Update on the kids

Rather than yet another tourist attraction, I thought I’d update people on the kids and how they are going.  Also both of the them said quite amusing things tonight that I thought was worth sharing.Interestingly we are all feeling a bit home sick at the moment.  Ella woke up the other morning crying because she missed Molly, Jasper asked “when do we go home?” and both Karina and I have had fond thoughts about our house.Still, everyone seems to be going OK, both at school and in general.  Jasper is taking leaps and bounds with his reading, he’s moved up a couple of levels of reader now and is confidently tackling new words.  For the most part he’s also stopped saying “I don’t know” when you ask him what he did during the day and he relates lots of detail about what happened.  His favourite job is “Fruit Monitor” — something he did so well, that Miss Bell let him continue with it for a few weeks as he was so proud of it.Today Karina was approached by Miss Bell to ask if Jasper might audition for the school play as “he has a lovely singing voice”.  We are really pleased he’s coming out of his shell a bit, but also have nightmare visions of him sitting in the wings on opening night going “I don’t want to!”.  We’ll let him guide us and see what he wants to do.Ella is as confident and loud as ever, bossing everyone around and getting frustrated with the school rules at times.  She reads one or two chapter books a night, although she does prefer the ones with pictures.  I was surprised yesterday when I came home and she’d covered the footpath with “I love you Dad” and “You are the best Dad” all over the side walk.  Working from home today I’ve watched people stopping to read it all afternoon.  Her favourite job at school is “Register Monitor” because she gets to go out of the classroom.This is actually quite an involved task as all the classrooms and the corridors are locked down (seriously) during the day and you need a swipe card to get through, so as Register Monitor, she gets to take the card while another kid carries the register, and swipe her way through to the office then back into the classroom again.A friend from work came for dinner last night, and he asked Ella what she thought the best thing about London was.  Ella said “Umm, I think it’s the fact that you have a train which goes underwater and takes you to France in only 2 hours and you can see the Eiffel tower”.We went to our local Pizza Express for dinner (not as cheap as La Porchetta’s, but the pizzas are better if I’m honest).  The kids were watching the chefs make the pizzas and got talking to them, then one chef gave them both one of the disposable paper chefs hats that they use in the kitchen.They were both thrilled, and Jasper asked Karina, “Mum, next time we go can you have a good look at the chefs and then sew me one of their tops so I can be a chef too?”While we were at the table, Ella told us how she’s sick of learning things she already knows, and in fact, “I know everything, I know my ABC, I know how to add, and subtract and multipliky (sp.). I can read and I even know the continents. I shouldn’t be at school.”  She seems genuinely puzzled about what there might be left to know!