NotSheep

Nothing to report here. Move along.

Well actually no, don’t move along. Not until after you’ve seen just how cool this two-year-old can be:

And this is George and Freddy doing history this morning - they’re learning about medieval castles. This is not a particularly surprising pose for the two of them; I often find them sharing the same space.

Not much else happening here. I got a Little Tykes house from Freecycle yesterday - we have one in Jack and Toby’s bedroom, but someone was giving away a couple that had been outside and I thought they’d have fun with one in the garden. So while everyone else charged about the street on bicycles, I went to collect that and we pressure-washered the algae off it. Toby likes playing outside; at one point yesterday, I heard the front door open and called, “Hello?” No reply. “Who’s there?” No reply. “Toby, is that you?” Toby, obviously figuring he’d been caught in the act of escaping, said “No!”

I’m trying to think of what has happened in the past week, as this blog has been populated almost entirely by twitter updates (I usually have them set so they’re not visible on the front page, but since I’ve been away from the internet so much recently, I changed it on a temporary basis), but for some reason I’m having trouble remembering anything that happened prior to Friday night. Odd, that…

Okay, so let’s resort to the tweets again to aid my failing memory. Monday was spent catching up on things which needed done - like phone-calls to the mortgage people (I can’t believe we’ve been here three years already) and organising mobile phone contract cashback documents. George started to sew on Freddy’s new ju-jitsu badge - why the heck do they need to be so gigantic? They really are unreasonably huge. George wimped out part-way around it and someone else finished - I’m assuming Scratchy, since Barney doesn’t sew unless sat on, and my hands were much too numb to be poking needles through ju-jitsu gis with them. We had Toby’s last speech therapy appointment for a while - the therapist is now off on maternity leave, and in traditional NHS fashion, no replacement has been arranged. She’s pleased with Toby’s progress, however, so he’s down for review in August or September when she returns - although how long it will take her to catch up is anyone’s guess.

In the evening Barney went to Air Cadets and came home with a camp permission form with no dates. I’m told it’s sometime in the summer. Freddy went to ju-jitsu, did his grading, and came home with a brand new shiny green belt - although he did hide it and try to fake me out that he hadn’t qualified, but just as I was about to commiserate and say he’d do better next time, his serious look fell apart

Tuesday - ah, now that I read my tweets for last Tuesday, it all comes flooding back in glorious detail. I’d a slow start, with my body not particularly keen to cooperate with my head’s intentions, but we did manage to pack for the caravan and make it out of the house around lunchtime, when Scratchy brought the car back from work. I left him back, then went to the library to return books, but found the library closed until 2 p.m. - since it was only about noon, I wasn’t waiting. Then I went to the bank, only to discover that the most convenient branch had closed - or, as they euphemistically put it, “transferred”. But I don’t think it counts as a “transfer” when the branch it has transferred to already existed, and I had no intention of fighting the horrendous parking situation around that branch. My next errand involved dropping off a letter which had been delivered to me instead of to the person who needs to deal with it, except that I couldn’t remember her address and couldn’t get hold of her on her mobile. Thwarted again. I stopped to buy fuel for the car, and carefully made my way in beside the pump on a small, busy forecourt - bear in mind that I had four bicycles attached to the back of my car by way of a carrier designed for three - got out of the car to find a sticker over the pump saying it was out of order.

Briefly considered going home and back to bed, but decided to press on. I’d hoped to arrive at the caravan in time for a late lunch, but having wasted so much time on unsuccessful errands, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to buy lunch on the way. That, however, required cash - of which I had none (having not been to the bank yet…) so I needed both a cash machine and a food outlet. I found the cash machine and asked George to do something, only for him to say in a rather pathetic voice, “I can’t, I’ve thrown up all over myself.” This led to an exchange on twitter between me and several other parents who were somewhat incredulous that he had not said anything and that I had not noticed. As I pointed out, he was two rows behind me and the only person beside him was Freddy, who was immersed in DS-play so might well have missed the entire episode.

I got George stripped and cleaned up as much as possible by the side of the road, found a clean tee-shirt in his bag and got him back in the car wearing that and nothing else. He was adamant that he was hungry, but it was clear that lunch was going to be a drive-through experience - fast food restaurants might not be very formal, but they’re a little more formal than tee-shirts with naked boy-bits hanging out below them. So drive-through it was.

We made it to the big town near the caravan without further incident and I stopped to buy food supplies for the next few days - and also bought new tee-shirts for me, as none of my old ones cover my bump. I asked where the men’s tee-shirts were and a staff member took me there and tried to help - asking what colour I preferred etc, but frankly the only thing I was bothered about was that they were the largest size available. I spent £8 on four tees - living it up, as usual and then we drove the few miles to the caravan, where I put George in the shower (once I remembered how to turn on the water) and told him to get clean underwear and socks from his bag. “I can’t, I didn’t pack any.”

Deep breath. Several hours earlier, I had stood on the landing, looked George in the eye and said, “Do you have clean underpants and socks in your bag?” - and I’d asked at least three times, because, you see, I know George. And each time, George had replied in a very definite and here-I-am-being-sensible-for-once voice, “Yes.”

So there was George, sockless and commando for the next few days - and wearing the same denim dungarees for the next few days too, as he’d only packed one extra pair of trousers. About five sweaters, but only one pair of trousers…

Why do I do it? Well, here’s a view from the road approaching the village where the caravan lives. See that gorgeous blue sky? See that thin dark blue stripe at the bottom of it? That’s the ocean.

And here’s a view of part of the beach - the busy end. Admit it, you can see the attraction.

The boys spent the rest of the day scooting about the site on their bicycles, playing in the playground, etc - all of which left them very ready to go to sleep when bedtime arrived (and I can’t say I wasn’t grateful!) Mostly. Barney took Toby to my bed to cuddle him to sleep, as he often does in the caravan. Ten minutes later, Toby came trotting back to me at the other end of the van. Investigation showed that Barney was fast asleep. Toby, however, kept bouncing about for another hour…

They didn’t even wake up early on Wednesday morning - it was about 8.30 before anyone started to emerge. It didn’t take Barney long, however, to start being annoyingly pedantic (I can’t think where he gets that from…) so I thought of something we needed from the shop in the village and sent him to get it. I offered him the choice of cycling on his own, or walking with Toby - he chose the latter and the two of them had a lovely outing together. Meanwhile I fixed the sweater I was knitting for the baby (the sleeves weren’t wide enough when it was made according to the pattern), and added a hat to match:

We went down to the beach in the afternoon, well wrapped up in coats and hats, but it was a tad windy down there so we didn’t stay long. Back at the van we had hot chocolate to warm up. The difference in wind-strength between the beach and the van was quite amazing, given what a very short distance it is and that there’s really only one row of buildings between them!

On Thursday morning the making of my breakfast (by Barney) was rudely interrupted when the gas ran out - I tried to move the thingy to a different cylinder, but wasn’t sure it was properly connected (it can be quite difficult to connect at the best of times, and having hands that couldn’t feel much of anything wasn’t helping) or if the second cylinder was also empty. Having checked the forecast before leaving the internet home, I knew that this was to be the dullest part of the week, with the possibility of showers, so had planned to go into the big town. I finally found a bank to go to, and we topped up our supplies (bread and milk - and smoothies, to make up for the fact that I really don’t do fruit) and went to the library, where the boys had a great time exploring a new-to-them library, and borrowed every Doctor Who book they could find, as well as a fair few others.

Back to the caravan for lunch, followed by hunting around the caravan park for the bloke who maintains it - he’s a very pleasant, helpful man (and, according to Barney, looks like Bruce Willis) and when I explained the problem he came straight over to check. Both cylinders were indeed empty, and he put one of them in his white van and went to get me a new one, then attached the new one for me.

At about 4.30, I was feeling a bit shaky, so I asked Barney to watch Toby and went to lie down for a little while. I woke an hour later. This unplanned nap led to a bit of a burst of energy after dinner, and after hearing the weather forecast for the next 24 hours (cold overnight, windy with showers for Friday), I decided to drive home on Thursday night rather than wait until Friday (and have to pack and load the car, including bicycles, with even-number-than-usual-because-it’s-early-in-the-day hands). Barney helped me clear the caravan out, and when the others returned on their bikes, they all helped get everything into the car and get the bikes on the back - I was very impressed that within 45 minutes of the decision being made, we were driving away. Most of the children fell asleep on the way home, although not until after Jack had thoroughly discussed infinity with anyone who’d listen to him - except that he kept calling it “insanity”.

Friday was largely uneventful until 8.33 p.m. when I had what at first appeared to be the world’s strongest Braxton-Hicks contraction but which rapidly turned into sweating, fainting and feeling at least as bad as I did a few years ago when I had septicemia. That whole story is already on the blog, a few posts down from this one (or one post down, if I’ve altered the twitter-feed settings again), so enough said. I spent the weekend taking it easy, peeing on sticks and encouraging Barney in his efforts to polish his presentation for his French GCSE aural. I finished my fingerless gloves, and having been nagged throughout their production by Toby - “Dees too big for me! You make me gloves now?” - I also made him a pair of mittens, shaped like little mice - except that I haven’t a scrap of pink yarn in the house with which to make the knots for the noses, so they’re not quite finished. On Sunday morning I was playing a Mika CD in the living-room when Jack came in looking angry and said, “Can you turn that off, because it’s annoying me!” Erm…hang on, isn’t it supposed to be the parents who say that to the kids?

Early in the evening my neighbour K (the one who was so helpful on Friday night) came in to see how I was; about ten minutes after she arrived, George came into the room to tell me Freddy had swallowed a magnetic rod. He’s supposedly the sensible one… in accordance with advice from the children’s hospital, we’re still waiting for it to re-appear…

Today, I’ve been very tired. I can’t think why…

…that’s what happens when you spend most of the week in an internet-less place. When we’re away at the caravan, twitter is my only contact with the outside world

So in the last week - well, last weekend was not fun, as I’ve said before. Once Jack’s breathing eased, he was more his usual self - posing when a camera was pointed his way, for example:

On Sunday we brought Jack home from the hospital and spent the rest of the day lying around and playing. On Monday morning, Toby had speech therapy, and rather than spend the afternoon at home and falling asleep (and consequently being unable to sleep on Monday night), we went to visit friends, one of whom is one of Jack’s best friends. He spent the afternoon running about like a mad thing, showing absolutely no sign that he’d been hospitalised less than 48 hours earlier. So we felt it was safe to head back to the caravan on Tuesday - making sure to pack Jack’s inhaler and spacer, but fortunately he hasn’t needed them.

I spent the next few days watching children in the playground, or as they cycled around the site. A couple of weeks ago when I was twittering about the wild wind and rain, Merry wondered why we were there - well, here’s part of the answer:

Barney sleeps in the living-room in the caravan - it’s not a very big caravan and he has far more room there than anywhere else - so rather than have him stay up late and be grumpy next day, I often get him to go to bed with Toby in my bed, then I wake him to move him when I’m going to bed. Neither Toby nor Barney seems to mind at all:

And then, when I get up in the morning, this is what I find:

When the weather is bad, you stay inside and play games and knit. Hats, among other things:

And if you’ve any sense, you don’t teach your 13-year-old to knit, because he’ll get addicted and want to stay up late doing it, and nothing will ever get done until he’s finished his row…

Like Jack, Toby also often poses when a camera is aimed his way - but in his case, his intention is often to be cheeky and wind me up. But I can sometimes still manage to get a good photo when he’s busy laughing at himself for the previous one:

We drove home on Friday, taking the coast road, which is longer than the inland route, but much prettier. We had all kinds of weather during the drive, but when it was sunny and bright, we stopped to buy lunch at a chip van and ate it by the sea:

A week since I last blogged. You know what that means, of course: missing chunks - though on this occasion there wasn’t much to remember, and much of what I do remember I’d rather forget, so we’ll just gloss over those bits…

I know we went to the Transport Museum on Friday. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to go - I’d much rather have lazed about the house - but it was the last day of our membership, and since I don’t really expect to be feeling like traipsing around large outdoor museums (the Folk Museum bit) or large indoor museums (the Transport Museum bit) for the next while, I’m going to wait a few months before renewing it. I posted about us going on the local home-ed list at the last minute, having thought about doing so for a couple of days but not actually having made it around to it, so it wasn’t very surprising that there wasn’t a huge crowd. One other family did come though, and it was nice to see them. I took my little camera and let Barney run amok with it, which led to some, er, interesting pics. (I also realised, when uploading these, just how much better photos from my big camera are, so I think I might be handing the small one off to Barney more often in future.)

Toby was fascinated by the model horses attached to the carriages and some of the trams etc - “Mum! Look! Animals!” - as usual - although he was initially a bit wary of standing next to them to have his photo taken. I tried to explain that they weren’t real, that they were like big toys, but in the end I had to agree with his assertion that “Hoss dead!” - well, it wasn’t moving…

After the museum, we went off in search of lunch - initially intending to eat at the Ikea café (nearby and cheap) but I decided that I’d rather do a drive-through to save the energy it would take to get out of the car. (Yes, I do know how pathetic that sounds.) It took ages to find a bank machine and then a drive-through, but it was worth it when, after passing fast-food back to everyone behind me, I was thanked in four different languages (English, French, Japanese and German)!

When we got home I decided to do my fourth B12 injection (still not looking as it pierces the skin!) but I’d have been better to sit down with a cup of tea first, as all the energy expended throughout the day had taken its toll, and immediately after the injection, I felt faint. I lay down on the dining-room floor for a minute, having learned from experience that when feeling that way, it’s better to place myself on the floor than to find myself on the floor. Barney brought me a glass of water and once I was sure I wouldn’t pass out, I disposed of the needles etc and went and fell asleep on the sofa.

On Saturday, I got up and decided to go and buy paint. We’ve been in this house for nearly three years(!) and I’ve never liked the colour of the hall, stairs and landing - it’s a sort of orangey-rust, which I wouldn’t like even if it wasn’t too dark for that area, which it is. Not to mention that with five children and two dogs in the house, it wasn’t exactly clean… I still haven’t decided on a colour, but figured that a first coat of white would help cover up both the dark paint and the dirt, as well as being cheap, so that’s what I bought. I thought maybe I’d get the hall done on Saturday, then tackle the stairs and landing next weekend…but I reckoned without The Team. No sooner had I started than I had a queue of children beside me asking to help - so I phoned Scratchy (who was out doing errands) and told him to bring back more small rollers. I did big-roller bits up as far as I could reach, and various children came behind me filling in the bits around the edges (lots of edges: door-frames, stairway, chair-rail…)

Since we were getting on so well, I kept going - and despite taking a break for an hour or so when a friend came by in the afternoon, we managed to finish everything except the top bit of the wall by the stairs - which I thought best done when there were no small children around, as it required a step-ladder on the stairs themselves…

So now the hall is white(ish) and I need to get on with choosing a final colour. I’m thinking along the taupe spectrum, but things could still change.

I have a cough and a sore throat. I’m achy, feverish, nauseous, whiny and completely uninspired to write anything interesting. So instead of moaning, I thought I’d show you the postcards we’ve received from Postcrossing so far.

Hello! Here is a little bit of Germany, Cologne for you! The city is very beautiful and always offers a pleasant atmosphere for foreign people. Take care and happy postcrossing. Ana Claudia.

Hello and greetings from rainy Finland. My name is Sari and I live in Mäntsälä, which is a county in the southern Finland. I work at the health central as a food service superior. Best wishes and happy postcrossing. Yours, Sari.

Hello! Greetings from Australia. Canberra has a population of around 300,000 people. It is currently Spring. During Spring, there is a festival called ‘Floriade’ where 1000s of flowers are planted in amazing patterns. From Claire.










I just heard Jack (5) asking George (10) to play chess with him, saying, “I’ll go easy on you.”

Barney and Scratchy are home; both look tired but it seems both had a good time. Apparently Barney’s willingness and determination during the Saturday afternoon hike impressed the Leaders, and although he ate too many sweets and then threw up during the night, he at least managed to get his head out of the tent and over the grass before doing so. The highlight of his weekend seems to have been the abseiling:

Scratchy appears to have been a useful extra adult, much more use now that his warrant application is in since he can actually lead rather than just assisting (in theory, anyway). The other two Leaders left him to it during the abseiling - there were centre staff around, just no other adults from our group.

I spent the day doing yet more cleaning and sorting until they got back. Barney arrived home in good form, tolerated me asking him to try on a few items of clothing so I could put them away in either his room or elsewhere (depending if they fit him), looked upset when called for dinner and said he wasn’t hungry, then decided to eat after all and polished off loads. He cheered up during the meal, then went all quiet and unhappy-looking again when he went upstairs afterwards. I’m not sure what’s going on there; he says nothing happened during the camp, so maybe he’s just very, very tired.

Update: whether it was the cause of his moodiness or not, he was very, very, tired. He’s fast asleep already.

It was a bit rainy this morning, so we stayed in the caravan for more time than usual. It’s not a very big caravan, but that doesn’t usually matter, since we’re in and out so much and spend so much time at the beach or playground or just generally around the site. When we do stay in on a day like today though, we do start to feel a bit on top of each other. The boys did some educational stuff we’d brought up - some maths and German for Barney, some French for Freddy and George. They also watched some television for a bit, then when the weather dried up a bit we went to the beach with the dogs. We saw what we thought were jellyfish - dozens of them, all over the beach, presumably because the tide had just gone out; normally I’d have googled to find out if they really were jellyfish, but since there’s no internet access at the caravan, that wasn’t an option. Later googling confirmed our analysis

When I say no internet access, I really mean it. To get on-line, I’d have to drive about 10 miles into the nearest big town and go to the library - which has lots of sites blocked, including my webmail There isn’t even a wireless network in town that I can steal a few megs of bandwidth from (I’ve tried! LOL)

The afternoon was spent around the site, on bikes or in the playground. At one point when we were inside, Barney looked at the glued-together jigsaw which is on the wall above the table - it’s the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album - and asked, “Which one of them is Elton John?”

Since the dogs are able to leap over the fence around the deck, I hooked their leads around the slats to keep them contained. That worked until Andie chewed through her lead - well, I assume she did, since the lead was in fine condition this morning and when I found it on the deck it was in two pieces. So that’s one lead and one collar she’s destroyed this week. Fortunately we have both a lead-doubler (which lets me walk both dogs on one lead) and the retractable leads with us.

When we were tidying up before bed and I was changing Toby, I left the pups on the deck gnawing on bones, the caravan door open so I could hear them. Until I realised I couldn’t hear them anymore. I then spent 45 minutes running around the site looking for them, with several other people from the site helping, including three teenaged boys on bicycles, who’d offered to help after I’d asked if they’d seen them. Another dog-owner from the site went out into the town and down to the beach in case they’d gone that way - I didn’t really think they’d have left the site but it was a possibility. I was just starting to get really worried when Barney rang me to tell me that they had arrived back at the caravan on their own.

I went back to the caravan and got everyone settled down and had a shower. I was just nursing Toby to sleep when there was a knock at the door - the site owner. I was ready for him to complain about the dogs running wild, but in fact he wasn’t worried about that at all. He’d found two teenage boys around the site and they’d claimed to be helping someone look for their dogs; he didn’t believe them, so they brought him to me so I could confirm their story. I was glad to do so, as they’d been doing a great job of searching for the dogs, even if they didn’t actually find them in the end. They weren’t pleased about being accused, but I could see both sides; the site owner was only trying to do his job.

Wasn’t this supposed to be the quiet life?

So this is 2007. *Looks around* Hm.

We spent most of yesterday at the home of friends and had a great time with them, as we always do. Having failed to bake cranberry muffins (one of our Christmas-time favourites) until now, we took the opportunity to make some to take with us.

We headed home at about 8 pm; some of the boys made noises about wanting to stay up until midnight, so we said that if they were still awake at midnight, they could come and celebrate the New Year with us. George almost made it, lasting until about 11.50 before he gave up and climbed into bed (I hadn’t the heart to tell him how close it was!) - but there was no hope for any of the rest of them. They were still all wiped today though, and bedtime came very early indeed

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