Holiday walking - part 2

Somewhat later than planned..........I thought I'd share another wonderful walk from our half-term. This one is a 'proper' walk with a defined route, car park and even other people. But Pressmennan Wood, despite being relatively busy (and I guess it is relative as we only passed around 5 other families in over an hour of walking), is such a great spot. The Woodland Trust has installed little carvings and windows and doors in some of the trees - the tree houses are home to Glingblobs and Tootflits. It really keeps the children's interest and the carvings are so well done and low key that they don't intrude too much into the woodland.







I started spotting some signs that Spring is on it's way. Great tits singing, lots of catkins and honeysuckle leaves stirring.







We have a gorgeous sunny day here today. Perfect. I do hope it's so lovely with you too. I'll be back soon, hopefully, with some evidence of real sewing. I've finally managed to be a bit more productive in the last few days - still only small bits but getting there.

Holiday walking - part 1

We have just finished our half-term and we had a lovely time with two walks, in particular, that hit the right spot - lots of freedom for the children and dogs, and no rain.




I think, in an ideal world, I'd always choose a walk like this first one. We were actually on our way to visit friends who live in the Forest of Bowland (not far from Wray and Hornby) and needed find somewhere to break up the journey and let off some energy.




When we got to Biggar (which, incidentally, has a wonderful fish and chip shop despite being quite far from the sea) we turned off onto smaller and smaller roads until we spotted an old hill track heading off into the hills (surprisingly enough!). It was just perfect. No other people, endless walking and beautiful views. We had fun!




My kids don't really know how to have a 'civilised' walk. For them a walk is an opportunity to climb, scramble, chase, get wet and fall over. We keep older jackets for walks so that I don't then have to panic about getting them clean in time for a trip to the shops or for school days.



I do sometimes get very frustrated and wish that they'd just walk, stay clean and be a bit less wild....but then I remind myself (or, usually, John does) that it is so very good for them to get this freedom and not care what they look like. They need to be children and be able to mess around and explore....and sadly not so many kids get the opportunity these days.



We had a lovely time with our friends too. Including a walk in 'their' wood. When they got married a couple of years ago they asked for donations rather than presents. And they were able to help the Woodland Trust buy Greta Wood. It was great to visit and see what we had helped purchase and keep in good hands for the future. I was too busy talking to remember to take more than this one picture - oops!



I hope you all have a lovely week.

Seeing the world through their eyes

What would you think if your 6 year old son waved a pencil in front of you, asked 'is this the green one?', and then produced a beautiful picture of a green lion?



Well, I thought 'Oh, Angus, why didn't you tell me it was a lion you were going to draw?' But said 'That's fantastic Angus, I love his claws'.

You see this sort of thing happens all the time with both Finn and Angus. I know that when Angus asks for the bowl the same colour as his hair he means the light green one (his hair is light red - strawberry blond. It isn't green, honestly). If Finn asks if something is grey it's because he's worried that I'm trying to make him wear pink.

With Finn, my eldest, I carefully tried teaching him colours. We often talked about the colours of his toy cars and soon he knew them all. But he couldn't apply that consistently to other objects. In fact, he'd just learnt which colour went with which car. He could get colours right sometimes - bright yellow was easy for instance and he got better at making an 'educated' guess. But we also understood what he meant when he talked about 'race you to that red tree' or 'our old cat was green wasn't she?'.

Finn sees the world very differently to most of us. His colour blindness is particularly wide ranging. When he first went to pre-school I mentioned that I though he was colour blind but was told he was too young to tell and I had the same story when he started school. I was pretty certain that he was so as soon as he knew all his numbers and letters accurately we had our optician test him and lo and behold he has a severe colour deficit.

It seems that there is a real range in the level of colour blindness and some people get through life without really being aware that they are. While with others, like my boys and my dad, it's very obvious. And that's who they have inherited it from - through me, of course. In fact one of my brothers is colour blind too but he has inherited it from my mum (it is passed down on the x chromosome which is why men are far more likely to be colour blind as they only have one rather than two x chromosomes) and isn't quite so bad. I'd always thought my dad didn't make much effort with colours and that was why he was so much worse than my brother - but having had Finn tested we now know that it's just that there are so many colours their eyes can't differentiate.

I probably didn't try nearly so hard to teach Angus about colours as I pretty soon guessed he was colour blind too. And this time I had no difficulty persuading the school about it - I guess they had had enough experience of Finn by then!



I think, from my observation, that they see far fewer colours than us and work mostly on shades to identify between colours. Finn was recently peering at our car and one of the same model parked next to it. After quite a lot of peering (I did wonder what he was doing but he is an 8 year old boy and they do strange things) he announced that this (the dark green one - which was correct) was our car and if you looked closely enough you could see it was different to the other one (which was a deep maroon). There wasn't not a lot to be said other than agreeing that it was our car.

If you're going to have some kind of impairment then there are far far worse but it does mean they can't join the police, fire brigade etc or the armed services or ever fly a plane (or rocket as Angus desperately wants to do). It also makes identifying blood from mud difficult (tricky when you enjoy playing rugby!) - I'm not sure how my dad has managed with this as he is a vet - especially since, to him, diarrhoea looks pretty similar to mud and blood too! And today, when John burnt his hand quite badly, the boys asked to see but then couldn't spot the redness or blisters - clearly daddy was making a fuss about nothing.

P.S. We do point out to them when they have made mistakes - mostly, and they are well aware that they see things differently. At school they are getting better at asking their friends or teacher for help but don't always remember or think about it(as evidenced by Finn's portrait of poor Sophie!). And we have had to explain to Angus that he won't be able to fly rockets, jets or even normal aeroplanes - it has always been something he has wanted to do but after a while we decided we'd tell him, just in case he really set his heart on it and it became a long-term career plan.