My first post using the WordPress for Android application. Impressive interface.
This evening I somehow acquired/ blagged myself a Google Nexus 7. Jane had somehow ordered/ bought herself two: an 8Gb and a 16Gb model. Long story…
Time for sleep now.
Jane needed Reuben and Joshua to be distracted for 15 minutes on the run up to dinner this evening; they were tired and fractious and needed something to focus on.
So I invited them to sit on my desk and help me work out which pens in my desk drawer worked and which didn’t. And it all went very well. Reuben had a pile of pens and a pad of scrap paper to scribble on, and Joshua had the same.
I was helping Reuben sort out a few pens when I picked up a biro-wannabe, not a proper Bic, but a cheap imitation.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, “I hate these pens with a passion!”
Reuben tested it, it worked and so he added it to the pile of tested-and-working pens.
“I’ve got one of these,” said Joshua looking back at his pile of pens. “I’ve got a passion pen… and another… and here’s another passion pen. I’ve got lots of passion pens.”
I didn’t have the heart to throw them out after that.
This was the conversation we had with Joshua this morning:
Daddy: Right, let’s get you out of your cot.
Joshua: (Holds up dressing gown) This my rope.
Daddy: Your rope? Great.
Daddy lifts Joshua out of his cot. Joshua wanders through to the landing and speaks with Mummy. He’s holding his dressing gown and a dog cuddle toy.
Joshua: (Holds up dressing gown to show to Mummy) This my rope.
Mummy: Your rope?
Joshua: Yes. (Holds up Copper, the dog from Disney’s The Fox & the Hound). This not my tractor.
Mummy: (Laughs) It’s not your tractor. Ok, what is it?
Joshua: (Looks at Mummy like she’s mad) It Copper!
Mummy: Of course!
There’s never a dull moment in our house!
A couple of nights ago Jane ordered Reuben and Joshua their first bikes (Branching Out First Bikes by John Crane), one in blue, the other in red. These are push-along, balance bikes with pneumatic tyres, adjustable-height seats and a bell on the handlebars. They arrived today.
Yesterday Jane took the boys into St Andrews to buy them proper bike helmets, which cost almost as much as the bikes themselves.
Reuben and Joshua love bike helmets; they’ve worn Jane and my helmets at home for the last few months. Often fighting over them. They love their own helmets now too. Reuben has a blue one with pirates on it, Joshua has a red one with dinosaurs on it.
I was sitting with Reuben last night, knowing that their new bikes would hopefully arrive the following day. We’d kept it secret from them that we’d ordered them. This was our conversation:
Daddy: Do you like your new bike helmet, Reuben?
Reuben: My like it. My like my new bike helmet.
Daddy: Good. Now you’ve got a bike helmet what do you think you might need next?
Reuben: Mmmm… [obviously thinking]. A drill!
Daddy: A drill?!
Reuben: Yes. My like a drill.
Daddy: Right… okay. Well, I didn’t give away too much information in that conversation then, did I?
Amazon UK has just sent me an email wondering if I might be interested in the following bizarre collection of books:
Wonderfully bizarre!
I saw an advert for Pantene that told me that their shampoo gives you “colour protection”. I’m going to be honest here. I have no idea what colour protection is in shampoo.
Are there some people whose hair turns monochrome unless they wash it in special shampoo?
When you ask people what might be the downside of having children they might say sleep depravation or a diminished social life.
But it’s not! It’s waking up in the morning with children’s TV theme tunes going around your head.
I woke up this morning with the Something Special theme tune from CBeebies in my head. I stumbled, bleary-eyed to the bathroom at 05:30 while in my head I found myself cheerily singing “Hello, hello, how are you? Hello, hello, it’s good to see you you….” Arrrrggghhhh!
They don’t tell you about that in the books.
I received this email this afternoon:
Post Express Delivery. Package is available for pickup. NR 67433
Hello.
Post notification No.17134
The company could not deliver your package to your address. Your package has been returned to the Post Express office. The reason of the return is “Incorrect delivery address of the package”
Please attention!
Attached to the letter mailing label contains the details of the package delivery. Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office
Thank you for attention.
Post Express Service.
Now, I am waiting for a parcel to be delivered. It should contain a wall clock for the bathroom as we had a nice one with a bird on it that is now on the wall in Reuben and Joshua’s bedroom. So, I have to be honest and say that I was tempted to open it.
But then I read the email again and these were the things that concerned me:
I just deleted the email.
When I was a young child I thought that the building where you visited the doctor was called “The Hell Centre”.
It wasn’t that I had a particularly negative view of the medical profession: my mum was a nursing sister who worked in the hospital next door. Neither did I associate “The Hell Centre” with any fire-and-brimstone images that I might have had of hell.
It was just that I had mis-heard the pronunciation of “health centre”—the ‘th’ sound had run into the ‘s’ of ‘centre’: hell thcentre—and so I just accepted that that was what it was called, in the same way that I had accepted that an apple was an apple and a cat was a cat.
I sometimes wish I could still accept things that easily without questioning them. I wonder why that is…
I arrived home last night to some excitement at Potting Shed HQ: Reuben and Joshua had new duvets and pillows for their cot.
Up until now the boys have slept in zip-up sleeping bags, and pulled blankets over themselves if cold. But now they have ‘big boy’ duvets and pillows.
They raced upstairs to show me, threw themselves into their cots and race under the duvet. What genuine smiles!
This morning I went in to see them around 07:15. They were standing in their cots holding a cuddly snowman and cuddly Santa over the edges of their cot.
“Diving!” they said before dropping the toys only the floor.
I picked them up.
“AGAIN!”
I picked them up. Again.
“Joshua, show me how you get under your duvet.”
Joshua dropped to his knees and shuffled under his duvet, pulling it tightly around his head.
“Do you like your new duvet?” I asked him.
“New duvet make my happy.” he said.
And you know, that made me happy too.
