You can tell it is the Easter holidays when we’ve done battle with Lakeside shopping centre, have cable ties from toys all over the place and the sound of whinging is replaced with inventive play with the newest additions to the toy cupboard! That happened on Monday when we, perhaps, ill advisedly battled the Bank holiday traffic to go to the shops to finally allow the children to spend the vouchers they had received at Christmas. The girls settled for dolls and build a bears, Imp on the other hand chose a remote controlled Sebastian Vettel remote control vehicle! We were a little unsure about him having it as he doesn’t have a wonderful record with them as my skirting boards can attest!
Once home it was out of the box, batteries inserted and whizzing around the place crashing into toes and any other debris that happened to be lying about! It was going so well, we only had to take it away once, due to the fact that he had rammed it into something and smashed one of the wing mirrors off! ‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘He can still see out of the other one!’
I didn’t really suspect anything was up until Tuesday afternoon when I was informed by Hpops that the car was no longer working. this needed a little investigation. I suggested that perhaps the non-stop use had worn out the batteries the car had been supplied with. This seemed a good idea until Imp said;
‘The tyres might still be wet.’ I of course asked why and was informed that in his wisdom and desire to keep the car looking sleep Imp had decided to wash his new car. Of course the car had not taken too kindly to this as it transpired that it had been fully immersed. We hope that if we dried the batteries and terminals the car might be reincarnated but further inspection proved that the circuit boards inside had reacted badly to the soaking! This caused many tears not least because he had a stern talking to about appropriate use of water, the dangers of putting anything in the water and respect for property. Despite his pleas for a replacement and his insistence that he cannot possibly be happy again if he doesn’t have one he has now come to understand that it will not be replaced. The plugs have since been removed from bathroom other than the main one to prevent any of the children playing with water when they shouldn’t be, not least because the leak we had recently caused by the water tank is enough to deal with for now!
I have to confess I do feel a bit sorry for him, we have convinced him to keep it as a model for now and as his birthday is in June we may be able to find something similar, we’ll see. In other news the little two have adjusted to their new beds well. Pixie is delighted to have a ‘big girls’ bed and says it is snuggly and Imp having had a cabin bed which he decided he didn’t like had the legs shortened and is now much happier. In a happy development he has spent much of his time reading by himself, something I never thought I’d be able to say! He has discovered the Tom Gates books and has read two in less than a week, indeed when I got up today to do breakfasts and stop the children fighting over the remotes and so on I found two children still in their rooms, one sleeping, one reading and the third was the one who had asked for food! A very pleasing development!
