NotSheep

And there goes another week.

I seem to start every other blog-post with those words these days. It feels very much like I’m juggling, with far too many balls in the air, and that I’m looking up and waiting for them all to start falling. Louie’s still a velcro-baby, which complicates doing many of the things I need to do. He also doesn’t like to sleep – the only way I can get him to have a decent nap during the day is to go to bed with him, which would be just fine if it weren’t for the little matter of having five other children to parent and a house to manage. Anyway, as I’m currently glued to the bed with him, and typing around his sleeping form is something I can do, I’m blogging. Let’s see how much I can remember.

George said he was too tired for ju-jitsu (again) on Monday last week, so he didn’t go, and it’s so long ago that I can’t even remember if Freddy went or not. Neither of them went last night anyway. Jack did go to Beavers, Barney went to Air Cadets but skipped SJA Cadets the following night. I think the relevant people all went to Cubs and Scouts on Wednesday, and I know Barney went to the youth group on Saturday.

Jack cut his finger on the living-room door. I’ve no idea how he did it – his version of it seems to go along the lines of “the door leapt off its hinges and chased me down the hall before attempting to stab me”, but I suspect that might be a little melodramatic. Anyway, it wasn’t a very bad cut, but it did get the nail-bed and there was a fair bit of blood. I was holding his finger quite firmly to stem the bleeding before patching it up when he said he felt funny and turned grey. I quickly got him lying down and started explaining to him what happens when you feel faint, mainly as a way to distract him from his rising panic. I managed to fashion a bandage for his finger (aren’t finger-tips just the most annoying thing to have to cover?) and left him lying on the sofa for as long as he’d tolerate it.

Toby has been most entertaining. He started singing along to Abba in the car: “Money money money, funny in a rich man’s world” Later the same day he was running around the house shouting, “You wanna piece of me?” – I know that comes from a movie, but I don’t even know which one, so how is it that my three-year-old is quoting it? And on the morning of my birthday (Friday), he ran into my bedroom with his little guitar and gave me a fast rendition of Happy Birthday To You, looking just like an under-sized busker. Also for my birthday, we had a family day out – we went bowling (which would have been cheaper if the Tesco deal vouchers had arrived on time) – and there are photos from that, but I’ll have to find the camera before I can post any of them. Toby beat the rest of the family, which I think is quite impressive for a three-year-old, and then we had a late lunch/early dinner at a pizza place. I’d said I’d like a family movie night, but Jack had a previous engagement (a movie night with Beavers) so we moved our own to Saturday night, and rented Ratatouille.

It’s been all-change in some of the bedrooms; most of the weekend was spent moving George and Freddy’s stuff into the larger front bedroom, as they now have a set of bunks and also a high-sleeper in their room (plus a sofa-bed under the high-sleeper – no lack of beds here), and Jack and Toby’s bed (a double/single bunk) was moved into the back bedroom, which is slightly smaller (although still a generously-sized room – it’s got their beds, clothes, shelves for toys and a large Little Tikes house in it now!) I hope it will be easier to keep it in a reasonable state now that I’ve packed up a huge box for the charity shop, another large box for garbage, and another box of bits of games and puzzles which really need to be kept downstairs and used under supervision. There’s a wardrobe in there at the minute which I’ve put on freecycle, because the only things that ever got hung in it were the ju-jitsu gis and the Cubs uniforms – those are now hanging on the rail at the end of the high-sleeper, because it seemed ridiculous to use up an entire wardrobe’s worth of space for four hangers. I also removed a shelving unit, which is going into the garage, where I’m hoping to create a sort-of pantry space. And I freecycled two single mattresses which had been collecting dust on the floor under the bunk-beds. In fact it’s been freecycle city – I’ve also given away my old slow-cooker (the one that only cooks on one setting), and acquired a chair of Ikea-Poang style, which is going to go under the bed which is soon to be Barney’s. Currently it’s sitting in the conservatory, but I hope to get it into Barney’s room this weekend. It’s another high-sleeper, which will leave his room a bit like a cave, but will give him a lot more floor-space as well as room for a chair and a desk. I haven’t quite finished in the other bedrooms yet though, so it might take another week to get to Barney’s. And once we’ve done that, there’ll be a mid-sleeper cabin bed to freecycle too.

Having cleared out the bedrooms and found lots of laundry in the process, it’s just as well I’ve got a functioning tumble-dryer again – a repair-man came and fixed it yesterday. I used to have a very small, very basic tumble-dryer, and when someone on freecycle offered a full-sized one in exchange for a smaller one, I replied. We were both happy with the trade, although she mentioned that they’d had some problems with the big dryer blowing fuses when it was plugged into the socket in their shed, and every time we used it with the heat on, it tripped the circuit-breaker. We tried to figure out why but had no luck, so we called in the expert. He arrived yesterday and took the back off it and found the source of the problem: the wire from a bra had got stuck in it and was shorting it out. Definitely not mine though (have no underwire bras, don’t tumble-dry the bras I do have, and am not that, um, fortunate up top).

And finally (she said, sounding like a very tired newsreader), Barney got some more marks for MU120: on his first CMA he got 100%, and on the first half of his first TMA (the second half isn’t due until later this month) he managed 39/40 (losing half a mark for not titling a graph, and half a mark for explaining how he did something the long way instead of the more efficient way). Good stuff