Firsts – French toast for Katya and Ollie - they
LIKED it! and it was even made using whole wheat! (. . . of course, I’m sure that Lyle‘s golden
syrup and orange chocolate spread had absolutely NOTHING to do with it – none whatsoever!)
Teachers were back to school after half-term but
not so children, so Leah asked if I could watch the two older kids. (Ella went
ahead and did her usual weekly thing at the secular nursery.) Seeing as how
Myfanwy was gone to Bournemouth for a couple days with a group of card-playing
buddies, I had them to my house. I thought we’d just start the day out here and
end up back at their house, as I personally had some important calls I needed
to make. Oh, boy, did we end up finding a lot of things to keep us busy. We
never did leave, and after all was said and done, Leah ended up retrieving
Katya and Oliver after 4pm, still at my house – still going strong.
One thing
was reading stories: the day before I had borrowed some storybooks from their
house to read out loud, but in exploring the sitting room we came upon some
great picture books Myfanwy had for her grandkids that we read instead. One
that made an especial impression was a fantastical pop-up book of the Wizard of
Oz, styled after the original text by L. Frank Baum and the artwork of W. W.
Denslow. (See below.) It was truly wonderful. I even learned some things about
the story that I don’t remember ever having known previously.
In addition to that, we explored the house,
including peering into the attic crawl space with Auntie Honey Bee’s torch,
looking for monsters and bats and spiders – definitely found some ancient
dusk-covered cobwebs; drew pictures; slid down the bannister – a number of
times; put together the Magic Haunted House puzzle with heat-sensitive
‘reveal-the-picture’ windows that auntie had gotten second-hand for a pound; put
a batch of dirty clothes into the washer and helped hang them up on auntie’s
unique indoor clothes line; plus cooked, ate and did up the dishes – twice. We also
spent a good deal of time in the garden. You would think just by looking out at
it that there couldn’t possibly be THAT many things a child could involve
himself in. Now I understand more thoroughly why in Tom’s Midnight Garden, Tom
was SO sad when he discovered that his aunt and uncle did NOT have a garden in
which he could amuse himself! There was a wheelbarrow, full of water, that
needed tipping out, and then being pushed in by auntie prior collecting leaves
in it. (I had first placed both Oliver and Katya in the wheelbarrow while it
was on the lawn, but found it near impossible to push. Katya helpfully pointed
out that the tire was flat. For a minute there I thought I was losing it. Got
it down to a single child at a time and kept it on the brick pathways. Much
better.) There was naming the kinds of trees and identifying their leaf shape; sliding
down a real slide (I told them the story of how my oldest daughter had broken
her arm on just such a backyard slide, and how we hadn’t realized it at first);
climbing trees; besides trying to open the mystery door into who-knows-where.
We also considered having our lunch as a picnic in the garden but in the end
decided that the sun was NOT going to cooperate – that’s often the way it is
around here (but at least it’s NOT snowing. Just chilly off and on, and the sun
has a WHOLE lot to do with that!)
Photos_
Inside splendor
1- sitting
room settee for reading
2-3 Wizard
of Oz, styled after the original text and drawings
4- jigsaw
for kids
5- stairway to the sky (shh – don’t tell Myfanwy . . .)
6- view
from above
7- view
from below (that’s me – the dormer)
8- barrow
fun
9- tree
for climbing
10- the secret garden?
