EMP in the US

Yesterday the sun was shining, so I took the boys out for a walk on the golf course, though by the amount they complained, you’d think I was making them climb Mount Washington. “my legs hurt” “I’m too tired” “I can’t walk any further!” Luckily, they became entertained by hazardous walking conditions:

Ollie might as well have stripped off and swam considering how wet he got:

Not all the ice was soft, so it was tricky to know whether you could slide across the top without your foot disappearing:

I got to take pictures of pretty ice features, which could have been really good if I’d had a decent camera (or any photography skills):

…better stick to easy subject matter:

I thought I’d mention a little about the mornings we are having at the moment. David is getting up pretty early (for us anyway!) at 6am. Somewhere around this time the kids wake up and come into our bed, usually bringing various toys, books and teddies with them. I’m then sandwiched in-between the two boys. If I have my back to Ollie, he has started pulling up my pyjama-top, and pulling up his pyjama-top and then lying with his tummy against my back skin-to-skin. It’s a bit strange, but quite nice in an affectionate way. I usually manage to doze for a while, notwithstanding various plastic objects, lumpy teddies, and sharp book-corners that inevitably poke me with every position-shift. Then finally Thomas says “MUUUUUM! We need to get up! Pleeeeease get up! We’re so hungry!” This morning I mumbled something about being so sleepy, and he returned, “you can sleep on the sofa! Just get us some breakfast!”

Yesterday afternoon, Thomas came in with his “The Secrets of Droon” book, and said, “Mum I must show you this!” He then read me a passage about a boy with a sprained ankle getting it healed with sparkly dust, and said, “isn’t that amazing!” I think he is grasping most of the concepts in the book, though there quite a few words that challenge him, like: ’scene’, and ‘ancient’. One problem we’ve come across is that words are sometimes split and hyphenated at the end of the line, which is a new concept for him, and I think he struggles if he can’t see the whole word at once.

Before I leave the subject of books, I went along to a “Read With Me” free course at the childcare centre last night. I was inspired to go by my friend Karoline, who thought it would be a good way to find out what the most popular books people read to their children here in America. It certainly was. While some of the talk was about things we knew already (talk about the pictures with your kids, sometimes move your finger along the line etc etc) it was nice to actually talk about why they are good things to do. Also, the speaker, who is a professional story-teller (what a cool job title!) introduced us to a few good books. We talked a lot about nursery rhymes, and how they have been transported across cultures. (I had a lot to say about that!) and then we were given free books to take home!

That Mother Goose book is worth $23! It’s great to compare the words with the british books we have. It turns out Margaret Wise Brown who wrote “Goodnight Moon” which was one of our favourites, is also very popular here, and you can see “Big Red Barn” is one of the books we were given, also by her. We discussed illustrations in a lot of detail, and she pointed out that adults tend to be text-bound, so we don’t spot all the detail in the pictures. She made us cover up the text to see it from a child’s point of view, who cannot read, and we all spotted all sorts of things that people who had read the book millions of times hadn’t spotted before! Karoline and I also managed to sneak in a quick drink in town afterwards, which is always a treat!

Finally, yesterday, we made Ollie’s “Happy Chart”. I made Thomas’ in Uxbridge when I was having particular trouble with getting him to be happy in his bed. I found lots of photos of him doing of things he enjoyed doing, and a picture of him being very happy and we made a sort of poster. Well, Ollie doesn’t really need any incentive to go to bed, other than a good story, but I thought it was a shame that he didn’t have something similar to enjoy. I think he was pleased with it: