family

another afternoon working from home. not sure if I’d want to work from home all the time. got lots done today because the house is empty, but it does mean you go a bit mad.
the silence was broken by an ice-cream van driving by. It was playing a souped up version of Popeye The Sailor Man and looked very modern. I was too slow with my recording device to catch the tune for you.

I once heard of a girl who’s parents told her that when an Ice Cream van played its tune it meant that it had run out of lollies and ice creams.
a fantastic parent lie. i think it’s a fair response.

Read More »icecream van

esther and elton balance cats on their heads

according to esther, a jawn and cough sounds like a woova.

just been discussing our TV aerial with esther.
esther: what’s that bird stick on the roof for daddy
me: it’s the TV aerial, not a bird stick
esther: what’s it for ?
me: it helps you see the TV better
esther: do you have to sit up there to watch it
me: no.

here is an old photo of kezia (she was around 12 months old i think). It’s not been on the blog before, so here it is.

i’m working from home today and as usual i started at 6.30am sitting wifi-ly in our front room. at 8am the kids came down and wanted to watch CBeebies. Whilst relocating upstairs I caught a little bit of the Fimbles, which is very strange stuff.

Read More »little red riding hoodwinked

esther and chums had been making balloon people which involves sticking stickers of body bits (eyes, ears, hands etc) on to a balloon.
unfortunately one popped over night. there were body bits all over the carpet and a mushed up mess of face in a little pile of balloon.
sometimes it’s like having Quentin Tarrantineeeno as a cleaning lady.

yeah. esther is 4 today.
the normal routine is for esther to only get out of bed if it’s after 7am (and even then she has to check it’s ok with us first). Unfortunately for her, her clock stopped at 5 minutes to 7 – so she didn’t get up until we went to see her at 7.30am ! poor bean.

we went to a party yesterday. i was carrying kezia and she shouted for joy when she saw a giant (to her) bouncy castle. i put her down and she ran to it. instead of jumping on, she threw herself on to the pile of shoes left in front of it and, with much squeels of delight, started playing with them instead.
she loves shoes does our kezia.

whilst stuck on a train today (usual journey time 5 mins, today 30 mins) esther and i did some spelling practice.
i saw a sign saying ‘litter’ by a bin. i went through the word phonetically –
“li spells ‘li’
double tt is ‘t’
er is like at the end of esther, so is ‘er’
li – tt – er , li-tt-er. what does that spell ?”
“it spells bin” said esther.
“don’t be a fool” i said. “it spells ‘litter'”.
“what’s litter daddy” said esther.
and therein lies the problem. kids today read everywhere “do not drop litter” yet they don’t even know what litter is.

i mended our summer house this evening. Nothing too tricky (otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it) – it was just replacing the decking at the front.
To get the old decking out I had to chisel out some old bits of wood. Esther asked me what the tool which looked like a screwdriver was. I told her it was called a chisel.
“Why do you call it a twissel ?” she replied
“I don’t” i said.
but a “hammer and twissel” has a nice right to it. prancing carpenters. that’s the future (perhaps I should commission a series on this for daytime TV)
here’s what it looks like now (the decking on the front step is the bit you have to be impressed by!)

esther managed to cycle 4.5 miles round windsor park lake today. whilst tethered to a bundy and skipping rope, she did pedal most of the way herself.

my camera ran out of batteries so unfortunately i couldn’t take any pictures of the fantastic scenary which was looking really good today.

kids still work down the pit. nowadays it’s the sand pit

preparing nails:

walking down street:

i was against electro therapy initially. but now i see the results and i’m very impressed