Did I Ever Tell You?

No I don't think I did.

A while back when we were commuting, as a family, to the church retreat on the tube, this event unfolded. As soon as I rolled the stroller, with J in it, onto the train, he said, with all the jubilation of an expectant mother, "Mom, she's gonna have a baby!" This was a comment about the woman we were crammed against in front of us. Not wanting to draw more attention to the statement I just kinda whispered in his ear something about not commenting on her looks--she was most definitely not of the age to have a baby. He tried to say something again but luckily this woman was in a conversation with a male friend and either didn't hear Jesse or just chose to look as though she hadn't. Perhaps our American accents covered for us. Anyways, Jesse got off the stomach topic, and then said something like, "Look mom, but she even has big cheeks and a big nose." Needless to say, I was glad when that train ride was finished.

Last week Luci said, "Mummy, when I was in your tummy, I used to eat dog hair." She is constantly coming up with craziness.

When Rebecca, a girl considering IC London, was here last week, there was a knock at the door at 9 p.m. When I looked through the peephole there was no one and then a man came back around the corner. I opened the door with Peanut growling and he dangled a badge at me saying he was a television licensing officer. I said "At this time of night?" He said, "Yeah we come until 9 p.m." He said that he needed to take a look in our flat to see if we were operating a tv. Feeling well protected and accompanied by Rebecca I let him peek into our lounge, which I could see he was very afraid to do with Peanut straining to get away from me. We were cleared, and he left and I was glad to have had this experience which until then I had only heard about. FYI, you have to buy a license to operate a tv here and they will come and check and see if you are operating one illegally.

I had a good time volunteering for my first time on the farm last week, though it is impossible to remember the amounts of food each animal gets fed. However, Carol wrote out some great instructions for me this week telling me how many scoops go where. Unfortunately, there was no set of instructions mapping out where to find the missing scoop. Oh well, Francesco and I did a fine job I think though he did most of it since I was half entertaining a sick Jesse who stayed home from school with me. Actually at least half the time he curled up under a blanket in our wagon. And the other half he help pull a cart that we had loaded 3 handleless buckets of feed onto. Peanut chased only a few goats this time and mostly tried to stay away from spunky Buster a beautiful, almost 2 year old dog that now lives at the farm. My scary part of the day was slipping water into the ferrets cage--I was told they could be nasty and Francesco had seen Carol wear gloves when she fed them, but luckily for me it was uneventful because I had no idea where the gloves were. My favorite part of farm time was petting the cows' hairdos and also, the 3 seconds when I was feeding a baby sheep a bottle of milk. A time when I averted disaster was when I was able to extract my sinking wellied foot out of the mud in the pen of a loner pig. I was about to fall over but thankfully I regained my footing.

Jesse's class had a Easter bonnet parade today. It was great to see the most of the kids heads piled high with chickens and eggs and all sorts other things they and their parents had piled on. One kid could not keep his bonnet on unless the teacher was holding it up because it was so heavy. Jesse's was totally minimalist because it had not been the focus of our attention since he's been sick the past few days. (Yes we sent him to school today anyways because he didn't want to miss out and neither did we want to miss out on sending him since he is about to have a long school holiday). Both kids are now napping which just never happens anymore, really a good thing since it will mean that they are up later tonight.