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Emma is four
In May, Emma's birthday came up. She had been counting down to it. In the morning they opened the
presents. Like her brother, she wanted a party, something we had managed to go without for Piet's fourth birthday. The theme was
Mike the Knight, a children's cartoon about a young knight who goes on knightly missions to do a good deed. We had the party at Clontarf reserve, which has a playground, harbour shore and picnic tables. Together with sunny weather, that is all you need for a good party.
When the first friend arrived, we rolled up our trouser legs and ran about. When all friends had arrived, we blew out the candle and cut the cake. We did a little knightly mission with the troop,which lead to hidden gingerbread cookies, and that was it. After lots of fun playing with friends, we came home to open up our presents and play with them.
There was a lot of secrecy in the run-up to mothers day: "do not look under my bed, mum". Piet proposed to get up at five o'clock for the preparations, but dad managed to bargain this up to six. In the morning, the kids got their presents out and got dressed. Piet has been dressing himself for ages, but for Emma this was new; Piet apparently helped her. Then dad was called and a breakfast for mum prepared: yoghurt with muesli and fresh fruit and a cup of hot water with lemon (in fact, her usual breakfast). This was brought up on a oven tray selected by Piet. Mum was delighted with the drawings and bookmark made at school, pre-school and Dutch school.
Pony ride with Katy
In the afternoon, mum took the kids for a pony-ride with Katy and her mum. This was our birthday present for Emma - at least something that does not need to be stored in a cupboard or tidied up at the end of the day. The kids started by burning of some excess energy in a
gallop and proceeded to mount the
ponies. Katy had a
good time and so did
Emma. Piet, who is rather hesitant about animals, especially dogs, had no qualms about patting the ponies and happily went for a ride as well. Emma was even brave enough to feed the pony some
carrots.
Lunches
Every weekday, Piet takes a packed lunch to school, while Emma takes her lunch on the days she goes to pre-school (Thursday and Friday). There are a few rules: no nuts or sweets. So
this day, they got peeled and cut mandarin parts for munch break (that's in the morning), salami (Piet) and ham (Emma) sandwiches for lunch and biscuits with cheese for snack (that's in the afternoon), all packed in their own marked container. On top of that, they bring their water bottles, sun hats, sheet (for resting, Emma) and school library reading books (Piet), so no wonder that parents end up carrying the odd school rucksack.
One day, Piet watched Emma doing some Dutch craft consisting of punching little holes along a the edge of a picture. After punching holes along all edges and maybe colouring in the picture, it is possible to tear it off. Piet commented:
Emma, I'm so proud of you. If you finish that, I'll give you ten stickers."
After seven weeks trying to cope without a car - we only rented one on four occasions - we finally got our car back. As it is a European brand, the garage had difficulty ordering an essential part. It was a great relief to mum and just in time for our short camping trip. The kids went to swimming in the morning and in the early afternoon, we were on our way to Dharug national park on the Hawkesbury river, just north of Sydney.
The national parks camping grounds are basic. There are toilets, but no running water. However, there are fire places, so after mounting the camper trailer, we lit a fire and played to our hearts content. We roasted some boerewors and before seven the kids asked to go to bed. Although we had deliberately avoided going into the Blue Mountains and were still at sea level, it cooled down to close to freezing during the night. This posed a problem when the kids wanted to get up at six and had to change out of their pyjamas - the freezing cold scared them so much it took us a ride in the car to warm them up and calm them down. For breakfast we had warm pancakes and a warm campfire. After the sun had come out properly, we had a nice walk in the surrounding bush.
This week, Piet's school went to winter uniforms, meaning that boys need to wear their long, checkered trousers and girls their checkered dress with stockings. Before this week, that was all optional. Piet did not want to pose in his winter uniform, but dad sneaked in a shot anyway.
After school, mum drove the kids with their bikes to a park, where, for the first time, both rode their bikes without training wheels. We had not been able to practice this properly much for lack of flat parks at walking distance. The main practice had been riding on the footpath (pavement) to a lookout at the end of our street. In the park, Piet and Emma showed they are able to ride fairly well, provided Emma keeps looking in front of her...
At preschool, Debbie tried to get Emma to write het name with a lowercase 'a', with little success. Debbie asked: "don't you want to practice your little 'a' for when you go to school? to which Emma replied:
No, I'll learn that when I go to school."
