We arrived home 9 days ago after our, very warm, sojourn in Baltimore to the chill of an Australian winter and the heat of an 8 day visit from Max with his mother, Beck, in tow! Max is a one-man whirl-wind, a bundle of energy and curiosity, precocious in his ability to inquire and mix with others, and amazingly worldly wise. So the visit was simultaneously tiring and inspiring, with a lot of the burden falling on Dot.
Beck, herself, was here to attend a residential school for one of the units in the Mater of Natural Resource Management program she is taking part-time. As a result, she spent 6 working days at UNE, three of which were a field trip into the coal mines of the Hunter Valley. I was also committed to various meetings at the university, which left Dot to amuse Max. Fortunately, it was school holidays and various events were conducted in nearby shopping centres to amuse the kids of working parents, and Max spent quite a while modelling with play-dough. Fortunately, too, the weather was mostly fine and he frequented various parks with their play equipment. He also spent quite a while watering the garden (and the house), but not the cats who had the good sense to steer clear.
And, of course, we had to buy him toys, scoring two Leggo kits, one a transformer with a million small bits to put together and another humanoid. He has this fascination with robots and strange beings, not to mention dinosaurs. So I spent a lot of time assembling Leggo - one set we bought was for 7 year olds which he couldn't assemble but had heaps of fun using once I had done the job.
Now the house is deathly quiet and the cats have come in !! I think I'd rather have Max around.
AS
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