Au Revoir Plum Tree and Bonjour Reading Girl

Twas a busy, busy day today but strangely enough, it didn't really feel that way. It all started at 7.30am when the tree loppers came to remove our deliciously beautiful plum tree from the backyard. (They also removed the bougainvillea and camphor laurel but *pfft* to them.) I was so upset - it had borers and was dying a horrid death, full of sap and gouged out holes and all sorts of botanic sadness. So in they came to remove it. A great way to start the day for the children though - very, very interesting stuff. The men who came were great. The main guy has eight children, and he handled Harriet's exhortations and enquiries with good humour, patience and bonhomie. Harry asked me if trees had a memory, because she wanted the tree chips to remember that once they had been green and beautiful. *sniff* So poetic.

Teddy was dressed in his first hoodie. He wasn't really that impressed by the hood part of it though and the next photo from this has him tugging it vehemently off his head as if to say "Who the hell is my dresser here?". The loppers didn't leave until about 11am, so he was forced to stay up until then, despite trying desperately hard to go to sleep earlier.

When he went down I made dinner and then Harriet and I played a game of her choosing. She chose 'Make a Word', which isn't really a game. It's just lego-style bricks with a couple of mats and simple words on laminated cards. The idea is that your child makes the words on the cards from the letter-printed blocks. Sounds simple enough, yeah?

Well Harry was more than capable of doing the word thing so she didn't really try at that. I started writing sentences starting with the word I picked up from the pile, but even that was a bit boring for harry. When she's bored she doesn't say so or even get restless or anything, you can just tell from the way she starts playing. On this occasion she started making the letters into people (of course). Now normally I might have, in some way, attempted to bring the game 'back on track' so to speak and keep it 'educational'. But we've had a rough week (more later) and I just wanted to chill out and play one-on-one with her for a while at her instigation.

But Harry was better at educating herself than I was! She divided the letters into vowels and consonants and then started them all having a mock argument over who was the better group of letters. Turns out that the vowels are quite arrogant and think they're the bees knees because they don't need consonants to make words ('a' and 'I' of course) and that 'e' thinks it's the most important letter in the world. But, as Harriet informed them all, each group was not better or worse - they both need each other to make words interesting. Then each vowel did a show for the consonants, and each song was made up of both their long and their short sounds, so that the consonants could learn them. This was some show, I tell you. I was asked to step in as guest performer for the 'e' song. I hope I did it justice, but they are pretty big shoes to fill after you've seen Harriet in full vowel flight.

She then wanted to make a video to tell other people all about this important fact. And here is that video. I'd also like to point out that when she watched it afterwards, she was most annoyed at herself for saying two incorrect things. But on the whole she was satisfied the message was being put across well.

When Ted awoke it was on to the JB meet where Teddy's newly found body shape (read: it has a shape and is less like an amorphous body sausage) was bemoaned. No more Buddha Baby! He is looking almost average nowadays! Can you believe I bought him a few tops the other day and one of them was (shock horror faint) from the girls side of the shop (I think because it had a pink stripe through it. He's obviously going to grow up gay now). When I compared it to the size 1 tops from the boys section it was a full couple of centimetres thinner across the body. I mean seriously people, body image issues anyone? At the age of ONE we're expecting slimmer girls and bigger boys?

As for the rough week....well, Harriet has been really feeling the intrusion of Teddy a little more acutely this week. I think it might be due to his increased limpet like status (no doubt the result from my protracted absence from him last weekend poor sweetpea). But anyway, whatever the reason, Harriet told me that she really needs some more Mama time and that she was frustrated that Teddy is always on me and has always been there since he came home from the hospital. So this weekend I'm going to achieve the impossible - make my limpet one year old happy, make my four and three quarter year old emotionally fulfilled and my partner feel as though he's grabbing the odd scrap of attention from me too. And speaking of being wonder woman, I really need to go and buy my multivitamins. Can someone remind me please?