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First shoes and forgotten riches...

by bean a' chroiteir - 07:16 on 07 May 2010

Cold weather here, unseasonably cold. But it’s dry. Lambing continues to go well and with over thirty lambs we’re over half way now. Every year I forget that they cry for their mammies just as much as new born babies! My early morning walk is now punctuated by calls of, “maaaam” and mums either returning their calls or leaving them to cry! Our two early lambs are so much bigger than the rest. One of them in particular is a real character. He can be found most mornings down by the gate of No. 7 where there is a huge rock that he likes to stand on and jump on and off– his own personal playground! This morning walk also brought me my first cuckoo call of the year – eight day ago, but no further sound of the woodpecker – do they head off for the summer? I don’t know!

The Toddling Crofter and I had a trip to Inverness earlier in the week, the main reason for the trip was an appointment with the surgeon for a post-op check. I’m pleased to say that all is well and he was officially discharged. Phew! Glad that’s all over! We celebrated by going to buy him his first pair of shoes – Doodles! He has taken to them very well and shows them off as proudly as every other toddler with their first shoes. The highlight of his day was surely the train journey home – he sat nicely on his seat in the carriage and munched his way through a dozen cream cracker and goodness knows what else before deciding to explore (the train was quiet) – we walked up and down the aisle for a wee while, Mr Independent coming to the fore and not letting me hold onto him as the train rattled and shook it’s way along the track. Then he discovered the place where the carriages join onto each other – where there is always a bit of shoogling, swaying and lurching – he loved it and we spent ages crossing over it time after time! I remember liking it myself when I was wee, though older than he is, with my imagination running riot that I could somehow slip through onto the track and be left behind! It seems that he is finally finding a bit of bravery from somewhere! He’s even enjoying rough and tumble play – and needs to visit a soft play centre!! His speech is coming on too with new sounds each day – every sheep, cow and tractor we saw from the train window was greeted with a, “hello tractor/cow/sheep, bye-bye tractor/cow/sheep” which is fine except that he expects me to echo him which quickly becomes a bit wearying!

The Teenage Crofter came home from badminton last night beaming – they’d had a tournament and he’d won all of his six matches to scoop first place. I think he was most pleased to have beaten a fourth year! He was sporting (another!) medal and a voucher for a sports shop. All this lunchtime practise at school must be paying off! He took himself off to the local muga pitch at the weekend with his new basketball and called a couple of his pals from his mobile – seems they had a great time. I love how he is independent enough now to catch buses here and there. He is also earning extra pocket money doing the bins at his Auntie Ailsa’s house! Sadly though, he really let the side down yesterday at the high school’s mock election…he made the great mistake of voting for the candidate he recognised rather than voting on policy. I can’t bring myself to say who he voted for but my shame makes it fairly obvious…as did his Granda’s expletive response on hearing the news!!!

Elsewhere…

Blindness…I’m going to have to start wearing my glasses outside – I almost ignored our neighbours out on the road last night as I mistook them for tourists! It was only when they called over that I realised my mistake…and was very embarrassed!

Forgotten riches…got a (very) rare bank statement from the Royal Bank of Canada  yesterday. It seems I’m richer than I thought…$4.55 richer, to be precise. Now to convince the Crofter that a trip to NS/CB to spend it is viable…!

Revamped website…been working on a new website for myself since my core work is quite different to what I anticipated it would be when I set out on the road of self-employment over 18 months ago. I should point out that this is a good thing – I’m not having to do any book-keeping at all and am involved in so many exciting projects that it doesn’t often feel like proper work!

A’ Fàs Mòr/Growing Up…The Toddling Crofter and I spent an hour at Fàs Mòr (the local Gaelic nursery) yesterday. We thought we’d take him for an hour now and again to get used to it in case we ever need to send him for an hour or a morning or whatever…not that we want to!! True to form, he liked it well enough but he’d have enjoyed it far more if there were no other children there…! (Sound like anyone you know Granny?!)

Complaint of the Week: Jack Russells shed enough hair without actually moulting too…yuck!

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