Preparing for School

Today was my sons last day of half term, the dreaded school routine starts tomorrow.

My son is pretty happy with his home routine, he does everything to his own schedule and our days are pretty chilled. He's a different boy on school days, much more highly strung, not as calm as on the weekends. We tend to find most meltdowns occur on school nights, when all the stresses from the day have built up and he has to let them out!

We decided to just have a bit of a chill day today, in preparation for tomorrow.

I was awake until after 2 last night reading blogs, so when the two kids came bursting in at 8 full of energy, I really wasn't ready for the day. I lifted the blanket and invited them in for some cuddles, hoping they would still be a tired so we could all snooze for a little longer. Being the lazy bums that we are, we didn't get up for breakfast until 10. We didn't really sleep, we just lay in bed having a giggle and waiting for the snorer to wake up.

Our day was pretty uneventful, we had planned out going out in to the front street to have a little go on the kids bikes but as usual when you make plans, it started to rain.

We went for a little walk to the shop in the afternoon to pick up a few bits for dinner. We forgot to take shopping bags and refuse to pay the bag charge, so ended up carrying our shopping home in an old monster munch box.

The modern woman's shopping bag   as I can't possibly pay 5p for one

Of course the cats are straight into the box to see if they got a treat too

On the way home, the road is on a slight incline. The wee man kept turning around and making a little squealing noise and pointing back down the hill so I asked what was wrong and he declared he was afraid of heights and was scared of tumbling back down to the bottom of the hill. He's done it once before and I actually had to carry him home because he was rigid with fear, luckily today there was none of that and he was satisfied that if he held daddy's hand no harm would come of him. It's funny because he's quite happy to mess about as he climbs the stairs, despite the countless times I've had to shout about the dangers of falling down them, but he appears terrified at the danger of tumbling down a little hill. Kids are funny sometimes.

After dinner I gave the kids a bath to get them settled ready for the early morning. Bath is usually an indicator to Neil that it's a school night. I decided to make bath time a little bit more fun by adding some water balloons to the bath. Of course their daddy is a big kid also and thought it would be fun to start trying to burst them over the kids, but the tables turned when Caitlin found one with a hole in and started subtly squirting him.

They always have to make a bubble beard pic when they are getting a bath

One has to always out do the other this is his much more eccentric bubble beard

The kids loved the water balloons, it added something extra for them to play with and Neil really loved the sensory stimulation of squeezing them. It also added a bit of colour to the bath too.

So now it's time for an early night to get ready for school tomorrow, definitely no 2am finishes for me tonight! Hopefully the back to school routine goes by without any hiccups.