Thunderstorm

When I was growing-up, or, at least, according to my memory of that time, Sydney summer days often followed the rather liveable pattern of a hot, humid day followed by a dramatic and refreshing thunderstorm in the afternoon. Recent summers have not been so forgiving and the nights have been just as hard to live through as the days. Today, however, was of the old-fashioned sort and not long after Tigerlily, Wolfie and I arrived home from post-school shopping, we were treated to a rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning ("I wonder if we'll see 'sheep lightning' Daddy?" said Tiger).

The four of us stood on the front porch and watched the sheets of water fall on the road and the people running umbrella'less down the street. 

"I feel like dancing in the rain." I said to Tigerlily who regarded me nervously, clearly not sure what I was suggesting.

She paddled a little in the puddle that was forming near our front gate and I said, 

"Take your shoes off honey, we don't want them to be all soggy when we run around in the rain." She giggled. 

I kicked off my own shoes and ran out onto the footpath with Tiger close behind. We jumped around like idiots, laughing and doing a rather silly jig for no particular reason. As it turned out, it was really cold in the rain so we only danced about for a short while before heading back inside but first I convinced her to let me take some photos:

"Oh my goodness Mama, my uniform is very, very

wet..."

"I'm trying to smile but my teeth are

actually chattering Mama."

"Honestly, this isn't very much fun

anymore..."

"Enough with the photos, let me go inside Mama!!"

All this torture in the name of DIRM!

Recently I realised that we had all somehow overlooked Tigerlily's homework for many, many weeks. As she is in Kindergarten, there was not much expected of her but each week she is meant to do a page in her 'Letter Book' thingy which involves drawing pictures beginning with the letter for the week and sticking in pictures from magazines and the like. We have been so busy that somehow we had neglected to do Q, X, and Y and so almost all of Sunday was spent in our sweltering kitchen playing catch-up. I realised that we have been equally neglectful of the 'News' topics that she is assigned each week so, in an attempt to be more responsible on this front too, I told Tiger that we would definitely be spending our afternoon preparing her news. I had not noticed that the topic this week was "Make a puppet from found materials." Oh good, so glad I did not read this until this afternoon. 

Tigerlily decided that she wanted to make a fairy puppet. She also decided that she wanted it to be a hand-puppet (as opposed to one on a stick). We've been keeping a box of old paper, stickers and other craft materials for years; we put in particularly nice wrapping-paper from presents, particularly pretty cards, and bits of ribbon and whatnot that Tiger finds about the place. She went and grabbed this box and immediately began making a dress for her fairy. I suggested that she might like to make a body for the dress to go on and we struck upon the idea of using my coffee cup from this morning's (rather delicious) coffee. Some pipe-cleaners, a ping-pong ball, some cardboard, ribbon and glue and "Chloe the Garden Fairy" was born:

 Tigerlily decided that, as she is a 'garden fairy', she

needed to have green hair. The little butterfly on her

shoulder is named 'Rosie' (like everything else in Tiger's

universe). Her rather long neck is a rolled-up piece of

cardboard from a nurofen box. She even has purple 

cellophane wings but they aren't clear in these pics.

After she was finished, and because (quite by accident)

it turns out that she sits rather nicely on the edge

of things, Tigerlily decided that she needed a couch 

to sit on. Daddy helped her wrap an old biscuit box

in pretty paper and Tiger stuck gold and lavender 

squares all over it as the 'cushions'.

I think she looks rather nervous at

the proximity of those scissors...