Are you ready yet?

This is the question I hear whenever I venture out at this time of year.  And as I am an extremely disorganised person I am never ready, so I give a vague mumbly answer about 'IT' arriving whether or not we're ready. Then, I listen to the super organised person who asked the question tell me how they have been ready since the end of October, and you can guess how that makes me feel.

Yet the reason I delay is that I take pleasure in getting ready for Christmas in December. I like shopping as the nights draw in and the lights in the shops seem cheery and inviting. I enjoy meandering around the Christmas displays choosing presents and being so delighted when I spy just the thing.  Sometimes I make the posting deadlines and sometimes I don't, but either way friends near and far get a Christmas or at worse a New Years greeting.  We always put the tree up late, after the December birthday is out of the way and the birthday cards have been moved from the mantlepiece.

The advent calendar made at brownies.  Each numbered envelope contained a sweet and when turned over there was a letter to make up a famous Christmas saying.

The young Follies have been a great help this year and I have been able to delegate Christmas cake decoration and mince pie making.  They have enjoyed making paperchains and decorations in the weeks holiday from school.  We have an artificial Christmas tree due to allergies and asthma amongst many of the Follies, but this year there is not the space to put it up.  Yet it didn't feel right without the tree. So, yesterday 4 Follies and a Folly Friend made a dash to the DIY store where we found a blue tinsel tree and decorations all reduced. What fun choosing and colourmatching we had! 

The Christmas cake iced and decorated by Folly 3. It is the best decorated cake we have ever had!

And yes, the day before, the day before Christmas I am ready - and I think it is the earliest ever!
 

Local mistletoe bought just today from 2 young boys selling this from their garden in the village.



Room with a view

Or not as the case may be!

Four weeks into our 17 week project and the foundations have been laid, drainage dug and refilled and the ground floor walls built. So far no major hiccups but I probably shouldn't speak too soon on that one.  With progresss as swift as this it was time for the scaffolding to go up.  And so it did last week.

Now although the 4 Miss Follies had managed to play on the digger and dumper I found that these machines had disappeared off site before I got my turn and I was adamant this would not happen with the scaffolding.  So Saturday afternoon found me shimmying up the scaffold ladder (actually it was more of a painful easing with Mr Folly standing guard at the bottom of the ladder as I have quite a fear of heights).  It was fantastic seeing our garden and the fields beyond from such a vantage point and we positioned ourselves strategically to get a feel of the view from the bedroom windows.

not bad

quite pretty

oh dear

This will be the view from the side bedroom window - imagine when this lilac is in leaf!  We hadn't thought about this at all when planning the positioning of windows and there isn't really anything we can do apart from a little pruning I suppose.  Fortunately this room will be double aspect and so will have a view across the playing fields too and so there will be plenty of light.

I think scaffold climbing will now be curtailed as Mr Folly goes off on his work travels for the next few weeks and I don't want to encourage 4 Follies up to the heights.

I can't quite believe

• that our building work has started.
• just how many cups of tea I have made over the past week.
• that my builder is called Bob (though he does not wear orange checkered shirts).
• the sight of four girls on Sunday morning climbing on diggers and dumpers in their pyjamas.
• exactly how our garden looked before this project began.
• how quickly the holes and trenches appeared.
• that I am already having to think about where to positon radiators and lights.
• how long we managed to ponder over whether to reposition a door (and in the end didn't).
• that every night Bob reconfigured pipes and electric to enable me to use my washing machine.
• we have another 16 weeks to go (if things run to schedule).

The calm before the storm

I got up early yesterday morning as I felt too restless to return to sleep. All was quiet and I was able to sit alone in the kitchen sipping my tea and thinking about the project that was about to begin ... 

... building an extension to the back of our home.  Our plan is to turn the old garages attached to the back of the house into an eat-in family area which will be knocked through into the kitchen.  Then the old outhouse will be turned into a study and a room over which there is dispute - dance room for some, home cinema for others and some have suggested a gym (though who would use that I am not sure)!  Above all this we will have 2 new bedrooms and one of our existing bedrooms will be turned into an additional bathroom. This will give Follies 1 and 2 a bedroom of there own whilst Follies 3 and 4 will share a large bedroom.

We have waited 18 months for this project, since moving into our hotchpotch house in the country.  I am certainly keen for work to start, yet I will be sad to no longer see the old and broken brickwork, the exposed rafters of the outhouse and the gaps and holes the reason for which have long been forgotten.  Mr Folly took photographs of the old place as we both know that once the new walls are up with a extra storey and new roof atop we will struggle to remember how our house used to look.

And so after my tea I take a wander amongst the aged building dating from the 1960's in part and the early 1900's in others. I say my goodbyes to the lives lived here before I arrived and prepare to face the onslaught of the day.

Noisy

I hadn't realised just how much I had got used to the sounds of the countryside.  Our summer sounds are usually a variety of birdsong (albeit at an early hour), evening cricketers with their subdued clapping and occassional shouts, children playing, and in my own garden the clucking of chickens.



one of the four chickens - Bonnie (I think)



8am the whirr of power tools started and now at 6.30pm all is back to normal.  The reason being that overlooking our fence are many tall leylandii which the parish council have decided must be brought to a more managable height.  Today was the day this feat was accomplished.

Poor Bess the dog was beside herself with anxiety and took to barking. I took her out on a long peaceful walk but we still had to return home.  I tried music on my I-pod to drown the sound, I tried going into competition working my sewing machine at full speed but nothing could defeat the drone.

I found myself unable to settle to list of tasks I had hoped to achieve today.  It is at distinct moments such as this today when I realise how I have gradually eased myself into this quieter country life and am now most comfortable here.



the newly chopped leylandii hedge

Holidays

Finally the school holidays reach Hampshire.  I think we are the last county in Britain to break up but hopefully it follows we will be the last county to return in September.

Usually our holidays begin with a period of readjustment amongst the follies as we all get used to being home together.  This means we have about two days of arguments and resolution finding until we find our places, strategies and routines for days at home.  This year, however, has been different as immediately the holidays began we had activities planned.

Thursday and Friday was a tennis course and I did feel I had planned things to happen too soon as I had to wake up the follies and organise a packed lunch for them on their first day of freedom from routine.

This weekend we all went our seperate ways:

• Mr Folly was off on a work trip to Ottawa Canada, although I am sure work will be punctuated with visits to our favourite haunts and friends from when we lived over there.
• Folly 3 ventured into the New Forest with her friend on a family camping trip.
• Follies 1 & 2 have been dropped off with grandparents in the Yorkshire Dales in preparation for a week long summer school in performing arts.
• Folly 4 and I visited the other set of grandparents and spent a night in their caravan in the Yorkshire Dales before returning home.

Next weekend we all gather together again and I will be curious to see whether the adjustment amongst family members will occur or whether the time for us to explore our own space and interests will obliterate this need.

Quiet around here

After the hurly burly of half term it was time for the big send off for Folly 3 on her Year 6 residential to France. I have dutifully labelled clothes for every eventuality apart from snow and provided spares for the spares.  We saw her off on Sunday and my four young follies became three for one week.

It is always strange when one of the follies are missing as the dynamics among those left behind changes and there is a slight shifting of position.  The absence of folly 3 left folly 2 without a fighting mate so she moved to form a closer bond with folly 1 resulting in lots of sharing and conspiring between the two of them.  Folly 4 turned her attention away from the family and sought out friends from school who came back home for tea or were telephoned to make plans and plots together.

I found my week simplified somewhat as there was only two school runs to co-ordinate rather than the usual three.  There were several afterschool activities which could be forgotten and I didn't seem to be needed as referee quite as often. Things were quieter too and maybe our neighbours found that as well, for Folly 3 likes her music at volume.  However, there was a spirit missing. There was no-one to join me in the kitchen early in the morning as I made the lunches, no-one as eager to pop out with the dog to give her a run on the field.  There was no voice questioning my decisions and suggesting other ways I might have approached things.  There was no-one challenging my parenting in her own particular way and forcing me to question my handling of situations.

At times I felt guilty for enjoying a simplified life or for forgetting to think about what Folly 3 might be up to at any given moment.  Yet, now that she is home with her presents and tales of her exploits, I see my job more clearly.  I parent in order to send my children out into the world. I need to be confident that I have done my best to equip them not simply to cope, but to participate and delve in, able to make appropriate choices and evaluate risks.  I should not be continually thinking or worrying about my children for it is right that they and I should have our individual lives. I think back to my Montessori training and remember that our children are striving to be independent right from the beginnning.  Though I have no control over this vast and rapidly changing world, I can control how I prepare the follies to take on the challenges they will meet when they leave my side.  As they grow the follies will leave this home little by little until finally they have their own home and it is that they visit me.  So just as I enjoy the fun and chaos I will enjoy the quietness too and not feel bad about my own independence.