On Fire

Not too much to tell this past week. I got hit by the flu truck and spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday resting, recovering and essentially being a big sook. During that time Kylie looked after the children and I. And I laid in bed or on the lounge. Hmmmm. I told you it was a quiet week.

I was finally back to it on Friday, and put in a reasonable day at uni. We enjoyed a lovely dinner with some friends that evening. And when we awoke on Saturday morning Kylie suggested that she was feeling a little unwell. Oh no! There’s no way I could do everything Kylie does. In order to nip it in the bud, I took the children out for the day. We left around 9am and returned just after 2pm.

First stop was Ella’s preschool, where I spent a little over an hour weeding “the jungle”. The children played and had loads of fun. Ella painted – mostly on her hands, face, and clothes! Then I took them down to the harbour. It is so beautiful there. We walked along the pier, with Ella flirting dangerously close to the precipice all the way along. That girl scares me so much! My nerves were frazzled by the time we got a safe distance from the water.

As we headed off to do some exploring, Ella came running to me holding her hands out. She had been playing with something brown and gooey. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I had my suspicions. And I wasn’t going to let her touch me with THAT on her hands. We walked to the boat ramp and Ella used the sand to wash her hands. Rinsing them off was a challenge, and as you might expect, Ella ended up a lot more wet than she should have. She splashed through the waves as they raced up the sand beside the ramp! At least her hands were clean. A bit of anti-bacterial gel and we were back in business.

We climbed to the top of a huge, grassy hill. The girls rolled down, giggling and squealing delightedly. Ella chose to join the fun, but from a different starting point. She laid down in the scattered grass clippings instead of the clean grassy patch that Chanel and Abbie had begun their downward journey.

An hour later and after a few tantrums, Ella was finally in the car with the other girls and we were off to buy some lunch. I couldn’t decide on which fish and chips shop, and ended up making a very bad choice.

The kids had a quiet afternoon at home while I prepared dinner with Kylie. Then, just as dinner was being served, Ella came into the kitchen saying “Sorry” and holding out her finger telling us it was burnt. We thought she must have burned her finger on the gas heater. We were trying to kiss it better when…

we smelled something…

It was in the lounge room...

And it smelled toxic.

FIRE!

Ella had put her little foam lounge chair over the top of the heater. It was burning and filling the house with toxic fumes. Kylie raced outside with the chair while I turned off the heater and ran around the house opening doors and windows. It was icy cold as the breeze began to remove the smoke and smell. Dinner got cold. But Ella was safe, and so was the house. Phew! What a day.

Just as the children were fading off to sleep, the phone rang. It was one of the members of the bishopric from church. He had to race off to Launceston in Tasmania and couldn’t give his talk in church. Would I give one instead?

So I spent a couple of hours putting together a 20 minute “sermon” before finally collapsing into bed a little before midnight (You can read it in the blog post below).

Today it’s Sunday. The talk went well. We had a terrific day at church. This afternoon we had pasta for lunch and I took all four kids for a 2 hour walk. It was terrific. As I contemplated the way we walked I chuckled at what it said about the children’s personalities.

Out in front by at least 100m was Ella. She is 100 mph all the time. And she runs her own race. Half an hour after I observed her forging the path ahead, she was lagging behind smelling flowers in people’s yards.

Chanel pushed the pram with Annie. She is the organiser, the protector, and the responsible one. We see it in everything she does.

Abbie was content to walk beside me, holding my hand. She is the soft, compassionate, caring child. And Abbie loves to be with people, and to feel safe and protected.

Of course all of the children possess these attributes and we see them at various times, but it was illustrative to consider their behaviour as we walked in the broader context of their characters.

After walking up and down 3 klms of some of Wollongong’s steepest hills Kylie picked us up so we didn’t have to traipse home. And another week has vanished, leaving us to remember the joy of last week, look forward to the possibilities of a new week, and extract every bit of experience out of the moment we’re now in.