I came home from work yesterday and the Princess leapt up to meet me. “I won the class art competition! I got first place! I got a brilliant prize!” Her recital of her greatness was interrupted by prolonged wails from her brothers neither of whom won their class prize. Rejoicing in your siblings’ good fortune is a learned skill, I think.
Boys
All I Want for Christmas…Seasonal Round Up
Daniel is down a front tooth…
And in other news, did I tell you that Saint Nicolas came on December 6 – Dublin is somewhat outside his remit of the Low Countries but he came all the same.
We went to see Santa at the Botanic Gardens on Sunday. On the plus side it was free and the children got an African violet and a gummy snake each. On the minus side, it was freezing and the queue lasted for 90 minutes.
Mr. Waffle is in Helsinki all week. He was obsessively checking the weather before he left and packed his ski gear and a pair of long johns for the expected Arctic cold. It turns out that it’s not as cold as he expected (but, you know, snowy, dark and -3). I am home alone with the children and it is now gone 10 and Michael continues to trek down the stairs at regular intervals to inform me of activities upstairs. In fact, I think I hear him now. Sigh.
Guilt as Standard
When we took the kids to Milano’s recently, the children got little activity books while they were waiting for their food. They were asked to identify their favourite places and Michael wrote “the swimming pool”. What useless mother has not yet arranged swimming lessons for her children? Who only manages to take them to the pool once every two months, if that? Oh dear.
Ominous
I found this taped to the boys’ bedroom door the other night:
There’s an obscure joke to be made about this and this post on the Schengen area on Jon Worth’s blog; I’m too tired to make it. Fill in the gaps yourselves there now.
Cultural Differences
It is the end of GAA training until after Christmas. The young men from the under 8s are invited to a Christmas party. Last Saturday was the deadline for paying for the party. I brought my money dutifully. Another mother whom I know from our time soldiering together on the side of the pitch arrived rather late and handed over her money and appeared to be scurrying away again. “Are you off already?” I asked in surprise. “Yes,” she said, “[the GAA under 8 boy] and his sister are both sick in bed.” And off she went, looking quite harassed. When I related this to Mr. Waffle we both marvelled at the trouble that she had gone to and as one said, “Of course, she’s English.” Later in the week the inevitable email arrived: 57 boys have been signed up for the party but only 36 have paid, can the others bring their money on the day?
Gotcha!
Horrid Henry has a game that he plays with his friends that is modelled on Monopoly. It’s called Gotcha and features dragons’ lairs instead of streets and rubies instead of money but the principles are similar. In an ill-fated moment of inspiration, Mr. Waffle suggested to the boys that he and they might make Gotcha themselves and, with the aid of pictures printed out from the internet, an old packet of Rice Krispies and a Pritt stick, they did.
They, therefore, successfully created a game even duller than Monopoly which one or other of the boys always wants to play but never both together. Mr. Waffle and I have put in many unhappy hours on the Gotcha board. Yesterday afternoon we stayed at home, the weather was inclement. Daniel tired of the rugby on the television and begged to play Gotcha instead so he and I did so. If I never play Gotcha again, it won’t be too soon.
