Home Run!!

It's Saturday, we are on the home stretch!! Today is a day packed with swimming and parties, however, I am at the hairdresser's this morning and Daddy is in charge.......

So what can I say?
Have we missed the TV?
No, actually.

In a whole week (nearly!) only Mr Beehive the younger has enquired about it, and then, only once! I have only been close to relenting once and that was yesterday, on a day when it poured with rain and they were burning off "we're trapped indoors" steam, very loudly, while Little Miss Beehive was trying to nap. But, we all held fast and she slept! That said, it is really tricky to be out and about and avoid the screen altogether. Where ever we have been this week, Costco, the YMCA (yes even there!) there is a little square box on in the corner somewhere which captures the beady eyes of these poor deprived bairns!

The boys have played so beautifully together. To be frank, we have so little TV on in the house anyway (around an hour a week), that it really hasn't changed what we do. If anything, I have become perhaps a little more tolerant of the noise and mess (oooh and believe me, I mean volume, I'm sure I have told you that there is proof out there that a four year old boy is as many decibels as 20 men in a pub!) while they play happily and we have all been way more observant of each other. The boys have ironed out issues that in the past I have needed to intervene with, Mr Beehive, the younger, has played delightfully with his sister (they had a wonderful hour and a half the otherday interacting in the garden without squabbles whilst going on a spider hunt!).
Mr Beehive the elder was concerned about the weather so we had to find alternate ways to discover this not using the computer or t.v. He has, on the other hand, kept his promise to do 10 minutes piano practice each day.

I have also sorted out a lot this week. It is another great activity for I. to help with, shredding old papers etc. I sorted the kids' wardrobes into hand-me-downs, consignment, can't-bear-t0-part-with and what-was-I-thinking or completely knackered piles, which she then muddled or chose to wear on her head! Then we organised a writing tray for the kitchen and made a rather large order from the Michael Olaf catalogue.

I also made a (maybe) foolish mistake of picking up a Leappad style magnetic letter learner thang (no idea what it is really called) for Little Miss Beehive, from the consignment shop. You put it on the freezer or fridge and then put in a letter, it then sings and says the letter name and sound. She has been more than impressed with it, it has kept her amused for ages..........but the bloody song. Why do these things have to come with such mind numbingly dull, repetitive, brain sapping music that when you wake in the night is always the first tune that sticks in your head.........FOR HOURS?? ("I know a song that'll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves.....") Must remember to accidently consign it and buy a drum instead!

My new toys arrived yesterday, a lens hood, adapter and tele-convertor lens for my camera. No T.V, so I actually started to read my digital camera book and the instruction booklet that came with the camera in the first place (*hangs head in shame, after all, we've only had the camera nearly a year!) I had no idea what it could do!

This hasn't been a very hard challenge, I think we could keep this up for another week pretty easily. I've not done anything with the children that we don't normally do, they always read for hours, play imaginative games, like to climb trees, ride their bikes, make stuff in the kitchen or paint. However, I wonder what we would really find it hard to live without for a week? We have only lived without the dishwasher for 10 days before, unless you include the time we lived in the caravan for a month and then a bed and breakfast for two when I was newly pregnant with Mr Beehive, the elder?

Washing machine? Microwave? Car? Phone? Computer?

Am I brave enough to try another challenge?


Funny thing is......the huge pile of ironing is still there!