but have you ever seen a panther that is pink?
How lovely it is to have children old enough to stagger downstairs, sort them out something to eat and drink and stagger back up to bed again while they entertain themselves. 🙂 I laid in bed for a while reading a book and then dozed off again to the sound of them giggling uncontrolably. I knew what they were giggling about too – they were making up a song about poo. And frankly if I don’t have to listen to it, get to sleep in longer and it bonds them together as siblings in crime then songs about poo rock with me :).
I made a picnic while watching the wonderful Ken Robinson as linked to on Making It Up and then we went to collect Lucy, R and R for a trip to Paradise Park. It’s been a while since we’ve been but Lucy and I had decided to go halves on a family annual pass which gets us in together for free for a year and enables either of us to come with one extra adult and two extra children as well 🙂 All for twenty quid each :). The children mostly entertained themselves on the journey over there while Lucy and I talked autonomy (I just can’t stop 😉 ) and then we had a most enjoyable walk round there. They have added various new bits and pieces and some work is still in progress, coupled with which every time we visit the children seem to pick up on something new. Davies always staggers me by remembering all the names of the various dinosaurs (on the way there he was telling Richard about how some dinosaurs eat meat and some eat plants. I don’t think he realised that Richard’s ‘yeses’ in response to some of his questions mightn’t have necessarily indicated full understanding and comprehension 😆 We’d talked about rainbows and light prisms recently and there was a good poster explaining that better than I had managed so we looked at that and I was a bit teachery with some of the questions I was asking them as we went round to prompt stuff we’ve talked about before but they were both in the right frame of mind for it and enjoyed chatting and asking questions about stuff. 🙂 All very educational 🙂 As ever during holiday time they had some sort of treasure hunt going on – this time it was 12 pictures of dogs posted around the place with names underneath, the entry form had the names of the dogs as anagrams so although we didn’t actually find the last one we completed those and posted them in the box. I got Davies to spell out the names of each and he attempted to read a couple of them too. On the way home in the car he was calling out various strings of letters and asking me what they said so we talked a bit about vowels.
So, some educational bits about our planet, lots of physical exercise and then a good old play in the play area afterwards while we ate lunch. I happened to have 40 pence so when both D & S had been looking at the various amusements wistfully for a while I gave them one 20 p token each to use. They spent ages walking round trying to decide what to spend it on. D chose a grabber type machine where he tried to win a cuddly fish (and naturally didn’t) and S after lots and lots of consideration including wanting to spend hers on something she could ‘share with Davies’ had a go on a Pink Panther ride. D had a bit of a moment about not winning which he took a bit of cajoling out of but I explained the rather crap odds of such ‘gambling’ machines and eventually he smiled again (but we took some pictures of us frowning just for fun anyway!). For the last 15 minutes or so they played in a small soft play area where D made a couple of friends including introducing himself to one of them’s parents and grandparents and inviting him over for tea one day. I watched from afar as D chatted to his audience of four adults, using his hands to make some point and getting indulgent smiles all round, one of them leant forward to ruffle his hair and they all stood and watched him walk away with ‘what a lovely boy’ looks on their faces as he made his way back over to me. He simply replied ‘oh stuff’ with an airy wave of his hand when asked what he’d been talking to them about but had clearly made an impression. 🙂 Love my boy :). He seems to have taken ‘making friends to play with including inviting them back to play at my house’ fairly seriously and is on an all out mission to do so!
On the way home both D&S were on a mission to not let me talk to Lucy but managed it very well by engaging me in intelligent conversation. We talked about the whole vowels thing and then spotted some very small lambs which led to a chat about why we couldn’t have one (it’d need it’s mothers milk) which led to a chat about how breastmilk / mothers milk is utterly tailor made for that baby including Scarlett giving a very well thought out example of Layla and how she stopped making milk when Claudia stopped needing it but started again when Jasper did. For a not remotely militant or extended breastfeeder I appear to have very committed to breastfeeding children :). At everyone’ insistence Lucy and co came back here for a coffee with the idea that I drop them home on my way to work which didn’t quite happen as Ady scraped home with mere seconds to spare to get me to work on time so as he pulled up outside I leapt in his car and went off to work and he leapt in my car and took Lucy and co home, then brought D & S back for tea and bath while I did a two hour stint at the library, which all but paid for my season ticket at Paradise park today :).
Home again for bedtime with the children, reunion with Ady and a rather lovely (if I do say so myself) curry with lots of ‘accessories’ (bhajhees, poppadums, naan bread etc) and wine. 🙂 We watched taped Masterchef with me asking A lots of ‘is he like that in real life’ type questions and then some back to back Dinner Ladies on UKGold – oh Victoria Wood is so great :).