On 28th of July 2001, my husband and I got married. And now, eight years later, we have three children and, a real triumph this, are still happily married. Rejoice with me.
It is also the first anniversary of the day we left Belgium. I am surprised how little I miss it. Although I do miss some things as do the other members of the family. The other day the Princess asked whether I would be going to Brussels for work at any point. No. Why? “I miss the tarte au citron from the Pain Quotidien“.
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.
The computer died. It went pop and smoke came out from behind as I was sitting playing with it at 2.30 am when I should have been in bed. I feel quite nostalgic. We bought it in 2003 cheaply, second-hand from the people downstairs. I had wanted a cool apple computer but my husband reined me in. I am quite pleased that he did. It was not beautiful but it was functional. And now it has died at a very opportune moment because we have been thinking of getting a new one for some time but felt we couldn’t justify it while the old one worked fine. We have a new one, twice as fast, half the size and half the price and amazingly silent.
We discovered that in the privacy of her bedroom, the Princess has been working on some alternative models:
Do this child’s parents spend too much time playing with the computer?
The Princess invited twins to her birthday party in April and each brought her a fiver inscribed “Happy Birthday love from..”. It struck me as an odd kind of present and I wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t some kind of offence to deface notes of the realm, but who am I to knock other mothers of twins. The Princess preserved her treasures carefully regularly asking about their purchasing power (she’s holding out until the economy hits bottom and she can get a house). Last night she decided unbeknowst to me that her treasures should sleep under the stars; under the brambles in the back garden to be specific. This morning she learnt a valuable lesson about minding her money. I suppose that kind of knowledge is worth a tenner.
Princess: Mummy is very nice to us today.
Michael: Yes, she is.
Princess: Normally she doesn’t give us this many meals.
The other morning, Michael asked could he bring a bag into Montessori school. He and his sister had been whispering about this earlier in some excitement. In a moment of weakness, I said that he could and in he trotted with a pink poodle bag strapped to his back.
When he got in, he could contain his excitement no longer; he opened up the bag and, to my intense astonishment, began distributing envelopes. “We’re having a party,” he announced to his classmates. I managed to get one of the invitations from one of the other children. It said, in his sister’s handwriting “We are having a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ party”. It gave a date (aha her request for a calendar explained), time and address and included a drawing of Thomas.
I was impressed by her organisational powers. She had said that she wanted to hold a party for the boys and I had fobbed her off saying that we would have something for their birthday in September and we couldn’t afford to throw parties at the drop of a hat. She was undaunted and said that she only wanted a party for playing games not for food which might, she could see, be expensive. I resorted to the grown-ups’ favourite phrase and help in ages past “We’ll see.” Clearly, she felt that she needed to take matters into her own hands. The teacher rescued all the invitations from the boys’ classmates and the Princess and I had a discussion about the power of the written word.
