Cycling, competition and clay - all in one day

Despite the fact that this is a crappy photo taken with my phone I think you can see the happiness bursting out of this child. All because he rode his bike to school yesterday for Ride to Work Day. This is a manufactured experience, we live too far from his school for him to really ride the whole distance. (Although once he is older we might give it a shot. I seem to remember riding my bike a fair way in my school days) So I took the bike for a drive to Cherub's creche, then Climber and I used foot-power to get to school. This photo is taken really close to where we used to live; the park just behind Climber is where his first 2 birthday parties were held because we had almost no backyard in our house. Fixit and I really miss living in this area, even though we now live in a perfectly good area with an enviable backyard. And I feel a bit wistful about Climber not being able to walk or ride to school, if truth be told. But it's having your cake and eating it territory. Climber could very easily ride to school if we sent him to the local one, but we wanted him to come here. So shutup whining already.

The same day we had the Prep to Grade 2 Sports Day in the park across the road from his school. Not a competition as such. I didn't get to barrack for the Climber's 'house', we just sat on a rug watching the kids rotate through a few different sporting activities like frisbee-throwing or net-casting-&-catching.

This lack of competition eventually made a couple of us decide to just get up and cheer the kids over the mini-hurdles. We cheered them if we knew their names. It made them run faster which was quite funny.

And then after all that extra fun, I took Climber to the first session of the pottery course he'll be doing, alongside Next-door-boy, for the next 6 weeks. Fun with clay at a Neighbourhood House, which is like a community centre I suppose. The new families among us stood round the edge of the room in that slightly nervous are we in the right room way. Eventually the teacher came in and fired a few questions at the middle of the room. How many children have I got? Hmm, dunno, seeing as I'm new here... Suddenly her gaze fixed on me, sizing me up as a new parent and presumably a potential trouble-maker because her introductory words to me were I get very testy if people are late so I'm going to give you my phone number. Make sure you call me if you're late or I get quite annoyed.

How on earth could she tell that I'm sometimes late for things?

Also when I get new students to my tap classes I generally say something along the lines of you must be ... hello and welcome, I'm Miss Caroline and I speak to both the parent and the new child and tell them helpful things like where the toilets are and where to change their shoes etc. And I never grump at latecomers, or if I do it's only to tease Astrid.

The boys really enjoyed the class of course. They never care about things like formalities.