Spring Busy

Spring Break snuck up on me this week, as these things always do, and it was Saturday or so before the twin facts that all the toddler classes are taking a break and Monkey has no school all week impinged on my brain and I understood that I would be responsible for directing operations for both children all day every day without so much as a gymborama or a music time to distract us. Never mind having to do the grocery shopping and go to the post office and things like that with not one but two in tow.

On Monday morning I got the shopping over with early, and it didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped (child B runs away, totally, to another aisle; child A delightedly chases her, feeling all righteous and justified about it; I prevaricate halfway along the cereals straining to hear which end I should be aiming the giant truck-trolley for; they both appear in front of the milk fridges at the top end, where Monkey appears to be practising his cop moves with a most impressive wrestle-her-to-her-knees maneuver; I hope everyone understands it's all in good fun, and go to restrain the perpetrator in the seats up front, only to discover that this, the supermarket's most-coveted Blue Car, has no functioning straps so I can't keep her anywhere, and the shopping's only half done... anyway, I was a bit frazzled by the end of all that), but we managed to meet up with friends at a slightly different playground from usual and the rest of the morning went well enough.

The afternoon, mind you, was a moderate disaster, since it turns out that the only thing more stressful than getting the kids out of the house in the after-nap period is not managing to get them out at all. There was some dismantling of the sofa, some pulling out of the phone wires, some fighting over stuff, some dumping water out of the bath, some dumping the towels into the bath... it was tedious. I needed some wine.

Tuesday morning was much better: the stars aligned to give me a cloudy morning and no children with colds, and I took them swimming. Monkey got an early birthday present of scuba goggles (he wanted ones that covered his nose as well) and they were so excited they got themselves dressed in record time. We presented ourselves and our sadly under-used membership cards at the reception desk, where Mabel announced "We're going to go swimming!" to the nice lady, who was impressed. Mabel then went on to tell her all about how the doctor cuts the umbilical cord when a baby is born (we'd been talking about such things in the car, as you do) but luckily the nice lady didn't understand a word of that. They bobbled around me in the shallow pool for almost an hour, and afterwards Monkey was still talking about how this was the best day ever. Clearly, I should take them swimming just exactly this often, to engender such enthusiasm every time.

On Wednesday we managed a trip to Target without significant loss or injury, and our usual playground date for lunch, and the weather was so hot we had to break out the shorts and t-shirts. In the afternoon we went to a nearby playground-with-sandbox where a reasonable amount of fun was had, though I did have to go and explain to the father of the sobbing three-year-old that my two-year-old had just stomped all over her sand castles. Never my favourite moment.

Now it's Thursday and I think I'm getting the hang of this, a little. The weather is more seasonal again, so this morning was a different playground and this afternoon will be a quick shopping trip followed by more playground. Tomorrow it's going to rain, but we have muffins and an indoor playdate on the cards for the morning. By the weekend I'll be knee-deep in birthday baking, so at this stage I just have to make sure that I've got all the eggs and the cocoa and the chocolate chips, and Easter will just have to look after itself.