Who’s Normal Anyway?

This morning after breakfast we did some paper mache. M missed it when they did it a couple of weeks ago at Beavers, so I said we’d do some at home to catch up with what the other Beavers have done and then he can join in with his own creation when they come to paint them. Ha, easier said than done. They are supposed to be making “vases” by covering the bottom half of a balloon (not sure how they are going to stand up?). We had balloons so I blew 4 up and tied string on them and we vaselined them to stop the paper sticking. M did the smallest balloon and I started the others, but it was so tedious I quickly cut down to doing 2. I thought we should keep one at home and try and take a spare for any other Beavers who were away. We got 2 layers of newspaper on and M was seriously flaking, so I hung them up outside to dry and eventually got slopped PVA etc cleared up. L wanted to be involved and was fussing, so that limited us timewise too.

In and among I also rolled out some play doh to make hand and footprints of L now he’s turning one. We made them before when he was about 2 months old. They’re really easy to do, I don’t know how some companies get away with the exorbitant prices they charge to make handprints and put them in a frame. L was quite cooperative with his hand and I got a good print first time, then I put a piece of plastic box from rasperry picking around the print to make a square edge and filled it with some plaster of paris. The play doh needs rinsing off when the plaster sets, then it needs to dry and be painted and varnished.

M took himself back to bed and listened to story CDs. I tidied up and sorted out birthday cards and things to send to my mum and my FIL who have birthdays on Thursday. Then I mixed L’s birthday cake and put it in the oven - I found a pasta bowl that was oven safe to make a rounded shape because he’s having a hedgehog cake. I used Rosie’s choc cake recipe but altered it to SR flour because we don’t have any plain (and missed out the baking powder and soda) and then misread it and used water instead of milk. Tastes fine anyway (had mixture left over and made a couple of buns too).

I heard a bang from the garden, looked out of the window and saw one of the balloons had gone pop. Tried to rescue the paper mache by inflating another balloon inside the shell. All in all every balloon popped at some point today, even when they were in the house out of the sun, but they are probably useable, just about.

L fell asleep and I went to sit with M and listen to the story CD. Heard it to the end, so now I’ve a big chunk in the middle where I don’t know what happened. We sat and needle felted together for quite a while. M’s trying to make a fairy like mine.

When L woke up we all came downstairs and I had some lunch. M lay in the chair and watched his Robots DVD. L and I went back into the garden to do some more paper mache layers and L played in the sandpit. Then M perked up a bit and asked to phone some friends, at which he became quite animated and stopped coughing (til he got off the phone anyway) and afterwards L and I went to the post office. We played some more Settlers until it was time to start cooking tea.

This evening L fell asleep but woke up again as soon as I laid him down and is still going 2.5 hours later. I’ve made buttercream and decorated his cake. M and A went and wrote cards and assembled his new slide upstairs and then M went to bed. Still got a few bits to sort out for L’s birthday tomorrow once he’s gone to sleep.

Is about all we’re hearing from M at the moment, he’s got a chesty thing going on and we got antibiotics from the GPs for him yesterday he sounded so bad. So the weekend wasn’t the best with him going downhill.

Saturday morning M seemed fine so we took him out to cricket. He was tired and thirsty after he came off and whinged about going into Norwich shopping in the afternoon, but we thought it was just a boys and shopping thing and jollied him along. Got most of what we’d gone to Norwich for except for new black shoes for M (still squeezing into a pair 2 sizes smaller than his current trainers, but only for things like church). Then we had a typical navigation argument trying to find the retail park where we’d reserved L’s birthday pressie at Argos.

I fail to see why A doesn’t take on board roughly where we’re heading for and go in that general direction, reading the signs as we go. He wants me to navigate but gets testy if I point out the obvious turns (and they are so tedious I tend to switch off and forget to navigate any more) but then at the last second he’ll suddenly ask which way now and I won’t have been paying attention. He doesn’t like me doing the best guess method I would use if I wasn’t sure driving myself, he wants 100% accurate know exactly where we are on the map (even if it’s across 3 different pages in the book) directions. So whenever we go somewhere new and A is getting tired we always have the same navigating argument. Dunno why I don’t just drive, except he hates being driven. Maybe I should make him sit in the back and entertain L or something.

On Sunday we all woke up feeling like we needed to go back to bed. Both boys had had disturbed nights and we were all in bad moods - oh joy! We decided we had to get out of the house for a bit so we went fruit picking, leaving L asleep and M listening to the radio in the car while A and I picked. We got 4lbs of strawberries by going to the unweeded section and delving through the mass of sticky weeds (think they were cleavers), then we picked blackcurrants. M and L came out for a few mins to help pick some raspberries.

Then we went to Tescos for some lunch and groceries, then home to do some jam making with the strawberries. I love homemade strawberry jam!

Afterwards I baked scones to go with the jam, only A wanted to take some into work so I was talked into making 2 batches (fine, I love baking). I asked how many might be in his office and he said 15(!!!) so I cut them out with a tiny cutter and made mini ones LOL. L helped me cut them out (sort of) and then played in the flour. He thought patting it so it went everywhere was hilarious.

Yesterday we had a very quiet day at home with M watching lots of TV and DVDs and listening to CDs. We also played some Settlers: Heritage of Kings together which was a birthday pressie from M (it’s a joint pressie for us to share mummy!). M’s annoyed I’m so much further on with it than him, but he doesn’t plan to have enough resources, he just likes to battle LOL. We had courgette curry again for tea and in the evening I did a bit of needle felting, then watched some episodes of Lost to catch up and knitted.