Day

I started the day in a foul temper and screaming. Well, not started, but one mockery-and-taunting from a disobedient child was enough to get me there, when usually I can act like a grownup.

Got everyone dressed, gave everyone the opportunity to eat breakfast and brush their teeth, hung out laundry, brought in laundry, laundered laundry, got out the yoga mats and encouraged yoga, reserved books online with Linnea so she will have the things she wants to read next time she goes to the library, made a fruit salad, wrote Linnea a recipe for French Toast and stood back while she mixed it up, helped her fry it, we all ate French toast and fruit salad for lunch, I cleaned the kitchen counters, dining table, highchair, swept the kitchen floor, emptied and refilled the dishwasher, hung up the wet wool laundry and put on a "handwash" load of toys and things...

I think I am actually a pretty good parent today, in spite of first-thing-fail and screamy heebie jeebies.

Astrid ADORES her sisters. She is so lucky to have TWO big sisters at home to play on.

Groo

So the rest of the afternoon was also terrifyingly together. Astrid napped, so Emer and I sneaked into the garden in the rain to harvest potatoes; we emptied the compost out of the potato bag and used it in other areas of the garden, too. When the rain was at its heaviest we got umbrellas and in a rods-of-water deluge we planted sunflowers. I was bent over and my bum got wet, sticking out from under the shelter of my huge green brolly, but the sunflowers got planted. I wonder whether they'll grow.

Then Astrid woke, so I fed her and then made banana muffins by hand without a food processor. Emer found this very strange. I must say, the new kitchen is a large part of what made that so easy for me to do, but I still feel like I'm living in some alternate universe.

We ate banana muffins and I washed the potatoes and put them on to cook. Rob came home and I basically collapsed; the effort of being cheerful and Switched On Parent was huge, today. That's partially due to my biologically normal birth being followed by my personal biologically normal menstrual cycle, which is not funny in the slightest.

Also, I sent my midwife an "I'm thinking of you" email and learned that she's having a Spot Of Bother in the way only independent midwives really can, because midwives with an employer would have backup. It's terribly sad.