It’s Sunday morning and I find myself surrounded by seemingly bionic children. They powered up at about 7:30am, and have not let up all morning so far. We are several hours into the marathon that each day has become, and I am filtering out the mayhem to write a blog post.
My brother in law came to visit yesterday and stayed overnight - he has rapidly become a favourite with the children. They look forward to his arrival, and make tentative steps towards climbing all over him each time he comes to visit. When we get a moment to step outside of our daily adventures and look back in - as we can when he is entertaining the children - it’s interesting to see the way the children build confidence with people they like - smiles turn into nudges, then sharing toys (usually several hundred cups of pretend tea), then rough and tumble.
While I was the clear favourite in the early weeks, W has eclipsed me. We were told this would happen - through her “being there” through the school runs and sickness, the children run to her. Our early worries that the youngest wasn’t bonding with her new Mum were unfounded - she is now the unquestionable favourite, and is shadowed all day by her little charge who never stops talking.
Granted, the main topic of conversation at the moment with the youngest seems to be “that onewithout the rest of the sentence being communicated, but the smile that greets a questioning look tends to undo anybody.
So - last night my brother in law visited, and W got to escape back into the grown up world for a few hours (othewise known as the local pub). Her brother’s visits have become a welcome break for whichever of us needs it most - a trip to the pub, followed by takeaway food and a movie. Judging by the lift in W’s spirits on her return, it did the trick.
Last night’s movie choice was “The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford”. Strange movie. Unsettling. After an hour I was wondering if any story was going to unfold - but couldn’t stop watching it. Brad Pitt was his usual “12 Monkeys” self as Jesse James, and Casey Affleck was fantastically creepy as Robert Ford. It took me most of the movie to realise who the actor playing Charley Ford was (Sam Rockwell) - where I had seen him before. About an hour into the movie it suddenly came to me… Zaphod Beeblebrox.
I spent the rest of the movie expecting this 1880s gunslinger to sprout a second head and offer people Pan Galactic Gargleblasters to drink.