Brownsea Island

Love is

A small girl, pampering her mother at Brownies. A back and neck massage, a hand rub, nail painting, hair brushing, and foot weirdery.

Love is sitting still as a small child paints my nails, and leaving the varnish on overnight, even though I feel as though my fingers are suffocating under it.

Love is playing bingo together, winning, and letting the small one eat the creme egg prize without assistance.

Love is spending time together, valuing the thought and care, and appreciating the closeness.

And it can only possibly be love which kept me sitting as my head was scraped and poked by a very very strange metal head massaging wire brush/egg whisk thingy.

But it requires no effort at all to enjoy holding hands and snuggling and being told I'm the best mummy in the whole wide world and that I should alax more often.

So the question is, how long does love dictate I should allow my fingers to remain in a state of suffocation?

Tia

Growing Up

I have just dropped the Little Princess off at her Brownie Sleepover. She had a practice run back in the summer, staying until bedtime and then coming home. At 11PM, still full of joy and enthusiasm and thinking that she might want to stay next time.

So when this next sleepover came, tLP was quite excited. And then worried, and then excited again. And then we started making plans.

Our aim was to be free from overnight tubes by this point. We haven't quite managed that, but she is able to direct one of the Brownie Guiders well enough that hooking her up won't be a problem.

She didn't want the Brownies to see her on her Nippy (ventilator). And she was worried that it might be too noisy. So she spoke to the respiratory nurse herself, to ask if she could leave it off for one night. And received permission to do so.

She has gone without her gastrostomy extension tube, and so will be taking all her meds orally. Even the ones which don't taste nice. She has chosen to avoid the leg bag option, and will therefore have to take responsibility for noticing when she needs to cath. She has stripped down her morning and evening routines to the bare minimum, and is confident enough that I know she will either manage herself, or manage to direct others to help her with all the bits she really can't avoid doing.

And she has remembered her torch, her apron, her pencil case with sharpened pencils, two pints of milk, and her craft tubs.

Not bad for seven!
Tia

Beat the Guides

 One for local readers - we sent the Guides out last night to try to identify these and other locations. All within an easy walk of church. They had to match them in the dark. Any one fancy having a go?
Tia

Beginning and the End

 I promise that I will do my best to love my God, to serve my queen and my country, to help other people, and to keep the Brownie Guide law.

Hello, tLP, the newest Brownie Guide. And goodbye, Mog, the oldest Brownie and very shortly now the newest Guide of all.

Officially fully enrolled Brownies for one evening only, but both thoroughly pleased about it.

Tia

Beautiful Day

 "Today is a beautiful day," said the Little Princess (on waking at half past six in the morning, but perhaps we won't dwell on that), "because today I get to wear my Brownie Uniform."

And so she did.

"I was a Rainbow, but now I am a Brownie. And this is my Brownie Uniform, and it is for beautiful me on a beautiful day, and you are a beautiful Mummy because you did get it just for me."

And I'm recording verbatim as I had to go back through the archives here yesterday, looking for a certain key date (nb L - 5 years, not 6; I feel better about that although I'm not sure why!), and I found some of tLP's earlier speeches recorded. And I had forgotten how hard she has worked to become the articulate girl she is today. It's easy to get fixated on the bits she gets wrong and forget to celebrate how far she's come.

 It was and is a beautiful day, too. Miss Mog here somewhat inelegantly supporting the Swedish banners - our Brownies having been chosen to represent Sweden in the Division On Your Marks Olympic Event. Mog took part in the opening ceremony, carrying the Brownie Flag as the oldest Brownie in the pack. 

Our Guides made do with a hurriedly scribbled blue cross on the back of a couple of white permission slips to represent Finland - sorry guys; we brought the girls but not the gear. 

Being with our Guides, I missed Miss Mog and tLP attempt their own version of a Haka. I saw their handmade Olympic torches, and I cheered them on in the obstacle courses (whilst also taking note of our fleetest Guides and mentally assigning to them the role of gopher at summer camp).

It's been a long time since I made it to a Division event (GirlGuiding UK is divided up in to regions, then counties, then divisions and then districts. Our district is very very local, our division is our town). Lovely to see Guides and Brownies and Rainbows all mixing and joining in, in an afternoon formally opened by our Division President, who just happens to be my old Guider. You might get too old to wear the uniform (although there's always the Trefoil Guild), but you never stop being a Guide. 

tLP's first official event as a Brownie, and Miss Mog's last; she will be joining us at Camp as a Guide, meaning that once again, we will have three generations in Blue. 

And so a beautiful day. Just enough (OK, more than enough) wind to keep the flags flying (sorry about the hurdle races, but hey, they weren't wheelchair accessible anyway), enough sun to bring out a nice pink glow without frying anyone too badly, and the most perfect note of all; flash storms and torrential rain which started two minutes after I'd pulled out of the car park and stopped just as I pulled up outside Miss Mog's respite centre. Sorry for those of you who got stuck with the clearing up though!

And now Miss Mog is in respite, and very pleased to be there in her Brownie Uniform, showing off all her badges. The Little Princess is enjoying the non-sleeping part of the Brownie Sleepover, and so whilst I wait for a call letting me know the others are off to bed and can I pick her up, I have the house to myself. A properly beautiful day, and a first for a Saturday night, I think. 

Tia

Party season

Tuesday, Ladies' night out.
Friday, Christmas Lunch.
Saturday, Christmas Party.
Sunday, Carol Service, pre-Christmas Lunch, mini school reunion.
Monday, today, the Guides Christmas Party.

Mog was poorly last week. Made it into school for nearly a whole day before being banished once more, but had an excellent extended weekend of parties. Yesterday, she was fine; last night she was very not fine, and today she seems absolutely fine except for one smallish issue - she keeps forgetting to breathe. I don't mind her obstructive apnoeas; at least I can usually hear her struggling. These ones though the only warning is the beep of the monitor as her sats drop into the 70s. A gentle nudge and she breathes again, laughing at my concerned face.

So, plenty on my mind, and a few days where we've only been at home in order to sleep. Which is my attempt at an excuse for having forgotten until this morning that I was supposed to make a piñata for the Guide Christmas party. Thankfully, two things we're not short of in this house are old paper and flour. Resurrecting a flattish balloon from Friday's party, I made a start. Having coated the kitchen in a fine layer of drips, I stood, holding one very soggy balloon, and wondered what to do with it next.

Hurrah for ceiling track hoists!
And hurrah again for baby baths to catch the drips.

Two hours under the fan heater, and we were ready for the second layer. Second layer taking significantly longer to dry, I had a prolonged and eloquent debate on facebook researched the possibility of using the microwave to speed things along.
Before realising that the gold paper probably wouldn't make the microwave very happy.

Beautiful!

But very soggy. No problem, shorten the ribbon, bring it closer to the fan heater.
Did you know, warm air makes balloons expand? And that an expanding balloon will push apart soggy Papier-mâché turning your beautiful giant bauble into something more closely resembling an elderly daffodil bulb post flowering?

No matter. Pop the balloon, and bake the beastie until it is rock hard and only slightly scorched around the edges.
Remove from oven, allow to cool. Cool some more. And some more. And some more. And then fill with chocolates, party poppers, glitter.

Decorate. Realise you have created something which looks less Faberge and more as though your five year old brought it back from school having made every step of it herself. Debate allowing her to take credit, before deciding she'd tell everyone the truth anyway.

Sit back, wrap pass the parcel, attempting to create inclusive forfeits.

Sit down again. Stand up, visit bathroom, realise you may have more work left than you first thought.
Take a closer look at the floor, the kitchen, the playroom, the sink, the oven and the radiator.

Sigh.

Go to Guides.
Tia

I promise...to help other people

But do I help them by holding their hair out of the way, or by encouraging them to dunk that apple really deep?
Tia

Take three sausages and a bowl of rice

Add tomatoes, onions, cheese, and a bunch of Girl Guides.

Factor in a newly fitted smoke alarm in the church hall, and decide to move the cooking competition into the carpark. Pray for good weather, remind the girls to bring coats, consider lighting options and decide that the darkness adds an extra dimension. Discover that Brownies with Sparklers are an extra complication.

And then enjoy Vesuvius

Mix and match for the picky eaters patrol
Enjoy the "better than my Dad's" tomato risotto ring.
and appreciate the optimism of the cunningly disguised carbonised sausages in the "pretend it's a pizza" entry.
Hand those same girls chocolate pudding, chocolate, chocolate biscuits. And watch as three patrols make a chocolate cheesecake style desert. And one group create this
Poo on a plate, with biscuits.

Much washing up - and one group not only washed and cleared their own stuff in record time, but then happily helped the others - now that's living the Promise! Only casualties the teatowels - I would love to know what it is about the snowy whiteness of a crisp clean teatowel which provokes the apparently irresistible urge to use it to polish greasy gas stoves, mop floors, clean mud off shoes, and finally wipe tables. Still, sharp knives and no cuts. Rationed cooking equipment and no fights. Rearranged patrols and no arguments. Raw meat and no food poisoning. And at least one girl planning to repeat the meal for her own family's dinner later in the week. Not bad!

Tia

20.10 20/10 2010

One hundred years ago (give or take a few months), a group of girls had the audacity to turn up to Baden-Powell's Boy Scout Rally. They told him they were Girl Scouts; he was adamant they weren't and they couldn't be.

And then people persuaded him that really he might be able to do something for the girls too. And so he persuaded his sister Agnes to do something, and she wrote a tediously worthy little book called "How Girls Can Help to Build up The Empire". And that might have been it, but it wasn't, and Girl Guiding grew anyway, and eventually his wife became involved.

And now, a hundred years later, we celebrated by renewing our promises as Guides, Brownies (not Rosebuds), and Rainbows at 20.10 on the 20th day of the 10th month, in the year 2010.

That first rally was outdoors, muddy, mostly boys, and the girls came in long skirts with packs on their backs. This ceremony was managed via internet link, and our girls were in their uniform of pink and navy, with jeans and trousers and hot pants and miniskirts. We had a Glowsticks campfire, and the only men a handful of parents come to see their daughters receive Baden-Powell Awards. Although, as we were using the theatre belonging to a local independent boys' boarding school, I suppose the ratio of boys to girls in the wider vicinity was possibly not dissimilar.

I wonder what Lord B-P would've thought about it? About GirlGuiding as it is today, and about the celebrations we had. Such an outdoorsy man; I'm not convinced a warm centrally heated theatre would have been an acceptable option to him. But I hope the continuance of the movement he started, however reluctantly, would have brought him pleasure. And I hope he'd recognise some of his ideals in what we have today.

But for now, Day is done, gone the sun, from the sea, from the hills, from the sky. As we go, this we know, God is nigh.

Tia

I promise

I promise that I will do my best to love my GodAnd to be kind and helpful.

And I promise
to laugh at my sister making her promise and to use my talking book to demand music, repeatedly. And to enjoy Brownies even when I am horizontal.

Tia