Finn the fish

Finn is certainly enjoying pre-school nursery and seems to be picking up knowledge which he occasionally decides to impart to the rest of us. He was very interested to learn about the QE2, which was up the Forth recently on its farewell tour, being especially fascinated that it had a swimming pool and a number of "cafes" on board. While driving recently I remarked about the trees losing their leaves and he told me the ones that kept their leaves were called evergreen. And while listening to Classic FM he correctly identified the piano and the violin as the two musical instruments being played "and the piano is playing the high part." It was! He got to sit in a fire engine at pre-school last week when the local fire brigade were in for an educational visit. The "alarm" was very loud.

This is when Finn is at his best, really pleased with himself for being clever. He has romped through his Pre-school stage at swimming lessons, with his teacher, Dawn, declaring him "a natural". Finn was reluctant to go back as he thought he was on to a green hat and would have "to do hard things" but he's happy as he's still in his same class. He's skipped the Non-swimmer stage and moved on to Beginner, which is the level at which Sean is still struggling to get his final sticker. He's not had a fruitful term and hasn't really progressed, with the breaststroke his downfall. I feel his teacher this term hasn't been as good and he's getting demotivated as he has only earned one sticker. That said, he needs to practise more when we go to the pool, like Finn, rather than just play about after a token swim.

Finn has been discharged from the eye clinic, so it will simply be annual visits to the optician for him from now on. Sean is down to one hour a day for his patch, although his eye hasn't improved since the last visit. Rowan has his appointment later in the month. When he does his "funny face" he tends to screw up his right eye a bit like Sean so we'll see if his vision is impaired. I hope he doesn't need glasses. He doesn't have the nose for specs!