We all slept in today. I was up first, then Liesl and eventually Ciana and Dominica. Liesl convinced Dominica to play some board games with her for a while and then we all decided to go out to “breakfast”, which ended up being slightly after noon. We went down to the Westchester Diner which we have not been back to since we returned to New York. We had a nice lunch and then went to Home Depot to do some shopping.
We have been needing some stuff, like a garbage can for the kitchen, so we got that, more firewood, lightbulbs and other basics. Nothing exciting. Just home basics. The girls spent some time, while we were waiting on Dominica to research some paint, hiding in a dark recess caused by us taking one of the huge garbage cans so they would hide off of one of the main corridors for about half an hour. This kept the girl semi-occupied for a while.
We had thought about going out and going looking at apartments but it took so long to do Home Depot and the girls were getting so restless that we gave up on the plan. Instead we just returned to the house and I made a fire in the fireplace. Then we played one of the girls’ new Christmas board games, “Cinderella’s Royal Ball” for a while. We played it several times. This is a board game that Luciana can actually play and really enjoys. It is really cute.
We had cut video game time so short last night that I took the girls downstairs around three and we set up “Night of the Rabbit” and played for quite a while in the middle of the day. This made both girls, but especially Liesl, very happy.
Liesl just gets better and better at playing the games. She knows how to save her game all on her own, how to exit out of it, how to load up a new game once the system is running (she cannot start it on her own because Steam has some issues and requires that the administrator be involved every time that the game restart.) In the game today there was a new card game introduced that was a lot like playing Go Fish. Liesl picked it up and understood how to play on the very first try. I was really amazed.
“Night of the Rabbit” is definitely the best game that Liesl and I have played together yet. The graphics and music are amazing and the characters are really cute and enjoyable. Liesl and Luciana are both so into the story and the world. They love it. The puzzles are generally not so obtuse as most of the games that Liesl and I have been trying and the overall game just seems so much more solid and well built. This feels like a big budget game whereas most of what we have played felt pretty cheaply made, the Ankh games especially.
We played the game for a few hours. Liesl sits at the desk and I sit on the couch with the second monitor turned around so that I can watch her play and use the iPad to look up anything that we need online. Luciana tried playing with Liesl for a bit, they share the chair and Luciana tries to help, but soon she left the desk and came to the couch and snuggled in my lap. It was so sweet.
Luciana slept on my lap for a while. When Dominica came downstairs with dinner, a Quorn stew over biscuits, she helped me to carry Luciana upstairs and put her to bed. It was only six o’clock, maybe earlier, but if she is tired, then she needs her sleep.
Dominica, Liesl and I ate dinner and watched two episodes of Melissa & Joey. When we finished that Dominica went back upstairs and Liesl and I played “Night of the Rabbit” a while longer. This was her chance to play without Luciana being there.
Liesl did not play her game all that long, maybe an hour. She decided that she was more interested in snuggling than playing her game. So Dominica came back downstairs and we all finished watching the third season of Melissa & Joey.
After that I took Liesl upstairs and got her ready for bed. While I was reading her her nightly bedtime stories from the Chronicles of Narnia, Luciana woke up (after four to five hours of napping) and came in to join us. She listened to the bedtime stories and then I put Liesl to bed and took Luciana downstairs to hang out with us for a little bit before putting her back to bed. She needed to get up for a little bit – she kept saying that it was morning!
We watching one show and before we could get Luciana back to bed Liesl came downstairs rather upset that she had been waiting for Luciana to come back to bed but she never came.
We finally got them both into bed again after eleven. This time they both went to sleep.
Tonight they are sleeping with changing colour LED lights in their room. They were a present that I bought for them while we were waiting on Home Depot. They are regular light bulbs that are very dim and can be changed in color at the press of a button. Liesl voted for red lights tonight. So they are sleeping in a room lit so that it looks like a 1980s dark room for developing film. Something our girls will never know first hand, it having died out long ago.