where does the time go....

I can't believe that I haven't blogged since friday, I am slipping in my old age. The weekend wizzed by as usual-matthew worked and sam and I ran errands and played. He did several episodes of headsprout (www.headsprout.com) which has really captured his imagination. We have study dog and education city both a try but he wasn't keen on either of them. Headsprout on the other hand captivates him and he even asked to play it! His word recognition has increased and when he is in the right mood he can even sound out words. I am not pushing him to read before he is ready, just trying to give him the building blocks to make reading fun.

We have started playing a sentence game which he enjoys. I write a sentence and he has to figure out what it says-his reward-an extra bedtime story. I think he got an extra 4 on top of his normal two the other night.

Monday we took down the loft bed, giving sam more room and more light in his room. we also started to sort out the loft ( in order to put the bed in!). As a result of all this decluttering the house looks even more cluttered because of all the boxes to sort out. It will all be worth it in the end though.

Merry and the girls came to play this afternoon and despite a few toddler moments sam was in 7th heaven. He really enjoys playing with them-he even made a picture of fran for her and laminated. (did I mention that we got a laminator this weekend and have gone laminator crazy)

Rest of the week is busy-library, karate, happy faces and muddlepuddle. It is tough being a toddler!

A ragtop day..

and it was, beautifully warm and sunny both climatically and otherwise. the only fly in the oinment was seeing m off to work this morning and knowing that we won't see him until monday night.

We spent the whole day at ferry meadows. sam cycled there for the first time, it was so cute to hear him go 'whee' as we went down the little hills. I was very proud of him, he rode responsibly and never once moaned about anything. It was probably only about a mile each way but it was further than he had been before.
We met up there with the rest of the peterborough home ed group who were having a japanese day. We hope to go to japan one day so sam was very keen to go along and find out all about it.
As you can see by the photos he joined in on everything and had a blast. the scarf he made was beautiful, yet quite simple to do. He enjoyed the sword making (out of cardboard) and the sushi making. The minature zen gardens captured his imagination and though we didn't do one there (couldn't get it home on the bikes) he did one when we came home. It ened up being an assult course for the lady bugs of our garden. It was great to see him interacting with the older children and doing it so confidently. A group of them went on a ladybug hunt to fill up E's garden and he was in the thick of it. What was even nicer was that the older children were all so accepting of him and happy to let him join in.
After the event finished we went to one of the playgrounds with some of the others and let the children carry on with their games.

After a quick bike ride home we made the zen garden and stocked it full of ladybugs. We listened to little toe radio before bed-he is really enjoying listening to it at the moment. The enid blyton stories seem to captivate him most.

All in all it was a lovely day, even if it did start before 6am with airplane building!!

Now a ladybug assult course 

This is what we got up to today-Japanese day with our home ed group

zen garden 

Johnny Appleseed 

Here is one I made earlier 

Sushi anyone? 

A scarf for you mommy 

Tending the corn 

my little aeronautical enginer 

If it is Thursday it must be Karate

The Karate Kid 

The Trains at Thorpe Hall 

Frank in his new tank 

Sam dyeing easter eggs 

Is Lush addictive???

I certainly hope not because if so then I am on the road to ruin. Sam and I had a mini spree in there today ( I still think a 4 yr old boy getting excited about bath bombs is unatural) and I have just used the face mask and bubble bar and feel very relazed. I may have to make this a weekly ritual. It was a nice way to end a laid back weekend.

We spent the weekend doing jobs, pottering in the garden and generally having fun. We got two new clown loaches yesterday for our main tank. The other clown loach has been very lonely since his two friends died and we thought he needed cheering up. The three are now getting on swimmingly (please excuse the pun) and sam keeps hugging the tank. Now all we need to do is find a 4in plecistomas to keep frank company and eat the algae in his tank. M is hard at work looking for a protein skimmer to set up the marine tank. We will be able to open our own aquarium at this rate.

Sam and I had lots of fun in the garden today while M slept (he is on nights). We planted flowers and did some mowing and weeding. Looks like our blueberry plants have surived the winter so we should have another crop this summer.

Being sunday, we went of course, to the trains at thorpe hall. They have started a new collectable ticket scheme whereby if you collect 24 different tickets you can have an afternoon of free train rides. We are on our way with 2 tickets. I had a proud mommmy moment when having told sam that one of his tickets had an engine named mayflower on it he exclaimed that it must have been named after the ship! I guess that he is listening to what I say. ( at least sometimes!)

He has spent a quite a bit of time this weekend playing a phonics game on the computer. He is really enjoying it but I am not sure that he totally gets it. He can't quite grasp the concept of sounding out words. He will sound out each letter and then sit for ages trying to work out the word, even if it is one that he has just read. At first this frustrated me but now I think that when he is ready it will click. At least he has the building blocks and the tools he needs. It reminds me a bit of potty training. We had a few false starts but then when he was ready it happened in a matter of days.

The biggest news of the weekend is that one of my oldest friends and sam's godmother, is coming to visit in june. She lives in florida and is a kindergarten teacher. She has bravely agreed to come along to muddlepuddle camp! We are really looking forward to seeing her, sam especially loves spending time with her. We will probably play tourist for the first week of her visit. This will be her first summer visit to the uk in 12 years and we intend to make the most of it. Neither she nor sam has even been punting, so taking them to cambridge for the day is on our top ten list.

A fairly busy week as usual, with m on long days for most of it. At least he is not working bank holiday weekend (except the monday that is!)

Rock a bye sweet baby james

Yesterday we went down to see the latest addition to the family, James. He was very sweet and very small. I got to cuddle him quiet a bit and was a bit nervous at having such a small baby in my arms. Sam was 7lb 8oz when he was born and he was never a small baby. He was always very solid and after the first week or so gained a pound a week until he was 4 months. Thus I was very nervous at having james in my arms. He seemed so fragile. He was very sweet and slept most of our visit. I think my sil liked the blanket that I had knitted, at least I hope so anyway. It took me the whole of her pregnancy to do it. I just hope the next one doesn't take so long. I have just started one for my friend who is due in sept.

Today was a busy day, a toddler group in the morning and then muddlepuddle in the afternoon. Sam had lots of fun at muddlepuddle and M was able to come along for half an hour or so which was great. He and sam and had lots of fun climbing all over activity world. It was nice to see all our friends, though sam seemed to spend most of his time playing with either M or myself.

A quiet weekend ahead. M is on nights so sam and I will have to find some way to amuse ourselves. I think we are off to find a plecistomas (sp?) as a friend for our oscar to eat all the algae in his tank. We also have a mystery job on sunday as well as a date with the trains at thorpe hall.

It's because I'm a parakeet...

This is the answer that sam gave his friend matthew when matthew asked why we had a bead necklace with a parrot on the end hanging from our rear view mirror. Matthew looked very puzzled and said "but you're not a bird". Sam gave him an exasperated look and said "parakeets are boys and girls who like jimmy buffett songs, don't you know anything". I was laughing so much that I didn't hear matthew's reply. To put this in context, fans of jimmy buffett call themselves parrotheads so their children by default are parakeets. Sam was very put out that we couldn't find him a parakeet t-shirt at the concert. Perhaps we shouldn't let him listen to so much grown up music but you can only hear the wheels on the bus so many times before you go insane. In his defense he also likes jazz and pretty music as he call classical music. He also still does like all his children's cds which drives me potty on long trips.

Anyway enough of boring everyone silly with our musical tastes. We had a good day and achieved most of what I had set out to do. The scrapbook is underway and sam really enjoyed doing it. He didn't even mind writing the titles. That is a first, normally he protests a little when asked to write something. We also spent ages playing make up the words with our hamma letter cards. We would each take turns making up a word and then the other one had to try and read it. He did good at sounding out my words and took great delight in making up lots of strange words. When I offered a prize for making up real words he even tried doing a few of those.
He made lots of airplanes out of his galt octogon set and we built hangars for them out of soft blocks. We did lots of counting and measuring so I was able to sneak that in as a math lesson.

The afternoon was taken up with collecting M's jeep from having had a new window screen fitted-don't you just hate gravel trucks and having Matthew to play. Matthew stayed to tea as well and both boys were very upset when it came time to take him home. They wanted him to stay over but I'm not sure they are really quite ready for it yet. Give it a month or two I think they will be fine. They played very well together and there were no major rows to speak of.

The rest of the week is going to be busy, lots of visiting with friends and going to see sweet baby james (can't get that james taylor song out of my head). M is on long days until thursday and then on nights friday-sunday. We won't see much of him this week-at least we have dublin to look forward to.

Mum when does the next movie start?

This from the little boy who was moaning about going in the first place! We went to see Valient this afternoon and sam thoroughly enjoyd it. I am sure that most of the jokes went over his head but he was mesmerised nonetheless. Don't suppose that I can count the film as a history lesson can I ? It was set in WWII. Actually it might be a good jumping off point to do something on animals in the war. Apparently there is a special medal awarded to animals-the Dicken I think. In the last war it was awarded to about 40 pigeons, 18 horses a few dogs and one cat! Must do some searching to see what we can find out.

Combined playdough, pattern blocks and cuisinre rods for the math lesson today. we talked about portions, things being 1/2, 1/4 the size of something else. Did some more go for the code. He was really enjoying writing the letter b and the letter f. We also did a bit of reading. Tomorrow I think I will get out the hama letter cards and play a few letter games. We are also going to start his scrapbook, having picked up 5 rolls of his developed film from tescos. I should be able to sneak in some letter practice by having him do the captions and titles.

His friend M is coming for tea tomorrow and I think both boys are excited. They have planned their menu-toad in the hole and strawberry ice cream. sam is very disapointed that M can't stay the night. I don't think it will be long before they start having sleep overs. I am not sure I am ready for toddler sleep overs! I think only one friend at a time, he is definately too young for slumber parties. Anyway, I didn't think boys had slumber parties. I guess I have a lot to learn. Not having had any brothers or male cousins living close by I sometimes feel at a loss to understand the male mentality-especially the younger ones. Mind you M and I have been together for 16 years and I still don't understand how he thinks so maybe there is no hope for me.

A dolling family first

We did it! We finally managed a trip to Ikea where nobody was grumpy, nobody threw a tantrum and nobody asked for everything in sight. We went to the new Ikea, in Edmonton (north london) and amazingly found it without getting lost or having a fight. We also got all the way around the store without too much complaining from anyone. We promised Sam an ice cream at the end-bribery can work wonders! We may have found him a bed, we need to measure up to see if it will fit.
Both birthday parties went well and were lots of fun. Saturday it was matthew's aunt's 60th so it was a big family party. Sam had lots of fun playing with his 2.5yr old step cousin. They were both very well behaved all things considered.

Today's party was lots of fun. His friend samuel's sister turned 2, so all the boys were together to celebrate. Chaos reigned as usual but a good time was had by all.

On the HE front we did some seed planting today-sunflower seeds and science-making playdough. Our project for next week is to make a scrapbook of all sam's holiday pictures. He took 5 rolls on holiday and we have finally got around to getting them developed. It will probably take us all week just to sort them out. We also have to do the flat stanely project for cheryl. we started it last week but didn't get very far. If we don't hurry up the school year in the US will be over.
We do have a fairly busy week ahead, going to the movies, having friends to tea, going to wickstead, visiting James and our muddlepuddle group.

we all had fun,fun, fun

We had a really nice day today. Merry and the girls came over to play and everyone got on brillantly. There was only one squabble between sam and maddie the whole time they were here. they had lots of fun with the playmobil and the delta sand and even braved the weather to go out and play in the sand box. Josie was adorable and smiled the whole time. Hopefully they will come to play again soon.
We spent the afternoon going to the library and doing odd jobs. We went and got new speakers for the pc so now we can play games again. Sam and matthew had lots of fun with his finding nemo cd.
We have a busy weekend ahead, Ikea and two birthday parties. If we get out of Ikea without rowing it will be a first. We always seem to row when we go there. I hate crowds and sam always wants an ice cream. M just wants to be left in peace to browse.