Bits and pieces

Well, another couple of weeks have flown by. There have been various interesting things going on, but I can't remember when or in what order so I'll just do bullet points.

• Shannon astonished me by taking over Reader Rabbit 1 that Jade had left, and not only did I see her competently using the mouse and clicking on stuff for the first time ever, I realised that she was actually properly playing the pairs game and matching up sets of 2 pictures! Astonishing!!!
• Jade and I have been playing lots of Farmyard Bingo which Shannon's enjoyed joining in with and doing quite well too.
• Jade went to school all day on Monday. They were having a 'medieval day', making food, dressing up in costumes, dancing etc. She enjoyed it, but said it was too long to be away from me. I agree! It felt very strange not having her here for that long, and I just can't imagine what it would do to family relationships if she was there full-time.
• She's going all day tomorrow, too - for a trip out to Warwick Castle. I'm rather surprised she's so enthusiastic about going, actually, for one who's fairly anxious being without me, but she seems keen so I am happily going along with it.
• DH took the girls out to see Kenilworth Castle last Wednesday when I was at work all day. They loved it.
• This morning, we've done the story of Isaac from the Bible. On the way I explained about primogeniture, inheritance, cultural differences and lots more.
• Then we did some Miquon maths. She's still at the simple adding up stage, and using her fingers for 1+2 and other such sums!
• Then we pulled out the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia, and she wanted to look at the page about having babies, so we read about fertilisation, where babies grow, how long for and how they are born. Then we went onto the web to follow up the Usborne Internet Links and searched for some others too. So we saw short videos of fertilisation, implantation, and foetal development. Then we found a nice video of some women giving birth, gently and naturally, which may well have robbed me of the opportunity of ever having grandchildren, as she really does not like the look of that AT ALL! She says she's quite scared ....
  
• Also on the subject of birth, we visited a friend's farm last Friday for a tour round the lambing sheds. We saw the orphans that were being fed from bottles, the ones that had been put with another ewe to try and get her to adopt them, and then were fortunate to find one ewe who had just delivered one lamb, and my friend got the big shoulder-length glove on and stuck her arm in to find that there was another one on the way. This one was breech, though, and she couldn't manage to get it into a good position for delivery, so her husband came along and he managed to get the lamb born. It was touch and go for a minute or so but fortunately the lamb managed to get going and eventually we saw it struggle to its feet and have its first feed.
• The same day, I went to a funeral for a local woman whom I knew reasonably well, so that was sad. Birth and death in one day. The girls went to play with another HE family in town.
• This afternoon we've been swimming. Neither of them are swimming independently yet but Jade is showing a little progress each time we go and as she does so much better without any pressure I'll just let her take it at her own speed.
• There are of course tons of other books and stuff we've looked at over the past couple of weeks, but nothing else is springing to my memory at the moment.