Speed

Things change quickly round here at the minute. Nathaniel is powering towards being a school-goer rather than a pre-schooler with gusto and seems to grow in abilities, use of logic, and size on a minute by minute basis. Bus drivers have started giving me a hard time when I expect not to pay for him (he's free until he's five), and Nathaniel explaining patiently and eloquently why they are mistaken in thinking that he is five because its only becuase he is quite tall doesn't really help.

Dorothea is more like a person everyday and is currently calling everything "Daddy". Nathaniel is predominantly "Daddy", but so are other men, nice books, Granny Janni and Grandpa Beard, and desirable cakes. "Daddy" is definitely a good thing, and is normally followed by "Yeah, yeah, Yesss" with firm and exagerated head nodding.

But the most useful developments are our increased options for transport. Nathaniel can cycle pretty much anywhere, and happy cycled to his friend Beth's house and back (a good 6 mile round trip) and wasn't too tired for heart-felt playing. Bike is now our favourite mode of transport, and if it wasn't for the lack of quiet roads/cycle tracks into town, we'd probably always cycle together because Thea loves the bike seat. However, because there is no way of avoiding the bit of busy Holgate Road over the railway (with added steep hill for extra blood-pressure exercise), at present I normally walk so that I can grab him if necessary (not so far!).

Thea is enjoying walking at speed everywhere and we've had to start being really careful about the back gate as she notices immediately if it is not bolted, and the next thing you know she's off round the corner on an adventure. She seems to have understood the road issue, and so far (jinxing it now), I've not had to drag her back from a curb. The face I see most often when outside is her grinning cheekily over one shoulder before taking off at rate of knots. I thought she was particularly keen to go a specific way down the road and was therefore pleased when we needed to go that way yesterday, but no, its just the wrong way that particularly interests her. How she knows which way we're going is a mystery to me (more of that in the next post).

Swimming

It's half term here which means that Nathaniel has no nursery to attend. So on the recommendation of some friends, and at his request, he has been booked onto a swimming course. A 40 minute lesson every morning.

Today was the first one. He was excited from the minute he got up, and asked whether it was time to go every 5 minutes.

And eventually we went. It was quite a big deal. Its the first time that he has done something totally on his own (parents were always present to help him settle into nursery). And the first time that he has done something that involves interacting with and taking instruction from an unknown adult without a parent with him.

He did superbly! I sat and watched from the gallery and he just got on with it. The teacher is wonderful - an older lady who seemed to have taught most of the parents in the gallery to swim when they were little. Nathaniel jumped in, and swam around with arm bands, and played all the games (yes, he deigned to join in with organised fun!).

At the end, when I met him, shivering, in the changing rooms, he immediately asked "Can the next swimming leson be now?"

I believe it to be a roaring success!

Music

We were rather pleased when we were able to acquire a house with a study, and once it had skylights installed, we were pretty sure that it was going to make a marvellous music room, even if we had to move the piano out of the living room.

How right we were. Moving the piano out hasn't reduced it's role in everyday life - it's greatly emphasised it. Now a day doesn't go by when we haven't spent some time playing music. There are guitars easily reached from the hooks on the walls, the piano always open with nothing piled on the lid, the violin on it's stand on the top of the piano, and our new recorder stand holding the recorders all ready to be played. Lower down, there is a marvellous basket full of every percussion instrument you could hope for and a ukelele on it's own stand. There are cushions to sit on, a variety of random bits of material to wave, and a selection of cases that can be used to build with.

What child could ask for more?

On an average day, someone will decide that it is time for some music. More often than not, that will be Nathaniel. A guitar or piano or violin will be played and the kids do their own thing (how often does that happen?!!). Nathaniel usually decides to build something complicated - either a building of some sort or a contraption involving rope and pulleys and handles. Thea tends to get out all the instrumemts and play them loudly. Her favourite is the tamborine, but she is also a fan of the shaky egg.

Both kids love the recorders. Nathaniel is starting to be able to play them, but Thea makes up for lack of technique with enthusiasm!

Outside

On Wednesday it snowed serious snow and we got quite impressively cold on the way home from Steiner

We made a reasonably sized snowman and failed to take any photos of it.

Then yesterday it was warm, and today it was postively spring-like. The snowman met a rather violent end:

And then we played in the garden.

Thea took great delight in playing with balls ("ba"). She picks them up and carries them around and then throws them and chases after them. I love watching her a)throw and b)run!

Then she decided that it was time to play with the wheel barrow. This was her idea, communicated with a range of firm and persistent squeaks and pointing.

And to be fair, she didn't really cry when she got ditched out sideways onto her head when they tried to take a corner too tightly! Then they hit the sandpit.

And Nathaniel made a complicated assault course using everything in the garden. He fell many times, but was kind enough to have previously laid out spectator stools for me and Thea to use so that we fully appreciated his foolhardy nature!

The rest of the afternoon was spent levering Thea in and out of the baby swing that is still in the garden. I think it may well be time to start to scour ebay for a proper sized climbing frame and swing....

Activities

It is nice now that we have got to the stage that activites can interest both Dorothea and Nathaniel. We're still limited by factors such as Thea not being able to reach the kitchen table easily and thinking that its funny to watch people's reaction when she puts stuff into her mouth and pretends to swallow, but more and more things are becoming fun for everyone.

Today we got the coloured lolly sticks out of Nathaniel's craft box. You can tell that they are engrossed, because there is no hint of a smile on any of the children in these photos!

Nathaniel made polygons and insisted that there were two words for five-sided shapes (???!!), and then sorted according to colour and made up some complicated game (I didn't understand the rules), where he had to sell Thea the sticks in a particular order.

Thea put sticks into various tubs and poured them between them. We made more use of our trusty dishwasher tablet box. It's pretty sturdy, so perfect for puching holes in which to post items. We now have different holes on all of the sides. The most useful is the side for posting block crayons. The stick posting end was ony useful if I held onto the box because otherwise Thea couldn't see where the holes were!

I have a great plan for what to do with them next, but I need to pay a visit to a craft shop..........

Thea's Car Seat

As a baby, Thea was always surprisingly happy in the car, and cooed contentedly while we drove up and down the country. So it was disappointing when she decided that she wasn't having it any more and that the car was an evil that she did not feel she should have to endure and decided to ensure that we were made aware of her dislike. It's hard to persuade Thea to un-banana when she is determined to arch her back into the most contorted shape possible.

But we remembered how similar Nathaniel was at this age, and also remembered what solved the problem. And so went out to buy some bathroom scales just to make sure, and then declared Thea big and heavy enough to go into the bigger car seat. The one that faces forward so that she can see out.

This is her first outing. I think that we have a success!

Thea

Since Christmas, Thea has really become a proper little person. She can understand and react intelligently to pretty much everything you say, though this does mean that she has developed a very clear "no" where she shakes her head and does a sweeping gesture with her hand.

She really loves being outside. After breakfast, the first thing that she does is go and get her shoes, pass them to you, point to the back door and say firmly, "yeah, yeah". In fact, everything she says, she says firmly. She gives the impression that everything has been considered carefully.

Once outside, she likes to be swung on the baby swing which she is getting rather too big for. Otherwise, she wanders round the garden looking for bikes and trikes to get on. They are all still a bit big for her, so she retreives an adult, leads them to it, points to the seat and says, firmly as ever, "yeah, yeah".

She is also a big fan of the bike, and will bring you a bike helmet, pass it to you, point to her head and say, firmly (getting the picture yet?!), "yeah, yeah" and then point to the door. At present she seems happy to compromise and will simply walk around the house with her (or anyone else's) bike helmet on. This is handy as she is really enjoying the ball and mallet set that she got for Christmas, and gets rather carried away with the malleting!

She's an independent little thing and will quite happily just walk off to explore on her own. I'm having to remember this, as I'm not used to a child who is capable of being more than 3 metres away, or can find something interesting to get involved with without having to tell me about it on a minute by minute basis! She really enjoyed the diy shop the other day, and was quite happy to be left to gather important items that she felt were essential to our needs (polystyrene coving was a favourite).

She is extremely fond of Nathaniel and her whole face lights up when he comes downstairs in the morning (yes, she's still doing that 5:30 wake up thing!). She gives him a giant grin and often holds out her arms to, well, I don't really know what. She doesn't hug him. I think she just wants to menace him - stick her fingers up his nose and pull his hair and generally be affectionate!
They play best when they have lots of space. Their favourite place at the minute is the library. They roam around - Thea marching off with a grin on her face and a backward glance at Nathaniel. He follows and two seconds later they are rolling around on the floor together like lion cubs, giggling and screeching. Thea clambers back up and off they go again. This morning Nathaniel wasn't well and so we sat down to watch The Clangers on a DVD and Thea was determined to be involved. She asked to be lifted up onto the sofa and then snuggled down next to Nathaniel to watch, every so often glancing over to him to check that she was doing it right. She was amazed and overjoyed when the clangers themselves appeared on the screen (there's a reasonably long intro featuring shots of planets/moons). She had to stand up and point at them and make happy and astonished "oh!" noises.

Like Nathaniel, she doesn't seem to practise things - just watches other people and then miraculously performs. She has shown no interest in wooden blocks, and just watches me with faint derision when I have demonstrated stacking them. But then today she sat down at the table and flawlessly stacked up her 7 cuboid crayons. I didn't start filming under the third or fourth time when she had lost some interest, lost several of the crayons, and was distracted by what Finn was up to next to her.
She is very intesested in books, but, at present, solely in those with flaps or textured areas. She got very excited about Maisy goes to the Library the other day, but got bored after the first couple of pages. Her absolute favourite is Spot!

She likes to climb. The kitchen stool has to be left by a wall now, otherwise you find her trying to help herself to cereals, turning on the oven or getting into the sink. My current favourite is her getting stuck on a ledge made from two plastic boxes which happens on a a daily basis. You hear a yelp and find her clinging to the edge of the boxes with several "treasures" in each hand which she has rescued from the top. But any apparatus that is off the ground will do.
Most things that she does are done with a cheeky grin. When I get a good photo of it, I'll post it! All in all, she is great fun.

Snow

There's been snow on the ground for a about a week now, but it's been a bit token, and the most interesting aspect has been the ice. Nathaniel has been filling up sawn up milk cartons in order to create interesting pieces of ice to play with and then taking great delight in destroying them!

The snow proper (sort of), came today and so we thought we better go and enjoy it while it lasted. We took the sledge and Nathaniel insisted that he also needed a wheel barrow, which spent most of the outing being a snow-powered train. This necessitated much filling, emptying and refilling.

We found a suitable slope on the moor and prepared ourselves. Thea wasn't desperately interested.

Then Nathaniel gave them a big push off...

And Thea thought it was brilliant!

Of course, it was impossible to take a photo when she was still enough to not be a blur and also pulling her happy, grinny face! So here's another one that's in focus for those who like photos of Ian and Thea.

Thea's reaction to the whole thing was to get back onto the sledge and sit down firmly, which we regarded as a sucess, even if she did do this at the bottom of the hill instead of the top. Nathaniel was pretty happy too, but he remembers the much better snow and much steeper slopes of last year, so contented himself mainly with dealing with the snow-train.

We decided to head home before people started to feel cold, and although everyone was still grinning while they were whizzed up and down the bumps on the way back, we couldn't get a photo with everyone smiling!

Bicycles

The trailer has been wonderful, but there are some times when it would be helpful if we didn't have a giant lump of metal and canvas to lug around. So it was time for Thea to learn about the bike seat.

She didn't look amazed by the whole experience, more the typical solemn expression which hides intense interest!

Our subsequent bike ride would have been most excellent if it hadn't been for me getting over excited and embarking on something that was a bit far for a day when we didn't have gloves and it was starting to sleet!

The new normal

Its been complicated week. It's the first week back to normality after the excitement of Christmas and everything is a bit different. Nathaniel has been attending Steiner chreche as well as nursery, and Thea has started nursery as well. New things for everyone. Colin has been demolishing our bathroom and on Monday I'll be back at work!

So I decided that we'd just keep everything else simple. We walked in the sunshine pretending to be solar-powered cars with spinning solar panels:

We played on funky wind instruments: whizzers, water flutes and train whistles:

We messed around in the garden:

We discovered that Nathaniel rather likes wasabi peas!

It's all been low key and quiet!

Thea walks

Thea has been thinking about walking for a bit and doing the occasional step when she absoutely needed to, but on the whole, she has been resolute that the fastest way of geting anywhere is to crawl. And she is quite right, she crawls extremely quickly (like a prancing pony, Grandpa Beard says!).

But over the last couple of days she has suddenly seen the use of walking, and got really into it. Here is the proof:

What fun.