We're all learning something!

On my last birthday, I thought about a few things I wanted to do, to be more fulfilled. One thing was to learn to dance, and last night, I went to my 2nd Salsa dance class. After only 2 sessions, I'm hooked. It's great fun, I've enjoyed chatting to the other people there, and I get to dance without needing to wait for someone to ask me to their wedding!

This morning, I took all the children out in the car with me. I went to the dump (as I'd cleared out our garage yesterday) and then we went to the shoe shop and they each got new trainers. I had a bag of mini-marshmallows to dispense when needed, and we managed fine. I was impressed at how smooth it went actually. Lady was great at looking after Thomas. He is always worried about going down unknown stairs, and Lady let him ride on her back so I could keep close to Duncan. Lastly, we called into a charity shop and left with a cuddly rabbit toy, a teddy-phone and a Muppet video (Duncan recognised it from a trailer on another video and asked for 'Pig falling in the water.')

There's been lots of learning happening here. Lady has worked hard at some maths worksheets I wanted her to do. When left to her own devices, she's played with her 'Human Body Explorer' CD ROM, watched her new DVD, (Bugsy Malone), invented endless new outfits for her dress-up wooden doll, drawn pictures and filled in her Brownies book, told stories to the boys using the trains and various props, composed a poem about the guinea-pigs and played outdoors on the trampoline. (She's learnt how to somersault-the other day she wanted mustard on her hot dog; she carried it outside, turned a somersault, and told me it was to shake the mustard!). Whew! That's not half of it, but what I can remember for now.

Thomas and Duncan pootle along as usual. Yesterday, I overheard Thomas asking Duncan to play a Pingu game on the computer with him; 'Duncan play Pingu falling in the water with Thomas? Yes play Pingu?' Duncan obviously thought that was a good idea as they were chuckling away together later, while gathered round the computer.

Duncan has been inputting all the train names into Google and YouTube by himself. I stay close by when he's doing this, to check the YouTube stuff especially. There are hundreds of Thomas The Tank films on YouTube. Yesterday, he was really getting into a film someone had made, with Thomas set to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen!

Thomas loves the set of Magic Key books I got and asks me to read them regularly, then he gets all excited doing the 'game' at the end of each story. Sometimes I try to be clever and get him to read some words, or notice rhyming pairs, but he snorts in derision and says 'just read the story Mummy!' Fair enough. He is recognising all sorts of words now though, and wrote a letter to his friend in England (who really is called Thomas) ; I LUV YOU THOMAS.
I had to spell you, he spelled luv himself, and he copied Thomas from a DVD. Smart boy, eh?!