storbarnsförälder

We had dinner out with friends last night and lunch with neighbours whom we hope to get to know better today. Tuesday is grocery day and I hope to buy tons of food - or maybe tonnes, which is larger? - and in particular lots of things for baking with, like sugar and self-raising flour and so on. Honey, too, I expect.

I also have some John Lewis vouchers so I might take the children to Waitrose and buy things like meatballs and out-of-season fruit and other things.

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Linnea has been experimenting with symmetry. And Emer's language is leaping ahead of her.

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I spoke to my mother and two of my sisters today. I might try to call the other two next weekend. We need to sort out who is visiting whom this summer, and when. And to do that, Rob and I need to firm up when we're going camping! Three of our camping trips are pre-planned by other people, so the dates are fixed but unknown, and one we're hoping to have as a nuclear family holiday, just the four of us, which will be lovely if we manage it. We tend to need all Rob's annual leave for family and friends stuff, most years, but this year we're having a private Christmas, so... Here's hoping, anyway.

I ought to look up my Swedish dictionary sometime but I'm too lazy.

This morning Rob saw that Emer was sleeping across the head of the bed and I was lying diagonally below her, so he moved her over to let me stretch out for a proper sleep. If he'd only woken me first I could have told him not to - it woke her up, as it had every time I'd tried it in the night, and she woke me up. Ho hum. The corridors of Hell are paved with good intentions, and the piped music is "Shrieking" from Ailbhe's debut album, You woke me too damn early you insensitive clod.

Then Linnea said she had a headache and tried to refuse to get up. I opened her bedroom window and judging by the bouncing and hopping, the headache passed off quite quickly if it had ever existed in the first place.

Today started properly when I phoned the two local swimming pools to get their opening hours, and texted Helen, and arranged to meet her at Rivermead₁₈₆ (the warmer, posher, filthier one) at half past eleven. Then I had my coffee₁₈₇, got the children dressed, did some laundry, tidied up a little, argued about breakfast, and got them into the trike with a banana each. We went to the Post Office to get cash out and then cycled leisurely to the pool₁₈₈.

At the pool we queued for half an hour to get in - half-term, local lagoon pool with wave machine, obvious really - and then got changed hastily. I disgusted someone by changing in the communal changing area (adults are supposed to sneak into cubicles) but it was too crowded for me to care. We stayed for about 45 minutes, so got two sessions of wave machine, and lots of goes on the toddler slide₁₈₉.

It's the first time we've been swimming in ages; we stopped early in winter to make sure we didn't all get ill again. Linnea isn't as good as she was a term ago but is still very confident and cheerful and just goes out and swims places, and Emer was happy as anything and didn't mind getting her face wet at all. She had a float-suit on which flipped her over until I deflated the tummy floats a bit; her buoyancy has obviously changed in the intervening time. When she swam with me during Linnea's formal lessons, she never had any float aids, because she had my full attention.

After swimming and lunch (ew, burgers and chips from a pool canteen, yuk) we took the trike to the recycling centre by the car park and the three older kids (almost 5, almost 5, and 4 in August) stood in the trike and threw bottles and jars into the recycling bin, and I lifted Emer (3 in August) up for her turn. So they had fun smashing glass and I got my recycling done₁₉₀.

Then we played in the playground₁₉₁ in the mist until it turned into heavy drizzle, and then I cycled my kids to the library and Helen took her kids somewhere else.

Linnea booked her first Library Internet Session₁₉₂, but got tired of it quite quickly, and we read a few books and she played on the story-telling computer for a while₁₉₃. Rob met us outside as we were leaving₁₉₄ and we took a sudden detour past Eclectic Games, bringing them coffee as a sort of apology, and spent about an hour there looking at games and talking about nothing in particular₁₉₅.

And then we came home and had dinner and the kids went to bed and I caught up on everything I'd missed on the internet and we started the housework.

I'm tired, but it was a lovely day, really. Tomorrow morning I'm taking the kids to Singalong and then Farmor is coming - if the weather is ok we'll go to the playground and perhaps do more glass recycling if I can rustle up some glass.

With any luck Rob can open the CD player up tonight and find the CDs Linnea posted in the other day. And my bread should have risen - time to knock it back again.