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.
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?
No, just no
This evening I was the lucky recipient of an email from a PR firm asking me to promote a number of products. The details of the one that caught my eye are as follows:
My Beautiful Mommy: Must Have for Mom’s Undergoing Plastic Surgery
Young children are naturally curious – they’re full of questions and excited to learn about the world they live in. However, as times change, children’s curiosities have addressed more complex and sensitive issues, often at younger ages. In today’s American culture, more than ever, answers can increasingly be found in children’s books. Everything from divorce and global warming to potty habits and how to deal with a death in the family, children’s books have tackled it all. Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a Miami board-certified plastic surgeon and father of four, has taken the reins on a very hot topic and wrote [sic] “My Beautiful Mommy,†the first ever children’s book that addresses plastic surgery. To learn more about the book , you can visit: www.mybeautifulmommy.com
Where will it all end?
On the other hand, this is more appealing.
Happy Birthday to Me
I am ancient. It was my birthday yesterday. Mr. Waffle and I went for a walk in the Wicklow mountains. It snowed on us. I’m hoping that this isn’t a metaphor for something.
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.
Why hello negative equity, I like the way you’re doing your hair
Did I tell you that we are thinking of moving house? Well, we are. The man from the estate agent’s came around to look at the house and after some humming and hawing told me that it is now worth only just over two thirds of what we paid for it in 2002. Oh the pain.
