A third sleepover for young friends

Three years ago, we experimented with a sleepover for our friends' three youngest children, while their older siblings were at camp. The idea was to give their parents 24 hours to themselves. Their parents were in fact expecting to collect them soon after breakfast on the following morning, and - at the girls' insistence - they ended up staying until after an early lunch, 27 hours in all, although tempers were getting a little frayed by the end, and Elisabeth, who was only four at the time, was very tired.

Last year we repeated it, with similar results. The girls ended up staying 26 hours and, once again, the last couple of hours were rather fraught.

This year, we weren't sure if it would be able to happen at all. I was hoping to go to the UK for three weeks but dates weren't arranged until very recently. I'm not in fact going until Saturday; moreover, camp is a little earlier than it was in previous years.  More of a problem is the fact that our son Tim's cat Lady Jane has moved here, as he has gone back to the UK, and she's treating what was his bedroom (years ago) as her domain. To have three lively girls sleeping there would have caused her immense stress.

However, Katie - who is 11, and quite outspoken - was sensitive enough to realise that this might be a problem, and said, about a week ago, how she understood that they probably wouldn't be able to have a sleepover this year. So I said that perhaps we could all sleep in our guest flat... and she was so pleased that we made a date for them to sleep over last night.

Since the paper dolls I printed for them last year were so successful, I looked for more a couple of days ago, wondering if I could find some with 18th century ball gowns of the kind that they like to colour. In searching online I discovered this wonderful website with printable paper dolls from many periods in history.  I only intended to print three or four... I ended up with about twenty pages for each of the girls. There are many more for future visits.

Remembering the somewhat stressful ends of the previous two years, I suggested agreeing in advance that this year's sleepover would be 24 hours only. And they arrived yesterday around eleven o'clock in the morning, after seeing their older siblings off to camp on the bus.

They were delighted with the historical paper dolls and started colouring immediately:

However, although Elisabeth is now six, she doesn't concentrate for as long as her siblings, and soon wanted a break. She loves to play games, so we had a few rounds of Ligretto:

Then Helen, who is very good with her hands, decided to continue some knitting she started a couple of months ago. She's becoming quite proficient, and has even managed to figure out how to reverse mistakes and pick up dropped stitches:

Katie, as ever, took some time to read:

Elisabeth asked if I would read to her; the only book I actually read her in the whole 24 hours was 'Dogger' by Shirley Hughes, which is my favourite children's picture book:

Richard was out all morning but came back for lunch. I'd made a new loaf of bread, and some peanut butter, and boiled some eggs, and cut up lots of salad vegetables:

After lunch, Helen and Elisabeth got out 'their' Lego. I've allocated a small crate to each of the three to store their various creations from week to week, so they don't fight over who built what, and this seems to work quite well.

Katie, meanwhile, continued colouring her paper dolls. She kept thanking me and saying how much she liked them.

Alex spent most of the morning curled up on top of the printer...

Elisabeth then asked if we could play 'Misfits', and Helen said she'd join in too. It's a very basic game suitable for children of about three, but they still like it, and are amused by the resultant ridiculous people that get created, different each time:

Afterwards, Elisabeth put them all together 'properly' before putting them all back in the box. Well, she insisted that she put everything away but then Katie found one of the pieces by the bookcase later in the day...

Out came the Lego again:

When they didn't need me, I sat in my beanbag and read, keeping half an ear open to respond to questions. There was a complex war of some kind going on in these two Lego worlds, but it was relatively quiet and civilised:

I haven't been doing much cooking in the past few weeks as it's been so hot, but I knew the girls would want a hot meal, so I turned the air conditioning on in the kitchen late afternoon, and made some pastry. Then I concocted a couple of sausagemeat pies, one with onions and one without, and also a spanopitta as I mostly avoid eating meat.

I made some coleslaw too, and produced some chopped up cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes. All the girls chose sausagemeat pie without onions, and between them ate what was officially supposed to serve 4 people. Richard, meanwhile, ate a quarter of the one with onions, and I ate a third of the spanopitta.

I was surprised when Katie informed Helen that in order to make the sausagemeat pie I must have taken all the skins off lots of 'English sausages' (as ordinary sausages are labelled here) and assured her that I'd done no such thing. I just used some frozen sausagemeat I'd bought before Christmas but hadn't used. She said that her brother Lukas takes the insides out of sausages to make this kind of thing, which seemed like a very complex process to me, and not something I would even think of doing!

I'd bought a melon that morning; it was a bit hard but still quite tasty so we had that afterwards. And then Elisabeth was quite eager to go to bed. I tried to dissuade them as it was only 7.15, and I didn't think they would get to sleep for at least another hour, but they wanted to brush their teeth... and as I hadn't slept well the night before and was very tired myself, I shrugged and agreed, and we went downstairs to the guest flat.

Helen and Elisabeth got ready for bed easily, and Katie, who stays up till 9.00, sat in the living room reading. Of course they didn't get to sleep at once... I ignored quiet talking, but Elisabeth came out about three times to drink water, or to tell me something Helen had done, and Katie went to turn off lights at least twice, and apparently found them jumping on beds. By then I had rather a headache and was feeling shattered so I got rather annoyed...

Richard, meanwhile, fed the cats, changed the litter, put on the dishwasher and locked up the main part of the house. And shortly after Katie went to bed, I did too.

I woke about 5.30am and came upstairs to have a shower, then went back down to read. Helen woke about 6.15 and had a shower in the guest flat, then came to play with one or two of the puzzles we keep downstairs, then the K'nex, which also lives in the guest flat.  I didn't take any more photos... I forgot at first, then thought there had probably been enough.

The girls had breakfast about 8.30; I knew there was some cereal in the guest flat, left behind by other visitors, so I brought it upstairs and they were delighted to find some chocolate granola, which they finished. Some of them had toast, some of them had bananas, some had some other cereal, and they had a few pieces of apple.

After breakfast, Katie coloured more paper dolls and read some more; Helen did more knitting and colouring; three of us played a few rounds of Ligretto; two of them played with Lego.... and at 11.00 their mother arrived to take them home again.

Elisabeth had become a bit bored and whiny a few times, not in a major way but often enough that I realised it was the right decision to stick at 24 hours, at least for this year.

Now they're a little older, I didn't feel nearly as exhausted afterwards as I did in the previous years, but still - being very much an Introvert - quite drained by so much focussed people-time.

Sleepover, revisited

Just under a year ago, we had three young friends to stay for 27 hours. Their older siblings were away at camp, and their parents enjoyed some time to themselves, for once. It was tiring, but - overall - quite fun, and although we hadn't really talked about repeating the experience, we decided to do so again this year.

The youth group camp started Tuesday, so we agreed that the three younger children could come Wednesday morning, and stay until after lunch on Thursday. So, first thing Wednesday I did my usual Wednesday housework (changing our sheets, putting sheets/towels to wash, cleaning upstairs...) and also cleaned out the air conditioner in our second bedroom, which we hadn't, so far, done this year. It was very dirty indeed!

Then I put some yogurt on to make, and boiled some eggs, and thawed some cheese, and cut up some vegetables, and put bread ingredients in the breadmaker.

By ten o'clock I was showered and prepared for the onslaught arrival of our friends, only to receive a text saying they would be a bit late. So I decided to pre-empt the likely requests of the children, and found a few websites with printable paper dolls to colour and cut. They have made lots of them before, only to end up losing them. They're no longer allowed to make them at their house, so I decided to print three of each of several kinds, and allocate each girl an envelope so they could keep them here, in a cupboard, and play with them when they're at our house.

By 11.00 they had taken their pillows and luggage upstairs, and were thrilled by the paper dolls to colour.

They kept on thanking me, which was nice.  Elisabeth (5) needed a bit of help cutting the first ones out, as she told me she would probably cut the tabs off the clothes by mistake.  But Helen (nearly 7) was fine, although she said she didn't like cutting as much as she likes colouring:

I thought the activity might last half an hour or so before they got bored. However, I hoped they would keep coming back to them every so often. I underestimated them... Helen and Katie kept going almost all day.

Katie, who is ten, asked if she could update her blog in the afternoon. She is ten now, and started it recently under her mother's supervision.  I was impressed at how fast she types; she doesn't touch-type yet, but is far more competent than she was even a few months ago.

Even more impressively, she figured out how to use my webcam to take a photo to put in her blog post. I had no idea my webcam could be used for taking photos...

Elisabeth was the first to get bored of colouring; she also didn't take as much care as her sisters, so finished several of the dolls and their clothes much more quickly. Then she told me she could now read and was going to read the book 'Titch' to me.

We didn't get very far, because she was annoyed at the spelling of the name 'Pete', Titch's brother. She didn't think there should be an 'e' at the end. She explained patiently that the last sound is 'ttttttt' so the final letter ought to be a 't'. I pointed out that if it was just spelled 'p-e-t' then it would make the word 'pet'. She nodded, but felt that the second e should be before the t, not after it.  She has a point...

When she then found that the word 'bike' also ends with 'e' she gave up in disgust.

Helen, meanwhile, who had been colouring a doll version of Lucy (from the Narnia series) said she thought it very funny that Lucy's name was spelled 'Lucky'. I said that the word 'lucky' had a 'k' in it too, and then we had a discussion about when the letter 'c' makes the 's' sound.

So that was their phonics for the day...

Elisabeth got out a bag of paper coasters and cookies and other items of food that she has made over many weeks, when she's here with her mother on Tuesday mornings. None of us really wanted to play one of her long-winded cookie games, so she coerced the large white doll to play.

She had to put some thought into what to feed the doll; I think she allowed him (or perhaps her... the doll is of unspecified gender) some bread in the end. She told me, with a little shake of her head, that she couldn't allow him to have any chocolate because he always gets himself in such a mess when he eats chocolate.

Only those who have seen Elisabeth eating chocolate (or, worse, chocolate cake) can appreciate the wonderful irony of this statement.

Helen was still patiently colouring in her paper dolls' clothes...

Finally they all decided to put the colouring aside for a while and play a game. Ligretto is their current favourite, though I gather Elisabeth only learned how to play it a couple of days ago. It's a game I enjoy, although I'm not very good at it; when playing with experts I usually manage to get two or three cards down by the time someone else has finished. However, these three were at around my level and I even went out first a couple of times.

At lunch we had eaten bread with cheese, and eggs, and chopped up carrots/cucumbers/peppers, and coleslaw, and hummus, and one or two other random things from the fridge. That was straightforward.

However I wasn't entirely sure what to give the girls for their evening meal. I haven't done any cooking, other than on Sundays, for over a month now. We've been eating salads in the evenings, with some form of protein, and no extra starches. But I didn't think that would go down well. Richard spent the afternoon sailing with some friends and had taken some halloumi and pittas to cook on the boat so he wasn't in the equation.

I didn't want to turn the oven on, and haven't used the slow cooker since early July. But we had some sausages in the freezer, so I asked if the girls would like those. They said that would be a great idea. I thought we could have them in pittas, with salad, but then discovered Richard had taken all the pittas from our freezer. One of the girls said she liked sausages with 'noodles' so I cooked some spaghetti, and also refried some roast potatoes that were in the freezer. I knew they wouldn't want cooked vegetables, so out came the chopped ones from lunch, and the coleslaw.

I asked if any of them liked fried onions; they all said they didn't, but were very gracious and said they didn't mind at all if I cooked some for myself. I didn't take advantage of their offer; with potatoes, spaghetti, sausages and a little tomato sauce (also from the freezer) on the hob, I didn't have room for anything else anyway.

The girls were very pleased with the sausages, and even more so with the tomato ketchup I produced. With the heat, I haven't even made ketchup since June; we bought some Heinz ketchup on offer in the supermarket a few weeks ago. One of them asked me if it was very expensive, apparently considering ketchup to be a luxury. I assured her it was very reasonable, and cheaper than mayonnaise.

They were also quite excited by the fried potatoes, which they said they've only ever eaten at the house church. There weren't very many, but that was fine; they went on to eat a bit of spaghetti too, mixed with ketchup, but were more eager to eat the sausages.

I'd made some banana bread on Sunday, which I had kept in the freezer until the morning. So we each had a slice of that. I thought it was rather tasteless; I'd missed out both raisins and walnuts, knowing the girls aren't keen on either, but they declared it 'delicious'.

By the time we finished eating it was after seven o'clock, and the two younger girls said they needed to go to bed soon. Elisabeth asked if she could have a shower, so I found her a towel, and showed her how to work the shower, which is in our bath.

After about ten minutes the shower was still on so I popped my head around the bathroom door to see how she was doing, only to find her sitting down in the bath, with a scrubbing brush and the Cif cream cleanser. I thought perhaps she was cleaning the bath, and was about to thank her, when she showed me that she was scrubbing her feet! They looked extremely clean, but I was a bit worried that she might be scrubbing away a layer of skin; it's quite powerful stuff. I rinsed it very thoroughly and she seemed to be fine.

She said she had thought it was shampoo, which slightly puzzled me as shampoo is not normally used for cleaning feet although it's probably better for them than Cif. It was only when mentioning this to her parents a day later that I learned that she refers to shower gel as shampoo.

Then it was time to sort out the bedroom. We opened up the sofa bed, the one that used to be in my study until we moved furniture around last December. The girls had brought their own pillows, and also some teddies:

Elisabeth's mattress had come separately, and was set up next to the sofa bed.

Despite their eagerness to go to bed, neither Helen nor Elisabeth seemed particularly tired. I read to them until nearly eight o'clock, having turned on the newly cleaned air conditioner (it was VERY humid last night) and then they said they would go to sleep listening to a repeated 'rock a bye baby' tune - if that's the word - on a baby's cot toy which they had brought.

Katie was reading - as she had been, off and on, all day - until nine o'clock, at which point Richard said she should go to bed, and she complied cheerfully. Just as well, since I was absolutely shattered by that point and had already gone to lie down. It wasn't that any of the girls had been any trouble at all; they were mostly peaceable, right through the day, with only a handful of squabbles. I refused to get involved; the best parenting technique I ever learned, when my sons were small, is to listen giving good eye contact and an expression of sympathy to any amount of tattling or argument addressed to me, then to acknowledge that the situation was frustrating, or annoying, or upsetting, or whatever is most appropriate. And then let them work out what to do themselves.

We heard some talking but they stayed in their room and there was no major noise... so, presumably, they fell asleep eventually.

I must have been asleep before 10.00pm, and woke about 5.45am, feeling the humidity already. We only run air conditioners for an hour or so when going to sleep, and usually that's not a problem. I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep, so I got up, only to discover that Katie and Helen were already awake, and had been trying to get into my study to find some of their paper dolls. They had, very thoughtfully, kept quiet and hadn't tried to wake us up, so I let them in, and they took the colouring things back to their room.

I made my coffee, and turned on the ceiling fan, and opened the study door in the hope of at least a few minutes of cooler air, and settled in my beanbag to read.

I had perhaps five minutes of peace before Katie came down to read too. Shortly followed by her sisters. So much for time to myself.

When I went to get showered and dressed, they played some fairly peaceable Ligretto again:

I don't usually have breakfast until I've been up for a couple of hours, but the girls were starting to get a bit irritable and said they were hungry. I asked what they'd like for breakfast; they muttered that they like 'leftovers' like noodles and cheese, but I said we tended to eat leftovers at lunchtime, so in the end they said they'd like toast and butter. They didn't want any yogurt. Katie did say she would be happy to cook pancakes but I vetoed that one, not really wanting to heat the kitchen up at that hour.

I thawed some bread slices, and made orange juice, and produced a banana each and they had their toast. By which time it was about eight o'clock. And I was feeling tired already.

Someone proposed a game of Uno, so we had a couple of rounds:

But Elisabeth was clearly tired; she can't have had more than eight hours of sleep at most, which isn't many for a five-year-old. She always gets black bags under her eyes when she's tired; I've often seen them on her in the evenings, but they were there even at that time in the morning.

So the game deteriorated, and was then put away. It was getting too hot and sticky, anyway, so we decided to return to my study, and put the air conditioning on so that we could put the computer on and Katie could write another blog post.

Elisabeth then decided she would play with her various paper dolls - six of them in all:

Helen wanted to play Misfits but nobody else was keen, so she played with them on her own, for at least thirty seconds, before Elisabeth joined her:

But tempers were getting frayed. Elisabeth started being a bit silly; when she's over-tired she becomes hyper, and seems to lose her usually excellent grasp of reason. Helen seems unable to do anything without humming; she does so quietly and tunefully, and in itself it's not a problem, but Elisabeth kept joining in, and the volume increased as the tunefulness decreased... and since I was feeling tired and a little headachey, my tolerance was low.

At one point they were all looking bored, and pushing each other around, and I said they probably needed to run around outside - something that's not possible here - and maybe they should go home. I even had a text message conversation with their mother, who would have come to collect them, but Katie wanted to read a book, and then look through all our DVDs, and Helen wanted to do some colouring.. and Elisabeth even went to take a nap.

My study was starting to look more like a bombsite, although on the whole they had been good about clearing up one activity before embarking on another...

Elisabeth's nap lasted about ten minutes. Then Katie offered to make some more paper doll's clothes for her, and she watched, no longer being silly and hyper, but chewing her fingers and even yawning. Helen was tired too, but expressed that by sprawling on the sofa, and being more sensitive than usual, and refusing to pick anything up, and also yawning a lot.

But they kept insisting that they did not want to go home until after lunch. I didn't know what was best; I didn't want to turn it into a battle, or have them feel it was 'punishment' to send them home, but I wasn't sure how much longer I could cope - and the two younger ones were SO tired.

I also hadn't realised that they no longer play with Lego - so they informed me. Lego used to occupy them for hours when they came here. But not this time.

Helen decided to do some paper shredding for me, something they all seem to enjoy:

Then Elisabeth asked me to read to her, and Helen soon joined her. I think I read three books in all.

Katie read several books to herself, although I don't seem to have taken any photos of her doing so.

By this stage it was 12.20 and Elisabeth was looking so tired that she could barely stand up. She said she was hungry, so I suggested we have lunch a bit earlier than usual, and then they could go home at 1.00 rather than an hour or two later, as we'd originally planned. They all agreed to this and were pleased to find that Richard had brought back some leftover halloumi and chicken drumsticks from the meal on the boat last night.

So it was only 26 hours this time, an hour less than last year. I expect we'll repeat this next year, but that's a long way off... I have plenty of time to recover!

Coffee and Culture Shock - Day One out of Cyprus

Night flights are no fun, but sometimes they make financial sense. So, our outward flight with Monarch was at 3.00am Thursday morning. That meant checking in at 1.00am as we didn't want to pay another 14 euros to choose seats online. We didn't start packing until about 8.00pm - I'd done the important things like charging my Kindle earlier, and had also mopped the floors, and other random non-essentials. Choosing a few clothes isn't that difficult. So by 9.00 they were mostly sorted. I had been planning to go to bed around 8.00 so as to get a few hours' sleep; but that obviously didn't happen. However, I did get to bed at 10.00 and must have fallen asleep almost at once because the next thing I knew was Richard waking me to get dressed to go to the airport. At 12.15.

I can't sleep on flights. I never have managed to, but I rested, and drowsed a little. Richard did manage to sleep for about four of the five hours we were in the air,which is just as well since he had to drive later.

We landed just after 6.00; I watched the sunrise,which was rather pretty and we were glad to see that it wasn\t raining at Gatwick. It felt like we had to walk miles to the luggage reclamation place.. at least it woke us up slightly. We got a bit worried when our luggage did not appear, and almost everyone else waiting with us had gone, but then we realised we were at the wrong carousel.

By the time we had our luggage safely, it was past 7.00 and we knew we needed coffee urgently. As we left the arrivals area, we were greeted by a Costa Coffee sign. There was no discussion; We didn't even look for an alternative.

I had a latte (delicious and extremely welcome) and Richard had an Americano, which gave him the required caffeine, but - he said - was disappointingly bitter, not as good as he expected.

Then we popped to the loos. And there I had my first reverse culture shock of the trip. Each cubicle was nicely decorated, about three times the size of any equivalent I'd ever seen before, and each one was equipped with its own washbasin! Richard had waited outside with all our luggage, but I could have wheeled it in with room to spare. There was a mirror, and an automatic dryer- everything was motion sensitive,so I didn't even have to touch anything to flush the toilet or turn the taps on.

I felt so awed by this super-loo that I didn't think to take a photo. Apparently the men's were just the same. Amazing.

As ever it wasn't particularly quick to confirm and sort out the car rental, even though we'd booked it online a couple of months ago, but at last we climbed in the car, and were on the last leg of the first part of our UK trip. Despite being slowed down by road works we arrived only a couple of minutes later than expected. around 8.30am. We had more coffee and breakfast at Richard's mother's house, then thought we might like down for a bit.

I didn't expect to sleep - I almost never can when it's light. But evidently I was so tired that I managed it... and woke feeling at least slightly more refreshed at 12.30, in time for lunch.

Last night we were both asleep by 9.00pm and I slept soundly for nine and a half hours...