Or shortly thereafter. It was before 6AM which is really too early for either alarm or dawn. We live in a private residence on top of an old hotel, whose fire alarm has been rather twitchy lately.

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Today Sam was presented a certificate and badge for meeting the requirements for Ducklings 1 and 2 swim levels. In 10 weeks she went from being scared to let go of me in the water to trying to swim on her own, face in the water, without any buoyancy aid. The parents are quite pleased with her progress and the …

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Friends in London invited us to explore Kent with them this weekend, and so we took 3 trains to arrive at Leigh (sounds like Lye) and then set off on a 6-mile walk which took us past a castle, a village, a few streams, cows, sheep, oast houses, and fields and fields of tall, stiff wheat stalks wavering in crushed rows. …

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Squash is a super-concentrated fruit juice that you dilute with water. It is most excellent on a supremely lazy Saturday.

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At last the Busy Lizzie has bloomed.

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Hamza, Esme, and Sam go for a ride at St. Ann’s Well Gardens.

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Mom-Mom and Granddaddy’s cat, Ren, passed away yesterday. Sam’s been drawing pictures of him so we’ll remember him.

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Today I stashed a bunch of sentences around the flat, and wrote a one-word clue for each one. The game: Sam would pick a clue at random, then use it to find a sentence. Once she’d found and correctly read aloud the sentence, she would get the next clue. The clue for the sentence above was: Sink. When put in the correct …

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