A PEACEFUL WEEKEND

This weekend has been lovely.  The weather yesterday was beautiful but more to the point we got rid of Bella.

Don't get me wrong: I love that little girl to bits and I think she's amazing.  She's clever, she's beautiful, she's good at things like climbing up walls, she has the most amazing character: and I wouldn't change one iota of her.  But when she's not around things are a lot quieter and more peaceful and I don't find my time taken up trying to deal with a baby and play referee at the same time: I also have more time for Alex.

Friday evening my in-laws turned up to stay a night, en route from Manchester to Ambleside (OK, not quite en route but they'd booked a cottage which wasn't available until Saturday and it made a lot more sense than going home to Aberdeen, and we're not so far away from Ambleside that it made sense to stay in an hotel).  Bella said that she didn't have to go to school next week and she wished she could go with them: I just thought perhaps as Alex was off to two parties this weekend, her treat could be going down to Ambleside with Scotland Nanny and Grandad for the weekend (I stopped short of missing school).  The proposal met with favour all round so off she went.  Husband then started complaining - when we were just about to fetch her today - about the cost of fuel but it was too late by then.

An aside: my parents talked about getting me a car for my birthday.  A 6-year old Citreon C8.  What they didn't tell me was that it was an automatic - that killed the deal - but also it's fuel consumption is roughly double the VW Passat we've currently got, so why would we, when fuel prices are never going to come down again.  It was an incredibly generous thought but completely the wrong car.
Meanwhile on Saturday afternoon Alex went off to a party, David took Edward out in the backpack for a walk, and I tried to clean the carpets.  The latter was not possible as for some reason the carpet shampoo machine isn't picking up the shampoo, so all that was happening was that I was making my carpets rather wet (the house is mouldy in several places already: it's probably going to be worse now).  Then yesterday evening while David went off to shoot some rabbits, Alex and I walked across Brampton in glorious autumn evening sunshine to drop some things off to one of his friend's mothers.  As we walked we were talking about how peaceful it was without Bella.  "Perhaps", he said, "she could go away for about a week once a month".  I think he had a point, although he did also leave a note for her under her pillow saying that he missed her.

He then had another party today while I took Edward swimming.  This was only the 3rd or 4th time the Baby had been swimming and he was tired and not quite sure about it to start with: it was also a bit of a rush as we didn't want to be late back for Alex.  There really does seem to be a case of the more children you have, the less time you have available to invest in them and to stimulate them.  What is lovely with the older two now, though, is how you can have quite thought-provoking conversations with them.  Alex and I had one the other day about how Jack (in the Beanstalk) wasn't necessarily the Good Guy - in fact he was a thief.  Everyone always assumes the Giant was a Baddie, but there's no evidence that he was: he could have been living peacefully up in his cloud, leaving well alone, when along comes Jack and steals his golden-egg-laying chicken and his singing harp and so forth, and then cuts the beanstalk so the Giant falls down to earth with a thump with no justification whatsoever.  It's all a bit unfair to the Giant really.

We had a similar conversation this evening about lions eating people.  The conversation ran something along the lines that if a lion was hungry and a person ran across his path - perhaps a person who had shot the lion's normal food - then the lion isn't actually being evil eating the person, he's just following his instincts which tell him that because he's hungry he needs to eat.

I'm not quite sure how we moved from there to missing people but not always needing people around, but it was encouraging how both children said they were really sorry and didn't want to be horrible or anything but sometimes it was nice just to be alone, and that sometimes they just didn't want to talk to anyone.  David and I said that it was absolutely fine and that although we loved each other and the children, having some time in the house alone was sometimes really nice.  It rather supports the teacher's comments that Alex is a bright and thoughtful boy who just needs to be able to demonstrate that on paper: I saw his form teacher earlier this week who said that, and then also saw the headmistress about something else who said because he's bright I shouldn't worry as he would get there.

Bella's teacher's first comment was 'she's quite a character'.  It seems that although she's doing extremely well academically, she's also really good at PE: I'm sure she'd benefit from doing gymnastics, and enjoy it.  That's one of my main frustrations about not earning much money: I can't pay for extra-curricular stuff for them like music lessons, drama, gymnastics, dancing, scouts/brownies.....

I have just to brag and say that their reading ages as of September were 10 years 9 months and 8 years 5 months.  I'm very proud of them both.

Edward is rapidly becoming a boy rather than a baby and it's in a way scarey but also exciting to think that it really won't be long before he'll be joining in these sorts of family conversations as well.  It's going to be interesting to see what he's like academically, as I've felt ever since he was an embryo that he was going to do his own thing and not copy the other two.  He's demonstrated that already several times and whilst he's a really happy baby, he's no pushover and knows his own mind: he's also pretty keen to do things for himself, particularly when it comes to food!

I know we need more money but I really don't feel terribly motivated at the moment to put in all the extra hours and time away from the children that a 4 or 5-day a week job would entail.  I keep wondering how - and why - on earth I went back to work full-time when Alex and Bella were each 6 months old: particularly Alex as David was also working full-time so Alex was in nursery full-time.  I feel quite bad about it now, but I guess I was in a senior level job I enjoyed and working for an organisation I enjoyed and I just didn't really contemplate anything different. 

How things change!  Sometimes you just need something to shake up your sense of what's 'normal' and to challenge how you live your life.  I guess it's taken me some time to get there and I'm still not totally sure what path I'm on, but it's fun finding out.  And after all, there really is no right or wrong answer.