It was the hottest day Sydney have ever experienced since records began and we had a fair few things to achieve. First up, it was an appointment with Ted's behavioural optometrist. Luckily it was on at 8am, so we had a chance to drive there when it was only in the 30s. He is wonderful and pronounced Ted improved, and ready to move on to some neural activities to encourage divergence and convergence, courtesy of some fun red and green glasses. More on those later.
Then it was off to the pool for the lessons on our last day. Harriet moved up a class - hooray! It's a tricky thing with her acceleration, since she is now amongst children who have had an extra year to work on their physical skills such as swimming. Being in the Tuna class at the local aquatic centre should be perfectly reasonable when it comes to having lessons with her peers this year. Her school uses the centre for their swimming tuition, so hopefully there will be a few other children in her level.
We also caught up with some friends to have a swim together before and after Harriet's lesson. When the bell rang for Ted's class, Saul very sweetly was adamant that he see Teddy perform an activity in his class before he could leave. Teddy was having a great time in there, swimming with his face under water and kicking to the count of ten, diving in from the deep end and generally much improved from the faraway days of Monday when he was crying to leave his lesson. What a difference a gentle teacher and four days can make!
We didn't stay after the lesson since we had a couple of errands to perform. Ted had a chiro appointment booked, we had to pop in and buy some snacks and then head home to meet Harriet's friend who was coming over for a playdate that afternoon.
Ergh. What an afternoon. It was horribly hot. I ate some dip with crackers and immediately felt ill. I was starving but unable to eat anything, it was just so hot. Luckily Harriet and her friend Poppy managed to entertain themselves peacefully by playing Mouse Trap - and not just running the balls through the trap over and over again, but actually playing the game. In fact we had never played the game before and had to read through the instructions to work out the details. Ted played as well and remarkably, despite the cloying heat, the children all played together well.
To be honest I had been expecting the worst, since Harriet doesn't deal with the heat well and neither does Ted. Plus they were running on empty after their big week of swimming. So when a few rumbles started between Harriet and Ted, I quickly swept him up and, at a bit of a loss of what to do with him since we couldn't go outside, couldn't go into the playroom, and he was "so tired I just want to lie down here on the bed and do something", I actually resorted to the iPad and he played the Hiragana game I have on there.
James asked if I'd mind if he went out for a beer after work with his new boss. I thought to myself - hey, if I had the chance to sit back in a sweet, refrigerated air bar and have someone buy me a beer right now, you can bet I'd grab that opportunity with both hands. So he stayed out and ended up having quite a big one, while the children and I ordered in noodles and rolled around in the heat.
A quiet day. A hot day. A tired day. The end of the working week.
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