NotSheep

Toby might have been one-and-a-half yesterday, but I think we’re already seeing the “twos” - call them terrible, call them terrific, whatever you like. He’s into everything. He’s helped himself to shreddies (not brand-name, because we don’t do that brand) from the cupboard - getting a plastic cup out first and then putting the cereal in. I don’t know how he got it in - scooping? pouring? - but he’s carried it all over the house while he’s been snacking. He also poured a cup of them on the kitchen floor, lay down on his stomach and started eating by picking them up with his mouth. He’s helped himself to bread from the bread-drawer. He’s been cruising the refrigerator and protesting mightily when Barney insisted on moving him out of the way so he could close the door. Yesterday I made the mistake of serving him his lunch in a breakable bowl - he ate the macaroni, the flung the bowl across the kitchen; it hit the ceramic floor and shattered into tiny pieces, spread into every corner of the kitchen and dining-room. Right then. Twos.

He’s not taking his life in his hands as much as Freddy though, who managed to knock my laptop off the dining-room table after lunch. That was a moment none of us wants to relive.

Our nine-year run of being free of antibiotic meds is over. Toby has a finger and a thumb which have infections at the base of the nail-bed. I’ve been soaking them and cleaning them and applying antibiotic ointment - left over from when we lived in Canada, because it’s prescription-only here - what’s with that? You can buy stuff that will make you high or destroy your liver or cause your heart to race or even kill you - but oh, we can’t have people buying antibiotic ointment without a doctor’s say-so. Must be all because of all those antibiotic-ointment-sniffing junkies Anyway, Toby’s hand is not improving, and so it’s one of those times when an oral antibiotic really is necessary - but despite knowing it’s one of those times, I’m finding it really annoying. He took the first dose without any bother at lunchtime - oh yeah, that’s my other rant: it’s supposed to be taken on an empty stomach, one hour before food. He’s 18 months old and we’re supposed to leave him hungry for an hour, four times a day? Not flippin likely. And if the look on his face after the first spoonful was anything to go by (”what the heck did you give me that for?”), I doubt if future doses will go in without a struggle. Sigh.

What else haven’t I written about? On Monday George went back to ju-jitsu with Freddy. On Tuesday the big two went to Cadets and George went to Badgers and Freddy and Jack and I went to Beavers - we’d an outing to the marina, which was fun. Dark, but good, and they each got given a cool kit-bag with pens and pencils and diaries and CDs and crisps and drinks in them - very impressive. We’d fifteen boys and five little lifejackets (borrowed from the sailing-club by a Beaver parent who’s a member), so they were taken down onto the pontoons in three separate groups. Definitely an outing we’ll do again - though perhaps in spring or autumn next time, so it’s not so dark and cold. Last night (Wednesday) Barney and Henry went to Scouts - I’m told they played hockey and something called Deal or No Deal, though neither of those explains why Barney came home looking like he’d been dragged through a hedge every which way.

Otherwise we’ve been studying hard. Barney is reviewing all his KS3 maths rather than starting into GCSE-level stuff as we’d originally planned, because there seems no point in starting something new only a few weeks before he goes to France. He’s also really working hard on his French and has finished the KS3 stuff on that too. Henry will have exams in June (I don’t know if they’ll make Barney sit them or not - seems a bit pointless, but then it’s school, so they might), so I’m really trying to make sure his (Henry’s) maths is as solid as it can be before he goes. I’d really rather slow down and cover things more thoroughly, but we haven’t time, though at least he seems to have finally switched his brain back on and stopped offering answers like “there are nine-and-a-half people who have cats”. George and Freddy continue with their usual stuff and Jack is learning to read, so I spend an awful lot of time saying things like “Yes, bench begins with buh” and “Yes, it’s a wuh and it does look like an upside-down mmm.” And Toby, as noted, is learning a lot about everything. He managed to get Jack’s trainers on over his own slippers this morning and walked about the house veeerryy slooowwwly for a while. He’s cute even while he’s driving me crazy

From Thursday evening (see how fast I am to get this stuff down?):

The boys were tidying their rooms so we could put laundry away; I was in the hall sorting it into separate baskets for individuals.

Me: Jack, are your drawers accessible?
Jack: No.
Me: Why not?
Jack: Because there’s stuff on the floor in front of them.
Me: Well, can you get into any of them?
Jack: No.
Me (thinking the “stuff” can’t be piled that high): Why not?
Jack: Because my head is too big.

Ah. Of course.

He knew exactly what I meant, of course, and was deliberately being clever funny obtuse annoying just like Barney.

Four weeks from today, Henry will return to France, and Barney will go with him.

I wrote the previous sentence at 10.22 this morning, and I’ve spent all day trying to work out what else to say.

I can’t think of anything that really says how I feel.

For a variety of reasons, it’s not been a particularly fun week around here, and I still haven’t found the words to describe how I feel about the main thing that’s been on my mind, so I haven’t felt like writing much. Thanks to those who sent hugs after my last post, particularly Alison, who came back a couple of days later to offer more support (when she wasn’t boasting about being a neglectful mother on usenet and )

Barney has been up and down all week - one minute it’s “I hate French and I’m not learning it!”, the next he’s looking forward to going to France. Jack told him at lunchtime that he didn’t want him to go to France, and at dinner he said, in his you-do-know-I-actually-run-the-place voice, “Well if Barney’s going to France, I’m going with him.” When someone said “Why?”, his response, given in his well-of-course-and-what-a-stupid-question voice, was “He’s my brother!”

Henry was astonished when I told him that he’s got a natural talent for geometry, and I saw this week just how much his confidence in maths has grown, which was very rewarding for me because I have put in a huge amount of effort with his maths, and will admit there have been times when I was ready to tear my hair out over it. I hope his confidence spreads to other subjects when he returns to school. I told him I expected him to come top in his English tests (no pressure though LOL)

At dinner tonight, we were trying to remember how to say “ground beef” in French, and we didn’t get any further than boeuf until George piped up, “boeuf de terre!” Later this evening though, he had the mother of all meltdowns; it’s been building for a while, so I hope that now he’s got it all out, he’ll cope with things better. He’s filled out an exchange application, though we are only doing a one-way exchange for him at this point, due to his need for help with his big feelings (see previous sentence).

Freddy’s mental arithmetic is now impressive, perhaps in part because he has taken to weighing himself before and after going to the toilet because they said in Brainiac that you lose weight when you, er, go

Jack, having seemed slightly calmer recently, is back in I-never-stop-talking mode. I heard Henry mutter, “Jack, stop talking!” from the back of the car today; that dispels any doubts there might have been about him being part of the family then

Toby is, despite my complaints, an absolute delight. He was a bit “off” last weekend - off-form, off-his-food, but not off-my-chest - which I think was because the antibiotics were making him feel that way, but they’re done and his fingers are better (though I think he’s going to lose the two nails) and he’s back to being very lively and inquisitive. He totally knows how to get his own way: yell at the person who’s stopping you until they stop stopping you He’s running about everywhere, and we’re going to have to review our stair-security soon; we have two gates but they aren’t wide enough to be stable on the stairs (and Toby knows it!) so right now there’s an ottoman across the bottom of the stairs and when we’re upstairs we just chase him frantically. He managed to climb onto the ottoman a couple of days ago though, so that’s not going to work for much longer. He’s a very effective human vacuum cleaner; when climbing the stairs, he picks up every little bit of anything and gives it to the person who’s following him. He hasn’t realised yet we mostly just toss it over the rail into the hall, to be sucked up next time the actual vacuum cleaner comes out In the pool today, he got his hands on a small plastic watering-can and spent about 40 minutes investigating how it worked and what he could do with it (no concerns about his attention-span then!) He and Jack are playing together a lot these days.

We’ve not done anything very exciting; it’s been half-term so we’ve been avoiding the hordes The boys have all done lots of work, and I’m hoping we can finish what we need to with Barney and Henry by the end of February, so we can take a couple of weeks off completely before they go. Certainly there’ll be no studying by anyone the week they actually leave; I’ll be in no fit state to support it Henry, Barney and George went to St John Ambulance on Tuesday and to Cubs/Scouts on Wednesday; Freddy went to Badgers with George, as there was no Beavers (lots of boys don’t come when it’s half-term, so we decided to take a week off). We all went swimming this afternoon and then left Barney and George in the pool with the instructor for their lesson while the rest of us ate chips in the cafeteria.

Henry’s mother in France has been into the school to talk to the head of the year about Barney’s arrival. It feels very strange knowing that Barney will be going to school, but even stranger knowing that some other parent is making the arrangements. What I mean is, I always thought that if any of the boys was going to go to school, we’d go together to visit a few possibilities, talk to the staff etc, before making a decision - and this is a very different scenario from that. I am worried about how he’ll manage, but it’s completely beyond my control so all I can do is hope. I wrote an email to Henry’s mother in France saying that I didn’t expect the school to teach him anything, but what I meant was that I don’t hold them in any way responsible for his education. If he goes and absorbs French all day and gets absolutely nothing else educational from attending, that’s fine with me; in fact it would be my preference if the teachers would just take that attitude and let him sit and join in as he can without pushing him at all - I daresay he’d learn just as much, and it would take some of the pressure off him.

The exchange organisation is keen for us to contact the media before the boys go; they’re always looking for English-speaking families and we’re the first family in the province to do an exchange. The guy who runs it all loved the photographs of the boys in their uniform and suggested we give a copy of the second photo in that blog-post to the media. But Barney says if we make a big fuss it will just make it harder for him to leave, so I feel we have to respect that. Perhaps when he comes back (assuming he stays, and assuming it’s a positive experience for him).

Right, busy day tomorrow, so I’m off to bed. Have a good weekend

As mentioned, we had a great day yesterday…at least for as long as we were at the aquarium. The drive home, however, was another matter. An incident on the motorway earlier in the day resulted in the closure of three of the main motorways around the city, and total chaos throughout the city. Stretches of road that would normally take about a minute, even in rush-hour, were taking 35 minutes or more to travel. We stopped to get some food for everyone in the hope that things would ease up, but no such luck. If I hadn’t had to make it back for Beavers, we’d have given up and spent the evening somewhere close - but we had arranged to take the Beavers on a trip to a police station and I was supposed to transporting some of the boys. The police sent a bus for us, but we had more Beavers than there were seats on the bus. After some frustrated phone-calls as I sat in traffic, I got hold of one of the Cub leaders and she agreed to go on the bus so my co-leader at Beavers could drive. I still had to go to the police station though, since I had one of the Beavers (Freddy), and, as it turned out, George and Jack came too. By the time I got to the police station, a journey that should have been less than two hours had taken more than five hours - and I still had an hour in the station followed by another half hour in the car to get home. The Beavers all had a good time at the police station though, and it became the joke du jour to get on the loudspeaker system in the police jeep and shout that I was under arrest - so one of the policemen said, “We’ll be needing these then” and slapped some handcuffs on me Then it got even worse - he took them off again

Woke up this morning feeling completely shattered and with a heavy cold, but struggled through the morning with the help of several cups of tea, then left them all to entertain themselves after lunch while I went back to bed with Toby. Henry had a difficult start to the day - we sat down with his English book and got as far as the first sentence before he rushed from the room sobbing “I need a minute”. I found him crying in the living-room; he said he’d had nightmares last night about going back to France. I already knew he wasn’t keen to going back to school, but he said there were “lots of things” he wasn’t looking forward to, and sobbed, “It’s too good here!” He also said he had a nightmare about something bad happening to the other boys and us. It’s good that he feels such a bond with us, and that he’s enjoyed his time here so much, but I really hadn’t thought until now about how hard it must be for a child to leave a family after spending six months with them. There is so much involved in an exchange; it’s such a learning process for all of us.

Cubs for George and Scouts for Barney and Henry this evening - they’ve only got two more Scout meetings before they fly off to France

What a stinking cold this is! Jack and Henry are sneezing a bit, Toby has a streaming nose, and I’m wearing Eau de Vicks Vaporub so I can breathe.

Things have been pretty quiet since I last blogged; we’ve been working in the mornings and collapsing in a heap in the afternoons. Barney and George were supposed to have a swimming lesson at 3 today, but I phoned the instructor to see if he could take them later, and he’d a 6pm cancellation, so they’re going then instead - that means Scratchy can take them and I don’t have to leave the house. The timing works quite well, really, because Scratchy and Henry will be at basketball from 6.15.

A woman came to the door today to ask if we had a cat; my heart sank because we lost a cat to traffic in 2004, but this time it turned out not to be one of ours (I say “one of ours” because in theory we’ve got two, but one of them hasn’t been back in weeks - we’ve seen her, so we know she’s around, and she’s getting fat, so someone’s feeding her). The one that was found today was lying on grass at the front of our neighbour’s house. I didn’t recognise it, and Barney initially thought he did, but when he went to take a closer look he realised he didn’t. I sent him for another neighbour; she knows all the neighbourhood animals (and feeds most of them) and she’s also a nurse so would be far better able to tell if the animal was still alive or not. It was still warm but definitely dead, and she did know whose it was, so she and Barney put it in a bag and set it under some bushes and we all agreed to watch for the owners arriving home. Barney volunteered to help her with the poor thing’s body; I wouldn’t have wanted to, but he was just fine about it.

I also found out today that one of our neighbours is selling their house; their son plays with George and Freddy quite a bit, so they’ll miss him. They’re nice people, I’ll be sorry to see them go.

Going back to my blanket on the sofa now…

Some days just start good

I had a post in my head (come on, all the rest of you who blog do it too, admit it ) about Jack, who has been, um, challenging, recently. Well, he’s been challenging for while, but recently he’s been, uh, extreme-challenging. Like extreme ironing only less fun

But then, at 9.05 this morning, I looked around me. Barney was sitting at the table working on French (heh, I wonder why?) I’d spent about twenty minutes with Henry, looking back over the old chapters in his maths book and discovering that he could do it with ease, rather than the struggle he often experienced when we looked at it before. Well, Henry was discovering it, I already knew - that’s why we were doing it

Freddy was also at the table - with a grin on his face and saying “This is so easy!” about his science book - actually the last few pages of it, which are KS2 SATS practice. I don’t suppose there are many kids in school who see the words “SATS Practice” and go “Yeah! SATS practice!”

Toby was in the kitchen, roaring with laughter at Jack, who was entertaining him while vacuuming the kitchen floor. Yes, my four-year-old was vacuuming the kitchen floor. I vacuum the kitchen most days, usually after breakfast - the vacuum cleaner lives under a cupboard in the dining-room, already plugged in, so it only takes a couple of minutes and it saves us from walking on crumbs all day. Today, Jack was looking for something to do, so he decided to do it for me, and spent about 25 minutes on it (before I made him put it away again - though in retrospect, maybe I should have just extended his territory LOL) There’s not a crumb to be seen

So, you know, maybe I’ll save that moan for another time

Jack is just waking up. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, just shifted on the bed, stretched, and said “Mmmmm…. BOOM!”