Music, clothes and crochet.

The past couple of days have involved quite a bit of music.  There have been piano lessons for both girls and a French horn one for M.  There has been a distinct lack of piano practice lately, so I've been encouraging both girls on that front, reminding them that they don't have to continue with lessons, but if they want to that they'll get much more out of them if they practice regularly, so both girls have done a bit at least and M has practised her French horn too, with very little encouragement.

We have also been having our spring clothes trying on sessions (rather later than usual and even more unusually without Granny), and consequently have had quite a big pile of clothes, some to hand down to a friend and some to take to the bring and swap session at the Asfordby HE group on Monday.  M really didn't want to get rid of a few favourites, particularly a dinosaur t-shirt & shorts set that I think is age 5-6 (she's just turned 9!).  When she found the baptism dress in her wardrobe (which a friend of the family made from the skirt of my wedding dress), and I told her I wasn't getting rid of it even though it doesn't fit anyone, because she or K might like it if they have children one day, she seized on this idea and is now keeping the dinosaur t-shirt & shorts for her possible future children too.

This afternoon we watched the final episode on the first dvd of The Human Body, which was about puberty, which is quite timely for K, as she's just embarking on it herself. 

Having seen me doing quite a bit of crochet M has decided that she would like to learn too.  So today I suggested she try to do chain stitch and work on getting the stitches regular and not too loose or tight.  Regular she got pretty quickly, it took a bit longer with the tension but she seemed to get that cracked too by bedtime.  I anticipated that we'd continue with other stitches tomorrow or Friday, but M dug out a present that she was given, probably a couple of years ago now, a crochet kit for beginners and took it upstairs with her.  About an hour later, she presented me with some crochet which is definitely not just chain stitch!

M's crochet.

In other news, we've started reading a new book together, which we're reviewing for my friend T, who set up an independent small publishing company, Mother's Milk Books.  (Do check out the fantastic Musings on Mothering which was her first venture, the royalties of which all go to La Leche League GB).  I think I'll save up our thoughts on that for its own post though, but I think it's looking very promising.