Weeks are busy at the moment, Joni is at pre-school in the mornings, and I’m at the summer scheme, so the afternoons are juggled between taking life at two-year old level, and hoiking him around to do the grown-up errands that have to be done in order to maintain some sort of normality.
Weekends are less structured, so anything might happen and frequently does. This weekend the scouts were making a hundred dozen pastelitos which are little pastries filled with quince jelly (click on the link for recipe in Spanish or a photo in any language) to raise money for our forthcoming summer camp, so we made 30 dozen or so on Friday evening, before heading to Bible study group, which then turned into “drumming finger nails on table-top” when no-one else turned up. Saturday morning I was back at the scout HQ at 7 o’clock to put together the other 70 dozen. That’s a thousand two hundred pastelitos. No wonder we’re all sick of the sight of them.
Mid morning I was back home, Miguel arrived from his village of Porteña as usual to accompany Martin to the prison, so I prepared a swift lunch and off they went. Two o’clock I was all washed up, kiddo siesting, and I was more than ready for some down-time with the computer so I locked myself in the office. Within five minutes the house was broken into, that’s not quite correct, the house was audaciously walked into over the back wall and through the unlocked back door. I didn’t hear them for a while so they opened a lot of drawers and cupboards but didn’t actually take anything; pretty sure kids looking for cash and they didn’t find any since I only had 20 pesos (about three pounds fifty) and it was about my person. Eventually I twigged that the noises were occurring inside my house so I went to see, which I expect is what caused them to leave. Flippin dogs never squeaked, going to stop wasting money on food for them. So then there was some clearing up to do putting stuff back into the drawers etc that they’d emptied (the kids not the dogs). Hoping they were sufficiently disappointed not to return.
Next we were off to deliver pastelitos to various people who had requested them. Hot and sticky on the bike. Home, played in the plaza with Joni, followed by dunking him in the bath and bed. Left him with our favourite teenage babysitter hoorah while we went and met some friends for a quiet half.
Sunday, we set the alarm for eight-thirty to be up for church. Boy doesn’t yet know about weekends, so he went off at seven-o-seven and that was that. The alarm went off an hour and a half later to remind us of when we used to get up on those pre-Joni Sunday mornings. I was on Sunday school duty so I missed the sermon, which was mercifully short, probably for those listening as well as for those looking after the off-spring of the above. Small dramatic moment when the fan in my sunday school room burst into flames. Not sure how we’d fit that into today’s story of Abraham, probably better suited to Moses, but still, the kids enjoyed it.
Afternoon, kid slept siesta, we had an English-tv-fest. Every so often we catch up on the kind of rubbish that we wouldn’t lower ourselves to watch if we were actually in the UK. Kid woke up decided he wanted to take the dogs for a walk so that was next, blisteringly hot, didn’t stay out very long, followed by a brief turn around the plaza, on a swings, a trip to the supermarket, and then off to see some friends who have children a bit older than Joni. He has a mixed relationship with them; loves to go and see them, and then doesn’t understand why every game doesn’t always go his way; the little boy is five, isn’t yet prepared to make concessions for the stroppy two-year old on his patch. More than bed-time, threw Joni in the car, him protesting that he wasn’t tired “no sleeping”, arrived home some ten minutes later and he was begging for his bed, so that’s where he’s gone, and that’s where I’m headed. Next week starts tomorrow.