Long Longs

Two hours of happy lego playing inspired by the gift of lego for Bean's birthday being built after breakfast. And yes, we are in our pyjama's :)

A spontaneous enactment of Michael Rosen's poem 'Shorts' -

Long shorts

short longs

short shorts

long shorts up high

long shorts down low

long longs on his head

-and a lot of laughter.

And food art rearing it's head again, this time in the marshmallows and ice-cream left over from the birthday party at the weekend. It is an alien with three eyes, a nose and a mouth.
And pumpkin creating a snowy scene in lego land using one of Plum's muslin cloths, whipping it away suddenly and shouting excitedly 'it's melted!'

Our adventures this afternoon took us to the library, where Bean only selected two books (very very unusual) followed by a mosey about Horsham museum to see the Matisse collection. I found a Matisse book in granddad's vast library of art books at the weekend and have had it loitering around the house since. The boys recognised 'l'escargot' immediately and the piece next to it is on the cover of the book. We were only in the art gallery fleetingly but the boys were fascinated by the idea that these pictures were all cut out.

viewing the scissors collection

Pumpkin was more taken with the working grandfather clock and an urgent trip to the toilet for Bean took us into new unexplored museum territory so we actually spent more time here than I had expected and we will undoubtedly be returning.
The walk home I decided to take along the river as Bean has been asking a lot of questions about where the river comes from and goes to. We enjoyed the leisurely walk home looking at the river, enjoying it's sounds and observing its changes in such a short stretch.  

Through the Looking Glass

Pumpkin's bed consists of two mattresses (one longer, one shorter - it is an extendible bed) two sheets, one towel, two waterproof squares, one duvet, one pillow. In the past week this collection of material has been used to build a camp, a beach, a mountain, a house, a shop and a castle. To the untrained eye they all look much the same but to the boys they are all very different. Today's effort was a castle and also included two bean bags.

We have a very busy week this week and so today we ditched our normal Tuesday routine and headed into town. A few weeks ago my glasses fell apart and today I had an opticians appointment to test my eyes and buy some new ones. I had warned them that I would be bringing three smalls with me and they were amazing. Bean choose to sit outside the room and draw, Pumpkin choose to come in with me and Plum very dutifully slept for the whole appointment. The optician explained everything to Pumpkin, answered all his questions and even let him press a few buttons to move me up and down in the chair. They calmly let the boys try on different glasses and play with the mirrors. It was generally a really positive experience except for the man who wanted the boys to show him how they could 'sit nicely' which I found slightly amusing after my post yesterday. 
We had totally the opposite experience in Argos. Totally unhelpful and unwilling to accommodate my request at all.

This was followed by a library trip, mainly so I could feed Plum and the boys routed through more books, we read about five and they played on the computer. It amazes me how confident and able Pumpkin has become in just the last few weeks. And as it was dry and warm enough for us we picniced in the nearby play area.

We had to go and buy Grandma a birthday present and then we went to Horsham Museum to look in the art gallery. As Bean and Pumpkin have been churning out art work recently I thought it would be nice for them to see how artists display their collections. Pumpkin was a bit tired by this point and mostly moaned but Bean loved it. The display was a photography one taken by a professional pilot whilst in flight, so various views from above, sky lines, sun rises/sets and cloud formations. Bean was really interested in what each of the photos was called and was very articulate about the ones he liked and why.

This morning Bean had asked how do we make jam tarts so we ended our day by making some...actually we ended our day by eating some, yum, yum.