A little owl

Yes - that's what it's called

--
Dave McLaughlin

Keyboard lessons

Elizabeth was apprehensive before going. The lesson started with singing a simple melody accompanied by gestures representing "do", "re", "mi", etc. (Think "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and you won't go far wrong.) Throughout all this, Elizabeth was mouthing something to me; I couldn't make it out, but I assumed she meant she wasn't enjoying herself; I smiled (I thought) encouragingly. After a while, I realised she didn't want me to watch. After I took to reading my email and surfing the Web on my phone, she had a whale of a time.

Unfortunately, only three kids turned up for today's taster lesson, so they won't be starting a new class until they get some more - pity, because she's quite keen: we came home and took the stickers off the keyboard because she doesn't need them any more.

Vegetarian!

Yup! That's what she announced earlier this week. I don't know if it'll last.

--
Dave McLaughlin

Tricky business, this reading

Elizabeth [reading Alexander McCall Smith's "The Girl who Married a Lion"]: "What's a knob?"

I: "What's the context? What else does it say?"

E: "Soon the people were upon him, beating him with their knob".

I had a look. The word was "knobkerries", hyphenated at a line break. That, of course, made it much clearer.

--
Dave McLaughlin

Chocolate ice cream

Very tasty!

--
Dave McLaughlin

Riverside

What fun!

Wide-ranging discussions

Elizabeth shouted for me shortly after going to bed this evening. When I went up, we had a chat about: Hawaiian life and culture; manned lunar missions; the possibility of life on Saturn and its moons.

--
Dave McLaughlin

Technology

Elizabeth's going mad for console & computer games. She's started showing an interest in some Mario game we have for the Wii and she's been going on so much about the PS2 games she plays at the after-school club that we've bought an old console. Now she can regularly beat us at a couple of variants of Sonic.

When we're out she sometimes plays with her DS, though she's more likely to borrow Mum's iPod or my phone to play Angry Birds.

This morning she disappeared for half an hour. I found her in the dining room on the venerable PC that serves as a file/printer server, watching Bakugan movies on YouTube. Time for parental controls!

--
Dave McLaughlin