6395/19315
We went on our now traditional Sunday afternoon walk, even though I felt too knackered to put one foot in front of the other at the start and everyone was pretty lethargic, but we rallied and it was a fun ramble through the woods. Two months ago my son dawdled and had to be carried most of the way but this time he was running ahead and full of beans and only got annoying in the boring bits. We bumped into a family from the village and stopped to chat and he wasn’t the centre of attention fo five minutes so he decided to rectify that by pulling down his shorts and nappies and flashing his bum. Which worked.
Turns out that he doesn’t just look at me.
My wife is a much better blogger than I, but I believe in quantity not quality and thus beat her hands down. I was looking after the kids either solo or together for most of the day,
but her blog about today covers the ten minutes that I was getting dressed and going to the loo and makes it sound like I do NOTHING
It’s a good account of the impenetrable minefield of parenting during even the most simple of tasks.
I’ve also found an even better way to get both kids to eat their food which is to pretend the fork is a big animal like a hippo or an elephant or a dinosaur who is desperate for a poo. But everywhere he tries to go there is a small animal in the way, so he looks for a cave to poo in and the cave is the child’s mouth. Even though they are pretending to be a poo-eating cave the kids love this. I am sure I am not setting up some damaging psychological problems for the future.
We watched a film in bed tonight (too tired to do a commentary). I’d never heard of it before, but it starred Lupita Nyong’o and she’s brilliant in everything and I liked the premise of a zombie attack involving a nursery class (which is basically what we’re living through). It was good fun, though our curious daughter who tries to avoid going to sleep whenever she can sneaked in to see what we were watching. She is, of course, fascinated by the stuff she’s not allowed to see. A few weeks ago she came down when we were watching Rocketman and as a little coming of age event we allowed her to stay and watch for a bit. It was mainly singing and she wants to be a pop star so it seemed fine. But then a very sweary man came on and so it was bedtime. God knows why she called Geoffrey the Giraffe a wanker.
We were just at the beginning and there were no zombies yet and Phoebe promised that she wouldn’t repeat any of the bad words. But she’s like a swear magnet and the main actor started effing and jeffing and it was once again time for her to leave,. Even though the nursery kids sang a song about rude words and how bad they were.
It was the right decision for her to leave as not only did things get gory but the man who plays Olaf started stating that Father Christmas doesn’t exist and it’s too early to shatter all of my daughter’s childhood dreams.
I remember that feeling of stuff going on after bedtime that I wanted to be privy too. I had it when I was 28 years old. So I love my daughter’s curiosity and insistence that she won’t be scared (even though I knew she would be as she’d earlier been freaked out that the woods were slightly dark at 3pm.
We’re not getting all the parenting decisions right, but who does?
It’s fun being worn down by these maniacs though and trying to keep them alive and of sound mind. But ultimately the first one takes up so much time that you just have to cross you fingers and hope for the best with the latter.
