Goldy (by sarah)

This is a rubbish photo of the fish but until he becomes a bit more accustomed to things it is probably all we are going to get - his name is Goldy the Goldfish and Jean won him at the Fair. We were a bit alarmed to see that this was still going on and the more we explained why it wasn't a good idea to get one of the fish the more determined she became to get one as they looked so sad :/

So to cut a long story short she had a set budget for the Fair - she got a goldfish - we all went home to sort the gold fish out - she insisted on carrying him home herself and fretted about weather he could breath and showed him to any and all other children we passed along the way.

I told of my carnival fish Sandy and Shelly that I had at her age and Daddy spoke of how he and his mother used to win as many of them as they could in order to save them when he was little.

Alaric turns out to be a fish expert (at least as far as goldfish are concerned) and we had wanted to get fish as the New House Pets as there had been fish here when we came to look around.

Once home Alaric and Jean set about equalising temperatures of water with the bag in a bowl - so that the poor thing wouldn't get shocked being put in new water. Then we zoomed out to buy supplies. Which being a bank holiday wasn't that easy!

It is only a small tank for now as we just don't have the money but hopefully say next month we can get a larger one - Goldy seems abit worried about the space to be honest and has mainly hidden behind the plastic plant and dug himself a little whole in the gravel.

Today we went to the Aquatic Habitate to get a real plant and a snail - Jean wanted a shrimp but apparently Goldy would eat it (it was not much smaller than Goldy!). Anyway Jeany has named the snail Slimy and is now obsessed with alliteration :/

Again Jean insisted on carrying the snail and has been very militant about feeding the fish and has even taken to remembering to feed her rabbit without being reminded.

I'm glad we have the fish and we are all looking forward to establishing an ecosystem but we were not happy to find them at the Fair and worse than that - in rescuing Goldy we are supporting the trade :/ But Goldy actually came out to see us today when we came in which we think is a good sign 🙂

Princess Alice and Mary Calvin (by sarah)

It is the schools Queen Jubilee Lunch today and so Jean had to dressed in red, white and blue or as a member of the Royal Family. Being Jean she chose to be a Red, White and Blue Princess. That combined tiredness has made her very much Alice out of Alice In Wonderland. This strange state of affairs was increased by Mary being a mischievious little grump - when ever she wears the little baby grown with tiger cubs on, I can't help but call her Calvin. Especially as in the caffuffle of getting Jean ready for school the baby decided to get down and eat the cat biscuits. On all fours with just her mouth like the cats do :/

So I had a precious little madam and a mischievious little monster this morning!

Here are more pics of Jean:

This has made me realise that Jean's idea of princess is mainly Indian - she loves the Princess out of 80 Days Around the World and wanted to go to school in a sari. But she was happy with this get up in the end though she wasn't happy with the pasta salad me and Daddy had stayed up late to make - mainly as it had spring onions in it :/

The Tooth Fairy Left a Letter (by sarah)

Jean lost her second tooth in the new house yesterday and spent the day worrying that they wouldn't find it as we still haven't found the tooth cusion I'd made her. She was also doing lots of wondering about how the tooth fairy would get into the house and lift the tooth and swap the money and did they go big/small, or could they walk through walls and were they a boy or a girl?

So she left a letter.

And the tooth fairy answered it. I thought it was just pictures but Jean pointed out it was a letter written in Fairy Language so she immediatly demanded to go on the computer to see if wikipedia could help her translate it. But after some google searching it became evident that there are lots of different fairy languages and dialects and when Jean looked closer she found that the symbols were very toothy and so we came to the conclusion that this is a specific tooth fairy language.

There are teeth and pliers and ladders and pillows and moons.

I told Jean we would probably have to wait until Daddy got home and she could work at translating it with him. She looked very serious and took the letter and sat staring at it about ten minutes later she announced that this symbol was M and this symbol N and before long she had worked out the second word was Jean.

'It now sort of looks like Jean as well Mummy' and she's right it does. She got the first few lines translated before school. And there was me thinking I would have to phone Tooth Head Quarters and ask for a key so we could find out what the letter ment.

Of course as the fairy borrowed one of mummy's pens Jean did initially accuse me of writing the letter until I pointed out I couldn't read what it said.

Captain Jean Sparra (by sarah)

Today Alaric had to go to London to deal with servers - origonally we were going to go with him and me and the girls were going to head to the Natural History Museum but with the weather being so nice and hot I didn't want to risk having the kids stuck in a car in traffic for like half the day so we stayed here.

We inflated the pirate ship paddling pool Jean got for her forth birthday and spent a good chunk of the morning playing Pirates of the Carrabian with Jean as Captain Jack Sparrow, Mary as Will (as she is the new baby captain) and me as ever other character out of the first three films.

Then I made up stories from the the characters Mary got given as bath toys as a christening present last weekend. So we had Gianty the Giant Squid from the deepest sea trench who went on an adventure to visit a coral reef.

I offered Jean the chance to go to the park and then to Pizza Hut for lunch but she stated she wanted a picnic as Pizza Hut do not have sorrel in their salad. So I made them a picnic with home grown salad 🙂

Which the rabbit instantly joined in with!

I had to take photos before removing and washing salad (I gave him some carrots I'm not mean!)

We then had to come inside as it was too hot and we watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and then Shaun the Sheep. Then it was back to the pool and bubble blowing and then colouring in!

Mary wanted to help Jean so I had to get one of Jean's old exercise books and some of the scrubbed out felt tip pens for the baby so she could colour in too 🙂

We then had dinner in the garden, followed by another paddle and then The Wizard of Oz and pop cakes.

Today scores high on the goodness scale 🙂

Mary and Jean (by sarah)

I thought I'd just do a little catch up on the girls - Mary is walking, saying Mumma, hitting people because she is teething, keeps trying to dress herself, when that fails she brings the clothes to me to dress her then once dressed she gets her shoes and tries to push the pushchair over to me. If she doesn't want something she will grab it and throw it just to show she really does not want it!

She has a favourite toy - a little hamster who is her baby, she tries to play the recorder and she loves drums. She giggles and cries at the slightest things and loves snuggles.

Jean is obsessed with acronyms especially recursive ones which she spells out and says ALL THE TIME. She is having stress attacks over where to put apostrophes when something belongs to a plural and is correcting my spelling. She has been moved up a class with some of her friends for spelling and things. She is obsessed with Harry Potter and wants me to do her hair in Hermione styles and talks in parseltongue.

She is sad science club has finished but is happy she is getting to do her dancing at school. She sings her beavers theme all the time and wants to take part in Jujistu competitions. She lies about having washed both body and teeth so keeps being in trouble and is getting sneakier about it by the day!

She has declared she wants four jobs when she is older:

She wants to be in bands (three of so she can play the drums, guitar and sing), then she wants to be a Vet as she loves animals and wants to make them better, then she wants to be an artist (specifically she wants to be the colour artist to comic book/animation line drawings and her colouring is fantastic!) and lastly she wants to be a teacher.

I have to ration the amount of time she spends reading and doing maths so she actually goes and plays - when her friends come round she organises them into bands and theatre groups and puts on shows for me.

I think that is everything currently.

Oh apart fromt he fact that Mary escapes all and any strap you put her in and has taken to posting what ever she can into the bin if you don't watch her!

Jean is picking up Lojban even though Alaric is only really speaking it to the baby and she keeps coming home saying things in Spanish and French. She is also doing her own writing ranging from poetry to stories though most of them involve Daleks.