Elephant trains and slime

We went to W5 again yesterday. It’s close and I have annual membership. We all had fun, but for Duncan, the highlight of the day was the safari train that had been set up in the outer building. I just had to let him have a go. Oh I thought he was going to burst with happiness. Thomas was too frightened and Lady felt too grown-up so I went on with him myself. We sat in the engine and he rang the bell non-stop. It looked like this;


I know because I had to Google for it when we got home. This picture was on page 6 of the Google results, but he found it.
Duncan wanted me to draw it. I made a really rotten attempt but he liked it well enough. He had me stick my picture onto one of his toy carriages, one with a monkey and an elephant painted on.

Lady had watched a demonstration at W5 about slime. So today we made some using corn flour, water and food colouring. It was all going well and all 3 children were having a great time getting their hands in and squelching it. I was sitting at the table with a cup of tea and my laptop just listening out. Lady took out the enormous saucepan and started teaching the boys Hogwarts spells. When I next looked, they had made rather a lot of mess. Duncan had the mixture all over his face hair and clothes. They had decided to make some more by themselves and had used up 2 full bottles of food colouring. I had a bit of a rage about that before I caught myself on. We cleaned up a bit, though Duncan still has a bright blue nose and green hands!

Oh yes, I’ve just remembered. Duncan’s contribution to the clean-up was to fetch the mop from the upstairs bathroom where I’d just used it. I said, ‘Duncan, get the mop. I want the mop’. Hr went up the stairs and returned a few minutes later empty handed. I said again, ‘Duncan, get the mop for Mummy. Mop to clean the floor’, then I mimed mopping the floor. Duncan went off again, saying ‘mop, clean floor!’ I heard a bit of a squelching wet sound, then he came down the stairs proudly bearing the wet mop. He’d stuck it into the (thankfully clean) toilet, because, he’d obviously reasoned, you can’t clean the floor with a dry mop!

Later Duncan was having a bit of a whine about something or other. I tickled him and asked him if was grumpy like Captain Hook. He laughed and pointed to himself saying, Peter Pan, then pointed to me saying Captain Hook. Then he ran away saying ‘Mummy chase me, Captain Hook, crocodile, SNAP!’

I just heard Thomas talking to Duncan in the special simplified way; ‘Duncan watch Bambi with Thomas? Yes watch Bambi?’ Then he turns to me and says ‘We would like to watch the Bambi video. Will you get it for us please?’
I love that they know exactly how to communicate best with Duncan. They play together every day and really enjoy each other’s company.
Well, usually!