It was Genevieve’s second day of being in school for almost a full day. The walk to school was nice and I was only slightly pulled along when she saw a friend and tried to bolt! She’ll have to learn that she can’t just try and run off like that.
When I got home from the school run, Stephen was on a call to his boss so I tagged straight in with James and tried to get on with my own work commitments. It’s a real challenge as James just won’t play with anything for a sustained period without input from me. This makes concentrating on work a challenge.
At 10.30am I had a work call with my form group so I tagged Stephen back in to look after James. We decided to let James play with the iPad as it’s the only surefire way we have to keep him quiet. However, it’s not something we want him to be on all day so it’s reserved for specific quiet times.
Stephen went for a sleep, and I managed to work and keep James entertained on the iPad until just before lunchtime. Then it all fell apart. Despite being told not to open the app, he’d gone in to Kids YouTube and somehow watched an educational (and age-appropriate) video about mosquitoes. There’s no exaggeration here; he was completely, and utterly, freaked out. He was certain that mosquitoes were in his room, under his bed, and were going to suck all of his blood. I reiterate that this was a children’s video on Kids YouTube and I have subsequently watched it (to see what all the fuss was about). It’s no worse than Baby Shark. But hey ho, you can’t easily explain that to a freaked-out child.
I decided to distract James with lunch and some Peter rabbit. It worked. Mostly.
Before long it was time for Stephen to be woken from his daily nap so I could tag him in and go get Genevieve. The walk home from school was accompanied with friends again, and proved to be lots of fun. However, it did involve a longer route to walk Genevieve’s friend Izzy to her door, so Genevieve was cream crackered when we got home.
She had to go straight in the bath (as mandated by school), and then I had to tag back in with Stephen so he could do some more work. But by this point I was incredibly tired and so it was very challenging looking after both kids. The TV was used whilst I prepped dinner.
Stephen came down for a break and took the kids out in the garden. They had great fun kicking footballs at him. I think he really enjoyed doing something so normal with the kids, even if he couldn’t take part like he used to.
There was suddenly a lot of excitement when James spotted a beetle on the patio steps. The garden’s full of wildlife if you stop to look, but sometime James takes a real fancy to a particular bug. Again, we had to tell him that we couldn’t keep it.
Stephen then took the kids for a walk to see friendly neighbourhood monkey to give me 10 minutes’ peace. It was much appreciated and greatly needed. Today the monkey was working as a signaller. Apparently both children were doing their best to wrestle the flags away from the teddies, so Stephen quickly moved them on.
The kids then had a bit of a run around on the green while Stephen sat on a bench watching them collecting sticks. He desperately wants to run around and chase them but just can’t. He’ll get there soon though.
Bedtime was harder than usual with the dreaded mosquitoes coming back to the forefront of James’s mind. He was distraught. I think we were up and down six times in total before he settled. But once he was asleep, thankfully he stayed that way all night. This was an excellent as I was convinced he’d have nightmares.
I was in bed super early as I was knackered from the day’s antics and was falling asleep on the sofa by 9:30pm. A busy, tiring day.
The Smiths Family Blog 
Well I can talk about malaria but i dont think that would be a good idea.
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