A Day to Record

 

This is what I do to my children when I'm tired of them.  Ha!  Just joking (kind of).  Ted's sensory play involves a lot of wrestling and throwing around, and then he also enjoys being restrained inside fabric a lot.  Of course finding out about Egyptian mummies through Harriet's Egyptian fascination has been a boon for this play, and he chooses different types of material for each subsequent re-wrapping.  The head wrapper is a scarf from Lis, the long blanket is one I made for him.  

The weekend was quite odd. Ted and Harriet played beautifully...all...weekend.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They were like besties.  But for some reason they were less than kindly towards us.  I imagine they only had so much love to go around.  

We bought Harriet some new school shoes, and popped into an antiques shop next door, where Harriet spent some saved-up tooth fairy money on this tiny little owl, named Hooty (and yes, all weekend-long James kept asking "and where's his blowfish?").  I was unsure at first that it had been a wise choice - after all, the child acquires small, bitsy, fiugurine-style items on a far too regular basis for my liking.  But Hooty was the saviour of our weekend.  When we came home the two children played harmoniously the entire time as they worked tirelessly to order any detritus from our abode into the workings of a luxury home for Hooty.

Here Ted is arranging an outdoor setting for him.  Harriet used her shoebox to make the interior of the home, including a little stove, and velvet-backed bed.  Only the best for this nocturnal avian apparently.  But they spent all afternoon on it.  Then - miracle of miracles and in an absolutely unprecedented experience - the two children got up together on Sunday morning and proceeded to play beautifully together for an hour, while James and I stayed in bed.  We may have burst a bladder while we waited out the period of playful bliss, but even when James eventually succumbed and went down into the playroom, Ted only looked up at him and announced "Hey Papa, Harriet is playing with me!" with  heartbreakingly sweet awe.

James has managed to stay ahead of the trendy curve by acquiring his latest gadget before if appeared in the Good Weekend.  He got it out in front of Ted for the first time and Ted was transfixed. 

Ted was also thrilled to discover that his vision therapy includes a little bit of screen time.  He has a similar kit to the one in the link and we have been playing some of the games in there lately.  The beauty of having school back on is that we can arrange a better routine to use the glasses therapy than we were in the holidays.

 

The pattering of rain throughout the weekend meant we kept it close to home.  I finished off the invitations to Ted's space party, as you can see above.  Ted helped a lot with making these, and even used the hot glue gun (mostly) on his own too.  We had made some of these rockets during our pox isolation and they seemed like a simple idea for the invitations without using any new materials.  But then I realised we didn't have any cellophane left and Ted professed a desire to have the rockets purple, so we did end up buying those two items.  The information about the party is actually curled up on a piece of paper inside the toilet roll, the 'flames' can easily be pulled in and out but are great in that once they are in they're also secure. I guess the purple does tie in well with the 'save the date' cards we made last year and gave out before preschool finished (the trouble of a February birthday!).

 

We also set about trialling the glow water we're making for the party; we're planning on making the dining room a black room where the children can play with glow water and if I can find some, some glowing water beads too for some more sensory-based games too.

And then in the afternoon of Sunday James and I pottered down King St, ate and drank in the refurbished Newtown Hotel, and browsed through a book shop unhindered.  Woot for a friend volunteering, completely for no reason and out of the blue, to babysit!  I woudl like to point out that this friend had not actually met our children beforehand.  This may explain her enthusiasm, hee!  They all had a blast and Ted crashed in bed at a highly reasonable 7.30pm as well.  A beautiful weekend (errr....with two little bursts of anger from me, admittedly).