The king, the princess, the fairy, the prince and his horse

Yesterday was dry and sunny and in the morning, Duncan was sitting outside, dressed as the handsome prince and examining a collection of trains and drawings. He looked so content. I thought about how different it would be if he was still going to school. He’d have been forced into a school uniform and onto a bus at 8 am, and then made to engage in activities that held little or no interest or relevance to him. Oh, I’ve just remembered; on Sunday I was having a lie in and he came into my room, kissed my cheek and ran out saying ‘handsome prince!’ When he came back a while later I asked if I was the sleeping princess and he said yes, then I asked who everyone else was. He told me that Thomas was the fairy, Lady was the king and Gordon was the horse!

We had friends over to visit in the afternoon. I had a lovely time sitting around, drinking tea and chatting. Oh and I enjoyed watching a beautiful smiling baby, content in his Mummy’s arms. The children all enjoyed themselves too, even if Thomas was a bit judgemental about D’s hair! Duncan was happy when he saw the boys come to the front door and he wanted to cuddle D when she came in, though that may have been partly because she had a bag of food he wanted to investigate!

Later when Gordon came home from work, Thomas told him about his day, ‘my friends were here and A. (the baby) was here and you missed him,’ which was obviously the most important thing for him.

We had yummy roast chicken for dinner and after the children were in bed, we watched ‘Annie Hall’. I’d forgotten how utterly funny and sweet and wonderful it is!

We’re having another quiet day. Thomas has been doing what he calls his work, which is, playing CD ROMs. He spent ages playing a ‘learn to read with Clifford’ game, and was doing really well at sounding out the letters for 3 letter words. He also played ‘Jojo in number land’ and is now onto ‘Adiboo’ a strange but fun music game. Duncan has been focusing on rockets again today. He has asked me to draw pictures of ‘Barney’s rocket’ (it features in their ‘Barney in outer space’ video) over and over. I must have drawn 10 of these by now! I was getting a bit fed up drawing the same thing so many times, (though I’ve been instructed to make some alterations on the recent batch) but I figure he must need to do this right now. He can’t explain what benefit he derives from it, but there’s obviously something meaningful going on. Perhaps sometime later on, he’ll look back at this and tell me what it was. I also wonder what causes his great desire to acquire new Thomas the Tank Engine trains. He’s gone beyond needing the different characters so he can emulate the stories we read or that he watches. He now wants me to get the various types of each train produced by the different manufacturers. In this case, completing the collection seems to be his motivation. Thankfully he hasn’t discovered the Hornby collection yet. At a cost of £20 or more per engine, he can buy those for himself when he’s grown up, if he’s still interested!

Lady has been going through a BBC Spark Island Maths book and longingly reading a Disney World holiday brochure with Thomas. I sent off for the free DVD because I knew Duncan would enjoy the footage of roller coasters and other rides. Maybe we’ll go there some day, but not anytime soon!