Emily took three steps today from the end of the kitchen to Mum. She’s staggered one or two accidental steps before, these were her first considered steps. As with every childhood milestone reached: much jubilation despite impending chaos.
It was beautiful. I liked everything about it except that it wouldn’t make calls. Today I took it to the curiously named “Vodacare” to whose abyssal service system I have committed my delicate device. Will it come back to me, I wonder?
Grandpa and I took Jo and Sophie to see Swan Lake this afternoon.
They loved it. Sophie sat on the edge of her seat (or stood) enthralled. As each movement drew to an end, if it had been a good one she held her arms up high over her head for the last few bars and then applauded for all she was worth. Otherwise she just applauded.
Jo had lots of plot-related questions and was absorbed except for the long-drawn-out lake sequences in the second half of Act II.
Somewhat surprisingly, fun was had by all at the ballet this rainy Saturday.
Yesterday was a lovely day. A cold and rainy inside-day, just right for playing with Lego, building puzzles and watching Peppa Pig. And watching Peppa Pig. And watching Peppa Pig.
Sophie’s a wonderful little girl and watching her enjoy her birthday was a joy.
Dialogue of the day:
“Dad, that’s a really big one”
“Jo, if I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that …”
“Then you’d buy a bigger one, wouldn’t you Dad?”
I mean, where do you go from there? Seriously.
We have a P..P..Pigeon Problem. Well, not so much us as our bird-brained but rather dear dog, Ruby.
A couple of weeks back we woke - two mornings in a row - to find that Ruby had mined the area around the beanbag she sleeps on. She’d taken the added precaution of ensuring the deterent was of a consistency that gradually spread itself evenly over the floor. Both mornings, fortunately, we switched the lights on before entering the room. Nuff said.
We adopted a two-pronged remedial approach: we changed her diet immediately and started feeding her in the morning. The first measure she took to just fine, but the second change has failed. Entirely. She runs to the front door to go out in the morning, looking famished, then watches the pigeons eat the food out of her bowl. She begs again mid-afternoon and does the same. After dark (no pigeons) she repeats the process and eats her food. I put it down to idiocy for a while (hers) and persevered in the hope she would suddenly realise that breakfast was better than dinner - specially if there’s no dinner to be had. I now think it may be something other than idiocy (hers).
She really has driven the argument far beyond the realm of what might be considered reasonable. If I walk outside at any time of day, turn and look back at the house, my eyes are met by the hopeful cocked-head stares of clans of hopeful pigeons lining the apex of the roof and the gutters. It’s a little freaky. Really.
Now there are a few things to note here:
1. She’s beaten us
2. Either she’s terrified of pigeons or a completely selfless philanthropist
3. She is almost certainly a supreme canine strategist
4. She’s beaten us
We’ll feed her after dark from now on, but if she soils the floor we will close her in a kennel full of pigeons with a single dog biscuit until she taps out. If reality TV can do it, so can we.
(and if we may say so too) … we wouldn’t be us if it wasn’t for you.
Happy Mother’s Day!
It’s a corker. A hint of Autumn chill despite being 20-some degrees. Just a teeny bit of work to do, otherwise treehouse building.
We spoke to the doc’s office yesterday and need to wait another 3 weeks for Sophie’s results 
Very serious sense of humour loss yesterday, better today. And hey, it’s party season! Fancy-dress this afternoon ..
My car is cute. My car is satisfyingly, counter-culturally compact. The longer I live in South Africa the stronger the impulse to park my car out of sight and walk the last few hundred yards to meetings.
For the past few weeks my car’s home has been under a fig tree in the yard. Today it looks like a fig-eating bird has ingested it and then passed it. Even though I drove really really fast to my meeting this afternoon (to try to blow it clean), it still looked like a sort of smallish, coarse-grained dinosaur dropping between the two shiny BMWs at the investment bank.
So now my car is counter-culturally compact and stop-and-stare dirty. It’s a stereotype breaker, my car. I’d wash it if it wasn’t such a powerful statement.
Josie had her sixth birthday party yesterday. Six. Good grief. It was great, thanks entirely to MGW.
There were cutout figures of Buzz Lightyear and a Space Princess to have pictures taken with, a hunt for moon rocks and a space kitten that arrived in its own spaceship and needed rescuing. Jo and the kitten have been inseperable since. The kitten travels on the end of a leash, stuffed into a shoe which is fitted to a roller skate. Not a real kitten, you understand.
Kids parties completely freak me out. I’m of some use at the decorating-the-party-room stage, but the event is too much for me. Something about organised activities and pre-schoolers. Is that not an absolute contradiction?
Josie loved her party and spent some time on the phone afterwards telling everyone all about it.
“The reserve offers the visitor some of the most striking scenery in the Karoo as well as fascinating animals and plants that comes to life on the back of a horse.”
… but I have more pressing things to think about just now.