Am I ready for this?

2 more days of school. I feel I am ready for the 'break' I love not having a rigid routine, no packed lunches to make, no uniforms to iron, no having to be here and go there at certain times.
I don't like the chaos though. Especially trapped in this house, I dread it. I have been pining for the barn and it's acre of land, for the wilderness and the trampoline. Fr days of not going anywhere but out in the garden....friends spending the day and having feasts outside.
Oh well, tough nuts, we're here and we have to come up with a plan.
I do have a plan of sorts. More and more I am horrified by the waste in our lives, the endless shopping and consuming of crappy foods.
We eat so may crisps and snacks in this house, no matter how many I buy and hide, they get eaten at a ridiculously fast and greedy rate and I am so sick of it.
So, today I decided that I am not buying any easy snacks in the 6 weeks we have no school. That sounds like an easy thing but I don't think it will be. When the boys are at home, they graze all day long, especially Isaac.
The thing is all of us really love good food, really good food. We all love fruit and vegetables, the boys would choose olives and pickles given the choice. So I am going to give them the choice.
For 6 weeks we will have a fridge stocked with carrots and cucumbers, grapes, melon, apple slices, strawberries.
They can eat cheese cubes and pineapple. Red and green peppers, beetroot.
I know that they will be completely happy, which makes me feel bad for opting for the easy route most days. It's so quick to throw crisps and a cheese string in their lunch box. Who wants to stand for hours chopping peppers and carrots when their are school shirts to iron? So, while we don't have shirts and schedules, we can have time to try a new road.
I am bored with the shopping too, wandering around Asda buying the same old stuff week in week out, I shall try the markets and stalls, buy fresh and let the boys chop and scrape.
I have been so tired lately, pathetically weary, waking up tired, sleeping more than I ever have.
Sleeping is great but being awake and having energy to enjoy being awake is great too.
I am nearly 46.....somehow that number bothers me. I remember being that bothered by becoming 30. Ha!
Imagine being worried about being 30. A baby.
So I must make myself think about how, in many years time, 46 will seem young and fresh to me. I shall grasp the joy of being 46. When you think of the alternative...being 46 is pretty great!
I feel a bizarre kind of excitement about a change, we are all in a grizzly rut lately, I know the boys are ready to have a change. They are so grumpy and whiney it's untrue.
Poor Eli is on his last legs, he falls over fresh air and by 6 o'clock every evening he is so floor flingingly fed up with the world. This evening at bath time, brought forward a bit because he was falling asleep at 6pm, we had Little Richard blaring on H's super duper bribe iPod dock deal, we were dancing and washing and singing and he climbed on the side of the bath and somehow he fell and bit through his bottom lip, 3 teeth went right through. Poor little boy. Try being beside yourself tired, so ready to sleep but can't suck that beloved thumb because your lip bleeds every time you try. Big old fatter than usual kissy lip, leaky brown eyes plopping tears like nobody's business and the world is just a rotten old place to be.
He is fast asleep and looking comfy. He was awake again in the night. I can't work out what is going on with him, still happy enough in the day but having trouble sleeping and fractious at night. He needs a few weeks of taking it easy and having a nap with mummy in the afternoon. My littlest boy. I cant believe he is almost 5. Still a baby to me though.
The weather is glorious here at the moment, how I hope it stays like this for saturday so that Eli can have his picnic in the park with friends and all his cousins and a high school musical cake. Please don't let it rain.

Isaac came home from school today with 2 go go crazy bones. He went to school with 23 and a new case for them. I want to storm into that school and find the snotty little oiks that took his bones and make them cry. He seemed unconcerned and said he swapped them, trouble is the revolting brats didn't give him anything in return. When I think of H and his sojourns to W.H Smiths and the excitement when we got some go go crazy bones, whooppie!
Ack, H says it is a lesson learned and when his stash from ebay arrives ( hopefully after school finishes so we don't have to endure weeping because he is NOT taking them to school to give to little shites that take advantage of his not being able to say no to them) he will have a new stash to play with and they will NOT be taken anywhere that some horrible Henry can take them away.
H and I are good for each other because we always seem to balance each other out, I am ready to punch any kid who looks like they might be thinking about Isaac and his crazy bones, H calmly says that Isaac now knows that he either has to say no, keep his toys at home or lose them.
Another time, H will be about to blow and I will tut and say no big deal, let it go.
Heaven help the world if we ever get up in arms about the same thing, perish the thought.

Gemma commented that H looks like Pop Larkin in Darling buds of May, indeed he does! How marvellous. I loved that show and it is my idea of a heavenly life. Glorious Pop with his love for his family and adoration for Ma, who is twice his size, country life with their children and chickens in the garden. If H and his sideburns are to appear like anyone, I shall vote for Pop Larkin everytime!
I wish that would come back on, on sunday evenings, from start to finish. I might try and find the DVDs because I really think that was my favourite show in the whole world ever.
H is about ready to lose the sideburns, as soon as we have taken a glorious picture akin to the one he has of great great grandpa Greenhaulgh, they can go. I will be happy to see all of his lovely face but somehow the whole eccentric idea of them has been very touching and along with his sandals and socks and his floppy hat, he is altogether quite delicious.

Did I tell you about my dream? I keep meaning to.
I once had a dream ( when pregnant with Isaac) that I could see 2 little boys playing and another watching, the one on his own said that he was going to be a brother to the other 2 and that he couldn't wait to be with them. A 'man' told him that he wasn't going to be with them now, that the family had chosen not to have more children and so he would be going to another family. He cried and cried and said that he had chosen THAT family and that those 2 boys were his brothers, he begged to be with that family.
I knew then that H and I were to have another baby and every day I am glad that we made that decision. He is our joy.
Anyway, 2 weeks ago I had another dream, just as vivid.
I was walking along a street and saw a small boy sitting on a wall, he was looking at the ground and was swinging his legs. I walked past and felt that he was waiting for someone, that maybe he had been left behind or forgotten. I took a few steps back and asked him if he was waiting for someone.
"yes, I am waiting for you"
"For me?"
"Yes, I have been waiting a long time."
"what's your name?"
"Solomon"
Well, well.
Unless there is a miracle, I won't be having another baby. I am sure that I had all the babies that were waiting for me.
I was stunned for a day or two about this dream because it was so real.
Now I feel OK with it because lately, since Eli has been at school and no longer a baby, I have been thinking a lot about the babies I lost. Especially the one that I lost right before Eli. I was so sad when we lost that baby, I was so sure that it was meant to be, that this baby was the one that had cried in my dream, I couldn't understand why, if this was a good thing to do, the right thing, to have this baby that we had no idea how we would manage to look after ( H had no job, we had no home, were about to move back in with H's dad) I couldn't grasp why we would then lose the baby.
I got my answers, I learned that sometimes a baby needs only to get a body, no matter how small and that's it, that life is complete, sometimes the baby doesn't need to be born into this world to fulfill it's purpose. I believe that we will raise those babies, we will be a family, just not here, not now.
I wonder if my dream was that baby, telling me that he is waiting and just letting me know that he will be mine.
Solomon is a pretty good name, fits with the other boys names too and is certainly a name I would use.
If you ever come here and read a long running sentence about how even though H had a vasectomy and even though I am so OLD and even though this was not planned or even thought about but OH MY LIFE I am pregnant.....the baby will be called Solomon, unless it is a girl in which case she will be called um.......who knows, I will be in some lunatic asylum rocking back and forth just at the thought of having a teenaged girl in my 60's. I am pretty sure her name could be anything, I won't be in any state to choose it.