Knitting

Mummy and I are in a knitting club called Knit and Natter that meets at the Almanack on Thursday mornings. We could not knit before we joined and at first Mummy helped me with my scarf. Now I knit by myself and I can talk and knit at the same time like the other ladies in the group.

Nanna comes too but she calls the group "Crochet and Chat" because she does not knit. I call the group "Knit and Natter, Crochet and Chatter". Mummy has learnt to crochet but is not as fast as Nanna at all. I have a special knitting bag that I take with me and Mummy challenges me to knit a number of rows each time.

Last week there was a power cut at the Almanack and so we had to knit in the dark and I still managed to knit a row.

Mummy makes me toast and puts butter and honey on it. I have an Innocent pouch to drink or a hot milk or a strawberry milkshake. I like the milkshake because it comes with a straw and smarties on top of the cream. If Mummy has a hot chocolate I like to have her marshmallows. Nanna has a hot mint tea and lets me squash the leaves with a spoon. It goes green.

Didn't you know if I put a green smartie in water the smartie goes white and the water changes colour a little. If you put three smarties in water the water tastes funny afterwards and it takes a long time for the colour to come off them all. Didn't you know the smarties don't have to be green to go white because it works with all smarties. If you suck a smartie and don't bite it then it goes white and soft in your mouth. Mummy says the orange ones taste the best and are her favourites but pink is my best colour. If I lick a smartie and then put it on the cream on my milkshake then the colour of the cream changes and the smartie sticks to the cream. I have done these experiments and lots of others. Daddy and I are going to make a battery with coins and make a clock work with a potato or mud. I like doing experiments at home especially messy ones.

Mummy has also learned to knit and she made these hats for Daddy and me. She made Daddy's first and I kept borrowing it so she made one for me. I chose the wool for mine from Nanna's collection and made Mummy knit with 3 different colours of pink.

She made it too small at first so had to take it apart and try again. The next time it was still too small for my ears so she made me the earflaps and the big bobble on top. It is snuggly and I tie it under my chin so it doesn't blow off in the wind.
I am making a pink scarf and when the pink is used up there are other colours. I have new needles now and you can see where I started knitting without help (it has some holes in it) and then where I used my new needles because they helped me make it neaat and Mummy says it has a tight tension and is consistent. When I have finished I will photograph it and wear it.

Ice Skating

Mummy took me ice skating in Solihull but she stayed off the ice as she has not got good balance. One of the home ed Daddies (Andre) took me on the ice and I held Andre's hand round the ice.
This was my first time on real ice and it was a lot more slippy than the plastic ice Daddy took me on in the summer.
I waved at Mummy every time I went past. I cam off to have a bite off banana but wanted to get straight back on.








This is my friend Holly and it was her first time ice skating too. She held my hand and I held the barrier. She wobbled and I fell over lots. We wouldn't let the home ed Daddies help us as we wanted to go round on our own.
Mummy had spare trousers for me but I didn't put them on because I wanted to stay on the ice.
We had to dash off Solihull and I had an in car picnic on the way to my dance class.






Last week Mummy took me iceskating for the second time on the real ice.
This time I did not hold Holly's hand but am skating across the middle with Holly. I am really confident because I am wearing double bladed skates.










I really like ice skating a huge bit. I can now skate forwards and backwards and turn in a circle.



Mummy said I looked like a penguin as I skated round the ice. I enjoyed skating across the middle of the rink. Allison is one of the bigger home ed girls and she skated with me so that the big boys on the ice wouldn't crash into me.



I didn't fall over until the very end of the session. I learnt how to get myself up when I fell and it didn't hurt.
I tried to skate and touch my toes at the same time but it was easier to touch my toes when I was standing still.


My ice skating nonsense song:
Ice skating, ice skating is really fun,
Though it is cold, it is really slippy,
When I've got double blades, I'm really hot.
How fun would it be to skate on your nose.

Snow

I have written a poem about the snow. A couple of weeks ago we had lots of snow and had snowball fights with Debs outside The Almanack and then played in the snow on the green the next morning.

SNOW


Snow, snow, wonderful snow.
'Though it is soft and powdery
you can make snowballs to throw.

I love to shock my Mummy
with a snowball to her tummy.
Daddy is surprised
by a snowball at his thighs.

I love it when it snows
'though it is chilly on my toes
and snowflakes do land on my nose.


I love making angels in the snow.
It helps when I wear waterproof trousers below.

My bottom and legs stay dry,

so I can make angels and not cry.

I do not like snowballs thrown at my face,
nor are my ears an appropriate place.
Snowflakes are pretty, white, wet and cold,
a man took photographs of them in days of old.







Each one is unique
and when it rains the do leak.

The snow goes brown and then thaws
when it warms up out of doors.




When we played in the snow we made this snowman even bigger than me. We took it in turns to get our of breath by shovelling snow into piles. The sun melted my snowman and his head fell off.




Daddy, Debs and Mummy buried me in the snow. I was still snug because I had waterproofs on. Mummy got a wet bottom when she made a snow angel. I made an avalanche on Debs' car when I pushed the snow off the roof and bonnet. My chickens don't like the snow but we put vaseline on their combs to stop them cracking like my lips did.

Tower of London

Mummy helped me make my own castle using boxes and toilet rolls. I cut out the turrets and bent them over to make a walk way for the soldiers around the top sot hey could look for the bad guys. Mummy made a drawbridge using some wool and a skewer and I can turn it to make the drawbridge go upnad down to let my kings and queens into the castle. We have a raven keyring that has to stay at the castle to make sure that government continues like at the Tower of London and Grandpa bought me a soldier with a gun that I broke off but Mummy stuck it back on and he is on guard in the castle.


There is actually a beefeater who goes to sleep with his wife in a jail - he told us so and he lives in the Tower of London. When we wanted to look at the moat I sat next to him on the wall and once whilst he was talking to us all about the olden days he pulled my hat brim over my eyes. I lifted it up and decided to put it back down again. We went up into the chapel and we had a little look around afterwards and I saw Anne Boleyn's grave. When we pretend to be olden days people Mummy is Anne Boleyn and I am Lady Jane Grey who was queen for 9 days and Daddy is Guildford Dudley (my husband who had his head chopped off too). Guilford Dudley's brother lived in Kenilworth Castle and our road is named after him. He was friends with Anne Boleyn's daughter who was Queen Elizabeth I and he made a special garden to entertain her and they have built it again at the castle and Nanna and Grandpa have taken me to see it.


I had a drink from a water fountain and got water all over my face so I dried it off on Daddy's trousers when I gave him a leg cuddle. We went to COSTCO and I had my picture taken but they didn't print me a membership card so I only saw it on screen. They had a water fountain and I got water up my nose and I was covered in water.


When Anne Boleyn was going to be executed Henry got married to Jane Seymour on the same day. Anne Boleyn had her head chopped off with a sword because it was quicker and less painful than an axe. The swordsman came from France specially to cut off her head. Most people had their heads cut off with an axe. Anne Boleyn was queen for nearly three years and had one little girl but henry wanted a boy but I think girls are better than boys.
We saw where they had their heads chopped off and we saw Henry VIII's armour. He had six wives and there is a poem to remember what happened to them that goes: "Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived".
Henry pretended one of his divorced wives was his sister and she survived into Elizabeth's rule. She was called Anne of Cleves and wore funny hats. The last queen married again and died in childbirth. They gave birth at home not in special places like now and lots of mummies died in childbirth. I have lots of books about the olden days.
They cleaned their teeth with sticks and sponges nad other yucky stuff so they needed false teeth but they were made of wood or bone and hurt.They had horrible chemicals in their make up called Mercury and Lead and this made their faces white but it was posoin. i made my face white using ice-cream - much yummier.

If the ravens fly away we won't have a government and the beefeater said that England would break. He told us that they clip their wings to stop them flying off and one raven bit his nose when it was having its wings clipped.
In olden days they played tennis and football but they used balls made of pigs bladders which are kind of like balloons and they were covered in leather.
Some of Henry's armour had skirts on because men wore skirts or tunics in those days. He had flowers on his armour and they were Tudor Roses. they needed two hands for their swords as they were really heavy, now they only need one. Now there are fighting girls but there weren't in olden days. Joe told me that the girls have pink feathers to make them easy to spot when they are knights. We saw a giant arrow that they had to throw because it wouldn't fit in a bow. They would light it and send it into the enemy boat.
We saw traitors' gate which was very sad. Queen Elizabth went in there when she was young and her sister was queen. Most people who went in the gate were executed.




I sat on the king's toilet which is called a garderobe. If they did anything in the toilet it went in the moat making it very smelly and dirty. I didn't do anything in the toilet but could see straight down the side of the wall outside.
In those days only the kings and queens were allowed to wear purple and some of their clothes were made out of real gold. Henry had salt and pepper in a big gold box but we have it in a glass grinder.
We went on a boat on the River Thames to go to a restaurant near parliament. There is a bridge that opens up to let big boats through but it didn't open whilst we were there.
We went to London on the train and Nanna made lunch so I could eat chicken bones with my fingers like they did in olden days.


For our meal we had chopsticks but Grandpa used a spoon. I had special squeezy handles and a lovely sauce with noodles. It was very messy to eat but I had fun. I poured the sauce all over the noodles.
We went back to the station on a bendy bus nad I stood on the turning bit and I got turned around when the bus turned round corners. We had pudding on the train and I fell asleep on Daddy.

Sharks

I visited Nanna and Grandpa all day the day before today because Mummy was painting pottery a long way away and Daddy was at work. I went there in my pyjamas to have my breakfast. We watched a movie about sharks called Great White Sharks and I learnt lots and told Mummy and Daddy all about it and they thought I should tell you too because they are really exciting creatures and were on earth before the dinosaurs so that is even before Grandpa's Grandpa.
They live in the sea and a big boy went surfboarding and the shark bit his arm and his leg but it only left a mark. The surfboard was bitten in two pieces and the shark swam away with a mouthful of surfboard. The boy collected both pieces of board and swam back to shore. Quite a bit of blood came out.
Another man in a boat went out with oars and he thought the shark was leaning its head on his boat and it was tipping. The shark was taking a closer look at the boat so the man paddled really fast to shore and jumped out of the boat. (You can read about this man and his adventure with the shark yourselves)
A girl was swimming with two children and the daddy. The shark bit her leg and she only had a scar and she screamed and her hair was wet because she had been swimming.
I saw a picture of them jumping out of the sea with fish in their teeth.
Biting sharks are the only fish that take a look at the sand. (typers note: I looked this up and found the following on Wiki: "The great white shark is one of only a few sharks to regularly lift its head above the sea surface to gaze at other objects such as prey; this is known as spy-hopping" Apparently scientists are not sure if this is because the shark is curious or to improve its sense of smell!)

One even had bits of whale in its tummy. (typers note: again, I checked, and during an necropsy a sharks stomach was found to be full of whale blubber. Bethany was fascinated by the ability of a shark to eat a whale although the images did put her off her food for a while even though it included her favourite - baked beans)
Sharks normally have lots of scars from battles with other sharks.
They have the biggest brains. They have three bits and are not round like our brains but long like a y. (typers note, sorry to keep interrupting Bethany's comments but I needed to check. She is right about the shape - see the pictures we found. The size is another one of those questions dividing scientists. One part of the brain is only the size of a walnut making the shark very small brained - scary in such a large and powerful creature. However the shark's brain is divided into sections and when all put together it is believed to even include the eyes. Great Whites, and other sharks, do have disproportionally sized livers which might have been the organ Bethany meant)
Their teeth are like saws and are sharp with zigzag bits. They have some near to the front and they have another set of jaws behind the first and you can see the second teeth in the gaps between teeth. (Final typers note, I hope: they have tooth generating membranes that are constantly growing rows of replacement teeth that gradually increase in size as the shark grows older. Like a conveyor belt of teeth.)
The biting sharks are called Great White.
They live near Auntie Kate in South Africa and Australia and American but not Britain. The basking shark lives near Britain and it is smaller than Mummy and they only eat little things. I'm little but they eat things littler than me and I want to see one. Daddy has seen one on a boat in Cornwall when he was a little boy.

Ruby Wedding

I am putting my feet against my head and my head against my feet in an 'O' and I can make an 'O' forwards too lying on my back putting my toes on my head. I learnt to do this at ballet in the summer. It is a good stretch and I have to point my toes. I learnt lots of new stretches and balances. Also we did some dances to Disney songs especially to "I Want To Be Like You" from The Jungle Book and "I've Got No Strings" from Pinocchio. I haven't seen Pinocchio but I have a pinocchio puppet in my room that is from Italy and I like making his arms and legs dance. I practise my stretches lots. Also I can put my toes behind my ears but I can't do it without showing my pants. Sometimes I put my toes behind my ears when I am sitting on a chair but it is easier to do lying down. Mummy cannot touch her toes very well but she can tickle mine.


Daddy and I are hiding on one another from Mummy because Mummy was taking pictures and we didn't want to have our picture taken. We kept popping our heads up to test if she was looking.
I was the best hider. We were having drinks because we had all arrived at the hotel for food before Grandma and Grandad and we had driven Great Uncle Leith there and made him join in singing songs in the car but he didn;t know all my favourite songs so we tried to teach him "There were rats, rats, big as blooming cats" whilst Daddy drove.


Grandma has just opened up her Ruby Wedding present and she likes it. I painted a picture of Grandma and Grandad dancing on a plate that Mummy gave me and Grandad has got trousers on and Grandma has got a dress on. He has got spiky hair and she has curly hair. They both have rings on their fingers and they love one another. They have their feet and hands touching because they are holding hands and holding feet. I painted a tie on Grandad and it took a long long time to dry. I painted one arm on each of them curvy like I do at ballet.


Daddy and me and Grandpa have all got our chins on our hands. We were pretending to be thoughtful so that Mummy could take our picture. We are waiting for our food near the Wrekin. The Wrekin is a mountain near Grandma and Grandad's house. I say 'Hiya Wrekin' when I see it when we are driving to their house. We were having a special lunch for Grandma and Grandad's Ruby Wedding Anniversary. Great Uncle Leith and Nanna were there too.

After the special lunch we went to a museum (typers note: It was the Blists Hill Victorian Town museum where the hotel that was used for the original reception is now a tearooms so we had afternoon tea there) where there were lots of people dressed up in old fashioned clothes. There were some strange smells and one man showed me how to use a printing machine without chopping off your fingers. He said I could be his apprentice because I like machines but I didn't want to be his apprentice so Mummy took me back to Grandma's house.

Grandma and I are watching Punch and Judy and it was really cool. We were all enjoying it, even all the children there that we didn't know. It was funny and my favourite puppets were Punch, Judy and the baby. I also liked the sausages and the crocodile beacuse Punch was trying to rescue the sausages and put his head into the crocodile and the clown pulled out him out safely.
Judy had the baby and sniffed his bottom and said 'he may be a bit smelly' and gave him to Punch to hold and they kept swapping the baby over as it needed a nappy change. She told Punch not to drop the baby down the steps and he threw the baby down the steps and said 'Walkie walkie, walkie'. We didn't get to see them fighting but we did get to see the devil. I liked the policeman too. I liked all of them except the dragon.

Punch took the stick off Judy and she told him to give it back and he didn't so she phoned for the policeman and we were supposed to call out for the policeman every time we saw Punch. But Punch hid and the policeman told us not to tease him. Judy, the policeman and the clown told us to call out when we saw him.

There were one day old piglets, they were born the day before Grandma and Grandad's anniversary. The piglets were tiny. The mummy pig smelt but the babies didn't although they were in the pigpen with the mummy.

There were chickens nearby some of which were Sussex Star chicks like my chicken Star. They were pecking at food and making nests in the pile of horse manure. Some of them had feathers over their toes. They seemed to like having homes in the dump.

We liked all the animals, even the smelly ones. I tried to stroke the ones that were loose but just watched the ones in special pens. There were some black pigs in another pen too. The chickens snuggled up in the hay.

I made Daddy go so so so low in the swing boats that he is scared of falling out but I wasn't scared at all except when my back faces the ground then I was really scared but we had ropes to hold. Then the man stoppped us as he was closing and I slid down the ropes and steps and hurt my back so Mummy and Daddy and everyone had to cheer me up whilst we ate scones and cream and jam.

I pulled on the ropes fiercely to make the swing boat swing and made Daddy slide off his seat. There wasn't time to go on the roundabout or to throw balls at coconuts. I like putting coconut in cakes.

The sunflowers at Grandma and Grandad's house were so big they were gigantic so they won the race to grow the biggest sunflower but mine now has buds by every leaf and is growing extra flowers so I win the competition for the most flowers.

So we have both won but my sunflower is still alive and theirs have died so they have lost and I am the champion. Mine has 12 flowers growing on it nad the dead head of the original flower. We are going to give the sunflower seeds to my chickens because they like eating things like that and corn on the cob. I don't like sunflower seeds but I do like corn on the cob even though it sometimes sticks in my teeth.

I took this photo of Grandma and Grandad chopping the cake up for us to eat. Nanna made the cake and used a really good red colour for the icing that made my tongue and fingers go red. It was a yummy cake. Daddy did a toast about the Wrekin and we all chinked glasses. I like saying cheers and chinking glasses with people.

I fell asleep when we were taking Great Uncle Leith home so I didn't see his Boxer dog.

New Friends and Animals

Whilst next door were on holiday we looked after their rabbits. I fed and stroked them and when they were hungry they took carrots out of my hands.

Next door have a trampoline and I bounced high on it whilst they were away. I can also bounce on Dominic's trampoline the other side.

Only Jordan is allowed to do forward rolls on the trampoline because she is bigger and stronger and has been to class. I can do forward rolls on bouncy things. At least I do forward rolls on Mummy & Daddy's bed. I like bouncing on Mummy & Daddy's bed especially in the morning to wake up Mummy.

Daddy & I went camping at a campsite a long way from home. We met some friends of Daddy's and Mummy's and their children. There were lots of children, five plus a baby. I played with the big ones, Josh, Issy and Bethan (called Beth) and there were two little ones George and Katie (she was the baby).

George got stung by a wasp and I have called one of my baby sock dolls George and the other one is called Bethan. Mummy made the baby sock dolls whilst Daddy & I were away and she gave them to me when I came home. When I first met the sock dolls I did not like Bethan at the beginning but did like George but now I like all of them even the Daddy who has blue hair.

We went to a woodland adventure playground. There was a really steep slide that made me feel sick because my tummy went ziiiiip up into my throat. I went on the slide twice. There were other slides that weren't so steep but one had a gigantic bat on the top of it, you could see the image of the bat above you as you slid down.

I was sitting up and tried to grab hold of the steep slide and I fell on my back and was spinning round and round in a circle. I went twice on a zip line because you were only allowed on two times. You sort of tipped to one side at the end so they said keep legs and hands really tight wrapped round it. At then end when it wasn't really high you could jump off and pull it to the man and say goodbye. It was sooo good fun. Soooo good fun. There were some houses and one of them we called school and zoomed in and went and had our lessons. once I was the teacher. We didn't actually like our second teacher even though she spoke in a very nice voice. We don't know what her name was.

Little people like me, not big people like Mike in this picture (Issy's Daddy) can swing on the rope bridges. There were some steps up to get to the rope bridge and you could get to it from two sides. I liked climbing on the cargo net bridge because I thought it was fun.

Mummy took this photo when I was packing for a holiday with Mummy and Daddy in a hotel and cuddled all my cuddlies that were going to go with us. We stayed one night in the hotel and Daddy fell asleep before I did.

We went to our wood after being at the hotel. All of the mums and dads talked until their ears were deaf about what wood they own, pets and stuff like that. There were fierce pouncing dogs that could jump over your head like Aslan but in a bad way whereas Aslan does it in a god way and they were so so scary. I thought about hiding in the car.

Whilst the grown ups were talking I played with Holly. She gave me piggy backs and we became friends when our mums and dads were chatting. I played football and tennis with Joe. There was a log swing with two logs tied together and I played on it and there was a big castle to climb up and I went in it to hide from the fierce dogs. (typers note. Paddy is aged 12 and just wants people to throw sticks for him, not really fierce at all. There was a labradoodle that wanted to have its tummy tickled and a terrier that was a little more aggressive and it was kept on a lead as soon as the owner realised that the younger children were wary. But Bethany clearly has a different view of the dogs!)

A lady a

t the wood, called Emily who works for Gwynedd Council, brought a bat in a box. (typers note. The label on the shoe box said VAMP) It was a Pipistrelle bat. I called that bat Issy. It was a grown up bat but it was sooo tiny it would have fitted in my hand.

It was rather cute and it cleaned its head with his wing like he was flying his wing or stroking it over his face. It also cleaned under its wing with its head. It was in a box because it had a broken wing.

You could only hold it if you had special gloves on. He crawled onto his blanket and Emily lifted it up in its blanket so we could see its face.

Bats go out at bedtime to eat and they eat flying insects but not owls. They live on bugs which they find using sound that is too high pitched for me to hear. You can hear bats with a special kind of walkie talkie called a bat detector. I heard the Pipstrelle bat on the computer and it went bu bu bu bu like horses shoes when they gallop.

Driving home from the wood we sang songs in the car. We sang Quartermasters Stores. I like it because it starts with "Rats, rats, as big as blooming cats". We sang "The bear necessities" that Baloo sings in "Jungle Book" and we sang "king of the swingers" from "Jungle Book" too.

At my holiday dance club Miss Sharon taught us a dance to "king of the swingers" which I really enjoyed doing. Mummy and Daddy couldn't remember the words so whilst Daddy was at archery Mummy and I watched the movie. I made tickets for us and we were going to have popcorn but we had chocolate spread sandwiches instead. At the other dance classes we learned a dance to "I've Got No Strings" from "Pinocchio" and I was Chip when we did "Be Our Guest" from "Beauty and the Beast". Chip was a cup not the Mummy teapot. We learned lots of moves and stretches like the splits and I balanced on Miss Sharon's feet when she was lying down with her legs up. On the last session we did a stretch that Mummy said makes me look like a circle because we lie on our tummies and push our heads back and touch them with our feet.

Auntie Kate showed me how to draw elephants and we gave her a felt purple elephant puppet to take to Africa with her. She has gone to Botswana with Uncle Simon to look for elephants. She was on television because she is an elephant expert and other people are hippopotamus experts and the people on the television were listening to Auntie Kate.

We were at The Almanack and we played Jenga and then built a tall tower. Nick said I could stand on the table next to our Jenga tower (Daddy, Uncle Simon and I built it together and I put the very top piece on the top). I had to take my wellies off to stand on the table because we were going to eat our food there too.
We made the Jenga tower fall down and Uncle Simon did a cheesy grin. It was quite noisy when they all fell down and Uncle Simon tried to catch it but bash it fell down. I had some help to pick up the pieces and caught some of them in my skirt and some in my hands before putting them in the box. I helped Uncle Simon eat his pudding because it was donuts with runny chocolate to dip them in and they had little sprinkles on. It was messy to eat but fun.