Living in a box

Monday

I wonder if the inventor of the humble cardboard box had any idea what they had unleashed. The box above has been used as a house, a theatre, a boat, a plane, a biding place, a robot head, a helmet and all within the last 48 hours. Bean has even started to draw on it to add appropriate features, which he has not done before, and put a couple of holes in it in various places (eye holes and a whole in the roof.)

Today's trip to Horsham Park saw Bean continuing his (self set) challenge around the Trim Trail. He is becoming more and more confident and certain of what he is doing, although there is still some things he struggles with he gives everything a go. He used to avoid climbing the A frame but will now climb to the top and then ask for help which I supply in the form of verbal directions
accompanied with an enactment of how to climb over. 

Pumpkin still spends the majority of his time on the swing but today asked to go on the "big swing". He immediately started doing the 'swing leg' movements. I do not know where he observed this from but I was impressed (it is not something Bean does.) He won't go as high on these swings (yet!) but enjoyed it when I swung next to him.

Pumpkin has also been experimenting with words lately. Added to our vocabulary are 'swonged,' 'plimpt,' and 'runned,' amongst others.  

Pumpkin has also taken to sleeping long periods during the day again, probably due to the heat or his cold. This of course means that he is up later than usual in the evening which we have not had for a long time and is rather a shock to the system. 

Rainy days and Mondays

 Roopt

'A word is dead once it's been said, some said, I say it just begins to live that day.' Emily Dickinson.

After a lazy morning for me (thank you daddy for the lie in) in which the boys got busy building railway track and drawing pictures we headed for Owlbeach and Leechpool woods dressed for rainy weather. 
         
It was a good job as not only did it rain but unsurprisingly the woods were wet and muddy. The boys loved it. Bean and Pumpkun both struggle with walking (as such) and either stand still or run! Standing still involves looking at a twig that could be a slug, or watching where the river runs, smelling the flowers, discussing which path to take, listening and looking for the birds, splashing in a puddle, squelching in the mud or just pausing to climb the fallen tree or drive in the rotten tree stump. Bean was particularly taken by the 'blanket of bluebells' (his words) and Pumpkin interested in the puddles and mud.              
           
Bean's use of words to describe the bluebells really impressed me and daddy. Our children's language development has always impressed me, it seems to be something they are good at and enjoy playing with words. Bean regularly asks what words mean or who might use them.I felt sorry for the boy in the synthetic phonics training video who was marked wrong on his hestitation to pronounce 'roopt,' which is a great non-word but is clearly a word he knew was wrong and therefore hesitated to read it as such. I think the world may have gone slightly crazy when it asks a child to read a word that is not a word and tell them they got it right and when they pause to question the non-word tell them they are wrong. I think maybe we have forgotten we are dealing with people and not processes (rant over.) 
          
We ended up in the play park where I fed Plum under the play equipment in the only 20cm squared patch of dry bench I could find. Bean hasn't been too well and rode back in the buggy but Pumpkin managed the whole walk there and back again.
                                     

Clowning around

We spent the afternoon at the local play area. Bean turned it into a big top and Grandma was the ringmaster. He rode the white horse and performed tricks: riding backwards, riding standing on the saddle and riding facing the horse...until he fell off and the horse hit him in the face! The swings became the trapeze, the crows nest was the tight rope, the slide became the arena for his acrobatics and the trim trail used for his clowning around sequence, I can't remember what the round-a-bout was for but it was in the routine somewhere. He repeated his circuit several times. 

Pumpkin spent most of the time sitting in the buggy having fallen over and grazed his hand on the way there. It was the wrong time of day for a swift recovery of such an injury. He did eventually emerge but only after Pops had pushed him energetically several times around the play area pretending to fly him to one country or another.  I couldn't even tempt him on to the swings!

Pops hadn't quite realised the Plum was in the buggy too and the high speed turns, bumps and bangs woke her up so I fed her in the park which was interesting as there were no seats at all.
The day was topped and tailed by fuzzy felt pictures, dominoes, drawing, cutting and reading books.