Wednesday. Our second full day without Dominica here. The weather is really nice, the sun is out and things are getting really warm. I got up and wrote a little. And I made an early trip to the local grocery around the corner to get water and cheese. I had tried to get water yesterday but they were oddly closed. So it was important that I go today. So I got a dozen 1.5l bottles of water today, just to be safe. And lots of cheese, Luciana loves the cheese here. It’s fresh sliced down the street. They don’t have many options, but they slice it for us as we need it.
Once the girls were up we got everyone dressed straight away and immediately went out for a walk.
We walked down to the main square first and treated ourselves to gelato. Liesl ordered a chocolate and puffo (which translates as smurf, it’s just… blue) and Luciana decided that she needed to have the same thing. I got pistachio reale (with the rivel of pistachio butter through it) and mela (apple) because the girls wanted to taste the apple but they don’t offer samples at the place that we were. The girls loved their puffo and Liesl said that it is the best chocolate that she has ever had.
Luciana did not want to go to the park and the playground today because it had “bad memories” for her (or “remembories” as she often calls them) because last time that we were there last week she got in so much trouble. But Liesl and I had a talk with her about how you can fix bad memories by going back to a place and making happy memories and this clicked with Ciana immediately and she wanted to go straight away to make happy memories, which she did.
We had a good time on the playgrounds. There were some smaller kids there and one of the parents gave the girls paper streamers as it is carneval. They played with those a lot.
It was a gorgeous day. Probably in the high sixties and due to be quite a bit warmer tomorrow, as well.
Back home the girls set up in my office and played a lot of video games. They really like having the Steam system up in the office because they can do stuff while I am here. It’s a good combination of things. I suspect that we will probably keep it like this even after Dominica gets back home because it just works out so well. And it means that Dominica will have an easier time getting away from the kids after school is done. As it has been they tend to be stuck in the same places as each other all of the time and that makes it a little bit tough.
For dinner I made the kids fish fingers tonight. They devoured all that I made for them and all that I made for myself as well!
With the new Internet that works so much better I finally managed, after days of it downloading, to get Sims 3 fixed on the Steam laptop. The girls are so excited. So once I got it working Luciana, who has been asking for it the most by far, played it for most of the evening. Once I was free from writing I went downstairs and Liesl and I watched The Dukes of Hazard from 2005, which she enjoyed.
Liesl spent a good hour or more cleaning around the house today. She wasn’t asked to, she just really wants to be helpful. She said that she would happily wash the dishes, too. But there is no safe way for her to do that here. Both girls have been angels since Dominica left, I’ve not had any issues with either of them. They’ve been very good and Liesl has been working hard to be super helpful.
We read another chapter in the first Nancy Drew novel tonight. Ciana really likes getting books read at bed time. Liesl and I take turns reading the book as part of her reading practice.