Irish dancing

Springy has been twice now to an Irish dancing class.  She loves it. I'm so pleased because it's a good cardiac workout, along with being enjoyable and good for her co-ordination and posture.  At the moment she's dancing barefoot and is doing "soft shoe" style reels.  She picked up the 1-2-3 move in a week (practising on the farm tracks).  It also reminded me of how I used to love dancing.  I did ballet and tap until I was about 11 years old and in tap I used to get distinctions.  I've been learning some of the moves so that I can help her practice at home.

Springy gave the guineapigs a bath this morning.  It was new guineapig Martha's first time in a full bath bathtime.  With piggies that means they go swimming.  They look like mini capybaras (who are also South American creatures). Our dog fell asleep on one of my knees earlier.  We played three rounds, as a family, of Bananagrams. We love the game - it's a good way to increase vocabulary and spelling awareness.  I'm surprised how many words Springy knows at times.  She's currently reading a book called Dog Detectives.  I'm reading The Lord of the Rings - I read it every year.  I see it as a holiday (since we don't have a holiday otherwise) to voyage to Middle Earth and read of first Bilbo Baggins' adventures in The Hobbit and then travel with Frodo and Sam.  I liked the films but feel they fell short of the books by a long way.

I've been working on the garden a fair bit the past few days.  It's been quite cold outside but dry enough to dig up some of the borders, pull out some of the old and decaying plants e.g. the angelica.  I've kept back some of the angelica stalk to make a musical instrument with.  We're also hoping to do some willow workshops over the next week as we're moving into our block on Shelters again.  This time we're hoping to have some hands on opportunities.

We finished our Old Testament block.  We've covered since last year Adam and Eve (which is about questioning and disobeying authority and the loss of innocence), Noah and His Ark, Joseph and his Coat and Moses in the Bulrushes.  I dislike the Bible generally speaking because I find that the deity is rather nasty and into smiting.  However, I took the stories that I felt had general wisdom in them and that would meet some of Springy's 9-year change aspects.  It's interesting how prone to melancholy she is recently.  She was always very sanguine in nature - happy, skippy, la-de-da like a butterfly.  However, in the past 6 months we have much more of a huff and a "not fair" and general "I'm not doing that" going on.  It's involved at times lots of psychological ploys including the melancholic empathy thing whereby I've done "Oh I remember that when I was your age..."  Some of it has been peer influence.  There  are a few friends that I'm having to stop her seeing - they're not bad per se but they don't have the same curbs on pop culture that I prefer.  I know that this too shall pass but it can be a little exhausting at times and also a little sad to see some of them go through this change into 'attitude'.  Ho hum as some of my good friends would say.