Pirate swimming

General 

Elliott was mostly good today. We did have two moments where I asked him to go to his room, calm down and then apologise. The first was when he broke a pair of Halloween pumpkin glasses. This was completely accidental and would have been totally fine except he was trying to hide what had happened and blame other people (Jake - his soft toy poppy). It happened late afternoon after we'd been out so I think he was a bit tired already. We had a chat and he was only in his room briefly before he came out and apologised and I emphasised it wasn't about breaking the glasses as that was an accident it was about how he took responsibility afterwards. He was also calm throughout. The second moment was during tea. I cooked us sweet and sour chicken and cooked a blander version for him (no peppers, onion or pineapple and reduced version of sauce). I wasn't totally expecting him to like it (had fish fingers up my sleeve in case) but he started out saying he did and we called it "chicken like sweets". However after about a third of the bowl he suddenly said he didn't want anymore because he didn't like it. So I asked if it was because he was full, but he said no he still wanted crisps. He then got quite babyish about discussions. Again I asked him to go to his room and come back when he was ready to eat something healthy and that there were definitely no crisps if he hadn't eat his tea. I explained this wasn't about not liking food but how he behaved and communicated. This time he was a less calm, although there was no melt down - he was upset for a minute or so but did take deep breathes and start calming down. After about 5 minutes I went into his room and he was much happier and in fact did eat more of his original tea and he had strawberry fruit bits for pudding, with 1 crisp afterwards.

Activities

We had a lazy morning playing with Lego, reading a new Lego Chima magazine and watching CBBC (a programme about deadly animals) and Takeshi's Castle.       

After lunch we all went swimming to Coral Reef - the "pirate swimming pool". We had a lot of fun and Elliott now seems totally fine with water falling on to his head (there are lots of features at Coral Reef that mean water falls on your head at different times - like a canon on a pirate ship that fires water sporadically). We did use arm bands because  some of the pool is a bit deeper than the training pool at Carnival Pool, but we took them off when in some of the smaller pools and he was practicing swimming underwater and touching the bottom of the pool. After a shower we popped in to Sainsburys and Homebase for some shopping and then went home for tea, reading and bedtime. He read some of his Lego Chima magazine and I read The Magic Faraway Tree to him - he's chosen this as his new bedtime book.