Unexpected kindness is the most powerful least costly and mostunderrated agent of human change.”

It is so nice to see daily how much Opeie loves his family. When he's playing / role playing all our family and friends are included even if they are not there at the time. Last week while shopping for Mrs M's Mother's Day gift Opeie started to get really excited and couldn't catch his breath. When he finally got his words out it seemed that he had spotted an enormous Lindt bunny and knowing how much Nanny loves Lindt chocolate he was desperate to have a picture taken to send her way...

Opeie is such a thoughtful little boy. I think, like me, he really appreciates the family he has and he wants to make everyone happy with these thoughtful little acts of kindness.

"Then toads and beetles, bees and bugs, Brother snails and sister slugs, Uncle ant and earwig aunt Clap and cheer and chant this chant."

If your children have a keen sense of adventure and curiosity and you are creative in your parenting then you can find all the fun you need on your doorstep or rather in your garden. It was another glorious day in sunny Shropshire and a chance discovery of a magnifying glass we thought we had lost a while back kick started an afternoon of discovery and learning.

I asked Opeie what he wanted to go searching for and he said 'bugs', so with magnifying glass in hand we began our investigation into the greener areas of our lovely garden. It really is amazing what you can find when you are really looking and with every different species found there was more excitement from our little adventurer.

When it comes to creepy crawlies Seth is pretty much frightened of everything but Opeie is so different, he thinks everything is 'cute' and if I catch spiders in glasses in the house he has to kiss the glass before saying his goodbyes and setting them free, so as you can imagine our bug hunt this afternoon was lots of fun.

We searched the ground, found webs high up, a colony of worker ants in one of the compost bins and some big fat slugs in the other compost bin that Opeie calls the 'smelly bin'. And with most of the things we found Opeie either picked them up or was happy to have them running over his hands. I don't want Opeie to be frightened of anything so i try and treat all bugs and spiders as friends.

Opeie was fascinated by the snails and we lay on our tummies and watched them for ages before Opeie picked them up to have a closer look. Our garden seems to be some sort of meeting ground for all of Shropshires snail community I've never seen so many hiding under all our bushes and plants.

We even spotted a very rare breed of snail too later in the day...

I try and get Opeie to do some sort of writing during each day and i try to keep the theme of the words relevant to keep him motivated, so in keeping with our mornings fun I wrote down some of the things we had found for Opeie to write also while I hung out the washing to dry. He was so proud of himself when he had finished and called me over to show off his work. His handwriting is coming along great and we 're so proud of the way he is progressing.

When mommy got home from work we continued our day of Entomology (thanks Google, hahaha) with some relevant literature. Superworm and The Hungry Caterpillar were part of today's reading, read beautifully by mommy. A fitting end to a creepy crawly yet creatively cute day of fun learning.

A little bit of craft to break up the day...

Today while we were out getting our food shopping for the week we popped in to a couple of shops to get some Easter craft bits for Seth's school. We picked up some plaster of Paris chicks and bunnies for Opeie to paint which we got straight to when we got home. It meant that i could keep Opeie occupied while Mrs M made us a tasty lunch.

I can never work out whether its the actual painting that Opeie loves or just making a mess, he had used up most of the paint painting the plate before it hit the Easter decorations, he had a lovely smile on his face though so he was having fun.

I probably shouldn't find it funny but I'm always entertained when Opeie gets paint on him or food down himself, he has a mini panic attack and needs it off him straight away. So it was most important that i had wet wipes at the ready.

We finished the painting and Opeie had a well deserved snack break before moving on to his Batman sticker book.

Opeie loves stickers (or stickies). They usually end up being stuck everywhere but he will happy work a room sharing out his stickers making sure that everyone is well covered, he's generous like that. No to think of a craft activity for tomorrow...

For more craft activities check out our other blog giftsfromthepiratescreate.com

"I'm late, I'm late, For a very important date..."

 

Mrs M's Motherly instincts are in overdrive at the moment as there has been four new additions to our ever growing family leaving the pitter patter of tiny feet once more.  Thankfully i am not talking about four new children, although i would love a huge family i think four newborns together would be more hard work than i could deal with especially already having Seth and Opeie. I am in fact talking about the the four new bunnies that our Rabbit Brobee gave birth to this time last week.

As selfish as it sounds Mrs M has had to deal with the new additions as ive got issues with dealing with that sort of thing. I think it stems back from my hamster dying a while back, i was quite attatched to Cheesecake, probably sounds silly but ive just always kept away from pets in general since then but Mrs M really wanted the rabbits and she is more than happy to deal with that side of things. Its nice for the boys to have pets though.

 Despite this the babies are beautiful and when they were first born looked like little baby hippo's. Unfortunately one of them is really struggling at the moment and were not sure their going to make it but Mrs M is doing everything she can to keep the little one warm and fed. It seems she has not been feeding off Brobee and is looking very dehydrated so i had to pop out yesterday to get some kitten food which Mrs M has been feeding to the poor little thing.

 Yesterday we had some freak rain here in Shropshire and the area of the hutch where the babies were was filling up with water so we had to bring our smaller hutch into the house so that we didn't lose all of the babies as their nest was starting to get very cold and wet, so they are now living in the middle of our kitchen until later today when we can sort out the hutch. Yesterday we covered the roof in one of this aluminium emergency blankets so fingers crossed it will keep any excess rain water out.

We have 2 other rabbits, Miffy and Snuffy who im feeling a little guilty about at the moment as our attentions have been permanently on Brobee and the babies. Mrs M is getting quite stressed about it all but thankfully the breeder that we got Brobee from has been great and has even been over to see them and bring some special food.

The poor little one that were having issues with is having problems keeping warm so Seth has decided that He/She is called Mr Freeze....

...I stopped writing the post at this point earlier as i had to go out and sadly Mr Freeze didn't make it, Mrs M has been very very upset as she was doing everything she could to keep him/her alive. Despite my recent comments about not wanting to deal with that side of things Mrs M was so upset that i couldn't let her deal with sorting the body out so i wrapped the poor little thing in some lovely material and made them a little coffin so tomorrow we can bury Mr Freeze.

It's so sad but thankfully the other three and mommy are all fit and well so that's something at least. There's no shortage of love and affection coming their way so im sure they will be fine.

Rest in peace Mr Freeze 9/8/2012 - 16/8/2012