Jumping Kit Where is the Green Sheep? By Mem Fox is one of the twins favourite books. The other day I wandered into the lounge room and found Kit 'reading' it together with Hannah. One of their favourite parts is the 'near' sheep and the 'far' sheep which are drawn to scale to demonstrate the concepts but we always hold the near sheep right up against thier faces and hold the book away from them for the far sheep for extra emphasis and fun - they love it.

Cranky ... it is that time of year again - I have a bucketload of marking to do and am staying up late every night to get through it. Everything else seems to suffer and I feel that the littlest thing can set me off. I have everything finely balanced and at the moment any unexpected turns can destroy my fragile sense of equilibrium. This is the time when I really hate having had to go back to work ...

The other day I was up the road buying some wine for our Friday night meal when I met a wonderful person. She was working in the bottlo and so quickly established a great rapport with the twins in their pram. She bent down so that she was at their eye level, she waited for Hannah to respond before going on, she spoke in simple phrases. She had a stamp (something the brats haven't had before) and after checking with me that it would be ok she demonstrated on herself what happened and then waited while Hannah held out her hand and indicated where she wanted to have the stamp put - she vocalised beautifully too! I was thrilled - I commented that this person was great with kids and how Hannah has DS and can find communicating with strangers a bit tricky. She said that she had 10 years child care experience and a sister with cerebal palsy - no wonder she was so good with the twins. It does make me wonder though - I am always reading in the papers about the child care crisis here - and I don't know why this person was working as a sales assistant but I know that I would much rather that she was employed part time at Hannah and Kit's child care centre - she clearly had talent in the area. Either way it was wonderful to meet a stranger in such a positive way rather than feeling embarassed or annoyed at the interaction which can so easily happen!
Hannah is still working on her standing skills