Today was less successful, as I realised by mid-afternoon that I have come down with a head cold (presumably the one which has K streaming banners of snot, yet again) and the pain in my head was not solely related to the baby yelling in my ear or the profound lack of sleep I had last night, but was actually a sinus headache. Joy.

H slept for six solid hours after we put him down at 8pm yesterday,then woke up approximately every hour or so after I came to bed. It was also hot and manky upstairs and I’m still not drinking enough to keep up with the tandem feeding and the hot weather, so I had a lovely dehydration hangover when I woke up. E let me sleep in til almost 9am, as arranged, then shut himself in his study and achieved something. H went back to sleep (the little bugger!) which gave me the opportunity for breakfast and a shower before it was time to get ready to go out. B did some handwriting in the morning, as I had found the parcel of late-primary workbooks I had tucked away in the spare room, and left them out for her if she wanted to try the cursive one, as she had expressed an interest in improving her handwriting. She didn’t particularly like the book, but it might be worth doing some of the exercises anyway just to get used to practising the joins, and then customise the rest of her penmanship as she chooses.

B had a swimming day with the homeschooling group, which took some complicated logistics to arrange. Mum got there before 11 to do some swimming, and we were running late. E dropped H and me off at the mall (after I gave him some money) and then headed off to sit in the coffeeshop with his ‘puter while B and K swam with Nannie. In the meantime, I pottered around the mall with H, and found some more stuff for the girls’ stockings (chocolate coins for K and giant gummi spiders for both of them) and art and craft present (oil pastels). I looked in various other shops and found a few things I’d like to get, but nothing I particularly wanted to carry around with me! (the one drawback of not having a stroller). I remembered to have something to eat, and fed H a couple of times. When K was finished swimming, B stayed with Nannie, and E met up with H and me at the parenting room at the mall, handed over the car, then headed off to work on the bus. I went home with the small squids and spent several hours trying to feed both sleepy, grumpy babies off to sleep. I only succeeded with H, as Nannie arrived back with B at around this time, but K ended up being happy to watch TV quietly for a while, and so far hasn’t had a sleep at all.

I really started to fall in a heap around this time, and when H woke up I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him and didn’t have the energy to try walking around with him. B volunteered, so we mocked up a sling for her out of a length of fabric, and she walked him down to sleep. I was a bit concerned that he was all twisted up since she is so short and he is so long, so I took him back after a while, and he was mostly contented, but sometimes yowly. I just plugged him with the boob whenever he yowled too much so that by the time E came home he probably had a bit of a tummy ache! He took them all off to the shops so I could have a break. I found the sewing scissors, so I was able to cut and pin a length of woven fabric to make a proper sling for B. Next step to unearth the sewing machine! I can cut out K’s beanbags now, too…

ETA: This evening she watched a program on ABC about the history of the Celts.