NotSheep

Another week is half-gone – not so many outings this week, but that doesn’t mean it’s been quiet (hah! with six boys here? fat chance!) or even less busy. We’ve been doing lots of skool to make up for doing almost nothing on that front last week, but there’s been plenty going on besides that too.

Barney in particular has been busy. On Sunday, he went with off with the youth-club on a raft…er, I mean a Dragon Boat. Dragon Boat Racing, to be precise. They didn’t win anything, but they did get wet and have a lot of fun. On Monday he had Air Cadets, and on Tuesday St John Ambulance Cadets – and arrived home with three new certificates, one of them in Child Development, which did make me laugh. We’ve been talking about his plans for the future, which, assuming everyone co-operates, currently involve the OUs’ 2+2 scheme, which means doing the “first year” of a degree course part-time through the OU, then going straight into the second year of the course with one of the OU’s partners. I spoke to the OU advisor this morning and she doesn’t foresee any problems with it, but we still need to speak to one of the partner universities. We’d planned to discuss it all some more over the weekend and then contact them next week – they do the admissions bit, rather than the OU – and as there’s no youth-club this Saturday, we thought we’d have time to sit down and talk it all through. But those plans – and my delusions that I was somewhat organised – were blown away by a text-message I received late this afternoon, asking if Barney was still okay for camp on Friday…uh…what was that again? Oh yes…he’s got his first camp with Explorers this weekend. I think it counts towards his bronze Duke of Edinburgh award, but I’m having trouble keeping up…he has somehow managed to be part of a Scout group and, simultaneously, part of an entirely separate Explorer Scout group which is based two hours away. This sounds completely daft at first glance, but in fact it does make sense when you know all the details – but I won’t bore anyone by going into it all here.

George has returned to Sea Cadets this evening and had an “excellent” evening; Freddy is keen to return as well but has agreed to finish off the “term” at Cubs first – they’ll break for the summer in another two or three weeks, but Sea Cadets will continue through the summer. We’ll have to review the calendar when September rolls around – it wouldn’t solve all the conflicts, but it would certainly make things easier if the legal age for driving was suddenly dropped to, oh, let’s say fourteen-and-a-half…

Jack has been out every dry day (and some wet days) playing with friends who live on our street. Only a few short weeks ago, he stood at the end of our drive in tears and refused to go call for his friend J, because J lives down at the corner and “there are girls there!” A few weeks later, we had girls calling at the door for him almost every day, and this week he surprised me by asking if he could “go and call for A” – he calls for J regularly, but A is a girl! (She’s very, um, strong-minded too – I think Jack might have finally met his match! ) He’s also made friends with E, another girl, who is a couple of years older than him and moved in across the street just a few weeks ago, and who has spent most afternoons in the past couple of weeks in our back garden. Jack’s requests to “go and see if so-and-so is coming out to play?” start at about 11 o’clock most mornings, and he looks at me with deep scepticism when I tell him that the child he wants to call for will be at school.

Toby has been singing – he loves to sing, and has several favourites. One of them is Bowie’s “Starman”, which usually gets belted out at top volume – and yesterday he started out with that, then segued into “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Another favourite is something he calls “My boy didn’t come back”, and I have no idea what that is or where he got it from. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! I showed him the video for The JCB Song on Youtube earlier this week; I suspect that might become another favourite.

Louie continues to become more and more interested in the world. He still has no intention of moving under his own steam – he’d much rather get other people to carry him around – and he still has no teeth. His eczema has been improving, though – his scalp is completely clear, and his face, while still a bit red in patches, is no longer dry or weeping. There are still a few very small patches on his back, but the worst bit of it now is his forearms. Still, that’s much easier to cope with than having it all over his face and head, and he seems to feel the same way, because he’s doing lots of grinning and chatting, and playing games with the rest of us – lovely to see

And just a brief final note that twelve years ago today, I had a due-date. Little did I know that George would keep me waiting for another 18 days!