Today, Auri and I had An Adventure Day, featuring buses, a bank, a museum and art gallery (including a Highland Cow treasure hunt!), a trip to campus, and coffee and croissants. A tiny, tiny part of me thought Auri might actually be worn out tonight and go to bed on time, but no.
Lydia
I have noticed (note-iced?!) these last few days, since I have had time to think (Auri-juggling, though exhausting and challenging at times, is nowhere near as constantly intensive as looking after Elfi every minute of the day), that my notebook is becoming more and more full of fresh ideas and scattered with observations. Previously, though I used a notebook almost daily, the content would be leaning towards lists: things to do, things I hope to do. Now it has a different flavour.
It’s strange how easy it becomes to assume, when you’re lost in the midst of the parenting jungle, that certain energies and abilities to process certain ideas might be lost forever when, really, they’re just lying dormant, like plants waiting for spring.
Today, we had one of those lazy family walks which turned into a two-hour ramble. Auri kept saying, “I’m having too much fun!” and Elfi kept laughing and chattering away. The promised showers hadn’t really come to anything, and it was still, warm and calm. We are in peak mushroom season right now, with several varieties popping up in different parts of the woods. Auri knows not to touch any, as I’m not confident enough in my identification, but keeps reminding me that our friend Daša knows which ones we can collect and eat so she’ll be doing that with her one of these days.
The recent rain (three afternoons of thunderstorms, two accompanied by deluges, breaking the heat) has turned the first of the paths through the woods into a broom jungle, the sheer weight of all the water pushing down the whips and closing off the way forward. We picked our way through yesterday, and pruned a few lost branches today.
Auri loves the broom. Whenever we go for a walk, she presents Elfi and me with handfuls of the petals.