The final countdown

Having complained bitterly about the terrible burden of the school holidays, here we are in the last week and I am going to miss the little munchkins when they go back to school.

Especially as it is the first year of real school for the youngest.  I am used to having her poddling around after me several days a week.  Aside from her other charms, she acts as a delicious-food-alarm system.  If you go past anything mildly delicious like a bakery, she announces she is hungry on the off-chance I will have a brain sneeze and nip in and buy her a sticky bun.  Then she would have the double pleasure of eating a sticky bun and telling her sister about it afterwards.  You have to love an optimist.

I have also enjoyed spending lots of time with the oldest monster.  It is not the same when she is at school.  It is lovely that this is the first school holidays she has really enjoyed the fruits of her emerging literacy.  She has been writing birthday lists, reading the shopping list to check for delicious things and reading up a storm with her books.  It is amazing how quickly she has gone from just having the confidence to read 8-words-per-page books on her own to chapter books with a hundred or so words per page.

Just in case you haven't seen the theme emerging, both monsters are obsessed with the idea that they should eat more sweet food.  We are about to make a chocolate cake as a last-of-the-school holidays special event so heaven is approaching. 

Further, the eldest monster has taken the giant leap to choosing a chocolate cake with orange butter cream rather than a decorated kids cake for her birthday in 6 weeks time.  This means no making eyes from marshmallow and licorice for me, and the cake will taste nice rather than look pretty.  It is theoretically possible to make a delicious cake decorated as, say, a beetle but if I am going to spend several hours decorating the bloody thing, the inside will be packet cake (gluten free at that).  Think compounded wood shavings with pink icing. 

Heavens no.  Mine won't look this good.

 
So there are two cakes on the girl's near horizons.  It is bliss around here sometimes.

The girls have definitely gotten into the holiday groove.  They are rotating through their toys, spending a surprisingly small amount of time fighting with each other, getting on well with other kids, and particularly enjoying being regularly dunked into bodies of water.

It just won't be the same having tired, grumpy, "I can't remember what I did at school today" girls.