Monday - Play Date

We woke to the sound of the door intercom at 7 am this morning. ARGH! Coles delivery is here. They never come that early - I love delivery day. It's kinda like Christmas - by the time it rolls around, I've forgotten what I've ordered. Today we only got a free sample of sparkling water. Sometimes we get free samples of chocolate and usually we get a least one can of chicken. However, we did get some free soap by accident. That's handy - I was running out. Some poor person didn't get their soap today. Is it wrong not to return it? I figure it's all karma - sometimes they send me old dead broccoli or stale bread, and I haven't complained, so if they accidently send me free soap, I figure it's retribution.

Tanya (mom), Graham and Leah came over for a playdate today. Once again, I realized that our apartment is too small (how do people do it that live in places like Amsterdam?) as we could not escape the children. As there was no where for us to lock the children away and as we could not hide ourselves away, us moms became the defacto sharing police. I'm sure they would normally work it out amongst themselves if they had to actively try to locate us, but as we were sitting right there, they could turn to us to help negotiate.

So, it became "ok Ellis, you get the blue car for three minutes and then Graham gets the blue car for three minutes."

Of course, the blue car has sat there on the floor since it was received on Christmas, maybe touched once by Ellis. Today it is the toy of choice.

The three minute timer routine got old after two cycles and the kids moved onto other toys to fight about.

Tanya and I eventually got bored of policing so force fed the kids lunch and then took them to the pool.

This went much better - now that Ellis has goggles, it seems he can swim (and water wings of course). Ellis and Graham tried to outdo each other in swimming up and down the pool. They both jumped off the side a few times too. Ellis does not even need anyone to catch him anymore. He jumps and goes right under the water. Quite amazing what a pair of $5 googles can do. The first time Ellis put them on at Esme and Ava's, he went diving in the bath.

After Tanya et al left, we spent the afternoon baking cookies, playing with felt pens (not actually colouring - just stacking and sorting them), talking to Tracey and making dinner.

At one point during my conversation with Tracey - Ellis shouted out from the potty room

"will you and daddy be dead when I'm four?"

"uh - I hope not." I said.

"how about when I'm eleven?"

"yah - hopefully not then either, but you never know. If we are - you get to go live with Tracey and Johnny."

There has been a lot of death talk lately - wonder what that is all about.

Cyp and I went out on a date - of course, as we were leaving both kids were clinging to us with that desperate look in their eyes. I did not envy Elle and Hannah's job. Rowan now follows me everywhere - moaning 'Maaamaa" Right now, we are fighting over the computer, so it is making it harder for me to post to my blog.

We took the ferry to New Farm - as we sailed under the Story Bridge (we were sitting on the outer deck), I thought - this is pretty nice. We waved at the bridge climbers (they got very excited that people down on the river saw them and madly waved back and cheered). You know - we didn't go out alone as much as we do here. We've made it a priority to try to get away from the kids every once in a while - at least until the money runs out, which could be soon as we have been quite spendy lately.

We had dinner at the Taj Mahal restaurant in New Farm - it was fantastic - and only $40 (tip and tax included). It is BYO here (bring your own) so we had picked up a bottle of $10 Shiraz - so dinner was $50. Not bad.

Tonight we broke the three hour limit we usually set for ourselves with the sitters (I guess Indian food takes longer to cook). We took the ferry home to find Rowan passed out on Hannah - he had screamed for an hour and Ellis had just fallen asleep. I guess Rowan was exhausted from the screaming so he slept through the night. Hooray sitters! The best thing is, he didn't seem to remember in the morning.