Surviving the life...

Well, birthday tea over and done with, and house in one piece, more or less. They are all pretty good kids, but when you get that many of them in the room at once, they do get a little hyper. And it's not like in school, where they expect to have to be calm, so you don't feel like you can just make them sit still the whole time (more's the pity). But I think Sarah had fun and the rest seemed to as well, so that's ok. Looks like we might have to postpone the Chessington trip until next weekend, though, as the weather looks like it's going to be foul.

Glorious weekend

We had some friends around this weekend - Geoff's colleague Heather, who works in the Boston office and his colleague Florian, who works in London. Also, Florian's girlfriend Alice, who I hope had a lovely time despite being somewhat overwhelmed by my kids and us all talking quickly in English (she's German and speaks good English, but it's one thing to talk one-on-one and quite another to keep up with a rapid, far-ranging conversation involving lots of obscure American and English cultural references - Heather and I had a conversation about Jon Hughes films in conjunction with proms, for instance...)

Anyway, the day was glorious, so after lunch and before dessert we decided to go for a walk over the park and past the school to the new development called the Hamptons - they had what appeared to be from a distance a rather good playground, so we thought we'd check it out. Poor Florian ended up carrying one or the other of the girls most of the way - here he is, carrying Sarah - photo taken by Olivia, believe it or not.

And here are the other two kiddies - Olivia posing in her usual manner, after having scraped her knee rather badly (I'll spare Heather the embarrassment of blogging to the world that it was all her fault due to an abortive attempt at swinging Olivia like an aeroplane) - silly Mummy was out without her bag, but the resourceful Alice had a pocket full of plasters in her bag, so all was well in the end. And Alex playing Mr Cool leaning up against the wall outside the school - very sweet! Thanks to Florian for the photos - for once I didn't have my camera with me...

Let the birthday season begin...

Tomorrow kicks of the birthay season in the North household (except for Alex who is in February by his lonesome, we are all within about 7 weeks of one another) - Sarah will be nine. Yes, nine. Hard to believe, I know. Where did those years go? Not much special planned for tomorrow, as it's a school day and Brownies night, but Thursday she's having a bunch of friends over after school for pizza and a movie and on the weekend, I'm taking her and Thalia and Olivia to Chessington World of Adventures for a treat. Hopefully the weather will be as good as it was last weekend...

Look out, Adam Ant...

This is what happens when one of his sisters leaves makeup lying around. Personally, I think it's kind of cute, though I appreciate it won't appeal to everyone. If he's still doing it when he's 10, I may feel differently...

I a schoolboy now

Well, Alex's first week of nursery is gone and he had a fabulous time - really settled in well. He's thrilled to be in big school, and loves doing all the stuff they do in nursery. He's a bit tired some evenings, but that's only to be expected. Once the newness and excitement wears off a little, he'll be less shattered at the end. And of course, there's the added excitement of having extra children in the house in the afternoon 3 days a week - with Gabriella and Katarina, the two little girls I am childminding after school (and before). He loves playing with Katarina, who is only a year and a bit older than he is, and of course Olivia adores having Gabriella here - she's one of her best friends anyway. Now that we're into the routine of it, it's going well - I won't pretend there isn't a little chaos involved, but it's organised chaos, so it suits me fine.

Official First Day of School...

The girls started on Wednesday last week, but we decided to wait until today, Alex's first day of nursery, to take the official first day photo - aren't they cute? And isn't it amazing how close Olivia is to Sarah in height? Alex had a lovely day - settled right in and was very happy. One of the other little boys was a bit clingy and kept saying "I want my mummy" - Alex turned to me (he was playing at the playdough table - surprise, surprise, he went straight for it) and said "I don't want you, Mummy." "OK," I said, "Shall I go?". "OK," he paused and then said "But I WILL want you when you come back." Sounds like a good compromise to me...

Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em...

And today, I'm referring to computers, not husbands. Opened the main email this morning (Outlook Express) to find that everything, including thousands of old, saved messages, that had been in my inbox and the subfolders thereof, had mysteriously vanished. After some exploration and frustration, we eventually decided that what had happened was that the compacted backup files had corrupted, which could happen either if the computer crashed while Express was compacting (maybe) or if the compaction process was cancelled partway through (more likely, we think, although we did have a crash yesterday, but the email was still there afterwards, we are pretty sure). Not to name any names or anything, but some of us are more patient than others of us, so...

Luckily, I managed to find all the old compacted backup files and download a piece of freeware that extracts the messages from them, back into email format. The downside is that you don't seem to be able to then move the messages en-masse back to your email, but only one message at a time - fine if you have 20, not so good if there are years' worth. But at least I know where the stuff is and can get at it, to dig out the stuff I need (photos from friends, usernames and account numbers for online businesses, and so on). I did need to clear out old folders anyway, but this is sort of an extreme way to go about it!

Back to (what passes for) normal

Well, that's the end of the first (half) week of school - they started back on Wednesday, and have had a nice three days, complete with lovely sunny weather. Sarah adores her new teacher (which is great, although I think Sarah probably has a pre-disposition to like teachers anyway) and Olivia seems happy - she knew her new teacher fairly well before, so I don't suppose she feels that "new". I haven't done a "first day of school" photo because Alex doesn't start until Tuesday, so I'll do the three of them together then.

He's excited about "big school" - we went today to an open day in the nursery, and he painted, rode bikes and played with some plastic fish in a water table - so he'll be well in his element!

Windmills in my mind

We went up to Wimbledon Common again today, this time specificially to go to the Windmill Museum, which is only open on weekends. We've never been before, and it's one of those things I always mean to do and never quite get around to. We wanted a small outing with Grandma Lucy today, so this was just right.

Very interesting place, actually, with lots of working models of different kinds of windmills - Alex in particular enjoyed pushing the buttons to make the sails go round on the models. I learned that the earliest recorded windmills in history are from Persia, of all places - 400 or more years before European ones were recorded - very interesting.


Anyway, Sarah got a paper model of the windmill to build, so when we got home, I helped her with that - I think it came out well, and the sails do move, although they aren't that smooth. The entire top assembly of the mill moves around the vertical axis, as well, so you can turn the windmill to catch the wind. You can see for yourself how it compares to the original!

Champion tree...

which is apparently what they call any tree which is the largest recorded specimen of its species. Not sure precisely what species this is - some type of pine - but as you can see from Sarah beside it, it's big.

This was from our visit to Wisley (RHS Gardens) yesterday. They still have a lot of stuff in bloom, despite it being end of summer (my garden always looks a bit done by now). We took Grandma Lucy to see the gardens & ended up doing quite a lot of walking, including seeing part of the garden I'd not been into before (the Pinetum and National Collection of Heathers). More photos in my yahoo album (a few of the kids, but mostly, just flowers).

Bankrupting the tooth fairy

This seems to be the goal of the household this week - poor Olivia has lost two in two days. The first one, which came out last night, was very loose and had got to the hanging-by-a-thread state. Today's tooth, which was a bit loose, but probably had 3-4 weeks left in it, came out a bit early, aided by Sarah's foot. You will understand that of course they had been told dozens of times to "stop romping before someone gets hurt". I suppose if something like that has to happen, it's just as well it was a tooth that was loose in the first place, but still... I rather think the tooth fairy will bring a little extra for this one, more than the standard 50p.

The system works!

Earlier today, Alex comes in from outside while I'm at the sink washing up and says to me "I going by myself".
"Where?"
"On the naughty step."
"Oh, have you done something naughty?"
"I pull the leaves offa flowers."
"You're right, that was naughty. OK, off you go." And darned if he didn't. I went over a few minutes later to accept his apology and hug. Bless him - what a sweetie. Of course, not pulling the leaves off in the first place would be even nicer, but not nearly so cute.

I'm probably a bit mad...

Probably?? I hear you all say in chorus... I say this because I've started another blog - like I can even keep up with this one! The thing is, sometimes I'm not inspired to blog here, because my life's not all that interesting and I try not to bore my readers to tears... The new blog is a quilting blog, so it's entirely related to what I did on any given day in terms of quilting (or sewing or dyeing, fabric painting or I suppose cross-stitch or any other related craft thingy) so it has no obligation to be interesting to anyone but other sad quilters who like to see what their fellow addicts are doing. I thought about just adding all that stuff to my normal blog, but it didn't seem right. You are all of course welcome to read my new quilting blog, but please don't feel obliged - that's why I've separated them!

Tennis, anyone?

A very long time ago, Geoff used to play tennis on these courts with his friend Stewart. Like 20 years ago. Over time, they fell into disrepair, until they were virtually unplayable on (ok, questionable grammar, I know). Recently, the park has resurfaced and painted and put new fences up and now they are really nice courts - they do charge a nominal charge to use them, but frankly, it's worth it. We've taken the kids a few times, but today (which was a lot rainier than in this photo, which was taken yesterday - Geoff knocking the ball around with Sarah, who is getting better) Geoff and I decided to have a game ourselves. We haven't played in about 10 years - since before Sarah was born. Geoff pointed out that we weren't that much worse than we'd been then - unfortunately, that's mainly due to the fact that we were fairly bad then... Both of us ache now, though - all those muscles we don't normally really use. For him, it's his back. For me, it's my right shoulder and arm. My back seems ok - that's probably the yoga... 

Positively 3 1/2

This morning while I am fixing toast, a little but quite strident voice comes from the living room "I wanna drink of milk". "Ok," I reply, and reach into the cupboard to get a Tweenies cup. "NO! says the voice, followed by the stomping of small feet, "I gonna get the cup out myself, I gonna get it - I gonna." "OK," I reply, and hand the Tweenies cup to him, "put this one back and get the one you want." I get the milk out of the fridge and wait for Mr. Boy to choose his own cup. Sounds of Tweenies cup being put back. Sounds of Mr. Boy moving the cups around to decide which one he will deign to use. "THIS one," he says, handing me, you've guessed it, the Tweenies cup. WhatEVer, as the girls would say...

Lessons for the house-husband

1. When you put new, fresh bread in the bread bin, the old stale or moldy bread at the bottom doesn't take itself out of the bread bin and throw itself away because it's embarrassed to be there next to the new fresh bread.

2. The whole "putting things to go upstairs on the edge of the steps" thing only works if you then actually CARRY the things upstairs next time you go. Otherwise, the things that were waiting to go upstairs Wednesday evening when your wife left to go away for 4 days will actually still be sitting on the edge of the steps on Sunday evening, when she returns.

3. There are no "putting away" faeries. And children, when given the choice, will 99 times out of 100 choose not to put their own stuff away - go figure.

Kid free zone...

Or at least, free of my own children... I'm off later this afternoon to Birmingham to attend the Festival of Quilts (big UK quilt show) as a vendor - working on the Nolting Longarm booth with Lana. Coming home Sunday evening, probably. That's about 4 days without my kids. At the moment, I consider this to be a very good thing - I'm on the verge of setting up a UN style exclusion zone between my girls with threats of economic retribution if either fires sallies into said zone... If I thought it would actually work it would be done in a second - problem is, just like in the real world, these things tend to need heavy reinforcements to have any effect.

Home again home again, jiggedy jig

Had a nice trip up to see Grandma Lucy last week - not entirely relaxing, because it's always hard having kids away from home in a house that's not completely geared towards kids, but they were very good and they do love visiting Grandma. Luckily, the weather was very nice so we were able to go out and do lots of stuff. On the way up, we went the slow route, past Oxford up to Coventry. We stopped at the Oxfordshire museum in Woodstock - a small, local museum with a nice sculpture garden, where we ate our picnic. Then we stopped again at the Rollright Stones, which the kids really enjoyed. I like Stonehenge, don't get me wrong, but I think I prefer some of the smaller stone circles, which are dotted all over - there's a really nice feel to them, plonked in the middle of a field, just kind of there. And of course, hardly any tourists, unlike Stonehenge, which gets a bit insane sometimes.

Thursday we mainly stayed at Grandma's, but Friday, she treated us to a local amusement park, Twinlakes Park, which was exactly right for the kids - for older kids, there wouldn't be as much of interest, but it was great this year, and will probably suit them well for two more years before Sarah starts getting bored. I'm sure we'll visit again next year - either Easter or summer.

Saturday we took Grandma and Auntie Mary (Geoff's Aunt - his dad's brother's widow) to lunch, and Sunday we headed back home, again by the meandering route, this time via Wellplace Zoo, where we had our picnic - we had a lovely run down some of the kinds of country roads you only get in England - really great and SO much better than the wretched M1... But it's nice to be home - and much easier on the kids as they have all their stuff to get into and amuse themselves with - and easier on me, as I don't have to keep an eye on them all the time...

One advantage (?) of being at Grandma Lucy's house is there is no internet access, so in the evenings once the kids go to bed, I mainly just read. (Helped by the fact that there is never anything on telly in the summer). We were there for 4 nights; I read three books - ok, none of the was A Suitable Boy (though one was by the same author), but neither were they picture books - I was glad I thought to take 3!

Oh, and of course there are lots of photos in our yahoo album.

2 down, 42 to go...

Well, we have just successfully completed day 2 of the summer holidays without any child killing any other child (or any parent doing so). The girls' task for this summer is to try not to argue with each other for no reason all day long - so far, I've only had to remind them of this about 10 times. Someone should remind me again why I thought it would be nice to have kids close in age... Oh well, it's not quite as bad as a friend of mine who has twin girls a bit younger than Olivia. I can't quite imagine two Olivias in my life.

Vital questions number 12 & 35

Today's vital question: "So Mum, if you were going to name a penguin, what would you name it?". Important enough to interrupt a conversation between mum & dad, apparently. She didn't like my answer ("Alfie"), which I admit, wasn't all that inspired.