Well another gorgeous day in lockdown is over and perhaps it was the last gorgeous day of the summer. But let’s not be pessimistic about things and try and focus on the positives.
We had a Sherlock Holmes style mystery this morning which remains unresolved. After M’s late night antics last night, he refused to finally go to bed unless he had a biscuit. So with his custard cream in hand he trotted up the stairs but to our surprise he didn’t ram it into his gob. Within seconds he was sparko in his bed and I was dispatched to rescue the biscuit to ensure it didn’t make a mess in his bed. Well, could I find it? We still don’t know where it’s gone and as usual with my little boy, the mind boggles! Happy for any suggestions of possible hiding places as we really don’t want it going mouldy!
And so we move onto events of today and the big question of what made the top 5:
1. The big development of today was that it was Steph’s first day on furlough leave. This has lead to a mix of emotions about what it meant for us but our positive outlook on life inevitably caused us to focus on how much easier it would be to juggle childcare and work. Sadly for me, this did not manifest in the way I had naively expected. Steph woke up this morning and decided she was starting a holiday so had a very lazy day monitoring the children from afar and letting them amuse themselves. An executive decision was made to can #HomeSchooling for 24 hours. It was a bit like asking your schoolteacher if you could do your work on the grass outside because the sun was out and not only did he say yes but then you didn’t actually have to do any work when out there anyway! I could hear far too much fun going on outside which just ended up making work even more challenging. 👨💻
2. From absolutely nowhere my wife announced that she thought we should invest in a gazebo. Now we’ve borrowed one from the in laws before, for a particular event but I’ve never ever thought about buying one. So of course a hundred good reasons were given to justify such a purchase and before I knew it we were on a click and collect journey at lunchtime and then rushed back home to get it built in the garden. I’m looking at it now thinking that with the forecast rain the kids will likely be indoors a lot more than they have been so perhaps I could relocate my home office outside into the gazebo just to get some peace. 🎪
3. The obsession of jigsaws in my house has been taken to new levels. I came downstairs at one point this morning to find all 3 of my family sitting doing jigsaws. M is an absolute fiend and just demands more and more to do. He’s so happy finishing one and then just breaking it up and doing it again. His main breakdown today was when he lost a piece so thought he had finished but there was a gap in the middle. I mean who hasn’t suffered that crushing feeling so I can certainly empathise. Fortunately it was tucked down his shorts so disaster was averted. Sadly his jigsaw skills did not come in handy when he wondered over the “help” Daddy try and put the poles together for the gazebo. He was more interested in trying to hide the last one…. 🧩
4. I don’t normally write about things that I didn’t personally experience but this one was too good to exclude from tonight’s top 5. E has been able to reach into the cutlery drawer for a while now but she knows what she is allowed to touch and what might be dangerous. We didn’t think M could get into it so imagine Steph’s shock when he came running out into the garden clutching a pizza cutter. Apparently he thought it was a measuring wheel (you remember those from school surely) and certainly didn’t give it up without a fight. When this story was told to me, I couldn’t help but think that we never had these problems with E. I wonder what makes two siblings so very different even though they are growing up in the same house with the same rules. 🍴
5. After I’d finished work for the day I had one big job to do this evening. We knew the weather was due to change so there was a big clear up operation underway in the garden. The kids have basically lived out there for over a week so there were toys and bouncy castles and paddling pools and jigsaw pieces and BBQs and all the rest that needed tidying away before the rain came. It felt like we were preparing for a hurricane as everything was packed away. I’m just surprised we weren’t boarding up the windows. Who knows how we are going to cope with the kids cooped up indoors. I suspect we will be donning wellies and raincoats and still heading out for lunchtime walks just to retain our sanity! 🌧
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