We had a huge bunch of friends and kids over on Sunday morning for pastries. Claire just wanted to hole up somewhere with a book, but littler kids kept finding her and invading her space. She was filled with impotent fury.
Moira: She reminds me so much of how you were when I first met you.
Me: …I was 22 years old.
Moira: Yep!
Andrew very kindly did a special screening of the 2008 Royal Ballet production of “The Nutcracker” for a certain small ballet-obsessed human of my acquaintance. The nice thing about having the entire cinema to yourself is that you can recline on floor cushions while said small human can join in the ballet. I watched her leaps in sillhouette against the screen.
Remember when Julia was a baby? That was, like, five minutes ago, right?
“Mama!”
“What?”
“You can’t eat Julia.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you love her?”
“Yes! And I love ducks, too. They’re delicious.”
“Don’t you love her to hug and kiss?”
“…you could hug and kiss a duck.”
“Mama you can NOT EAT JULIA.”
“I thought you said she was really annoying?”
“She is! But that doesn’t mean you can eat her!”
“I think the real question here is, Do you love your baby sister?”
“…yes.”
“To eat?”
“No!”
“To hug and kiss?”
“…yes.”
“Even when she is REALLY annoying?”
“…yes.”
In Sydney. It is, as everyone has already said, way too cold to be Christmas. Best moment so far: Ric saying “Lovely to see you too.”
The beautiful old house has been sold and we are staying in the flat, which is full of pleasingly familiar furniture and paintings, and also offers far less plummeting scope to (for example) five-year-olds with no sense of their own mortality and absent-minded people who just turned eight. (I find this lack of peril restful. Our family has a strict no-pummeting policy.)
Oh, that reminds me, new blog feature.
Q: How should I invest my retirement savings?
The eight year old replies: Why not just retire straight away?
Email your questions to yatima@gmail.com. Happy Doctor Who Christmas Special Day to all!
Today we will learn about feel. This is another important skill in riding that I have been wrong about all my life. Turns out it’s not about keeping your hands still relative to the horse’s withers. It’s about keeping your hands still relative to the horse’s mouth.
Play along at home! You will need:
If you don’t have a seven-year-old girl, find your most over-scheduled and under-slept friend and borrow theirs.
Now, take your seven-year-old girl. Pick up a strand of hair from each side of her head. The strand should be about the thickness of a rein (that’s 15mm for civilized people, five-eighths of an inch for Americans.)
Ask your seven-year-old girl to throw her head about like a cantering pony.
You need to maintain the exact same gentle, consistent pressure on her hair. Too loose and the pony will run away with you. Too tight and the pony will get angry and buck you off (and your seven-year-old girl will speak sharply to you, or cry.)
You may notice that this is impossible, and requires precognition! Keep working on it. I am.
God-daddy G: “i don’t know why she needs a godfather when she already gets advice like “there has to be a way to overthrow the plutocracy without being a horrible rapey douchebag”. You HAVE TO LEAVE ME SOME WISDOM SPACE!”
Julia is emerging as a systems thinker.
“Daddy, how does [x] work?” she is wont to exclaim.
“Daddy, how do brains work?”
“Daddy, how do TVs work?”
“Daddy, how do nerves work?”
“Daddy, how does a computer work?”
“Daddy, how do eyes work?”
Me: “Eyes?”
Julia, scornful: “I ASKED DADDY.”
Work dinner with people Jeremy knows. You know how terrified I am of other chimpanzees – you may even have seen me bare my teeth at them in an abject signal of submission. But Konrad and Alyssa are extremely nice and funny. They have an excellent joke about a Rabbi Weasel, and they laughed when I described the Apple Newton: “Of course, this was years before you were born.” Alyssa took Claire and I took Julia and we had piggyback races down the hill. As Claire was falling asleep, she said: “I loved it when Alyssa gave me a piggyback.”
Last night before we went to sleep we piled all her presents on the end of her bed.
I am not a fan of mornings. But if you have to wake up, it might as well be to the sound of your big daughter saying, “Wow! Cool!” and your little daughter squealing: “This is the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.”
Later there was dim sum, and later still cupcakes; but me, I am still grinning like fule over that squeal.
You can be
whatever you want to be
for Halloween!
Oh that’s just a zombie!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
It’s just a kid, it’s just a kid,
A kid a kid a kid a kid a kid a kid
I know it is!
Let’s go and check.
Oops!
It’s just a kid.
It’s my little brother.
Let’s go away!
When will
the sun
shine through the year?
The bright sunny days
I love them
I love the sun
I love my mother
coming with me
The sun bright shining
The sun bright shine in the world
Julia: “Mama, are rainbows really real?”
Me: “Yes, Julia, rainbows are real.”
Julia: “OH MY!”
On mornings when the timing works out – not all mornings, but definitely the best mornings – the whole family walks down Eugenia together, the girls in school uniforms and non-uniform tights and boots, their bright backpacks on their backs, and Jeremy and I in our serious grownup Linux hacker and industry analyst standard city equipment.
J and the girls take the bus south, I go north. The buses are frequent so there’s usually not enough time to wave, but one morning last week, Mission Street was empty for a while. I waved, the girls waved. I waved. They waved. I blew kisses, they blew kisses, I made heart shapes with my hands, they made strange squashy shapes with theirs.
Then we all paused. Still no bus. Awkward.
I made jazz hands. They made jazz hands.
All three of us started to dance.
We danced and danced. We boogied. We step-ball-changed. We twirled. Julia, especially, twirled.
For ten minutes, on two sides of Mission Street, we got our white girl funk on.
When my bus finally arrived I saw a woman on the other side of the street solemnly high-fiving Jeremy and the kids.
Tyrannosaurus!
Tyrannosaurus Rex!
He was the king!
But then he had a breast.
Everybody!
Has to run and hide!
Because if we don’t
We’ll all get died.
Tyrannosaurus!
Oh, no! A meteor!
Tyrannosaurus!
Oh, no! A leaf-eator!
Milo: I think that I will never ever write another song.
Me: Because this one is so perfect?
Milo: Yes.
It would be misleading if I were to give the impression that life with the girls is unpleasant. Yesterday I took Miss Four to the Farmer’s Market with me. She was glowing, in a shiny ivory dress and orange cardigan. She was very helpful and cooperative, and then we danced together at Jackie Jones. We picked up Claire and Jeremy and walked over to the Fairmount Fiestaval, where I gave Claire money and told her to buy tickets and take her sister and play while I sat in the sun and recovered from my cold. Later she came up to me quietly and said “I loved it that you gave me money and let me do what I want.”
“I loved it that you were responsible and took great care of Julia,” I said.
We came home and Claire and Jeremy investigated a set of grasshopper robots for the Community Arts and Science day at Claire’s school on Friday. Jeremy will be running the solar-powered robot work table. Julia and I curled up in my bed. She fell asleep first and I held her and listened to Claire and her Dad talking about solar power. There was nowhere else I wanted to be, nothing else that could have made me so happy.
At a week shy of her four-and-a-halfth birthday, right on schedule, Julia became a sudden and zealous Haver Of Opinions. Her sister also experienced this phase, during which we coined the phrase Four Is Hell.
For example: I’ve been experimenting with wearing things other than jeans and tshirts very occasionally. This morning I walked out of the bedroom in the new Frye Melissa boots Jeremy bought me, a thrifted brown wool skirt, a pink tshirt and a black cardigan. Julia looked me over shrewdly.
“You want to change that jacket,” she said. “You want the sparkly jacket.”
Chagrined, I changed the black cardigan for a chocolate-and-gold one I picked up at Thrift Town last week. I have to admit, it looked a lot better.
As if that weren’t scary enough: We’ve started an ongoing series of stories about Blair and Dahlia, the girls’ interdimensional evil twins. They live in a town called Frank Sarcastor and they always misbehave and are cranky. They don’t eat nice food, just things that taste of snot. At swim class they fill the pool with jello so all the children get stuck.
“Maybe you should go and live with them,” said Julia today. “Since you are always cranky.”
I have no idea how we will get through the next six months. Keep us in your thoughts.
James May’s Toy Stories is ridiculously optimal family viewing material. We simply provide the children with the relevant toys. Claire produced a very fine playdough flower during the plasticine-at-Chelsea-flower-show show. It’s still in a vase on the kitchen bench. Last night the children watched Lego and built their own tall, frail towers.
The Observatory was a highly educational experience. In the bathrooms:
Julia: Are mutants really real?
Me: Oh yes. Not like in Futurama, living in the sewer, but there are lots of mutant frogs, for example.
Julia: What do they look like?
Me: The frogs? Oh, they might have an extra eye or an extra leg.
Woman coming through the door: I definitely walked into an interesting conversation here.
Me: My daughter was asking me about mutants!
Woman: Oh! Well, I was born with an extra finger!
Julia: Wow!
Me: Yeah! Polydactyly is awesome!
The set list:
I said: “You like ‘We Are Family’? You’re gonna love ‘I Feel Love.’”
Julia said: “I can’t stop dancing! This is the BEST SONG EVER.”
preoccupations