11th of January

Harriet woke up the next morning at home and seemed fine, despite her previous evening of excitement.  In fact she was so fine that she immediately took on the role of fairy educator and inducted Ted into the world of ocean fairy queens.  Ted, as you can see, was quite the captive audience.  I'm not sure Harriet appreciates just how enthralled he is in these games; he sat there for quite a while, listening and being 'educated'. 

 

There was also an element of immersion that seemed to elude me.  

 Harriet then, for some reason, decided that she wanted to make a blanket for Bear.  To do so, she wanted to embroider a 'B' and a love heart, so out came the hoop and some hessian (isn't the green funky?  I also grabbed a couple of metres of red at one of the fabric markets last year).  Harriet drew on the image she wanted, and then carefully embroidered over it with purple thread.  It looked awesome!  I encouraged her to use the hessian because I was worried her lack of sleep might lend the experience of careful crafting towards the land of Meltdown.

However I was pleasantly surprised to see she was calm and collected and did a thorough job of it.  In fact the only issue was my small stitch compared to the rest of her even stitches. 

She then also wanted to work on the 'good' version but I thought we'd better quit while we were ahead.

We had a special, one-off hour-long 'boost' lesson from Tori, the violin teacher with the mostest.  Harriet had even practiced that morning without losing her cool.  I guess I was just on eggshells knowing how much she needs her sleep to keep an even keel during the day, but I kept being surprised and impressed at how she kept it all together.  She really loves her violin lessons, and after this one asked if we could have one hour lessons every week.  I told her that we were kind of looking forward to not having to pay for  two lots of violin this upcoming term.  But that hour long lesson has definitely worked its magic on her playing at home. She has been focusing on playing to make 'beautiful music' rather than just necessarily playing.  It's a lovely distinction (especially when you are the constant audience *ahem*).

After the violin lesson, Harriet had an appointment with her newly formed book club committee, so I dropped her off for organisation and discussion, whilst Ted and I went for a meander around the local op-shop.  We hadn't been for, honestly, months.  I found this gorgeous set of four Meakin bowls for $2 each.  And even more impressive, I found a set of 18, pretty much untouched, Magic Treehouse books.  Harriet enjoyed them when she first started reading fluently, and I have a feeling Ted will be similarly (if not more) interested in the series.  The beauty of being a regular at an op-shop is that when you front up to the counter with 18 books at $2 each, they just don't bother and only charge you $1 each.  Woot! 

We even managed to pop next door to IKEA in order to buy some icypole makers, which I've been meaning to do for a week since I realised they sold them.  What sort of a summer is it if you can't use your leftover juice to make delicious icypoles?!  No summer at all, I'd hazard.  Call DoCS immediately!

 

That night I had a date.  Not that I was quite aware of it at the time.  And neither was James.  But we had dinner with some new friends at our local club.  We were on to our second drink I think, when the mother admonished her husband, reminding him to be on his best behaviour for 'our first date'.  Cute!  We all had such a fun night (and isn't it fun when you like both partners?) and the highlight for the children would definitely have had to have been the gaggle of children ranging from about 12ish to Teddy who were all playing beautifully together until about 9pm.  I remember those nights myself; finding children, making instantaneous friends, running around breathless with excitement over a new game we'd all made up and then eventually rediscovering your parents at the end of the evening.  Especially under the cover of a hot, humid night.

 

Towards the end of the night we all discussed if we thought we could fit in one more drink.  Hmmm...turns out we pushed the envelope just hat inch too far in terms of the children's tolerance levels.  Although all three of them (we were still there at the last drinks call and their friends had all left) were dancing in a very sweet way around the dance floor,  Harriet totally cracked it when Ted kept bumping into her when he attempted the dance the two girls were performing.

Cue:  adults rushing to sweep together all goods and chattels, pile drinks in the middle of the table and make a beeline for the exit.  Honestly I don't think we could have left any faster, the whole operation was like a  military exam.  Harriet however protested her indignation that there may have been any implicit judgment on the status of her tiredness.  Noooooo....of course not.