This Little Clan Mac

Time for supper, comprised of peanut butter sandwiches at the moment. Ewen climbed into his booster seat and asked that I push him in. The next thing I see is Iain walking round to Ewen's side of the table instead of his.

"Um, Iain your chair is on the other side" I thought. It's not as if he could have forgotten since he climbs into his chair too now. And woebetide you lift him into his chair. He went furtherbehind Ewen's chair and started pushing Ewen's chair, that is copying what I usually do. Don't think he even realises he isn't able to move the chair, but he tried nevertheless. And continued to do so while I pushed Ewen. Meanwhile Ewen has also suggested to Iain that his chair is on the other side of the table. Iain promptly returned to his side and climbed into his booster seat.

Most amusing!

Posted by Keith at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And be a little more wary of what your kids can get up to when they copy you climb over the fence!!!

Yes! That's what Ewen did this afternoon, even though the gate was open. We boys had raced the last stretch up to the house having been for a walk to my office to collect the housekeys. Iain continued past to then look over his shoulder to see if Daddy / Mommy would chase him. Realising I was giving chase, he dashed further giggling all the while.

The game continued with me sweeping him up in my arms and placing him in the garden over the fence. I climbed over to chase him further over the hill. I turned to look back after reaching the house to see Ewen horizontal over the fence.

He had specifically retreated from the gate to climb the fence. One foot on the middle bar, the other along the top so he almost lay along the top, swung the supporting leg over and dropped down safely. What an achievement!! And the smile that beamed across his face told how he felt about it too. I had to laugh with joy!!

Posted by Keith at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The evening is drawing this weekend to a slow close. It's been a very good weekend by all accounts. Clare spent the weekend participating in a conference called Women of Destiny, which left us boys to our own devices. One might be quite justified to expect havoc to reign, but almost surprisingly, it didn't.

In fact, it was mostly calm. I was a little apprehensive, particularly of the bath time routine. Of late, Ewen has refused my removing him from the bath, drying him down, and dressing him for bed. He responded very favourably this weekend. I suspect it might be that he wasn't quite as tired, so we were able to reason, and he understood my expectations of him. It is this ability to rationalise now that certainly eases some of the frustrations we experience with the boys.

Although, having said that, he's just had one of those unexplained tantrums that only ends by letting time pass. Half an hour has passed and now has gone to bed having read a book and accepted the fact he must wear pyjamas to bed.

Anyway, we did go out together. Saturday morning we did a recycling run where Ewen helped offload the cardboard, and the glass. While we were doing this Iain played in the front seats, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ewen noticed and preferred to join him leaving the paper and plastics to me. Done is short order. It was off to a bit of play time in the local kiddie park in the village.

Iain tried to slide down the fireman's pole, which starts at his height above the ground. He forgot to move his feet and somehow ended up on his back rather shocked. He responded with a very distraught wail. However, soon after he tried the pole again but with Dad's help this time. The fall was soon forgotten as he joined his brother and two other little boys to play on the slide and swings.

The boys were quite ecstatic to see Mom again when we went to collect her. Their interest soon turned to an adjoining room to the one Mom was in. An Oak Room, chairs hugging the walls, but plenty of empty floor space to run to and fro. And those little legs of Iain's certainly help him keep up with Ewen. Clare thoroughly enjoyed the conference, too!

So a good weekend was had by all, me thinks!

Posted by Keith at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently upgraded the Movable Type software from version 3.16 to 3.2, along with that came a major glitch. The blog page appeared to have completely lost the content in the main page. Imagine my initial horror at the potential loss. Further investigation showed the entries were all in the date-based, category, and individual (permalink) archives. So the error lay in the main index page.

Hence the debug process began. Having made some very minor coding changes I thought that was the issue. Not! Since the default templates had the same results. This entry started with the question, "I wonder if the page will appear, or remain blank as per the current view? Hmm!" Needless to say it appeared flawlessly!!

Yup! The light bulb went on. As mentioned, I upgraded the blog software, and for some bizarre reason the Sixapart's default setting to display the last 7 days of entries was restored, and consequently removing my setting of the last 10 entries. I hope not to have the same struggle again.

Posted by Keith at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bathing tonight was a very relaxed affair. Iain was actually sitting upright rather than lying down as has been common practice of late. Then out of the blue, Ewen commented, "Look, these are eggs!"

"Sorry?" Clare queried.

"Here! I'll show you. And they are squishy and move around!" he explained.

Yes! I don't think I need to clarify just what part of a male's anatomy Ewen had been referring to. Needless to say, neither Clare or myself could contain our laughter. We don't know yet whether Ewen understood the humour of the occasion. Time will tell.

Posted by Keith at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)