but I need to rant.
Why, oh why, do ppl feel the need to visit to see the children at past 6 o’clock in the evening? Arriving just as they are finishing tea, when they are due to go into the bath (many of you know that we have quite a rigid evening routine, to do with Big being a touch on the hyper side when tired), quickly followed by stories and bed. I’m trying to get Small into some sort of routine now, if only so that I get a little down time on an evening without children swinging from my arms and screaming at me.
Anyway, by the time they’ve had quality time with their visitors, they are both absolutely shattered and hyper, meaning that I’ve got to manhandle and yell to get them into the bath (really helping my headache) and it then takes over an hour to get Small to go to sleep, leaving me starving with the hot and cold shaky thing going on (do other ppl get that when they’ve dozed on an evening? I hate it!)
On the plus side, Big suddenly appears to be grasping the values of different coins, and has started considering multiplication. I’ve no idea how this came up in conversation, but it has over two days now, and she is getting the idea that 2 x 10 is 20. Impressive for a child who doesn’t count on yet but always goes back to the start when adding two numbers together. I’ve also noticed that conversations are involving much more independent questioning – a little while ago she never asked anything, now she never stops. Today we had “how do you make glass”, which was great, although a little difficult to handle while I’m driving the car.
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8 responses to “Apologies all”
Lol.. we don’t have any friends to visit at that time, or nearby family!
Big sounds like she is following a startlingly similar “awakening” to Fran did. How odd!
now all you need is a nearby glass factory!
wow at the glass question. E asked exactly the same recently. I said we’d have to go to a glass factory or something, but I’ve failed to find anything local.
lol Caroline – great minds…
Oh, yuk, yeah, C’s dad and S are fantastic at that. If C’s dad is swapping cars with C or something, they’ll turn up about 8.30, and even if I tell them the children are in bed, FIL always has to go up “to say goodnight” and leave an hour later once the children are jumping all over the house …… the fact that C and I are trying to cook and eat our dinner never seems to put them off either ….. grrrrrrrrrrrr
Same situation as Merry here. No family near enough, and everyone else I know has already got their kids into bed long before mine crash out, or are wrestling with doing so too! Gatekeeping is tough tho isn’t it!? It bothers us most if the kids are still up when it’s not too far off our own civilised bedtime. We’ve got to have a certain amount of downtime and the later they go to bed, the later we go to bed. Yet strangely, they rarely sleep in, HUH?
No, we never have drop ins either, simply because there is no one to do it. But I’m sure I would find it annoying 😉
We have been going through the “how do you make…?” phase for what seems like months. Eldest DD (5) wants to know how everything is made – not sure if it’s curiosity or just her way of being able to talk incessantly through a 2 hour car journey and actually get me to respond.
I’ve finally got grandparents trained to not turn up after 5pm, unless they’re going to help with bedtimes, in which case they may arrive at 6.30 and leave again at 7.30 to prevent small ones from doing the ‘just a quick drink of water please’ routine.