Putting it down to Experience

This was just before we realised it was more gusty than we'd thought. The lantern had to be caught before it crash landed on the garden wall, and then we had a few moments of mild panic when we thought (on its second release) it was going to crash into the back of the house. Then a gust of wind took it off in the other direction and after a hairy few moments when we raced upstairs to try and spot it out of the back bedroom window to make sure it hadn't just crash landed the other side of a tree, it was last seen heading towards Flixton.....

Note to selves: don't let Chinese Lanterns up when there's even a breath of wind.

The boys had just been racing around the garden. I told Bean at dinnertime that he had rather evidently got a severe case of the Fidgets, and the best cure was a few laps of the garden as we don't have a climbing frame here. They went outdoors and sang at the tops of their lungs some random song including bits about God being full of grace (I think), and then we started chasing each other so I spent five minutes chasing the boys round the garden before declaring I was knackered, whereupon the boys got their bikes and took them outside, clearly enjoying the evening air far too much. It backfired on me a little when Bean then decided he didn't want to be outdoors without Bear, and Bear didn't want to be outdoors without ME, so I ended up taking my pudding and wine out into the dusk to sit and be climbed on by the boys.

Straight into the bath after that, to wash off the salt and sand from yesterday, and then into bed and quite happily too. Hurrah for evenings running around the garden singing at the tops of their voices.

We have had to have The Talk about Television with Bean, again. Since moving here we've had the tv on a LOT more than usual, it's been a quick and easy method of calming the boys down when they're getting fractious but the amount of tv they are watching has been creeping up and Bean is forgetting how to play with toys and forgetting how to occupy himself and is slipping back into Difficult Child mode. The tv has been switched off, and we are back down to 2 episodes or 1 movie per day again. I think it's going to be tough the first few days but it needs doing as he's going into meltdown at the mere suggestion of turning the telly off at the moment...

Church this morning, Bean said we had to go! I was so glad he did though, and I said thankyou to him. It was the Big Breakfast at church - Messy church! And we loved it. The boys had chocolate croissants, we made clay mandalas or coasters using sunflower seeds for decoration, we stuck some leaves onto some letters which I imagine are going to be used as a banner for the harvest festival in a couple of weeks' time, we went and did some leave / fruit / tree recognition games (which we aced, and were even able to provide some extra information for one tree!! All these nature walks recently have come in handy at last lol). Lots of singing, and juice and biscuits and more croissants afterwards too.

Very odd being home by 11.30am though, and even though we were home so early we didn't actually get round to having lunch until gone 2pm. Mind you part of that was because as soon as Bear had gone to sleep I raced down to find soil and pots and trowels and things, determined to get the broad beans into a bigger pot! Turned into a bit of a mission, we had to dig weeds up and sift out a whole load of plant bulbs (must re-plant them tomorrow, I keep forgetting to deal with them) and all sorts before we could pot our beans. But they are done now and Bean enjoyed helping with that too. They're now in their new temporary home in the window in the living room at mum and dad's house, in the warmth, hoping that they'll carry on being tricked into thinking it's spring or summer and will carry on growing... I don't know how long broad beans take to grow to maturity, it's a bit of an experiment still!