Life's a picnic

I have discovered something very much like a Jaffa Cake in our local supermarket, and I think I might just be about to eat half a packet in one sitting. This is good, but also bad.

This morning, while Monkey cavorted in shaving foam and frolicked under lawn sprinklers with his classmates, I had wanted to do something special with Mabel. Or at least something we wouldn't get the chance to do again all summer, now that we'll have Monkey with us all morning every morning (playdates, as yet unarranged, excepted). In the end, I spent a while taking photos of the kids' water day, and then we had to go home because we'd forgotten Mabel's shoes. (Yes, I know. But sometimes I put her in the car and chuck the shoes in separately, because she so often kicks them off on the way anyway. So rather than put them on twice, I just put them on when we get to wherever we're going. This morning, busy remembering hats and sunscreen and a towel, I forgot the vital second step.) So instead of sharing a mother/daughter cupcake in Starbucks or trawling the racks in Marshalls for something I can wear in the lovely 100 F temperatures we're having now (something that's only just possible with one and pretty much impossible with both), we went to the Teddy Bears' Picnic.

The picnic is an annual event held by the local library to kick off their summer reading program. Somehow we'd never gone before, even though I'd heard about it every year. It turned out to be a supersize story time, with snacks at the end to entice listeners. All the kids brought a teddy - or a baby (Mabel), or a stoat (her friend), or whatever - and at the end we paraded around the room three times to the strains of the eponymous song.

I've mentioned before how our local library's storytime isn't my favourite. This was much the same, only On Crack. Let's just say that the five librarians, enthusiastically clad in their orange t-shirts, were a bit more reminiscent of the Munsters than Jackanory. Still. We saw some friends, ate some snacks (amazing how not one of the little packages of crackers and cookies was devoid of HFCS, but at least the juice was real), and pointed to our heads, shoulders, knees, and toes as required.

And then we went and got Monkey from school, and now the long, long summer stretches out in front of us, and every time I consider doing anything tomorrow (laundry, shopping, sitting down) it's tempered by the realization that I probably won't be able to without breaking up a fight or calming down craziness every five seconds.

I'm really going to have to up my game a bit, aren't I?

Monkey, shaving foam, you get the idea