On his mind: Winton

Upon waking, while still rubbing eyes:
"But, Mommy.  What kind of pesto does Liam use on his pizza?"

Clara: Special Talents

Here is my daughter,
she walks on the water:

Potty Talk

Things Winton has told me while pooping:

"Mummy!  I have ghosts coming out of my butt!"

"Mummy, did you hear that?  That was the caterpillars coming out of my butt."

I think I'm ready to write up some horror-movie scripts now.

4's a crowd

Sometimes after a challenging day, it is nice when the 4 year old boy stumbles into my room at 1AM wanting to squeeze into the bed with me and the two cats (whose proportions double in the dark--anyone who's ever slept with a cat knows they are larger in the dark than in the light).

Claraism du Jour

Clara [plaintively]: "Mummy?"
Me: "Yes?"
Clara: "Will you be mad if Rainbow Dash catches on fire in my backpack?"

Resilience: A Study with a Single Participant

Method: 
Wake Mummy at 4.30AM, or 1.20AM and 4.30 AM, every night for 11 consecutive nights.
On night 9 add a broken (and therefore un-openable) window and markedly warmer temperatures outside (and consequently VERY warm temperatures inside).
On night 11 add copious quantities of cat vomit so the room is hot, stuffy and smells of cat puke and the vinegar used to try and clean it up.

Results:
Decline in maternal resilience and patience.  If, ideally, one "bounces back" against the minor challenges of parenting (refusals to brush teeth, insistence on My Little Pony trading rather than putting on of shoes, complaints in car about being hungry when Mummy has just thrown away 88% of child's uneaten breakfast), the Mummy in this experiment doesn't bounce.  In fact, she responds more like a duck pin bowling ball dropped on a concrete floor: loud, jarring, unpleasant, ugly, ruinous.

Conclusions:
God help me, I think Mummy's going to sleep in the living room tonight.

My Little Pony: Mummy

I have developed favorites among the 65 episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic available on Netflix. 

That says enough, doesn't it?   I know them well enough to have a pseudo-intellectualised preference for the episodes focusing on cutie marks and what they imply about aptitude/ destiny/ the needs for various kinds of talent in the world.

Who am I??

(I don't like Pinkie Pie though.  Really not.)

Clara's Restaurant

Yesterday afternoon, Clara created a restaurant in our living room. She named it Breakfast Delicious.

She pulled together two footstools, draped a "table cloth" (blanket) over them, set cushions around them (to seat four) and then started work on her menu:

dates
2 figs
ps [peas]
tea
carrots
green beans
peas
waffles

She then made a sign: "It opens at 10, the rest."

And discussed problems in her business plan with me: "But, Mummy.  Someone will have to be here to run the restaurant while I'm at school.  May be we should only be open on days when you don't have meetings at work."

And then she had an epic melt-down when I wouldn't let her go out onto the sidewalk to solicit guests.

Me: "OH.  But I thought we were playing restaurant!"
Clara: "Noooo.  It's a real restaurant!  I have to tell people it's open or no one will come."
Me: "Clara, I don't want to have strangers in off the street eating our figs. And I just washed the floor."
Clara: "I hate you, Mummy."