Tag: parenting
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My Ball
One of my dog's favourite games is 'My Ball', in which my role is to want the toy that she is guarding. It's all about the motivation, you see! Which is like some of the games I used to play with our eldest, when she was a toddler, I realise.
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Our family tradition on New Year's Day is to go to the Rollright Stones. Legend has it that you can't count the standing stones and get the same answer twice.
This year the younger child counted 37, the elder 67... so wide a difference that you can see how one might ascribe a mystical reason!
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A stone circle in the rain. Some people (and a dog) are walking around it.
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Christmas Jumper Day at school, and I'm continuing my never-ending effort never to rest on my laurels, proving myself time and again worthy of my title of Most Embarrassing Parent.
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Three people in a decorated hallway, wearing Christmas jumpers and headgear. Dan, in the centre, is wearing a jumper designed to make him look like a tiny elf, and a matching hat. To his right, a girl wears a jumper showing Rudolf, and a pair of spring-mounted reindeer deely-boppers. To his left, a boy with his eyes closed throws a thumbs-up: he's wearing a jumper with a pixel-art picture of Santa, and a wooly Santa hat.
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Building another secret cabinet
When I was ten, I'd have killed to have a secret compartment hidden in my bedroom bookshelves. And once she'd seen the one I built for my own room, earlier this year, my ten-year-old predictably wanted one of her own, too. Luckily I had the spare parts and, now, the experience to make her one. Awesome.
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Babies and Baubles
Each year, we encourage our two children to each select exactly one new bauble to add to our tree. The result is a decoration that's a celebration of the changing tastes and interests of our two kinds: a mismatched, discordant, crazy mixture of colours and shapes, but in which each and every item is its own story.
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Kids' ability to pick up new words from context is amazing.
Kids' confidence even when they've misunderstood how a word is used is hilarious. 😊
This evening, our 7-year-old was boasting about how well-behaved his class was while their regular teacher had to attend an all-day meeting, vs how much it impressed the temporary teacher they had.
His words: "Today we had a supply teacher and we totally DOMINATED her!"
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Things my children have gotten out of bed to say to me tonight:
- I don't want to go to school tomorrow
- I can't find [name of toy]
- I want [name of toy I lent to my sibling] back
- if I'm ill, I don't have to go to school tomorrow, right?
- I can't sleep
- I might be ill: I don't think I should go to school tomorrow
- I want a hot water bottle
- I'm too hot
- I've lost my hot water bottle
- I spilt my water1
- I went to the toilet because I thought I was going to throw up but I didn't but I think I'm too ill to go to school tomorrow
- my book is wet
- I forgot to brush my teeth
- I don't like these pyjamas
- I still can't sleep
Footnotes
1 it later turned out to have been spilled on an electrical extension socket! 😱
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As the kids grow older... someday our final soft play session - something we used to do all the time, and now do only rarely - will be in the past.
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A mug of coffee held in front of a view of a multicoloured soft playground.
But for now, at least, it remains a chaotic way to tire them out on a morning!
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Parenting is about sacrifices.
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Dan drinks a beer, a children's football match is being played in the background.
Here, I'm making the noble sacrifice of forcing myself to drink a delicious beer so my 10-year-old can use the customer-only bathroom at a beachside amateur football club. Such a sacrifice.
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Bad Names for Servers
Not for the first time, our eldest child has drawn me a network diagram. It's cute, but I've outright refused to name one of the new servers I'm provisioning after our dog. Here's why...
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Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn't both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂
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Two frustrated-looking children each sit in front of a separate chessboard (the photographer is presumably playing both of them).
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I'm not sure I've ever seen a parent look as awkward as the one whose kid, in a combined toilets/changing room, just pointed at me, saying: "Daddy, look! Look! That man's using his willy to pee-pee in the standing-up toilet!" 🤣
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Science Weekend
It was a weekend full of science, starting with a visit to the excellent open day at Harwell Campus and a trip to the Diamond Light Synchrotron, and finishing with a series of medical tests on my lungs and why they're not working as well as they ought to. With graphs!
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Woke Kids
The other weekend I took our 10-year-old to her first Pride parade, and she blew my mind with the level of allyship she's already achieved.
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Water Science #2
For the second time, the kids and I had an outing to do some "citizen science" experiments on a local watercourse.