Frosty

After relieving his father of the Boy Wonder in Monmouth this morning, R and I whisked him off to Croome for a sausage brunch and a walk. The sausages were a hit, but the walk didn't take long because it was evilly cold, and even though we'd swathed him in multiple outer garments, B (full of cold, as per) didn't find it fun. He did ask to go into the church, which was surprising because he's never seemed to notice this building before, but it turned out that what he really wanted was to know where they keep the bells. Once I'd managed to convince him that we weren't among the lucky people allowed up in the tower, and he'd explained to the other people in the church at the time that nobody was allowed to go through the tower door, his interest withered on the vine and he said he wanted to go home.

On out way back to the car he spotted this frosty picnic bench. "Wottizzit?" he enquired. "Is it birdy poo?" "No," I replied, "it's called frost. It's a thin layer of ice crystals that have settled on the bench because it was such a cold night last night." "Can I touch it then?" was the inevitable follow-up, and I said that he could, but warned him that it would feel very cold. He promptly twitched off the mitten I'd spent the previous five minutes wrangling over his uncooperative fingers, and put his hand flat on the icy surface. "Cold!!" he said, and I thought, science in action.

Back at home more education happened, but this time I was the pupil. I was watching the Boy dismembering a piece of fruit loaf, and suddenly realised that he was counting the raisins he was removing, in Welsh. So I asked him to count to ten for me, which he did, and tried to copy what he was saying, which caused him great amusement. "Do it again, slowly," I said. He complied, and then I tried again, but I only got as far "Un - dau - tri..." before grinding to a halt. My efforts to reproduce "pedwar" by ear alone caused B to hoot with laughter. "Do it again, please," I said, but this time he frowned at me as though I was the most annoying child in the class, and replied, "But you know it now, Grandma. Because I teached you already!"

Ooof.

Luckily R found a YouTube video appropriate to even my sub-elementary level, and I hope that by the next time I need to demonstrate counting fluency I might even have passed "pump" and mastered "chwech".