Mother's Day

I really only wanted one thing for Mother's Day - to sleep in till at least 8.00 am (well, that and a box of Roses chocolates). BallFiend woke us at 6.45 am. So no sleep in, but at least it wasn't a 5.30 am wake up I suppose.

Still, I did get to lie in and have a hot cup of tea and breaky in bed, many thanks to DeepSpice (although he does this for me most days, so it wasn't really a mother's-day specific thing). Then BallFiend brought me in a gift that he made at crèche - a noteholder to go on the fridge. We have now officially reached the point where the endearing-yet-truely-awful-handmade-gift-for-mum-on-mothers-day rite-of-passage begins. I remember many long weeks spent at school in Grade 2 making my mum a padded coathanger. This tasteful craft project involved:

1. collecting plastic bread bags
2. cutting bread bags into strips
3. tieing the plastic strips around a wire coathanger
   

It was a long and tedious process and I was bored-to-tears after about an hour of assembling it. Still my mum claimed she loved it... and whether this was true or not, she continued to use it for her jackets for the rest of her life. I suppose it was functional even though very unattractive.

Anyway... at 9.15 am, DesignerSis and Wigward arrived to take their nephew out to the Aquarium to see the penguins. It was weird waving goodbye to BallFiend as he drove off in another car. Apart from when he went with VolubleK after the Wedding, he has never been taken anywhere in a car without myself or DeepSpice being in the car too; and this was the first time I had ever actually watched him drive away without me.

Our child-free morning was spent industriously - planting new trees and other plants in the garden (purchased at CERES Nursery on Saturday):

• a Eucalyptus forrestiana (Fuschia Gum) to replace the E. kitsonia that died in the January 2009 heatwave;
• a Scleranthus biflorus - a groundcover in the back garden to replace a Phormium (New Zealand Flax) that didn't do well under my 'complete neglect' gardening regime. When we had the garden landscaping done, I specified only Australian native plants were to be used, but somehow four of these NZ Flax snuck in. They are water-hungry things... there are two still hanging in there.
  
• a Grevillea nudiflora (Curvy Tops) - a prostrate groundcover for the front garden;
  
• a Kennedia prostrata (Scarlet Runner, Running Postman) - another prostrate groundcover for the front garden;
• a Grevillea pteridifolia (Golden Grevillea) - another tree in the front garden... actually I had intended to get a 2m bush but didn't read the label properly so have ended up with a (potentially) 4m high tree. Hopefully it won't be too big!
• I also bought a punnet of lettuce seedlings and a punnet of spinach seedlings but ran out of time to plant these.
  

In addition, I shifted a daisy bush (to make room for the Grevillea tree) and DeepSpice put our hard rubbish out on the street ready for collection on Monday.


After gardening, we had organised to lunch at a restaurant with GrandPaul, Gran and StompyDad. We had planned to enjoy lunch unencumbered by BallFiend, but the Aquarium trip didn't take as long as I hoped expected, so BallFiend was back in time to come along.

I was concerned that he would be tired out and ready for a nap at about 1.30 pm, but he held up just fine and loved his spaghetti. So did the people at the next table who said they got a real kick out of watching him eat it, strand-by-strand, biting each one in the middle then sucking the ends in. Personally, I enjoyed watching the grandfathers, seated either side of BallFiend flinch and cry out in horror every time a bit of bolognese sauce went anywhere other than BallFiend's mouth!

Gran, DeepSpice and I shared a tapas platter and I also ordered a pasta dish but as this hadn't arrived by the time everyone had just about finished their meals, I asked the waitress to cancel the order. She was very apologetic that my meal had been missed and so didn't charge us for BallFiend's pasta as compensation. I was happy, since I had got too full on the tapas to fit the pasta in anyway!
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