Four And Up

I took Mum’s old iPod shuffle to the playground the other day (she was at work) - I enjoyed the experience, although a) her headphones fell off my ears 143 times b) you have to tweak the headphones to play through both channels and c) I have no restraint on volume levels. To mitigate a) I will have to get some children’s headphones, b) I can’t do much about and c) you can set the maximum volume level on an iPod via iTunes, and I suspect Dad will do so..

I was beading with Mum yesterday (putting little beads onto templates and bases). James, though his little fingers would be ideal for the ask of laying beads out in intricate patterns, seems to think throwing the beads around the room is a better use of said fingers. Harumph. Mum and Dad sweep up the beads as uncomplainingly as a pair of Cinderellas but they still inhabit every nook and cranny of the living room..

Me and James got Love 2 Love Bears for having good marks on our charts: I got orange, he got green (I really wanted one, and as we got buy-one-get-one-half-price, bogohp, him having one of his own saves a lot of angst and trouble)

You have to feed the bears when they want attention: their noses flash, or they start crying at random. Trouble is, the bears don’t seem to be able to tell when it’s the middle of the night and they should be asleep: at least James’ bear does. Maybe it’s traumatised!

For ages I’ve been coveting Lelli Kelly shoes: they sure know how to attract little girls like flies to a splattered rotten pear: sparkly flowers, free gifts (often including the magic wonder of Lip Gloss hidden inside) and a catchy theme tune on their adverts.

So I was thrilled to get a pair of Lelli Kelly trainers today, and they are truly wonderful: white but covered with spangly flowers, in a pink box with rose print. I’m glad they skimp on the translations on their web site in order to concentrate on designing their shoes: from what I can understand, though, they are most interested in sweaty feet:

For mothers, Lelli Kelly are thought for sweeting in cleanliness

Designed to wick perspiration

I can understand that. I hate it when I’ve worn shoes for so long the inside becomes discoloured: I like them pristine.

Ben and Ellie have been on holiday since school ended: they got back this week, and came round last night from tea-time till night-time. We had a lot of fun and went to bed very late..

If you have a Wordpress blog like me and you spend more than five seconds a week dealing with spam, can I recommend you activate the Akismet plugin that ships with Wordpress 2.0 and later? You need to create a Wordpress API key (which takes a minute or so) but after that it takes care of everything. I’m not allowed to see the spam on this site - I hear Dad grawlixing about how inappropriate and disgraceful it is that these grawalixes post their nastiness to my innocent little blog - but I’m told it’s caught more than 4000 spam comments since we moved to our current hosts in February. There haven’t been any false positives that we know of (well, if there have they’ve deluged in the torrent of filth) and few, if any, spam comments which have leaked through to the moderation queue.

Someone spilt - accidentally from the back of a van, or deliberately, we don’t know - a whole pot of white paint on the road in front of our house today. Oh, and James had to go to A&E, for the first time but maybe not the last. I’ve never been there, when I hurt my eye we went to Outpatients.

My hula-hooping has come along well, I can now keep the hoop up for numerous revolutions!

We’re off to funplex today as it’s raining.

To deal with the inevitable Summer Holiday Strops, I have a happy face / sad face chart for good vs bad behaviour. If I score more happy than sad then I will get a treat of some kind. Now, it seems to me, this is my chart and I make the rules. Not so! say Mum and Dad. Still, I’m in front so far - unlike Mario Kart Wii: I can more or less complete the race (unlike James who just goes round in circles) but the intricacies of steering have me confused, it’s not like steering my scooter at all, and I always come last (unless in 2 player mode against James, of course). I like to play as Peach, but maybe I should try Rosalina..

Another of my holiday projects is to learn to play cards: I can now play Snap and Pairs with real cards, and Mum and Dad are teaching me the, uh, doyen of card games - it has many names but no real one, and is known by it’s rules even though everyone has their own set of them: follow suit and numbers, 2 picks up 2, 3 picks up 3, 8 miss a turn, Ace changes suit - you know it, I’m sure. I like the game, but my attention is often distracted by the TV - especially if Super Why! is on. Me and James are big fans, but he gets frustrated sometimes as he can’t recognise letters.

I’ve taken to staying up late, and sometimes I even stay awake long enough to watch Big Brother with Mum. It has a Stuart in it! Apparently it had a Becky too, but she was evicted. I don’t really know why anyone watches it, nothing ever really happens..