Category Archives: children’s chatter

A special Sunday afternoon for two

Posted on by
6

Last Sunday I did something very special.  Well, it was not “swimming with dolphins” -special, but it was more like ”Not something you do every day, but will probably do again real soon” – special.

I took the eldest to the petting zoo. Alone. Without her father or her sister.  Just us girls.

The youngest was sick and my husband had to work – on a sunny Sunday, poor thing. So while n°2 took a forced and much detested nap we set out to explore a new petting zoo which has recently opened in the neighbourhood.

There was nothing special about the petting zoo, we do that fairly often, but it was special because it was just her and me.

Ever since n°2 came into our lives we have almost never been alone, a few trips to the grocery store not included. Since I had both children within the space of 17 months all her memories of time spend alone with mommy are either gone or turned into misty reminiscences of which it is unclear whether they were ever real.

Don’t get me wrong : my children love one another dearly, except of course when they both want to play with the same Barbie doll, then you better remove all sharp objects from the room. But part of being the big sister is that you are rarely the sole subject of your mother’s attention for a couple of hours. You always have to share mommy with someone. And since n°2 enjoys playing the part of ‘Baby’ with gusto she all too often steals the limelight, leaving poor n°1 standing on the sidewalk in the semi-darkness.

So to get mommy’s attention she turns to monkey tricks. Running about, screaming, jumping on one leg all the while yelling : “Look mommy, look what I can do!”. Anything to bring the spotlight back to her.

I imagine being an elder sibling is a bit like being a former A-list star, who has sunk down to Celebrity Has Been – level and tries to regain her/his glory by participating in “talent” shows, getting pregnant, having fake weddings, much talked about divorces…  you get the picture.

But this Sunday she was  without doubt the star of the show. We didn’t do much. We just walked about, looking at the animals, commenting on the smell of the pigs, I held a baby rabbit so she could pet it (mentally praying the poor frightened rodent wouldn’t pee or poop all over me), we climbed stuff, we jumped on a bouncy castle, we went down a slide together, hand in hand.  But when you are four life doesn’t really get any better than that. 

So it is really not surprising she insists we have to going back when n°2 feels better. Because every girl deserves to pet a baby rabbit and slide down a slide with mommy, the slide is big enough for the three of us anyway.

 

I have no idea from who she gets it…

Posted on by
6

Conversations with my now 4 year old :

Me (after being asked if I wanted to play ghostbat) :”you can be a bit weird you know…”
She : ” yes I know, I’m your daughter”

Yesterday while watching Peter Pan:
“Mommy why are you laughing! Can’t you see the crocodile wants to eat Capitain Hook!”
“Wendy is a bit stupid, she always needs Peter Pan to save her.”

And:
Me: “what would you do if Capitain Hook caught you”.
She: “pffft, become a pirate of course, I love to fight.”

I’m screwed aren’t I?

Posted from WordPress for Android

On the absence of Spring, Disney and lentils with sausages

Posted on by
4

Hello Readers ! Are you as excited as I am !

What for?

For SPRING silly! Spring! It is finally here! Gone are the dark, rain-sodden, grey days! Away with the cold gales. Make place for the sun, the flowers, the rebirth of Nature, the…

Wait a second?

Is that …

Snow?

Yep, that is definitely snow. And rain. And a cold, bone-chilling wind.

The first day of spring and it is snowing. Otherwise known as Mother Nature giving us a royal “Up Yours” and continues to sip Martinis on a beach in Maui.

So I guess this means I will have to contain my kids to the house a little longer. A prospect which I find as enticing as giving a rabid honey badger with anger management-issues a rectal exam. It has been a long winter, filled with lots of coughs, mountains of snot and more wanna-play-outside tantrums than I thought possible.

The princesses are not best pleased about their containment to the house. You see they are the kind who need some healthy outside time, some running, some rolling around in the dirt, lots of yelling and chasing after each other. Preferably naked, if the weather permits it. They long to ride up and down the street with their bikes, to chase the cat into a tree, to draw with chalk on the sidewalk and to eat ice cream, preferably the sneakily healthy fruit ice-cream kind.

It breaks my heart to deprive them of such joys. And more importantly my brittle nerves have been frayed to the point of breaking by their constant arguing about who gets to play with the Playmobil baby and who is to be Playmobil mama. 

My selfish need for peace and some tranquillity drove me to extreme heights and deep lows. And made me wonder why I waited so long before introducing the kids to…

Disney!

That is right, we finally caved and got a DVD-player.

Don’t get me wrong, we are not the kind of parents who enforce weird no-tv rules and force ponderous volumes of literature upon their children. They are allowed to watch TV, not as much as they would like surely, but a reasonable amount. Now that they are a bit older their attention span is more than that of a fruit-fly with ADD and they can watch a whole movie (if it doesn’t take too long of course, 90min. seems to be the maximum).

We recently tried this and it worked great! They watched a movie while we enjoyed a lovely tranquil dinner and were absurdly entertained by their reactions to the story, which included but were not limited to : cushion biting when things got excited, grabbing hands when things got scary, laughing when it was funny, yelling and booing.

So while they are thus entertained I’m free to dream of Spring and indulge in hearty winter food which warms the heart and fills the tummy a little bit longer. Such as this :

Salad* Lentils with Spicy Sausages and sour cream –mustard dressing

Ingredients:

200gr of blonde lentils

1 shallot, cubed

2 or 3 laurel leaves

250 ml of chicken stock (yes, by all means use cube)

Some olive oil to heat things up

1 table spoon of sour cream

1 table spoon of mustard

Some chive, chopped

Sausages

Salad

Fabulous bakes potatoes

How to :

- heat up the olive in a pan and add the diced shallot, when things are nice an’ steamy add the lentils and laurel leaves. As soon as they are covered in a nice layer of olive oil add the stock and leave to simmer over medium heat.

- heat some more olive oil into a pan and add the sausages, bake.

- in a bowl mix the mustard with the sour cream and chopped chives (I know crazy difficult)

- throw into a plate, feed family.
image

Christmas is near, let the mayhem begin!

Posted on by
2

I have to admit it : I simply adore Christmas. I adore every little, crazy thing about it. From the buying and choosing of the tree – after December 6th, not before,or bad things will happen to good people (meaning their tree will lose all its needles before the actual Christmas dinner) – the decorating of the tree (lights first, then ornaments) and the crib.

About that crib… this is ours:

 

image

A beautifully handmade wooden crib, perfect to the last little detail… filled with the Playmobil Christmas family.

Last year the crib was filled with plaster figures. Plaster figures which where a gift from my In Law’s more specificaly. I can still hear my husband say it : “what can happen! It is not as if the kids are really going to play with the figures.” Five minutes later we had lost Joseph, one sheppard had lost its head and Melchior was missing an arm. We were able to mend the sheppard and Melchior but Mother Mary was a single mom until June. That is when Joseph turned up, from God knows were. They are now reunited in the dusty box up in the attic and I hear mariage counseling is going well.

Needless to say the girls threw themselves hearth and soul into the whole decorating scheme:

image

image

image

Ok the little one was not that impressed with it. She preferred to make sure the Playmobil sheep went out for walkies.

Needless to say wine time was hailed with uncommon delight that evening.

 

 

Conversations between sisters

Posted on by
6

N°1: “Here can you put this in your pocket?”

N°2: “I don’t have pockets.”

N°1: “Then put it in your diaper.”

N°2: “But I just did kaka.”

N°1: “The kaka is only at the back, put it in front.”

N°2: “Good idea.”

Time to intervene…

Also please tell me mine are not the only ones to have this kind of conversation…

At long last…

Posted on by
2

image

Tell me, what do you see on this picture?
You see two girls, playing with stickers, enjoying themselves without me or any other person to supervise them.
So to you mothers of very young children, you who have nearly given up hope of ever having a minute of peace, I tell it is possible.
The moment will come when you can go into the kitchen/toilet/laundryroom by yourself and you will not be followed by the pitterpatter of little feet and whiny sounds.
That day will come. Keep the faith ye mothers of toddlers young.
And keep the white wine chilled,.because these intervals of peace generally don’t last long…

I think my kids are trying to tell me something…..

Posted on by
4

After the eldest we are now trying to wean the baby – excuse me – big girl n°2  (don’t worry that breaking sound you heard were just the cracks in my heart getting a little deeper) of her beloved pacifier.

It is like she senses what we are trying to do because all of a sudden she has become ve-e-e-e-ry attached to the thing. Whenever we try to put it away silently she will hunt for it until she has found it. And unlike her big sister, she has the intelligence to try to put a chair against a table, climb on the chair and take the paci-prize out of the fruit basket were I hide them. She is a clever one that little one.

The result is that she is running about with her pacifier more often than without. And this pacifier has become the central figure in a new game my girls like to play.

It is called ‘Nice Mommy’.

Here is how it goes:

- One child plays the ‘baby’ and lies down in a tent/on a blanket/the carpet while the other one plays the ‘mama’ and goes to the other side of the garden/room with the pacifier.

- The child lying down starts faux-whining/crying for her ‘mama’.

- The ‘mama’ goes to the cryer and says: ‘don’t cry darling, here is your nice mama with your paci, shush shush’ and gives the ‘baby’ the pacifier.

They hug and cuddle and then the ‘mama’ takes over the role of ‘baby’ and the ‘baby’ goes to play the ‘mama’.

It is very nice to have them play together, but I have a feeling that there is a hidden meaning behind their game and I’m just not getting it…

And then she kissed me and mended my broken heart….

Posted on by
9

Someone once said that the essence of being a mother is to have your heart broken and glued back together again a million times a day. Or perhaps I just made that up on the spot, I don’t know.

But anyhow. Today I had my heart broken into a thousand tiny little pieces.

This is the culprit:

 

My lovely n°2.

She is my baby. My tiny perfect, funny, adorable baby. And that is what I have always called her : Babygirl. She is my Babygirl. My youngest child, my precious, my little bundle of joy.

I called her Babygirl from the moment she was born and she has always responded enthusiastically when I called her that, with a hug and kiss, because – young as she may be – she understands that she is indeed mama’s baby.

 

Until this morning.

This morning she broke my heart.

When I dressed her and asked: ‘what does my Babygirl want to wear today?’ (She may not yet be two but that child has a fashion sense to rival Alexa Chung’s) instead of the usual ‘skirty’ I got : ‘No mama, not Babygirl. Girl’.

* blink blink*

‘Are you not mama’s Babygirl?’

‘No, Girl’.

* My heart breaks. It sound a bit like the shattering sound of a thousand fine Venetian crystal goblets breaking at once*

 ‘Mama’s Girl!’

And with that she used the magical superglue that is a toddler hug and kiss and my heart was mended again.

Until tomorrow morning of course, then she’ll probably sledgehammer it into the ground by declaring that she prefers her papa.