Dinosaur role play

We had another quiet indoor day yesterday, because it was hot (although not nearly as hot as last week). Declan brought his dinosaur collection downstairs and had a lovely afternoon lining them up on the couch and playing all sorts of games with them.

Chess tournament

The School held a Chess tournament yesterday. Declan took part and came home with a medal having achieved two draws and a win.

Lucky negotiator

Each year the School holds a Peddlar's Parade. Families donate old toys, they are put on stalls and the kids buy stuff during lunch and recess. I gace each of the boys $2 to spend.

Declan came home with the usual pile of rubbish - mostly soft-toys.

Call came home with a magic trick and $3.75. He had negotiated the cost of the magic trick down from $2 to 25 cents and then found another $2 on his way home.

If we ever visit Turkey I know who I'm sending in to do the shopping.

Cubs

I took Callum to cub scouts last night. There is a new pack starting up in the hall literally just around the corner from us. The location made it too good an opportunity to miss, so we cajoled him into trying it out for three weeks.

He had a really good time and ran about with the other kids playing an assortment of cub scout games. The new pack is lead by two highly experiences leaders and they do a great job.

Only hitch is that it starts at 6:15 and runs until 7:45 - that's very late in our day, past bed-time actually. Cal was exhausted by the end from the lateness and the exercise. Worse is that it's on a Monday which is the day we do before-school robotics (and normally, though not this week, Tae Kwon Do after School). So that's a very long day. We'll persevere for a few weeks, though.

Vegetables not working

A week and a bit of a regime of fruit and vegetables means Callum can give a whole new answer about how often he does a poo.

Unfortunately he still feels unwell. So it's back to the doctor tomorrow for plan B.

Expedition

Yesterday I took the boys plus Milly and Alice to see Dinosaurs 3D at the IMAX cinema. It was so easy. They really do play well together. Alice and Declan spent the whole movie comparing notes on their dinosaur knowledge, and all four of them had a long discussion about birds and dinosaurs on the way home on the ferry.

Also on the ferry I noticed that we had a nice even age distribution - 9, 8, 7 and 6 - which perhaps accounts for the way they get on (or an alternative explanation is that they each get on better when they are distracted from arguing with their siblings).

Hot

Today was 40.4 degrees at Observatory Hill (forecast 41) so we were prepared. It's interesting how much a hot day is like a horrible rainy day in the available activities. The boys are old enough to help now. Callum, in particular watched the thermometer carefully this morning until the point where it was hotter outside than in, at which point he policed the closed door with cheerful rigour.

There was a lot of television watched, computer games, and Declan and I started a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

There were also quite a few water fights in the back yard, but unfortunately it was so hot that they ended in argument quite quickly.

Highly evolved

We visited the dentist this afternoon for a check up.

Declan's teeth are absolutely as expected and the dentist is pretty confident they will all come in beautifully.

Callum, she made umm-ing sounds about and then took a x-ray. It turns out that Callum's six-year molars are entirely missing. That means he'll keep the baby molars for the indefinite future. At some point they'll fail because the baby teeth are not supposed to last forever - but there's nothing under there to either activate them falling out or to replace them.

Cal looked worried for a while; until the dentist explained that missing teeth are supposed to be a sign of evolution progressing.

Fruit and veg

I walked out of the doctor's yesterday, bought a banana and told Cal to eat it. The boys both had a Nudie before TKD. Then half a raw carrot before dinner. Broccoli and spinach with their pasta. Then a tasting plate of fruit for desert.

Cal attached the plate with great reluctance. A piece of plum produced a 'yuck' even when taken with some maple syrup. Nectarine he managed to force his way through. The grape however was a real problem, but he did manage to get it down eventually. Not a great success there.

Declan was about 10 minutes behind Cal in reaching desert and had watched Cal's performance. So he approached the whole thing with shaking hands. He decided to attack the grape first. He popped it in his mouth, his face scrunched up in disgust... and then cleared. His eyes opened, he smiled and stuck a thumb up. And so we discover Declan likes grapes.

How do I know how often he poos?

I took Cal to the doctor yesterday about his continuing nausea. She sat him down and asked a series of questions (culminating in a diagnosis that he is perhaps simply constipated).

She asked him how often he does a poo. Cal thought a moment and said, 'Twice a month.'. The doctor did a double-take, questioned his answer, and then asked me to confirm it. It was at that moment I realised I had no idea. There was a time that quantity, frequency and even quality was one of the mainstays of my life. But since potty training has faded to a memory, times have changed.

OC refused

With a high degree of uncertainty that we were doing the right thing, we turned down Cal's OC offer.

Alarm 2

Waking Declan up with an alarm worked for exactly one week. This week he's used to it an blithely slept right through a noise that i found intensely irritating.

And then we were back to the wake-up argument.

Queasy

Callum has been low level queasy all week, without any other symptoms. He skipped school on Monday and Tuesday, which I was suspicious about, but today he skipped something he really wanted to be at - Angus' birthday party (a Teppanyaki restaurant).

After the first bite of some yummy steak (not the bread he has been eating all week) he felt queasy, and Angus' mother Fiona called me to come and get him. He's been OK (but not right) this evening, and I'm hoping that another good nights' sleep might finally get rid of whatever is troubling him.

Alarm

Following our horrible experiences trying to get Declan to wake up early recently, we tried something new this week. An alarm. Astonishingly it was much better. Declan was so interested in how the snooze button worked that he forgot to be grumpy about waking up early.

The Goodies (apology to Jennifer)

For some time Jennifer has been suggesting the boys, and Callum in particular, would like the Goodies. I've been luke-warm at best about the idea.

I came across the King Kong Kitten sketch on the net yesterday and showed Callum. He was in absolute and complete hysterics. We're now working our way through what's available for download and our house is ringing to Cal's helpless laughter.

Jennifer was sooooo right.

OC info

We went to the OC information morning today. If nothing else it drove home to us how much Cal had achieved in getting an offer. This year was the first time they removed the geographic boundaries and Neutral Bay which has a huge reputation was massively oversubscribed. So Cal's first round offer was against some serious competition from kids two years older than him.

He's currently rating the probability of him going as 3 out of ten - ie not likely. I'm putting the number at zero.

Cockatoo Island

Last night we camped on cockatoo island with 200 other people from Cammeray Public School. It was great.

Here is Declan waiting with the bags (if you look closely you can see the snake from Zoe's party on his wrist):



Callum checking our the ferry timetable and looking for the water taxi.






Callum showing off the view from our tent



And then Evan wheeling our bags and boys back to the wharf



Just as we were leaving it started raining so we timed the whole thing perfectly.

OC?

Callum sat the OC test this year in July. OC is a specialist gifted class for years 5 and 6 in NSW - our closest is Neutral Bay. Evan and I had convinced ourselves that Callum was unlikely to get in, given he would only have had six months in year 4 from having skipped year 3.

But this week, we got the letter confirming he had made it in. We are very surprised (and proud of him) and now trying to decide what to do. Next year the class will be held at North Sydney Boys High School (Neutral Bay is building classrooms with the government's building fund) which is quite good from our perspective, as it is directly on the way to Cammeray. But having trained Cammeray to look after Callum, quite well, we're not sure if we want to take a chance on a new school!

We've got an information morning next week, which may help us decide. We'll see.

Band concert

Tonight was Cammeray's band concert - all three bands (junior, intermediate and concert) plus some assorted ensembles.

I was struck once again by how impressive they are given how little time they have been learning.

Callum's band has been going for 9 months now and they have six pieces, all of which sound like real music. Here is Callum in his concert blacks.




And here is the whole band.



Sadly, after I wrote this piece (at interval) the second half went down hill, for Callum, at least. The three bands each performed, and all the band members stayed around for all the performances. So far, so polite.

And then they had a short piece for the massed bands (150!) at the end. Poor Callum was very upset by that, because they only had two keyboards, and as the Junior band keyboard player, he missed out. So after hanging around for two and a half hours after his bit of the concert, he got to stand there with a music stand valiantly joining in at the bits where the band members clapped or shouted, while everyone else played their instruments.

He came home quite upset with the whole thing (partly because he hadn't had dinner yet - it went an hour overtime), and determined not to do band next year. I'm not sure I blame him, to be honest.