* I got up and immediately argued with B because she hadn’t put the washing up away last night like she promised she would “before bed”, and then tried to make out like the fact that she’d gone to sleep on the sofa somehow meant that she hadn’t failed to keep her word. B stormed off into her room, and apparently went back to bed. Came out an hour or two later and apologised and (eventually!) did it. Also fed the chooks and took out the recycling bin (but failed to empty it and bring it back, although admittedly that was because she got distracted after K let H out the front and B had to catch him) and hung out some of a load of washing, but apparently she had a tummy ache whenever she stood up. I banished her to her workbooks if she was going to be unhelpful, so she did a fair whack of them in between watching more Ranma 1/2 episodes. That was what she did most of the rest of the day, actually *sigh* Since she was being so unhelpful in the morning, I unilaterally called off the HS swimming meet-up, which was probably a good call anyway since it was sunny but blustery and cold. We also had another fight in the afternoon about something just as stupid, ho hum…
* I spent an hour frying pancakes for everyone, did the washing up, tidied the kitchen a bit, put on and hung out two loads of laundry, brought in and sorted all the dry stuff and put some of it away, read The Folklore of Discworld and pootered intermittently, ranted on my blog and invented a word new to the internet, read to small people, chased small people around the garden, sang many many songs, and had an extremely silly conversation with K in which the leaves from one of the trees were brainsuckers, except for some of them which pooped more brains out into your head once the suckers had been past. I did not expect it to take such a hold upon her imagination when I first made a throwaway remark about brainsucking leaves, although perhaps that was naive of me…
* K played in the garden, drew and wrote, read books to herself (she has memorised most of the Hairy Maclary books by now and sits there and recites them while looking at the different books), and played a balancing game with a ball on a plate, but mostly she spent ages asleep on the floor of her bedroom, wrapped in a sleeping bag. I suspect she may be coming down with something. She brought out the Playschool Useful Book and we sang lots of songs out of that.
* H spent a lot of time outside, climbing stuff, which was okay until he fell off the top of the chicken tractor onto his head *sigh* He had a long nap again over lunchtime, but when he was awake brought me lots of books to read, danced to my singing and enjoyed lots of bouncing rhymes, flumped off the coffee table onto me and onto his sister, pushed the pram, explored bits and bobs all over the house, and played with K for quite a while.

Everyone was getting grumpy after about 6ish so I took the littlies for a walk to the busstop to meet Daddy. E was late, but it was still a nice outing, and a way to exhaust some energy from the daughter who had had a three hour nap! She ran up and down the hill path at least a dozen times plus galumphing to the busstop and back, and went to bed quite early, so either she IS sick, or it worked… We also pottered about in the tunnel, dropped bits of stick through the grate into the storm water drain, and H was constantly distracted and fascinated by passing bicycles and cars. Eventually E showed up, and I headed off an incipient meltdown from K by drawing her attention to some fluffy seedheads. We looked at them in various stages of development, tugged one apart to look at the fluffy seeds, and then set off for home, looking for new seeds as we went. We found one other tree with obvious seeds, which were the whirly helicopter kind, and had fun throwing them around. Need to re-introduce a H-proof nature table, I think…

Since E was going out for a movie, I let him make dinner and mostly wrangle munchkins while I hid and read a book. H went to sleep almost instantly after dinner, E managed to put K to bed before he left, and B has completely ignored me in favour of Ranma 1/2, so it’s been a quiet evening…