Daniel: Mummy, where are you going?
Me: Out with friends, sweetheart.
Him: To a dinner party?
Me: No.
Him: To a party?
Me: No, just my bookclub.
Him: Will there be wine?
Daniel
The ugly truth
Children are distressingly honest. A frequent plea is “Mummy, can I play with your pizza dough tummy”. How I wish I was making this up. Frequent “Mummy, your teeth are yellow” comments led to a recent trip to the dentist for a clean and polish. Upon my return, I was told, “They’re still yellow.” I blame the Americans.
On the plus side, the other morning Daniel said to me, “Mummy you look beautiful, your dress is lovely, everyone at work will say you are beautiful. I also like your sparkly eye-shadow.”
Ephemera
Daniel speaks in a mixture of the accents of the South African (Afrikaans speaking), Romanian and Dublin women who were his teachers in Montessori school. It is endearing and also slightly alarming.
Michael refers to his sandals as his “ankles”. He often begins sentences with “Well..” and when enthused about something will say “oh yes indeed”. His standard introduction line is “Hello, I am Michael, we are three.” It seems to work well for him.
Both of them say “I am he” when I would definitely say, “I am him”. I am not sure whether they are grammatically correct or not but it definitely sounds wrong.
The other day, I asked them how Dublin people say “book” – source of mild amusement something like bewk – they looked baffled. You know, the way Dublin people like Daddy say it, I encouraged. “Un livre” offered Michael, “l’histoire” said Daniel hopefully. Some confusion there, I fear.
Close but no cigar
Me: Doggy’s cousins have arrived.
Her: You said Ian was Doggy’s brother.
Me: OK. Doggy’s brothers.
She treated them with utter indifference. The boys, on the other hand, were delighted to see them both and exclaimed “Doggy’s back”. Obviously, Doggy was a big figure in all of our lives.
Stereotyped at 3
Me: Worry, worry, school, boys, blah etc.
Husband: Don’t worry.
Me: But I do worry, school, big children etc.
Him: Look,they’ll be all right, Daniel is clever and Michael, Michael has street smarts.
Please note: 1. They are both clever (of course they are, my children etc. etc.), 2. Neither of them has street smarts (they’re three).
Tús maith, leath na hoibre
A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a friend in his 50s who has never married or had children. Over lunch he laughingly described a sum of money as being insufficient “to keep you in nappies.” “Of course,” he corrected himself “they must all be out of nappies by now.” “Actually, they’re not,” I said. As a single man with no children (therefore not possessed of the exquisite tact of fellow parents in relation to advice) and distinctly firm views on the rearing of same (in his 50s), he yelped in horror “Three and not out of nappies.”
This made me think and I determined that the time had come to attempt to move the boys out of nappies. For a couple of weeks I trailed the idea of only one bottle at bedtime. When that was successfully executed I moved on to trailing “no bottle, no nappy” which the boys greeted with great excitement. On Friday night we had no bottles and no nappies. On Saturday morning, they were dry. Hurrah. “Tús maith, leath na hoibre,” opined my husband. “What’s that ‘doucement’?” I enquired. “No, it’s Irish, a good start is half the work,” said he. And we had another dry night last night. Could it possibly be that easy?
