Whatever makes you happy, whatever you want…

We were supposed to be meeting up with Julie, Jack and Maisie today for a Pre Spring Walk but the arranged place is the best part of a 50 miles round trip with an hour drive both ends so when Julie rang to confirm details this morning I was reluctant enough to convince her not to bother too. Maisie is in the last throes of a mild dose of pox so she was quite happy to have a quiet day in anyway.

So I offered D &S the choice of what to do. D chose ‘making an animation’ and came up with an idea for something to do with toast – details of which are over on MMP so there was much doing of that which revolved around him actually eating his breakfast at the same time then he snuggled up alongside me as I edited it in moviemaker and you tubed it. I then got caught up looking at animation workshops and events for children having been all envious of the fab stuff at Animated Exeter that Sarah keeps linking to (finally able to get to her blog today so overdosed on it 🙂 ) and found a very local company that offers schools animation workshops which look fab. I’ve emailed them about the possiblity of D joining a pre organised one or the costs for hosting one and seeing if I can summon up numbers to make it worthwhile, haven’t heard back yet though.

S did some more puzzles – she got out a UK map one with 100 pieces and I was really shocked when I looked down and discovered she’d done a huge chunk of it all by herself 😯 meanwhile D was making all sorts of geomag creations and making them move animation-stylee. I suggested a couple of ideas for geomag animations none of which grabbed him so I set about making my own (took the pics but haven’t done anything with them yet – might task D with putting them in order as it’s simple drag and drop to make the film). The sun was shining in through the window which made D start to make shadow puppets and see what shapes he could cast on the floor with his geomags and panels so I got a big sheet of card and drew round his profile to show him sillhouettes. He then did me, I did Scarlett and then Candle very obligingly stood still in perfect cat profile for us to do her too. 🙂 They liked that idea and we talked a lot about what makes shadows, the sun and it’s path across the sky during the day, things that cast shade and so on. Davies mentioned sun dials again and reminded me that we really should have a go at making one with the right time of year for it on it’s way. We’re using the clock more and more lately with me telling them where the ‘big hand’ will be when we do X but unfortunately although our clock is fairly sized for time telling 😉 it is roman numerals (which did lead to a conversation about roman numerals the other day as they are on one of the W&G x box games so I was explaining 1 to 9 – confusing because my clock has IIII for 4 but the game had IV).

This led to some shadow casting with my artists dummy but by then Scarlett was asking for help with her puzzle so I left Davies to that and went and sat with her for a while. Davies came over (having gotten bored of making the artists dummy shadow dance!) and identified the English, Scottish and Welsh flags and then asked if the Eire one was Germany. We have a flags game which is still unused so I went and got that out – it’s like snap with four each of various countries flags, so he looked at those and asked me which country they all were and found the various UK ones to match to the puzzle. I know virtually nothing about flags so I wouldn’t have identifed most of them without them being labelled underneath but they seemed a fairly bizarre mix with some obvious omissions and some curious inclusions.

We left everything where it was and got coats and shoes on ready to go to the park and meet Lucy, R and R. Davies really didn’t want to go but I decided some fresh air would do us all good. Both of them are quite fragile at the moment getting upset over small things and seeming very ‘tired and emotional’ – hope they are not going down with anything :(. The park was pretty busy being half term *and* a nice afternoon but they all had plenty of goes on things. I pushed both of them on the swings for a while, did some seesawing (excellent thigh exercise seesawing with a small child :shock:) and then Tarly occupied herself with Rebecca while Davies and I had some goes on the roundabout and finally queued up to go on the dish type swing thing. He adored that and had a nice long go before Scarlett, R & R came over to join us. We were there over an hour before deciding to come home again. On the way home Davies suddenly decided he’d go to his room when we got back and watch a film, which he did while the others played. After they had gone he came and had a chat with me about wanting to have more of his friends over and not just people who always want to play with Scarlett. Not at all sure whether this was perfect timing on his part, some overhearing of me talking lately or just sibling-ness but I explained that I do understand we spend lots of time in the company of younger children and that it can sometimes not be that exciting for him but that he does have the chance to suggest and lead games because of that, showed him the couple of things we have booked in for March where he will be spending time with *his* friends – although he did moan that Scarlett would still get to be with *her* friends too 🙄 and then talked to him about having his Beaver friends over for a play. So we agreed he would point out which child/ren he would like to invite and I will work out who their parent is and approach them about coming over, which is a bit of a new challenge (for me! :lol:) but I’m sure will be fine.

And that was about it for today, I think.

Tomorrow I’m working all day and Ady is away (again, sigh :roll:) for the night so expect either silence while I spend the evening making welcome home banners for his return on Friday or blogging aplenty about library related incidents and full details on how great my boss thinks I am ;). Ooh with maybe a side order of cheerleading for autonomy 😉 Give us an A!