NotSheep

Another weekend almost over… time is really flying around here these days.

On Friday all the boys did some bookwork in the morning, and after lunch we swung by the library then went swimming. Jack is very comfortable in the water now - just a few weeks ago he was afraid to put his head underwater, but now he just leaps in off the sides, off the slides, throws himself underwater to retrieve things - it’s great He still doesn’t listen to a thing anyone says though, so I’m not signing him up for swimming lessons yet

There was no basketball on Friday evening (the leisure centre gym was being used for a special event), so it seemed a good evening to go check out the fencing club. Barney has wanted to give fencing a go for ages, and we found out about this club when he did St John Ambulance duty at a fencing tournament back in June. But the club was closed over the summer, and since September things have been ever so slightly busy around here, so we hadn’t done anything further about it. Scratchy took Barney to investigate (Henry might have gone too, but he’d already gone to bed with a sore stomach - he thought from pulling his belt too tight!) Barney came home bouncing; he had a great time and is really looking foward to going again. The coach said Barney was a natural, that his footwork was excellent, and when he discovered that the reason Barney looked familiar was that he’d seen him at the tournament in June, he said he might be in the tournament next year! Well… he won’t if he goes to France, but still - no wonder Barney was pleased!

Saturday morning began with swimming lessons as usual, except that I wasn’t sure if it was the last week of the last session or the first week of the next session, and I knew we hadn’t actually paid for the next session yet… so I sent Freddy to get changed while I found out if he was actually going in or not It turned out to be still the last session, so he did swim - and then George went into the later class with Barney, since he was told at his assessment last week to move up a class. He shouldn’t really have moved up until the end of the session, but I was confused - the instructor said it didn’t really matter anyway, and he was very pleased to have part of his lesson in the big pool for the first time

I worked out while they swam (I might have lost half a pound this week, so maybe Merry’s right…) and then we all came home to freshly-baked scones for brunch. Freddy and George had gymnastics at noon; George managed to go from delighted-about-big-pool to meltdown-over-something during the hour we were home, so had to be coaxed into going to gymnastics at all, but within five minutes of the class starting, he was leaping around with the others, quite happy.

Various children on various computers led to various grumpy people during the afternoon, and the weather was much too wintry to send them all outside, so instead we turned off all the computers (well, okay, the screens ;-)) and had a family movie. We watched Nanny McPhee, which the boys had seen before but not me - it’s better than I’d expected. I think I’d thought it was one of those “all these wild children need is a strong disciplinarian” movies, so was pleasantly surprised to find it was all a bit surreal. I like surreal

Another meltdown from George at bedtime led to me losing my temper with him He’s always been an emotional magnet, picking up on other people’s feelings and stresses, so his ups and downs yesterday were probably a result of the events of this week, and really I should have been prepared for it all *sigh*

The boys all finished a bit of bookwork this morning (I’m such a slave-driver), and I talked briefly to George and Freddy about Toby. They’re bound to wonder why he’s seeing doctors etc when none of the rest of them ever do, so we had to offer some explanation. I managed a bit of one-on-one time with Jack, during which he “decoded” a word using phonics for the first time (well, the first time I’ve heard him do it anyway). After lunch I took off with Barney and Henry, in search of yet another bookcase. As always, the local one was a waste of time (it’s the shop where they told me that bookcases are “seasonal items”), but we did get what we wanted after driving a bit further. The sooner Ikea reaches these shores, the better - not that I’ll ever be going there on a Sunday afternoon

Scratchy and Henry have now gone off to basketball. Barney is… er, he’s doing something, but I don’t know what or where. George, Freddy and Jack are folding all their t-shirts. I found a Youtube video in which a boy who clearly has an undiagnosed compulsive disorder demonstrates how to make an “automatic shirt-folder” from an old cardboard box. Okay, so this is precisely the kind of thing that appeals to me, so I’m slightly compulsive too. But I thought it would be exactly the kind of thing that George, the origami-ninja, would also love - so I showed him the vid, and I was right. He made one, then Jack wanted one, then Freddy… so no we own three automatic shirt-folding machines and one last half of a cardboard box

I’ve just been told that during the folding spree, George found a £5 note he received for his birthday in June. I guess folding pays well