Head over heels

The girls have been very keen on doing acrobatics this week. It all started at bedtime the other night - a convenient delaying tactic, or co-incidentally when inspiration struck; who knows? They had just been to the loo so were undressed from the waist down when I heard a shout of 'look at me mummy' and turned round to see T doing a handstand against the wall. Of course M had to join in too, so then there were two naked bottoms staring up at me while I was almost laughing too hard to be able to call hubby up to see.

T then decided to try a forward roll, so I suggested she'd be more comfy on our bed. She'd never managed it before, but without much help was soon doing them perfectly. M is far too bouncy and enthusiastic to worry about going over straight so tends to roll sideways, but gets about 1 in 10 right. I am hugely impressed as I could never do forward rolls (or what T not so long ago called rolly polollys!). We then found they are flexible enough to go back over, though they can't do this without help, so they lie on their backs with their feet over their heads then I push them over. The session ended with them hanging upside down with their legs over our shoulders, then doing 'sit ups' from this position by us pulling them up.

It made me realise how much flexibility we've lost as adults, but also very glad that it was ok for bedtime to be delayed like this because we don't have to worry about getting up for school in the morning.

Are we nearly there yet?

I think I should rename our car as the mobile education wagon! I suppose it's because there's not much else to do when we're driving around. T invariably asks how long till we get there on journeys now, so I'll tell her 5 minutes (or however many) and she'll count to 5 and then say we should be there. So I've been explaining that you have to count to sixty to get one minute. This has spawned a car counting game - see how many we can count to before we get there. We take it in turns to say a number each. I have to prompt her with 20, 30 etc but she seems to be getting the pattern and quite happily carries on 21, 22 and so on. On her own she can count to 16 reliably, but tends to forget one of 17, 18 or 19, and interestingly enough she does the same with twenties etc. M is still counting too, but has changed from 3, 7, 3, 7 to 1, 3, 1, 3.

Today on the way to horseriding T asks me what oil is. My highly technical answer is it's a liquid you put into machines to make the parts slide over each other so the machines can run smoothly and don't get stuck. She thinks about this for a minute and says oil goes in engines and I tell her yes, and that's why we put it in our car, because it has an engine and the oil helps it to run properly. I tell her oil is dug up from under the ground but we're nearly there now and she's looking at horses out of the window so oil is forgotten.

On the way home she asks me what cars are made of, so I say 'what do you think' and she says 'string'.

She's been getting interested in other languages and likes to say 'bonjour' to people. This was started by the episode of Peppa when her French penfriend comes to stay - who says TV is all bad! One of my mummy friends is French and I've told T this - it will be interesting to see if she asks her how you say other words in French.

I think TV is also going to lead to her learning the time as I try to ration it and 6pm is TV time. She's always looking at the clock and trying to figure out what time it is and where the hands need to move to for it to be 6 o'clock.

Latest thing is when is it Christmas - cue more counting I think!