Itchy Feet

Driving home from nursery today Rosie complained of itchy feet. Holly was furious:

"I WANT ITCHY FEET!"

Tummy Hugs

Cameras on mobile phones exist to remind you what a good picture you would have taken if you had had the foresight to come equipped with a proper camera...

Mummy has been in Germany for four days and we've been coping magnificently. There was a certain amount of "I wish Mummy was back" when Daddy refused to allow delayed bedtime to accommodate even more crayoning, and an incident involving 90% of Holly's body and a nappy that didn't live up to its side of the bargain, but otherwise somewhat of a success story.

We all went to Daddy's friend Alex's house in Bath today for a party. There was lots of lovely food and, ultimately, lots of lovely cakes. Holly was spotted in a crowd of nicely turned-out guests, next to a pavlova with her tongue embedded in it...

Daddy, Holly and Rosie were all piled up on the sofa watching Storymakers today, Rosie with her legs and, significantly, shoes in his lap. The sensitive part of his lap. Where gentlemen keep their sensitive extremities. The extent to which this area is, for want of a better word, sensitive, cannot be stressed too highly.

Suddenly, with nothing in the way of warning, Rosie sprang both legs into the air and brought her shod plates down squarely into the midst of Daddy's...

..."Knackers!" As she so proudly announced while Daddy curled into a foetal position and exhaled with a pronounced wheeze.

Granny Lea is staying with us at the moment. Sometimes she can be a bit loud, apparently, since Rosie started singing in the kitchen this evening:

"Granny Lea...
She shouts in my ear..."

Windmills

Today we were all in the car, at lights, staring out of the windows. Daddy notices a Chrysler Crossfire parked across the road. "Look at that." He says. "That's the new Chrysler Crossfire. Look at the way there is a frame picked out around the windscreen, and the way the side intakes delineate a concavity which sweeps towards the back becoming convex and forming fins..."

Mummy, in a supportive-but-deficient-in-Y-chromosomes way said, "Yes. I like the lines."

Rosie, having far more insight into the important things in life, and a way of summing up in three words what zen students for centuries have been trying to achieve, said:

"I like windmills."

Er. OK.... So the deal at nursery is that the kids all have lunch and then go into the "Sleep Room" which is like a miniature billet with bedding rolls for the children. On this occasion some child was refusing to settle down and making life difficult for the others.

Holly, in a bid to secure a moment's peace for her toddler comrades hauled herself up onto her elbows and shouted "GO TO SLEEP YOU ASSHOLE!"

There is little to be gained from insisting she didn't get it from Daddy.

These days when we go to bed there is usally half to one hour of chatting, singing and playing behind the bedroom door before we go to sleep. Today Daddy couldn't contain himself and opened the door to have a look in... They were both sat in Holly's bed playing with their teddies. So Daddy said "Hello... Don't play for too long luvvies. See you in the morning" and shut the door. Then there was silence. Then two little children were crying, so Daddy went and had a look again and they'd tidied up their teddies and climbed into bed - all sad cos they thought they'd been told off...

So we all had a big cuddle and Daddy explained that they could play if they wanted and they were all cheered up and started chatting again. Phew. Bless 'em.

They've started singing something about Emily O'Pease. It wasn't immediately apparent what song this could be, until we managed to catch the preceding lyric: "H, I, J, K, Emily O'Pease..."

After a hard afternoon of picking up crayons, Mummy was fed up and said "Holly! I've asked you not to do that! What do you say?" Holly looked at the floor glumly and said:

"Sorry Crayons..."

Holly wanders into Nana's kitchen making faces as if she has something stuck to her tongue.

Nana:"What's that in your mouth darling?"

Holly:"Bogies!"

Daddy met both monkeys at the bottom of the stairs a couple of weeks ago. Holly had a lift-the-flap book and Rosie was holdng one of the flaps. "Fix it! Fix it!" they insisted so Daddy agreed and Holly zoomed off into the living room. As Rosie walked up the hallway with Daddy she said quietly "Holly did it..."

More recently Rosie was opening Christmas cards and found one with the three wise men on it. "Daddies!" she said, "One, Two,Three!"

Hmm... Holly discovered she can climb over the rail of the cot today, and so fell three feet onto her back. So Daddy converted the cots to beds and we had an hour bouncing and getting used to them. And bouncing. And bouncing.

Tonight...? We'll see.