Silas and the Air vent!

Hi! Hope this finds you all well. We are fine here, although longing for Summer to arrive! I was in Target yesterday and saw all the summer banners up and thought "that is funny, I wonder why they have all their summer advertising up now? It is a bit early!" only to realise that it is in fact June and it is the weather that is late rather than Target that is early! I am very confused with my seasons as you can tell! Ulrike was saying today that they have had their gas fire on and have had hot chocolate by the fire this week, which seems perfectly common sense to me!!

Apart from shivering and wearing winter woollies, we have been out and about a bit this week. On Monday after school the girls and I made some oat and raisin bars to take to a couple of people and then we met up with Amy and Elisabeth at the park, which was good fun! It was nice to see them as it has been a while.

Silas was such a pickle on Monday morning though as he managed to take off the air vent cover and stuff Naomi and Esther's playmobile toys down the vent! We were webcamming Mum and Dad and Silas had been around for most of it but had then gone into the girls room. I wasn't too worried and then Naomi went in to get something a few minutes later and I suddenly heard a loud wail! He really had done a good job of stuffing things in and was quite happily sitting there quietly occupied when I came in! He was most put out when I moved him! I think that I have recovered most of the stuff but it is hard to be sure; playmobil is such tiny stuff!! At some point we will get someone in to service the vents and maybe they will catch anything that gets blown out then!! Poor girls - they were upset!

Yesterday morning, Esther, Silas and I popped to Target quickly and then went over to Seattle to see a friend of ours who has had a new baby! He is lovely and my friend and I discussed various sleeping and feeding techniques, which I hope work!! The Dad looked after Silas and Esther and did a great job at entertaining them! I had a lovely long cuddle with the baby so it was a good morning! We drove home in driving rain and picked up Naomi from school who had stayed for lunch. In the afternoon we had swimming as normal.

Today, Naomi had a funny five minutes before school but has otherwise been absolutely fine all day. She had been playing with Silas this morning and then had eaten all her breakfast but as she came upstairs to get ready she had a little cough. I don't know whether the coughing upset her tummy but something made her feel a bit funny and she started to cry and cry and say that she felt sick and she couldn't go to school. Well, I eventually calmed her down and persuaded her to get ready for school anyway as I was going to take Esther and she managed to get ready. She didn't have a temperature and had been so well that I couldn't really believe that she was really going to be sick. Anyway, we got in the car and she was fine! I told school what had happened and they promised to call me if there were any problems, but they didn't need to, which was good! I don't know! IT was all very odd!

Naomi was telling me a very funny story this morning about a little boy in her class called Ethan who is a bit of a pickle (Naomi's words!) by all accounts. Yesterday he had inserted a Hama Bead up his nose and the teachers couldn't get it out. They had had to call his mother who had managed to get him to breathe sharply through his nose and it had eventually came out! After that the teachers were sharing stories of other children who had done the same thing. I am not sure what Naomi was supposed to have been doing during all this but I know from her retelling the story that she was listening to it all intently!! Poor Ethan and his mother!!

Naomi is doing really well with her reading at the minute and is really sounding out simple words. She can read simple sentences quite well now and is really determined to work them out too, which is great. She has been reading one of Silas' books in the car and although she has needed help on some words she really is starting to put the sounds together to make a word. I am really proud of her.

I am really proud of Esther too as she too has been starting to write simple words like CAT and NO and ON. She has made a wonderful map of the world which is great! I need to put it up on the wall but it is quite large and I need to find some space!

Silas' speech improves gradually; he is now calling Naomi "Mee Mee" which is very sweet and can now bellow at the top of his voice "Mum", which is not so sweet when it is 5 am!!

So that is it for now, we have swimming tomorrow and then I am going out in the evening to my Jane Austen Book Club which I am looking forward to as I haven't been since February!!