Pootling along.

We've started our next book, with me reading to both girls, which they're both really enjoying:  The Five Children and It.  Since K chose The Phoenix and the Carpet as her free Puffin Post book, I think we'll be moving on to that by the weekend!  There was much excitement when Bodiam Castle was mentioned and although generally we're not allowed to talk about the more violent side of history (due to K's sensibilities) somehow it's allowed when approached through the medium of fiction.
While I was reading today K & M busied themselves with building marble runs and making Fuzzy Felt pictures, including this particularly lovely one by K:

Two best friends having an ice-cream

In other news M is rapidly approaching her 7th birthday and so it's soon to be party time!  She's having a bit of a tough time at the moment and in particular is really struggling with the fact that so many of her friends (who have birthdays before the Easter holidays) have joined Brownies and she can't until September due to numbers, despite being 7 next week.  I'm hoping that her birthday celebrations will take her mind off that a little bit at least.  Last year she chose the Natural History Museum instead of a party, but we've been there recently, so she's going for a 'Dinosaurs' Picnic' party in the park.  We've been coming up with dinosaur themed games and I need to make a cake which is 'the park with a picnic blanket' so M can put some of her (small) plastic dinosaurs on it.  I guess it's just an up-to-date version of previous years' cakes, such as this Mesozoic Era cake that she requested.

Mesozoic Era cake for M's 4th birthday



Finally we've been drifting a little bit lately, which isn't generally a problem as I know we'll get back to 'doing stuff' again, but in an effort to help us towards that I've started offering the girls each half an hour a day 'Mummy time'.  I don't think it's something that would have worked until quite recently, but they're now both at a point where it's not unreasonable to ask them to give their sister some uninterrupted time with me.  So far M & I have played some board games and read a non-fiction book about dinosaurs and K & I have played some board games and have talked about reviving our French learning (but not actually done any as yet).