The kids, the house and the kitchen floor.
Apparently it isn't just me. I still might investigate whether the children are secretly getting biscuits out of the cupboard with the express purpose of crumbling them all over the floor five minutes after I've swept it and then secretly gathering fistfuls of dirt from the garden to add to the mix. Nevertheless, it's nice to know my house isn't somehow filthier than others and this continual cleaning malarky is just par for the course when everyone is in the house all day.
Things have changed a bit this week. Things have started getting slower, not in a bad way, just in a we're getting used to this new very odd way of being. I tried really hard last week to keep a full morning timetable - it pretty much worked and we've kept it up this week, but there's been more slipping of time here and there. There's also been a bit more of Pip sitting infront of Super Simple's number songs on the computer instead of me trying to teaching him his numbers at the same time as helping Sally work through her maths workbook. He does seem to be able to reconise more of his numbers than this time last week and Sally now knows her five times table up to 25 - so I'm gong to count the strategy as a win. Cleo has also been progressing nicely, she is growing much more speedy at stuffing any random crumbs she finds on the floor in her mouth and has learnt to undo the zip on the trampoline which has put the kybosh on my using that as a safe babyzone.
Other things I've discovered:
I've turned into the parent that buys her kids loads of toys. I've always been more in the ration the toys/force them to be imaginative/stop your house from being swamped with plastic camp. Now I can't even take them to the park, everything from the internet seems to be making its way to my house. Some of it is educational - like the numbers stuff - some of it is just to keep them entertained and to make me feel less crap about telling them that they're not even allowed to go to Tesco's with me.
Talking of Tesco - I'm not sure I'm going to be able to grump about having to queue at tills again now that we have this new process of queueing to get in to the shop. Shopping at the weekend was just weird. Actually having a shopping list and checking it was way more important too now that nipping into a shop on the way home from work is off the cards.
This came home from Tesco with me last week - and came out on a cloudy Thursday afternoon... look here at the delightful co-operative play from my children...
... it such a shame that I put my phone down somewhere so have no photos from twenty minutes later when they started paddling, then got wet so took off all their clothes and ran around the garden naked.
We've not really adjusted to the clocks changing. It tends to be the external pressure of being somewhere in the morning that really forces the time change on the children. Now that school is here, there's no pressure to haul them out of bed so they've stuck at the old wake up which is fine by me! It does mean we've not managed to adjust their bedtime either, but how can I speed away the cuddles from my little boy snuggling up to me and telling me I'm the best mummy in the whole wide uniberse and can he have just one more story?
Baking and dance parties are the way to spend the afternoon, but bubbles are the best:
The last photo - Sally and a sword trying to pop bubbles. It was lovely. But in these strange times were we feel so safe at home, but we know chaos and death is unleashed elsewhere it seemed a kind of metaphor of the futility of the current fight against this virus. A wooden sword and bubbles racing off unchecked into the sky. We might be on the brink of achieving some measure of control by shutting everyone in their homes across Europe and ordering as many ventilators as can be made - but in poorer countries? It terrifies me.
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