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Nothing much going on this end. It was hot, then it rained at night, now it's sunny and windy. I can't look at the newspapers as they continue to be depressingly full of politicians.
My middle daughter (6) is training for a big football match next week that we will drive over 2 hours to get to reach a hidden away Kenyan 'upcountry' prep school full of boarders that sometimes start as young as 5. It's madness to go all the way there from Nairobi, but there it is. Our headmistress says we have to go for reasons of sporting etiquette - I just think that it might be more a case of 'rent a friend'.
Once my husband got over the fact that our daughter has been put in goal ('I can't believe it! I'm not having boys kicking a ball in her face!'), he has actually got quite keen and been in 'training' with her every evening. This involves locking up our 2 Alsatians and 2 smaller dogs (that we inherited with this house), because they all love running after the ball too and this game inevitably winds up with the dog puncturing a hole in the ball and much shouting. The middle daughter enjoys it but says she's not very keen on 'diving'. She goes off to school with an old long sleeved tracksuit on Wednesdays and Thursdays and swelters in goal in the afternoon sun - so I'm not surprised she doesn't like it.
Our eldest (8) had to learn a very complex French poem which all mothers' thought was a bit much when the children only started the language in September. They have been doing Swahili up until now but have never been asked to learn a poem. We finally cracked it at last but the learning went on a bit like this; ME (reading out loud) 'Le chat ouvritlesyeux Le soleil y entre' Daughter: 'Le .... ME 'Le chat ouvritlesyeux' Daughter; 'Le.... etc etc. until we were screaming at each other like banshees (sp?)
Anyway it went very well in the end and she incredibly learned both verses but that and the history test ruined the whole of half term. My friend said her daughter casually announced at 5.30pm last Thursday that she needed to know the poem for the next day and they hadn't even started on memorising it. Apparently stressful hours ensued and the girl in question ended up learning the poem by singing the words. I thought, why didn't I think of that?
Our youngest (3) seems to have adopted picking her nose as a nervous reflex. When anyone says hello to her the hand whizzes up to the nose (which is usually dirty). Her best friend's mum has gone to England on a wonderful 5 days in London alone without children trip (are you detecting envy?), so we have stepped up neighbourly school runs and play dates for a short time to help out Dad. I offered to do the morning run but our dad friend declined, he told us; 'Apparently her class mate Acacia announced "Natasha doesn't have a Daddy!" to everyone last week, so I had better put in an appearance.' Our daughters are absolute terrors together. A couple of weeks ago they managed to find some panadol and eat one each. The only reason they told us was because they didn't taste very nice.