Days like these 😍

12 September 2018

What a fabulous day we’ve all had! Cornelia slept for a full 13 hours not waking until nearly noon! She woke up full of beans, and has chatted cheerfully non-stop all day! While she ate some toast for breakfast, I prepared a picnic lunch (she’d mentioned a few days ago that she’d like to have a picnic) and packed up for the day (afternoon!).

We walked all the way down to High Park, which is one of the top places to visit in Toronto, according to various websites, and they weren’t wrong. Another Canadian city, another terrific green space.

It was about a mile and half down to High Park and Bugsy was on great form. She told us about the differences between witches and wizards (girls can be both wizards and witches, but boys can only be wizards) and she recited almost an entire episode of Peppa Pig, laughing at Mr Lion (the zookeeper) calling Madame Gazelle “Mrs Wildebeast” by mistake, then telling her he gets them confused all the time… She put her pretend friends in a bag because they’d quarrelled and needed some time to sort things out and we each had to pick a boat for a boat race. I was a cruise liner, she was a sail boat and Daddy was a tea clipper (🙄). It took us a long time to get there, but it was such a fun walk! The only fly in the ointment was a horsefly that managed to bite me twice on the back of leg before I noticed it. Argh, itchy!

We arrived at the Castle Playground and Cornelia was over the moon to discover a huge wooden castle, complete with a dungeon, bridge, slides etc. She was in heaven! I’d thought to bring her crown that she’d made when she was on the cruise ship, so she wore that almost day, alternating between being a princess, a queen and a witch. Even Ian roaring like a bear when she got to the bottom of the tunnel slide didn’t upset her and she just laughed it off (after a momentary pause!). There were a couple of other girls there, but she didn’t want to play with them. “I just want to play with you, Mummy.” 😍 She then invited me into her “neighbour’s castle… I was never invited in, so now she’s dead, I thought I’d have a look around!”

We took a break from the playground to have our picnic lunch, although Bugsy took so long she couldn’t have an ice cream or any of her snacks, but again, as I would normally expect, she was completely fine about it. No tantrums or anything!

From there, we walked on to the small zoo that was in High Park, with a variety of animals, including some fabulous teddy-bear like bison! Huge glassy brown eyes, enormous head and shoulders covered in thick fur. So beautiful! Cornelia went from pen to pen, checking out all the different footprints (that were printed on each information board) and learning the male, female, baby and group names for each animal. She was completely switched on all day, made abundantly clear when Daddy said “Can you see where the mouflon sheep is sitting?” She looked all around before saying “No?” Daddy pointed to the sheep in the trough to which she replied “No, that one’s lying, down, Daddy, not sitting!”

We returned to the Castle Playground from the zoo, where there were loads more children playing this time, then eventually it was time to head back. Cornelia had walked all day without a grumble, but as we left the park, she made noises about needing to be carried. I pointed out a nearby fence and said that if she walked to that, Daddy would carry her the rest of the way (I’d checked with him first!!!), and so began a ten minute standoff, with no screaming or yelling, just me and her standing silently five metres apart. Waiting. And waiting. Neither of us said a thing. And, like magic, she ran towards me and off to the target fence post, waiting for her shoulder ride to collect her!

So, Daddy Cabs carried her home, while I checked out the very many semi-naked men out for their evening walk. As I said to Ian, I was checking they were all fine. Yes, they were all most fine indeed…!

Bugsy continued chattering away to herself and to us, complimenting a dog walker by telling her “Your dog’s heeling nicely, isn’t he?!!”

We stopped off at the Sweet Potato, an organic supermarket (or rather, a supermarket only offering organic products) and whilst I could’ve spent a small fortune on tasty meals, we ended up with roast chicken, potatoes and broccoli for tea. I’ve never particularly been one for organic food, but the potatoes and broccoli were incredibly flavoursome. Yum. 😋

We put a very tired Cornelia to bed for about 20:30 and she crashed straight out. I started watching Bodyguard on iPlayer (what an exciting first episode!) and Ian probably looked at sport, before we noticed it was nearly midnight! What an absolutely perfect day.

(Argh, I cannot upload any more photos at the moment as I’m over my allowance! I haven’t worked out what I can do to resolve it… I’ll keep writing blogs but they may be without photos for now!)