Daniel has begun to read by sheer will power alone. He painstakingly sounds out words from everywhere. They are always slightly disappointing words – Avonmore, O’Neill’s, stop, yield – but he is undaunted. Next stop, the Russians.
Daniel
Making Sense of the World Around Us
The Home Lives of Others
Me: Do you like the new babysitter?
Daniel: Yes.
Me: What language do you think [insert the most Irish name you can think of at this point – babysitter’s mother is a native Irish speaker from Donegal] speaks at home?
Daniel: I dunno, French?
Relations
Me: Everyone has two grandmothers. Do you know who your two grandmothers are?
Daniel: Grandma and Aunty Nic?
The Solar System
Daniel: Do you know which planet is closest to the sun?
Me: Mercury?
Daniel: Yes, and then it’s Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Do you want to hear about sunspots?
Why you Should Try to Keep your Small Children away from Police Stations
To renew the children’s passports, we have to bring them to a police station and let a Garda look at them. This may or may not be because Mr. Waffle was not born in Ireland but in a country well known to harbour dangerous subversives (Canada, since you ask). So on Sunday we trooped into the station where the Gardaà duly looked the children over and pronounced that they matched the photos. During that time, I fielded the following questions from the Princess based on a series of posters on the wall:
What is rape? [Having looked at these excellent but disturbing posters]
What’s human trafficking?
What’s a drug dealer?
While doing this, I had also to break up a fist fight between the boys on the subject of Daniel’s wellingtons.
Unrelated: Praxis, please advise on the capitalisation of the title.
Signs, omens, portents
Daniel came home with a big cut across his forehead. “What happened to you?” I asked. “Mary Lou [McDonald, successful Sinn Féin candidate in the recent election] hit me,” he said. “WHAT??” “Well, Michael, threw her at me and she hit me on the forehead.” It transpired that one of the candidate’s posters had fallen off a lamp post and Michael decided to test its aerodynamics by flinging it as his brother. I tell you, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Round Up
Parent teacher meetings: Herself, v clever, but continues to coast along without making the slightest effort (this is all very well in primary school but I can see disaster looming in the long term). Michael, too early to tell whether clever or not, but does not apply himself, particularly to colouring (try to care but just cannot, am clearly a bad mother). Daniel, tries very hard and worries a great deal about what everyone will think of his efforts. Due to power of will alone he can now nearly, nearly read. I think I should rely on Daniel for my pension. None of them shows the slightest interest in Irish or desire to speak it despite encouragement from all quarters. Sigh.
Went to see Tutankhamun exhibition on Saturday at the request of the children who are learning about ancient Eygpt in school. We queued for an hour with our pre-purchased ticket but, as a fellow queuer pointed out, at least it wasn’t raining. It was a bit dull in the end but the children, amazingly, seemed to enjoy it. Probably because they were given headphones.
Incident
The childminder took the children to the park yesterday. Some big bold boys ran after them, tried to kick them, shouted at them and called them names. The childminder departed with the children in tow and the bullies following. They only left when the children got on the bus home. The Princess is particularly upset, pointing out that they tried to kick Daniel she said, “I can do that, but no one else is allowed to.” They were all a bit shaken up. Later in the evening, Daniel said to me, “Mummy, the mean boys in the park called me [insert nasty racist epithet here] what does that mean?” Lovely. Proof that racists are stupid, I suppose. Mr. Waffle said to them, that these were children who weren’t looked after properly and taught properly and they probably wouldn’t have very happy lives. I was much less inclined to go with the wishy-washy liberal approach than usual and just said that they were nasty children [looks like it’s true – a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged].
