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