Saturday diary

Day 3 - An exercise in recording a week in my mothering life.
Hooray! Lovergirl has the whole weekend off! It's such a wonderful luxury to have a 1:1 adult:child ratio.

Today we went to the local primary school fete. Amazingly, it was a hoot. Everything is so much more fun when you have a couple of small beings looking about as if they have just be dropped into some extraordinary fun park every time you take them somewhere new.

We bought:

• an inflatable swimming pool in the shape of a train ($3)
• a pull along trolley filled with plastic building blocks ($3)
• a fluffy kangaroo with a removable joey-on-a-string in its pocket ($1)
• a wooden board with removable letters of the alphabet ($2)
• a fairy cake (L), a brownie (me) and some watermelon (babies, poor things!)
• 3 singlets, two tops, a little tracksuit, a green dress and a bright striped t-shirt, all for the small people ($5.25 the lot - it actually added up to $6.50 but that was all I had left in my wallet!)

The babies danced to the local community choir singing world music, were stunned by the high school heavy metal band with its gaggle of admiring teenage girls, and Louis made friends with a large Indian woman in an orange sari, returning again and again to pat her on the leg and request attention.

This evening we attempted our first evening meal out with the babies and went out to a Chinese restaurant for a special Mother's Day adventure with Granny. All in all, I would consider it a success. We arrived at six, distributed steamed rice across three dining tables and the associated carpet, and were gone by seven. Apart from the outrageous mess, they really weren't too bad - no high pitched screaming, which was my main concern. It's really a matter of constant entertainment - when the food ceased to be attractive, having a couple of books, a toy mobile phone and some crayons and paper to hand kept them reasonably docile. Also, it was one of those fantastic Chinese restaurants with the enormous fish tanks filled with our prospective meals, so that was wonderfully diverting. Choosing Chinese was deliberate - Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants seem to be tolerant of children in a way that I wouldn't imagine possible in a more sophisticated environment. I think if the tablecloth is plastic, it's a good sign, child-wise. Our first dinner out in seventeen months - the world is opening up for us! Maybe we'll try a counter meal next.