Swings & Roundabouts

This week has been good and bad. After a long chat with a very good friend at the end of last week, I was feeling positive again about doing supply work (not for the love of teaching other people's often badly prepared lessons and boundary pushing pupils, but for the love of my house and not wanting it to be repossessed!). So, Sunday afternoon came and I started to think about getting my work clothes and bag ready to make sure I was ready if the agency phoned in the morning. Then, Big J, who had not been feeling particularly well since Friday, started to look & feel (as far as we could work out) worse, coughing, sneezing and feeling hot. As a result, I could not go to work until Friday, by which time my motivation for getting out there and working a full week (oh, yes, I remember that.) had diminished. On Thursday night, I did however manage to talk myself into accepting work on Friday morning if the agency were to phone. And they did. (No, never start a sentence with "And").

As I had not been to work all week, I had been able to watch Big Brother (ooh look, I have just lost 70% of my blog visitors), which, although utter rubbish, I find sadly addictive as I am human and therefore nosey by nature. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to find that the children at Nursling Primary School were much better behaved and, for that matter, intelligent than the adults who seemed to be occupying the BB screen. From what I have seen this week, their prospects for the future are much brighter also. My day at Nursling was really enjoyable. My Teaching Assistant walked in and turned out to be a friend of mine whom I know from Little Z's school (one of the mums); the caretaker looked familiar to me, and I later realised we had worked together years ago at British gas (and there go the other 30% of my Blog readers!) and the children were well behaved, hard working and good fun to be with. The planning left for me was as good as I can usually expect and I all the staff were friendly and helpful. I hope I get an opportunity to go back there to work and will certainly apply if any more permanent vacancies arise.

On the job front, I have applied for a year 1 teaching post this week and should hear by Tuesday whether I have an interview. There are quite a few jobs to apply for at the moment, so I am going to be busy this week, making applications and trying to fit in visits to schools between teaching. I have at least 2 days' supply at a nice school in Bitterne I have taught at before, so I'm looking forward to that.

Saturday morning is usually "mum & kids" time as PP works from Midnight Friday night until about 1pm Saturday so is not around and when he does get home he is not really in any fit state to do anything but sleep. I usually take the children out on the bus or an a train ride, or we go to the city centre to look around the shops. This week, I thought we would do something which would not cost any money and if possible would not involve using any petrol either, so we went for a walk. I really do not know why I don't do this every week, as it is free and we all had a great time. It is also very healthy for me as well as the kids and encourages Big J to walk further instead of being pushed around in a pushchair (one of my pet hates is seeing 4 year old children in pushchairs, especially when they are sucking a dummy or eating crisps). This is where we went:

Southampton Sports Centre. It took less than 10 minutes to walk there from my house and is absolutely massive. It is hard to believe that such a huge place could be hidden away not far from the City Centre. There are running tracks, football pitches, netball / hockey courts, golf course, various multi use pitches a ski slope, a small boating lake (never seen boats on it, though), as well as a little funfair open Easter to October and a play park, from where I took all of these photos:





I had just as much fun as they did. There was a surreal moment when the children were both sitting on the bench, while I was on the swing...
(Think little Z did a good job of taking this photo)



Of course, walking in a lovely place like this during the colder, wetter time of year also provides cheeky little boys with the opportunity to splash in puddles and get as muddy as possible!





Finally, I have managed to get back onto my weightwatchers diet again this week and have stuck to it. Christmas is never a good time to try to lose weight, but I am just grateful for the fact that I managed to get through the festive period without putting on any weight. I lost about 1.5 lb this week, which although not much, is a step in the right direction and, to be honest, I am just happy to have lost some weight.

So, despite Big J being ill for a few days this week, I feel that the week has been quite successful. The highlight of my week, by far, (if anyone is still reading!) was on Friday at Nursling, when a little boy came to me and said, "Mrs Sheep..." Aww bless! He was soon corrected by a little girl who said, "She's called Mrs Lamb!"

Have a great week everyone. Remember, however bad your week may seem, it won't be as bad as Jade Goody's!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope 2007 brings you everything you wish for.

We had a great family evening for New Year's Eve. PP had been shopping and bought lots of nice Christmassy food to eat, as we had been away for Christmas and not bought any food in for Christmas yet. He was surprised to find that Tesco was almost out of all their Christmas food already, but he still managed to get some treats for us to enjoy on New Year's Eve and found quite a few bargains where items such as Tesco's Finest mince pies had been reduced to half price (making them just about affordable!). I guess we will see the seasonal aisle filled with Easter eggs next week!

We decided to have a family games night and spent a few hours playing Elefun, Jitterbugs and Hungry Frogs (cheapy version of Hungry Hippos). We have lots of family games, but choosing ones which are suitable for Big J to play is difficult. He is not very good at turn taking yet, which rules out most games. We had a lot of fun though, got the children very excited and hyper and then spent the next couple of hours trying to calm them down so that we could watch the TV and see the new year in before all going to bed at about 12.30.

While Seany and I both stayed in, our mum was at her local pub having a few(?) drinks and seeing the new year in with her friends. Somehow this seems the wrong way around, but I hope I have a social life as good as my mum has when I am her age.

Today we have had a fairly quiet day. I have done some sorting out to make room for the new presents and have managed to clear a lot of space in Big J's room. I can't help wondering if I have gone too far by getting rid of his bed!

Joking aside, I have taken Big J's bed out of his room as he doesn't sleep on it. Since he went up to "Toddlers" at nursery he has had his midday nap there on a crash mat on the floor. This seems to have discouraged him from sleeping in his bed at home at night. We often find him asleep on the floor in his room and no matter how many times we tuck him back into his bed, we invariably find him back on the floor again in the morning. After trying many different things to encourage him to sleep in his bed, we have finally given in and taken his bed away, leaving him with a mattress on the floor to sleep on. I think it is better for him to sleep on a mattress on the floor rather than just sleeping on the carpet or on his rug as he was before. At least now I won't have to keep getting down on my hands and knees to clear out the toys from under his bed!