Parrot

For those family members who've not been getting this blog by email, I added you to the list, having figured you'd just not got round to saying that you wanted me to when I asked as I set it up.
Having finished working I have time to do them once more.

Last night when the children were meant to be going gently off to sleep, I went upstairs to find that Miriam was 'Saint Niclaus' (Father Christmas). She had stickers on her chin for a beard and she was giving Reuben random toys as presents!

Miriam seems to be going through a mischievous stage at the moment. This weekend this included doing a poo on the driveway, a wee in the bath, unscrewing a door knob from a cupboard and screwing it back on the wrong way round (handy for closing the cupboard from inside), splashing in muddy water, climbing in all sorts of places where she's not meant to climb, running away when called and coming downstairs when she was meant to be going to sleep to tell us 'Reuben wants you'. As if he weren't capable of telling us himself. Reuben's taking a turn at more of a 'butter won't melt' approach.


Reuben and Miriam have been carrying Peacock, Monster and Spider round with them all day, feeding them breakfast, getting them to sit on the potty and putting them down for an afternoon nap. On the other hand they have decided recently that there are some imaginary 'babies' from which they need to hide, run, close the doors etc. I think it's funny that they look after Monster and run from babies. M, P and S have recently become bilingual. 


Reuben has a habit at bedtime of calling out, 'Mummy/Daddy', there are three things. One, look at what Miriam is doing and she shouldn't be; two, I can't find my torch because it's too dark; three, can I have a drink of water?

I was surprised that, having made 10 'cookies' out of playdough, Reuben divided them up onto 2 plates (one for  him and Tim and one for me and Miriam) with five on each. He then split one from each plate in half and gave us 2 1/2 each.

We told Reuben he could have chocolate icecream for pudding as a treat for sitting still (ish) for a haircut the other day. The first day they forgot about it. The second day Tim had prepared some grapefruit for them and Reuben came through at pudding time and said 'the grapefruit isn't really that nice, so I don't think it will be good tomorrow. We can have grapefruit now and icecream tomorrow.'

The other day Miriam did a lovely dance to the rhythm of the fruit bats (unlike some bats their sounds are very much audible to the human ear). 

Miriam asked 'Is Bhavni's Daddy Barrit? We said yes ( his name is Bharat - aka His Excellency the High Commissioner, and our next door neighbour). She said 'Then why doesn't he fly?'
She thinks that a barrit is also the name of a large, colourful bird...