January 24th

 

A(nother) new friend was due to come and visit this morning, but alas they had to cancel at the last minute due to illness.  However I happened to remember that their play had clashed with the ever wonderful Lisa coming over for a visit.  So I quickly sent her  message saying that she was more than welcome to come and visit after all.

Entertainment for the morning sorted.

It was a smoochy morning amongst us all, similar to yesterday and  leaving me with an optimistic bent to my shower.  I had only been immersed in liquid for a minute though, when I heard "MAMA!".  Since I hear this honestly about every five minutes or so, I fail to respond to it in any manner but almost complete indifference (especially these holidays where 80% of sentences seem to start with "MAMA!".  This is normally followed by the verb I am supposed to perform - make, watch, do, feel, touch, pull, taste, help, etc.).  And so it was that while I was in the shower Ted's yelling was met by my response of "Teddy, I always tell you to come and find me if you need to talk to me.  Get off the chair and come and find me please." (yes I really said please, despite all my griping on here I do attempt to be gentle with my children and god knows I love them to pieces so I don't want to use up all my grump before Ted's even five). 

Next thing I know there's Ted at the shower curtain, attempting to pull it aside.  I lean over to help him and ohmyfreakinggod there he is holding three massive chunks of broken glass.  He immediately starts telling me "I'm sorry Mama, I didn't mean to but the glass..." however I have no idea what the rest of what he said was, because I was frantically trying to grab the pieces of glass from him.  Realising the futility of this with slippery hands I told him to go and place them carefully on the table until I came out and reassure him that all was well.

Well, when I emerged from the bathroom I realised that all was not quite as well as I had hoped.  The glass had been full and there was water everywhere, all through the Trivial Pursuit game he had out to read , and covering lots of small but thick shards of glass over the floor between where he had been sitting and the bathroom door.

So it was that I cleaned up the glass and the water and then said goodbye to a few of the TP cards and thanked my lucky stars that Ted has many lucky stars.

 

When the children found out that Lisa was coming over, they set to work on some mementos for her.  This was Ted's contribution - Luke Skywalker on the left and Mace Windu on the left.  He drew those love hearts on his own after drawing his first one with my hand guiding him yesterday. Naww.

 

Harriet announced that she would be making her own porridge, while Ted set to work on making his own breakfast - a wrap of blueberry jam.  

 

 However after he saw the porridge, Ted did request a sample bowl.

 

Harriet had been practising last night and again this morning to do a dance performance for our friends coming over.  Instead, she had a newly filled audience room - Lisa brought over Todd and it was a packed auditorium that awaited her debut.

 

Harriet's practise paid off.  She twirled and leaped and focused.  I was so impressed by the way in which I saw her make a mental decision to ignore the writhing, screaming and interrupting Ted to continue to give a flawless performance of her dance show.  Lisa, Todd and I definitely got our money's worth.

 

When Lisa and Todd mentioned that they were going to be leaving, I suggested to Ted that we might  do something calm and quiet, like read and work on another puzzle adventure book.  He then set about pushing our guests out of the door as quickly as possible.  I was then set to work on some scrambled eggs with mint for him (just like you had for breakfast, Mama) and we started on the story.

We lasted perhaps for three puzzles until he started squirming off the bed and looking restless.  Poor little dude was just exhausted and had not a minute of focus left in him.

 

While he was off playing spies with Harriet, he found the packet of DAS modelling clay I had bought months ago.  Off they set to work on creating something.  For a while there Ted pronounced that his half was going to be "the surface of the moon".  It has ended up being a  seriously phallic elephant head. 

 

A quiet afternoon allowed me to catch up on some blog posts and  photos.  These two played together quietly but all the while I felt I couldn't really enjoy it due to an horrific headache, the likes of which I haven't felt in many a month.  I finally realised, after James came home, that I could actually take some ibuprofen to help with that.  Why didn't I think of that before?

Tomorrow we're hosting a bbq.  I'm not sure if I'll be blogging tomorrow night, so stay tuned for Sunday.