A point-blank blast of bubbles to the face

Genevieve headed off to school for another day of learning whilst James was off to Grandma Margaret and Grandad Stephen’s for more grandparental shenanigans.

James’s day started off with a wander around the park with Tizzy the dog. He was keen to spot and point out the wildlife as he went, but he wasn’t such a fan of the overgrown sections of the path.

Once back to their house, James helped Grandad make bread and butter pudding. He ate a lot of raisins and brioche bun during the making process, but there was still just about enough for Grandma and Grandad to eat once it had been cooked. Yummy!

James had Grandad’s homemade plum jam in sandwiches for lunch followed by Grandad’s special flapjacks for pudding – he’s a big fan of homemade treats!

Megan arrived home from work and then headed out to collect Genevieve from school. In anticipation of Genevieve’s return, I ran a bath with an abundance of bubbles. You can’t have a bath unless it’s full to the brim with bubbles! Megan took this as an opportunity to start being silly (!) resulting in a bubble fight between her and Genevieve. The floor was very wet by the end of it, as was Megan! Genevieve even got Megan with a point-blank blast of bubbles to the face. Great fun!

Genevieve came down to help choose her jacket potato for dinner. There’s a golden rule when it comes to food and siblings – she wanted to make absolutely sure that her potato was bigger than James’s one. The kitchen scales were needed for this particular task – Genevieve was only happy once we’d weighed her potato as 285g vs. James’s paltry 270g.

Genevieve brought home a drawing from school – apparently it’s a doctor shark. There were no further details provided to explain why she’d drawn an aquatic medical practitioner – I suspect we’ll never know.

Having learned how to do so yesterday, Genevieve began making paper planes but moaned about them not flying straight. I highlighted that her folds needed to be a bit straighter and crisper, after which I delivered an impromptu origami lesson about folding best practice. This meant that I got to show off the origami skills I was taught by Great Grandma Olive and Great Grandpa Jim back when I was very young indeed! In fact, I’ve still got the origami book they gave me to learn from somewhere (and it was already ancient by that point). I’ll have to dig it out for the kids!

Instead of using her new skills on more planes, Genevieve put them to use by making some paper fortune tellers. The Halloween themed fortune teller suggested that my costume this year will be extra smelly – good to know.

At this point her focus started to dwindle and she began showing me the arm-farts she’s been taught by someone at school. Delightful. Being the grown-up and mature man that I am, I suggested that we slow-mo record her blowing raspberries. I have to say that the results were top-notch.

Just before james arrived home, I took Genevieve to see the friendly neighbourhood monkey. Today was his 100th day entertaining the locals – that’s a very good innings. Apparently he’ll be retiring soon – he’s been an utter delight to have around and will be sorely missed.

With James back home, we fed the kids dinner (and James didn’t even notice his marginally smaller potato). I was starting to feel awful again at this point so Megan did the bedtime routine. While the kids were settling I decided to crack open and almost inhale a bottle of wine – not the smartest of ideas but I was already feeling dire. Coronavirus – you continue to be an absolute pig.

With the kids finally calm we tucked into our own jacket potatoes (and no, we hadn’t measured whose was biggest). We’re several months behind the trend, but we finally started watching Tiger King as we started eating dinner. It really is terrible but amazing at the same time! We’re already hooked.

We then went to bed, but having just dropped off, I was soon woken up by James crying. He’d had a nightmare and just wouldn’t settle. In the interest of getting even a tiny bit of sleep, rather than flitting back and forth from my actual bed, I ended up sleeping on James’s floor to keep him calm and quiet. Not the best night’s sleep ever, but it did the trick.