January 13th 2016

Some days you just wish you could leave one child at home. It fluctuates on a pretty even distribution between the two of them and for completely different reasons each time. Today it was Harriet. Everything was horrible, annoying, frustrating and downright offensive to her today. This annoying mental state seems to be obstinately in place until around dinner time, so let's try to minimise the Harriet discussion until then.

We were in Newtown and decided to have sushi for lunch. Harriet chose the bento box. But there was no vegetarian bento box. Cue sulking. Found a teriyaki tofu semi-box thing. Received it. Didn't like the sauce. Cue much crankiness. Hang on, didn't I say I'd leave the Harriet discussion until later? Oh yeah.

Saw Sam and Elodie in the sushi place which was lovely - hadn't seen them for years! Then I realised I was going to need to grab a coffee.  Snapped this shot of Ted in a completely relaxed face mode - he wasn't upset or sad or in any way in a negative frame of mind, I just happened to snap him before he could turn on manic-Tedness or stick out his tongue or similar. 

This is Ted when he is neutral.

 Of course that didn't last long - because here is Ted about ten minutes later. He ran away from Harriet and I, along an entire block of King St out of sight, across Mary Street and into Dr Earth to buy his kombucha drink. Meanwhile Harriet was screaming hysterically about...oh wait. Sorry, momentarily forgot again.

Anyway, Ted had much fun excitedly causing his agitated kombucha to fizz up again and again. It's never a dull moment over here, that's for sure. Fizzing drinks - oh the madcap.

Ah, finally, So I read Animal Farm this afternoon and just as I was finishing, I reminded Harriet that she had volunteered to make dinner this evening. After much wailing and wringing of hands, I told Harriet that cooking with your favourite music on really loud is actually a great way to improve your mood. And you know what? She did it. And it did. And this is the delicious meal she made:

Pearl barley with greens, with halloumi and parsley oil. Nom nom nom.

As I pointed out to Harriet: even Ted, the fussy one, dug into it with gusto. No posing for this photo, just a genuine "This is delicious" face. 

Then when James left to go to trivia, Teddy was ever-so-cutely hanging off his body and crying out "No! Oh Papa, don't go!". Which of course meant I was blackmailed into playing Star Wars Game of Life, where I was thoroughly, totally and completely destroyed.