Babies, children and weekend bliss

The baby boy is beautiful. His sister is a fair-skinned, strawberry blonde 3-year old bundle of energy. He is tiny, olive-skinned and has a mop of dark hair. She thinks he's a bit noisy. He thinks sleeping and eating are just the perfect way to spend the day. I must admit that I agree with him completely.

I had a very full weekend. The City Beneath the Mountain was sweltering, it was as if The Weatherman was baking biscuits and had left the oven door open. Upper 30 degrees were the order of the day. Now I am very much not a shopping mall person (to put it mildly... I abhor them) but on Saturday morning when we went wedding outfit shopping, I loved it. They have air-conditioning. Say no more.

We shopped, I had house guests - a family with three children aged 7, 5 and 4. The house was filled with squeals of delight and joy. My house is, well, let's just say a bit of a children's paradise because I have lots of 'stuff'. And plenty of it is kid-friendly. I own four dinosaurs for heaven's sake, need I explain more?

I watched rugby. I don't usually do that. It turned out to be quite fun actually. We went to the pub down the road and I drank my new favourite drink (which is, incidentally, fabulous in a heatwave) - icy cold beer shandy made with ginger ale. Yum. The rugby-watching was made extra fun for H and I, as there was a table next to us with one guy and two girls who were vying for his attention. It was like watching birds fluff out their feathers and they used every trick in the book. It was hysterical as the one pushed her boobs out in his direction, and the other looked at him through fluttering eyelashes beneath her fringe. One even did the 'oh-could-you-please-open-my-Appeltiser-for-me-I'm-too fragile' trick. Bimbo. Unfortunately we didn't stay long enough to see who won, but they provided us with hours of entertainment.

After a late night not-so-nice hiccup, Sunday was spent breakfasting, three children on a sugar high after having hot chocolate and chocolate cake for breakfast, stopping in each park on our way home to swing, get dizzy on the roundabout and lose their tummies on the slide and then they chattered off back to their farm and we relaxed the afternoon away in a haze of bliss.

There is a big decision pending, and my love story is bristling and bubbling and wanting to be set free. It is imminent, I can feel it. I need blogsphere advices and discussion to help me, and to get that I guess I’m going to need to blurt it all out.

Watch this space?

The lion, the crocodile, and the wardrobe

I went to dinner at D and B on Friday, them who are the parents of the delicious Maya, who turned three, two weeks ago. I sat in the kitchen, at the kitchen table with Maya while D made salads and Maya 'mixed' the salad dressing. This entailed me holding the bowl, D adding each ingredient one-by-one, Maya stirring after each addition and then dipping her finger into the dressing and proudly proffering said finger for me to taste.

I can now tell you what changes salad dressing goes through on addition of each ingredient. I won't go into detail, other than to say it's best to wait until they're all in, and then taste. After we'd finished 'cooking' and tasted the dressing about twenty-three times, this conversation ensued:

Maya: There's a lion in Zeida's bed. (They're Jewish, Zeida = Grandpa - B's dad is living with them at the moment)
Shiny: There is? Do you think you should warn Zeida?
Maya: No, it's okay, the crocodile's fixed it.
Shiny: Oh, right, phew. How did he fix it?
Maya: He put him in a box. And then strapped the box up.
Shiny: Thank goodness for the strapping.
Maya: Yes, and then he put the box in the cupboard. And then he strapped the cupboard.
Shiny: Wow, what a clever crocodile. But, Maya, where's the crocodile now? I'm a bit scared.
Maya: Don't worry, the crocodile's gone back to the pool.
Shiny: Oh, of course, yes.

She then went off to bed in her sweet pink pyjamas that are getting too small, and we had dinner. I swear though, when I looked down the passage to the glass back door that leads out to the pool, I saw two glinting red crocodilian eyes.

Maybe it was just the Shabbat wine?