We had a little houseguest this weekend. An inanimate one, thankfully. It was Barnaby the Bear, a well-traveled teddy bear that belongs to The Bun's class. Barnaby goes home with a different child twice a week and they get to dress him up and take him on 'adventures'. He lives in a huge wicker picnic basket and has a rather comprehensive set of clothes for every kind of weather imaginable. When the timing's right he even goes along on holiday, and the children stash souvenirs and postcards into his suitcase. Barnaby has even been to Venice and has a fancy Venetian mask for dressing-up. The children are encouraged to document Barnaby's stay with photos and drawings and they have to write a short essay in a notebook about what Barnaby did when he visited. The last time Barnaby came home with us, it was October 2015, and he got to spend the
weekend in Zermatt.
So this is what Barnaby got up to this weekend with us:
On Friday he came home where he found himself changing outfits several times because The Bun and Bao were extremely keen on making sure he was dressed just right. Bao took it very seriously and kept chucking his raincoat in the corner because, as she declared, it was not raining. Eventually they settled on an outfit (khaki explorer shirt and navy fleece trousers) and took him to the kitchen for snack time. I had to upend a big plastic box over a chair so that Barnaby could sit comfortably and at the right height for the table. He presided over snack although he did not eat a bite; after, he watched The Bun do his Chinese homework. Bao, ever the proponent for equal (sibling) rights, grabbed her Duckie to sit with her as she did 'homework' too.
On Saturday Barnaby had to tag along with us to town for some shopping. The Bun, bless him, is more excited about my upcoming birthday than I am, and has been counting down, planning presents and party games and so on. He corralled his father into this shopping trip in town so that the both of them could buy presents. Barnaby was babysat by Bao throughout all this as we sat at the food court in Globus waiting for the boys to finish shopping. Eventually they emerged with smug secret smiles and we went off to lunch at Coop down the road. By this time both children had tired of carrying Barnaby around so he unfortunately did not join us for lunch because he was stuffed napping in the basket beneath the stroller.
After lunch we headed to the Cité library, the largest of all the municipal libraries. It opened last spring after a long renovation, but we are so rarely in town that we only visited it for the first time on this day, nearly a year after its opening. The children's floor is marvellous, with loads and loads of books (some in English) and many nooks for curling up to read or even having a quiet play. I popped into the adults' section for a poke and picked out a couple of novels from the English section. My reading in French is still on par with the childrens', unfortunately.
Today, Sunday, Barnaby was forgotten at home slept in while we all took advantage of a small pocket of sunshine and went to the park. The weather hasn't been great (typical of February) that it's been a while since the children got to play outdoors for a proper length of time and today they played hard until the cold eventually drove us home. Later in the afternoon, Barnaby accompanied The Bun to his friend I's disco party where he received a very warm welcome since he's, after all, an honorary classmate. I'm not sure what they got up to at the party, except that when I dropped The Bun off the kids were playing in the living room in a rather civilised manner, and when I returned to collect him there was stuff all over the floor, the children were bouncing off the walls, and the noise was incredible. Must have been some party!
Clearly overexcited and over-sugared after the party.
So that was the weekend with Barnaby. He's now packed away peacefully asleep in his picnic basket, left by the front door so that we don't forget to take him back to school tomorrow. I can't say I'm sorry to see him leave. He's so ratty I wouldn't be surprised if he has fleas or something, ugh. Thankfully The Bun agreed that Barnaby would sleep in his picnic basket, and not his bed, during his stay.
Oh, and lest I forget, this was also the weekend where Bao slept from 8 to 8 on both Saturday and Sunday and did not nap in-between. Someone's a big girl now!