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Clara has been going to swimming lessons, this was week 5 - we were supposed to watch the swimmers at the beginning of Feb but the snow meant that the lessons were cancelled, so we watched them swimming today.

I taught Clara to read, I taught her to draw, I taught her letters and how to put them together. School have built upon what I've already taught her, and obviously are teaching her other things which is great. Neither of us have taught Clara to swim, so what she did today was completely down to someone else. It's one thing to watch Clara bring things home that she's written - I know she can do it, but it's quite another thing to watch her doing something which I've had no interaction with at all. She wasn't the most confident child in the pool, she doesn't like water in her face but she was very good and made us very proud! I've always said that Clara is definitely my academic child, she's going to be my A grader (although, you know what, if she's not, it really doesn't matter - I won't put that sort of pressure on her - I know too well how that feels), Storm will take to swimming like a duck to water (haha!) but that's because that's the type of child Storm is. She'll enjoy swimming and physical activites. You can see the major differences in their personalities already .. what I'm glad for, is that the love eachother very much and have a super relationship, you can already see that the sister with the stronger trait already helps the other and vice versa.

Makes me sad that my own Mother didn't try harder with me and my sister. A lost friendship there. Hey ho! Good things come from bad huh?

In other news - Storm didn't wake up so much last night, only at midnight, managed to get her back to sleep then Mr G and his mates stumbled in from the pub and woke her again, grrr! Managed to get her back to sleep, had a few stern words with Mr G and told him that he will be the one getting up at 6am when she wakes up - she was too kind and only woke at 7!! She has been terribly grumpy today though, she's having her nap, I hope that she is just teething ..

Oh today was the first time I had the camera in RAW + JPEG, I had a go at playing with NXview but it was far too slow for my liking - as it was, I didn't feel that I needed to change anything (just cropped to make sure no other children were in view) - we were unfortunately placed such that the sun was in front of the camera so I had to sit in the right position, but I didn't blow any highlights on this picture. I'm feeling much more confident with the camera - as soon as I went into the pool, I adjusted my settings, did 2 test shots and I felt that the settings were great. Makes me feel really great about all this now! Was internet window shopping last night for new lenses ... only 9 sleeps until I can actually buy my new one! :)

Camera Mode M, WB Auto
Things I did - ISO-800, f/5.6, 1/1250, 55mm, meter mode pattern,
Things camera did - focus
Image taken as RAW, cropped NXView