Relaxing Saturday

Funny isn't it? You get pregnant (by hook or by crook or by over-excited celebration of new child-unfriendly one-bedroom flat tenancy), you spend the months of your pregnancy fondly and dreamily (and somewhat arrogantly) imagining how you will open up the world to your child, widen her experience, introduce her to all the depth, the excitement, the fun, the complexities and subtleties of life.
5 years later, you find yourself repeatedly hissing such mind-expanding utterances as 'Sure you don't need a pee?', 'Cup! Cup!' and 'Think about your PANTS!'. Far from being the one who broadens the horizon and opens the portals to sweeping vistas to a little novitiate filled with wonder and awe, you find that your task is rather more concerned with narrowing it down, albeit temporarily, to the mundane, the physical, the practical, the 'pants and pee' end of life, while your child's flighty feet barely touch the floor as she constructs and explores the fantastic edifices of her imagination and the world as she finds it and leads you through part of it, if you are lucky. She may wander into the gutter and need to be steered away from the dangerous road beyond, but she has no problem looking at the stars.

So, today started with a nice family snuggle, as weekends always should. Then it was my turn for a lie-in so I dozed for a good few hours.

When I got up F was playing in a very civilized fashion with Rumble in the Jungle and initially said 'yes' to my offer of a game, then after a while decided her own game with it was fine and she wouldn't be needing me after all, thanks.

Whilst drinking my tea I checked out a few things online and read out Mrs MT's April Fool's post about D and S being sent off for wraparound care. F picked up the extraordinariness of this instantly and interrupted me with 'But D is going to be home-educated' in a stern and confident fashion - result of a single conversation a while ago that I really didn't think she had taken in at all. An explanation of April Fool's Day as a concept followed and she gamely attempted her own 'Look, there's a monster' type trick.

At some point in the afternoon we all watched Barbie as Rapunzel (borrowed Thursday and watched by F at least 4 times I think). Not really very much like what I remember of the traditional Rapunzel story but watchable with burger sandwiches and ice-cream to follow. I am just about fogeyish enough to be rather glad about the classical music used in these strange Barbie films.

Other things she has done today - as soon as it started getting dark she turned all the lights off and explored the house, which was apparently a cave then, by torchlight, using her Dora torch which goes out if you don't keep your finger on the button. She spent a good hour playing this game I think, and commented on how the layout of the deep dark cave was identical in many ways to that of our house, but deeper and darker and such. The bathroom was apparently a grotto, which is 'a more beautiful type of cave'. She also played some mad bouncing game in her room for quite a while, and has been humming and singing to herself all day long and generally in good spirits after the recent phase (2 weeks or so?) of being a bit whingey. Think winter has gone on a bit long now for all of us, so soon we'll be able to have our conservatory doors open and eat outside and enjoy all that again.

Am now debating whether to watch a film, or read, or start the work for next week.
Tomorrow Glo and Shula are having a cake afternoon, including vegan cakes, so we will go over to Brighton on the bus for that. And I have to pack the case for going to my mum's on Monday too.