I have been concerned for a while about Tess and Tom's computing abilities or more accurately their lack of them. Tess studies computers at school and it is the first time she has ever touched a computer as I never felt it necessary to introduce her to them. However, when I talk to my peers with children of similar ages I find that I am alone in not encouraging computer literacy - I hear of 3 year olds who can navigate to abc or BBC kids on their own and find games to play on the sites which amazes me especially as these children are too young to read. I recently purchased a second hand computer from work which is officially Tess' computer and she has 1 educational computer game on it. This weekend I finally gave in and bought a computer game that Tom can use - more importantly I am actually letting him touch my Mac - it took me months to let Jules anywhere near it so letting a 3 year old touch it is pretty big of me!
I have had a busy "school" week this week with Tess' class organising a book stall to raise money (each class at the school has been tasked with raising $1,000 through fund raising activities - I asked why each parent can't just give $50 - cheaper and easier - but apparently that's not in the right spirit!) which was open on Thursday and Friday and raised $815 which is pretty good going. Unfortunately all the books that didn't get sold (about a car boot load) are currently sitting in my car boot and I'm not too sure what to do with them - we have talked about doing another stall at some stage and potentially as early as this week so I'm reluctant to carry them all down to the garage only to carry them back up again a couple of days later! We discovered during the week that Tess can count to 20 in Japanese - I couldn't count to 20 in French until I was about 14!
Tom almost came down with his 3rd asthma attack this week. On Tuesday morning he was beginning to wheeze and although he wasn't having any difficulty breathing I decided to stay home with him and take him to the doctor to check I was doing everything right. I'm very happy to say that we managed to avoid a full-on asthma attack developing and as a result I feel much more confident in my ability to manage his condition. The doctor suggested that we keep him on his preventative inhaler throughout winter and although I'm reluctant to give Tom steroids on a daily basis, friends who have gone through this have said that the steroids really do build up strength in the chest area and can reduce the chance of another attack developing.
Our good friends John and Leanne came round for dinner on Saturday with their boys Noah and Charlie. Leanne is from my mother's group and so Tess and Noah have known each other since they were 6 weeks old. They have always played incredibly well together and with the advent of school have not seen much of each other recently as a result we had an incredibly peaceful evening with Tess and Noah happy to catch up and all 4 kids playing together beautifully.
Jules spent Sunday sailing on St Jude (cold and wet - lucky him!). The kids and I went shopping to get ourselves prepared for the cold weather that we're expecting at the farm next weekend - boots, fleeces, beanies etc. I also spoilt myself and bought a new compact digital camera. The one I bought about 6 months ago is very clever in that you can use it underwater (you may remember the photos taken in the pool last summer) and it's shockproof which is useful when Tom decides to use it but the quality of the photos is appalling and as a result I don't use it that often. I spent months researching this new one and so far I am very happy - it will be properly tried out at the farm next weekend. After our shopping the kids were happy to play, Hunter and Fletcher came round too, so I was able to do some cooking and some baking. It's part of my "working mother guilt" that I need to have a ready supply of home-made "healthy" muffins for Tess' lunch box - the ones you see are raspberry and chocolate chip (they're healthy in that they have no butter and hardly any sugar but the kids don't seem to mind!). The kids all got bored at my house so went round to Craig and Lisa's - Lisa had made a huge pile of choc chip cookies (I know what I'd prefer in my lunch box) so I went round to play too!
Tess is doing such a good job of being a teacher for Tom. She helped him on the computer today and is frequently reading him stories, helping him write his name etc. Today in the car they had the following conversation:
Tess: "Tom, you are so adorable! Do you know what adorable means?"
Tom: "Yes"
Tess: "What does it mean?"
Tom: "Dog"
Tess: "No Tom, it means cute! You are very cute.....some of the time when you're not being naughty"
Who needs parents??!!
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