Bethany and Harry Potter

On Friday Damien came home with a new copy of the first Harry Potter book for Bethany (our original was loaned and never seen again).
Tonight (Wednesday) I let her stay up late and finish it.  She was very ready for this book, and it was such a pleasure to see her enjoy it.
Note also that she is sitting on the NEW downstairs couch!  I helped Damien carry our temporary downstairs furniture to its' proper place upstairs and Libby scored our old upstairs floral setting.
We are still waiting on the ottoman though.

Hannah astounds us again

About a month ago Hannah suprised me by starting to point out alphabet letters:  "look Mummy, there's a B for Bethany!"
When I got over my shock, I showed her what a H for Hannah looked like, and then we started to spot D for Daddy, M for Mummy and L for Leila.  It had been a great distraction on occasion: when she is being grumpy I can point out a signpost or something and get her to forget what she is whinging about.
Today at Leila's Music lesson, Hannah got to play with a pen on the whiteboard, and I suddenly realised she was WRITING!!!

I am proud and excited, but also a little awed and perhaps even a teensy bit afraid.  This kid has another year to go before kindergarten!

Alphabet Cookies for Leila's class

Mrs Bayley's prep class has being running a "letter of the week" program for most of the year.  They start at the beginning of the alphabet with a little display and activities about the letter "A" and then work their way through to the letter "Z".  They finished last week, so I thought I'd do what I did 2 years ago for Bethany's class, and cook up a celebration:
The girls and I made a big batch of treacle gingerbread dough, and then (while the big girls were at school) Hannah and I used my Wilton 3 inch cutter set to bake a complete set of alphabet cookies, plus a tray of smaller letters so each kid could eat their own initial.
Hannah and I visited Leila's class with the cookies and a heap of decorating gear and helped the kids to ice and sprinkle up a colourful display.  It was fun.  Unfortunately I ran out of camera-phone battery before I could capture the final result.  It wasn't perfect because Hannah somehow found a way to pinch and eat half of the letter "V" (despite me having baked an extra letter "H" just for her).
While I was there I got to see Leila wearing a coloured cape to reward her achievement of learning yet another list of "magic" words.   We are very proud of how she is taking off with her reading.

Leila's black eye

Hannah had a little toy wooden hammer, and Leila copped it.  I don’t think Hannah had any idea that she could hurt Leila as badly as she did.  The initial lump was pretty scary, but it went down and coloured up quite quickly.

 The profile shot below doesn’t show the eye colour or swelling very well, but it does show Leila’s gorgeous little upper lip sticking out.  I just love it.

 A few days later:

Nose ribbon

Hannah complained about her nose and I gave her a tissue.  She is often fairly snotty, and I didn’t think to check further.  The next day, as I strapped her into her car seat, I saw (and extracted) this little wad of curled up ribbon!  I don't know how she fitted it up there!

Here is another random Hannah moment:   I love it.

The Snow Ball Tree

Every year I look forward to this:  our snowball tree grows green pompoms which turn a brilliant white and then quickly shed.

I get the kids to stand underneath the tree while I shake the branches (I stand on the ramp leading from the back door to the washing line and reach across).  It is wonderful to watch them play and dance among the falling petals.

Dance concert preparation

Our Dance concert is on Dec 4th.  This year Hannah will be doing a demonstration of her steps in a cross-the-room exercise.  She is learning to skip and polka etc.  Her costume is a little 2 piece jungle girl number in orange and black with sequins and a bone in her hair.  Granny probably won't like it.

Bethany is not doing tap this term (to free up our Saturday mornings).  Her Jazz items are "chitty chitty bang bang" dressed as a car driver (see Leila modelling the goggles above) "Bibbity bobbity boo" and a number from flash dance.  She and Leila are also being Christmas elves with their ballet classes.

Leila is dressing as a cow girl for her group tap number and as a monkey for her jazz item "I wanna be like you" from the Jungle Book.

Parents are helping out with the costumes and props.  It is getting crazy.  Last week I had to give money to 5 different individuals for various costumes.  This reminds me... one of the other mothers has asked if I can help her out with sewing an elephant costume.  Could be interesting.

In the photo above we are at a cafe in Lauderdale having fish and chips.  It was a fairly boring day, Damien had been hitting the books pretty hard (he's been studying flat out for music exams and a board-of-directors course) so we all took a break from the house and went for a bike ride together.  Leila scoots, but if she gets tired she hops into the carriage.  I've been taking them to school like that quite a bit this week too.