
I am frantically clutching at these last few precious weeks of having two pre-schoolers, just knocking about at home, pottering around together, chewing the cud and testing my patience to its very limits…
Today we decorated spoons, made houses for pandas, built improbable flying machines, ‘biffed’ a legion of imaginary Romans, invented our own version of drum & bass, used the decorated spoons to turn MrSpud’s guitar in to a cello, played ‘extreme train wrecks’ and discovered that the Ninky Nonk WILL get wedged in the train wash if you shove it in hard enough. And that was just this morning.
Later their crazy mother, oh wait…that’s me…,took them out in the mid-day sun on the hottest day of the year to the park. I lay down in the shade and enjoyed the gentle breeze. They ran around like lunatics in full sun. Here they are, pictured above, in a moment of enforced stillness edging slowly along the balance beam because it’s, ooooooohhhh, about a 20cm drop there you know.

Just to round things off we engaged in a high octane 3 hour play date this afternoon. And yet Diggy, 3, insisted, “I’m..not…TOIRED!!!” in his strongest Suffolk accent at bedtime. The child has been up and bouncing since 5am with no rest or nap. Must be something in the water. I need something in MY water believe me, something alcoholic…
Today my son sacked the wife’s husband. That’s a complex sentence. Freud might have something to say about it. Certainly Shakespeare could have based a play on it with which to torment generations of school children. And ITV could make a shitty mini-series out of it for sure…
We were discussing the process of how houses are built and that you use an architect, like my best friend’s (AKA ‘the wife’) husband, to draw up a plan of how you want your house to look. And then the builders use the plan so they know how to not bother and do as they please what to build.
“Oh but that’s EASY!”, quoth Bertie, age 4 going on 44, “I can easily do that. Don’t let the wife’s husband do that. I’ll do it. I’ll draw the house and the builders can build it and that will be nice”.
Um, yes…but I don’t want to live in a 2 dimensional wonky house with perma-curly whirly smoke coming out of its impossibly tall and twisted chimney , with 70s hippychick flowers in the garden almost as tall as the house and a Mr Potato Head style ‘person’ squatting in the garden forever. [hand on hip ] Am I being unreasonable? [/hand of hip]
But the main news of today is that I am a truly outstanding parent. As well as eating veg my children now eat SALAD LEAVES and have declared them to be, “YUM!”. I win…I win…punches air in manner of tragic person. Bertie has been flirting with the occasional lettuce leaf since we started harvesting our crop a few weeks ago. Today Diggy ate his own bodyweight in rocket at lunchtime and MrB ate at least two whole little gem leaves. Stands back awaiting parenting accolades, fame, fortune, book deal etc etc.
Bertie won’t eat cucumber or melon. Diggy won’t eat tomato or chicken. These things are a puzzle, but I saw actual LEAVES go in to their mouths today and not come out again. Ah, what smuggery is this? Who cares, I’ve got a 4 year old leaf eating architect. Beat that…mwha ha ha.
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