LOOK! LOOK! A second post within the week!!! Just like I promised!!!!

So after the successful trip to Thrapston in BBP (big-boy-pants remember) the next test was to go further afield. On Tuesday Simon and Edward went shopping to Asda – this can take anything up to three hours if they faff and meander around so everything was ready to GO and again all they were waiting for was for Edward to have a pee and then they would be OFF.
They were gone for ages and I was really expecting Edward to come back in different clothes but NO! It was a great success and has set the tone for going out for longer in BBP – so maybe we’ll only need to stop once, if at all on the Crimbo Eve there and back journeys.

Nothing much else has happened this week other than I decided (again Tuesday I think) to take the dog gate down the separates the kitchen and the lounge. Morpheus was getting increasingly unhappy at being shut on the the other side of it and come that evening he was acting very strangely, he almost had a really wild panicked look in his eyes and wouldn’t settle down. All in all the gate was causing more stress and agro than it was worth – Edward was shouting at the dogs because they were always being told to shut up and settle down, Cypher would rarely move out of the way if someone wanted to get past – making it very difficult for Simon to manoeuvre his way through and so would make him cross. Edward would stand and rattle the bars like a little prisoner if he was shut out of the kitchen and CRY, “Bear’s come too! Bear’s in kitchen! Help cooking!!!!” and so it would go on!!!!
Without it all of that has gone: no squeaking dogs, no crying Edward, no fluff and skank piling up either side of the bottom of the gate because the Dyson can’t quite get there, no kids getting told off for forgetting to tie the gate shut with ever-increasingly complex knots that Edward can’t untie it and break into the kitchen etc and I LIKE IT!
Simon, on the other hand HATES IT! It does mean that you have to follow Edward around the house and be close by him all the time so he can be whisked out of the way of the dogs if they decide to get silly (rolling around on the floor and kicking their legs around, rushing to the window to bark at someone who dared to walk past etc) and as a result it means that you can’t just sit with the laptop on your lap and let Edward get on with something. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing to be honest, I think the TV babysitter has had a long enough run. So me and Edward have been doing ‘stuff’ this week: building fires – he helps to clear out the fireplace and build a new fire, we decided to teach him and involve him with the fire so that he learns about how to be safe, feels useful and included and as a result he has no interest in it when it’s lit because it’s boring – you can’t do anything with a hot fire but you can do LOADS when it’s cold like play diggers in the ash and get absolutely FILFY! We’ve been to the park – he rode his tractor down there (he sits on it and someone pulls it along) and he cooked me stew in the little wendy house, we swung on the swings, he rode the springy horse, slide head-first down the slide (that is the ONLY way to go down a slide) and we went on the roundabout – I felt sick for the rest of the day! Give me an extreme rollercoaster and I’m fine, love it but stick me on a roundabout or one of those carousels where you bob up and down on the horses and I’ll get off feeling really sick! I’ve got some little videos of our trip to the park on my phone so I’ll need to see if I can compress them and put them on here!

And so there you go, that’s about it – Jack’s gone beating today, Ellie’s playing with Edward, I’m in the kitchen (I can sneak in a bit of work if I keep my laptop out here when Edward is playing on his computer in the kitchen) and Simon is still snoozy in bed. I’ve got some pictures to stick on here but they are still on my camera – I’m hoping I’ll get a few minutes to do them sometime today.

Have a good day
Sarah xx