Sunday 1 July 2012

Too fast to plan!

Some weeks just fly by in a blur of things we've had booked interspersed with so many things that Sprout and Squidge do/find/come across/need/want/discover that I'm almost dizzied by how quick it's gone. This has been one of those weeks...

Squidge has got so much more relaxed with his baby rabbit and has even held him by himself. So pleased!!

There have been enough strawberries that the boys have been picking them every day (and usually eating them up straight away too!)


While Moppet has absolutely no desire to be in the baby bouncer, Squidge has repurposed it into a hang-glider, so it's all win.


Both boys were excited to stop at  level crossing twice in one week and watch the trains go past, so we're planning an afternoon at the train station in the next couple of weeks watching trains.


Squidge's been enjoying Tree Fu Tom and Numtums this week, along with karate videos on YouTube, following which they've both asked for Karate lessons so they're booked in! We found out a bit about thorny devils after we saw one on Tree Fu Tom, then he asked about wolves so we talked about whether you can still find wild wolves in this country, and then moved on to watching Peter and the Wolf which he loved and has been watching every night in bed since then. That led us to this guy flute beat boxing, and then this beat boxer who Squidge watched over and over again.


Sprout's been practising his parkour, and has also made a parkour custom map for Minecraft. He also came across a mention of Pandora's Box in a Minecraft video on YouTube, so we talked a bit about that and watched this brilliant animation lots of times (made in part with After Effects, which we're going to try out the free trial of), followed by this one of the Cyclops. That led us to this Ancient Greek pot game here, and we're going to a craft session at Gladstone Pottery in a couple of weeks where you paint Greek Gods onto tiles, and one at the Potteries Museum where you can make an Ancient Greek style pot and paint it. He's also rediscovered his Mario mod on Minecraft, and has been watching lots of videos of it, playing Mario Party 9 on the Wii, and I found Donkey Kong online too so he's been persevering at that as he's determined to get further and further.


Dough jewellery (and dough monsters who live in caves and eat nothing but noodles, and dough princesses who live in towers and kick noodle-eating monsters' asses to escape)...


...zombie faces...


...and converting dough jewellery into wearable weather stations to measure wind speed :D


We had a painting session with some acrylics, bath puffs, celery bases, sticks and chive flowers as brushes. Sprout painted a picture of the giant duck statue in a giant bath that he had also built on Minecraft. They then asked me to find some new games for the computer so I installed Roblox, Terraria, Crayon Physics and we played this Dig It Up: Vikings game too. We managed to change a bit of the Roblox script to have custom weapons, and Sprout now has a Terraria server to play it with his friends and Gruff (we've installed three copies here so everyone can play together). Squidge is really enjoying Crayon Physics and experimenting with what he can do on it.


On International Mud Day June 29th we played with friends in the river at Tittesworth Reservoir...


...and looked (unsuccessfully) for fish!


There have also been loooads of cuddles...


...and we even managed to save some strawberries as Sprout wanted to make "really beautiful strawberry cupcakes for a strawberry cupcake feast"! So we did :) (Recipe here, plus we used squirty icing and sparkly sprinkles!)


My few spare moments while feeding Moppet have been spent learning Javascript on this brilliant site (so that I can eventually help Sprout program Minecraft mods which is what he's wanting to do next), and reading the Playful Parenting book, which I'm really enjoying and from which I've already used some brilliant ideas.

My favourite moment of the week was when I wandered outside with Moppet to see what Sprout and Squidge were up to, and they were pottering about the garden, chatting away to each other, picking strawberries and giving the rabbit food and water. Happy mummy :)


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