Written by: paul

Sunburn tingles on my face. Lovely day yesterday – a lot of it spent outside.
We were waiting for the plasterer to arrive most of the morning. Even if it was a Bank Holiday he said that he would be starting on the Monday… we were sceptical, but then that’s what he told ‘Jill the Builder’. So we got bored waiting. We should have checked the ‘call minder’ (voicemail) on the phone as Jill called the night before (while I was on t’net) to advise that he was stuck in Anglesey…. “Stuck in Anglesey”… It’s very tempting to ask him what had stuck him in Anglesey, but as we do not really know him from Adam – it may be interpreted as impertinence.
Both the kids love being outside. They play well out there. We can leave them to get on with things (for short period) without the fear that they may do something silly. Well, we could yesterday anyway. Jack has been a little more needful of a watchful eye of recent. He was much better again recently though. He has been a little so-&-so at times over the weekend though. Sunday was his worst day & it culminated in being a bit bad for him. He started off the wrong way out & was shouty at the drop of a hat. Wanting his breakfast just so & silly things like that. It’s annoying when he’s shouty as he’s less apt to listen (as he cannot here you for shouting, I guess). Eve was fine – she was enjoying pottering about & obsessing about her welly boots. She has 2 pairs now (since we bought some in Burnham) & she likes to put them on 1st thing in the morning when she’s still in her pyjamas. Any opportunity & she likes to put them on, really. Jack was upstairs being quite. We should have known better really – he being quite & all that… it usually means he’s up to no good. …Heh… When he’s doing something right in front of you that he knows is not something he should really be doing he says, “Don’t look!!” at you. So, when Louise popped upstairs to check on what he was up to she found that he had got a chair out & got to stuff on top of a drawer that should be out of reach, including the paint scraper & putty knife that I’ve been using on the occasional evening to polyfiller the walls of the room (that I am STILL in the process of preparing to decorate on 2 3/4 walls). So – he took the putty knife – the sharper of the 2 & did what he must have seem me do once upon a time (gawd knows when). He had a scrape at the paint on the bedroom door & picked a little hole in the wall. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
These things are going to happen sometime when you have kids. I still remember the piano that I played with a hammer & dad’s watch that I could not turn the stopwatch off on – & dinted little holes in the bathroom windowsill with the little buttons. Ah well.
No real explanation on the door, but Jack volunteered later that the hole in the wall was to “let the dust out”. An interesting thought. Pity that the walls are, if you poke at them like that, essentially made of dust.
His petulance persisted most of the day. He wanted this or that. We got through a visit to the supermarket & the cafe quite well, I think. I cannot recall any particular feeing of being wound up.

The attic progresses – get more complete each day I pop up just after the builders have gone. I am just too nosey to resist. The dust had not settled in the room, even, yesterday. They had been knocking a bit more of the old plaster off on preparation for the plasterer who will be starting on Monday…. a Bank Holiday… That be his choice… We will have to devise one of those expeditions to Ikea or something again, as we will be looking to get some new shelving & so forth… Ah, it’s all in the future. There’s still a lot to get sorted out. We will have to do that decoration thing – there’s some paintwork & old paper on the beams that need to cleaned off.
Jack & Hamish seem to spend as much time together as possible at the moment. They were out in the street playing when I came home, & I didn’t really see him much until teatime, when I went round to Hamish’s house to pick Jack up. He was not keen to come without Hamish. He wanted Hamish to come for tea. Hamish would have come as well – given the chance, but I said no & his mum kept a hold of him.
Eve love play. She is a whirlwind of play. She loves nothing better than to be al play. Louise said that at playgoroup yesterday she was straight into the painting – daubed a picture & pulled her tabard off to do something else, then spotted the crayons & had a good scribble with those, & then spotted the glue & did some gluing. So, that was all the craft activities sorted within the 1st half-hour. She actually went back to the glue a few times, it seems, as it was in a pot with one & she could lift up the spatula & drip it slowly back into the pot. Not actually daubing it everywhere though, which is interesting, as it would still be what Jack would not be able to resist doing.

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