Saturday, June 12, 2010

• Time to just hang out with my sister, talking about the family, and what she will call her baby.


• Becca's joy at seeing her Aunty Ruth: she arrives home from school with a big expectant grin and on seeing R, flings herself into her arms.


• Ruth and Becca look through the photo album her nana gave her for her fifth birthday; it contains pictures of her family on both sides, going back three generations.


• Becca is overjoyed with the dresser, desk and bookshelf from the shipment of family furniture Jack's dad bring back from Berlin. Aren't I a lucky girl? she says to Aunty C on the phone.

I'm putting this blog on hiatus for a bit while I pursue other projects. I'll still be tweeting, though – here's my page – and posting pictures to my Flickr page. Back in a bit!

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

• Forgetting the time while I play with Noteworthy.


• Going down the bouncy slide with Maggie.


• Chipmunks, the indoor playground in Tawa, still makes the best coffee in Wellington.

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Tuesday, June 08, 2010

• In the bitter cold, under murky skies, Becca arrives home singing, pink-cheeked in her puffy blue jacket, pink hat with flaps and the purple and white scarf I knitted her.


• Making a perfect batch of gingernuts. Edmonds Cookbook recipe, but in our thermonucular oven, cooking time reduced from 25 mins to eight.


• I put an extra quilt over Maggie as she sleeps; it's the Kiwiana one Margaret Robinson made for her to welcome her into the world.

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Monday, June 07, 2010

• Sarah gets up a posse to go to Te Papa. With kids left, right and centre, we move from place to place in a sort of noisy, stop-start Brownian motion.


• Stretchy frogs and butterflies that cling to things when you throw them; the living room ceiling is festooned.


• Maire, watching Maggie marauding about, suddenly exclaims She's so PRETTY!

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Sunday, June 06, 2010

• Playing 'Stormy Weather' on the violin.


• A visit from Sarah, now based in the UK with her English husband and family. We've both had our second babies since we last saw each other five years ago in London. Ellie's just a little older than Maggie, who sizes her up cautiously. Brian drops in too with his girls, eight and nine, and Sarah, who hasn't seen him in a decade, boggles.


• Getting the jump on the house cleaning so I can doss off on Tuesday when the kids go back to crèche and school.

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Saturday, June 05, 2010

• Billie Holiday singing 'Stormy Weather'.


• Vogels toast with avocado.


• The way Maggie's little denim dress brings out the auburn in her hair.

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Friday, June 04, 2010

• Maggie and I make gingerbread with the new Maisy kit that Auntie Ryoko sent for her birthday, which includes cookie cutters shaped like Maisy, Charley, and Cyril the Squirrel.


• Maggie reads Maisy Makes Gingerbread, her current favourite story. She's word perfect.


• She sleeps for two hours, and so do I.


• True Blood is surprisingly compelling: vampires for grownups.


• Maggie is so excited by the awesomeness of her new Maisy lunchbox that she can't wait to get to crèche to show it off to her friends.


• J's getting tattooed in Paekak, so Becca and I go for a jaunt up the coast to get out of the Wellington rain. As we drive up SH1, mist lies across the hills like skeins of wool with the sun burning them off one by one.


• Sitting on a rock scribbling in my notebook while Becca capers about on the beach collecting shells and building a driftwood fortress.

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