Getting back in the swing.

Today felt a bit like the first proper day back to normal (whatever that may be!) after the Christmas break.

The annual post-Christmas thank you writing is now well underway.  Thank yous are something that we do ask the girls to do, which they respond to with varying degrees of willingness.  Rather bizarrely both K & M, however much they protest at 'having' to do them, insist on writing thank yous to absolutely everyone they receive presents from, including each other and me and A!  I'll add photos later, but yesterday both girls made their wooden vehicles that they received for Christmas, they both managed with very little help and although M's was a bit squiffy, the results look really good.  Today M started the 250 piece Where's Wally puzzle she was given and is making good progress with that.

This morning a doctor's appointment got us up and going rather earlier than we otherwise would, and once we got home, I got out the electronics kit that we borrowed, for K & M to have a last go, as the plan is to return it tomorrow.  Both girls were reminded how much that they'd enjoyed playing about with it and are hoping that we'll be able to keep it for longer.

I have also started reading to K & M again, after a long break because of losing my voice back in the summer (I had my third session of speech therapy this evening).  It's something we've been talking about for a while, M (who's 7.5 now) has been keen for a while, but K (9), who is very aware that she often finds things frightening, has been very wary, but today we starting reading the first Harry Potter books.  One of the reasons that K has been reluctant is that she's worried she might really get into them and not manage to resist moving onto the more scary subsequent books.

M has taken to wanting to watch a lot of telly lately, but has been watching various children's programme repeatedly, even when she's already seen them.  We had a conversation about this, I pointed out that it's fine to watch things, but that we've got some really interested things recorded on the telly if she wants to watch and she's already seen the episodes of the programmes she likes that are on, such as various David Attenborough series, who both girls really like.  I'm not planning on pushing it, but I'm hoping that the 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates' obsession will fade soon.  This afternoon we watched the first one of David Attenborough's Africa series, that we recorded on BBC1 and both girls are looking forward to the next episode.  Then we also watched 101 Dalmations, (the film version with Glenn Close) and talked about adapting books for the screen.  K is of the opinion that you should stick closely to the book, although she did concede that there are things you can do with cartoons that wouldn't be possible with actors, M said she thought that it doesn't matter if so much, as long as it's still a good story.