D'Arcy Developments

There was a disco at school on Thursday night to raise money for...er...Oxfam, I think...as organised by the SRC. D'Arcy was not very enthusiastic about attending, until Thursday when all his buddies announced they would go. I had bought him some of the purple hair spray he loves so much, and a new lavender shirt and he was on his way. It is hard getting boys all scrubbed up, especially when (as at the moment) fashion decrees that for boys, casual wear is very grunge/ripped/ugly casual, and then there is nothing until you get to very formal wear. The lavender shirt was the best I could find, and not too bad, really. However, when he arrived, all he wanted to do was hang out in the canteen with his mates and eat chips and drink milk (see Flickr). I did manage to drag him out for a few dances at the end, including a game of 'musical statues', but he really wasn't into it. he said later that 'everyone dances better than me' which surprised me. Actually, most of the boys could be found hanging in the canteen, while most of the girls were in the hall getting down. I think it was the unfamiliarity of the situation, as much as anything. It was dark. It was loud, There were flashing lights. Why the hell would anyone want to be in there? But it was fun for me, in a weird kind of way.

There has been a spate of piracy recently.

Auntie Laura joined D'Arcy up for the Double Helix club and his second magazine arrived this week. In it is an experiment about salinity where you plant triticale seeds in 5 pots and water them with progressively more salty solutions and measure what happens. Wednesday was a sick day for D, but he wasn't that sick, so we started up the experiment. We'll keep you posted.

On the left we have an Eastern Rosella seen in the school yard, and on the right a common pigeon (I don't think you need a wiki link to one of those - we call them flying rats) also seen in the school yard. D'Arcy drew them while he was waiting for me to finish talking to the teacher and the other mums. Then when we got home, he coloured them in. I told him that he was drawing from life - life drawing - and his take on that is "live drawing". After he'd done the colouring he insisted that we go to a nature reserve nearby so he could see more birds and draw them.

He got ready to go, which involved packing his bag with his notebook, pencil, water bottle, snack and hat. And then we were off. There are a couple of photos from the adventure on Flickr. We didn't get far before it was time to stop for a snack, and then time to stop to draw. He drew a dog we saw, and started to draw another - a border collie puppy who wouldn't stand still, when disaster struck! Yes, a broken pencil. So after a short tantrum it was deemed to be the end of the drawing excursion. The puppy's minder (it wasn't her puppy, she was looking after it) had another dog - an elderly Airdale called Bexley, who was pretty keen on D'Arcy. She told of being an art school student - studying life drawing and printmaking, and D was impressed that grownups could go to school. A short walk and we were home again. He coloured in the dog picture, which at this stage still involves heavy handed texta-work. While we were wout he also did a few studies of birds legs and feet.

I wonder if it's the left-handedness, or the boy-ness, or just the D'Arcy-ness that has him at the bottom of the artistic continuum in his class. Most of the girls at age 5/6 are doing amazing scenes with people and sky and flowers and colouring inside the lines. The boys are mostly into drawing aeroplanes and boats and stuff. Not my boy, though he drew a recognisable skull and crosbones on a pirate ship he'd made out of cardboard boxes the other day. I'm thrilled that he's interested in drawing at last, and I've been suitably impressed with his pics. I'm sure he'll get there in the end, just worrying like a mother I s'pose.

Ampersand Duck put forth a book meme challenge, thus:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

Nearest book is D'Arcy's, so it doesn't have 123 pages. So, from pages 1...the 4 sentences are:

From Heaven, the Yellow Emperor's kind grandson Kun looked down upon Earth and saw that all the people worked in harmony to save their world from the great flood. Kun called the horned Owl and the wise Tortoise to his side.They whispered into his ear, "The Yellow Emperor possesses Magic Soil that can rebuild the land." Kind Kun watched the people of Earth suffer as they crowded into boats, climbed trees and scaled roofs.

I don't know the title of this book, but it says "Copyright 1995 by Hilary Arnold and Sue Clarke. Published by Hyperion". The really interesting thing is that the book is bound as a Jacob's Ladder, making it a tad hard to read, but interesting all the same. it is a retelling of a flood/creation myth from China from what I can tell, but information is scarce. Google to the rescue again?

*GOOGLE to the rescue* says this. Apparently the title of the book is Heaven & Earth and the cover shown is not the same as the copy we have. Ours has a dragon on one cover and a lion on the other (which perhaps represent Heaven and Earth) but it is a good book.

Taken today, complete with chewing gum sticking out of his mouth ('Extra' kids weird flavour) and his new fashion statement - the topknot. He came from his dad's, brandishing photos of Sumo wrestlers, and his teacher said today that Miho's dad Shuji was giving D sumo lessons before school yesterday (which didn't help his concentration much, but she thought it was funny anyway).

Chewing gum is his new favourite thing. I've realised that he can be trusted not to swallow it, and mostly trusted enough not to take it out of his mouth and bugger around with it. HIs dad hates it (heh heh) and won't let him have it in the house, so it is something special that happens here.

Ooh, The Glasshouse is on TV and one of the guests is a comedian who was in a series on SBS, a fake lifestyle show, as Todd, the DIY guy a few years ago. His name is Brendan Cowell, and the name of the show was....? Anyone?

*LATE BREAKING NEWS* it was Life Support. Thanks to Google and a sudden emergence from laziness.

IN other late news - D'Arcy wants to rename this blog "Mummy Developments". What do you think?

Taken last week...