Fourteen weeks + 5

My Mom, and her friend Pam, thinks that Xander is going through puberty early and that's why we are having so much trouble with him, I think that Neil and I have come to the same conclusion. It's hard when  some of the time Xander is so kind and thoughtful, it just makes his stroppy moods and his lousy attitude at other times seem so much worse. It all came to a head (again) on Tuesday night, he upset me so much that I just sent him upstairs for a shower and told him not to come back down, but to go straight to bed. So yesterday morning when he got up he was quite surprised to find out that he was on a ban (electrical), "you never told me I was on a ban", well I'm a fair parent and I normally give at least one warning before I put any ban in place, but as I pointed out to Xander I was so upset I couldn't speak to him on Tuesday, therefore the ban was implied. He accepted that, and yesterday we went about repairing our broken relationship. We did things together (apart from when I had to go to Uni, they don't like you taking your kids with you, funny that), he did puzzles while I washed up, and we cooked the dinner together, we even all went to the woods (all except Neil, he was at work). Then in the evening Xander was allowed to watch TV, as a reward for his good behaviour in the day. I will try to spend today doing the same sort of things and slowly, maybe reintroduce the XBox. I don't blame the XBox for spoiling my relationships with both of my boys, but it doesn't help. I've told Xander that XBox use for him will only be the direct result of a major change in attitude, and can be removed again at any point. I wouldn't mind but the XBox he uses is actually Neils, so I can't exactly remove it. Oh well this process is going to be ongoing and I'm sure that Xander will be in my blog regularly, but lets hope it's as much for his kindness and specialness, rather than his behaviour.

What am I going to do with myself today, well I'd normally have Summerhill this morning, but as it's half term, I don't think I need to go. I am actually having lunch with Carla, which will be so great, we hardly speak to each other at the moment, never mind see each other. She is so busy with all her college students, and I'm , well I'm so busy with everything in my life, we just don't seem to have the time to catch up any more. So lunch it is, and a lot of chatting, my boys asked if they could come with us, so I said, they could as long as they paid for themselves, so that solved that quite quickly. We are going to the Harvester, which when he was little Xander used to call "the eating place", Carla and I still do, but Xander now calls it the Harvester, isn't it sad sometimes that they grow up. Will used to call his fingers, "fingles", I miss that too. I mean how did it all fly by so fast, Will is so grown up, and in his last year at school, and Xander, well we won't go there, but still, it goes so fast! 

I think that after I've been a "lady that lunches", I'll get both of the boys to come to the field with me, I like them to have a little bit of fresh air and they didn't fall out with each other at the woods yesterday. All this is in preparation for them being left together on Saturday night, Will has lost out on a babysitting gig because of it (I do hope I don't have to pay him) so I really hope it goes OK. I don't expect that anything bad will happen, just that Xander won't do what Will tells him to do, and Will will then be on the phone to us every 5 minutes (trust me I know my boys). My solution is not to tell Xander to do what Will says, but to tell Will not to tell him to do anything, then they can't go wrong, can they. Is that a slightly backwards plan, or do you think that it may work? We will have to wait and see about that one.

Right I'm going to have myself another cup of coffee before Xander gets up, and I think I'll see if I can't find a nice recipe for a cake for us to make this morning, as part of our relationship fixing, it's bound to work better if it's centred around food.