Urgh. That would be another week without updates. I hate it when that happens. Let me see…

Tuesday

We took B into the post office to cash her birthday postal order and write and send a thank you card to her grandmother, then to the bank to open her a new savings account, then went through both op shops, and all the way through the supermarket without a tantrum. Either being taken home from the bakery mid paddy made an impression, or it was the fact that I ballasted them with plenty of porridge (with ground almonds for extra protein) first, which I signally failed to do the day before… Since we had managed to get to the shops, we had chicken Marylands to make Jollof Rice for our African Week of cooking (well, it turned out to be an African Day rather than a week as planned, but it was still yummy). Unfortunately I couldn’t convince K to come and help me cook, but she liked eating it.

Wednesday

We went to Bruny Island with Sandy and Lucy. Everyone enjoyed the ferry, and fortunately I was sufficiently clued in to likely weather conditions to make sure that everybody was rugged up to the eyeballs. We went to the cheesery (nom), climbed up to the Truganini lookout in a, ahem, “brisk” wind that practically froze our noses off, ate lunch at a general store cum cafe which served amazing gourmet pies, and drove down to look at the lighthouse. Unfortunately we hadn’t worked out our times very well and by the time we got to the lighthouse we had just about enough time to say, “Gosh, a lighthouse!” and turn round and drive hell for leather up almost the entire length of the island to get back to our ferry so we didn’t have to wait another hour to get back. But it was a lovely day. H fell asleep in the car on the hell-for-leather chase, slept through the ferry trip, and most of the way home, so was definitely not tired when we got home *sigh* 

Thursday

Housework, mostly. Kids amused themselves, I grumbled at them for not helping. Didn’t go to the PO and library. Didn’t get out of pyjamas all day, in fact *blush* When we were reading The Long Winter in the evening, Laura talks about frost on the windows and frost on the nails in the roof, etc, to I showed K an experiment in the Cold science book about making frost in the freezer. It was too late to do it that night so we put the book out on the bookstand at the right page so we would remember to do it tomorrow.

Friday

More housework. After I got grumpy with them yesterday for not helping, K and H took out the rubbish, collected kindling, and K did some washing up. Better show than the day before… We did the frost experiment in the morning. K liked it so much that when she had seen the frost the first time, and it had melted, she put it back in the freezer again to see if it would do the same thing (it did). They also played with the pattern blocks, and then tidied them away and built towers with the blocks.

Today we actually managed to get out of pyjamas and off to the library. We really need to go through our current pile of loans and read the ones which we haven’t gotten to yet, because K’s card is so full I had to borrow half of them on mine. Oops. But K’s African paper dolls and sticker map arrived in the mail, so she was much more interested in them. She chose one pair of costumes for me to cut out, and they were Maasai ones, so we looked up the Maasai and read a bit about them, found Kenya and Tanzania on the map, and I printed out a Kenyan flag for her to colour-in. We wanted somewhere for the dolls to live where H couldn’t reach them, so we appropriated the top shelf above the seasonal shelf, and propped up some of the African theme books up there too. So now that bookshelf is looking very edumacational: Africa on the top shelf, the seasonal shelf beneath, and winter theme books (some on bookstands) under that. It makes me think how cool it would be to devote the entire bookshelf to our various themes, and maybe a display of art, etc.

After that, K and H both got into colouring-in so I had to print out more pictures for them. K cut one up to make a mobile. She ended up putting all the country maps on her sticker picture and we talked a bit about different countries. Then a few more chapters of Laura and some library books. Mr Bat worked late before going to an SCA social evening to meet some visiting royalty, so I didn’t bother insisting that anybody go to bed until they were tired enough to ask to.

Saturday

Mr Bat took the three smalls off to a tourney at Roseneath Park. With a bit of flailing and cursing, and the last-minute spilling of a bottle of water down his only warm outfit by H which necessitated ironing and tumbling his clothes dry again, I managed to get them outfitted and out the door not too late. B looked utterly gorgeous in her Renaissance garb (from Carina), and I did her hair in a pearl-bordered snood and side-ringlets which miraculously stayed on the whole day (it might have had something to do with the fact that in sewing the pearl border onto the snood while she was wearing it, I also deliberately sewed it onto her hair, heh).

While they were out, I went into Hobart in the other car and went op shopping, then picked them up after the tourney finished. B decided not to go on to the ball with Mr Bat as originally planned, and I took all of them home, leaving around 4ish. H of course went to sleep in the car and thus was up almost until Mr Bat got home at stupid p.m., but again, we all happily did our own thing and the smalls generally went to bed when they got tired enough and it was all quite relaxing, which was just as well. Two nights of solo parenting bedtimes, humph! 😛

Sunday

I pulled out a pile of our loans which need to go back soon and which we haven’t read. K as very interested in Houses in Hot and Cold Places, and altho I didn’t try and read all the text to her, we had a fun time looking at the pictures, reading a few bits of text (usually the least stating-the-blatantly-obvious didactic bits) and discussing some of the concepts. She was putting together the idea of geothermal heat with the DVD we borrowed from the library, Naked Science: Birth of the Earth, which she watched on Friday.

We decided to go out at lunchtime to get fish and chips and return the DVDs to the store, but B’s stomach was playing up yet again so she decided to stay at home. Then we figured that if we were going to Huonville we might as well go all the way to Margate and go to the tip shop and drop off our recycling. But even that didn’t tempt B, especially when we mentioned the windiness of the road to Margate…. Unfortunately the smalls had yet another attack of eviltude in the fish’n’chip shop which caused us to give up in exasperation and haul them out of there. I’m sure there are gentler ways of dealing with a 2yo displaying a sailor’s vocabulary at the top of his lungs and his sister yelling STOP SAYING THE F-WORD in a crowded eating establishment, but yeah, it wasn’t happening this day.

So we hauled off to the DVD store, and then off to Margate, and on the way we worked out (we really are rather slow sometimes) that they hadn’t had much for breakfast except toast, so were probably melting down from lack of protein, yet again. But Mr Bat was set on fish’n’chips, so we had to drive all the way to Kettering to find some. We went into the Mermaid Cafe and then decided that we really shouldn’t subject them to our melting-down children and ended up getting (extremely yummy) fish’n’chips at the Ferry Road takeaway 500m up the road. Since it was raining, we ate it in the car, and it was bloody good. Then we finally made it to the tip shop (which was disappointing, after all that!), and home. It was all a big pain in the bum and a waste of time, especially since it was B’s last full day and we spent most of it without her! Silly woman.

I bought K a new Barbie doll at the tip shop, sans clothes, so when we got her home K started making her clothes. She started out using rags wrapped around and tied with string, then cut holes in them and tied them, then started sewing them on, and eventually ended up trying to cut out shapes and sew them. I gave her a hand with a coat she was making. I discovered that she can thread needles with tiny holes in them on at least half of her attempts, which I find quite boggling at her age!

Monday

Had to leave just after 10 to make sure we got B to the airport on time. We got there early, so ate ridiculously overpriced but not-half-bad airport food and tried to keep the smalls amused. Did not succeed, so was aggravated by them instead of feeling suitably melancholy at my big girl going away. Which was probably a good thing, as she had threatened me with terrible retribution if I cried all over her in the airport and made the cabin staff patronise her (well, she said she’d probably have to thump them for it and then she’d end up in juvenile detention, but anyway. I love her amazing comic timing and delivery, she really rocked that line). We had to stay until the plane was in the air, so it was 1pm before we got out, and after 2pm before we got home, and thus nothing much was ever likely to be accomplished with the day.

I was still feeling a bit fragile in the afternoon, so we read a few books, H played with Duplo and with Flurf the teddy, both kids played outside for a while even though it was freezing, K worked on her dolls’ clothes, and I got on with some housework and put baked potatoes in for dinner since I wanted something easy. Mr Bat came home early since he had worked so late on Friday, but wasn’t really spending time with the kids, buggrit. After dinner K watched the Naked Science: Birth of the Earth DVD again, and H watched Peter Rabbit which we have to take back ASAP since it’s overdue. 20 pages of The Long Winter for K and some library books for H, and then the smalls mostly amused themselves until they were tired enough to ask to be put to bed. I might try waking them up earlier tomorrow, since I don’t like the way that late nights are pushing later wake-ups are pushing later nights *yawn*