NotSheep

This is a three-year-old:

A rather cute one, in my opinion.

Toby’s birthday was on Thursday, but we celebrated today instead - although I did buy them all drive-through corporate burger-type food for lunch on Thursday, as a) I was out doing errands and b) the cupboards were bare - so he got two lots of Happy Birthdays sung to him. Today’s singing was just the standard version, but on Thursday his brothers regaled him with that as well as the zoo version and the dalek version. No, I don’t know that one either.

Barney has been alternating between Kevin-style teenager, when he gets all upset and tearful any time he’s told off, and marvellous big kid, when he makes me breakfast in bed, or when he looks after Louie so I could eat it. While I was eating, Toby came running into the room, stopped in his tracks, demanded, “Where’s Louie?!” and, when I told him Louie was with Barney, ran off to find them. Oh I know where I stand

After having had hardly anyone come to visit in the last month, we had not one but two lots of visitors yesterday. The first was a woman from another home-ed group - neighbouring, but not local - we’ve been emailing one another for a while, and she came with her teenage daughter. We’d never actually met before, so it was good to put faces and voices to the emails. We found we’d a lot in common, and I enjoyed meeting her. Later, my friend J and her three children arrived - her older daughter has just turned 14 and Louie lay peacefully in her arms for about ten minutes, so she can come back anytime

On Friday night Toby threw up - into the bathroom sink, which I thought was very considerate for a just-turned-three-year-old. Freddy told us that Jack had also thrown up, but Jack denied it, although he didn’t seem to be feeling great. They both went to bed and slept well, however, and woke up full of energy and apparently fully-recovered.

Sometimes the scenes in this house are quite…um…well, I don’t really know what to call this:


















He’s a lizard, by the way, in case that wasn’t obvious. But it’s Jack, who will tell you the obvious anyway, because how on earth would you know anything at all if he didn’t tell you?

Toby made it clear that Jack was not welcome in his photograph!




















George was grumpy, and was trying to make this a terrible photo - but I don’t think he’s capable of it.

The bigger kids all got involved with cooking today, with Barney and Jack making stinky pizza for lunch, and then George and Freddy preparing dinner together: honey-mustard chicken fingers and hash-brown potatoes, all made from scratch. It was all delicious. Here is the child who normally insists he hates chicken, but who kept eating until it was all gone












And here is the child who said he didn’t like it because it was spicy (presumably he meant the mustard, as there were no spices involved), but decided, when he remembered how much fun he’d had making it, that he was going to eat it anyway, so he could make it again
















And here is the only one who didn’t give it at least nine out of ten
























This is the birthday cake, being presented after dinner:

A split second after that photo was taken, Toby blew the candles out - long before the cake was placed on the table and well before the rendition of Happy Birthday To You was over. And as soon as the cake was on the table, he dived in to remove the candles and attack the cake itself. Hm, anyone would think he had older brothers with healthy appetites…