I haven't felt like a good mother this week. Nothing makes me a worse mother than sick kids. And we've had two this week. Robyn's had a horrible flu that has afflicted a good portion of her school, and Daniel has had a gastric thing (lots of horrible diarrhoea and vomiting). General misery. I don't suppose most parents are at their best when kids are sick, but still I'm sure I'm worse than many. Looking after a single sick child is easy. Looking after two sick and one well child I find immensely difficult. I didn't realise before I had kids how much time would be spent in doctors' rooms and mopping up after sick kids at home.

In other news, we got through the Ballet Show in one piece. Robyn enjoyed it all, though did find it quite tiring. Lauren and I went to watch the final performance on Saturday night (Peter and his parents, and my parents, watched on Thursday and Friday nights). Lauren loved it. Thankfully for all of us, Daniel stayed home. I think he'd had enough ballet for one week anyway. Speaking of ballet, and boys, one thing that I find weird, is that none of the dancing teachers (ballet and modern) around here even try to attract any boys to the classes. At the kids pre-school a note came around saying 'If your daughter would like to dance, blah, blah'). You'd think as dancing teachers, who would want to promote dance, they would want to try to attract at least some boys, for the future of dance in general. Where do professional male dancers come from, if not from teachers like these?

This week at school Lauren has been doing 'Other Work People Do' (after going through the usual doctors/police/firefighters themes in previous weeks). Today was dress-up day in this theme. She was interested in being a queen or Spiderman. Getting ready to go and sit at my computer screen for four hours, and trying to clean Daniel up at the same time (more really revolting all-over-body diarrhoea), I wasn't sure that those were really convincing as real-life jobs. In the end we agreed she would be a chef, and she went proudly to school in apron and oven gloves, bearing cooking utensils and a Jamie Oliver cookbook. A three-year old, unused Jamie Oliver cookbook, I should add. Sigh.