Spacebats

The thoughts, random or otherwise, of Mark and Heidi Thomas. Sometimes possibly Caleb and Elodie, depending on how much sense they are making.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Museum visits

On Friday Mark went in to school to do some more work and found it completely shut, rather than bother one of the caretakers at home he came back here, but couldn't get any work done coz he'd left everything he needed at school on Thursday. Hooray for the rest of us! So we decided to make the most of our 'extra' day and went here for the afternoon. It was excellent, everything's crammed into one room and initially you wonder if you've just been conned out of £6 per person. But there's so much to see and there's a guide who gives you a demonstration of basically everything they have. It takes about an hour, and you don't have to wait for the next tour to start or anything you just jump in at whatever point you happen to arrive at. The guy onFridayy was excellent; very enthusiastic, very personal, veryknowledgeablee, very taken with Caleb! Who, by the way, was an angel, we were very proud of him. I should mention that Mark was very excited to see the original plate for the music from the musicbox in Labyrinth. My favourite bit was the early predecessor of the Jukebox (no rock and roll here!) And the shop is excellent- we'll be going back there when we have gifts to buy. If I hadn't already started on my Christmas shopping I think we could have come out with something for every one of our nieces and nephews! There's tons of books and art kits and memorabilia, and not just stuff related to music or clocks (which they have a little sideline in.) We'd highly recommend it.

Well, that got us in the mood for knowledge, so yesterday we popped over to the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. I had been years ago on a school trip, but it has recently been refurbished and was well worth a second visit. It's mostly about the Romans, with a good bit of of the Anglo-Saxons, and some Medieval religion for good measure! This one wasn't as well suited to a toddler- too long looking at strange little bits and pieces that weren't very interactive. To be fair there was a decent amount to hold his interest, but we just wanted to take longer than he did looking at things. We enjoyed it though, and that's really why we went, let's face it! In a couple of years I think he'll get a lot more out of it.

We also stumbled upon a lovely little Christian bookshop in Cirencester, where I managed to find a couple of books in the sale and a couple of presents for friends- all in one hit, that never happens! Cirencester is lovely, we'lldefinitelyy have a little jaunt there again in the future...

Yesterday we rounded off the lovely holiday feel with a BBQ with Mum and Dad, nice and relaxing...

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Toddler-speak


'm disappointed, Caleb has started referring to himself as Cay-yeb a lot more. I still call him Carebear anyway! He's also taken to calling himself Kebs, again he came up with it completely on his own. We figured it out pretty quickly: I sometimes call Elodie 'Eds' and he extrapolated 'Kebs' from there. He's just growing up so fast, I can't keep up! And with Elodie it's like she's on some kind of growth hormone or something- when you have a toddler to take up most of your attention you don't even notice how quickly a baby progresses...

Big up to Esther

Congratulations to Esther for getting such a respectable set of GCSE results- A for the Sciences and A*s for everything else- the world is at your feet girl!
We're very proud.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Another few days have flown by!

Still trying to get the balance between easing Mark back in to work, and trying to have a holiday! Today we took the kids swimming at the Ferry Pool in Oxford (I'd put in a link, but it wasn't that great) Which was surprisingly easy. It was Elodie's first trip to a swimming pool and you can never be sure how these things are going to go, but she enjoyed herself and wasn't in the least bit bothered by all the noise. We realised that we hadn't been swimming for a year- we have this weird thing where every time we plan to go swimming Caleb gets a stinking cold and we can't go. Odd.

Yesterday we went to Swindon to buy a DVD burner (we've already burnt a little slideshow for housegroup tomorrow so will let you know how we did) and we made Caleb walk everywhere around this huge retail park to make sure he slept well- it worked, he fell asleep in the car! On the whole the sleep thing has improved over the last few days, neither of them have woken more than once in the night and Caleb has even had naps in the day a couple of times. I just don't know how I'm going to maintain this level of stimulation and exercise when Mark goes back to school. Oh well, tomorrow he's going in for the day to check out the GCSE results and get some more work done away from us. I need to be eased back in to real life too!


PROUD MUM ALERT!
I've saved the most interesting/important bit of news to last though: this week Elodie started to roll over! On Monday evening she flipped very suddenly from her front to her back, then yesterday to prove it wasn't a fluke she rolled from her back to her front while no-one was even there to see it. (The harsh reality of being a second child, eh?!) According to Babycentre this is a very advanced skill at three months of age ;-)
I seem to remember Caleb doing it fairly early too actually...

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Nice weekend

The last two days have actually felt like it's the holidays at last! Our children have been awake most of the day, and easy to get back to sleep at night. Despite Elodie skipping 2 feeds entirely this weekend she's been cheerful. And even though she was running a temperature on friday she's really been nothing more than a bit snuffly- which is better than Caleb who's been leaving snot everywhere he goes this week...

Yesterday afternoon we went out to play at the Burford Garden Centre and ended up at the Wildlife Park again! I don't think we'll need to visit again for a little while somehow. Anyway, the sunshine and stimulation did us all good and the kids were certainly ready for bed when we got home. Then we spent a lovely evening playing Scrabble, with a bit of Miles Davis in the background. If that sounds a bit middle-aged I'm sorry but it's a step up from slobbing in front of a movie as far as I'm concerned. It felt wonderful to be awake enough to partake of something that used our brains!


Today we went to Cote for church and honestly it feels a bit futile at the moment since there's no creche (coz there aren't many littlies) so we just go to church in order to look after our kids somewhere else. Since the Biddlecombes have been away the last three weeks it's not even as if we can share out the responsibility. Still, it's never a bad thing to go to church! Then this afternoon we got the balance just right of taking it easy and getting things done. We cleaned the car inside-out (I know, keep breathing!) and various other things that Caleb could help with (or play with the remains of in the case of the shredding) and this evening it was Lost again-I'm certain it will be our new obsession.

Just when it's starting to feel like the holidays Mark's got to get working. And Caleb isn't close to being potty-trained, or sleeping in his own bed, or any of the things we had planned on! Sigh, there's always next summer...

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Ruffling feathers

Well our other blog is certainly doing what we'd hoped it would and stirring up a lot of heated discussion! I think one of the main things that people are getting their knickers in a twist about is that we have aired our views on movies we didn't watch all the way through. Well maybe we'll post something more explanatary on the blog but for now let me just say that we very deliberatly decided that we wanted to have a whole section devoted to movies that we couldn't finish because these are likely to be the very movies that people want a wide number of views/reviews about before they make a decision for themselves. And take as an example, Election, which we read reviews of and were recommended. We found the emphasis on sex so off-putting that we chose not to finish it. We were unprepared for it in this movie, and would have like to have been better informed. At the time we had a subscription to Empire magazine but we found more and more that they weren't giving us a clear enough perspective on things, and we've not found a site/ magazine that sits somewhere between this and the crazy 'Mary Poppins is witchcraft' type Christian sites that we have come across. Our feeling was that we wanted to put something out there that was from a Christian perspective obviously, but was genuinely our opinions and not about a prescriptive moral code.
As for the people who liked/loved/defended Kill Bill. Fine! We don't claim to have the 'right' opinion of it, just our honest one. We don't think 'I liked it' or 'It was bad' is a good enough evaluation of any film, and the fact that everyone justified why they disagreed with us is good enough for us. Keep commenting, the more (considered) perspectives we have the better informed we all are about what we choose to watch!

Also, Chris made a good point which is that Google are trying to flog people Kill Bill merchandise next to our negative review of it!! Also, anyone had the dating link come up yet? That's what you get for commenting on sex/nudity! I don't know if we can configure the settings on the blog to have only family-friendly ads but we'll look into it.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Movie blog name change

My sister has, I think rightly, informed me that the title of our other blog was off-putting and misleading. Heidi said she thought the same when Sarah made this comment. So I have changed the name to part of a line from one of our favourite films (from the 90s). As soon as someone can tell me which film it comes from and the whole line, I will review the movie!

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Special Gal

When Mark first started doing his next blog game he made contact with a lady in Texas called Colleen and we've stayed in contact via each others blogs. Today I had a look through her archives and was very moved and encouraged. This Praynlady is very brave, enthusiastic and open about the pain in her life and her relationship with the big guy upstairs. So today I thank God for Colleen and her family, for their comittment to each other and to their Heavenly Father, and for their openness to other people. They've made me feel a little more connected today, and a lot less like I'm crazy! Isn't it amazing the ways God can use people who are almost strangers to us to bring us closer to him...

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Sleep strategy

Well, we decided something had to be done, so yesterday we made Caleb's day as perfect for a toddler as it could be. He was to be stimulated and indulged in an effort to a) reassure him we hadn't forgotten about him now that we have Elodie, b) soothe his mind, and c) tire him out! So it was decided that since we aren't going on holiday we could splash out on season tickets to Cotswold Wildlife Park and Caleb could go and see the crocodiles again! I stayed at home with Elodie so that he could have Daddy's undivided attention, and to paint the ceiling in his bedroom ready for a galaxy of glow stars. They had a lovely time seeing everything again, and looking at the things we didn't get to on Saturday, and they did a couple of rubbings- a crocodile and a tortoise- to bring home (obviously they were brass rubbings, they didn't go chasing after wild animals with crayons!) And Caleb very bravely stroked a goat. Sounds like they had a lovely time, and he was too busy enjoying himself to notice he was forfeiting his nap!


Then when they got home he was allowed to watch Star Wars, and had burgers for dinner, and got to have Postman Pat bubble bath. He went straight to sleep, didn't wake when we went to bed, and slept all the way through! And he's been in a lovely mood this morning. HOORAY

Monday, August 15, 2005

Soggy Saturday, sleepy Sunday

Well, we foolishly decided to brave the wildlife park on saturday, so we got rained on! It was so heavy nobody (and no animals) wanted to be outside. We had managed to see a few animals before the heavens opened- and lots of owls for some reason- and we did the reptile houses, so it didn't feel like a total wash-out. Caleb got to see the crocodiles so he was happy, which made it worth the money as far as we were concerned. Determined not to give in to the weather we decided to go ahead with our picnic lunch- in our lounge! It was really a lovely afternoon, spent with lots of Joy's family and friends. Caleb was especially thrilled to be in the company of 'big' boys Toby and Sam (See http://www.blogdewend.blogspot.com/)

Things have not been quite as much fun since- I woke up on Sunday feeling sick and very pathetic so we had to skip church for the second week running, which was pants. I slept and mooched and left Mark in charge (again!) I think it's just exaustion really. It's not just Elodie's night feeds either. Caleb hasn't been settling, has been refusing naps, has developed a fear of the dark, and has been doing a lot of night-waking and early (4/5 a.m.) mornings. So we're all shattered.
Still, it means we don't feel guilty about sitting and watching the first three episodes of 'Lost' back-to-back last night! We really enjoyed it- unsurprisingly, since it's written/ created by the guy behind 'Alias' which we're addicted to! Anyway, highly recommended.

After a spot of night-waking, and a 4a.m. start, this morning we went over to Toys'R'Us, just to get us all out of the house, and it was lovely and undemanding! But now I'm getting a cold! Feeling a bit hard done by...

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Our new, movie-devoted blog

Please take a look at Movies for Christians to find reviews of things we've seen. It's going to be an ongoing project with things added all the time, and as it's on Blogsome, it has categories and a search facility so you can search for reviews of what you're interested in, in case we have an opinion on it too. It will have a particular eye towards the things that Christians might look for in movies: avoiding the sex/violence/swearing triumvirate, messages you might want to agree or disagree with, suitability for kids perhaps. Of course, we never want to take away your decision-making process: think about what you and your kids see that you and they can't unsee!

Saturday, August 13, 2005

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOY!

Today it's Joy's birthday, and we're all going to Cotswold Wildlfe Park to celebrate (if the weather holds!)
Joy is very special because she's the first niece I ever had, and she's growing up in to such a young lady!

And she's a great cousin too.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Fair Trade fun

Continuing the theme of 'acting justly' that we're exploring with our church group this summer, we spent the evening tasting and talking about Fair Trade products. I was suprised by how little people knew about what was available considering everyone agreed that Fair Trade is a deeply biblical principle. Well, hopefully this evening changed that, and we'll all be a little more ethically-minded when we're shopping. Mark and I have found that it's easier than it would appear to incorporate Fair Trade products into your shopping without breaking the bank-it's all about strategy! For instance, since we don't drink tea or coffee regularly ourselves we try to buy a fairly-traded brand and it doesn't ruin us financially because it doesn't get used up all that quickly. Also, we never buy anything but fairly-traded wine for communion. Regular but infrequent purchases can be slightly more expensive coz it doesn't eat into your budget every week/month. Anyway, I'll stop preaching! But might I suggest you try the odd thing? Fairtrade doesn't mean lower quality, it just means higher values- and some things don't even cost all that much more. I'd recommend the Co-op own brand chocolate- I don't generally eat anything but milk chocolate, and it has to be Cadbury's usually, but in the last few weeks I've tasted their dark chocolate, and their white chocolate with rice crispie bits, and I was surprised to really enjoy both...

Quick post before housegroup, may end up gobbledegook



Well I know this weather is wonderful but playing outside with Caleb generally involves lots of effort on our part and we're just too tired at the moment, so today Mark made some play dough and much fun was had by all!

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Ever get those days you'd like to do over again?

After all the entertaining we've done over the last few weeks Caleb's finding this house-arrest for the sake of Elodie (and our sanity) rather mind-numbing, and he's definitely unimpressed by us abandoning him to do all this boring painting (and we haven't even started on his room yet.) Yesterday I did a lot of fobbing him off/keeping him happy with snacks because he didn't have a nap in the day, despite more disturbed night sleep. But I feel we shouldn't use food as a substitute for sleep too often, so today we pulled out all the stops and kept him as busy as possible to avoid those sleep-deprivation-induced tantrums. So we made jellyfish (that started out as Octopi!) and did a bit of painting. And he and Mark read lots of Dr. Seuss books together. Also this afternoon we put some batteries in R2-D2 and made Caleb's day- he was an unexpected hit with Elodie too!



So poor Mark had to finish painting over a veeeery loooong 12-hour period, but it's finally done and now our white hall and landing practically glow- all the cream/white gloss looks positively dirty in contrast but we're not even going to go there!




Now tell me: what do you see?
(Tee hee!)

RIP Next Blog Game

I got bored. Sorry if you were an avid follower, but not enough people were replying to make it worthwhile. I'll have to blog about proper stuff now. Oh well.

I have to finish off the painting today, and then we're going to move onto doing Caleb's room I think. He's having a night-sky-blue ceiling with glow stars stuck on. Hope he likes it - they will hopefully add a bit of light for him too.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Dave said he was disappointed not to see piccies of their visit, so here we go:

And today's lesson is...

...you can't place Duplo diagonally.

This is what's causing Heidi most consternation this morning, as she has become obsessed with creating little 'tableau's from Caleb's great selection of animals, bricks and house objects supplied by Sarah a good while ago. See Wildlife (2005) below.



He has just got into playing with them in a serious way, and now so has my wife. She will not let him destroy her artistic installations...



...nor will she express milk like she said she would 30 minutes ago.
Obviously, I cannot do this either, so I am stuck trying to keep Elodie either happy or awake until 12:00. Just 10 more minutes...!

Monday, August 08, 2005

Man make fire!


Well, here is the result of all that frantic garden activity last week: there was too much to fit in the compost so Mark decided he had an excuse for a bonfire. Of course he broke the first rule of bonfire safety and doused the whole lot with lighter fluid 'to get it going' so I was there with the fire extinguisher in one hand and the camera in the other, just in case! I kept an eye on it (or him) until my moth phobia got the better of me, then I abandoned him to his latent caveman instincts...

Painting each other

Well, nearly a year after moving in I've finally got the opportunity to paint over the dirty apricot colour on the hall and landing walls. For some crazy reason I've enlisted the help of a two-year-old! Caleb of course is under the impression that we should paint the dustsheets, my trousers, his hands, the cupboard doors, the paintpot...

Actually he made a good go of it today, painting sharks (what else?!) VERY thickly on the walls. There'll be a fair amount more tidying up and white spiriting of things than usual but I think he had fun which is the main thing. As you can see he mastered the art of two-handed painting- a very advanced DIY skill! He'll be on to two lightsabers before we know it...

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Oh my goodness!

Caleb woke up at midnight last night, just as we were about to fall in to bed. It appears all our attempts to keep his room dark are overly successful as any time he wakes up in the night he's inconsolable. It seems we may have to go down the nightlight route- something I've been resisting but probably more environmentally sound than leaving the bathroom light on all night. I don't care if it means I get to sleep- I'm not staying up til 4am again in the near future, it feels like my brain may well slide out of my ears...

Friday, August 05, 2005

Why oh why...

...do all the really loud planes take off when we're trying to get through a load of episodes of 24? I had to pause about 4 or 5 times tonight, and frankly, it gets very frustrating. Quite impressed with the series by the way (series 3, on DVD loan from Nikki - thanks!), just not with the planes. Boo, hiss.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Haven't done a real post for a while

But now I feel like I can do one, because I can tell you I'm a real grown-up who has wounds from gardening. Well, I say gardening, but if Alan Titchmarsh had seen me pruning our bushes and shrubs and roses with a hedge-trimmer yesterday, he'd have been horrified. There were occasions when I'm sure I resembled something from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Heidi had said that basically everything needed cutting back, except the flowers. I'm sorry to say that a few flowers did kick the bucket in the course of my afternoon, as did a hell of a lot of 'deaves', as Caleb calls them. But the plants didn't roll over and take it lightly. Oh no, those rose ushes fought back with everything they had. Shame they only had thorns, and I had an electric hedge trimmer!! I, of course, went through the cable right at the end. I had bought it specially to do the job. Idiot.

And Heidi's final verdict on the garden? "It looks like a hurricane's hit it."


Please, nobody come round to see it.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

More fun!

Well, yesterday we rounded off our week of trying to see absolutely everyone we know all at once with a lovely afternoon spent with our best buds Dave and Rhiannon. Sadly, we didn't get to see our beloved Sam because he has Chicken Pox and is convalescing (sp?) on his grandparents' farm in Wales (doesn't that sound like a 19th century doctor's prescription for recovering from one too many attacks of the vapours?!) But we still had fun and Dave got to play lots with Caleb, which I think got all those tickles out of his system in Sam's absence. It was exciting to see a pregnant Rhiannon at last, and there was much boring baby talk, but mostly we just caught up a bit, and listened to funny stories from Dave's crazy life! Caleb was also thrilled to receive some belated Christmas gifts (we really don't see them often enough!) and Elodie got a lot more cuddles and attention than she is generally used to!

However, I think all this entertaining has been a bit much for the kids, Elodie is resolutely refusing to go back to her routine- which would be fine if she was happy in one of her own design, but actually she's just miserable and doesn't have long enough naps to make her feel any better, they just give her enough strength to howl a bit more. Caleb also had a lousy night last night, thankfully he didn't disturb Elodie- two feeds a night is quite enough- but in the end he couldn't get back to sleep, and as a consequence he and Daddy got up at an unearthly hour, his nap was not long after breakfast, and he was in a pretty odd mood by dinnertime. Wierdly, he never made it out of his pyjamas despite the hideously long day- our fault for buying Shark PJs!

I should note that despite getting a very small amount of sleep last night Mark generously let me sleep all morning- and he used Caleb's naptime to touch-up some paintwork I'm too inept to do, then this afternoon he took Elodie to get her immunisations. What a perfect husband he turns into in the holidays!

No photos I'm afraid- I gave up after blogger failed to upload them three times.