Today was a fun day. I took Charlotte to the playgroup at the church in the village. It is a place where mums socialise whilst the babies and toddlers have a little play with lots of toys, puzzles etc and we gather to do a nursery rhyme/singing time thang. Charlotte liked to ride a plastic tricycle today and burst into tears when another child hot rodded away with it while she was sat down eating her buiscuit. She seemed very tired and dramatic which I want to attribute to either her stage of development or her lingering cold and not to my new late night blog reading habit that prohibits me devoting my attentions to her all evening. She has different things she prefers at each of the two play groups we go to: to the one at the village church she likes the toys you can ride the most right now and getting to eat cookies after the singing. For the other one we go to in the hall at FC (another village 2miles away) she goes for the play dough every time and again the passing tin of buiscuits after singing time. Sometimes I come home from taking the younger two children to school and get busy with "stuff" and try and talk up a tv show to her instead of taking her to playgroup. Am I a bad mother...well today I felt like an ideal mum because I came home and did what I wanted to do....getting the laundry rotated and writing letters to the school about absences during our GREAT ILLNESS and I was also able to take her to play for an hour and touch base with a couple of friends at the playgroup. It was win win, but many times I tell myself " she just wants cookies and just make her some play dough already so you don't have to feel obligated!". If I am honest though I need to get out of my house and talk to other women...it always lifts my spirits and I don't regret spending the time once I get out my door.
I volunteer in B's Y3 class on Monday afternoons and usually just listen to individual students reading their new books for a few pages. It is so cute I wish I could film them for you. I love the accents and they vary greatly even here in one school class. B is always beaming because I am present and that is why I do it mainly, because I have the time right now to do so. I also started to do random days in S's Y1 class and will be helping tomorrow afternoon to finish up their Christmas play attire. Don't know what it is yet but know the sewing has been done, so I think gluing fabric or something. It should be fun:)
After school we all meet up at the homestead and I was too tired to protest the tv being on so watched an actual game show that has math and word construction so let's say it was edutainment and then reminded eldest daughter that today was her first cello lesson~hurray!
We went and I sat in the kitchen as advised by the teacher as she said they had been out all day and hadn't heated the other rooms of the house. Her husband came home from an art class into the kitchen and we had a lovely chat about art, living in Germany, and music teachers. He showed me his charcoal sketch pad with very naked ladies posing and instead of laughing and showing how immodest I thought they looked I instead acted very non shocked and like I see someone's drawings of naked people every day. I did have to remark that the models must feel very confident to stand around without any clothes on whilst people stared at them for an hour. I think he said it was a challenging job or something. I then said "Yes you would need to have a lot on your mind " (as the naked person doing nothing but holding your body in a position for an hour, your naked body). Does that make any sense at all? After that we looked around and he said all of the art in the kitchen was his work, a lot of watercolours, then he invited me to go upstairs and showed me his studio with some of his present projects of acrylic paintings. Lovely big house, a bit uncomfortable but I am trying to trust people and to remember most people are good. The doorbell rang and the lesson was over as the next one had arrived. Good timing to end my upstairs tour. I collected Ainsley, her teacher seemed very enthusiastic saying she was able to read the music well today already. She plucked several songs then bowed them and I could hear her playing with her teacher when I was talking in the kitchen. Ainsley and I were buzzing with excitement at the fabulous opportunity it is for her to play cello. She said it feels very natural and she can picture herself playing it. I said "wonderful as you will be playing it for many years" hopefully!
We then came home and she got the cello into the living room and showed everyone her new instrument, she didn't ask if they were interested but they seemed keen once she unveiled it from the case. The next hour was noisy while I made bean salad salsa and quesadillas for dinner. I could hear Ainsley madly bowing every string over and over again, and Sage had got her violin out and after playing a few notes together decided her violin was slightly out of tune so she spent the next 55 minutes of the hour pounding or singing the same note on the piano while she tried to tune her violin. She kept calling me to go help her. It was a good time to say no thank you I am making dinner. Then S and B started with their recent habit of I'm going to hurt you if you compete with me and so you get the picture of me trying to prepare dinner amongst this...one must be patient if one's children will feel free to discover their talents...I did fairly well until Charlotte started saying her "I want my chocolate" mantra and pointing up to her advent calendar as she has been doing for small parts of each day since December 1st. That is the point I asked where DAD was. HA HA. Of course he was upstairs snoozing with a book and I chuckled to myself as the sounds would surely wake him soon and he would come and at least be the ref for B and S. He did show up once I said dinner was pretty much ready and we all sat and ate a fairly healthy meal. Funny what woke him was a child shaking his arm saying his food was ready, not the family noise downstairs. Talk about inequality! My ears are definitely not equal to my husbands.
S had the lesson for FHE which Ainsley asked him to improve upon by having a treasure hunt just as he was gathering everyone to start. Being the open to suggestion parent he is, he made one while I found a cream cheese brownie recipe online and prepared it. Once it was in the oven I stayed in the kitchen enjoying the very quietness of it just being me licking the spoon not realizing FHE was nearly over. I went in at just the right time to play Joy to the World on the piano. Great timing. I can't remember missing FHEever but I could hear them reading scriptures interspersed with my daydreaming and contributed by playing the song and saying family prayer. I'm happy with that. We enjoyed eating the brownies with ice cold milk and that was the gist of my day.
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