January 5th and 6th

 On the morning of the 5th we decided to go to the cinema.  We saw Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - and it was truly excellent!  I enjoyed it, the children enjoyed it and most importantly there was no time where I had to escort a crying Ted from the cinema.  This is twice in a row we've scored well with family cinema experiences - on Christmas Eve we saw Paddington which was also much loved by all of us (although it did require me escorting Teddy outside a couple of times during the film, but it was when Nicole Kidman was on screen so it was perfectly understandable).  Alexander wasn't too schmaltzy (caveat: it was a Disney film), the actors looked to be enjoying themselves and the film actually showed a mother being promoted and spending more time away from the family as ok because the dad was going to be able to work from home and be the primary caregiver.  Will wonders never cease?  What is this brave new world we're entering into?

After the cinema not much happened until we went to the Gledhill's in the evening for pizza, a swim and, of course, wonderful conversation.  However the conversation definitely had no input from me.  I started feeling cold and shivery at one point, and crossed my legs.  It was then I became acutely aware of the pain in my left big toe and when I squeezed it...BAM!  Pus city.  And after I opened the floodgates I could barely sit upright.  As everyone around me continued to converse and engage in witty repartee, I was forced to grimace, pretend I was following the conversation and nod and smile with little more awareness than a deaf mute.  It must have been a wonderful sight.  I even gave up on the pretence and ascended to my friends' lounge room where I curled up on their lounge, covered my body in throw cushions and waited out the family.  Ahh...these are true friendships.

Hence - no blog post for yesterday.

 

So this morning I was to be found curled up and shivering in my bed, while everyone else was doing their own thing: James was off on his annual pilgrimage to the SCG, Harriet was playing an imagination game and encouraging Ted to do the same.  Slowly I came out of my infection-fueled horror daze of fever and by about 3pm I was compus mentus enough to not sob with self-pity when Teddy asked me to set up MakeyMakey.  It was not quite the optimal frame of mind to be in to set up a high quality learning environment, but we did what we could.  We had a cherry tomato bongo set up, and then some cherry tomato keys for Tetris and finally some coins for playing a cardboard guitar.  It was fun, but I was challenged to even follow directions, let alone be experimental and creative. 

Luckily the children have that creative stuff figured out all on their own.   Their imagination games carried them over for the entire day, freeing me to lie down and contemplate my pillow.  Here, the toys are enjoying a geography lesson from Ted.

And here I managed a sneaky snap of them sharing a class for their toys.  I started feeling better about 4pm and was able to return to some degree of normalcy - making dinner, attending to my under-the-weather-returned-from-cricket husband, holding basic conversations and, finally, writing blog posts.

Addendum: Harriet just told me that she went through a book called 'The Blue Balloon' and edited the multiple grammatical errors in there.  Gosh, I couldn't be prouder.