Thumb twiddling.

Yesterday, a parent came to visit and discuss childcare for her son.  Floors were swept, again, shelves dusted, toys and books tidied, kitchen tidied, surfaces wiped down, floor mopped, garden tidied, toys put away.  Policies brochure etc printed out.  Yes, a lot of effort goes into making my setting look as attractive as possible.  The parent sounded very positive, queried if I would be able to start minding the boy from next week, spoke of her husband coming to visit me etc.   Yet I've heard nothing since, so I am assuming she's decided on a different childcare provider.

I am beginning to conclude that this house probably puts potential clients off.  Afterall, the lounge is very small, tiny in fact - not a lot of space for children to run and play - indeed I discourage running indoors, just because the lounge is that small.  Loosing the contract will not cause me any difficulties, just a little disheartening, and I confess I took a shine to the little boy immediately - he was lovely. 

The solution of course, is a bigger house.  I'll wait until next year and start looking in January, my preference is one of the lovely Victorian houses, that predominantly make up the housing down here.  The thought of packing does fill me with horror - we both have so much more stuff now, still, the ideal is to find a property I can bed down in and not having to worry about moving for a LONG time.

Anyhoos moving on.

Rye is very taken with his treeblocks recently and has been building lots of little towers and "castles".

Which he then knocks down;

The new myriad catalogue plopped onto my door mat this morning too.  There are some lovely new additions to their stock.  The Fairytale Castle is beautiful; pricey too at £229.95.   Then there's this lovely Fagus Excavator, which has had a re-design.  Again rather pricey at £89.95.  Rye adores contruction vehicles and I have looked at this and others in the Myriad range a number of times.   The prices have always given me pause, as I was never entirely sure how big these were.  £90 for a decent sized excavator, well, I don't mind too much - £90 for something that sits on my hand; I'd mind.  Particularly, as I've bought some things in the past and then been shocked how small they were for the price.

The catalogue has a large photo of a boy playing with the excavator and it looks a fair size, so I think I'm  set on this being Rye's birthday present. For Yule I think the Camphill Dumper Truck will be appreciated, and I'll ask my brother if he'll gift Rye with the Camphill Transporter.

Although given Rye's lingering love for castles and building of; I am tempted to buy the Kindergarten Play Set 1    and buy a couple of these castle wall sides  Add in the treeblocks we already own and Rye could make fabulous castles, without the £230 quid price tag.

Ahhhh, little consumerist me, eh.  I am not going to apologise - these days I am in a financial position where I can splash out now and again and while I enjoy hand making gifts for Rye, my skills do not extend to transporters, exacavators and beautifully carved pieces of wood... I feel a crochet exacavator may not quite hit the spot, too.

Well, there I go, off on a tangent - I meant only to mention the new catalogue and drool a little over the fairytale castle, before going on to write about yesterday afternoon.

Picking up my minded child from nursery - watching them run across the playing field, playing on the slides and swing - then back to mine for lunch and naps.  Rye isnt napping much at the moment, so he played with the treeblocks, trains and cars.  Then it was time for C to get up; and by now the rain was sillaging it down, and the washing I put out earlier - well rinsed.

I really didn't fancy taking the children out in torrential rain, so I needed an activity to distract them from running in and out of the lounge and kitchen, screeching.... this is what I decided on

Good 'ole aquamats.  And no mess, normally I don't mind mess; but after spending a lot of time making the house very spic and span for the interview with the parent, I really was not in the mood for mess.

Mess does follow me though, the dishwasher is having a moment.  So I need to emptied it and handwash the dishes.  (sigh)  I need to do it today too, as I left it for a couple of days hoping it would reset its self.  It did and turned back on; and then the programme got stuck again.  If I leave the dishes any longer they will go mouldy - yuck.

I suppose I better go and do that then.   Blah.