Yesterday I decided, somewhat foolishly, to reorganise the playroom. I've let things slip a little bit lately and do not think I'm worth the 'Outstanding' grade I was given at inspection so time to pull my socks up and sort my 'enabling environments' out a little! I have two major problems: lack of space and lack of storage! Yesterday I tried twice to put an order in for some storage units but the website I use seems to have gone mad as the order won't go through.. As for space, well I can't make more of that so just have to use it more wisely...
Another reason for wanting to sort out the playroom is because this little devil will be arriving on Tuesday!
I'm hoping he will be the answer to some of my prayers but will leave you to work out what it is, for now... ;o)
Home ed: Half term next week for the school children, which of course means I will have more children to mind during the day so we have chosen to have the week off but get back to it with gusto afterwards. It's hard to take in that Jack would be doing GCSEs next year if he was at school and I'm getting kind of worried about what we should be doing now. There could be a possibility that I could get him into a very good local(ish) school for the last two years but I'm unsure if this is a good way to go. I think he would thrive there but, well I don't know what the 'but' is really but there is definitely a 'but' in my throat...
I'm a little bit cross with the boys at the moment too. Every week they have music lessons in their chosen instrument. Every week I have the devil's own job at getting them to practise! Jack seems to have a natural flair, as he has a natural flair for everything, and can just pick up his guitar and sound ok but I cannot get through to him how damned good he could actually be if he bothered! Grr. Well, this week his music teacher told them both that it's really not worth her time coming if they cannot be bothered to practice so I am making renewed efforts at getting them off/away from screens (Jack seems to be literally addicted to Runescape) and back to their instruments. I have to say I'm in agreement with their teacher and have told them that if they are unwilling to practice then I'm not going to keep paying out for lessons.
On other subjects, the boys did not go to their usual Thursday night youth group this week. Not altogether sure how it came about but there was some sort of altercation between Max and another lad and Max ended up hitting the other boy. Jack said the other kids had been getting at Max all night and he'd been asking them to stop. When I said to Max he shouldn't have hit the other kid no matter what his response was 'but you told me if another kid hit me I should hit them back twice as hard!', which indeed I did (after having four kids bullied for years and schools doing nothing to stop it!) when he was 5 years old and just staring school! Somehow he didn't actually compute the 'if another kid HITS you' bit and just lashed out which is totally unacceptable and I made sure he knew that. He doesn't want to go back as he says he's fed up with the other kids picking on him all the time. When it came to time to leave this week, Jack didn't want to go either so I'm wondering if there is slightly more to it than meets the eye...
Now I must stop procrastinating and get on with the cleaning and tidying, and they call weekends 'time off'! I'm not sure who they're time off for, possibly the men of the house (if you're lucky enough to have one that is).
