"Bobend"

Like most families with young children the expressions, “Father Christmas won’t come”, or “Father Christmas will take your presents back” have been used on more than one occasion over the last month or so. However Christmas now seems a distant memory having been back at work a week already and we can no longer use Santa as a negotiating tool for good behaviour! This is where Mickey Mouse comes to the rescue – what I here you say? Yes we have booked our first holiday of the year for late March to take the boys to Disneyland Paris. So whenever they are naughty now the expressions are more along the lines of  “Mickey Mouse won’t be happy with you”, or “You won’t go to Mickey Mouse Land”.

Other than holiday most of our attention is now focused on a certain little mans 3^rd birthday which is only approximately 3 weeks away! Late January is always difficult to arrange something as a lot of theme parks, zoo’s, farms etc are closed and even if they were open it would probably be cold and wet. So we are left with indoor activities. One possibility we are considering this year is to take him and some of his friends bowling as her thoroughly enjoyed his cousins bowling party over xmas. On the subject of Brandon, does anyone know what “bobend” means or where it comes from? When Brandon gets frustrated or told off says the word “bobend” in a sulky sort of manner as if he is saying “bothered”. We have asked him what he is saying?, where he learnt it from? and who says that word? – but have drawn up blanks.

Joshua has now started to get homework from his pre-school in preparation for starting junior school this September. We have made his school selection already so now it is a case of fingers crossed and wait. Hopefully we will get our first choice as the decision we have made will ultimately affect Brandon as well. Anyway here is Joshua proudly showing off his homework folder outside of his pre-school class today. 

Joshua seems to be getting very cleaver lately and grasping a real understanding of numbers and their sequence. At the dinner table last week we had garlic bread and he had memorised that he had eaten 3 slices and Brandon had eaten 2. There were still 2 slices on the plate which I went to take for me and Tina and he responded with “No they are for me and Brandon so that Brandon has 3 and I have 4”. I was so impressed that he remembered two numbers and then also had the ability to add 1 to each knowing the next number in the sequence.

Joshua is also getting very good at football club and I am convinced he is now ready for the next class up. He can now do some good jumping headers and if you bounce a ball towards him he really gets his laces into his ball strikes. Brandon has shown good improvements but is not ready to go up into Joshua’s current class and for this reason I think the coach is holding Joshua back as he know it will give us a problem with the gap between the two classes. It is already a bit of a marathon on a Sunday morning to take Brandon to football whilst Tina waits for Joshua, then Brandon waits whilst Joshua does his club afterwards. So to then add an hour gap between the two classes would make it really unmanageable,  I doubt Brandon will be ready for the next class until around April at the earliest.