It’s my little boy Bill’s birthday today, he’s turned 8. Just like his mummy he likes to celebrate his birthday for days and days so we’ve had a busy weekend.
Saturday we took the kids for haircuts. Beth likes her hair really short. If we fail to get her haircut quickly enough she doesn’t have a problem with cutting it off herself if she finds a pair of scissors that we’ve carelessly left lying around. At least she just does it to her own hair now. When she was in kindergarten she actually cut another girls hair. Luckily she didn’t cut very much off but she did it just because she could! I imagine it is something that you’d get a lot of pleasure from, a real ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ kind of moment. I explained to the hairdresser how short she likes it and that it actually does look pretty when it’s that short so away she went. We decided to leave the sideburny bits longer to make it look a bit girly but Beth would have none of that. When asked if she was happy she answered with “yes ……. but no, you’ve missed a bit.” The sideburns went too. Now that she is starting to develop a bit up the top at least it’s hopefully starting to be obvious that she is a girl.
Saturday afternoon my dad and his wife Helen came up. It was a really nice afternoon. We just got some rolls and chicken and sat around and chatted. The kids played on their DS’s or watched dvds most of the time.
Sunday (yesterday) we went off to rollerskating again. I picked up Bill’s friends Nathan and Will, and Will’s mum Bec came along with us in the car too. Originally I thought Paul could take the boys and the girls and I could do something else but that was when they were going to go to a movie. When Bill decided to go rollerskating Bec and I decided that she really needed to be there. I wasn’t worried about William having a meltdown or anything, just for more practical reasons such as holding hands. Guy came too with his mum Amanda (from the hags group) so we had a merry little band of parent helpers. The kids had a ball. Amanda and Paul both skated (Amanda took her own) and Bec and I just walked around either videoing the kids falling over or walking with one of my unco girls. Bill got the hang of it pretty well and Will was Mr Daredevil. He just went for it with no thought for falling over (which he did numerous times) so he got the hang of it pretty quick. Guy and Nathan were pretty good too, on the sides most of the time but venturing out into the middle on occasion. Beth and Bridie were more cautious so didn’t fall but didn’t skate that well either. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about Beth as she gets older. She used to be more like Will with not a care for her safety, now she seems to be getting a healthy respect for things that can be dangerous, such as heights and falling. We have a deck that is high above the backyard. When we first moved here I was so scared of her climbing on a table and jumping off. I know she wouldn’t do that now as she’s too scared. Mind you I still have to watch her, I don’t know if she has that fear of throwing something or someone off! I don’t really think she’d do it but she does like to experiment with things.
We then went to Hungry Jacks for lunch (mmmmm Grand Angus) for Kids Meals and ice creams. It worked out pretty cheap actually, for the whole day it was about $100, much cheaper than a proper party. It’s easier as they get older for things like that I think, you can get away with just inviting a couple of friends to a quality outing rather than the whole class. Bill and Bridie came back for a play at Will and Kasey’s then back to Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner and ice cream cake.
We got up nice and early this morning for treasure hunt presents. Beth has been getting up late so will have to get back into the routine for school next week.(Yippeee!) She wakes up and puts on her music. I love to listen to her do her things in the morning. She sings along with all her cds that her cousin Siobhan made for her and it’s like hearing any 10 year old playing in their room. Hopefully she wont get a hangup about any of her cds, she tends to do that sometimes with cds or dvds. There’ll be a part that she doesn’t like, whether it’s a certain noise or something else. She starts by leaving the room when that bit’s on, then eventually she just wont watch or listen to it again. Sometimes she can go back to it in a year or so but most often it’s then in the vast store of things in her mind that are over, never to be heard of again.
