NotSheep

I’m trying very hard to blog regularly during Tim’s early days with us – I know his parents in Germany will be thinking of him a lot, and will want to know how he’s getting on. Of course I could just send them an email, but if I’m going to sit down and write out what we’ve done, I might as well do it here We’ve had a good day all around, I think. George, in stark contrast to yesterday, didn’t even have a wobbly moment much less a full-scale meltdown, and Tim has continued to be cheerful and positive and make lots of effort. As mentioned yesterday (yesterday! – two posts in two days! ) he fell asleep very early last night. I wondered if he’d wake very early too, but his fatigue obviously outdid his body-clock, for he slept until nearly 8 a.m. By that time some of the others were getting up too, so he had plenty of company at breakfast. Barney was up late, having been tired after an OU tutorial last night, and had a CMA to submit as soon as he’d eaten and got dressed. After the morning routine most of the children entertained themselves for a while and I prepared dinner for the slow-cooker (lasagna) with help from Jack. Yesterday just after he got into bed, Tim told me he was “home-ill”, but this morning while I was doing dinner prep, he came and told me, with a smile, “I am not more home-seck.” Good stuff

Once the morning business was done and everyone had found their socks/shoes/coats/library-books/scarves/football/gloves, we headed out the door in the hope that we’d get an hour of dry weather in which Tim’s desire to play football could be fulfilled. Our garden is much too wet and mucky to play out there just now, so we went into town – but by the time we got there, it was raining, so we went to the library instead – I’d planned for us to do that once everyone got cold, but I didn’t expect the temperature to be quite so low quite so quickly. As we say around here, we were foundered.

In the library everyone read, including Tim, who found some children’s books in which he could manage the English, and Louie, who took one look at everyone else and pulled up a chair himself. The boys returned books and borrowed more, then we went to the post office to buy a stamp for a letter that Tim had written. I sent Freddy and Tim into the post office together, and told them to meet us around the corner at McD’s – I was just too cold to survive the five-minute drive home!

We came back home after lunch – the kitchen was full of the smell of lasagna cooking, so it was probably just as well we hadn’t come home for sandwiches – we’d have all felt very tempted to dig into the not-yet-ready dinner! Jack and Tim played Labyrinth for a while, the others having disappeared to various corners of the house with their stacks of books. I got Toby and Louie settled to nap – having kept both of them awake in the car, that didn’t take long. Tim then went upstairs and I sent Freddy to check if he was okay, and he came back reporting that he was writing a letter. I told Freddy to stay upstairs with him to make sure he wasn’t getting sad; he went back and soon afterwards I heard them playing Uno. Later in the afternoon Tim came to me to say, “When I am writing, I am homesick, but when I played, I am not homesick” – that’s a good thing to learn so early in an exchange, I think! I said that I thought it was good not to write too many letters to family and friends at home, because it makes you think too much of home, and you need to think of your new home – Tim replied that he was writing in English, but understood when I explained more, and willingly agreed when I said that I thought maybe one or two letters each week was enough.

After dinner I took Louie for a bath while everyone else got ready for bed (Jack, Toby) or to go out (all the others). Freddy has decided to drop Sea Cadets Juniors for a while and return to Cubs on Wednesday nights – I think this is probably better, as the former isn’t very well-supervised. Freddy is old enough to move up to Scouts now, but I spoke to Akela this afternoon and we agreed that he’d stay in Cubs for another few months so that he and Tim can be among the biggest Cubs rather than the smallest Scouts – some of the Scouts are quite ginormous, and there’ll be more support for a just-getting-used-to-English child in Cubs. While speaking to Akela, I also mentioned that we’d had no luck in arranging a football game and asked if there was any chance of them getting a game tonight during Cubs, and she very kindly obliged Barney and George went into the city for an Outward Bound course they’re doing through GY – it’s one evening a week for the next seven weeks, then there’s a residential weekend in March and possibly a further residential later in the year. They should be home shortly with Scratchy, and I’ll send them straight to bed so they’ve plenty of energy for the science centre tomorrow