A surprising day

Today turned out pretty busy. I knew that I had two outside appointments, but didn't predict my busy "internal" afternoon at all.

This morning I went to a Japanese friend's house for morning tea. Actually there were going to be four of us (adults), but only two of us managed to make it. I took our 6 y.o. too and he had a great time with my friend's 3 y.o. But they mostly ended up playing outside on the road (quiet, dead-end road). The sun came out and it became very hot and steamy out there. 

We came home around midday and found my husband and other two sons in the middle of replacing the paper on the wooden frame (shoji) in our lounge room. First time they've done this, so it was a bit of a learning curve. You might remember why the paper needed replacing. 'Paper Aeroplanes' is all I'll say and you can take a look back at this post to find out the details.

We pulled some lunch together and then I dashed out to a magazine editorial meeting at the local coffee shop at 1pm. When I returned home at about 3pm my husband was still in the middle of fixing the shoji. Upstairs were boys beginning to sound stir-crazy. 

So, I impulsively decided to wash windows (especially while the shoji were out). Actually the only impulsive thing about it was the timing, we'd been talking for some time about window cleaning. 

The other crazy thing that I decided to do was involve the boys! The outside of the windows on the second floor hold a particular challenge. I'm not sure how we'll manage the ones on the front or on one side of the house, but the other side has a roof to walk on. There is no where to fall because the houses are so close together. So, I asked our eldest to go out and clean windows (this David and I had also talked about beforehand). That looked so fun to our younger two that they immediately begged to be allowed to do such "fun" work too. 

I ended up ceasing my cleaning and moving into full-time supervision. The two older boys ended up outside on the roof with me shouting such things as, "Don't stand on the neighbour's house!" and "Get back to work!" Our younger son managed to wipe down the front door and climb on the front wall (but do no work) and climb around to fetch stuff that fell (or was thrown) down the crack between the two houses and landed on our neighbours' side of the fence.

So, in this rather inefficient way, we managed to clean a good number of windows between us. Eventually the boys gave up. I sent our eldest on a "mile run", something he's supposed to be doing to train for the cross-country season starting when school begins in August. He decided to take his brothers with him and they were completely keen. The youngest went on his bike.  (At one point he got a long way ahead of his brothers and stopped to wait - there another staff member found him and asked him what he was doing there alone. She then went on to school where David was printing something, happened to see him and told him of his sons' misdeeds. Proof of what a "glass house" we live in in this pocket of Tokyo.)

They were gone a long time and we were beginning to wonder what had distracted them from completing a fairly local and short circuit. Eventually they straggled back. Our on-the-bike kid first. Then the other two, with the 12 y.o. soaked from head to toe. It turns out they stopped by the river for a bit and he slipped and fell in, fully clothed and knocking his cheek as he went in. Good thing he can swim because it is relatively deep at that point and that he didn't knock himself out. He's struggling to go to sleep tonight because it was a very uncomfortable feeling. I can only imagine! I'm not sure whether I'll trust them all to go on a "mile run" on their own again, but then again maybe they've learnt some good lessons.

After he'd had a shower he was up for cooking dinner (this was prearranged). He dragged along an accomplice and it was quite fun to watch them working in the kitchen together. 12 y.o. instructing his nearly 9 y.o. brother on what to do. He even had to cope with a change in assistants. Our youngest had a shower and then switched positions with the middle boy who went up for a shower.

When our middle son came back from the shower I asked him to set the table, as is his duty for Tuesdays. He refused. So, according to the rules, I insisted he do another job - collecting all the rubbish from the upstairs bins. But we're in Japan, so he had to sort it out too, into mostly burnable, unburnable, paper and plastic.

Phew! I hope this makes a modicum of sense. What a day! 

I'm really glad though, that we could get the boys busy helping around the house. They are usually quite reluctant. But I wish all household jobs were as thrilling as climbing out a window onto the roof . . . that added a good deal of incentive (even if it didn't keep them very much on task, they were very interested in hitting each other with rags and giving pedestrians heart attacks by peering down at them from between houses).

I am sure, though, that they are learning valuable life skills as they help us out with these things, even if it doesn't feel very efficient or fun when I'm supervising such activities.