Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Finally

The Big Day dawned bright and sunny and a suitably filling breakfast was ordered to prepare us all for the next American Adventure. The morning was planned down to the last minute and, for once, the whole family was packed and in the car dead on time.
Having arrived (unusually) early, I spent the time psyching myself up. The half hour of pacing and mumbling flew by. It could not be put off any longer and it was with damp palms, a cold sweat, churning stomach and a general all round paling of skin that I prepared myself to.......


...watch Finn take to the ice for the first time.


My heart was in my mouth, I couldn't speak, I nearly left Meg in the foyer.

Finn was fine.

Really excited in fact, as he padded up and proudly pulled on his number 50 jersey. (I didn't see any of this, having been banished from the changing room due to exuding excessive levels of fear - Jodi thought this might put Finn off, for some reason.)

The first I saw was him tottering on unfamiliar blades down the hallway, clutching onto Dad for dear life, then finding himself being unceremoniously propped against a wall while Jodi shared a joke with the other hockey parents. (Obviously some of the other Mums were doing a much better job of keeping themselves under control than I was).

The word was given and the thirty or so teeny tiny, helmeted, padded and skated hockey tots were led one by one onto the ice.

It was instantly clear who had hockey parents, as some of the little girls and boys made a passable effort at skating over to some padded benches placed on the ice and sat down. Then there were those who had never before set foot on the ice and were given personal escorts to support them over to their places. Then there was the small Australian boy who wasn't really sure what ice was and looked more than a little surprised at discovering that it was actually quite cold.

I won't go  into too much detail as we have video, lots and lots of video, but progress was definitely made. The coaches were fabulous and let the kids find out a lot of things on their own but leaped in at speed if it looked as though despondency was setting in. One of them spent five individual minutes with Finn and he re-joined his group smiling - upright and smiling. He had started to move his feet and get up by himself and he was loving it.

Suffice it to say that the little boy who stepped off the ice practically skipped back to the locker room in his skates with not so much as a held hand and didn't stop talking about his hour on the ice all day. If that is not a roaring success then I don't know what is.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

What a good girl

A Real Estate Agent came to value our house today. Two of them in fact. And true to their species, having made an appointment for a definite time of the day, they turned up twenty minutes late. Of course, they did.  So, having got me on the back foot before they even arrived and having really upset Meg who was dropping every hint at her disposal that she needed to go to bed NOW, they proceeded to stand about chatting for 10 minutes before actually looking at anything. I chivvied them along with an almost polite "Have you been here before or would you like me to show you around?' and they got on with it. They wandered about, loudly pointing out the improvements that our landlord has made since he bought the place, always on the lookout for a quick sale it would seem. When they'd finished they came back for a bit more chatting and the older of the two said something quite extraordinary. And I quote:

"My, you're a good housekeeper!"

It's a wonder she didn't pat me on the head at the same time to really emphasise her point.


As promised, some photos of the houses in the village. Our current house looks nothing like these.





Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Just a quick word.....

My little boy has a couple of favourite songs at the moment, 'London Bridge is falling down, My Spare Lady,' and 'In a Cabbage in a wood, little old man at the window stood.'

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He refused point blank the other day to put his slippers on. "But Mummy I can't - there's scarecrows on them."
"But you have trains on your slippers, son, not scarecrows."
"I can't do it Mummy, the scarecrows are there."
"Show me, poppet, show me where the scarecrows are."
"Look, Mummy," pointing, "Scarecrows."
"Darling, that's there to help you with your slippers, not to get in the way. And just to be clear, it's usually called Velcro!"

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When being reprimanded by a female family member for not getting on and eating his dinner, his riposte was a little surprising:

"Don't talk to me like that you silly, bl##dy woman!"


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Where, oh where, does it come from?!