Nests

Nathaniel had a chocolate crispie nest from the kindergarten easter stall and was most taken by the fact that you could consume that much chocolate and still call it a snack, so he was keen that we should recreate the confection at home. Our first attempt was not successful, due mainly to using the "just melt chocolate method" using Lidl milk chocolate. A grey nest is not appetising!

Attempt two used the standard chocolate crispie recipe and was much better.

Dorothea had a good go at helping, but quickly demonstrated where her interests lay:

She was, however, a bit better at looking after the mini eggs and moved them all backwards and forwards between cake cases, only eating 4 or 5 as she went!

Nathaniel was very dilligent and did the whole thing, measuring and stirring and decanting, himself. He even managed not to lick the spoon until the end. He's got so big and sensible!

(at times......)

Up and Down

The sun peered out for a brief few minutes and so we took off to the woods with the scooty bike. The story telling trees seemed a good place to play and we suddenly realised that Thea hadn't been to them since she could walk.

First she explored around them while Nathaniel investigated the mountain biking qualities of his scooty bike.

Then they climbed. Well, Nathaniel climbed. Thea did a cracking job, but most of the "steps" were far too high for her to lift her leg onto, especially when wearing michelin-man-esque down-filled trousers and snow boots. She tried just leaning forwards and crawling with her knees, but it didn't really work, so she utilised one of her new commands - "Up, up", and found that me lifting her over the largest roots was much easier.

Then, onto whizzing down slopes. Fun for everyone. Nathaniel found precipitic roots to career off, and Thea stomped determinedly up steep slopes and then "ran" down the other side shouting "Weeeeee!"

Everyone was happy.

Spring

Ha ha! Like that could possibly be the case. It looks like we are on track for a white Easter!

This is the kindergarten egg hunt. In the snow.

It was still fun though.

Today we are mostly....

....demonstrating climbing skills

Climbing up to the work surface and helping ourselves to tasty things to eat (crackers from the tin, dates from the tub, cake decorations that had been "hidden" up here to stop them from being taken out of the low cupboard). When these are all taken away, open the spice rack and help yourself to jars of herbs and take big swigs from them.

......building kennels

Being a cheetah is so last week. Instead, be a dog and build a kennel with different rooms. Use every blanket in the house as well as our newly constructed building frames.

Obviously these aren't ours....

Nathaniel still likes jigsaws

Most successful purchase of the month? A puzzle of a map of the US cut along state boundaries. One whole english pound from our local charity shop. Hours and hours and hours of fun as well as interesting conversation. ("Why does Oklahoma have a pan handle?"; "I have absolutely no idea!")

Beer

When we last went to Canada, we had very low expectations for eating and drinking. We were expecting the bread to be sugary and inedible and the beer to be cold and fizzy and bland. But then we discovered artisan bakeries and the world of micro breweries and craft beers. Chris took great pleasure in buying different bottles of crazily strong local beers and we tasted so many of them I can't remember half of their names. We visited a couple of brewery bars where there was a tasting menu and discovered all sorts of extremely palatable beers.

So when the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale started to become available in the UK we were pretty pleased. It wasn't the most exciting of the west coast beers that we had tried, but it was rather nice, and not at all lager-y. Then the other week I noticed that a local pub (I imagine it has a trendier name for itself - a tap maybe. Something that indicates that it stocks a colossal number of proper beers), was hosting a Sierra Nevada tasting evening. So for Ian's birthday outing, we went.

Mmmmmmm, beers. (Ian didn't pull this face all evening.) They were very tasty. 10 different beers from the brewery ranging from a light, open fermented Kellerweis to the crazily thick and birch syrupy Life and Limb (10%!).

Most entertaining were the beer camp beers - beers formulated at a week-long beer festival where the brewery invite the best to come and invent recipes together. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that I am still not the biggest stout drinker, but that a red ale will always be the way forward. Hooray for Imperial Red Ale (and not forgetting the wonderful, albeit much closer to home, Red Cuillin).

Things I wish we had photos of #356

Our costumes for James' Bond-themed PVR party: SPECTRE henchmen, complete with logoed boilersuits and homemade AK47s!

Rievaulx

Jim and Vicki have bought a car, and it was a sunny day, and everyone needed a change of scenery, so we pottered up to Rievaulx to bimble and have some lunch in Helmsley.

Nathaniel and Vicki were in charge of book reading and identifying drains and ancient toilets;

After the first 45 mins we didn't learn much about the monks, but mainly galavanted over the place. Nathaniel looked for interesting places to climb;

And Thea charged around the place. This is one of the rare occasions she bothered to hold someone's hand.

Mostly she just did her own thing, which was amusing when her own thing was systematically swimming on each and every column base along the cloister;

but less so when it was trying to climb down spiral staircases unaided. (No photo for obvious reasons!)

And if there was any doubt that these two were related, check out the crazy tongues:

Creepy Crawlies

I hate Creepy Crawlies - it's a hanger of soft play fun with a soundtrack to match with a rule about food from home and a cafe full of grot. It is a good way to over-stimulate, exhaust and generally mess with your kids. So, typically, they love it. Nathaniel's friend Robin was keen to go again, so this morning, four adults and seven kids took it on, starting very early to beat the crowds.

Its actually great fun, and if it was just us, I'd love it. Its the noise and the other kids and the food and music that gets to me. Thea was obsessed with the giant slides - she loved coming down them, but prefered to walk up them and I spent most of the morning removing her from the bottom and explaining the in a wonderfully pointless way that it was ridiculously dangerous and she was going to get squashed.

Nathaniel and Dylan and Noah and Robin romped around the "rack" which I call the "cage" and threw themselves off stuff onto the crash mats and Nathaniel stood at the top of slides and refused to come down. Thea was pretty excited by the cage, but was a little small for most of it. Mostly she lay down and dragged herself along to a soundtrack of "brmmmm". Interestly, despite the fact that it is a total maze, and Nathaniel's biggest fear is getting lost and unable to get out, it didn't matter where I put here down - she was always able to walk out (and back to the bottom of the slides), by the shortest route. I think she's got my sense of direction.

The ball pool was their favourite place to be together, though pelting balls at each other made them as bad as the other hideous kids who I love meeting there.

In one area there is hard standing with some weird wheeled items (loved by Nathaniel and D, N and R) and rockers. Thea loved the rockers and spent a good 20 minutes just climbing on and off and rocking violently to the extent that other parents rushed over to check she wasn't about to be catapulted over the front. By this time I took this video she was starting to space out and just rocking as she watched the big boys:

They all enjoyed the caterpillar tube - good for crawling through, and running around being a caterpillar.

It didn't worry Thea a bit when she was "eaten" by Noah during her rocking:

Now Thea is asleep in the car, and Nathaniel, having been sent up for a 40 minute quiet time about an hour ago, is lying on his bed reading. Definitely over stimulated!

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....