt his toe in the garden last weekend - and came over and offered it to me. I think that’s a good sign; you don’t just offer toenails to any old stranger now, do you?

When I got out of the pool, I discovered that the towel I’d put in the bag for myself was no longer there… which left me standing, dripping wet, in the changing-room. I did the best I could with Toby’s small, already-damp towel and went to make sure George and Freddy were on the soccer pitch before I went for Scratchy… Freddy was there, participating in the warm-up, but George was sulking on the side. I tried to get him to join in, but I didn’t have time to talk him through it properly, so ended up putting him in the car and taking him with me (along with Jack and Toby). Barney and Henry were still in the pool, having been reminded to get out in time to get dried before Barney started soccer at 4.45.

I collected Scratchy and collected some reserved items from a shop near his office, then left him and George at home making dinner while I went for everyone else. Henry watched Barney play soccer; I asked if there’d be room for him in the class (yes) but he doesn’t want to join - which is fine, of course; it’s up to him.

Scratchy, Barney and Henry went to basketball at the leisure centre after dinner while the others and I cleared the table and put the swimming things through the wash, ready for swimming lessons tomorrow. I’m now on my bed with a very snuffly and slightly hot Toby, so I’m going to snuggle up with him and a book. Hope your weekend’s a good one!

That’s my estimate of the number of small pieces of toys I have touched today. Lego (of various sorts), K’nex, Mr Potato Head, Bionicles, marbles, bits of Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit pieces of pie, dice, chessmen… I have collected, sorted and put away every bit of anything I could find, and there was an awful lot of it

We’d the usual busy start to Saturday this morning, with swimming lessons for Barney, George and Freddy at 9 and 9.30. Henry wants to get his hair cut, so Scratchy was going to take him to the barbershop while the others were in the pool, but when they drove past just before opening-time (9 o’clock), there were already three people wating for it to open, so that didn’t get done. After swimming Barney and Henry went to Fit Kids, which seems to have gone down well, and then back into the pool, since a Fit Kids session comes with a free swim.

I spent the morning tidying up and nursing Toby, who’d had quite a fever on and off all night (and continued to do so all day, though he does seem much improved now). I don’t know what his temperature was; I haven’t taken a child’s temperature in years. I go on two things: how hot they feel (slightly warm, quite hot, scary hot… Toby was the latter) and how they act (a bit off, sorry for themselves, totally miserable… Toby was the middle one). He wasn’t interested in anything except sleep and breastfeeding, which are the two best things he can do when he’s sick, so that was fine by me. He’s now cheered up to the extent that he’s trying to help me type this - with his toes - so I think he might be over the worst of it

The point of all the tidying was to give Barney and Henry something in which to store their clothes and other essential-for-being-an-eleven-year-old-boy stuff in their own room. Freddy has moved into the small bedroom that Barney vacated in order to share with Henry, and until today, Barney’s clothes were in Freddy’s closet, Freddy’s clothes were in the corner of George’s room, and Henry’s clothes were in a bag at the foot of his bed. Now each child and his clothes are actually in the same room - which seems a much better idea, can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it sooner I watched Henry putting away clothes for a few minutes, then went and told Scratchy, “he’s folding everything and sorting his t-shirts according to whether they’ve long or short sleeves… he’s the son I never had!”

He had a phone-call from his parents at lunchtime; En Famille recommends a maximum of one call a week for the first few weeks, then one every couple of weeks if possible. A lot of the things in their literature initially struck me as quite picky - stuff about no books in their native language, how many photos they could take with them, how often parents should write to them, etc - but now I think they’re right. If the child is hanging on between one point of contact and the next, there really isn’t time to meld into the host family’s language and culture and way of life. Henry has, I think, done extremely well this week. I know he’s still not quite relaxed and open with us, but I think that will come in time. He got off the phone and told me he was finding his mattress uncomfortable - I don’t know if it had just occurred to him to tell me, or if he’d told his mum and been told to tell me - but I switched it for another one and he was very pleased

Oh, and I think he’s settling in well - he corrected me today for the first time. “Henry likes Runescape,” I said. “No,” said Henry, waving his finger at me, “I love Runescape!”

Jack asked how long it would be until Henry’s “mum and dad come to take him home”, and I told him it would be a long time (about one-ninth of Jack’s life!) and that Henry would be staying with us until after my birthday (which is at the end of February). Jack nodded wisely and said, “That’s because there is chocolate on your birthday.”

Once we’d got most of the bedrooms sorted out, the boys watched a DVD before dinner. Barney was grumpy - due to reading for far too long last night and a busy day today. Henry was yawning - due to a busy day today and still coughing a little (though much less) and, well, due to having probably had one of the most overwhelming weeks of his life! So everyone has headed to bed early, and in fact I think three of them might even be asleep already… with me not far behind

Y’know, we really shouldn’t worry about how many planets there are and whether Pluto counts. Or if the universe is infinite. Or even how old it is. Because there are plenty of equally mysterious questions much closer to home.

Much, much closer to home.

You want examples? Okay.

How can one child making breakfast for a few other children manage to leave every single flat surface in the kitchen covered in crumbs, butter, utensils, and even a few things that don’t appear, at first glance or any other time, to be in any way related to the process of making breakfast. It was only toasted bagels, for goodness sake!

How can children, told to gather their library books so we can go to the library after lunch, not realise that thirtyish library books would be easier to carry if they were in a bag. Even when the instruction was “gather the library books and put them in a bag”. Even when there is actually an assigned bag which is used only for library books. Bear in mind that said children go to the library approximately every two to three weeks and have been doing so for years. And that this particular conversation occurs approximately 70% of those times

Why a four-year-old will insist that he’d rather have dry toast than have scrambled egg on it and then, five minutes later, want to know why the now-covered-in-scrambled-egg toast (because he changed his mind) tastes “yummier than ordinary toast”. Note that this was not just a comment on said four-year-old’s part; it was a demand for an explanation.

Why my toaster produces slightly-dried-out-but-still-colourless bread on setting number 4, but large hard black crackers on setting number 5.

Where the four-year-old’s other shoe is.

Why children (or maybe it’s just male children, or maybe it’s just children under 12, or maybe it’s just male children under 12) don’t open the curtains in their bedrooms. Even when they’ve been told to do so every morning for over a year. Even when they’ve been told several times in one morning to do it. Even when they’re told again when the parent notices the curtains are still closed at 1 p.m. (while looking for the four-year-old’s other shoe).

How a parent, specifically the female kind, can feel twice as busy with six children in the house as she did when there were five children in the house. Or even how it’s possible to feel twice as busy as when there were five children in the house anyway

Why the French word “pâté”, translated into English, is still “pâté”. I have to admit that this one doesn’t particularly bother me, but apparently it’s important to certain other people. I tried to offer examples of the reverse being true (like “le weekend”), but it turned out that that didn’t really help matters.

Why I’m wearing a belt. (See comment on list-item immediately preceding this one. Again, not something that’s keeping me awake at night.)

How a man can read a recipe for chili, then go grocery-shopping, and still be missing half the ingredients. I kid you not: half of them. Including very basic things like, oh, onions.

(Okay, that last one might be a generalisation. Maybe it’s not all men. But I can certainly name one. I’m guessing that by this point, you can probably name him too.)

Whether there’s one “l” or two in “chili/chilli”. The prepared dish, that is, not the raw peppers or the spice. The thing we were going to eat for dinner tonight.

Why I’m hiding right now. Okay, that one’s easy.

I’m sure I’ll think of more. In fact I’ve a sneaking suspicion I’ve written a similar post before. But these are the things on my mind right now.

I bet you can come up with some of your own. Leave me a comment. If you relate to any of the above, please also comment - it might not make me feel any better but it’s worth a go. If your house is all sweetness and light and absolutely no disagreement or awkward questions ever, please don’t comment; it would only depress me.

Well who knew my steam-letting-off exercise yesterday would strike so many chords? Lots of comments, for which I’m very grateful, because many of them made me laugh, and I needed that. Still do. I’m sick I thought I’d acquired the bug that got Henry and Jack last week and then Toby over the weekend, but then it started to look more like I had mastitis. I definitely have a clogged duct; even if I couldn’t feel it, I can actually see the lump and I can identify the exact duct because the milk coming out of it is visibly different. And feeling flu-y. Last time this happened was when Freddy was a baby, and I landed in hospital having a breast abscess cut out, and also got septicemia - so this is scary territory for me. Hence, after fighting my way through Beavers last night (did you know you can make a squirrel with teabags? well you can.) I headed to the local Emergency, to try to convince a doctor that yes, I did have mastitis and yes, I do know what I’m talking about, and yes, it is at the stage where antibiotics are justified. I haven’t had antibiotics in seven years (and that was the IV ones for the septicemia), so that gives you some idea of how I’m feeling.

After an hour in Emergency listening to the staff discuss their pay-bands and whether they’d get enough to live on for the rest of their lives if they took redundancy and who was making the next round of tea I finally saw a doctor. Told him what was wrong. He left (to get a nurse as a chaperone, because of course you couldn’t possibly predict that when a woman comes in and says she has mastitis that you might be looking at her boobs). He returned, I squeezed my nipple and produced clear evidence that I wasn’t a junkie looking for her next fix of flucloxacillin, and he produced a packet of 28 of them. To be honest, I don’t think he had a clue. I think he was just trying not to look lost and decided that I sounded like I knew what I was on about so he’d be better to just nod along, fake the clue thing and do what I said. I don’t care: it works for me.

Scratchy is staying home today; I was going to struggle through, but then the car wouldn’t start, so that was kind of a, uh, non-starter.

Anyway. Back to yesterday’s comments.

Surprisingly, the most widely-discussed mystery was not why I was wearing a belt. The big issues, in reverse order, were:

In third place, tied: cleaning up and curtains
In second place: laundry
And in first place… ta da: is the correct spelling “chili” or “chilli”

Sue said it’s chili with one l; now she’s usually got a handle on these things, so I was inclined to believe her. Then Mamadillo/Trogette said the same, because it “looks” right - again, I was with her, because that’s how I mostly figure out spellings. Alison agreed that one l is correct, on the somewhat spurious basis that it’s how the Red Hot Chili Peppers spell their name But then Mamadillo changed her mind because she found a recipe on the BBC website (except that this is the same BBC that often states that the law says parents are legally required to make sure their children attend school, so they’re, uh, not infallible.)

Being the pedantic type, I had to get to the bottom of this.

The History of Chili says it ain’t Mexican, but rather originated in Texas with Spanish immigrants. That would make it “chili”, because “chilli” in Spanish would be pronounced “chi-yi”. The Life and Times of Chili agrees, but adds that chili may have been influenced by a native American dish called pemmican and by Mexican spices. Wikipedia says the same. But I think the best page I found on chili is The Great Chili Con Carne Project - it even has a little pepper as its favicon, so it must be right It directly addresses the spelling issue, as well as describing the dish’s origins and offering several excellent-looking recipes, even if none of them is as easy as my recipe. Hm. You know how chili can make your nose run? Do you think it would work for blocked milk-ducts in the same way?

That’s enough digging, because it’s time for me to lie down and hide under the covers again, so I’m going with The Great Chili Con Carne Project: the dish is called chili, the peppers are chile peppers.

And we still haven’t found that other shoe.

As far as I’m concerned, Wednesday and Thursday were non-days. They just didn’t happen. I spent Tuesday night feeling feverish and blergh, and then on Wednesday morning, the car wouldn’t start. It had been a little iffy for a couple of days and we’d booked it in with our mechanic for Thursday, so that will explain why it refused to start on Wednesday. So Scratchy didn’t go into work, and once I felt able to drag myself out of bed to sit in the driver’s seat and try to get the thing started once it was rolling down a hill, that’s what we did. A neighbour came to help, and eventually we managed to get the engine going, and I went back to bed. And more-or-less stayed there until this morning. The kids were great; they all entertained themselves very nicely and even helped out a lot with Toby so I could rest more. Not much “education” going on, obviously, but they’re always learning, even if it’s not what I’d planned By yesterday I was out of flu-mode and into heavy-head-cold mode, and by this morning I was feeling almost normal. Still on antibiotics for the next few days, but I’m certain they were necessary; looking at it with a clear head (rather than a flu-fug one), I’m fairly sure I actually had an abscess rather than straightforward mastitis - though thankfully one that would drain on its own and didn’t require me to meet another scalpel.

So I lay there feeling sorry for myself while Scratchy took the car to the mechanic. He wasn’t able to get it fixed until Thursday, so we couldn’t do Cubs or Scouts on Wednesday night.

This has triggered further discussions about buying a newer car. We’d been talking about looking for something newer next year, but when Henry arrived we considered buying something bigger. Once you get to the point of needing more than seven seats, the number of available options rapidly shrinks. There’s a Volkswagen van which seats either eight or nine, depending on seat configuration; I went to look at one this morning, and while it’s big enough and spacious enough and would do, I’m just not really taken with it. It’s a modified van, and it looks like a van and it drives like a van. (For North American readers, a “van” in the UK is a commercial cargo vehicle. What you call a “van”, we call a “people-carrier”.) Also it’s only been on the market for two years so the cheapest ones are still £15k. And also insurers won’t cover the nine-seat version as a private car, so we’d have to go for the eight-seat version. Yes, I know that would be enough seats for now, but it would be nice to have a spare one to take along a friend or for any possible future needs wouldn’t it? And £15k is an awful lot of money to hand over for one extra seat, especially when you don’t just love the car, y’know?

So back to the drawing-board. Currently under consideration is the purchase of a new (to us, definitely not brand-new!) seven-seater of some description, to be kept alongside what we’ve got. Cons: double the insurance and road-tax, and if we all go somewhere together, we’d have to take both vehicles. Pros: a lot less money to hand out initially and we’d have a backup vehicle if anything went wrong.

Opinions? Or, if you have more children than the average bear and have managed to suss this one out, tales of what you’ve done and how it worked out?

After two stops at car shops, we had a fast food lunch (and crikey is that so not cheap when there’s six children to be fed including two who eat adult-sized meals!) Then Henry and Barney went to the small museum in town, mainly so Henry could buy some postcards. We’d all have gone, but we only had about 20 minutes, and that wasn’t enough time to find parking, get all the kids out, get all the kids to the museum from the car-park, gather them all up again and get back to the car. Note I didn’t even try to factor in the time for all of them to go around the museum in there - just the peripheral stuff wasn’t do-able, so the big kids went and the rest of us didn’t.

We did all go swimming though; Toby had a thoroughly good time again - in fact I had to wrap my legs around him to stop him diving down the steps head-first while I tied the cord in Freddy’s shorts. We stayed in for ages today too, and everyone really enjoyed it. When we first went in, we were the only ones there, and even when we left, there were only a couple of other kids in the pool. Henry and Barney stayed in for even longer than the rest of us, and Freddy went to soccer while I picked up Scratchy. Soccer for George is not happening this season; he just doesn’t want to do it. I wish he’d said so before it was paid for; it’s not as though they’re ever signed up for anything they don’t want to to.

Home for chili (one l) from the slow-cooker, which I, in ten minutes of domestic goddessness, had thrown together this morning before we left. It’s very nice to come home after a long day and find dinner all ready and hot and smelling delicious; I need to make more use of my slow-cooker.

We weren’t home five minutes before R and G from across the road arrived to play with our lot, so people ate in a sort-of relay system before Scratchy took off to basketball with Barney and Henry. Henry hurt his foot in the pool - not seriously, it’s just a scratch and a bit of a bruise, but it was bothering him enough that he didn’t want to walk on it; however it wasn’t bothering him enough that he didn’t want to go to basketball

Tomorrow: swimming, Fit Kids, gymnastics, basketball, maybe library…

Saturday:
Swimming (Barney, George, Freddy).
Fit Kids (Barney).
More swimming (Barney, Henry).
Library (Henry, George, Freddy, Jack, Toby).
Gymnastics (George, Freddy).
Car-shopping (me).

I hate car-shopping.

Almost as much as I hate headlice (Barney, Henry, George, Freddy, Jack).