Beyond tired

so off to bed in a moment.

It’s been a very hectic day, after another very bad night with Small. (So bad that I’m off to the chair bed in Big’s room in the hope I might get some sleep tonight.) Despite the bad night, I did get up slightly after the alarm rang – I knew Kirsty was coming over, and that I had loads of stuff to do.

I started with my least favoured task – rang the recruiter who’d sent me an email about a job last week. I’d sent my cv in, but not got a call back, and usually I’d just let it go at that. However, I determined that that is kind of a cowardly course of action, and that I was going to actually ring up and chase it up. And I even kept trying – somehow managed a wrong number first time I dialled.

Turned out she’d been out of the office, but she wasn’t overly impressed by my cv. She sent me some hints and tips, and I set to trying to rewrite it, pausing briefly to dress the children and let Kirsty in. Then mad running around to gather the stuff I needed to dash over to Barbara’s, before chucking the kids out of the car and driving down to the local railway station.

Sitting (in the snow!) in the carpark, the phone rang. ‘Twas Tim, saying that the family I was supposed to be meeting off the train had missed the connection and were waiting in Sheffield. So off I went again, only to discover that the ptb have decided it was *far* too easy to find the convenient dropping off/picking up zone for the railway station, have dug it all up, blocked off various roads and generally made the whole thing rather difficult. Aargh! So poor K waited (in the snow!!) for me for nearly half an hour before I managed to find her.

Back into the car and off to our Sheffield puddlers Christmas party. Still ppl arriving as I dropped off K, then went down to Barbara’s to pick up my children. Back up the hill, after we all slid around on her drive a bit (in the snow!!! are you getting the picture?) to the hall, and finally got to settle down a bit. Which was difficult, as the children had filled the hall with the chairs and were chasing each other around with them. Didn’t have too much of a problem until they actually started waving chairs around, at which the parents mutinied and put the chairs away.

We hadn’t planned an activity, assuming that the children would be far too excited, and they were, and I think that’s exactly why we needed an activity. But Kirsty had brought a lovely book so I read that, then we got out the secret santa presents and doled them out. Who knew that Small knew about presents? How did he know about presents? He was clinging to my leg as soon as I came out with the pile, and really wanted one. So I gave him the top one, and he sat himself down ever so carefully and set to with the paper – he was thrilled to find it contained three foam balls, although I whipped the bubble mixture double quick 🙂

All the children seemed very happy with a lovely selection of gifts, and the mummies were pretty impressed too. Then most of the little girls sat themselves down with a craft kit that K had brought, and produced pictures for each other, which was rather lovely to see as well.

Then more juggling of children and cars to get K back to the local station. It was lovely to finally meet her – we’ve spent a lot of time emailing and chatting in the last couple of weeks, due to some difficulties she’s having with her local LEA, and great to get her along to our group, as she’s not made a home ed meeting before. There isn’t a lot going on in her neck of the woods, although with the way it’s going atm, looks like things could change quite quickly.

Gathered up my offspring, to loud and rather rude protests from Big and brought them home. Small of course fell asleep in the car, which is presumably why he yelled, screamed and generally carried on for an hour and 20 minutes when I took him to bed tonight 🙁 He was shattered, but obviously not sleepy. I hate it when he does that, he isn’t ever really like that during the day, but I seem to have a different child at bedtimes.

Anyway, my bedtime now.