A week of mixed fortune

Mixed fortune in that it has been a wonderful week for Harry, who has been an angel of making my life easier with good behaviour and keeping himself busy but a rather less wonderful one for poor Peter, who is suffering awfully with (I think) 4 front teeth coming all at once.

We have had some unexpected fun with a large tub of mixed small stones and buttons. I knew Harry would love sorting and pouring them but I was very wary about letting Peter near them, given his love for tasting his toys, but he loved them too. He flicked them with his fingers in a small pot, scattered them around the floor and put some back into the pot. Putting things inside other things seems to be one of his favourite skills at the moment, the concentration on his face is brilliant!

It is difficult to plan structured activities sometimes with Peter thrown into the mix, but his daytime sleep is becoming more reliable now so I have put in some effort to do some Christmas themed activities this week with Harry. We used some Christmas objects to do size ordering and Harry found this harder than I expected actually, as he has no problems sorting biggest and smallest, but has never tried ordering several items, so it was a worthwhile exercise!

We also made a Christmas tree decorating game which Harry has been playing when he comes down in the morning (he is always first!)

A big highlight this week has been meeting up with our home ed friends at Durham's Botanic Gardens on Wednesday to exchange Christmas gift bags for the children, to which we each made a contribution. The children had fun breaking up the ice in the pond and Harry was particularly enamoured by a piece which had some foliage frozen into it. Peter wasn't enjoying it too much, however, and had a burning temperature by the time we got home, so cbeebies got a good airing in the afternoon!

I thought Harry needed a bit of a treat today as Peter has given us a challenging week, so we headed to Shields Road, which can be an adventure in itself sometimes :-), to return some items to the library and look in the charity shops, as Harry loves a rummage in the toy sections. We were pleased to find two lovely puzzles, a book and a small bob the builder toy, followed by fish and chips for lunch, all for the bargain price of £8!

That brings us to today, the 22nd of December eek!! It's nearly Christmas (although it feels far too warm)! I am really quite excited and have been planning food shopping tonight to tackle in town tomorrow on my own as Stuart is home for the holidays.