A Fine Afternoon
This is just a pleasant ramble about Abigail and I having a good afternoon.
Last week, I picked Abigail up from school and she wanted to go to Yaoya-san, a local Japanese grocery store. We had an absolute blast finding fun foods for dinner. She picked the required foods for dinner, then her “for fun” foods. We had a magic moment when we were deciding which “fun” food I’d get. I let Abigail pick: I took the pint of red bean paste ice cream and the kilo of tapioca balls behind my back and she got to pick which hand. Tapioca won!
We got home and we cleaned up a little before Megan got home. We put away some of the beautiful home-made soaps we had made as holiday gifts. Some soaps went into our own “gonna use” pile, some, we realized, still had to get to their giftees, and some went into the “pre-emptive gifts” pile! You might get one of our soaps!
I started cooking up some tapioca balls for milk-tea. (I had never made milk-tea but how hard could be be, right? Foreshadowing!)
I started making dinner, then Megan and Abigail finished it. It was a super-yummie “Creamy Dreamy Mushroom Cavatappi with Scallions & Parmesan” recipe from Hello Fresh that made us all “mmmm” with delight!
After some chilling and washing dishes, I sat down with Abigail who was watching this very charismatic Minecraft Youtuber, “aCookieGod”. It was really pleasant! I gave the milk-tea a try. What should be in it? How about… umm, milk… and tea… and tapioca balls? Ding Ding Ding! It was so simple and good! Abigail’s suggestion of adding some brown sugar was a winner and we had milk-tea while chilling on her new bean-bag, watching TV together!
It came near bed-time so we brushed teeth together. Abigail asked to play Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel) by Billy Joel while we brushed. I hadn’t realized until then what a hauntingly beautiful song it was. As we listened and brushed teeth, she told me how the girls in her class were going to hum the song at the spring song-swap, and the boys were going to say the words… and she was amused at how bad the boys were in the practices they’ve had so far! What a great time we had brushing teeth and chatting!
Then into the bedroom for bed… almost. We played with her slinky for half an hour, learning how to flip it so it would slink on the ground just so. We went back and forth teaching each other tricks. And I snuck some nice parenting into it: suggesting instead of her telling me how I was doing it wrong, that she focus on how I could do it better. “Show me how to do it right three ways, and how I did it wrong just one time.” We had a magical time!