Piggy in the Middle

As you may realise, I do not generally do a running account of the day! Though on the trip down to East Devon last month, I chose to do that and I guess in hindsight, it was quite amusing. I just thought that I might do a run through of the last hour today for you. It’s all pretty normal stuff I guess. The dogs have been sporadically charging up and down the stairs, cheekily ‘cat napping’ on our bed. That’s naughty as they are no longer allowed on our bed, due to the amount of white hairs they leave behind and the ‘doggy smell’ is not so good. Thor was earlier shouting from the top floor. He wanted various people to go up and open the baby gate to their rooms. He would be released and the person would return downstairs without him. Then he would close the gate again and start shouting for somebody else to come and let him out. I really must read him ‘The boy who cried wolf’ again. That’s one of Aesop’s best. Anyhow, he is now downstairs watching ‘The magic school bus’ on Netflix and is watching contently. Whilst this was all going on, Caleb was just clinging to Daddy’s lap. It is an ongoing problem we deal with, let’s hope he will get less clingy in time (I blame the previous nanny for this). Now Tara and Amritsar have been shouting and screaming for thirty minutes, climbing on to the arm of the sofa (it’s a four person chesterfield) and running the full length of the sofa and jumping off at the other end. It looked like lots of fun and they laughed a lot. I’m sure if I was five years old I would have joined in. Aaliyah has been shadowing me and giggling, much as the dogs often do (but without the giggles)! Caleb has also been clinging to the balloon that I inflated for him earlier, going into meltdown every time it has fallen to the floor. Daddy and Dadda are tired of picking up and reuniting it to him at this point. For the last twenty minutes the girls and I have been playing piggy in the middle with Amritsar’s purple balloon. Again lots of laughs and screams. Tara prefers to be piggy it would seem. Oh! I have just heard Caleb stringing a good sentence together. ‘Daddy, pick up my blanket’? Actually it is my Schott fleecy hoody. Our game of piggy in the middle finally ended with Tara falling off of one of the sofas, backwards and crying. I heard no bump like the banging of her head, so no big drama. After a rub and a cuddle, she’s as right as rain and sat, like Thor besides the television watching ‘the magic school bus’. Caleb has just run into the kitchen and is tearing a piece of kitchen roll, it usually sits on top of the washing machine. It’s a black, hoover model with an incredibly sensitive touch sensor for ‘ON’. You just have to look at it or sneeze too closely and it just turns itself on. Then you spend five minutes trying to turn it off. Pain in butt, so it is. Caleb spoke up ‘Sorry Dadda’ and then continued with ”I get Aaliyah one too’. He is getting there, slowly but surely. Better start thinking about dinner for the children now. I’m not planning on the family roast tonight, but I might do one next week, in order to update you as to any improvements in our little diners table manners. So watch this space! On the subject of piggy, John and I are planning on Roast leg of Pork tonight with the last jar of last years apple sauce. This year I didn’t manage to preserve jars of plain apple sauce. The crop was poor and most of the apples we had from the our orchard I have used as my source of pectin in ‘Dadda’s Jammin’. A trade secret I am happy to share, none of my well set jams contain any shop purchased pectin (sorry Certo)! Okay dinner calls…