NotSheep

Today did not start well; I’d a headache when I fell asleep last night and it was worse each time I woke during the night. By the time this morning arrived, I was feeling sick, and it took a while for me to feel even vaguely human. Fortunately by lunchtime it was mostly gone and I was nearly back to normal (for me )

Barney and Henry worked together in the morning, with Henry writing about his stay here so far and Barney correcting bits of what he wrote. In the afternoon we took a trip to Toys’R'Us – and I realised that how irritating I find that store is positively-correlated with the number of children accompanying me. Alone, I find it annoying. With one child, it’s slightly worse. With six children – well, let’s just say that those who believe in doing penance are missing a great opportunity there.

We went because Henry wanted to buy a Bionicle of his own (like there aren’t already about 37 here) and because we need more swimming-bags. Henry got a Bionicle (not the one he wanted, but he’s happy anyway), but there were no swimming bags to be found. Half-way through the store, I realised I’d probably have had a better chance on ebay.

George and Freddy have signed up for a sports club thing that happens every Monday for the next few weeks, so I left them off at the leisure centre, then brought Barney and Henry home, since they had plans to meet their friend N, before going to collect Scratchy. We came home and heated up the potato-and-carrot soup I’d made yesterday, and I got a head-start on tomorrow’s dinner – I’m so organised Barney and Henry headed out with N for a while, then came back to ask if they could go to a club at his school tonight – table-tennis and pool and stuff like that, as far as I can gather. I said that was fine, but by the time dinner was over, Barney’s attitude had descended into grumpy, resentful and eye-rolling and since he didn’t seem fit for human company, he went to bed early instead. Henry has gone off to the club with N – the first time he’s done something like that on his own since he got here, and it feels really odd – to me! His English has already improved quite a lot, and I don’t think he’ll have much trouble (apart, possibly, from being the centre of attention – though I don’t think he’ll mind that too much ) – but I feel a bit… well, like he’s growing up too fast or something! How nuts am I?

edit at 9.44 p.m. – Henry is back, safe and sound and having had a good time

Back to Barney’s mood this evening – we’ve had quite a bit of that recently and I have to say it’s not a part of parenting I’m finding thrilling. Another aspect of it is that he’s decided he doesn’t want to have his photo “all over the internet” in case “somebody sees me in the street and recognises me” (because my blog is soooo widely-read…) I suspect this is more to do with being awkward than anything else, but I’ve agreed that posts with photos will be private from now on – i.e. only visible if you’re logged in. I’ll put the posts up publicly at first, then change them to private a few days later, unless his sudden desire for privacy increases I’ll also be making my Flickr photos private, but I think most of the people who look at those either read here or are contacts there anyway.

Freddy’s just come home from ju-jitsu and disappeared to bed without saying a word – he must be tired, because usually I get a run-down of how things went.

I just discovered that a change I made last week resulted in my blog sidebar getting messed up when viewed in IE. So to those reading in IE – sorry! But why did nobody tell me? And why are you using IE anyway, when there are so many far far better options?