"No bother at all, I can't seem to find what I'm looking for either." She chuckled, looking around helplessly. It wasn't of much consequence, it wasn't as if Maisie, at all of a barely a year, would know one way or another. "Maybe if we stay put for a few moments, one of them will roll by." It was an amusing thought, even if she wasn't sure how practical it was. Somebody would be along eventually, hopefully.

Els could relate to the sentiment. Even though she was still working part time, she had spent quite a bit of time over the last three years stuck at home in confinement (not very good at it either, given Maisie's arrival story), but it did feel strangely disconnected when she was home all of the time. "I know the feeling. We're well, busy with two under three." Ben and Maisie were hardly eighteen months apart, and everything was busy with a pair of toddlers. "She's walking already, takes after her brother. Two on the move is something else entirely." She passed Lucy a wry smile knowing that her fellow mother would understand in a way nobody else could.

"How about you and the children?" Elsie had started having children relatively late to most of her peers, but motherhood was a universal sort of language.