The excitement of brown

Last night F woke up and required a cuddle about 3 or 4 times. The wind made a door creak and woke me up another 2 or 3 times. So I'm tired, and have work, so even more tired. Ah well, have completed 2 smaller jobs and have a larger job which will be done for Friday. So Friday and rest of weekend should be relaxing I think. Tuesday evening was nice as I didn't do any work (though had I known what a bad night I was going to have, I would have done). Instead I watched a couple of recorded things on telly and started exploring my rugmaking kit - my mum gave me a really good starter kit, as I've had a weird urge to make rugs for about 6 months now. The kit is good because it's small and simple but uses lovely colours, so will hopefully give me a great glow of creative achievement when I finish. Anyway I did 3 rows last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.
This morning, F woke up really late, just after 10, I think, and spent the next few hours doing some drawing and colouring and Leapster stuff. She was very excited to learn that brown could be made by mixing red, yellow and blue.
In the earlyish afternoon we set off for Brighton. On the train, unusually, she was suddenly really interested in the view, describing it, finding beauty in it and talking about making a pictureworld where different views would be different pages I think. Her vocabulary is good, I'm so used to it, I forget, but she does have a good range of expressive language at her disposal and enjoys using it, I think. I love trains, and have always loved watching the countryside rushing by on a day like today with good light and the odd cloud casting shaped shadows on the hills, but this is the first time she has ever shown this interest.
In Brighton, she was excited and happy, and really well-behaved! Even in Woolworths! We bought a birthday present (yes, late!) for Glo and Shula's little girl, whose birthday was way back just after Xmas (Crayola 'Create a Story'), and I bought some reduced Geomags (as the call of the Geomags to me has been getting stronger and fiercer over the last 4 months or so), new paint pens and another horrible plastic pony for F.
Then we made our way to G and S's, where F played pretty well with Jess and Joe (6 and 4, girl and boy), after initially being a bit wibbly. She and Jess bonded over their ponies, she and Joe bonded over a great game where they followed a robot toy together then over-reacted loudly and increasingly every time it turned round and flashed its light at regular intervals (cool robot toy, though, don't often see ones that work that well!). We must see them more often, I think she gets on pretty well with them. The children are slowly settling in, it's a long process. They're lovely kids, I really like them, Jess amazed me with her beautiful writing and ability to eat broccoli, and Joe was a classic 4-yr old boy, lively and fun-loving and sometimes loud! Jess was very thoughtful in helping when F got upset at one point, too. We stayed for tea and then a little while later Glo gave us a lift home.
Back here, F had some honey toast and we all watched a bit of Star Trek, then bedtime included the first story of Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf.
Plans for tomorrow for me are: work and washing
F has loads of options of new items and old to explore: Zoombinis, Leapster, paint pens, Geomags. So she will probably do something completely different!