Exhausted

After two weeks of school holidays in which the boys (particularly Callum) regularly refused to go to sleep until 9 or even 10 (that was Callum reading under the bed clothes), both boys were fast asleep at 8 tonight. Callum's book thumping to the floor from his listless fingers at 7.55 was a giant clue.

Not sure how Evan finaly managed to tire them out - I think it was the resumption of the swimming lessons. School tomorrow, which I think they are both looking forward to.

Old technology

We have one of our early mobile phones in the dressup box - a Nokia that was the height of technological cool when Evan first got it eons ago (in tech-years, at least). Declan was playing with it. I asked him who he was phoning. "It's not a phone, Jennifer, it's a walkie-talkie!... reporting to Echo Base...reporting to Echo Base..."

Mad doctor

Yesterday we went for lunch at the Gaynor Vincent's place, with the Linigen Langdons also. It's a great place for children to have a run in doors, as there is a nice wide hallway which runs the (considerable) length of the house without any stairs.

All five children (with poor Zoe tending to trail a bit, but not seeming to mind) made up a game which involved Callum being a doctor who was trying to immunise them all, and the rest of them running shrieking away from him any time he got near them.

ATYP

This week the boys have been doing ATYP - just in the mornings. This morning they had their end of week "show" which was less of a show than normal, since it was only four mornings of classes. The teacher led them through some of the various imaginative playing they had been doing, "pretend to be a rocket. Now you've landed on the planet bounce. Now get back in your rocket. Now you've landed on the planet sophisticated".

They also had to pretend to be things in a very weird kitchen - things you wouldn't normally see in a kitchen - Callum chose to be a TV (which I found amusing, as I'm sure they're quite common these days) and Declan chose to be a lightning conductor.

Callum, as always, loved it, but Declan was quite nervous about the idea of a show, and actually said he didn't want to go this morning. But during the "show" itself, he was fine.

Sharing

Declan worked out how to spell 'finish' by himself and so I gave him a special treat. For us a 'special treat' is generally a few mini M&Ms, and so he received four or five. He contemplated them for a moment and then utterly without prompting went and gave half of them to Callum.

I'm so proud of him.

Folk Songs

About a year ago, my parents gave me the present of an old record I loved as a child - Australian Folk Songs, by Alex Hood - on CD. In the past month or so, we've been playing it for the boys after they've gone to bed.

Tonight, Declan, unprompted, asked whether he could have the music on, and specifically mentioned his favourite by singing the first verse - the Queensland Drover (happens to be my favourite as well).

I suspect that, once upon a time, knowing the words to Australian folk songs would have been a useful life skill (particularly if you could also play the guitar). Now, I suspect, it is a small obscure piece of knowledge, shared with few (but it gives me a warm feeling to share it with Declan).

Looking after Declan

The boys are doing ATYP this week, and, for a rarity, are in the same class. They were both very pleased when they found this out, particularly Declan, and it's paid off.

They both explained to us this afternoon that a boy had been bullying Declan just before the class started (and Declan's friend Patrick) and Callum had told the boy to leave them alone, had protected Declan, and then gone to find the teacher. Although Declan was clearly a bit shaken by the experience (of having his face pushed into a crashmat), it was good that Callum was there to look after him, and good for them both to work as a team.

Recording for posterity

During our trip to Questacon Canberra, we saw a stage show about Newtonian physics (Boom Crash Boing!). Callum was thrilled to be invited on stage as a volunteer. He got to drop a ball, demonstrating potential energy turning into kinetic energy, and go and fetch a banana for the presenter (after first very convincingly going bananas, after being asked to do so by Sven the presenting crash test dummy).

When Callum looked at his watch on stage during a bit of exposition from the presenter (an explanation of kinetic energy), I was worried he was bored. He wasn't. It turned out that he was checking the exact time so that he could record the exact time of the thrilling moment in his Canberra diary.

Canberra visit

It being school holidays, we decided a little bit of a holiday was in order, and we spent the weekend in Canberra. We drove down on Friday afternoon (after a compulsory stop at the Lolly Swagman in Berrima), and then had two nights at a serviced apartment in Kingston before driving back this afternoon.

Highlights: Questacon (of course!) for Callum - the inventions gallery (with its demonstration safe), and the newtonian physics show at Questacon for Evan. For Declan and me, a visit to the National Gallery's Turner to Monet exhibition was lovely. Not so much because the show was great (it was a bit of a mixed bag - some fantastic paintings, and quite a few paintings that appered there to make up the numbers), but for me, because both boys were reasonably willing to spend a bit of time there, and for Declan because he got a spirograph pen with his own pocket money from the gift shop.

Lowlights: a lack of sleep, because Callum failed utterly to sleep on Friday night (for no obvious reason), and Declan spent much of Saturday night vomiting.

I was, like,

Declan is turning into a Valley Girl (or whatever the modern equivalent is). Whenever he is describing a situation to us, and his own actions, he will say, "I was, like, running fast, and, like, he was catching up to me"

I assume he's picked it up from school, because I don't think anyone in the house talks that way (although I may have missed it!)

Spelling

I was reading tonight to Declan, about the growing human body. We got to a little section about children starting school, and how they start to learn to read and write. I said to Declan, "you're learning to read, aren't you?". He replied, "yes, but I don't write very well." When I started to protest, he cut in, "I can spell 'poo', though!"

Capitalism

This evening, after dinner, Declan decided to make fans with me. I had to help him a fair bit through the paper folding part of the excercise, but once that was finished he took each fan off to bind one end with black tape.

"Jennifer, I think we should sell these fans to people. We can tell them that they are special because they have special black tape on them. We'll take them out into the streets and say, ''Fans for sale! Only 9 dollars! with special black tape!'""

I don't know if that is related to an earlier conversation I had with him in which I explained that I had to go to work tomorrow (even though it is school holidays) because that's how we got money to buy things.

School holidays

Today was the last day of school term. Declan celebrated tonight, just before bed, by writing a note for both his and Callum's bed. "no school tomorrow". Callum went one better, and wrote himself a more detailed note, which he bluetacked where he was sure to see it in the morning - "no school from 11.04.08 to 01.05.08". He was a bit disappointed when I pointed out to him that he was going back to school on the 29th.

They both seem to be enjoying school this year - Callum, I think more than last year (although that impression is always gained eliptically, rather than him telling me anything), but they're both ready for a holiday, too.

Noses turned up

In a "I can't be bothered cooking" moment tonight, I ordered Thai from our local, Stir Crazy. It's one of the better Thai takeaways around, and as I said to the boys, of course you should like it! Noodles - very similar to pasta - with chicken and tofu, and not much spice (we had Pad Thai). Also, spring rolls, and money bags, which are basically fried pastry wrapped around corn and peas.

Callum very patiently explained to me that, "not everyone has the same tastebuds, Jennifer, and I really don't like it."

I'm going to have to find another Thai restaurant I like, with a completely different name, so that they don't realise.

Excursion

Yesterday, Callum went on an excursion to Bondi Beach. Evan got to go with him. Callum says,
"We made a museum at the beach out of lots of things, even cigarette butts! Then we made a giant blue-ring octopus out of sand. We pushed our feet in the sand and then dragged them along to make the octopus.

Evan and our guide stood far apart to mark out how long some whales were. The hump-back whale was as big as 20 of my biggest steps. The blue whale was as big as 44 of my biggest steps."

Where is the Green Sheep?

Tonight, after reading Declan his bednight story, I left him with the book Where is the Green Sheep? because he wanted some more stories. I told him to try reading it.

Ten minutes later he called me back upstairs, wanting to read it to me. He was very proud of himself. While six months ago he could recite it by looking at the pictures, this time he could read nearly all the words (although he was still a little inclined to guess at the adjectives from the pictures). He put on expression for his favourite parts (yawning and pretending to be sleepy for the bed sheep, for example), and commenting to me on how he'd worked out some of the words through a combination of sounding out the words and looking at the pictures.

It was lovely to see him reading aloud voluntarily.

Brackets

Over dinner tonight, Callum (as he often does) decided to set Declan an arithmetic question. This time it was about brackets. "Declan, what's (20-10)+(30-20)+(40-30)?". Declan, quite reasonably, refused to answer, but it's interesting to find out, even peripherally, what Callum is learning at school these days.

Just by the by, Declan's arithmetic is now around the stage where he can generally do adding and subtracting if all the numbers involved are under 10, and has some success with multiplication and division in the same range.

April Fool!

Evan explained April Fools Day to Callum and Declan for the first time this year. They were very taken with it, particularly Callum. Callum took the opportunity to:

• pour water all over Evan
• Throw cushions down the stairs at me
• Ring Grandma to tell her he saw a NZ spy at Greenwood
• Ring Grannie to tell her that our grandfather clock had disappeared.

I'm not sure if either grandmother really understood what was going on, even after Callum exclaimed, "April Fool!" but he sure had a good time.