Suchi and I made plans to get together this morning so I got to meet her husband, Piotr, and Vivi got to play a bit with their son. She made a fort.
That's the fort as of last night. It's the hammock part. She's inside it in this picture. It got far more sophisticated as the hours went by.
It was lovely spending time with the neighbors- they arrived the same time we did, but from The Netherlands and they will be here a few years. They are both physicists and have lived many places - India, Poland, Madison, Paris, Berlin, The Netherlands, and now Belfast.
Connecting with people who have kids is great because we learn a lot from each other about how to balance our experiences with those of our children.
After coffee and tea and scones with clotted cream, real life emerged and it was time for all of us to part so we could clean and do laundry and prepare ourselves for Monday. To that end, Vivi has her uniform on the extra twin bed in her room with her backpack ready for the morning.
Viv was disappointed she had to take down her fort - she got quiet and started putting things in her travel bag.
She'd listened to her Ramona Quimby book in which Ramona "runs away" so I'd been waiting for her to try it.
Today was the day.
She rolled her case to the door, coat on, and looked back at me indignantly.
"Are you running away?"
"Yes. I am."
"Come sit on the sofa with me and let's talk about your plan."
We talked about how she wanted more vacation and doesn't want to go back to school yet, about her feeling homesick for her friends, about how she didn't want to take down her fort, and about how she feels under the weather with a cold.
We both have colds.
We agreed our day will be:
~Go to Spar to load up our gas and electric cards to feed our meters.
~Relaxing bath for Viv.
~Movie with snuggling.
~Cold medicine.
So that's the plan today. No exploring.
Just this:
No comments:
Post a Comment