Hallowe’en is coming (I think)
I have a very gorgeous two-year-old sitting next to me right now; he’s adorable. I’m not offering any promises that I will still feel that way about him when he’s still up at 10 p.m., which he undoubtedly will be, because he fell asleep at 4.30 and woke two hours later. I would very much like this phase of not-napping-but-unable-to-stay-awake-until-a-reasonable-bedtime to end fairly quickly. I love my children dearly, but I also value the hour or two I get in the evenings after they fall asleep.
We’ve done a fair bit of work in the past couple of days. Barney, George and Freddy all discovered they could do more in German than they thought, and Freddy discovered he knew a lot more French than he’d thought; these discoveries have spurred them on to learn more. They’d also like to learn Spanish; since my Spanish consists of about one-and-a-half words, that will be interesting. I’d love us all to learn some Mandarin or Cantonese - the former is probably a more useful choice, but the latter is their grandparents’ language…
Jack is doing better; he’s still coughing a bit but we’ve lost the wailies (thank goodness for that). The other seem to have escaped this bug, though I suppose it could still hit them - I hope not, because that would leave them sick over Hallowe’en - again. Mind, it’s not like any of them have done much about Hallowe’en. George is planning to re-make and use the costume he planned last year (Asterix) - if he finds the things he needs - or alternatively, somebody called Marth (well that’s what it sounds like - I have no idea who or what it is). Freddy can’t think of anything and Barney thinks he’s too old to dress up. Huh.
Remember when our car was broken about three weeks ago? Apparently the mechanic who changed the wheel-bearings told Scratchy that when one goes, the one on the other side usually goes soon after. Guess what noise the car started making yesterday? 
We thought we were going to be stuck without a car for another week while the part came in, but Scratchy took it back to the mechanic today, and it turned out that a) it was the same thing on the other side, and b) the mechanic had already ordered and received the part we needed. I’m torn: either this mechanic is very sensible and forward-thinking and offers a really good service, or he’s a crook who manufactures his own work. At £250 a time, I’d quite like to know which 
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well, to be fair, they do usually wear out at about the same rate unless one has been damaged (like when I kerbed my mini years ago….) so he could just be that most rare and precious comodity, a really, really good mechanic!
Hm, well that’s kind of reassuring. He’d have been a bit stuffed if we’d decided to get it done somewhere else though, wouldn’t he? There aren’t that many Voyagers around; he could have been stuck with an expensive part that nobody wanted.