I’ve written a more detailed post on this for a less public audience, but this is just a quick update on the issue of having our children very probably end up going to different schools thanks to the proposed new schools admissions policy in our area.
We have now submitted our objection to the local authority, jointly with about 30 or 40 other families. Watch this space to see what happens.
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Today was Oliver’s last day of nursery. His pre-school days are effectively over.
I felt rather sad last night when I realised. I considered taking him there for the last time this morning, as I mentally counted the pitifully few times I had had the pleasure of escorting him. Once I walked with him as he rode his bike. Perhaps a handful of other times I drove him. His nursery hours this last academic year also meant I almost never picked him up either (unlike his first nursery where I collected him almost every Friday). But in the end I thought of Oliver’s own outlook when I had asked him if he was sad it was to be his last day. “Noooooo!” he said in a dismissive tone, as if I had just suggested he might want to watch paint dry.
He brought home his “Achievements Book”, a scrap book assembled through the year. We last saw it at Christmas and we were surprised at some of the things he had done and not mentioned, such as the visiting snake! We were also taken aback at some of his drawings, as rarely can he be persuaded to draw at home.
Perhaps most surprising, his report said how competent he was with a computer mouse. Doubtful about this, as he never uses it at home, Hayley put up the CBeebies website and told him to choose something for himself. At first he protested she should do it, but when left to his own devices, sure enough he swiftly selected something for himself. I do think he lets us do a lot for him that in truth he’s quite capable of doing himself. Perhaps it’s a boy thing. A friend told us recently she was getting her son dressed in the morning until he was eight!
So in a little over a month he will start his school life. And when he does he will have a few familiar faces around, as several of his nursery group are going to the same school. In fact he has already had one 90 minute visit to his future classroom to meet his teachers and some classmates-to-be. I dropped him off there quite happy with a couple of his (non-nursery) friends and he seemed to have enjoyed it when I picked him up later. Nothing much phases Oliver.
And I find that very reassuring. It is one thing that stands out from his end of pre-school report: he seems to be a happy and sociable boy. One phrase stood out for me: “he values the thoughts and feelings of others”. Frankly, as he enters an academic world overly focussed on tests and league tables, I can’t think of a more important outcome from his time as a pre-schooler.
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As regular readers will know there was a little stroll that took place earlier this month. It involved a small hoard of bloggers and other ne’erdowells dragging their carcasses an impressive 84 miles across the country from one end of Hadrian’s Wall to the other.
And if you’ve laid eyes on some of them you’ll know this was a small miracle.
More importantly they raised a whopping £26,000 for The Joseph Salmon Trust.
Like most others in any way linked to the walk I have already suggested enough times that readers might want to donate so this is the last reminder that you can give via the Justgiving page or even set up a small regular donation via the Trust’s website.
Congratulations to all those who took part but especially to Dan over at All That Comes With It, without whom it would never have happened. He won’t be opening his big mouth with any more ideas like that for a while I’ll bet. Bravo, sir!
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Oliver has now reached a size where he is able to assert his indomitable right to a ritual known to all men and loathed by many women. Yes, he’s tall enough to easily stand up to pee into the toilet bowl and then (unintentionally you understand) forget to put the seat back down. Not that I encourage that latter part of course, amusing though it might be.
Unfortunately both the toilets in our house have had maladjusted seats that wouldn’t stand up unaided. So I rectified this yesterday and then encouraged Oliver to step up to the, erm, bowl, so to speak. I saw him successfully accomplish the operation without impact on carpet or other surrounding furniture and thereafter thought nothing of it.
Cut to this evening. Lucy has gone upstairs to the loo and finds the toilet seat left up. “No problem”, she must have thought, “I’ve seen how Oliver does it when it’s like this” and proceeds to hitch up her skirt and stand at the bowl attempting to pee. The result was predictable. Bless her. “I did it like Oliver”, she explained when I found the large damp patch in front of the bowl.
I have always told people “that girl would jump in the river if she saw Oliver do it”. It turns out there was a better example all along.
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I work full-time but finish at lunchtime on a Friday. My wife works part-time but since she started doing her Kiddipops parties they have kept her busy about every other weekend. So today when I came home my wife and I passed like ships in the night early afternoon as she went to manage 38 excitable under-5s, leaving me with two of my own.
I thought about taking them out, but we soon had such fun playing with cars and trains that I decided we should stay home. As a result I got some real quality time with my kids, building towers, reading books and playing that fishing game where you have to hook a wobbling bug with a spider magnet: great fun!
My point? Well only that although we all know that looking after kids can be hard work at times (he writes, thinking of a screaming two year old refusing to move as you stand laden with bags of shopping in the rain), this afternoon served as a reminder to me that fulfilling my part of the weekend working bargain can be far from laborious.
The highlight came after both kids helped themselves to apples and brought one for me too. As I sat semi-slumped on the floor with my back against an armchair, Oliver sat on my lap and lay his head back on my chest. Not to be left out, Lucy then lay on my legs with her head on Oliver’s tummy. The three of us lay there, like a toppled human totem-pole happily munching on our apples. It was bliss.
Not every afternoon with the kids while Hayley works will be that much fun, not least because it would me more satisfying for her to share in it, but as a way for me to indirectly help earn us some money, it’s got to be up there with selling refrigerators on MTV.
This post is part of Fatherhood Friday over at Dad Blogs.
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While on holiday in Majorca (retrospective post to follow, no doubt), we spent a lot of time in the swimming pool and also a few forays into the sea. As a result, Oliver, who arrived on holiday using one polystyrene swim-band on each arm, had abandoned them completely by the end of the holiday, although rarely swimming much further than required to get back to the edge after jumping in as spectacularly as possible. He also spent some time “surface diving”, well within his own depth, to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool. After a few hours of this he moved on to swimming underwater, oddly moving much more smoothly and quickly than on the surface. All of this gave us some confidence that he would be a slightly stronger and certainly much more confident swimmer when he returned to his swimming lessons yesterday.
In the event, as soon as he took to the water yesterady I could see how very much he had improved. And at the and of his lesson his instructor got him to start swimming up the pool to see how far he could go and award him a badge for 5 meters, 10 meters or whatever. He hasn’t done this before but the holiday made me think he should manage 10 meters. In fact he passed 10 metres and his instructor kept going. He got well past 15 metres and still he swam on. Hayley and I watched and to our amazement and absolute delight he made it all the way to the far end of the pool, completing 25 metres!
I don’t remember exactly when I accomplished the same feat, but I am certain it was a few years later than age 4. So just as he learned to ride his bike years before me he has done ths same with swimming and I couldn’t be prouder. I guess it’s also an indication of the opportunities available to kids today, providing you can afford them, to do more at a younger age.
Learning to swim is obviously an important and potentially life-saving skill, so I am delighted that Oliver has crossed this rubicon. We have made a big fuss of him afterwards yesterday. I think he thoroughly deserves it.
Lucy also went swimming yesterday, having her first lesson in the same pool in a group next to Oliver, more than month ahead of her third birthday. She absolutely loved it and followed the instructions of her teacher, merrily swimming after toy frogs or kicking her legs with a huge smile on her face. I was thrilled and proud to see her joining in, no longer a toddler but every bit a little girl. In fact she would tell me “a big girl”! I hope she maintains this involvment, as I can imagine her swimming by the time we go on holiday again next year given her enthusiasm and current ability to move through the water. She too greatly seems to have benefitted from her time in the water on holiday.
And so another significant milestone is passed for our son and a new phase starts for our daughter. As ever, my feelings are a mix of pride and poignancy. But mostly pride.
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This post was written while on holiday and is published retrospectively.
Both kids have so far loved their time in the water here at Sant Elm and both have given us some memories to take away. Oliver has been using the single polystyrene band on each arm that he uses for his swimming lessons. From time to time he has taken them off. He can swim the width of the pool and I started to add incentives to do so, offering an extra tv show for every width he swims. He immediately swam 2 widths back to back. Living proof that bribery is the tool of choice for the unscrupulous parent.
Lucy started the week by falling flat on her face into the sea and then moved on to clinging onto us in the swimming pool. But within a couple of hours she had progressed to swimming around with her arm bands on, refusing to let me hold her. Her confidence did over-reach itself after lunch one day though, when she walked away from me after I had finished putting sun cream on her. “Lucy you need your arm bands on.” “No I’m ok,” as she walks towards the shallow baby pool. “No Lucy, you need them if you go in without Daddy,” as I rise to follow her. Lucy runs towards the pool, I hasten after her. Determined, she races forward down the steps into the pool before launching forward gracefully with her arms in front of her. At this point her launch, which should resemble a racing yacht gliding serenely across the surface, sadly is more reminiscent of that of a submarine, as her glide takes a downward trajectory. Fortunately Daddy is now precisely one step behind and scoops her up, her face transformed from cheeky resolution to a drenched shock, before the inevitable tears. The damage was far from permanent though, Lucy returning to the pool with arm bands a few minutes later to give the pool a good telling off for making her sink.
Other highlights included:
Finally we witnessed the complete range of emotions when Lucy decided unprompted to jump into waist deep (for her) water at the swimming pool. She bent her knees, her face froze in an expression of outright terror, then she summoned her courage and leaped in. The splash of water on her face produced a startled look, before the realisation of what she had done caused a look if absolute unadulterated joy to beam cross her face as she laughed and jumped in delight. I shall never forget it.
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I should damn well think so!!! Their policy is outrageous.
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Oliver fell while running in the park today. He fell on a tarmac path while carrying the instrument of the moment, a toy vuvuzela! On rising from his fall he had a cut lip, bad enough in fact to need stitches. So Hayley took him to A & E.
Once there he was given paracetamol and then several injections of local anesthetic into his lip. He didn’t cry once. Nor during the stitching.
Unfortunately Hayley did not fair quite so well. While standing there holding Oliver’s hand, she started to turn pale, then to feel faint and finally sat down at the recommendation of the nurse. I reckon the stress of it just caught up with her.
Later, as a reward for bring so brave, Hayley bought Oliver a small Wolverine toy car he’s been coveting, plus Wolverine and Captain America figures to ride in it.
He told the nurse that he was a super-hero and mentioned Wolverine. She replied that she knew the X-Men. Well, that was it, Oliver giving her chapter and verse on all the Wolverine stories he knows.
Going to bed tonight he reminded us that he’s a super-hero. We’d be the last to disagree.
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