Giant Eyeballs and Thunderstorms

I have been feeling so lazy lately! I'm not sure if it's the change in diet - it's been almost a week now since being vegetarian....you know I don't like saying I'm a vegetarian, it's like I'm setting myself limitations, and I feel like I've put myself in a box. I've never liked being put in a box, when I was a teenager I never fitted into any category. I liked a bit of punk, a bit of hip hop, and a bit of this and that but I could never say that I was any type of person, I like to pinch a bit here and there, take the bits I like and leave the rest. Now that I've decided that I want to be vegetarian I feel like this massive pressure to NEVER EAT MEAT AGAIN!!! but I actually liked eating meat. I just don't want to eat it most of the time. I want to be mostly vegetarian, go for as long as happily possible without eating meat, and then maybe if I feel like it, have a bit then not eat any more for as long as possible again. I know loads of vegetarians are gonna be saying things like "well, you can't call yourself a vegetarian then!" I don't want to call myself a vegetarian! to call it what it really is, is a bit of a mouthful - "I'm on a plant-based diet with a bit of meat every now and then"..........it'd be good if there was a name for that! kind of like a chimpanzees diet! except they don't do any cooking....
So far, it's been ok without the meat, I'm not a big fan of Quorn though...I prefer proper veggie meals rather than ones pretending to be meat....

Anyway, enough about me........

Alex told me something today that was very strange and somewhat revealing......I just have to fill you in a bit first.....when Alex was about 2 we had quite a few tragedies regarding pets in a very short space of time, our old dog Lucy died(she was 17), our cat got run over, one of our rabbits got attacked by a neighbours dog...and Alex happened to see the remains of the poor rabbit :( and I'm pretty sure it caused a bit of post traumatic stress because he had quite a few problems after that, but only being 2, he couldn't talk about it. This afternoon, I was upstairs sorting clothes, he was downstairs, Jamie was at a friends house and Amelia was having her nap, he came up to me and said that he remembered when the rabbit died and we were burying it or something, we told him not to look(I think this was when I had to carry him past the dead rabbit), he said he looked and saw it's eyeball move and it really scared him! And immediately I remembered that he used to say that every night he dreamt of a giant eyeball that was trying to get him!! He's had that image in his head all this time and couldn't say anything, it must've been locked up there and only coming out in anxieties and for some reason, now he could tell me!  I wonder what caused him to remember? and I wonder if now he's said it, it will change anything? Anyway, I'm just glad that he was able to tell me, after all this time. I tried to reassure him that the rabbit was definitely dead, but I wasn't sure if that was helping, at that moment Amelia woke up and he went rushing to see her.

Things have been better between Alex and Jamie. They made up an island that their toys could live on. They built a house out of boxes and books. Alex put on a show for me playing a Ukelele, We talked about gravity, and why people in Australia are upside-down but don't fall off the world!  We talked about inheritance tax, because my nan died the other day :( We watched some of the Olympics, Alex particularly loved the mens gymnastics(I knew he would!) and immediately started copying them - or at least tried to!

The island designed by both of them, drawn by Jamie

 

Our Butterfly's have emerged! And we missed them every time! I kept going over to check up on them, and then during a big thunderstorm they came out while we were looking in the sky for lightning. The rain came down so hard and Jamie stood outside through the whole thing, getting absolutely soaked through!
Jamie and Alex had to name the butterfly's now that they're butterfly's apparently they hadn't earnt a name when they were caterpillars! Sunshine, Lollipop, and Lizard. The first one to pupate, the one that fell on the floor, hasn't done anything, and the last caterpillar didn't make it, it never got bigger than about 1.5cm, the little guy just didn't grow :( But the other 3 are fine and ready to be released in a day or two.

lollipop..or Sunshine....or is it Lizard??

There were lots of other things too....I'll start jotting things down as they happen, that might help me to remember. Last week I had a complete break from everything and just let the kids do what they wanted more or less, but this week we're gonna start doing stuff again :)