We’ve been having a quiet week at home so far, with Rabbit off Pre-school with a sickness bug.  She’s fine now, and the children have enjoyed extra unstructured time to play together which has been interesting to watch.  There has been lots of imaginative play, some good sharing and co-operation, wonderful if messy creativity, and reasonable attempts at clearing up after themselves.  I must admit I can’t report exactly what it has all been about.  We’ve done some Maths at the start of each day but then I’ve mainly left them to their own devices while I’ve attempted to catch up with housework.  In the afternoons, they have been doing Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Spellodrome, and a lot of playing in the garden.  The big boys have also been to Beavers this evening and had a tennis lesson which they really enjoyed.

Tiddler has been joining in more and more with everything the older ones do – he has even been demanding the right to “do Maths”!  His speech has also suddenly moved on again, with lots more sentences now.  When daddy left for work one day, he said “I want to go and look out window” and there have been lots more like that.  He also tries to join in every conversation, and copies everything he hears.  He’s been asking to sing certain songs over and over again, and is obviously trying hard to learn them.  He loves “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and joins in loudly with the bits he knows, especially “WHAT YOU ARE”. He also likes “The Wheels on the Bus”, shouting “ALL DAY LONG” with great enthusiasm.

The strangest conversation I have had with him today occurred during his evening breastfeed.  There has been a lot of debate about extended breastfeeding recently, and I haven’t really commented on it yet.  Maybe I’ll do a serious post about it sometime…Anyway, this evening, he kept stopping to tell me something which was very important but I couldn’t understand it at first.  It was something about monkeys and dinosaurs outside, and then he started saying “Ribbit ribbit said the frog”  which he told me was at Granny’s house.  He then said there was a frog and a fox (no doubt about which Granny he was thinking of) and the fox was having breakfast.  He carried on feeding for a while and then stopped to tell me that the fox had porridge for breakfast, with honey, and some water.  Having communicated this important message, he was happy.  I could feel his satisfaction at knowing enough words to be able to tell such a long story.  I love this stage of development (I think I say that about every stage!) – it’s so interesting to find out what is going on in their funny little heads.  It cheered me up anyway!