Shoelaces

Critterbug started school in February. He is 5 - he'll be 6 in September. Until now he's has shoes with some form of velcro fastening, because thats really all there is around. But this year he also started playing Auskick (little kid's AFL - aussie football). He's incredibly uncoordinated, but he has fun, and he looks cute in his uniform.

Theres just one problem. The spikes. They have laces.

He's a smart kid. He can count by tens, by twos, and probably fives if I asked him. He can do simple addition and subtraction sums, and is reading and writing amazingly well - if you ignore the fact that he seems unable to differentiate between capital and lowercase letters. He just picks one at random with no thought as to what should be used. He also uses words like "delectable" to describe dinner. No, I don't know where he picked that up.

Do to the smarty-pants factor, he's picking up the whole shoe-tying thing pretty well. He's got the concept, just needs a little reminding occasionally, and his complete and utter lack of coordination doesnt seem to be hindering him too much.

No, the problem isn't with him. Its with me.

Oh don't be stupid, of course I can tie my laces. We weren't allowed to play in the playground at school until we could tie our laces, becasue the teachers refused to tie everyones shoes at the end of lunch everday, and we had to take our shoes off to play. I learned pretty quick.

The problem isn't that I can't tie my laces, the problem is that I can't tie his.

My husband taught him how, and he does his VERY DIFFERENTLY. I can't make my fingers do his way.

• Cross the laces, tuck one under, pull tight. CHECK.
• Make a loop. CHECK.
• Wrap the other lace around the loop. CHECK.
• Pull the wrapped lace through the hole and form a second loop, pulling it tight. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He makes a loop BEFORE he pushes it through the hole!!! I CAN'T DO IT!! I get in theory that you end up with the same result, I can see that you get the same result, but I can't make my fingers do it! They get all twisted and dumb and just won't do it!!

And it's made me curious. Is this simply an individual difference, caused by someone in our respective pasts figuring out different ways to do it, or is it a larger scale difference, anerican V australian/english?

I'm so tempted to just have the kid use bunny ears. Make my life easier by far.

I never thought I would be so excited about my pantry.

The kitchen in our new house is odd. Decent amount of counter space, though not as much as I would like, decent sized sink, huge fridge space, TINY PANTRY CUPBOARD. Its about a foot wide, and has nowhere near enough shelves to make good use of the available space. Fortunately, theres a lot of other cupboards in the kitchen. A LOT. so the oddly tall one in the middle of one of the counters has been designated pantry#2.

Hubby took the doors off for me a couple days ago. So now, I can work on the counter in front of it without constantly having to move everything to get stuff out. BIG YAY.

However, because its open, I had to do some reorganising. Only relatively 'nice looking' things are in it now - my cansiters and old coffee jars full of herbs and spices. And my recipe box.

Alos, whoever lived here before was very clever. The bottom shelf is fixed, unlike the rest, and is quite high up. Underneath it they've affixed some hooks, which allow me to hang my measuring cups&spoons, AND oven mits, so they're always handy and I don't have to go searching for them! WOOT! Easy access to utensils most likely to be used over there, and plenty of room underneath for my canisters.

My computer is still borked, and hubby's isn't accepting the memory card from the camera at the moment, but as soon as I get it sorted, rest assured, you WILL be bombarded with before and after shots of my food storage.

I still can't believe how excited I am about this.