I had a fun day yesterday – I spent it at emergency at the Royal Children’s Hospital with Mr 6. He has been sick for quite a while I was tired of being told it was “just a virus”. I wanted a doctor to investigate further, so off we went.

Mr 6 needed a blood test. This is something that has been quite traumatic in the past. The last time he had to have one, the vein kept moving so the doctor had to stick him a few times, resulting in a very upset and sore little boy and needing to have another blood test as the blood they got the first time wasn’t enough.

The pathologist in the Children’s greeted Mr 6 by showing him some magic tricks, making the empty vial  appear and disappear and doing tricks with Mummy’s ring and one of the wipes. The blood test went without a hitch, much to the relief of both Mummy & Mr 6 – plus he got a band aid with Homer Simpson on it!

Talking with the pathologist, he said it’s all in the way you distract the child and put them at ease. He turned what could have been another traumatic experience into something fun by playing with Mr 6. There were no tears and he’s been talking about the magic tricks since yesterday.

It’s amazing how much difference a bit of play can make when a child is unwell and scared. And it’s amazing how one great experience erases the trauma of past experiences.

Oh, and Mr 6 is OK, and we have the answers we were looking for.

How often do we, as adults, forget to play?

On Sunday, we had some friends over for lunch after church. I was the only one with kids. So the make up of the group was a 6 year old, an 8 year old and 6 adults ranging in age from 18 to 33.

It was fun seeing my kids get out their lego and Magnetix and watching the adults have a good play.

This is a picture of the start of one of the Magnetix creations.

It was funny – a couple of the adults are engineers & scientists, so there was discussion of the correct structure for the Magnetix and other technical stuff the kids couldn’t possibly understand. The boys just cared that their pyramid would be strong, and then able to be destroyed!

It was a lot of fun, and a good reminder to us adults that play is not just for children, it’s for us too.

Today is my kids schools celebration of Harmony Day. Given the number of different nationalities represented and languages spoken by families at the school, it’s great they celebrate it.

My little Aussie boys got in to the spirit of the dress up day today. Kids were invited to come in orange or in National Dress. See below for how my boys dressed…

They figured Footy gear was as good a national dress for Australia as anything else!

They will be spending the day doing activities from different countries and cultures. It should be a lot of fun for them. I can’t wait to hear about it this afternoon when they get home.

As my kids get older, I ponder getting rid of some of their toys. A lot of them are things like the wooden blocks I got from a garage sale for 50cents when Mr 8 turned 1. Whenever I consider donating them to the church fete or similar, they surprise me.

A few months back, the boys were quietly playing with a friend, excitedly they showed me what they had done:

This photo is not so good, but I couldn’t include one boy & not the other!

The boys creating these were 9, 8, and 6. There was another name created, but I didn’t get a photo of that one.

They had a lovely time playing with the blocks and seeing what words they could create. Just another way kids can surprise you with their play.

Mr 6 has been having some issues at school. Some of these are because he’s been unwell in term 1, and others may be due to his personality… Anyway, the first thing the school suggested to help him is sport.

Before I continue, I’ll say that I don’t like sport. I failed PE 3 semesters in a row at high school, no mean feat when all you have to do to pass is show up with your PE uniform…

Anyway, not all kids are sporty. It doesn’t suit every child and there are other places where you can learn skills like teamwork, confidence, leadership and so on.

I was a guide as a teenager. I was a patrol leader and achieved my BP Award aged 15. I went on later to become a guide leader. I was also heavily involved in church as a sunday school leader and was active in other church activities.

My sister was in the Young Voices of Melbourne, as were my brothers.

There are other activities in areas such as music, drama, craft, and so on where kids can develop skills and confidence. Sport isn’t the answer to everything.

That saying, there are many kids who love sport. Mr 8 LOVES his sport, especially his footy. As well as football, he’s also in the schools chess club, where his team won an interschool tournament at the end of last term.

I just find it frustrating how the first thing people suggest when looking at kids activities is sport. There is so much more out there that kids can get involved in, especially if they are not interested in sport at all.

…when your 7 year old wants his own website! Over the weekend, I’d spent a bit of time playing with this site, finding a template, editing content etc, while the boys were playing. Well, after comments about my site, my 7 year old decided that he wanted a website too!

So, as any good business mum would do, I installed a Wordpress blog for him on this domain. Using my contacts on Facebook, we found an appropriate template for him and I let him do his thing. He hasn’t quite figured out that typing rules to some made up games won’t necessarily be a computer game automatically! But he is having fun. He’s even got his first comment!

So, Nutty Natty has begun, though we do need another nicname for him… Something to do with monkey’s so we can keep the same template…

He excitedly told his teacher this morning about his website and she’s going to encourage him as posting on his blog will help him with his storywriting and literacy skills. He’s planning to show his class his site for show and tell this morning!

How times have changed – when I was 7, I didn’t even know what a computer was!

…or it would have if we could find the cards! Not unusual in our house – the boys idea of putting the toys away is throwing everything in the toy cupboard and closing the door.  We have 2 sets of Uno – a Dora the explorer set, which we could find some cards, and a traditional set, of which there is not trace.

 So, I emptied a cupboard full of wine glasses, vases and platters and relocated them, then proceeded to empty a shelf in the toy cupboard. The new space is for games – at least the kids games. The thought is that we would find the Uno cards in the process of tidying up.

Instead of finding the cards (we did find a few more from the Dora set, but not enough for a game), the boys rediscovered a whole lot of games they forgot about! As they have both been sick this week, I wish I’d thought of doing this sooner.

Since then, the boys have been playing happily with board games. TV is off and a CD is playing in the background (though 7 year old N wants me to put the Geelong theme song on!). I’ve been hanging out washing, doing blog posts, and generally pottering around the house.

We still don’t know where the Uno cards are… maybe I should get them to sort out their rooms next!