Watch and learn, baby brother...

Clinging on to some semblence of days of the week by a thread at the moment. Desperate for some vague weekly routine!

After a mammoth sleep for the boys (I refused to get up at 7, they refused to leave me, they gave up and went back to sleep and we woke again at 10!!) Ben and Charley went exploring to Grandma and Grandad's room by themselves, came back and got dressed and headed off downstairs together. Charley is now confident enough on the stairs to be allowed to go up and down by himself - this morning he must have gone down and up 5 or 6 times, just for the fun of it!

Ben had THREE breakfasts (making up for two basically starvation days), and Charley had a fair amount too. Such a relief to see them both eating again.

Went out for a rainy walk before lunch, took both the boys with me to get some air and exercise (although Charley was wrapped with the intention of him sleeping) and flour for biscuit making.

It has been another dough day. We made chocolate biscuit dough and Ben helped squash it together before it went in the fridge to chill. Charley tried to reset the washing machine before mum rescued him/it. They both played with playdough while the biscuit dough chilled, Ben cutting more stars out, and Charley trying to eat it (He likes cat biscuits and playdough. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that), and then Ben decided he needed to cut the points of the stars off to make them into biscuits. Mum and I weren't sure we understood what was going on but gave him some scissors anyway and watched as he made biscuits by snipping the points of the playdough stars off. When that got too stressful I substituted the scissors for a wooden knife which thankfully Ben found just as satisfactory. Then Ben spent an amazing length of time focussed on his chosen activity of squashing the biscuit dough down and cutting stars out to make our real biscuits.

And after all that, he doesn't like them!!!!

The day's fun didn't end there. Before dinner Charley was doing his usual exploring thing, this time exploring his mouth with his fingers. He discovered his gag reflex. The third time he threw up. Great, I thought, he has Discovered, maybe he won't do that again! Then he shovels pasta into his mouth like it's going out of fashion, drinks a third of his juice in one go, shoves his fingers into his mouth and brings the lot back up!!

What am I going to do with my boys?!

And finally, on the job front, I am all over the place emotionally with regards the China job. Really really all over. Just how permanent is permanent? How much of an adventure would it be? How isolated would I really be? How much more finished would the house get while we were gone? How quickly would I fade from the lives left back here? When would we come back? Where would we come back to? How would I keep the messy mama going? Is it really where God wants us to go? That's the biggie really. Is it where God wants us to go. If it was us going because that's where the world said we should go, but God was saying something else, then that would be wrong. Chatting to Steve this evening I was excited and crying at the same time. Still, he's got two other companies here in the UK eager to talk to him before he thinks about accepting any offer from the China job...