Three days without the children. I had plans, great plans. I would finish off all the articles due this week, bring myself ahead with the stuff due next week, lay the ground for my pet business project and even enter a couple of crafting challenges.
Ha. I should have known better. The commute, which I had forgotten all about in the last few months, turned my short consultancy day in the office into ten good hours out and about. Add to this errands to run, the laundry that was piling up and needed doing, shopping for groceries, catching up with the post, going to the bank…and I have barely had time to finish the pieces due in this week.
Which means that next week I’ll have to work on whatever pieces are due, and that my pet project and crafting remain a chimera.
Oh well, at least I got to snap a fuzzy but lovely picture of Caterina trying to figure out where her mummy’s voice was coming from (the answer is IChat, but she wouldn’t understand).
Caterina and her papa
More than the Summer of Fun, this should have been dubbed the Summer of Frantic. Because that’s how the last couple of weeks have been for me—having a baby and three boys aged three to five under the same roof kind of does that to you, even when there are two more adults to share the work with. Throw into the mix a hefty dose of homeschooling (in preparation for ‘grown-up’ school starting in September), a new gig (I have started writing about property and travel for Italymag.co.uk, whey-hey!) and Niccolo’s birthday party (with another bunch of preschool boys all slaying a dragon with inflatable swords) and I am actually surprised I am still alive.
Birthday boy
On the obstacle course (aka knights’ training camp) part 1
On the obstacle course part 2
Slaying the enemy
I am also surprised Caterina is still alive. Brotherly love (and cousinly love) can be a bit destructive when the givers are young, boisterous boys and the receiver is a helpless baby girl—hugs tend to resembles wrestling moves.
Caterina: surviving against all odds
Despite having had to grow eyes at the back of my head though, I have been more crafty over the last few weeks than the previous months put together—except that I was engaged in rather different activities than my usual vintage-infused collages. Instead, I put together cardboard swords and daggers (times three, at least twice a day), toilet-roll rockets and even a dragon pinata (made of tissue paper so it could be broken with the inflatable swords and shower my little knights with sweets and small presents). When I was not running around fetching water (for watercolour painting), collecting broken pieces of crayon (for wax resist painting) and admiring the production of “a Ferrari submarine underwater” (by both my son and my nephew—however did they come up with that?).
The infamous dragon pinata
Crafty kids
But I had oodles of fun, and am happy to announce that I have discovered one craft that, above all others, will keep the kids engaged for at least 15 minutes, and smug for at least a week—draw your own t-shirt. I gave them fabric markers and three cheapo vests and they came up with their own (somewhat colourful) designs. Then I set them with the iron, and they have been proudly wearing their creations ever since.
