One word? When seven would do…

We are sliding ever more towards later bedtimes for the children, the knock on effect of which is that they tend to sleep later in the mornings too – all good :). Scarlett has had a couple of disturbed nights though this week and last night was one of them. Both the children seem to have gone down with a cold in the last two days and she was awake last night complaining of being cold. Ady dealt with it although it kept me awake too so I was glad that no one woke until 8.30am in the end. Ady slept in while I got up with them.

We snuggled on the sofa and watched Croc Files (oh Steve 🙁 ) and chatted a bit about that then we made a wacky wiggler thing together. We’d made one following the instructions yesterday but had clearly not pushed the bits together firmly enough as it kept falling apart – this time we got it spot on so all took great delight in that. Davies and Ady talked a bit about the whole gears side of it and the part of each individual cog in the whole thing being so small and yet so important. Davies read the names of the various creations in the instruction book with minimal help. I’ve noticed a real leap forward in his working out words – for ages he would just repeat the individual letter sounds and not really blend them, now he seems to break them into syllables fairly easily and then blend those – all steps forward :).

Ady got up then, I got dressed and the kids and I made pancakes together while singing ‘Fiesta‘ very loudly in the kitchen – perfect pancake making sound track that 🙂 put me in mind of that Morcombe and Wise breakfast making to music sketch from years ago. Until Davies took the whizzer out of the batter mix while it was still whizzing so he could see how it whizzed 🙄 Fortunately it cleared up pretty quick and I calmed down sufficiently to show him how it worked and explain why it was blades and how I’d originally bought it to whizz up his baby food long, long ago but it also served the purpose of mixing and blending too.

Ady went off to collect some logs while Tarly played on the pc (My Little Pony, Barbie and various other pink and very fluffy websites :)) and Davies and I had a go at draughts. I used to love playing with my Dad when I was little and Ady and I have gone through phases of draught playing championships over the years too. I’ve tried to show him before but he always gets bored of the rules and tries to create his own game loosely based on draughts which I run out of patience for. We managed one game with him getting some of the idea of thinking a move or two ahead and tactical playing. The set also contains chess pieces and he decided he wants to learn that but as I do not know how to play that (my Dad didn’t so I never seemed to learn that one) Ady will have to do that.

Ady brought home a couple of grabber things (the sort people who collect litter use to grab it from the ground and put it in their sack) from the trade show he was at which have proved a great hit with the children so we were reaching things on high shelves with them today. 🙂 We got down a Kitchen Science kit which is from at least three Christmasses ago and had a play with some of the experiments in that. There was a cold tea (from the teapot 😉 ) one where you added various acids and alkalines to it and tested them with litmus paper, mixing oil and water and then adding things like syrup, food colouring etc which was very pretty and has possibly inspired us to create on of those egg timer style lava lamp thingies if we can find a suitable container and finally an experiment on mould where we have put two pieces of bread in sealed bags in the fridge – one with salt and one without, and two pieces on the mantlepiece as a warm place, again one with salt and one without to see which conditions are best for growing mould in. Felt a bit contrived really as it was all very following instructions and what they actually wanted to do was just mix up loads of stuff and not really care about the scientific explanations but somehow because it was a proper set with test tubes and everything I couldn’t bring myself to allow that 😆

Davies then played X box, Ady cooked dinner and Scarlett and I went out for a walk to go and buy some wine. We walked into Lancing (about a mile) chatting as we went about all sorts of things. She is a very different child to Davies and where conversation with him is as easy as with another adult and always seems to have been so I tend to get more childlike responses from Scarlett and conversations are more along the usual walking down the road with a four year old variety of observing things along the way and asking random questions as you go. When we hit the main street she suddenly started letter spotting everywhere – road markings, road signs, drain covers etc and was 100% reliable in spotting the letters in the word SCARLETT and also found a couple from other words such as a D for Davies and a N for Nic – she knows A, B and X from the x box controllers and knows the names of several of the letters in her name too. We went round the shop, queued for ages it’s a little Somerfield which is always busy no matter what time you go in there, and then walked home again. Scarlett did not stop talking for the entire time we were out. 😆 She takes the term ‘chatterbox’ to a whole new level that child. We agreed it had been a very nice walk and arrived home to find a motorbike in our drive announcing a visitor. Tarly predictably tried to climb onto it but was persuaded into the house to see who it belonged to. It was our friend Bruce, who’s wedding we went to nearly a year ago. He was deep in conversation with Ady in the kitchen which seemed very confidential and stopped rather when I came in, so I busised myself in the lounge with the children doing online colouring in of ponies with Tarly and left them to talk.
Lovely roast beef dinner then a peaceful afternoon / evening with more pc games. I showed Davies some of gamegarage and we played several logic and platform games requiring thinking moves through before making then which he seemed to enjoy, there is no doubt that his xbox gaming has brought out a new level to his skills in that area. He has also been asking and talking lots about numbers, playing with multiplication and addition lots and counting up ever higher. He asked me today if there was such a number as 2001 and how long would it take to count to it, so I explained where it was and that actually he could count to it himself if he wanted to, he’s also been adding up 11s. I overheard Ady counting in 3s earlier (no idea what he was counting) and Davies saying ‘you’re missing out numbers Daddy, that’s not how you count’ so Ady explained and I’m sure that will have gone in and resurface at some future point too.
Ady took Scarlett off to bed with bedtime stories while Davies and I watched Ray Mears together, then we have had bath, toast for tea and various bits and pieces of tv watching. It’s been a very nice weekend. 🙂