Just another of those days....

It's been cold and rainy. So very, very rainy. There is a leak through one of the ceiling lights, so we won't be turning on that for a while. Although, in fairness, we have only two weeks left in this house. And if it burnt down, it would probably be quicker than getting the demolition crew in. Not that I'm advocating arson, or anything.

The Small Child is still awake. She has inherited the Irish propensity for staying awake late, exemplified by her paternal Granny, whose family are known for visiting each other at midnight, on occasion. The mind boggles.  She's currently sitting up in bed reading books to two of her plush friends, pretending to be her French teacher.

A friend of Himself and other friends, the blogger and journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy, is being hauled before a military tribunal in Egypt for criticising the on-going torture of activists. Unfortunately, while Mubarrak has gone, the military is still very much in evidence.

I have to get a new passport. This involves getting photographs, that hopefully do not make me look like a deranged axe murderer only recently released from maximum security. I am not hopeful. They are for the British passport, and all my British passport photos have that one overriding theme, regardless of continent of origin or year of photo.

Did I mention the rain? 

Of Birthdays and other happenings

It was the Small Child's birthday this week, including a birthday party at a local playcentre, attended by a number of her closest friends. The cake has been well publicised in other forums, sufficient to say  that is was very impressive. But pride cometh before a fall. The cupcakes I made for daycare last night, although delicious, had a decidedly rustic and lopsided  air about them.

From her party, however, she received her first Barbie Doll (narrowly pipping her adoring parents to the punch) and various other assorted items guaranteed to gladden the heart of the four year old. One of the presents was a small pink electronic hamster which whizzes around the place squeaking a variety of noises, some realistic, and some very much from the realm of fantasy (hamster Greensleeves, anyone?)

It appears to be somewhat more intelligent than its real live counterparts, although it had attempted to shag Himself's toes a few times as well as the Small Child's foot. Better still, it does not require either food or a kitty litter and can be shut up when required. Pretty much the perfect pet, really.

The actual birthday was today. From her adoring parents, the Small Child received another Barbie Doll, Snakes & Ladders, a watch and various other items. The Snakes & Ladders has been a particular hit, with the Small Child appearing to have a winning streak in inverse proportion to her size. I confess, it is a humbling experience to be beaten by a four year old. The rules of the games were somewhat confusing at first, with the Small Child insistent that she had rolled a three because that was where the dice had landed, rather than, say, a five, which was what the dice showed. She also evinced a desire halfway through any game to change tokens, so that every colour got an equal go.

Bless.

Small Child in Bed

One of the peculiar joys of going into the Small Child's bedroom of a night to check she's OK is seeing just what exactly she had chosen to wear. While you may very well put her to bed wearing orthodox pj's/nightie/knickers, if she can't sleep and gets hot, cold or bored, you can bet she'll be wearing something different when you check her a few hours later.

Last night she wanted to sleep "just in knickers, mum". I checked on her later, and lo and behold, she's in a pair of pyjamas. Other nights she'll start off in pyjamas and end up in a skirt and t-shirt. Or her nightie. Or a fleece, in the middle of summer.

One particularly funny night I heard a plaintive voice calling "mummy, I need help".  Turns out she had decided that leggings and a zipper jacket, with nothing underneath were the thing to wear that night. Except that the zipper on the jacket had got caught, and then split, and she could get neither wholly into it, or wholly out of it. To add to the humor, the jacket was purple, with sequins. She looked just like a mini glam rocker after a hard night, only minus the booze and fags.

Damn I wish I'd got a photo.

Big enormous bed

The Small Child is going through another stage of not really liking her bed. Tonight she followed me into our room, which currently has a pink duvet cover and where she pointed out that after she had another bad dream she would come in here and get into the beautiful enormous bed with the lovely big pillows.... because girls like pink beds, mum!

Err, right you are then, Ted!

Small Child World

The Small Child has been talking a lot about different worlds recently. There is the general one, Small Child World, and then there are others, depending on how she is feeling on any particular day. On Friday it was Small Child & Mummy World because we had adventures in the park. Another day it was decided that "today is going to be Tomorrow World". We've had Best Friends World, and, this afternoon, Pikelet World, in honour of the rather delicious pikelets we made for dessert.

And for posterity, here is the recipe, courtesy of The Guardian circa 2003.

250 grams SR Flour
100 grams castor sugar
2 eggs
125 mls natural yoghurt
250mls milk

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Whisk wet ingredients in another bowl until well combined. Make a well in the dry ingredients, poor in the wet ingredients and amalgamate well. Heat frypan,  put in a small amount of neutral oil and poor in appropriately pikelet sized amounts of batter. Turn when bubbles appear on surface, repeat process until all batter used,  then serve with jam and cream.

Rainy Day

Well, actually it's been more of a rainy weekend, so we didn't get to picnic with the Small Child's BFF and the roof has sprung another leak in the bedroom. We've had several different varieties of rain these last few days, from tropical style rain so dense we can't see the far side of the park, to the current variety, a fine penetrating Irish style drizzle that looks innocuous until you come in 5 minutes later to realise you're soaked to the skin.  Even the brush turkeys are looking bedraggled and even more desponded than usual.

The Small Child has been in fine form, the other day she told Himself that "you have a lovely furry chest daddy, just like Hairy Maclary." She's a fine turn of phrase, so she has.  At the moment she's playing an  game involving herself as Dora, Himself as Swiper the Fox, and one of her friends as Boots. Thankfully for the sanity of all involved, it's not Strawberry Goat.

Out in the wider world, NSW Labor are heading for a pasting in 6 days time. Earth Hour is on the same night. They must be fecking joking if they think I'm going to turn off my TV for an hour during what promises to be a very amusing election night count. Apart from anything else, I could have every light on in our house for a week and not come close to the electricity consumption of some of the monster mansions along Middle Harbour in one night.

Flabbergasted

This is a meme I did for a good friend of mine following something very funny she wrote last year. It's one of those happy examples of a time when a phrase and a picture just find themselves in beautiful harmony.

In other not so notable news, the Small Child was sick on Saturday. Thankfully, it was one of those 12 hour bugs and did not involve much in the way of copious amounts of vomitting, for which I am exceedingly grateful. Memories of the The Great Giardia Explosion of 2009 are still fresh in my mind, when the Small Child was much smaller and not of a sufficiently mature grasp of linguistics to be able to tell me she had a funny metalic taste in her mouth, which I gather is one of the principal methods of diagnosing the bug.

Alas, we had to do it the long way, which involved copious amounts of chuck, poo samples, a scarily limp and lethargic child and numerous trips to the GP/hospital/paediatrician, all in a two week period before we left to go to Ireland on our first trip back since we left in October 2006. I honestly never thought we'd make it. It didn't help that Himself was working for an utter dickhead of the I-employ-you-so-your-soul-belongs-to-me species, and working long, long hours.

We're still not entirely sure what caused the bug. Himself suspects it was dodgy blueberries, this being the first item heralding its arrival, and I am inclined to agree with him. The Small Child resolutely refuses to buy this in any way, shape or form, and chucks tanties when she sees what she currently can't have.

Oh, well, maybe tonight, when I purchase some fresh ones.

God the Builder

The Small Child attends a Seventh Day Adventist creche. It's not a religion I know a great deal about, as an atheist, and and atheist moreover who comes from a Catholic background. But I digress. The creche is good and I have no problem with the religion. So far as I'm concerned, people have a lot of differing views, and the sooner you learn to (generally) respect them, so much the better.

But I digress further. So the Small Child is sitting with her small friends, singing a song about "God The Builder". Her Granny watches for a bit, with an expression on her face that the carers no doubt interpret as loving the song, and a better person might interpret as deep cynicism.

In the car later, Granny asks the Small Child what the song was

"God the Builder, Gran. Mummy and me went to a special store and bought the DVD, didn't we mum?"

Err, no.

Enlightenment occurs. The Small Child is mixing up God and Bob, a natural mistake given that both build, but Bob builds better.

Especially in this house, where God builds not at all.

Goldilocks & the Three Bears - as told by John Donne

The Small Child and I were at Granny's yesterday, this being easier for both of us while my leg is in plaster. Wandering round, she chanced upon an old copy of John Donne's Love Poems, one of those Penguin 60s they were selling in the mid-90s. This, thinks the Small Child, is great little book and she promptly starts "reading" the story of Goldilocks to Granny out of it. Granny lost it a bit, but not wanting the Small Child to see her in stitches, tells her to go read it to mummy.

I suppose I can be glad that it wasn't Alan Clark's Diaries. There's a copy of that floating around somewhere and all.

Hee-re comes the Wagon!

The wanderly, wanderly Wagon! Here comes the Wagon!

No prizes for guessing what we've been watching recently. Yep, that classic of Irish childhood, Wanderly Wagon. The Small Child adores it. Needless to say, Himself, who was reared on it, does too. I suspect that Uncle Skinny, who gave it to the Small Child, had his big bro in mind when he bought it. I must say, it's even grown on me.

Vintage 1970s, it has sets similar to the wobbly ones beloved of Doctor Who. There is cutting edge 70s computer technology, and a bunch of puppets, of whom Sneaky Snake (or Snicky Snek, as the Small Child used to call him) is the household favourite.

And it has Frank Kelly, aka Father Jack. Apparently he ad-libbed the majority of his lines in the show. This led to such memorable lines as "Doctor Who? Nein, Doctor Who ist BBC! Dr Astro ist RTE!"

But possibly the item I love most in this show is Dr Astro's time travel machine, which runs on runny custard. Blue runny custard, topped up with popcorn. A triumph of the clearance sales in whichever was the closest department store to Donnybrook, I recently counted the following components:

A tea strainer
A number of wooden spoons
A wire frame milk bottle holder with milk bottle and dial showing how many bottle were required the following day
Quite a number of vegetable peelers
An equal amount of spoons
A collection of orange glass canisters and bowls, all self illuminated via standard electric globes
A vegetable basket
A cutlery holder
A funnel
A lot of pegs
A dustpan brush
A wine rack

Truly, they don't make TV like that any more.

Then Dora went exploring

The Small Child has now decided that her name is Dora, after she went exploring with Himself yesterday, which included a crossing of the Harbour Bridge. Granny raised her eyebrows at this last one, having been reliably informed that the expedition only went as far as South Mona Vale headland. Which it did. The Harbour Bridge in question is a small wooden structure over a little ravine. But it was all very exciting.

She has also, for some reason, decided that she must sleep with all her tights in the bed. Being hampered by the cast, I cannot magic them back into the appropriate drawer when she is asleep. There is also a torch. I discovered the torch when I sprung the Small Child going into our bedroom with it lit. The Good Lord Above only knows where she got it from. But torch is now back with mummy torch on the top shelf of the press, having had a wonderful holiday.

Loving the Lemur

King Julien, that is. From The Penguins of Madagascar, a children's show based on the movie Madagascar. Not that I've seem the movie or anything. But I'm growing quite fond of the TV show.

The small child adores it. She is having Penguin obsession right, left and centre. All other shows are foresaken for the opportunity to watch the penguins and their lemur sidekicks who include King Julien, a cheerfully amoral lemur with a middle European accent, a large ego, a bouncy castle and a habit of getting others to rescue him, in particular the Penguins, Skipper, Rico, Kowalski and Private.

I'm now also back at work. Ho hum. Thank feck I only have to work four days a week from now on.

And then there was Toast.

The Small Child is finally re-naming some of her dolls. Up till now, she has been fairly unadventurous in the naming stakes, going for endless variations of baby, babby, bubby etc with multiple dolls having the same name.

Today, we got something different. One doll has been renamed Toast, another Roast and the third has had a torrid time being variously Toosa, Toosla and now Toaster Roaster. No, I don't know where this has come from either. Just as she was going to bed, she decided that they were three baby Jesuses, recalling her show stopper at the creche Christmas show where she played "Jesus's mummy". I must say she did look rather adorable in the blue cape as shown in the mobile video Himself took of the event, myself being laid up with these wretched crutches.

Himself is somewhat perturbed by this infantile religious feeling. Growing up in Ireland, I suppose he has seen how the church gets a hold on children. I, on the other hand, have no fears, having grown up with my strongly atheist family. Given that the majority of his family is now leaning, at the very least to agnosticism also, I can't see that there is much to worry about.

She now want to know if she can sleep in the bathroom, having taken a scunner to her bedroom. For preference she would sleep with us, but this is not on. I have to get nookie sometimes and I'm not doing it with an audience.