Rectal prolapse
The year started with the acquisition of a pet.
Here's a clue...
and the answer is...Fluffy!
Here he is:
Fluffy is a particularly tame hamster which is a good thing as one day we looked in his cage and saw some horrible big pink thing hanging out his rear end. Taking the Internet to be the source of all knowledge we did an image search for "rectal prolapse" (you really don't want to do that) and were convinced that was what Fluffy had. So we stuffed Fluffy in a box and took him to the vets with the children. Needless to say the anomaly had been reabsorbed by the time we got him to the vets. However the vet picked Fluffy up in a special veterinarian grip and poked around until the monstrosity popped out again.
"Is that what you saw?" Asked the Vet.
"Yes, poor thing. Is there anything you can do for him?"
"Er, that's his testicles..."
"Daddy, what's a testicle?"
and so on...
Mind you the vet did say that Fluffy has particularly large testicles. That's my boy.
Which reminds me...
Tom's thirst for knowledge
If you were to meet Tom at the moment, he would probably ask you if you have a willy. Once when he was asking Grandma if she had a willy he went on to inform her:
"Oh. Mummy and Amy don't have a willy, no.... I've got a willy.... but I've only got a little willy...but my Daddy has got a great big....."
<oh dear - cringe...>
"TUMMY!"
<phew>
He is so keen to establish who has and has not got a willy that we have turned to the power of the Internet to help him in his quest for knowledge.
Filthy Language
Tom is 3 now, and his language is coming on very well. Unfortunately not always with the results one would hope. To see the "language of playground" of the modern toddler see Tom in action in this disgusting video.
U certificate
Here's the bit for relatives who like looking at pictures of the children. If you want to skip past that to more stuff along the lines of hamster testicles then click here.
Slavery
When we had a bit of snow, Amy dutifully dragged her brother around on his toboggan. The video is here.
Music
Amy continues to enjoy music and has a violin solo performance in a concert on the 18th December. She also has proper piano lessons now (not rubbishy Mummy and Daddy) and takes it all very seriously.
Amy and Tom have also enjoyed being taken to concerts. Amy went to see the final of Young Musicians of the Year at the Sage. She made her own judge's book and ranked the performers for various musical abilities as well as drawing their instruments. She talked about this concert for ages afterwards, and of course like all young violinist ladies wants to be Nicola Benedetti.
Steve sung in the Sage with his choir ("the Singers") in a concert with the Spanish Flamenco virtuoso, Paco Pena, in a performance of his "Requiem for the Earth" which has a classical choir behind much wild Flamenco wailing. This was a quick learning curve for us to work out at which bit of wailing we were to come in as there were no clues in the score and we only rehearsed one evening and on the day of performance.
Steve's choir has some videos of us rehearsing for our usual Christmas tour available here (I'm the forth from the right at the back).
Holidays
We had a short break at York which Amy has documented on her own website! (Feel free to dig around Amy's website). When we went round the Yorvick centre Tom was convinced there were going to be real dinosaurs during the automated trip bit, and as we went round each corner he kept nervously asking "no dinosaurs?" We took two trips to go round the Castle Museum, went to Betty's (of course) and other tea rooms and on a boat trip. The favourite activity for the children was the open top tourist bus of course!
In the summer we went off to Centre Parcs again, this time in Elveden Forest, near Cambridge. Amy and I went down the rapids endless times. We collided with a number of people and Amy kicked a boy in the willy!
Click on the photo below for a video of Tom's hole in one!
There are more summer holiday photos here.
Beer and Books
Impressed by Wendy's reading group's prestigious drinking abilities, the local Dads decided to start up a reading group of their own. So we meet in a local pub once a month and discuss books about alienated middle age blokes, or so it was for a while until we noticed the trend and branched out! It is a stimulating thing to do, until the tipsy bit kicks in and we have trouble with our eyes.
Amy's Christmas list
This is what we found in Amy's school bag:
To Santa
I would like
1. Keys to lock my room's door
2. Money
3. Nail varnish with no stickers and never washes off from swimming can only get off by nail varnish remover
4. Bethany back (Bethany is a school friend who moved to Australia)
5. Chocolate fountain
6. Me to help Robin Hood to do it with him on TV
7. To be a mermaid but not get eaten
End of Christmas list
May all your Christmas dreams come true!
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