What a week it has been for books in our family. I admit, there has been little reading aside from one or two short ones if a girl is having trouble falling asleep. The little readers version of The Little Mermaid. We’re Going On a Bear Hunt. The lost teddy bear book with the letters inside (which, although I like the illustrations and I like that it is a Tasmanian family and I like that it has letters in envelopes which are SUCH fun, the filler bits in the story feel contrived, as if someone needed to reach a word count or – more likely – they had little elements of a story that they wanted to include and so put them into this one).
But as mentioned in Book Week in August, C’s school does Book Week not in the middle of the craziness of all that is term 3, but at the start of term 4. Which is perfect, apart from the heat that is often present which does rather have an impact on costumes. But right after school holidays is great so that when kids are bored during the school holidays, “How about you work on your Book Week costume?” can be thrown around by parents as something to do to stave off the screen time, earning eye rolls and groans and resistance to make those holidays wonderfully joyful and stress-free.
Ahem. C had the idea in August that she could be the tree from The Giving Tree. I had ideas. She had ideas. It came to the holidays and she told me she very precisely what her costume was to be. I told her my ideas. That was wrong. She wanted to wrap a cardboard box around her torso and stick some green fringing to the top. And she was desperate to win. This was a huge factor. I’m not sure what Book Week is like where you are, but last year one of the winners was a kid who was Snow White AND the seven dwarves. And the year before, a girl in a Cinderella outfit complete with tiara and something like glass shoes and she was inside a homemade cardboard pumpkin coach did NOT win. I was preparing myself for dealing with a very disappointed 7-and-a-half-year-old.
Especially as her first-born perfectionism and a healthy dose of wanting to enjoy not sharing the iPad with her sisters meant that she just did not get started on this costume. Last Sunday, I took all the girls outside with a roll of butcher paper and a bottle of green paint so we got the green paper sorted out at least, as well as making a thorough mess of the outside areas. That made for a good physical activity Monday morning, I must say. Tuesday, big talk about doing this costume before it was the night before. Wednesday, same thing. Thursday morning, she cut out some big sheets of the green paper first thing. Thursday night, I had a talk with her about look at where we are. I’m going to have my shower and then you are getting out of bed and we are making this costume together.
You know how many times she has fallen asleep before, say, 8.30pm this year? Maybe twice. One of those was, of course, Thursday night. She was asleep when I had finished showering at 8.13. Unbelievable. I did my best with this costume, and thankfully she was awake bright and early Friday morning. She ended up in a basic brown skirt/dress, my new linen long-sleeved top, and a stapled together headdress with the green paper. She had scrunched a piece of red paper into an apple, and Glenn stapled green leaves to it and tied it to a string to hang on her wrist.
There were definitely vibes of no adult intervention. But, she also looked like an elegant tree. And you know what? She won the year 2 “Best DIY Spirit” prize. We are all stoked.
Two of the judges were from the local council library, and of course they talked about the library a bit, and so of course E and S were then at me to go back to the library. This afternoon, we did. I paid the fine on all our very overdue books. We borrowed a bunch more, some of which are gold. I will delve into them more next week, I think. I’m tired.
The Stuff of Our Life 