Day 77

After the epic astronomy movie night last night, Stormy and I both sleep in. As I’m coming awake, I roll over to check the time. Slowly the synapses in my brain connect the time with the plan for today. As that connection is made there is a rapid realisation that we’re nearly late and I am suddenly very awake. I wake Stormy and remind her that we need to hurry or we’ll miss her school sports carnival. She tells me that she doesn’t want to go. That she wants to go to her weekly Sportsball class instead. I get the impression that she’s choosing the familiar rather than actually wanting Sportsball. I remind her about all her friends being there and she reluctantly agrees. We rush breakfast and hop in a taxi.

Despite the rain, and hurried move to the indoor arena, the sports carnival is a lot of fun. She is given a card to get stamps on for each of the activities. Taking after her father, Stormy is a completionist, so she runs around doing everything. Tug-of-war, egg and spoon, sack race and multiple throwing games. She even gets involved in the inter-campus soccer match. At the end of the carnival she runs into her best friend, Kian, and so they run around together. I mean that literally. I don’t think they stop running for more than 1 minute at a time.

At this point I’m trying to decide what to do with the next 4 hours. The time between the end of the carnival and her friend’s birthday party. I ask Kian if he’d like to join Stormy and I for lunch and a movie. He, and his parents obviously, agrees.

We arrive an hour before the movie, however the strategic placement of a toy store in line of sight of the mall entrance means that we lose that hour very quickly. Given I need to buy a birthday present for the party this afternoon, it’s a convenient distraction, but it takes forever to get the two of them out. Lunch time and, while I encourage them to eat any else for lunch, McDonalds is the only choice that they are willing to entertain. Given the rapidly approaching movie I agree. We watch the movie, Boss Baby, and the little ones like it. It’s the kind of movie that’s fun on the surface but if you apply any form of critical thought it becomes really, really disturbing.

We drop Kian off after the movie and head for the birthday party. The birthday girl’s parents have arranged face painting and balloon animals. I’m incredibly proud of my daughter when she asks the balloon man for a crocodile. Sadly he can’t make that. He also can’t make a shark. So she gets a fish. The facepainter is brilliant and does her up as a butterfly and later paints Rarity on her arm. It’s pretty impressive so I get her card for Stormy’s next birthday. We have dinner at the party before scooting home.

When we get home Stormy is still a little hungry so I ask her what she wants. She thinks for a second and answers “I want Mango. Mango is in my brain. You can’t make me think of something else.” I can’t think of a response for a few seconds so she explains. “That means I really want Mango”. Got it.

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