A very handsome nose

Abigail draws a long line of little shapeless figures, and gives each of them a smile and one dot.  "That's you...and Aunty Madeleine...and Aunty Katy...and Aunty Lili..."
"Why do we all only have one eye?" I ask.
"The others are on the other side."
Then, just I'm marvelling that she's worked out perspective, she goes back along the line adding a second dot to each face.
"Oh, no, Abi!" - I'm cursing myself for interfering - "Don't put the other eyes in - you were quite right that they should be on the other side!"
She blinks at the drawing dispassionately.  "No, those are the noses."
Thank heaven.
"Aunty Madeleine​ has a very handsome nose," she says as she adds it.

Lots of naughty

Here's a tiny drama from this morning.

The scene: It's Sunday morning.  Abigail has got up early, refused anything resembling breakfast and eventually agreed to eat her untouched school packed lunch from the fridge.  Mummy has left her with this and CBeebies, made herself a cup of tea and gone upstairs to sort things out.  Jeremy has pottered down to watch CBeebies, and TheRev is in the study, printing stuff.

Mummy comes back down the stairs to find Abi waiting at the bottom.

Abi: (With relish) Mummy! I beened lots of naughty.

Mummy: Uh oh.

Abi: But, I want to be friends.

Mummy: Okay.  Well, what did you do?

Abi: I eated my spoon.

Mummy: Sorry.  You ate your what?

Abi: My spoon.

Mummy: Your - I - I'm not sure I've understood.  You ate a spoon?

Abi: Can we be friends?

Mummy: A spoon?  Are you sure?

Abi: Yes.

Mummy: Can you show me?

Abi leads Mummy to the sitting room and points to the remains of her packed lunch.  The plastic baby spoon which was with the (unopened) yoghurt now only has half a spoon on the handle.

Mummy: You ATE a SPOON?  But how...why...I mean, the other bit must be somewhere!  Did you swallow it?

Abi: Are we friends?

Mummy: Yes but where's the SPOON?  Is it in your tummy?

Abi: I don't know.  I spitted it out.

Mummy: Then why can't I see it anywhere?

Jem: Abi putted cheese on mine train.

Mummy: Oh.  Yes, I can see that, but - Jem, did you see her eat a spoon?

Jem: *proffering train* Clean it!

Mummy: I can't really...here, have a wipe...Daddy, come in here, I think Abi has actually eaten a spoon!

Daddy: I'm coming!  That's just printing, I can help get the kids dressed.

Mummy: They are already dressed.  The issue here is that one of them has eaten a spoon.

There follows a time of panic as we both hunt for the other bit of the spoon and consider the idea that our food phobic daughter has managed to consume a sharp bit of plastic for breakfast

Daddy: It's really gone!

Mummy: What's that in...Jeremy's hair!  It's in his hair!


Yes, that funny green thing in Jem's hair was really the top of the spoon, affixed with cream cheese.

It is a miracle every Sunday that we get to church on time.

40 days, 40 acts, 40 bags

For Lent this year, I've signed up to two schemes: 40 Acts and 40 bags in 40 days  Hopefully, I'm going to blog abut my experiences with these, but not every day (and, if I'm honest, probably not every week, since I'm writing a book and have two small children!)

40 Acts will e-mail me a choice of three acts of generosity to perform every day.  I'm both excited and nervous about this, because I suspect that many of them will require me to step outside my comfort zone in terms of time, money and being brave enough to talk to strangers.  However, I love the idea of making Lent, not just about sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, but about practicing a generous lifestyle.

40 bags in 40 days is much more selfish: although I'm doing it partly because giving away lots of stuff and simplifying life fits in with the generous lifestyle, it's mainly because my house is a mess and I want to declutter like a crazy woman.  The website suggests listing forty areas of the house or subsets of clutter (eg 'books') and tackling one each day, so I've listed my forty areas below, just for my own reference.  The resulting 'bags' could be things to give away, bags for the trash (most likely) or things to upcycle and bring back into current use.  I'm also going to count things boxed up for storage in the attic or garage.  I won't necessarily do the areas in this order - some are bigger or smaller jobs so I can pick according to the time I have that day.  And, in proper Lenten fashion, I get Sundays off!

While I'm following 40 acts and 40 bags, I'm also going to resist the temptation to buy anything new in the way of clothes and toys (with a couple of exceptions, because Abi's obsessions and need for motivators know no Lent).  This may be the hardest part of the whole thing.

So, I'm simultaneously simplifying life and practicing generosity.  It's like poetry: somebody said (I thought it was Tom Stoppard, but Google can't agree on who it was) that poetry is the simultaneous compression of form and expansion of meaning.  Lent has always been about the compression of physical desires and the simultaneous expansion of spiritual gain, so that seems about right, really.

Forty Areas
1) Under Abi's bed and down the back of her bedside cabinet
2) Abi's desk and desk drawers (which are still mainly full of my own stuff)
3) The vegetable rack in the bathroom where we keep dead shampoo bottles
4) My bedside cabinet
5) My wardrobe
6) My chest of drawers (Oh, the socks.  All the single socks.  Sob.)
7) TheRev's clothes
8) The bathroom windowsill
9)The bath toys
10) The clean laundry pile (Ha!  This will take about a week)
11) Jeremy's toys
12) Jeremy's clothes
13) Abi's clothes
14) The cloth nappies
15) My desk
16) My study shelves
17) Kitchen windowsill
18) Kitchen cupboards (crockery and glass)
19) Kitchen cupboards (food)
20) The den/puppet theatre in the understairs cupboard
21) DVDs
22) CDs
23) Downstairs books
24) Upstairs books
25) The spare room
26) On top of the fridge
27) The ironing-board-and-junk cupboard
28) Under the sink (about a million plastic bags)
29) Abi's toys
30) Abi's windowsill
31) The downstairs educational toy and puzzle shelves
32) The play kitchen area
33) The downstairs toy box (I have no idea what's in it)
34) Craft cupboard
35) Under my desk
36) TheRev's study shelves
37) TheRev's study floor
38) The sitting room
39) Storytelling resources
40) Utility/laundry/guinea pig stuff corner

If I'm feeling especially brave, I may blog before-and-after pics of some of these, if only to banish the temptation to show off the tidy parts of life on social media while hiding the ugly ones.  If anyone wants to join me in an honest sharing of mess and celebration of finding the carpet, make your own list and let me know and we'll get through this together...

Abigail's Nativity

For this post, I would like to hand you over to my daughter, who is going to dictate the story of the nativity in her own words.

"The angel said: 'You're going to have a baby!' and then Mary was surprised and then the angel just went away and then Mary shouted 'Joseph Joseph, the angel said I'm going to have a baby in my tummy!'

And then Joseph said, 'Let's go to Bethlehem' but she said, 'No, it's a very long way away', but then they just goed and then the keeper...the inner...said, 'There's no more room!'  Then they found a baby, Jesus.  They found baby Jesus.  And then the wise men comed...

(Here, there was a brief pause in which I reminded her about the shepherds)

And then the angel said 'Don't be afraid, I got news for you' and then the shepherds went to find the baby and they got there and Mary said 'Look, the angel said I was going to have a baby in my tummy' and then the shepherds saw baby Jesus.

THEN the wise men comed.  And they brought applenut squash."

(Editor's note: I have no idea what applenut squash is, but it sounds delicious and suitably exotic.)

Pictured: the set of nativity puppets that we made to help tell the story, and a crib scene that Abigail made out of Sticklebricks.

All that glitters

An Abigail moment I want to record before I forget it.

Abi often asks what inanimate objects are saying.  I'm not always sure what she's getting at.  Sometimes she wants to know their purpose, other times I think she is double checking that they really are inanimate objects and are not about to bite her or want a conversation.

At this time of year, she also likes looking through Christmas catalogues with me, which is why she found this glittery reindeer and asked me what it was saying.

As ever, I had to improvise, and guessed that it might be saying "Glitter, glitter, I'm so pretty!"

She fixed me with that Abigail-knows-the-answers-to-the-universe look.

"No, Mummy.  It saying "Glitter glitter, buy me if you got money!"

Good to know that she's got the hang of consumerism.  

I Love You...

It's our ninth wedding anniversary!  Last night, we had a rare night out to the Apex in Bury St Edmunds, to listen to a fantastic band playing "Django a la Creole".  They were epically talented whenever they picked up their instruments, but the lead clarinet kept trying to talk to us in between songs, which he did in a sort of incomprehensible croonmumble into the microphone.  As he announced their encore at the end of the night,  I was absolutely sure that he had said the next song, a Nat King Cole standard, would be called "I Love You For Several Mental Reasons".  Was quite disappointed when it turned out to be 'sentimental'.

Still, on our anniversary, here are several mental reasons why I love TheRev:

He includes me in his eclectic tastes in music, even though I am still not sure what 'Creole' means musically.

He finances my self-employed career that is at times merely a glorified hobby, encourages me in it as a ministry and proudly tells other people what I do for 'work'.

When he makes me a slice of toast, it always has a bite taken out of one corner.  He calls this 'tax'.

When I'm about to knock the children's heads together, he takes them away and tickles them.

He knows all the jokes and scripts from What's Up Doc, even though he doesn't particularly like the film.

He is willing to sing important conversations to the tune of Thomas the Tank Engine so that we can continue our discussions on car journeys.

No task is ever more urgent than answering a question I have about eschatology.

He agrees to boycott Nestle because I say so, but then forgets and buys me mint Aero because he knows it's always been my favourite chocolate bar.

When I make a deep philosophical comment about the worth of art once disconnected from its artist, he knows exactly what I mean and launches into his quite considerable thinking on the matter.

While at university, he was saving up cash in a biscuit tin under his bed to buy my engagement ring.

Over the course of our marriage he has, for the sake of our relationship, my sanity or the sheer fun of it, appeared on stage acting, singing and doing a dance with a chicken move.  He has allowed me to stage slap him with a beach bag.  He has learned to play the musical saw.  He has become a ventriloquist dummy to entertain dinner companions.  He has learned to ride a tandem.  He has learned to change a cloth nappy.  He has driven a VW camper van.  He has driven the length and breadth of France several times.  He has memorised all the words to You're the Top and Baby, it's Cold Outside.

He is, in short, wonderful, and I love him for far more than several reasons, some mental, some sentimental.  Happy anniversary, dearling.

It's a wonder I'm not mad already

Here's a little snapshot of communication in our house at the moment.

I have failed to realise that TheRev is out for dinner tonight, and have planned a complicated salmon dish involving asparagus.  Fairly certain that neither child would eat it anyway, I decide to ask their opinions and seek an excuse to cook a simpler supper for the three of us.

I approach Abigail.  This has to be done with caution, as she is absorbed in Pocoyo.  My iPad has been thrown across the room for lesser intrusions.

"Abi, would you like cheesy tomato pasta for dinner later, or salmon?"

"I would like a sandwich."

I glance at the screen.  Pocoyo has a sandwich.

"Right, but for dinner - pasta or salmon?"

"Pasta AND salmon."

"Do you like pasta?"

"No."

"Do you like salmon?"

"No."

I give up and go to find Jeremy.  I find him about to lob all the loo rolls down the stairs.  I rescue them.

"Jem, do you want cheesy tomato pasta or salmon for dinner?"

"Cheesy'matosammun.  Yes."

I really am looking forward to the day when I might be able to have a basic conversation with my children.  It can't be that far off...can it?!