Busy Sitting Down

The past few days I've been busy.  And yes, as the title suggests, I've been busy sitting down.  I am starting to get into the writing groove again, and banged out an article which I sent off on Monday.  Then I've been researching ideas for presents for the many little birthdays coming up between now and the end of the year.  Luckily I found a couple of little inspirational ideas to tide me over, although I haven't felt very inspired to do much crafty stuff lately.  I think the last thing I made was the embroidered lavender pillow as a thank you present for Harriet's teacher.

Oh and speaking of Harriet's teacher, she started full-time in her Yr2 class this week.  It has been wonderful!  She has been playing with a small group of different children at lunchtime, been engaged with the classwork and we both had a fun time last night working on her acrostic poem.  The word she chose was 'mist' and this was the poem she wrote:

My sister said
It feels sort of like steam that goes right through you
Seeing is difficult
Today I went through it

I did wake up this morning and realise that given the small amount of space offered for the poem, her teacher probably only wanted one word per line.  And when I mentioned that to James he made a wry laugh and motioned towards the Norton Anthology lying on the dining room table, which was also lying on top of the collected works of Emily Dickinson and said "Well I probably would have brought out When We Were Young instead".  But hey, she seemed to respond to it (although TS Eliot wasn't quite as accessible as I thought).  She wrote all of the poem herself, about the only thing I did was prompt her thinking by asking "What does mist feel like?  Look like?  How does it make you feel when you see it?". 

Ted also has had a big week.  He stayed at preschool for the full day on both Monday and Tuesday - previously I'd been picking him up at lunchtime, and then just after lunch.  The past two days, however, I picked him up at the end of the day.  3pm!  And there he was, sitting on the mat, happily (well, ok, no big grin to speak of, but he was sitting there quietly and babbled away about his day when I approached him).  This makes a HUGE difference to my days when he is at preschool, because I actually get a chance to do something other than hurriedly clean, cook dinner and then return back to the school.

Unfortunately the photo uploader isn't working for me tonight, so this shall be a photo free post.  Deal with it, people!