It was a very New Zealand kind of week. It began under a blazing sun, passed through thirty-three hours of rain and howling wind, and ended with the sky pretending nothing had happened. Every school run came with a mumbled "this weather is insane" — some days I came home soaked in sweat, others soaked in rain.
Our youngest is in her third week of school, and this week brought her first school event. It was an outdoor day for Year 0 and Year 1 — and because she's still finding her feet, I went along as a parent helper. On a wide stretch of grass, the children rotated through activities by class: dress-up relays, cardboard sleigh races, keepy uppy (yes, the famous Bluey game!), and bubbles with a parachute. For children who've only just started school, it's all about building basic motor skills through play — and most of it feels exactly like play. The shore breeze joined in as the kids tore across the field in the sunshine. Jin was completely taken with the giant bubbles, and made me pinky-promise we'd do it again at home.
The fun had barely settled when Wednesday brought a different kind of weather altogether. The rain thickened fast, and the wind went from nuisance to genuinely dangerous — flipping umbrellas inside out, making it hard to walk in a straight line. By Thursday things had worsened, and just after one o'clock the school sent an alert asking parents to collect their children early. PeNnY and I drove to pick them up, and in the few minutes it took to park at the gate and walk two children back to the car, we were drenched through our rain jackets. Min, who goes to a different school, had stayed home sick that day — which turned out to be a stroke of luck.
By Friday morning the sky was clean and still, as though the storm had never happened. This time it was Jin's turn to stay home — a little under the weather, but not enough to keep her indoors. So we kept our promise. I tied spare shoelaces between two straight sticks she'd picked up on a sunny walk home, poured dish liquid into a large plastic pot saucer, and we were in business. Every time a giant bubble lifted off and floated across the yard, she squealed with delight — her first morning alone with Mum since school began.
