This afternoon B watched the second disc of Pride and Prejudice, which she’d started watching at the farm. We had a bit of a chat afterwards about the kind of social commentary Austen was making which is glossed over in modern adaptations in favour of the Twu Wuv storyline, so hopefully inculcating sufficient cynicism to inoculate her against the Bridget Jonesification of Austen’s canon! We grabbed the opportunity to play Monopoly Junior when K fell asleep in front of Play School, and she flogged me soundly (as usual). After K woke up again, B walked up to the shop with the dog to buy sugar and jelly crystals. While she was there she also rang to ask if I would lend her the money to buy a Teach Yourself Knitting magazine. I said yes, then when she got home we talked about the Fine Print TM of this kind of week-by-week collection. After a bit of searching we found the information that the normal retail price is $7.95 and the series runs for at least 90 issues. You can buy an awful lot of knitting books with $700+! *g* I suggested we could look at the library for kids’ knitting books, and we found two which looked interesting so put in a request for them. After she finished Rollercoaster, she started watching the DVD which came with her knitting magazine, and has been watching the relevant bits over and over to learn new techniques. She is still considering whether it will be worth collecting the set; I guess she has to learn for herself really (I started collecting one of these week-by-week gardening references in my early twenties, so I’m hardly going to criticise her for not grokking the scam-like qualities of the marketing at her age!).
K has been playing with her beads, noting shapes and colours and making patterns, then using them as building blocks to build houses with the rectangles and triangles. After that she played with the stacking blocks while I washed up, then she wanted an episode of Play School, during which she fell asleep. She woke up again at about 4:00, then watched the episode of Play School which had just recorded, while apparently also practicing for the World Grumpiness Championship *sigh* She grumped about being hungry, then about wanting the heater on, then about the length of time it took for the heater to warm up. In the end we headed into my study for a very long feed, then she cheered up more while sitting at the table and doing her button board with me. She’s spent a bit of time pottering in her play room with various toys this evening, also helping with the very important mushroom chopping for dinner!
ETA: In the course of the evening B developed a passion for numismatics and has decided that she wants to spend some of her bank money on antiquities. During the course of an hour or two of trawling through coin dealers she is toying with the idea of spending $45 on a dolphin coin from the Ukraine, c. 300-100BC, $60 or so on a slightly less ancient Roman coin, or saving a lot harder and buying a cuneiform tablet which is over 3000 years old *g* She isn’t really fussed about what it is, so long as it is old! (although given her existing love for Egypt it doesn’t surprise me that she would prefer something from that area if possible). I have invoked the one week cooling off period for spending bank money, and if she is still keen by the end of next week we will see what she decides to do…
She’s a funny little munchkin! I can’t remember exactly how the subject came up, but we started by trawling through the Mint’s on-line catalogue, until she decided that what most appealed to her about the idea of coin collecting was the idea of holding something really really old. We found the Numismatic Association of Australia, and discovered that there is an ACT branch, but she wasn’t terribly interested in the idea of hanging out there in order to learn about collecting. From there, we ended up at the Australasian Numismatic Dealers Association, following a link to look for information on coin fairs, but unfortunately there isn’t one in Canberra in the forseeable future. We checked out their marketplace instead, and gradually ended up finding some of the dealers who specialise in ancient coins. If we can find some information about numismatics which isn’t mind-numbingly boring so that we can learn a little bit about it before she starts splashing too much money around, that would probably also be a good idea…
We also arranged for her to visit Temora on Tuesday week, probably coming back on the train the following weekend (she is very taken with the idea of subjecting her grandmother to several hours on uncomfortable public transport *g*). She could have gone for a shorter visit this week but I got all autocratic and told her we weren’t going to cancel the various HENCAST activities we have RSVPed for next week, when the following week we have nothing which can’t be postponed (horse riding). Particularly convenient timing given that Grandmoogi has a specialist’s appointment on Monday morning so B won’t be missing pottery. It is the week of the Science Festival, but frankly we never end up going to as many things as I think we will so I’m not going to argue too hard that she should stay home for that week as well.
And she was extremely chuffed when Nannie told her that her horse riding lesson, postponed from last week since she was sick, is now at 11am on Sunday, in Inga’s Intermediate class (she is still in Beginners 2, so she is thrilled at the idea that her instructor thinks she is good enough that she can handle the next level up!).