iRant, iRave

It’s been a busy time us of late. Rob is finally trying to get the patio laid but the weather has been against him for the past few weekends and when finally we get sunshine he has to work. He now has most of it sitting in the drive on pallets just now so hopefully the bog at the back of the house will disappear soon.

When Rob got a new job at UK Mail (same company but different warehouse) his hours changed so one week he works afternoons to evenings and the alternating week he works morning and afternoon. This certainly shook thing up. Instead of getting up at our leisurely 10 o’clock we had to shift everything so we are up and about by 6am and as a result I had to find new groups to take Duncan to since now he naps most days after lunch. Found a fantastic stay and play group and his loved his new signing class, Babies Can Sign, (although sadly this was eventually cancelled due to lack of numbers) but Rhythm Time was not at hit in the slighest. In the end he was refusing to even go inside the hall so that had to get knocked in the head.

As a result of this and the fact I want to work again, I’ve decided to set up a preschool music class, starting with Saturday mornings in Morley so that we don’t have to pay for childcare as Duncan and Rob can come along. So much to do though. As well as buying the kit I need and lesson planning I have to cover everything like Child Protection and Health Safety policies in order to rent the room at a school. There’s only so many ways the paperwork can be avoided but now I’ve almost finished the website there’s no avoiding it. It’s coming along nicely though and I’m hoping to start the class after the summer holidays.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it is scary how quickly Duncan is growing up. He’s a complete chatterbox with a huge vocabulary but as a result the signs have started dropping off unless he really wants to get his point across. He’s had a lot of visitors in the past few weeks – MoMo & Grandpa, Nanna & Grandad and Aunty Rachael. Grandpa gave him a much adored toy tractor and now he is definitely Grandpa’s wee pal, asking to speak to him and MoMo most days on skype.

We’ve also joined out local Netmums group which is fantastic as unlike everything else they are still meeting over the summer. Been great for us to get out and enjoy the company of other mums and kids.

His swimming in coming on in leaps and bounds. Instead of armbands we got him a little float jacket. When we took him last weekend he was starting to get his balance and could swimming to the side on his own from about a metre away. This Sunday though there was no stopping him. Almost as soon as he got in the pool he was off, swimming from one side to the other, twirling around in the water and getting us to help him jump in from the side. We had to force him to take rests as he just wanted to keep going and going. So proud that all the hard work is paying off.

Anyway paperwork waits for no woman so it’s back to work for me.

And now the news…..

Not a great deal going on really. Teaching is good and my students are coming on nicely but I won’t ever being going into great detail about them (privacy and all that). I found that for some of them I’ve had to find very creative ways of teaching to find something that suits them (homework – tell me a story on your saxophone ) but at the same time it’s been very rewarding.

Having a quiet couple of weeks with it being Easter holidays and all. Seems odd to actually be sitting in the house all day again. I had a lesson with my good friend Omar Puente last week which was great. Had Rob’s family over on Saturday so made a huge chilli in the slow cooker which went down well and jelly with loads of fruit in it for pudding. Kiddy food is ace!

At the moment we’re trying to work out how much money we need to do various jobs round the house and garden. First is getting a base sorted for a shed which should be about £30 and a weekend for what we need to do. Then it’s the more expensive building a bigger patio, some walls and a fire pit/bbq.

This past weekend we started having fires at night in the garden, just dug a hole in the ground so that the wind was a little bit less of a problem. There’s an area of grassland close to our house where people just seem to dump stuff. My neighbour got new metal gates the other day and miraculously some old wooden gates appeared that same day. Really annoys me when people who seem to take pride in the appearance of their home don’t extend that same principal beyond their fences. today I found a smashed up picnic bench and a wooden frame of somekind that will do for kindling so the fires will burn on.

Have spent most of today  on my local Freecycle group trawling for anything that I can put to good use. Basically it’s people giving away thing they would have otherwise thrown out. Off to Horsforth to collect some pictures/frames in a little bit. So far I have got a set of portable Aiwa speakers (for rob to use with his laptop), a Sodastream (just need to find somewhere that does gas cylinders for them) and about seven or eight purple throws which make the futons in my livingroom look a lot better as well as somewhere to on at the fireside. Now just hoping I can get some stuff to help do the garden and a new compost bin since the lid blew off the Blackwall dalek in the last big storm a couple of months ago and was nowhere to be found (and evil Blackwall people say they don’t sell lids on their own and want to charge us more than three times what we paid for a new compost bin which will have the same problem).

Right I better go get these pictures/frames since rush hour is finished.