Adventures in the City - woolly mammoths, pies and five dollar notes

It’s week 2 of the school holidays and I think I’ve well and truly worn the kids out already.

We started off on Monday with a big trip into the city, as I had discount vouchers for Reading Cinema on Courtenay Place. It was Alfie’s first time at the movies – I’ve never been sure in the past whether he’d be able to sit still long enough or be quiet for long enough. But he’s been extremely hyped up about today for ages, and had been telling everyone in sight that he was going to see Ice Age 4 on Monday.

So the day comes and we finally walk into the dark theatre and within 3 steps Alfie stops in his tracks and says “Mum I’m scared”. I cajole him in to his seat and all the way through the movie he repeats “I’m scared, can we go home now” approximately every 2 minutes. Hats off to him though – he still managed to stay in his chair for the whole film.

(Molly and I enjoyed it though – it’s a great movie!)

Afterwards, we went to meet Jake for lunch, where Alfie suddenly completely forgot how scared he’d been and proudly boasted to Dad how he’d been to see Ice Age 4.

Whenever we meet Jake from work for lunch we always go to a cheap local pie cafe. For some reason it’s Molly’s favourite lunch venue (apart from sushi). And Jake and I don’t mind it either - they may be completely and utterly unhealthy, but you can’t beat New Zealand pies. So we hung out in the armchairs eating and chatting for a while. And this is where things went wrong...

While we were sitting there, Jake gave the kids some holiday spending money, $5 each. This is more than our children have ever been given to spend in their lives (usually it’s the occasional $2 to go to the dollar shop with!) and in hindsight it was a bit overwhelming for our Molly!

Alfie spent his money quickly, choosing a rocket ship folder to put all his artwork in. Molly however appears to take after her father when it comes to making decisions.

We spent the next 2 hours walking up and down Lambton Quay and visiting the same 3 jewellery/accessories shops over and over again. I never want to see any more clip on earrings, friendship necklaces, hair bands, etc in my life!

Molly absolutely could not decide what she wanted to buy. Poor Alfie was dragging his feet up and down the road, and only broke down after the 4^th time at Equip “Mum, why does Molly want to go in here AGAIN??”

Once I’d fed and watered him, and calmed him down, Molly then had a meltdown and there were tears everywhere as she poured her heart out about how she couldn’t choose what to buy and didn’t want to go home without spending her money from dad.

Alfie acted great as big brother and quickly draped his arm around her, saying “It’s ok, Moll-Woll, I’ll help you choose”, wiping her tears away – so sweet!

But it was clear that we’d over-done our time in the city, so I steered us towards the train station for the ride home – and Molly STILL has that blessed $5 in her purse!