Freewheelin'

We had a really nice, low-key day today - played with friends, played outside, went to the co-op without too much trauma - but Mabel's teeny-tiny naptime coupled with Monkey's reduced TV time leaves me with, ooh, about five minutes to myself on the computer (not to be confused with all the time I spend refreshing my Facebook page in between breaking up fights, putting food on the table, and denying my firstborn all the recycled-cardboard creations his heart desires (today's invention: a gas-mask-type voice amplifier held on by an elastic band that would enable him to break glass, coupled with a laser holder and a mirror so that he can direct the laser onto the rope that the enemy has bound him with and escape out the broken window - I think: it was not made, but he did draw a picture which I helpfully labelled for future reference)) so my blogging-at-naptime habit has been severely curtailed.

Yes, that was all one sentence. No, I'm not going to go back and break it up. Just concentrate really hard.

So now I'm snatching moments between dinner and bath, as B has taken them outside on the bikes again, but I can't for the life of me remember what, if anything, I was going to say.

We do seem to be falling into some sort of a rhythm for the summer, and I'm less frantic than I was about the fact that I have both my children! at once! all day! to cope with. Eh, they're not that bad, you know. They've actually spent quite a while today playing nicely together with the action figures and the cars and whatnot, and if I don't try to get anything else much done, we can all muddle through pretty well. The pool is always there for when it's too hot to ride bikes, and somehow the laundry gets done and somebody picks up more milk and something is figured out for dinner.

The weather is slightly less hot than a few weeks ago, when I was afraid we were doomed to unabated hundred-degree days for the next three months, so there has been more bike riding. Monkey has progressed to bumping up and down the driveways around our road, and was angling to go further afield, so on Sunday B took him to Lake Artemesia, scene of former bike-related disaster and triumph. They went around the whole thing, plus a couple of detours, and it was one happy five-year-old who came home an hour later, proud of his accomplishment.

Mabel has taken to saying, "I weeally weeeally want a bike," and is somewhat disgusted with the hand-me-down tricycle that's her mode of transport at the moment. She got the hang of the pedals quite recently, but can't get up any speed and gets terribly frustrated whenever I take the handle to help her up over a bump or stop her from careening brakeless down a hill. (Yesterday she was particularly overwrought after a late night and early morning, and she stomped and wailed and declared, "You have to give it away to some other girl. No more bike for Mabel." Poor bunny.  She weeeally weeeally needed her nap.)

So I'd been looking on Craigslist and e-Bay for a no-pedals bike for her (walking bike, balance bike, whatever you want to call it), to no avail, and the adorable one I saw in REI yesterday was a whopping $130, which is probably more than my own bike cost, but then I found one on sale on Amazon (with decent reviews and free shipping to boot) and ordered it quick smart, so Mabel will be getting her my-birthday present in a few days, and I hope she'll love it and also not perish, seeing as how it doesn't have any brakes either. We have some elbow and knee pads that might need to be employed, and she already has a helmet.

The toilet training is trundling along, becoming more and more just how life is, with a diminuitive change of bottom-half clothes in my handbag these days instead of a spare pull-up; and nobody should ever have to do this in winter - or in Ireland for that matter - because you'd need a much bigger handbag. Mabel's sleeping is just as erratic as ever, but with only a couple of weeks to go till we change time zones for three more, there's no point trying to make any changes in that arena right now.

I have a lead on a mother's helper who I'm thinking I might employ a couple of hours a week, to keep me sane, and who could become our regular babysitter as time goes on, if the children like her. Monkey already seems a lot more open to the notion of a babysitter than he did last time the concept was mooted. It might not pan out, but just the idea of it is helping. Much as the idea of paying someone to clean my house, once Mabel starts school and I do an infinitesimally small amount of freelancing, is helping me not care much about cleaning it right now.

Summer, season of happy procrastination.