NotSheep

My four oldest children are standing by the front door, anxiously scanning the street through the window. They were outside until the rain drove them in for shelter. They are waiting, with great excitement, for the ice-cream van. When it arrives, they will spend the last of their pocket-money on overpriced, not-really-very-good ice-cream. This, I think, is the difference between a child and… uh, an ice-cream snob

Jack was on his usual form today; he raided my jewellery box and I found all my rings in his jeans pocket. He’s also written all over one of the radiators in the conservatory - though that might not have been today, it might be one he prepared earlier, that I’ve only just noticed.

Toby has been singing - well, we think it’s singing anyway. He does it while he’s breastfeeding, and he was doing it in the car a few days ago. It’s a kind of musical sound, quite different from his “talking”, and he doesn’t particularly look at anyone while he’s doing it (whereas when he talks, he’s very clearly “telling” us something). Anyway, it’s very cute

Barney, George and Freddy worked though loads of stuff today, despite having a longish break around lunchtime. We’d a chat over dinner about sign-language in general and British Sign Language specifically. Coincidentally this has been a topic on an email list over the last few days, and I asked if they’d be interested in learning some BSL - they are. If you can recommend any websites or books, please leave a comment

We lost one fish today and gained another. Our silver molly died - but then right after I’d put some food in the aquarium, I noticed a teeny-tiny orange baby platy. It’s about 4 mm long - small enough to fit in the mouth of a clown loach or another platy, so I hope it doesn’t get eaten! We’ve also acquired three shrimp and four white mountain minnows this week - the shrimp as part of a campaign to get rid of a horrible black fuzzy algae problem, and the minnows just because they’re pretty. We haven’t seen the shrimp since they went in, which might mean something ate them, but they’re hard to see even in an almost-empty tank, and ours is fairly heavily-planted now. No doubt we’ll be watching everything carefully over the next few days to see if we can spot our new baby again