Ruth

I told Ben she was coming. He said, "to play?" I said "well.... yeah, but mainly to drink coffee and eat cookies and talk business with me." Ben replied, "and play? Play first?!" Bless her. She played lots.

Charley slept in this morning, long enough for me to have a quick shower while he was still in bed! That was quite amazing. You may remember a while back I said something about trying to stop using shampoo (shampoo always makes my head itch, if I could find a way of keeping my hair clean without using all those chemicals I would be really happy) so I've been using baking soda instead. The idea is you clean your hair without stripping it of its natural oils, and eventually your head stops overproducing on the oil front. Well I think after a couple of weeks of having to wear a hat even with pretty clean hair the oil production is finally slowing down. My hair looked like it was full of hairspray or styling products rather than oily! Thank goodness. If this works and I manage to stop using shampoo permanently not only will I hopefully stop having an itchy head, we'll save so much money!

Breakfast this morning and I'd promised Charley he could have breakfast. He had banana and toast. The banana was yummy apparently, but too much like hard work because it kept slipping through his grasp before he got it from tray to mouth. Toast fared better but was boring!

Tots after breakfast and Ben took himself off to play with his friends. He's grown up a lot this past 5 months. He will still run around like a loon but not just with two other kids! And he picks and chooses what he wants to do, and goes and does it off his own back. I looked up at one point (I keep an eye on him, from my perch in the baby area with Charley) to see him sitting at the craft table, happily getting on with things. I guess this is also preschool's influence!

Home via the GP surgery to drop off a prescription, and as we headed home I told Ben that Ruth was coming later. That's when we had the above conversation! He also asked if we could have a picnic but the picnic never happened as Charley had a later than usual nap thanks to his lie-in this morning, so lunch was at gone 2pm. Ben requested pasta and cheese sauce. Charley had a cream cheese sandwich, had OODLES of fun with it, and then complained that he wasn't having what Ben was having!

Coffee and cookies and chat and play with Ruth, we also did some painting to show her how we did it (I put too much blue on the canvas though and this one is rather brown as a result!) and Ben had to get his feet washed in the bath as I couldn't find my usual bowl.

Sausage casserole for tea once Steve was home.

I did not think, when we started weaning fun on Saturday, that it would be so soon before Charley was playing with sausage casserole.

Straight up to bed for Charley after that, Ben followed once he'd had some cereal. He had a chat with Steve while I was upstairs, asking about hearts.

And that's all I can write. Both boys want me!