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Princess

Vignettes from the babysitting dungeon – in case you were wondering how my sister got on last weekend


Posted in: Family, Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

A phone call.

Me (sitting on a chair by a pond in the Tuileries): Hi, how is everything going?
Sister (in Dublin minding offspring): Not great, I am making pancakes, the smoke alarm has gone off, the children are screaming and the cat is pooing in the kitchen. How are things in Paris?

A further phone call

Me (sipping tea in a Parisian cafe): Hi, how is everything going?
Sister (at the side of the road in the car): Not great. Your daughter won’t stop saying “church in a church” and it’s driving me and the boys insane so please will you talk to her.
Daughter: Church in a church, church in a church, church in a church..
Me: What does that mean?
Daughter: Church in a church, church in a church, church in a church…
Me: Unless you stop saying that straight away, there will be no Club Penguin for a week.
Daughter: Eek.
Sister: Thank you that seems to have worked.

Motivational Speaking


Posted in: Princess

Me (upstairs putting on make up): You are the leader, go and inspire your brothers to get dressed.
Her (voice penetrating from downstairs): Mummy made me the leader, you must do what I say. (Noises of protest off)
Me (loudly): Come back up here.
Her: Did you hear that?
Me: Yes I did.
Her: Rats.
Me: That’s not what a real leader does, a real leader inspires her team to follow her through her own example like Jake the Red Ranger in Power Rangers SPD.
Her: OK so.
Moments later she returns.
Me: Are the boys dressed?
Her: No.
Me: I thought you were the leader, I thought you were going to inspire the boys to get dressed.
Her: I passed on the job to Daddy.

I suppose real leaders know how to delegate too.

What does fancy mean?


Posted in: Ireland, Princess, Reading etc.

Herself asked me this question this morning. “Well, it’s an old fashioned way of saying imagination or it could mean ‘like’ as in ‘do you fancy a cake?'” “What does it mean when they say at school that everyone fancies J?” They’re SIX, six, is this normal?

I see that the Irish Times using its extensive research arm (SOURCE: The Voice of Young People – A Report on Attitudes to Sexual Health, commissioned by Pfizer Healthcare), reports on the matter thus: “Despite the introduction of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) programme in schools, the study found that children still learned about sex outside the classroom, mainly from friends and older siblings. Most young people surveyed were critical of the sex education offered in schools, saying it was often “too little, too late.” Well since, it appears to be needed from age 7, I’m not hugely surprised.

The organ of record continues: “The primary fear for parents appears to be that they might shock their child or ‘steal their innocence’, something they are very mindful to protect,” the report said. What innocence?

Club Penguin Friends


Posted in: Princess

The Princess has become addicted to Club Penguin. When we signed her up, it asked for a username and she said “I know, someting really unusual, I am going to call myself Kate”. Club Penguin said “Sorry, Kate is no longer available, would you like Kate59004?” No, she wouldn’t and several (painfully picked out on the keyboard) tries later she had understood how to pick a sufficiently weird user name. There’s a valuable lesson learnt early. Her best friend at school, B, is on Club Penguin also and, although they see each other five days a week in the real world, they are keen to meet in the virtual one also. So popular has Club Penguin become that this weekend we started using it as part of our disciplinary armoury. She starts the day with 10 Club Penguin minutes, she gets additional minutes for good behaviour and loses minutes for bad. We lost 20 minutes leaving the funfair on Saturday. Now, she’s learning about negative numbers too. It’s all educational.

B’s Daddy is finishing off a Ph.D in meta-computation (who knows?). I suppose that this means that they are expert in computer safety as B seems to have a great deal of freedom to wander the internet. When B’s father dropped him off at the weekend to visit, I asked “Is it true that B has set up a website for their club*?” “Yes, I think so,” said his father, “on blogger or something.” “Really?” I squeaked, “What’s the address?” “I don’t know,” he said, “but I think he emailed it to his mother.” “He has an email address?” I yelped. “Yeah, since he was 4.” Am I out of touch do all the other 6/7 year olds have email addresses?

B is very interested in “mythical beasts” – the chimera, Pegasus and so on – he traipses into school with a copy of Greek myths under his oxter. The Princess asked me the other day whether mythical beasts are only for boys. “Certainly not,” I said. “Is that just what you say or does everyone say that?” she asked. “But I’m right,” I protested. “But is that what everyone says? You never say that things are for boys or for girls, you always say that everything is for everyone. Now, does everyone say that mythical beasts are for boys?” I pondered this for a while and went with the following: “Well, some people might say that the prettier end of mythical beasts, say unicorns, are for girls and the scarier end, say dragons, are for boys.” “FINALLY,” said herself. The problems the children of feminists have to face.

And in other news, just after its finally grown back after the scalping she gave herself last year, the Princess has cut her own hair again, I despair.

*He and she have started a club at school.

Hail Glorious Saint Patrick


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Princess

The Princess and I went to 8 o’clock mass this morning. We were the youngest people in the congregation by some distance. We arrived late (just as the priest was starting into his sermon) and scurried to a pew. The priest gave a rousing sermon about evangelising in our daily lives. He pointed out crossly that the church was nearly empty on St. Patrick’s Day. Apparently 83% of the population of Dublin is unchurched (what I previously referred to as “lapsed catholic”) and this represents a rich seam which we, the faithful must mine. Every time we go to a restaurant, coffee or to the pub we should try to work the conversation round to whether our companion has found Jesus. Personally, I can’t help feeling that this is a recipe for driving away friends rather than converting them, but maybe I am just craven. The Princess asked me nervously whether she was too young to evangelicise and I reassured her that she was. Though doubtless the priest would be furious, if he knew. It was all fire and brimstone round our way. We finished up with “Hail Glorious Saint Patrick” which he commented, surely everyone must know. Only the first verse, it turned out.

There was very little real shamrock in evidence today, apparently the dreadful winter has been tough on shamrocks and the best of it was exported to foreign dignataries. I could extend this into some kind of metaphor but I will spare you.

We all then went to the parade. I had considerable misgivings about this but it all passed off very well with all five of us getting a view. Have some pictures, why don’t you?

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Hope you passed a happy Saint Patrick’s Day too.

Old Testament and New


Posted in: Middle Child, Princess, Twins

Princess: What’s Passover?
Me: Why?
Her: It’s on my Lenten calendar.
Me: Oh right, well you know the plagues of Eygpt, locusts, frogs, rivers of blood and so on?
All three children: YES!
Me: Well the last thing was that God said he would kill all the first born children of the Egyptians, if they wouldn’t let the Israelites go.
Daniel (in shock): GOD WHO LOVES US?
Me: Well, yeees…
Daniel: Really?
Me: Weelll, you know, it’s um, anyway, moving on, the Jews ate a special meal and put a mark on the door so that the Angel of Death would pass over their houses, “pass over” get it? Hence Passover.
Daniel: Maybe God was joking and he wasn’t really going to kill them.
Me: Um, yes, maybe he was.