Drunken Kitten & Doggy Paddle

Went swimming this afternoon with Romy and Hazel, and was pleased to see that despite not having been throughout the summer (crowded pools and me don't mix) Emily was very quick to get her confidence back. Today she at one point managed about 5 or 6 unaided doggy paddles towards me, and was consistently doing one or two at the end of her long glides towards me. We'll get there. :-) Despite our having got there for 2, it turned out the pool opening times had changed, and it wasn't open until 3. So we wandered over to the 20/21 Visual Arts Centre for a look around. Liked their outdoor twelve witches sculptures....was less fond of the digital art Communion exhibition, which may well have had something interesting to say for itself, but some background information/clues about what was going on would have helped. There's usually lots for the kids to do but today there were just handbag shapes to colour in. Not quite up to their usual standards, although a helpful guide more or less insisted the girls had a go. At least he didn't ask why they weren't in school....

Back at home, Emily decided to go and do some face painting, and came back half an hour later with a rather impressive tabby face painted on herself. Better than I could have done.

This morning we tried the kittens' harnesses on them; wanted to get them used to wearing them for when we can finally take them out in the garden. If we lived somewhere different we might not bother with the harnesses/leads, but as it is we live right on the road only about six doors down from a major A road junction...and they're still very, very tiny....and they're both a few cat biscuits short of a full packet and seem to think the giant four wheeled mice they can see from the upstairs windows look fun to play with.... so harnesses and half hour trips out it will be for the time being, before we finally pluck up courage to let them loose, probably not until after they've been neutered. And gained a few brain cells.

Anyway. Juliet didn't seem to mind hers at all. Romeo, on the other hand, did. His party trick of the day, whilst wearing harness, was to tuck his tail between his legs and waddle, bottom rubbing, across the kitchen floor for a few steps, before collapsing on his side. Repeatedly. Whilst looking reproachful. Thought we'd accidentally trodden on him and broken his tail or something, before we figured out it was his way of saying he didn't like the harness. As soon as it was removed, he was happy as larry. Tough. It's harness or inside, matey boy.

Education, ah yes. There's been some of that, in between today's outing and yesterday's massive retail therapy session (had to buy Emily lots of winter/autumn clothes as she's managed to well and truly grow out of most of last year's, so it seems). Yesterday Emily enjoyed "bathroom door maths", which is when we blue tak a load of number cards to the door and she has to race to get the right answer to random sums I call out, or she has to race to get one of her choice and bring it back to me and tell me a sum that goes with it. More handwriting practice, more spelling, some work about the skeleton (which I thought would be quite challenging for her, but she raced through it giving expanded answers.... gawd knows where she learns this stuff...).

This morning we practised some editing - Emily went through the cat-first-time-in-garden story she wrote the other day and added more description and details, then went through it again checking spelling and punctuation. She seemed to quite enjoy that, so we might make a regular pattern or write rough draft one day and then edit it another. Also some work on teeth (she now has three top ones wobbly all in a row, although two have been wobbly for *months*) and some measuring with ruler type stuff. Fun fun fun.