Bumped head

When I got home on Friday night, it was to the news that Declan had missed school after lunch because he had bumped his head. And he did have the most enormous bump on the back of the head.

Evan had been called to school at the end of lunchtime, when Declan had told one of the teachers about it. Declan had actually bumped his head (by being accidentally pushed over by one of his classmates) at the beginning of lunchtime, but had gone on to the computer club for the whole of lunch.

He was absolutely charming over dinner, showing no ill effects, and has seemed fine ever since, even though the lump is still quite large.

A friend (whose husband is a doctor) tells us that the size of the lump and its speed of emergence points to a likely skull fracture, but that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it if there are no other symptoms.

The Birthday surprise

It's Miss Carapina's birthday on Tuesday next week, and Callum has been creating a class-wide conspiracy to celebrate it all week. They plan to surprise her with a slide show on the class smartboard (which one of the class will have ready on a USB stick), plus her favourite drink and cake. It was Callum's job to find out what Miss Carapina's favourite drink and cake were, so he created an elaborate cover story in order to ask her.

The cover story was that Declan had been given an assignment by his science teacher to do a survey of the favourite drinks and cake for a number of teachers.

I'm desperately curious to know whether Miss Carapina knows what is going on.

Singhi visit

Alex and Lucinda, who were Callum and Declan's best friends last year, moved to Brisbane at the beginning of this year. They are down for the weekend, and are here tonight for a sleepover. It's been six months since they last saw each other, so I wasn't sure how it would go, but it doesn't seem as if there has been any gap at all for any of them.

Alex and Callum immediately started discussing the best way to develop weaponry for Callum's company (the one which will be in a secret reef off the coast of Australia). When I asked them for specifics about the submarine they were discussing, they both got very upset with me for listening in.

Lucinda came with me to pick Declan up from the birthday party he went to this afternoon, and Declan immediately started sharing the contents of his party bag with her.

There was a lot of talking after they went to bed, and I expect that they will all be up on the dot of 6 (which I reinforced at bedtime was the earliest they were allowed out of bed.

Grotty

The excitement of being in a movie meant that the boys woke up very early this morning. And they have been very grotty all day, constantly provoking each other into floods of tears about tiny pushes and shoves.

We were at the Gaynor Vincents for lunch (to celebrate Claire and Alex's birthdays) and had to be sinbinned from the popular game of Doctor Doctor several times. Aidan took on the doctor role (previously exclusively Callum's) several times in desperation.

And tonight I've just talked Declan out of floods of tears because he might lose his blanky ("I love my blanky, Jennifer") on our European holiday.

Movie stars

Callum and Declan's piano teacher, David, is an aspiring film maker. He asked them, and Callum's friend Angus, to be in a short movie he's making for a competition. So this morning they went up to Hornsby to act in David's movie.

David wanted Declan to have the speaking part (one line), but Declan decided he was too shy. Not surprisingly, Callum was very happy to take the role.

They were both very interested in the camera tracks (there was a tracking shot), but Declan's main comment was that there was a lot of waiting around.

Teachers

Callum and Declan have pretty high belt levels these days at Tae Kwon Do. The other afternoon, Callum was senior belt (the highest of everyone in the class) and Declan only usually has a few more experienced kids than him (most a LOT older).

So their job is to teach the white belts (the beginners). It's been really nice to see that they have been making a big effort to do that. Declan, in particular, is quite good at it, patiently explaining the patterns and putting the new people's arms and legs in the right position. It's interesting to watch, as Declan is always smaller than the person he is teaching.

Science competition

Cammeray school enters their Yr 3-6s into these UNSW competitions. Callum got his first results this week - a Distinction. This means (we think) that he was in the 10th-20th percentile (he was 11th percentile). Evan and I really struggled with our initial reaction - why wasn't he in the 1st - 10th percentile (which would have been a high distinction)? All the 3-6s do the same test, and he would (according to the graph) have been somewhere like the 1st percentile in the yr 3s.

But the whole point of putting him in Year 4 this year was to give him challenging things to do at school - it is working.

Southern Cross

Callum and Declan aren't often outside in the full dark - in summer it is too late, and in winter, generally too cold. But on Saturday night we went for a Saturday night excursion to the DVD rental place, as we had forgotten to return the previous week's DVD.

With no moon, a clear night, and a trip through the back streets of Waverton, we managed to see the southern cross, including the fifth star, which is quite hard to see from the middle of Sydney these days. I'd forgotten how to tell where south is, so made up a method which happened to work at the time but wasn't right (extend the cross down to the horizon and that is south). Now I've looked it up again, it'll probably be another two years before we see it again with enough clarity to tell them the right method.

Free rice

Callum and Declan have recently discovered the website freerice. It's a website with various (mostly vocabulary) questions where every time you get a question right, the owners donate 10 grains of rice to feed hungry people.

Callum got up early this morning because he is trying to get to 10,000 grains of rice. He's recently moved to the foreign language section, and is really enjoying that he can figure out the meaning of many words in french and italian from their english language equivalents.

Declan is sticking to the english language section, but is very proud that he got up to level 6 this morning - I thought that was pretty good too!

I think they are both actually learning from the experience, although Callum did say this morning that he could only understand french words if they were written down, not if they were spoken.

Bushwalk

Yesterday we walked to Greenwich ferry. It was one of those lovely Sydney winter days - warm in the sun, with not too much wind, so it was a lovely walk. Most of the way from here is actual bush, with just a tiny suburban part in Greenwich itself.

Then we had lunch in Circular Quay, and caught the ferry home, coincidentally meeting Jacob, one of Callum's school friends on the ferry.

Both boys thought the highlight was the icecream at Circular Quay (to be fair, Evan and I thought the lunch at the Oyster Bar was the highlighted, so food featured highly!), but in second place was sitting at the top of the hill in Vista St in Greenwich watching the harbour, and listening to the birds.

Independence

Tonight we sent Callum down to the shops to get some milk all by himself. He had to cross three roads (one of them Blues Point Road at the pedestrian crossing) to get there. He was very proud of himself, especially that he had enough money left over to buy some fudge, and he didn't because I hadn't given him permission.