Taking the Rest of the Day Off

Sweeney and I cut school and work today - a mixture of horrendous cough-sounds, torrential rain, freaky coldness and the delightful prospect of a day spent just cruising at home all combined to make that decision this morning.

• We made biscuits. They were delicious;
• We discussed what each half of an oval is called when you cut an oval in half;
• Sweeney learnt a tough lesson about what happens when you play with the pliers, even after you've been told to leave them alone, and you trap a bit of your palm in them when you close them;
• I made some pita bread for our lunch, and Kitchen's pork noodle soup for our dinner;

• We watched G Force. I learnt a tough lesson about pre-judging films about guinea pigs saving the world;
• Sweeney played with his new favourite Hot Wheel for what seemed like hours. I bought it for him last night to celebrate his fabulous helpfulness and co-operativeness of the last few days;
• We discussed Batman's awesome powers vs Superman's awesome powers. It all leads me to think that Sweeney really doesn't know anything about Superman's awesome powers and I must remedy that immediately;
• I safety pinned a tea towel around his neck, and he ran the length of the house and back several times shouting "Batman!!";
• We read the next chapter of Winnie the Pooh - the one about the Woozle. We've been reading a chapter a night this week;
• I read some of my book and watched an episode of Marple while Sweeney stared out the window at the rain. He insisted he wasn't sleepy, despite lying on the sunroom couch under a blanket without moving for ninety minutes;
• We discussed how handy your fingers come in when you want to add four and five; and
• KimberleyJoeHarper came for dinner. We ate pork noodle soup. It was pretty tasty.

Best day off ever.

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

Have you seen this my-own-child-fest going on over at Kimberley's?? Makes my heart swell, I can tell you.

In other news, a woman I know had her twins last week, and one of them didn't make it. They knew he wouldn't make it, from pre-natal scans and all, but ...

She sent through photos of him, and the birth in general, yesterday. Of course he was beautiful, just like his sister, and he lived for the tiniest while.

When I got home last night, I looked up the pictures from just after Sweeney's entry into the world. I was knackered, mostly, Martin was nearly hysterical with besottedness, and Sweeney was just taking in all the lights and noise.

The pictures of Nikau and his dad - well, the poor man just looks stricken.

On the plus side, his sister is going great guns. Little, and still in hospital, but progressing rather well.

Straight after I'd looked at the photos and had a bit of time to let them sink in, I had a meeting to get to. What usually drags on for an hour was taken care of in a pithy twenty minutes, and I pretty much got things sorted the way that we need them to be sorted. Love it when you can channel the devastation into something meaningful ...

In the meantime, keep growing, Grace ...

Miles Away

March was a bit of a hell month. Work was all about getting 15-odd people over the line by the 31st, getting the hang of a new boss and not going completely mental in the process. Weekends were all about a gajillion actvities, obligations and chores, and not going completely mental in the process.
The last half of the month, I hardly saw Sweeney, except to bark orders and wrangle him into yet another direction he wasn't too fussed on.

To head off the madness, a clutch of us skedaddled over the hill for the weekend.

A spot of nature, delicious drinks, fabulous cheese, lots of swearing-because-we'd-all-ditched-the-children, possibly some dancing to Jose Feliciano, the pleasure of hanging out with the finest company about.
And now back to normal transmission ...

Going to the Zoo

Sweeney and I went to the zoo. The otters were a no-show, the penguin looked miserable. One of the giraffes did a giant wee in front of us and that made Sweeney's day.

A giraffe, a minute after weeing ...

The wild dogs were in the Nest having their ears flushed, so not prowling-prowling-prowling like they usually do.



A tiger, typically asleep



The gibbons were great, but about a million other people thought so too, so we carried on to places less crowded. Tigers sleep for 19 hours a day. I truly think that tigers' hours of wakefulness are between midnight and 4am, so that no-one ever sees the tigers at the zoo actually doing anything.



A lioness, noticing the juicy morsel Sweenus Ridiculous

The lions were fed while we were there, and that was awesome. The kids all squeezed in around the plexiglass and the lionesses fought, ripped food apart and ate just inches away from them. Two of them fought over a pretty tatty-looking dead rabbit for a bit - lots of rrrroaaarrr and massive paws and teeth. The kids loved it.

A less exotic kind of chap, to be sure 

It started to rain as we came out, so we headed home for lunch. The rain was so heavy by the time we got home, we stayed in the car and played with the Magnadoodle until it eased off enough to run to the house.

It's a sheep,  innit??

Top outing ...