Will is the eighth 'winner'

...in a 'glass half full' kind of way. When he plays his Nintendo DS, he often tells us he is the eighth winner. Otherwise known as 8th out of 8.... or last. Bless!

Will has of course done everything since arriving in Australia that we least expected him to do - coped, flourished, settled.... Much to my relief, I did eventually manage to get him a place at kinder - he has three four hour sessions a week - on a Monday afternoon and Tuesday and Friday mornings. The kinder is in Highton which isn't very handy for where we live, but it's no more than a 10 minute drive, and it's a really good nursery. The first day I took him, I expected tears and snot and clinginess, and had told his nursery teacher as much, and he walked in and sat down for group time without a backward glance!! So now they have me pegged as a hysterical parent.... But who cares? He's really loving it, his teacher says it's like he's been there all along and he has friends called Dylan and Baillie (though not as good as the Baillie in Dunbar apparently, and a different colour (!))

The nursery has fantastic outside play equipment, with a huge shade sail above for when it gets warm, and they seem to do a lot of really good stuff with the children. For the last two weeks they have had a chicken incubator on loan from a local farm and have watched a dozen or so chicks hatching from eggs and getting up and about. Will told me he held one of them but didn't like its little scratchy feet! They have also been doing a lot of Olympics-related activities and Will has appeared home with many flags and gold medals!! Will has to take his own bag (Spiderman) to kinder and twice a week has lunch there, so as far as he is concerned, it's basically school without the uniform. It's weird to think he would have been starting P1 in Dunbar by now - he still seems so little!! Though the peace and quiet would have been nice!

Have also noticed that Will is beginning to pronounce/k/ properly too, sometimes, so we have mastered crab and crispy and clap but still 'toot' dinner and drink 'toffee'.... Will has also reached the stage of being unintentionally very funny... Last couple of weeks comments range from 'Dad, will you still be alive when I'm a grown up?' to 'Well, you know, I'm not really very keen on wiping my own bottom', and the best of all whilst watching the Olympic rowing 'I want the guys on the bikes to win'. Those would be the coaches Will.... Now that the weather has been improving, we have been trying to walk more too, but Will moans about that as apparently his legs are 'really a bit too small still'


Haven't started Will at gymnastics yet but will do next term as this term finishes in September. There is a class he can do at the same time as Ella so they can learn together. He is doing brilliantly well at swimming lessons though and getting more confident every week. He is currently mastering holding a float and kicking his legs to move about the pool and also working on getting more comfortable going underwater. The last two weeks of this term focus on survival training so all the kids will do classes in clothes to learn what to do if they fall into the water.

So all in all, Will has proved to be remarkably adaptable and alternates between saying he wants to stay here and wants to go back to Scotland. One thing just the same here though - the number of people who feel the need to touch his hair...