Home again

Thursday was a working day, with 3 deadlines on Friday. Not sure what else - F watched some Class TV I think and then asked if we could have 'talking radio' on, so I put Radio 7 on for an hour or so, very nice it was too - Far From the Madding Crowd. We baked her modelling clay - she had made a very big '4' and she played with that for a while. Had to have a quick discussion about why it's generally not done to stand on the windowsill without trousers and pants on showing your noony to the man delivering the shopping. She's a bit keen to get naked at the moment, generally. However, she has been really good at doing things when asked, recently, rather than calling for a debate on it. Several times last week she surprised me by backing down from some intended annoyingness at my first request. It was a shortlived phase as it turned out.
I stayed up till 5am working, finished large job, then small job then half of medium job before sleep. Nearly finished medium job on Friday morning in time for the arrival of a MonsterTeeny visitation, but then had to do last 2 files while they were here, plus a bit that had got missed. F was tired - I had heard her not sleeping for over an hour while I was working in the small hours. She proceeded to behave very badly for the first part and the last part of the visit, with a relatively nice patch in the middle. I was too tired to be decisive in parenting, which didn't help. I chose my battles unwisely and then didn't really follow through. One of those afternoons! I still enjoyed the visit though - I frequently have The MTs round straight after one of my large deadlines and it's a pattern I quite like, adrenaline and relaxation, etc. Now, let me think, what did the children do? Lego train track, Zoombinis, XBox, watched My Little Pony (sorry Nic!) and we quickly established the right to shout out 'It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmas' at random intervals, since it was December 1st.
Friday evening, we had visitors and a Chinese takeaway and it was lovely to relax. I went to bed early as I had to be up next morning.

Saturday: Up before 8am! Woke F who blearily munched honey toast and drank soya milk ready for drama. Packed rucksack and train bag ready for our journey to Cheltenham.
Took a taxi to drama, as we were late and rucksack was heavy. Left F there, did a bit of shopping for a few bits we needed to take with us - food, travel size items and comics and felt pens for train.
And off we went afterwards, heading Northish West on train. Had a good journey, a 20-min wait at Romsey where F did 'acrobatics' on the bike stands and we watched freight trains go by with dozens of containers. Other connections were all pretty quick, 10 minutes or less.
Got a taxi at Cheltenham station and arrived in good time. It was quite strange to walk into dad's house and him not to be there. Lovely to see M and Uncle I though. F played with the toys that she has always played with there, which used to belong to Uncle I and Uncle A, and we both had baths and a nice meal, including apple crumble made with apples from the garden, picked by Uncle I.
On Sunday, Uncle I, F and I went to the park for a while before Uncle A and his wife J came over for lunch. We managed to catch a sunny half hour in between squally showers. Uncle I earned loads of uncle points over the weekend, F loves him loads. He set up a couple of domino topples with her, provided catching, lifting and whirling services at the park and taught her how to play picture consequences (points from me for saving me that job!). Also played Mastermind with me but thrashed me as he always does at Scrabble. Uncle A and J are off to Australia in spring next year and have just been over there on a preparatory trip.
The weekend also included lots of reading of the ladybird book that F has loved there for the last 2 or 3 visits - I have a little movie of dad reading it to her when she was 3 or so. Lots of water play, being read to, playing with toy animals. A nice weekend. As we left yesterday morning, F kissed a picture of her grandpa and sayed 'bye bye grandpa, I love you'. He was missed. I know he'd have been happy to have seen us all together though.

On the way back, we timed it fortuitously to catch a train that would take us all the way from Bristol to Brighton - nice small modern train and we got seats with a table. Over three hours on one train might sound hard going with a 5-yr old, but we played loads of games: picture consequences, simplified Mastermind, squares, drawing pictures of Christmassy things and simplified hangman, among others, and had a really good journey. At the end, the woman sitting opposite complimented F on being such a well-behaved child, which was good to hear. I'm enjoying the fact that she's getting old enough to be able to play games that are quite engaging. She also spent quite a lot of time just watching the scenery go past, as I love to do, and talking about it.
We were home by 5ish and J came home from work and cooked some noodles. I had to eat quickly to get out in time for writing group, which was good. Last session for a while next week, with a meal out afterwards.

Today: F has done a bit of painting, lots of marble run making and is now engaged in a bit of nasty whining and being unpleasant. My mum is here for the afternoon and I ought to get a bit of work done really. I have made a start on online Xmas shopping and done a few other things that needed to be organized and involved phone calls.

Rest of week coming up - going to get some work done and do quite a lot of homey type things, like ice-lanterns, cooking, craft, games, watching films, etc. Cousin's wife HH is coming on Thursday I think, which will be nice.