Cuckoo!

I bought a cuckoo clock yesterday. Duncan has had a thing about them for a while, ever since he saw my aunt's clock during a visit to her house. I have drawn loads of clocks, and he has Googled and YouTubed. His current favourite YouTube film is about a quilt-shop cuckoo clock. It's so funny watching him watching this film. It's not what most 7 year old boys would enjoy! When we headed out in the car last week, he directed me to take him to the Black Forest! Sadly, it's not quite in the neighbourhood.

He drew a lovely cuckoo clock picture on cardboard and I helped him to cut it out and make a 3D model clock, with doors and a bird inside. In his Wednesday art class, they were making things from Fimo and Duncan opted to make a little bird for his cardboard cuckoo clock. Thomas made a green snail and a badge for Gordon.

Anyway, I saw that they had cheap-ish clocks for sale at Argos, so yesterday I thought I'd get one. The children all came to the shop with me. Duncan was oh so excited. He was bouncing up and down and laughing and saying, 'Duncan get a cuckoo clock!'

We took our new precious time-piece back to the car where I had to open the box immediately so we could all get a look. Duncan was just bursting with happiness. He cradled the clock on his lap as I drove to the next part of our day's activities, the swimming pool.

Now Lady and Thomas have been wanting to go swimming for ages and I kept letting them down. So we finally decided to go during the day instead of in the evening. It should be obvious right, we're home-educating and all! But I'd been a bit concerned about looking after the 2 boys alone in the pool. The last few times we'd been, Thomas was really nervous and either clung to me or stayed really close, and was shivering soon after getting in, perhaps because he wasn't moving about enough to keep warm. Also, whenever I'd said to Duncan about going he became distressed and cried, 'no go to swimming pool!' Eventually I realised what was troubling him, and I said, 'Duncan go to the swimming pool, not go in the shower, just in the pool.' Then he agreed to go.

So we left the clock, with the bird carefully set out of the doors, and went to the leisure centre. It was fabulous. There were few other people there. I'd called up in advance and discovered that if we arrived between 12 and 1.15, there wouldn't be any school groups there. So we got ready in a family changing room and entered the water. I was astonished at Thomas. He put on his goggles, and he was off! He was jumping in and diving under and swimming a metre or 2 and had no fear at all! I don't know what had happened! Duncan loved it too. he mostly stayed in the shallow area by the steps and just splashed about and jumped and laughed. Lady did her usual crazy mermaid thing; she just loves the water. We will definitely make this a weekly thing.

Afterwards we had chip-shop chips, the best kind, and went to visit some friends whom we hadn't seen for a while. While we were there, Thomas and Lady had loads of fun playing a a game called 'doggy tag' which involved running from a swing to a trampoline while trying to avoid the 'lick power' (Lady's term) of their 2 dogs. I had a lovely game with a bundle-of-gorgeousness 2 year old, in which he kept booing me. Also provided was the tea and chat I had required when I posted yesterday.

Today Thomas and Lady went to Jujitsu. Thomas was so pleased to get his gee and looks ever so handsome. I'll have to post a picture as soon as I get round to buying a new charger for our digital camera :-(

Lady said Thomas was really going for it at their class today, and a big boy who has a brown belt was supporting him at the wrestling bit they do at the end. Thomas told me that his Sensei's mum turned up and expresed surprise that he had a mum. The he thought for a bit and said, 'actually, everyone on the whole planet has a mummy.' After a bit more thought he declared, 'except Luke in the Sarah Jane Adventures.' He's right, Luke was created from an amalgamation of the DNA from scans of the human guests to the Bane-run 'Bubbleshock' factory. So there.