February

Dentdale from Deepdale

So the first half term of 2020 has gone in a whizz.  Can't say much exciting has happened, Matt was out of action with a horrible cold after going back down to Bristol for a 'conference' again.  That took him out of action for a while.  Tom and I managed to avoid it but neither of us were 100% either, so when it came to weekends, Tom did his football on Saturday morning and then we were recovering from busy weeks and getting homework done.  Sedbergh cricket has started again on Thursday nights and Ingleton cricket on alternate Saturday evenings.  Homework has been ramped up - Tom has been bringing workbooks home for Reading, SPAG and Maths with significant amounts to do.  We have come to blows over it - Tom's idea of homework is to do it as quickly as possible, whilst my idea is to do it as accurately as possible.  His Reading homework has lead to us falling out - he seems to think it is ok to read a long passage once and then answer questions about it by memory only...I mean really????!!!!  I ended up showing Mrs Clements his original answers out of sheer frustration and she was shocked.  If I tell him he has anything wrong or to relook at an answer a red mist descends, he becomes sulky, answers back,  puts on an annoyed voice and no amount of reasoning will work - he digs in and refuses to listen to reason.  Not sure if that is due to not wanting to do homework, hormones, pure attitude or just hates me telling him he's doing something wrong.  Haven't worked out how to deal with it yet.

Tough-looking ponies

We also had Tom's school report and parents' evening.  No surprises for either of them.  The usual really - he could do well if he concentrated better and took time over reading the question correctly before answering it.  At parents' evening she spent most of her time justifying why he has dropped down from 'performing higher than expected' to 'performing at the expected level'.  We weren't that bothered about that - as long as he is where he needs to be we are happy.

I had an extraordinary number of cakes to do in January, mainly via Casterton School...the boys' boarding house has found me and the mums are trying to 'keep up' with each other meaning I'm getting lots of orders.  Strange it is the boys' boarding house and not the girls' - but I'm not complaining, they are generally mid week cakes as well, so bonuses.  I also had to catch up on chocolate work for Gingerbugs as I got cleared out over Christmas, there was pretty much nothing left meaning my shelf got filled with other goods until I could get enough made again.  Something to remember for next year - get lots of xmas stuff done in September.

Ewe lot

Because of illness, sports, homework and bad weather, we haven't had many days out.  Matt and I managed a nice walk two weeks ago on a Friday around Deepdale - great walk, really hard going, very cold but gorgeous blue skies and views.  We also went to the cinema one Sunday to watch Dr Dolittle which was fun - was almost as if the writer had been to our house as it was full of soppy animals - a polar bear who was constantly cold, a gorilla who had a 'bankie' because he wasn't brave, etc etc - at the moment we have a soppy polar bear and the mammoths now have to have bankies at night time - I know, I know we are soft and stupid around toys, but hey ho, that's how we are!

Oh and the Coronavirus put paid to our plan to go to China at Easter. Luckily we hadn't bought flights (very unusual for us not to be organised -we were faffing around deciding what to do / tell the school etc).  We now need to decide where to go for our summer holiday and maybe a quick somewhere for Easter.  We have had many suggestions so now we can't decide...

Eleven

The first frame

The 10th of February came and Tom turned 11.  Everyone says it every year about their children - but how time flies.  He is certainly turning into a young man, getting tall (he only just fits under my chin), hormonal attitudes etc but he is still loving and affectionate and good company.

As usual he didn't know what he wanted for his birthday.  Matt and I left it till the last minute and then decided to get him a pool table.  He does like playing pool in pubs and watching snooker with his grandparents, so we figured it would get used.  We got him a 5ft table which fits in the lounge fine and flips up when we need it to so we get our space back.  We also have caved in to peer pressure and got him a phone - when I say got him a phone - we got him a £6 monthly contract on one of our old phones (£6 a month gets him unlimited texts, 1,000 minutes of phone calls and 2GB of data which is way more than he will ever need)  I didn't want him to have a phone until high school - but we discovered that all the boys in his class have one already and he was being left out because of it!  Hate the idea of a phone and mainly social media - but hoping he will be sensible with it and of course we will have every control over it we can.

The gang

Anyway we set up the pool table in the lounge ready so he could play it straight away and wrapped up a chocolate phone and the pool balls.  He got through his presents quite quickly (thank you everyone - thank you cards will be on their way shortly) then we asked him if he was disappointed with what he had got from us - it hadn't registered that we hadn't got him much.  Matt handed over the pool balls and then we said to him to look around the house to see if he could find anything to go with them.  He found it in the lounge (couldn't really hide it!) He was very happy and asked to skive off Boxfit so he could come home and play on it straight from school.  Think I was made to play about 20 games with him!  

We had Japanese curry for tea (after having curry in Settle with Grannie and Grandpa on Sunday and also curry on Saturday with Julie and Kevin!) and then more pool before bed.  

Boy and cake

Tuesday Tom had his party which was the same as previous years - film in the lounge with huge amounts of pop corn followed by burgers and hot dogs and a loud game of hide and seek.  It really is the easiest thing to organise and mostly goes really well.  Tom did cry at one point as he got trampled on during hide and seek - but with 9 boys running around it was going to happen, but of course he isn't used to it being an only child! Tom's cake of choice this year was a Norwegian Flag and troll - nice easy one for change.  

The party ended at 7, then just Ellis was left as there was no-one at home for him, so Tom and he played Monopoly for an hour.

I think he had a good time - but sometimes it really is hard to tell!

  

January Weekends

Our start to 2020 hasn't been great!  Both Matt and I got colds (we stopped taking our nightly whisky!) which meant that after busy weeks at work neither of us was up to much.  Tom, however, has been fine.

Friday was a bit of a landmark - after an accident whilst bouldering with cubs (he fell off the top and landed on his head) he hasn't wanted to go climbing or bouldering no matter what.  On speaking to Debby who runs the climbing club at the wall on a Friday she told me to bring him along and she would get her boys to spend some 1:1 time with him to try to get him to relax and give it a good try.

He wasn't happy about it.  He didn't want to do it because he was afraid.  I told him he can't stop doing things because he is afraid but that he needs to face his fears to overcome them.  In the end I managed to get him to agree to try climbing for one full term.  If he still hated it after that then he could give up.  I got a lot of 'why are you forcing me?!' 'I hate climbing' etc etc, but once he agreed (mainly due to us saying it will help his cricket because it will strengthen his arms and legs), I held him at his word.

We took him along to climbing club on Friday, he was reticent.  We left him to it (he's better at these things when we aren't around)  When we picked him up an hour and a bit later, we found a buzzing little boy who leapt up to the top of the bouldering walls and apparently had made it to the top of the climbing wall 2 times.  He came hopping and skipping shouting, "I don't like climbing, I LOVE it!" in his strongest Northern accent.  It was a success.  Debby even said to us that he should move up to the next session with the older children as he was too good for this session.  Wowzers.    The downside to this is that we have now lost our Friday evenings - no more Friday night dinners for us - poo!

Chilly Ingleborough.

Saturday was a day of sport for Tom - he had football training in the morning and double cricket training in the evening (Ingleton cricket club training - All Stars and older Development Cricket training - Tom was delighted.)  

That was pretty much it for the weekend.  As I said both me and Matt were feeling a bit under the weather.  We watched a film I made a hearty stew and we settled down to watch the start of the sumo.

The following weekend we did even less.  Tom had football training on Saturday morning which didn't go too well - we think because he didn't eat enough yesterday after climbing - note to selves, make him eat pudding after climbing next week.  Then after a pit stop at Inglesport he got the bus to Settle to see Grandpa and Grannie and watch the snooker.  Matt and I went on a walk around Chapel le Dale to try to get rid of our colds, it was a lovely sunny but cold day, there were plenty of walkers around and it was a lovely walk with lovely wintery colours including a sprinkling of snow on Ingleborough.  

The Ingleton Bumps

We then went out for dinner in Kirkby Lonsdale.  We started off a the Royal Barn for a drink and then ended up at Avanti for tea (we tried No.9, although it was pretty empty, apparently they were fully booked for the evening).  We had a nice tea with a bottle of red wine (gave both of us headaches - so not the best) and were back at home at 8.15pm - rock and roll - we know how to have a good night out!  Forgotten how 'posh' Kirkby is. We felt a bit out of place, think Ingleton is more our sort of place, so glad it has some decent eateries now.

Sunday we picked up Tom, had lunch at Goat Gap, a quick stroll around Storrs Common and then Tom did his homework whilst we did chores.  Tom has new homework now - SATS workbooks - I personally think the work is quite difficult.  Tom did his usual thing of doing it all too quickly and getting most of it wrong, so we made him do it again with workings out etc and he did much better.  We had sulks along the way, but he did ok in the end.  He is getting much sulkier recently, doesn't take much to get him into one.  I have to send him away to do something else because once he is in a sulky mood then the whole world is against him and we get tears, he calls himself 'stupid' which I have to counter, basically he goes into a downwards spiral which is really hard to reverse. 

We had teas on knees and then an evening of sport on the telly: sumo and snooker!