Monday 17 March 2008

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Sean is back at school today after being laid low with a virus for a few days. It was nothing serious, just a general listlessness and sore head. Fortunately it didn't deter him accompanying me to an Astro Event put on by Dark Sky Scotland at the Balfour Lecture Theatre down at the Botanics on Saturday afternoon. We had a half-hour in an inflatable planetarium, a hemisphere about 6m across getting a star talk; a lecture in the theatre where someone made a "comet" from water, soot, sand, Worcester sauce ("organic molecules") and dry ice; and then the chance to make and fire paper rockets outside in the gardens.

Sean loved it and it was great to see him engaged and confident to shout out answers like "Saturn!" and that one of the meteorites was rough and one was smooth. We got to handle the two meteorites, one of which was rock and the other, much heavier, was metallic. As Stuart the lecturer pointed out, these would easily be the oldest things we will ever handle in our lives, being about 4.5 billion years old. We shared a hot chocolate afterwards. I always love getting some time alone with the boys and Sean is now old enough to enjoy these sort of events.

My "Finn time" was Saturday morning when we went swimming at Loanhead. He mostly enjoys just playing in the baby pool with the toys but does a little bit of kicking when I hold him and seems unworried about the lack of armbands. He is wearing goggles for some of the time too.

Lesley and Stuart minded the boys on Saturday evening, so that Sharon and I could head through to Glasgow to see Frankie Boyle at the Carling Academy. He certainly is a no-holds-barred comic and it was good to get a night out and a good laugh with my dear wife, something we don't seem to get enough of these days.

Yesterday we found a new playpark for the boys. Seven Acre Park is past Braids driving range by Alwnickhill Road and has a fine vista north to the city of Edinburgh. The downside of the open views was exposure to a biting easterly wind. It didn't stop Rowan from enjoying a great run around a playpark under his own steam: climbing steps, crawling through tunnels and stuttering down slides (aluminium slides are just rubbish!). Rowan has had some dreadful teething nappies of late, far worse than the other two ever had, and was a little out of sorts over the weekend. He badly needs a haircut: his mop of locks is just engulfing his head.

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