My son has gone to sleep wearing eight shirts.
It is exactly 20.8 degrees Celsius, so it isn’t because he is cold.
He can barely move his arms or turn his torso, that’s how tight it is.
It can’t be all that pleasant, but I am all in favour of it. Not only is very good for his posture, but instead of having to dress him for school in the morning, I just need to peel his top layer off.
Why I didn’t think of this years ago I don’t know.
This morning when we all went down to the beach he had put three bathing costumes on top of each other.
“It keeps me warm silly!”
I am hoping this is common amongst three year old boys.
Monday, August 10, 2009
What the cat dragged in
Our cats are killers.
Their most impressive prey are bats.
These are caught in the dark, at speed, and high off the ground.
We quite often get bats in the house. They are very sweet and we are quite fond of them.
They move very quickly and erratically.
Lying in bed, I have tried to follow them in the dark with the light of a torch and it isn’t possible.
They are fast darting little buggers.
Tigger however, is a supreme hunter.
She takes up position on the floor in the doorway, crouched, coiled and ready to spring.
She has cleverly worked out that at this point, the bats need to come down from roof height to fit under the top of the door frame.
This is when Tigger makes her leap, judged to perfection, and at the top of her arc, she stretches out her paw, and seems to just snag the bats with the very tip of one outstretched claw.
We would normally rescue the bats, but to be quite honest they quickly loose their cuteness and appeal, and become leathery, wriggling, wrinkled, evil looking cat food.
Half chewed bats are a common find at breakfast.
Another favourite is a very small grassbird, about the size of a champagne cork with a tail.
Very sweet and with the most melodic song.
The first one we saw we presumed was dead, then Skye noticed that it was still alive.
Unfortunately it was in a cats mouth at the time.
The kids looked to their dad to solve things.
Cats have claws and I discovered that they are mean, shitty, satanic, hissing, screeching little creatures when you try and remove their twitching prey.
Unbelievably, once out (I had to insert my thumb and first finger between the cats incisors. Sore.), the bird flew off unharmed.
I wasn't so lucky, and any adulation from the children was not enough to compensate for the pain inflicted by four sets of claws.
The next time I had a better system.
I was basically a lot more rough and simply threw a towel over the offending feline, sat on it, pinned it down by the neck and got the bird out.
Again alive.
This time I only lost about one pint of blood. And had to deal with the girls shouting, “Don’t hurt Tigger! Don’t hurt Tigger”
However, these are exceptions to the rule. Generally, during dinner, one of the kids says something along the lines of, “Eeughh, gross. There is something dead and bloody under the table”
And generally there is. Blood, guts and all.
Oh, and on the up side, we don’t have mice co-incidently.
Their most impressive prey are bats.
These are caught in the dark, at speed, and high off the ground.
We quite often get bats in the house. They are very sweet and we are quite fond of them.
They move very quickly and erratically.
Lying in bed, I have tried to follow them in the dark with the light of a torch and it isn’t possible.
They are fast darting little buggers.
Tigger however, is a supreme hunter.
She takes up position on the floor in the doorway, crouched, coiled and ready to spring.
She has cleverly worked out that at this point, the bats need to come down from roof height to fit under the top of the door frame.
This is when Tigger makes her leap, judged to perfection, and at the top of her arc, she stretches out her paw, and seems to just snag the bats with the very tip of one outstretched claw.
We would normally rescue the bats, but to be quite honest they quickly loose their cuteness and appeal, and become leathery, wriggling, wrinkled, evil looking cat food.
Half chewed bats are a common find at breakfast.
Another favourite is a very small grassbird, about the size of a champagne cork with a tail.
Very sweet and with the most melodic song.
The first one we saw we presumed was dead, then Skye noticed that it was still alive.
Unfortunately it was in a cats mouth at the time.
The kids looked to their dad to solve things.
Cats have claws and I discovered that they are mean, shitty, satanic, hissing, screeching little creatures when you try and remove their twitching prey.
Unbelievably, once out (I had to insert my thumb and first finger between the cats incisors. Sore.), the bird flew off unharmed.
I wasn't so lucky, and any adulation from the children was not enough to compensate for the pain inflicted by four sets of claws.
The next time I had a better system.
I was basically a lot more rough and simply threw a towel over the offending feline, sat on it, pinned it down by the neck and got the bird out.
Again alive.
This time I only lost about one pint of blood. And had to deal with the girls shouting, “Don’t hurt Tigger! Don’t hurt Tigger”
However, these are exceptions to the rule. Generally, during dinner, one of the kids says something along the lines of, “Eeughh, gross. There is something dead and bloody under the table”
And generally there is. Blood, guts and all.
Oh, and on the up side, we don’t have mice co-incidently.
Donkey Kong
Our children have been begging us to get a horse.
Skye is horse mad and rides the lodge horses whenever she gets a chance.
Nerve wrackingly enough, at nine years old, and no experience, she often leads the two hour out-rides that the lodge offers as an activity.
I block things out mentally when I hear adults asking her advice on the tightness of their girth, or which horse to ride, or general riding advice.
Firstly, she only knows vaguely how to keep her balance, and it only seems like yesterday that she was learning to tie her shoe laces.
And secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter.
Not only do the horses speak Xhosa, they don’t even listen to that. Ever.
Having determined that her old man wasn’t going to come good on a horse, she started negotiations to buy a donkey out of her own savings.
I think she has her mothers sharp sense of business.
She has negotiated the use of two donkeys “until she gets one of her own” – which will now be never.
The donkeys are not stupid.
We do not need to keep them tied up or fenced in.
They figured out pretty quickly that our house was the only one in the district where they would get anything to eat that wasn’t grass.
When I asked Skye how she planned to feed the donkeys and enquired if she knew how much this would cost, she told me not to worry, “its free dad, we are just feeding them carrots and apples and things from our fridge”
The other novelty is grooming.
This the donkeys like.
Mila and Skye both spend hours brushing them and scratching their itches.
They don't have grooming brushes so they use our hand help dust pan and brush, and some odd shaped sticks.
The girls get so excited, this morning in the dark, I had a torch light dancing around their room in the dark as they got their gumboots on over their pajamas so that they could go and find their donkeys.
I am happy to report that both Zig-Zag and Criss-Cross are also enjoying the royal treatment, and think nothing of spending half their day on our veranda.
The kids love it and disappear off through the long grass, each on a donkey.
Saddles and riding equipment are frowned upon by the way.
You basically grab a bit of mane and then use your bum, heels, and hands slapping their necks to steer and get some forward motion going.
It is pretty fun to watch them all enjoying themselves so much.
Mila, five, can’t quite reach high enough to jump onto hers, so she runs around with this little, green sand castle building kids bucket, which she inverts, and then uses to step on to get her the little extra height she needs.
Of course, the donkey takes two steps forward as soon as she has everything positioned right.
I don’t know who is having more fun.
I have a rough idea who the more stubborn is.
And it isn’t the donkeys.
Skye is horse mad and rides the lodge horses whenever she gets a chance.
Nerve wrackingly enough, at nine years old, and no experience, she often leads the two hour out-rides that the lodge offers as an activity.
I block things out mentally when I hear adults asking her advice on the tightness of their girth, or which horse to ride, or general riding advice.
Firstly, she only knows vaguely how to keep her balance, and it only seems like yesterday that she was learning to tie her shoe laces.
And secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter.
Not only do the horses speak Xhosa, they don’t even listen to that. Ever.
Having determined that her old man wasn’t going to come good on a horse, she started negotiations to buy a donkey out of her own savings.
I think she has her mothers sharp sense of business.
She has negotiated the use of two donkeys “until she gets one of her own” – which will now be never.
The donkeys are not stupid.
We do not need to keep them tied up or fenced in.
They figured out pretty quickly that our house was the only one in the district where they would get anything to eat that wasn’t grass.
When I asked Skye how she planned to feed the donkeys and enquired if she knew how much this would cost, she told me not to worry, “its free dad, we are just feeding them carrots and apples and things from our fridge”
The other novelty is grooming.
This the donkeys like.
Mila and Skye both spend hours brushing them and scratching their itches.
They don't have grooming brushes so they use our hand help dust pan and brush, and some odd shaped sticks.
The girls get so excited, this morning in the dark, I had a torch light dancing around their room in the dark as they got their gumboots on over their pajamas so that they could go and find their donkeys.
I am happy to report that both Zig-Zag and Criss-Cross are also enjoying the royal treatment, and think nothing of spending half their day on our veranda.
The kids love it and disappear off through the long grass, each on a donkey.
Saddles and riding equipment are frowned upon by the way.
You basically grab a bit of mane and then use your bum, heels, and hands slapping their necks to steer and get some forward motion going.
It is pretty fun to watch them all enjoying themselves so much.
Mila, five, can’t quite reach high enough to jump onto hers, so she runs around with this little, green sand castle building kids bucket, which she inverts, and then uses to step on to get her the little extra height she needs.
Of course, the donkey takes two steps forward as soon as she has everything positioned right.
I don’t know who is having more fun.
I have a rough idea who the more stubborn is.
And it isn’t the donkeys.
Kids and preschool
Mila and Caleb on their way home from preschool (escorted by Skye)
Here's a picture of the preschool. We've been operating for two weeks now from our new premises. The incomplete building on the right hand side is going to be a libary. The rest of the buildings include 3 classrooms (for ages 3-4, 4-5 and 5-6), an office, a storeroom and a kitchen. On the left hand side, you can see the beginnings of our vegetable garden.
And inside one of our three beautiful classrooms...
Here's a picture of the preschool. We've been operating for two weeks now from our new premises. The incomplete building on the right hand side is going to be a libary. The rest of the buildings include 3 classrooms (for ages 3-4, 4-5 and 5-6), an office, a storeroom and a kitchen. On the left hand side, you can see the beginnings of our vegetable garden.
And inside one of our three beautiful classrooms...
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