Recently Ms R has been learning her left and right. It’s not something we’ve discussed or anything that I felt was particularly important or relevant but in the last couple of weeks she’s been asking which is which. Initially she’d ask which was her right and then ‘um’ and ‘ah’ a bit before working out that the other one was her left. As the days have passed the questions have become more about confirming that the one she was holding up was the one she thought it was. She’s twigged that she usually writes with her right hand but wouldn’t know that it was her right, rather than her write. My Mum went into a long but very clear explanation of why her right hand was opposite Ms Rs right hand when they faced each other and at the end Ms R said "Yeah I knew that anyway".
We’ve all been riding our bicycles. On Sunday we went for our first family ride. The short ride to the park with Master R singing away in the seat behind me and Ms R wobbling happily along behind Daddy was pretty much what my pre-children imagined snapshot-of-family-life looked like. Of course, all those years ago I never envisaged the five or so years of endurance needed to reach that particular point but to any passer-by at least, we looked the perfect picture of family happiness. The only downside of the cycling, well it could be anything I suppose but I’m blaming the cycling, is that Ms R seems to have slimmed down to the point where her shoulder blades and spine is visible through her clothes and I’m starting to wonder what people must think.
Rainbows is a roaring success. Ms R absolutely loves it and while she hasn’t made any particular best friend (or managed to remember anyones name) she chats to everyone. Last week she said she didn’t really trust the leaders but this week she sat next to one who helped her to make a bracelet. She looks forward to the show-and-tell part although it’s not always easy to know what to take. So far she’s made (well decorated) cakes, made an instrument (shaker) and a bracelet. She’s also doing her best to learn how to hula hoop.
Activity books (or are they called workbooks?) seem to have made a comeback in our house. We have have a collection of them, most of them given to us by well meaning family and friends on first hearing that we weren’t using school. They are now all doable by Ms R, occasionally she asks me to read what it says at the top of the page but often the requests are obvious. Master R was eager to do one too so sat on my lap carefully tracing over numbers and shapes. I told Ms R that in some families the children are required to do a couple of pages of a book every morning and she said she’d like to do that too but asked if it would be okay if she did a whole book at a time. I said once she’d filled in every page of every book then I’d be happy to buy her some more.
We’ve spent plenty of time in parks. They’ve now reached the age where none of the equiptment eludes them so I’ve started taking a book. I don’t actually read much as I keep peeping to watch them play but it’s so much better than standing around feeling like a spare part. Ms R usually finds a smaller child to mother and Master R is often not far behind her but sometimes he takes himself off and will spend ages doing the same thing over and over until he has completely mastered it. I’ve also seen him just sitting and watching other children. Ms R is very proud to be able to slide down the pole by herself now.
Master R can count to ten. He counts objects and understands how many there are (rather than just being able to recite the numbers) although if one was taken away he’d need to start counting from the beginning again. Unless the objects were biscuits and then he’d just batter me. Today Ms R was playing with numbers and I asked if she could count up in twos, which she did so I then asked if she could count up in threes to which she said she couldn’t but she got a little pink calculator which is usually some magical or sophisticated item in a game and typed in three plus three equals, equals, equals etc and read me the numbers as they came up. I was rather surprised, I didn’t know she knew the plus or the equals signs or what a calculator was for. Obviously all those secret agent codes are more than just random numbers.
Master R acquired a plastic boat the other day and has fallen in love with it. He sails it in the bath.
Mum looked after them for a couple of hours the other day and with her friend she took them to the park, read them stories, fed them and let them play in the garden. Afterwards the friend said that she thought they were lovely children and almost made her want to return to her former job of working in a nursery. And today someone commented on how well behaved they were being and offered them both a sweet. It’s nice when strangers see good things in my children.