It rained pretty much all day today so the children were hard to entertain. I took them out on their birke to buy ice cream (what could be better on a cold day in May) but Bluebird was shut, and we degenerated into a pointless argument outside the other gelato shop when La Serpiente wanted to go in without a mask on. Then, having succeeded in making my daughter cry, we rode down past the toy shop, where she developed a haunting obsession with a three foot tall plush pineapple.
Getting home, equilibrium was restored, if not really peace. I had to go out again to pick up Destroyer’s schoolwork, so I bundled the kids into the car, drove to the school, picked them up, them drove back to the toy shop, where we had asked them to put aside some lego for us to pick up at curbside.
Of course, La Serpiente had it in her head that we were buying the pineapple (a mere bagatelle at $250) and despite me explaining to her over and over again in the car that she couldn’t have it, she wept from the shop all the way to Bluebird, refusing to compromise. Even carrying her around the streets did nothing for her mood, and it wasn’t until they got home, got Lego and got plonked in front of the screen to rewatch the movie that we had some civility.
And then it took over three hours for Destroyer to go to sleep. So all in all, a most relaxing holiday Monday.