Today was meant to be the one weekend day this month where I wasn’t doing anything, but even that didn’t hold, the busyness hasn’t been too bad though. It started this morning with taking Girl Lacer to her last proper tap and modern class of the term, except it wasn’t really much of a class as in two weeks time her dance school will be putting on a show and the lesson was taken up with more rehearsal and costume preparations. Girl Lacer’s class is doing Stephanie’s song from Lazytown and they will be dressed up as little Stephanies, awwww. They got their dresses today, hats off to the mum who made those, I’m glad it wasn’t me! Watching the final practice before the big rehearsals next weekend and they’re all looking pretty good, one of those moments where you think “When did my little girl get so grown up?”. This will be Girl Lacer’s second dance show with the school, they don’t do the dance show every year (thank god, the organisation is manic!) and the first one she did she was only 4 and she was a very cute sleeping bunny with that.
By the time me and Girl Lacer got back from tap and modern, Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer had gone out to the birthday party of Boy Lacer’s ‘best’ friend (who is a lovely, sweet little boy), which left me under the full glare of Girl Lacer’s enforced “Let’s play schools!”, which is her favourite game to play with me at the moment on the rare occasion she has me to herself these days. Girl Lacer replicates her school pretty well, right down to her baby doll who sits in the corner with a pen and is the secretary, so you have to take turns to take the register to her. The kids’ school uses claps to make sure the pupils are paying attention immediately (the teacher claps out a little rhythm and the pupils have to respond immediately with the same rhythm and if they don’t one of the smiley faces on the class white board gets turned upside down, they need all the smiley faces the right way up to get golden time at the end of the week), the method seems to work pretty well and as Girl Lacer is playing schools with me (a case of whether I want to or not), she’ll pop up at random intervals and clap at me, expecting me to clap right back.
By the time Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer got back home, me and Girl Lacer were on our way back out again to go and help set up the Christmas fair (which is tomorrow) at school. I’m so glad I took Girl Lacer with me (I had originally needed to take Girl Lacer with me as I had thought I’d be needed at school earlier and Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer would still be at the party, but the times got changed and Girl Lacer still wanted to go, despite me warning her she could get bored and she had to be on her best behaviour on pain of death). Girl Lacer proved extremely useful as I was helping set up the Hamper Tombola and that involved folding an awful lot of raffle tickets, 7 year olds are very good at folding up raffle tickets and Girl Lacer and her friend J were complete stars helping us, if it weren’t for them I think I’d still be there folding. After the tickets had all been folded, Girl Lacer and J went on to correctly spell Hamper Tombola out of the mixture of laminated letters for the sign and helped string them up, whilst I was sitting knackered on the bench.
Me and Girl Lacer got home just in time or should I say at totally the wrong time; as we arrived at the front door I could see through the front window that Mr. Lacer was changing Boy Lacer’s nappy, something neither of us have really had to do for quite a few weeks now and when I opened the front door, the smell came out to hit us like a wave, it stank (and as I type the flat still does smell but Mr. Lacer has shut the window again because it’s cold (and because he has zero sense of smell probably), honestly the smell was so bad Girl Lacer couldn’t even bring herself to step through the front door for a good five minutes). According to Mr. Lacer just prior to that there had been a bit of an ‘explosion’ and apparently just prior to the explosion Boy Lacer had said “I think I ate too much at the party” (apparently he had been stuffing himself), so either it was all that party food or the extra strength constipation medicine he is now on (which, apparently he shouldn’t even have until he’s 10) is now finally working. Boy Lacer was meant to go to school in ‘big boy pants’ from this coming Monday, we had been doing so well at toilet training but since starting this new medicine it has been going backwards and I think I will have to send Boy Lacer still in nappies to school and tell the teacher that right now, big boy pants are just not going to work. It is probably a good thing, Boy Lacer’s behaviour has been deteriorating a bit recently (a combination of end of term tiredness, pre-Christmas excitement and finally getting to that developmental stage where he was to test his boundaries, constantly) and as much as he will sit on the toilet now, I know he was not a fan of the big boy pants idea.
