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| Arya's first original Lego creation. |
I'm behind on everything at the
moment, but nowhere more shamefully than in this blog. In my defence and
against it, it's been a hell of a year so far. In February, the boiler died on
us, and that's really what's thrown me. We had a weekend living out of a hotel,
plumbers in and out, and all sorts.
So anyway; a brief catch-up
since just before Christmas:
Christmas was pretty good. Arya
was very, very excited, but was
pretty good about sharing the season. She's starting to get into the idea of
surprise presents, but... Well, with mixed results:
Mummy heads into a shop and Arya kicks off about wanting to go with her.
Me: (whispering) Arya. Mummy has gone to get Daddy Andrew's present, and
you need to distract him so he doesn't see it.
Arya climbs into the front of the car.
Andrew: What are you doing?
Arya: I just need to distract you from something.
After the whole Whamageddon
thing and my random decision to put four versions of 'Last Christmas' on the
family Christmas playlist, she went to sleep on Christmas Eve singing it to
herself, and the Google Santa tracker once more decided we were totally in the
Gulf of Guinea. We also watched Olaf's
Frozen Adventure a lot - and I mean a lot.
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| Arya's School Council Manifesto. Alas, she was not successful in her bid for office. |
On into the new year, and on
the 4th January Arya came to find me in the morning, woke me up and
asked: "Is it wake up time?" I told her it was and she said:
"Then, happy birthday, Daddy!" which was just awesome.
In February, the boiler broke
down, which wouldn't have been so bad, but the first plumber we got out not only
condemned the boiler, but also the gas fire in the living room, which he then
failed to isolate with the valve right next to it, instead switching off all the gas, leaving us with neither
heating nor the ability to cook, with a four year old and freezing weather
conditions. It also coincided with the delivery of a bunch of new shelves. Arya
was a bit fractious about the cold, and sleeping in a strange place, but all in
all she was an absolute star given that we were in and out of the flat during
the day, building shelves while she sat huddled up against the cold. It was, I
believe, as a consequence of this that her budding Sylvanian Families
collection(1) got a major boost.
The next big thing was that we
went in to London to see Wicked. Now,
honestly, we probably wouldn't have done this if not for the fact that Hanna
had already bought the non-refundable tickets by the time we knew we'd have to
replace the boiler(2), and it was a pretty daunting prospect. We were looking
at a trip in at the tail-end of the commuter rush, a fairly packed schedule of
Londoning, lunch, theatre, dinner, and then to a hotel. The Londoning was
pretty good, although we did get tied up in the big Disney store as Arya looked
for something she fancied and Hanna tried to steer her away from anything we'd
already got her for her birthday, and I think Hanna had fun introducing Arya to
her erstwhile local toyshop, Hamley's.
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| Theatre clothes. |
I had a bad moment in Hamley's.
I was watching Arya while Hanna was at the checkout and Andrew was looking
after our stuff by the doors. I'd got clipped in the head by a stunt glider
someone was demonstrating, so I was a bit twitchy about the thing still flitting
around. It zipped close to me again, I got distracted for like a second, and
then Arya wasn't there. She'd run off to join Hanna at the checkout, but for a
moment I was sure I'd managed to lose my daughter in London and I was terrified. Other than that, Arya was
great about London, despite being very, very tired. One of the things we got in
Hamley's was a ride-on suitcase for her to sit on as we pottered around the
city, and she loved that.
At the theatre we hit a few
problems, as the door staff didn't want to let us in with our big bag. Now,
this would have been a fair cop, but the way they handled it was shitty. First,
they told us that there wasn't a cloakroom, which there was. Then they told us
that it was too big - again, fair cop - but that the nearly-identical bag that
another guy had was fine. Called on this, they insisted that we couldn't put
our bag in the cloakroom because it had wheels and was therefore a suitcase.
Basically, I think that the queue guy made a clumsy attempt to deflect us from
trying to bring the bags in, and the rest of the door staff tried to double
down on that because they thought we wouldn't make a fuss.
They were wrong. Hanna
complained to the floor manager, who agreed that, yes, wheels was a rubbish
reason for Andrew to have to dash to Victoria to use their cloakroom. I don't
know what came of it internally, but we go free ice creams, so that was nice.
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| Best princess. |
Through all of this, Arya was a
trouper, and then came the show and she was enraptured. It was very much her
idea to see Wicked, having learned
about it through Julie's Green Room,
and she'd been insistent that she wanted to see Wicked and not anything else(3). Despite some concerns, she loved it, was pretty solid on her
audience etiquette, and really seemed to get what was going on. She sort of
missed that Glinda was at first a rather spoiled and unpleasant character, but
she absolutely recognised that Elphaba wasn't really 'Wicked', despite not
wearing a sparkly dress.
As an aside, we were talking
about The Wizard of Oz, and Arya was
reminding us that there was a good witch and a wicked witch. We questioned if
the Wicked Witch was really wicked, and reminded her of Wicked, but she immediately responded: "But that's not The Wizard of Oz, it's Wicked," which is some next level
metafictional awareness for a five-year-old.
After the show, Hanna took Arya
to look at the orchestra pit, and they had a chat with the conductor, which was
nice. Then we went to dinner which... Well, I ought to note that lunch had
already been problematic - it took ages to arrive, and was cold - and dinner
again took ages, and was wrong, in that Arya got gluteny food despite a
particular request for gluten free, and had to wait to get something else, by
which time she was tired and hungry and grumpy. Overnight she had aching legs,
and Andrew got MVP of the outing for going out into the night to buy some
Calpol.
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| "I got so big, so fast!" (Actual quote.) |
So, that was a pretty
high-stress outing, but well worth it. Arya wants to go and see Wicked again, but I think this is going
to be a once a year thing.
Not long after, we hit Hanna's
birthday, and we went down to the Warner Brothers studios for the Harry Potter
tour. Arya wanted to be a little quicker around the tour than Mummy, but there
was plenty that she loved: The dresses, the greenscreen broomstick photos, the
self-stirring pots, the butterbeer ice cream. It was a very long day for Arya -
pretty long for all of us - but she was not at all bad about it.
And of course, a week after
that it was Arya's birthday, and a few days before her party we found out that
the cake-maker(4) had gastroenteritis and couldn't provide her cake. Hanna
pulled out all the stops and she and Andrew - I did my best to help, but came
down with a cold that afflicted us all at precisely the worst time - created a
magnificent Wicked cake, as well as a full spread of gluten- and dairy-free(5)
snacks, cakes and what-nots for the party. It seems to have been a very
successful party, although I flaked on it due to illness. Arya was also very
pleased with her presents, including a bunch more Sylvanian Families and the
fairly last-minute addition of the Lego Dimensions Wicked Witch of the West.
So, that's been our winter. I
don't have as many photos because we've been using Hanna's DSLR rather than our
phones, but it's been a good time. Arya makes every bathtime a struggle, but is
- I hope - slowly coming around to the idea that 'Daddy can I have a hug' is a
better way to get attention than messing around until someone shouts at her.
(1) In no way an expression of
Hanna's thwarted desire to collect Sylvanian Families as a child.
(2) And the shower.
(3) Say, something recommended
for children younger than seven.
(4) Arya's old nursery teacher.
(5) So that her best friend
could eat everything as well.
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