children

To Stop Time

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I love a good short story.  Getting lost in a good book is one thing, of course, but a well-crafted short story is a gem.  One in particular I remember from my high school years is about a watch that will stop time for all eternity if you click a button, but nobody ever chooses to stop it.  There’s always something to look forward to.

But.

There ARE bits of my life that I want to make sure I remember forever, that I want to etch in my brain and my memory and my soul for all eternity.  

Like Sunday morning.  

I was too sick to go anywhere so we were stuck at home.  We asked Siri to play some music – Coco, maybe, or Mamma Mia! – and the girls started dancing.  Dancing in our cramped and messy living room.  Dancing to the music and as their souls dictated.  E, with her moves very much from the heart, turned to me and motioned for me to pick her up and dance, and so I did.  We did.  The joy on her face and in her body, her smile that lights up the world and stuns my soul, holding her tight and swinging around as she held on and bubbled over with the delight of it, THIS was one of my almost-time-stopping-worthy moments.

Even though life is really hard right now, with all sorts of outer stressors on top of parenting three young children and the tired have I mentioned the tired the tired is sometimes so overwhelming it is breathtaking but even though we are just, only just, coping in many areas of our lives, this is a really beautiful time.

We have three girls who are all emerging as the next reveal of themselves.  Does that make sense?  S is learning and practising all these new skills, like the alphabet song, and asking if we want to hear Baa Baa Black Sheep before launching into the first few lines, and saying so many words and animal sounds, and walking around with a skirt or bandanna or quilt over her face and only occasionally walking into a wall, and trying to dress herself by putting everything imaginable over her legs, and climbing onto the bed and pretending to sleep on my side, and climbing into her cot, and climbing out of her cot, and putting on shoes and socks and taking them off.

E is practising ballet, and speaking her own mind, and doing pretend play where I am the baby and she will kiss me goodbye as she goes off to work then I’m the doctor and need to put a bandaid on her broken leg, and pretending to swim around our backyard sea as a mermaid, and getting dressed “all my by-self”, and only wearing undies unless she’s at home, and recognising more and more letters and telling me which number is which and making me a cup of tea by pressing the button on the kettle and choosing a tea bag and putting it in a cup for me then, if necessary, using her muscles to lift the 3L milk bottle out of the fridge.

C is reading, reading so well that I suddenly have to be careful if she comes in when I am working, and still talking talking talking all the time, and building breathtaking cubbies (thanks, Bluey!), and loving her weekly maths challenge folders, and showing me her developing skills in Irish dancing, and loving chess, and building small things with even smaller building blocks that I keep finding one of in random places on the floor, and being very attached to a particular toy for a few days before becoming obsessed with a different toy, and laying out her pyjamas on her bed once she is dressed in the morning.

They are all at a stage where they can play together.  Or play independently.  I mean, play independently within our family rules, like using scissors for approved paper only, and … actually, that’s the only one I can think of that really works.  “Stay out of mummy and daddy’s bedroom”, “Only use nail polish if mummy says it’s ok and then you must use a towel and then stay in the bathroom for a few minutes for the polish to dry is anybody listening oh never mind”, “Clean up after yourself”, “NO PINS”, “Doors are not for playing”, and “No jumping from the sofa to the – too late” are all rules that are apparently just there “for funsies”.  

It is chaotic, gloriously chaotic.  It is hard work.  It is so heartwarmingly delightful as well as maddeningly infuriating, like having a little one sleeping in bed with you and hearing them giggle in their sleep right before kicking you in the face.  Absolutely wonderful, making my heart sing and want to stop time but also, what will it be like when…?  

Anzac Biscuits. No Coconut.

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I have searched.  For my whole adult life, I have searched, yet I have not found.

Until today.

Today, I was successful.  And so I am doing my first post in almost a year in order to have an easy reference, every time.

I’m talking, of course, about the perfect Anzac biscuit recipe. Chewy. No ridiculous add-ins.  And, most importantly, no coconut.  Here’s a link to the recipe if you want to jump right in (although the site does not, at present, have a crucial ‘Jump to Recipe’ button so you may be scrolling a while).

My grandmother – the one I knew – told me she baked Anzac biscuits to send over to my grandfather and his mates.  I do have the recipe she used, but it uses coconut, a fact which deflates me every time I think about it.  

After many years of fails, this morning I searched for an Anzac biscuit recipe, chewy, no coconut.  The original, pre-1925 recipe came up.  It is a winner.  

I managed to make these without any “help” this morning, so they were done in less than an hour.  I know the recipe says about 2 minutes for prep and 18 for baking but those people aren’t doing leg lifts to keep small children away from hot ovens, or squat lifts to show hefty kids what’s in the bowl, or batting little fingers away from the butter, or admiring the magnet creations on the fridge, or asking kids to please stop fighting over which show to watch or so help me I am taking the iPad away and ohhhh did the battery just run out well we had better plug it in then and maybe you can, you know, play.  Quietly.  And brush your hair.

Ahem.

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup plain flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar (I used white caster sugar)

125g butter

2 generous Australian tablespoons of golden syrup

1 teaspoon bicarbonates of soda

Water in the kettle

Method

Line two baking sheets with baking paper.  If you are free from distractions/have a slow oven, turn it on now to 170C, otherwise don’t stress it just yet.

Mix together oats, flour and sugar in a large bowl.

Put the butter in a pan over medium heat.  Turn the kettle on.  Once butter has melted, add golden syrup and stir until dissolved.  Bring it gently to the boil – now is a good time to turn on the oven – then remove pan from the heat.

Mix 2 tablespoons boiling water and bicarb and stir until dissolved.  Add this to the butter and syrup and stir until it froths.

Pour the frothy hotness into the dry ingredients and mix well.  

I like to divide the mix in half now, just by making a little line in the dough/batter with the mixing spoon.  Jewellery off.  Do remember to put it back on later.

Plop dessertspoons of mixture on the trays.  This works out perfectly for generous dessertspoons, in a 3-2-3-2-3 layout on each tray.  Children may be coming in now to “help” which means really to taste test which is fine for this egg-free recipe.  Make each blob of mixture into the nicest ball you can, then squash each a bit or a lot, depends on your helper/s’ enthusiasm and delicacy.  If you’re not getting little ones to help, then a gentle squish with your hand or a fork or a bowl or something could work too, I guess.

Clear all children from the area and put both trays of biscuits into the oven.  The recipe says for 15 minutes and then something something but 15 minutes produced very much done biscuits so I left it at that.  Leave them on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling tray.  Once completely cooled they can be eaten or, I suppose, stored in an airtight container for months.  Apparently.  I have no experience of Anzac biscuits being uneaten after a week.  Sorry.

A Year Ago, When We Became Five

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Well, hi. It has been a long time. A very, very Long Time. And while I could go on about how things have changed, and all the things – both big and small – that have changed and happened since my last post, I won’t. I’ll get to that. You know, [waves hand] later.

What has really been on my mind lately has been a year ago. A year ago, our little family of five all met. Our littlest bub had just been born, and her big sisters came to meet her in the hospital the next day. For one chaotic and delightful and nerve-wracking half hour, we were all together in my little part of the hospital ward.

The photos from that brief visit show the chaos. C was standing by, sucking a yoghurt pouch, obviously quietly delighted and loving her newest sister, but also possibly a bit peeved that no-one was letting her actually hold the new baby. E flung herself backwards on the bed and nearly fell off the bed multiple times and tried to pull out all the cables and push all the buttons that are present in a hospital bed setting. And Glenn, who was trying so hard to be a good husband and good new dad and good established dad and make it out of there with the same children he went in with all in one piece.

But for all the chaos, and the first real need for parental octopus tentacles to prevent all the accidents that almost happened, my memory of this day makes my heart swell with happiness and love.

And it’s mostly because of E.

She was so little, really. Just 18 months. Still in the hardly-any-hair, maybe she’s a boy? stage. Hardly able to say anything much. And because she was so little and such a baby still, I hadn’t been able to talk with her in the months leading up to this time about what was going on. What was about to happen. What this big tummy meant.

Because she was so young, I had also worried about what having a third baby would do to our second baby. She was such a calm baby, such a good sleeper and eater, and I worried that changing things would change her. Middle child and all that.

I worried, because I had no idea what she would be like with another small child, let alone a baby. She’d been going to daycare for months by then but did she even know what a baby was? I had no idea. How would she react? I had no idea. How would I present her sister, very much loved, just as she was herself, just as her big sister was, and convey that they are all from us and all loved, equally and fully, by us? I had no idea.

But what happened in the hospital that day, happened, and could not have been planned or wished or orchestrated. E came around the bed, wide-eyed, pointed to the baby and said, slowly and with wonder, “Bebeh”, with her whole face lighting up. And all my worries vanished. 

I mean, they were replaced with a thousand more. Some rather pressing, like, will E fall off this bed or make me cough or pull a cord or remove the catheter bag. Some more what-if, like, will they fall over each other playing, or hit each other in the face before they learn gentle hands, or throw wooden blocks at each other when frustrated. Some more for me as their mum, like, will I be attending to one while the other runs to where they shouldn’t and then a car— or will I sow resentment by unwittingly favouring one child in some way over another, or will I have an accident with a carrier again while trying to keep another child safe… The list goes for an eternity, it seems.

But the joys – they are each treasured, and unexpected, and so delightful. 

Like the way S will break into a whole-body smile when she sees one of her sisters. Like the way E will look at me worriedly and say “Oh no, baby S crying” when she hears a nap-time cry. Like the way C will show S how to build a blocks tower. Or S will crawl speedily along the grass to play ball with the big girls. Or E will wrestle and snuggle while I’m feeding S and produce chuckles like I’ve never heard. Or C will read a book to S when I’m making a cup of tea in the morning. Or S will have a bath with either big sister and be so overjoyed all she can do is kick and splash for minutes on end to the point that the older one can’t take any more water in the face. E and S in the pram, facing opposite directions but holding hands. E stroking S’s hair and saying, “I luh you baby S”. 

There are more, and more, and more.  I will go on and on, but not now. Now is for remembering the day a year ago, when sisters met and made my heart sing.

Saturday Morning Art Time

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We’ve had so many changes lately. Just since the start of the year, there has been C no longer at daycare, C starting school, lunches and baking and sickness and pickups and drop-offs and dinners and uniforms and homework and new friends and old friends in new contexts. This last week I have added to the upheaval by insisting on changing up the sleeping arrangements which has meant clearing space here in order to have space to move furniture out of that room to there and other things moving down to the garage just for now. A lot of change. 

And I have 3 very sensitive girls. 

One way my girls destress is through watching shows on ABC Kids, which works well until E decides she’s tired of an episode or a show and takes control and changes things. Or the internet stops working. Total and utter devastation.

Another way my girls destress is art. Colouring in. Painting. Making pictures. Drawing. Colouring the easel (or table or tiles or walls).

After school tends to be a screen time snack time veg out session. Sometimes there is homework or dancing or ice painting too. Saturdays I was just letting roll along, until last week. We needed nappy liners and milk, so I took the girls to the shops.

It was horrible.

I can’t remember any particulars, just that it was horrible. Once we were home, and things had calmed down somewhat and children who nap were napping, I realised that C’s behaviour was a sign of needing time out. That, I can accommodate.

I suggested Saturday morning become an Art-Time Time-Out and she was delighted. 

This weekend was our first Saturday Morning Art Time session. C drew fairies all morning, while telling me allllllll about fairies in general and these fairies in particular and their names and how they were all related and then cutting them out, very carefully, with her scissors.

E joined in with her new washable paints. Mostly by painting her body and tablecloth and high chair, followed by a bath. 

I had much happier girls. We had a much more relaxed and calm Saturday. I found out little snippets of other things that had happened at school, new signs she had learnt, a new song, games she played, that she has evolved in her art style just in the last few weeks, that she seems to like names that start with ‘L’. All of the fairies have names that start with ‘L’. 

So it is decided. As much as possible, we won’t be doing mundane things like shopping on weekends. Instead, art.

I’m always up for new ideas, too. Do you have a way that helps your school kid destress on the weekend? Do you have a favourite art activity to do with young children? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

In other news, WordPress kept reminding me about adding a payment or donation button. Last week, I finally sorted it out. If you would like to send some funds my way, thank you! Every little bit really, really helps. I’ll probably have different text for different contexts but we’ll see how creative or apt I can remain. Ha. 

Help fund our art supplies – thank you!

A Comparison of Sleep

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Things that make me laugh: an inexhaustive list.

My husband impersonating one of our girls.

C doing a funny walk.

E telling me she hasn’t played in the sandpit at daycare when I now have sand all over the parts of me that just gave her a cuddle when picking her up.

S chuckling as we tickle her tummy.

A bush turkey putting its head down trying to be inconspicuous while running away from us.

Me doing a weekend of baking for lunchboxes and the freezer and then C telling me how delicious everything is and could she please have a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

People asking me if my girls are different from each other.

I mean, really. That one really gets a belly laugh. They could not be more different. I could write this whole blog, a post every day, on how different they are.

For example, sleep. Sleep is rather on the brain right now as we are in the midst of clearing space to move furniture to change the sleeping arrangements. And E is apparently in the process of dropping her nap. And S is definitely maturing in her napping.

So, without doing a blow-by-blow, here are some thoughts on how my girls differ in terms of sleep.

C. Terrible sleeper as a baby and toddler. I know she DID sleep because I have photographic proof, but there is very little memory of it. Most of my recollections of her aged 3-14 months are surrounding sleep. Please sleep. Why don’t you sleep. The guide says you should be asleep now. Awake now. HOW ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?!?! Ahem. Feeding to sleep. Patting to sleep that only worked a little so back to feeding to sleep. The energy I burned trying to rock her to sleep. The bliss, the relief, that I still feel like it was this week, when she dropped her nap altogether the weekend before she turned 2 so then went to sleep at night without drama or fussing or hours and hours of feeding and chatting and stories and music and feeding and patting and feeding.

E. Beautiful sleeper. Slept, without me having to cajole her or do anything except put her down, exactly when the guide said she should. Would start screaming if she needed to be asleep and I was holding her. Handsies (and occasionally, footsies) to fall asleep. Overnight wakes easily resettled with a dummy or, once or twice a night, a bottle. Things get tricky (mummy gets frustrated and cross and bewildered) when a nap is being dropped and my usually-easy sleeper suddenly resists and stuffs around and is quite happy but also awake when perhaps they should be asleep.

S. I think of her now as my possum baby. Very much driven by awake times instead of clock times. Only now, at 6 months, is she settling into a predictable pattern with a shorter nap in the morning and a longer nap at lunchtime and not usually an afternoon nap. And, for a few months now, has slept most nights for about 12 hours, from after her bath (sometimes with a bottle, sometimes not) until 5 or 6am. It. Is. Bliss. I’m not stuffing around with those naps. This is a baby who sleeps when she needs to sleep, who settles fairly easily if put down when tired but not overtired, who can resettle herself in longer naps and overnight. I know it may not last, and I am hoping hoping hoping that it doesn’t change too much when the sleeping arrangements are given an overhaul in the next few days, but I am astounded and delighted and amazed that I have a baby who does this. 

Buy me a coffee

What We Read This Week (Things are Changing)

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I changed things up this week. Story time remains at bedtime for C, but E and S now have stories after S has a morning feed and before breakfast. And, without any pushing from me, E has started doing stories at bedtime too. Win! 

Tonight after the big girls had finished their bath, E went to the bookshelf and pulled out her current favourite book, a board version of The Gruffalo’s Child, and started reading it. I haven’t read it to her very much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve managed to read it entirely yet as she keeps turning pages for me and getting to the same page and saying the same phrase, over and over, looking very worried, and I don’t know what she is saying but this is clearly very important. I didn’t read it to her tonight though, because C found the Frozen book after months (MONTHS!), months of searching and all was well with the world. She sat on my lap and I started reading it, then E came over and snuggled in and I had my two big girls cuddled around me as I read to them and my heart melted.

Stories in bed in the mornings have been a mix of sensory books and paper story books. Tickle Tickle Peter (a very sweet Peter Rabbit book for S) and That’s Not My Reindeer which always starts in front of S and mysteriously ends up in E’s hands, just like any Bluey book (Bob Bilby is pictured). A new one for E is Cuddles and Snuggles (aww), and both girls are enjoying one of my dearest books, Zin Zin Zin! A Violin! There is a long backstory of how it came to be in our family (I won’t go into that here), and it was the first book that made C smile when she was a baby. All of my girls love it and are really engaged when it is read. 

I realise I should document what C borrows from the school library, too. She gets such a kick out of being able to borrow every single week. This week she brought home two princess books. Of course. Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber (Elizabeth Honey), and Barbie Princess Charm School. One I love and the other … I don’t love it. Unfortunately, C feels the opposite. That said, she has picked plot holes throughout the Barbie book so I’m not too disappointed. 

The Start of Tuesday Night Dinners

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I was at a nearby shopping centre yesterday. I had to walk past people trying to talk to people about I don’t even know what. Dinner delivery service or something. This will make your dinnertime so much easier, she called. I smiled and shook my head and kept walking. And then realised: she assumed that I did the cooking. That I would be the one making dinner, maybe prepping it during the day and putting it together at dinnertime while juggling at least one child and the bedtime tired and the end of day hungry. Ha. Wrong! 

No, instead I am married to a man who loves to cook. Who is a fantastic cook. Who will find a recipe on Instagram that he wants to make and then he will just make it. Who has favourite chefs and will find their top tips and recipes and follow their advice. We enjoy lovely food in our family.

At the end of week 2, C came home from school with homework. Oh the excitement! She sat down right away and did most of it in about 10 minutes. At the end of week 3, homework included a sheet with ‘bonus homework activities’. These were things like taking a walk along your street and noting all the places that you could find numbers, or teaching your family hand signs, or asking parents and grandparents where they are from, or helping out at home by making your bed or cleaning your room or helping make dinner. (Side note: I love these teachers!)

After a couple of weeks of thinking, oh we could do one of those extra things… maybe next week…? I finally made a decision. C would help me make heart-shaped pizzas for dinner on Valentine’s Day. And she did! We had a great time and she ate a LOT (rare for her).

Then, this week, I thought about the green mac and cheese that I’ve been wanting to make for months and decided that Tuesday night would be it. And C would help me. And we might make this into a thing, a thing that we do. C helps mummy make dinner on Tuesday nights. 

Because this is a new thing, it is still a totally and utterly crazy thing that makes me question my sanity. Why am I trying to do this when I have a baby doing a short nap? Or needing to get the baby to stay awake because she has clearly decided not to do an afternoon nap because we are in that annoying stage of nap-dropping? Why am I trying to do this when I have a responsible and helpful 4-year-old but also a very enthusiastic just-turned-2-year-old who wants to help with everything and will almost but not quite burn herself at every step of the way?

That said, I think this is a really important thing to do. I have long been a big believer in the benefits of baking and this is just the savoury equivalent. It is teaching me as much as it is teaching the girls. Life skills are important, as are maths skills and creative skills and problem solving (being realistic here, it won’t be long before we start a dish without having all the right ingredients). Learning how to mix different substances while keeping as much of it as possible in the bowl is not something I could have imagined I would need to teach 5 years ago. Yet here were are. 

I don’t have a plan for a dish for this coming Tuesday but I DO know that I will be prepping as much as is humanly possible during the day. Also, recipe suggestions welcome! 

E’s Second Birthday

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E is two! She’s finally, actually, really two. And, just like it has felt like she’s been two for months anyway, it doesn’t feel like there was much birthday. The day was marked to show she was now officially older: I sent some mini cupcakes along to daycare; and we had a very small celebration involving cake and balloons with my parents and a family friend. But we didn’t have our usual special breakfast. We didn’t do lots of presents. The presents that she has received have been totally ignored, or accepted like they were just meant to be, or railed against with tantrums. 

And wow, were there tantrums. I wouldn’t let her eat cupcakes on the way to daycare. I wasn’t daddy. Daddy was trying to put sandals on her feet when there were balloons to play with. There were no more blueberries. The cake was not yet in her mouth. I wouldn’t let her eat all the M&Ms off the top of the cake. 

There were, of course, also utterly delightful and lovely parts of the day. C and E sitting quietly together on a chair to watch ABC Kids. C leaning over to give E a kiss on the forehead. E climbing onto the bed where I was feeding S and getting right up close to S and staring into her eyes before giving her a kiss on the cheek. The little shivers of happiness when someone said happy birthday. Seeing her daycare teacher when we were heading home and being shown such a sweet photo of E, totally overwhelmed with delight as she sat in front of the cupcakes. Cuddles and ‘wuv you’s and kisses on both cheeks. Her face when she saw the cake. The excited screams from C and E as they played Keepy Uppy, or tried to run past daddy without being eaten.

All in all, a happy day. Happy birthday to our funny and utterly delightful E. Two!

Valentine’s Day 2023

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Or, ‘Well, That Was Unexpected’. Except you can’t start anything about Valentine’s Day like that, can you? People think either something wonderfully good (‘you got engaged?!’) or something wonderfully bad (‘he broke up with you on Valentine’s Day? Oh that’s rough…’). Neither of those things apply here. Already married. Still married. Still in a relationship that we both consider to be loving and supportive and respectful.

And although we don’t really go in for the big Valentine’s Day hoo ha (for want of a better word), it does not go unnoticed. Flowers and chocolates were given, a special breakfast made, the things that often go unsaid were said.

And although I feel that Valentine’s Day is perhaps a day more for grownups than for 4-year-olds, I did a few heart-themed activities with the girls in the last week or so. C drew a whole page of hearts that she then started to colour in and assign each to a classmate. E happily painted on some hearts that I drew for her. I made some heart-shaped hair clips for C to wear today, and cut her strawberries and her peanut butter sandwich into hearts. We made heart-shaped pizzas for dinner.

And although I planned on taking the girls straight to the shops after the school pickup, the weather had other ideas. I knew that this would happen eventually, that a school pickup would coincide with a thunderstorm on a day when I had no choice but to take the younger girls with me in the double pram. Thankfully, my girls are up for adventure. I kept thinking in my head that we would get to the shops, but there came a point where I had to admit that this was just dangerous. Unavoidable, but dangerous to do any more than was absolutely vital.

Unfortunately, to be safe means crossing at a set of lights instead of jaywalking a major road near the crest of a hill. Unfortunately, by not jaywalking we were forced into taking a detour then another to avoid flooded intersections and roads. We still had to walk next to a flooded road and we witnessed some cars being sensible, taking turns, driving slowly, driving near the middle of the road, being mindful of our presence. And then there were others, who drove close on the tail of the car in front, who stayed near the curb, who didn’t slow down and seemed to enjoy the big wash of water they produced. 

Fortunately, we made it home in one piece. As the rain was starting to ease. And just in time for the Bureau of Meteorology to send me a notification: Severe thunderstorm warning. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

Fortunately, school doesn’t start until 9am. I predict tomorrow morning will be spent with the hairdryer: homework folder, homework book, leaflet on fundraising, and school shoes are all sodden. What fun.

What We Read This Week (Baby Classics)

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It feels an age since I’ve shared what we’ve been reading. I’m putting this down to E being such a different child from C, on top of our home life being a wildly different home life. C would always have a story or five before bed. E was resisting more and more until I just gave up. It makes me sad to say it but it was just too hard. There was only so much I could force her to sit with me and read so I put her story time on the back burner, knowing that we would come back to stories at some point. 

And we did. At this point, I would like to thank Blue. E was given Verandah Santa and Bob Bilby last Christmas. Throughout the year we were also given Sleepytime and Hammerbarn. These books are soooooo well-loved. So much so that I’ve had to remove Sleepytime from sight as E would get obsessed with it and turn the pages too quickly and we all know how that goes. We haven’t found our groove with story time just yet but I am relieved that books are being rediscovered.

C has continued to have at least one story a night and – great excitement – was finally allowed to borrow from the library at school last week. Three nights since then, I went by her bedroom when she was meant to be asleep and heard her telling her toys all about what was in the stories. Libraries are fantastic. She’s a bit sad that she has to return the books tomorrow but rather excited that she can then choose MORE books to borrow! Bliss.

That brings us to S. I am sure that her experience of books is much more interrupted than it was for either of the older girls. “Here is the blue sheep, and here is the WHAT WAS THAT? What was that sound? Ok put that down… And here is the red sheep. Here is the bath sheep E, stop, get down from there, thank you, and here is the bed sheep. But where is no, I said NO, hands off! Gentle… gentle… no sweetie she needs to breathe. Thank you, maybe we can play with it next? But not shoved into her face like that…” etc. That said, this week has been especially lovely. E is past the stage where she pulls so enthusiastically (or intentionally) that any flaps from lift-the-flap books are ripped off. S is in the stage of knowing that this bit of coloured cardboard moves and there’s another picture behind it and ooh look! It’s an elephant! So I have been able to read Dear Zoo (Rod Campbell) to both of them, together, delightfully. This coming week we will also revive some of our other flappy books and I may even get inspired to fix the no-longer-very-flappy books. 

Other books that have been read often this week are Kissed by the Moon (Alison Lester), and Where is the Green Sheep (Mem Fox and Judy Horacek). The former was for S from the Christmas Eve Book Fairy. It was one I borrowed from the local library when C was a baby and I love it. I have read it a few times with all girls around me this week and that is possibly one of my highlights. A beautiful wish for my babies. The latter had been hiding under a sofa for a time so its rediscovery has been a joy. Every pair of sheep brings smiles. Every reading brings smiles.