Bare naked babies

Thanks for all the lovely comments on yesterday's. Actually I love how it came out as an optical illusion wasn't what I aimed to capture at the time. Just a few flukes came together to make it so.

This is the one and only.

Decided I would take only one shot today, this an absolute quickie as they ran from the bathroom flapping their pjs and the camera was as had been set from a previous video. I routinely take 100s every day and usually do little more than rate them but after I clicked, I just thought STOP and let it be so.

I enjoyed school this morning with Callum, sitting in the room alongside with my iMac lugged along in a suitcase backing up and processing some work images. There I can't get an internet connection and I have to say it's a jolly good thing when you want to remain focused.

The boys are motivated by money! I don't mean shed loads of it, but as of today, for the promise of a quarter (about 15p) in their green and blue piggybanks, I got the following:
- all the cutlery emptied from the dishwasher and correctly placed in the respective drawers
- all the boys' cups and plates put back in their retro kitchen
- the dishwasher reloaded
- the soap in the dispenser (actually Callum loves doing that job)
A bargain! Sure it took an age, but they did it.

The boys are in for a big surprise! The iPad has arrived which will be used to further encourage Reuben's reading, especially during his down time post July's surgery and for the 3 months after during which he'll be in the halo.

On reading, I found some flashcards I'd left at mum and dad's last summer and finally unpacked them today. Callum has never looked at flashcards as it just wouldn't have been his way to learn, but certainly Reuben enjoyed them a couple of years ago. Pulling them out he started reading dog, baby, watermelon, "The shoes are in the box", bag, zebra, frog, cat, ant, elephant, xray, wave, horse, cake, goat, truck, tiger, hat, ball"? Well I suddenly realized with 7 of the Bob books bought (nice alliteration!) last Wednesday from Amazon that he's now able to read through "I read the whole book!", he has about 100 words that he's able to read and certainly many more than I'd given him credit for during his assessment last week when I suggested 30. I could recognize his sources of knowledge for many of his words as he'd laugh when he would see a word that he knows the sign for ("Signing Time!") or even My Baby Can Read which to be honest has rarely been watched because pretty much the only viewing time the boys get is in the car and then I need an autoplay DVD which MBCR is not! Before you get the wrong idea that I've deprived my kids of TV, they love The Incredibles, Toy Story and Up, but have just never watched actual TV in the USA, only when we're back in the UK (CBeeBies is fab and I got to learn some BSL to boot!). I haven't bothered getting a connection for the last 5 years other than temporarily for the World Cup and Wimbledon which I'm rather aghast at today, as I realise I've missed the first 10 days of it. What has happened to my brain? It's the first time in my life I haven't watched it and now I'm listening to Five Live late in the night playing catch up. Perhaps because my heart is so often in the UK with homesickness that I insist on watching the matches, Wimbledon being just a few miles from the house we still own in Richmond. And maybe this year, oh I don't know, I feel a little less of that yearning of 8 years.