Princess

Snap

Me: Stop pulling that elastic or it will snap and hurt you.

Her: Like a puppy that hasn’t been trained?

Me: Same word, different context.

 

Ball

Her: Daddy bought a ball?

Me: Yes, in the supermarket.

Her: A ball??

Me: Yes.

Her: Where, where is the ball?

Me: It’s in the hall.

Her: A ball for dancing?  A swirl of colour and a swell of music?

Me: Oh no, sorry sweetheart, a ball for bouncing and throwing.

Her: Ah, same word, different context.

And re the title, yes, we’re having a Samuel Johnson week, is there a problem with that?

Me:  I saw you playing with Fernanda; was it a bit hard since she only speaks Spanish?

Her:  I speak Spanish.

Me: I see.

Her:  But we spoke Polish.  Fernanda and me speak Polish.

Me: Really?

Her: Yes, I speak a lot of languages.  I speak French and English and Irish and Spanish and Polish and German and Greek and Dutch and Flemish and Italian and Tagalog and Flatten.

Me: Flatten?

Her: Yes, Flatten.

Me: Latin?

Her: Yes, Flatten.

 

Later

Princess is frantically waving her hands in the air.

Me: What’s wrong sweetheart?

Her: There’s a fly and I’m afraid it’s going to pique the bejaysus out of me.

That’s English and French and Irish all in the same sentence.

 

Later Still.

Princess holds out to me a freebie book of Dutch fairytales we have been given in the chemist with our prescription (the chemist guessed our linguistic group and missed): Read it to me while I do a poo. [I love this job].

Me: But I hardly speak any Dutch, sweetheart.

Her: Read it to me in English.

Me: But it’s in Dutch.

Her: But Daddy read it in French.

Me: But Daddy is able to translate fairy tales from Dutch to French on the hoof but I am not because I don’t really speak any Dutch.

Pause.

Her: I speak Dutch.

Me: OK, but you can’t read.

Her: You read it to me in Dutch.

Me: Er was eens een weduwe die twee docters had…

Her: Keep going.

Me: Are you enjoying this?

Her: Yes, I speak Dutch.

She gets her stubborn streak from her father.

Since our trip to the Hague, Mr. Dutch Mama (who is a tall Dutch man) has become the benchmark for big things in our house, which explains this conversation.

Her: I did a big, big, big wee.
Me: OK.
Her (frowning): Probably not as big as Mr. Dutch Mama’s wee though.

Just to let you know, that I got to partake of this moment this morning because I was heaving over the toilet while she was weeing in her potty.  And while I’m being revolting, yesterday, the Princess told me that bugs look like water biscuits and I had to tell her that no, these were just water biscuits that had spent the briefest moment in her stomach and come back up into the bucket.   Anyhow, you will be delighted to hear that she has a) entirely recovered and b) gone for her nap which gives me the opportunity to lie moaning on my bed with a bucket clutched in my limp grasp.  Once I’ve finished blogging, of course.

Her: What noise does a butterfly make?

Me: A butterfly doesn’t make any noise, sweetheart.

Her: A butterfly is like a giraffe.

And in a completely unrelated matter, I always suspected that when BroLo began blogging, the best bit would be his description of communal life. I think that this post proves that I was right. You may like to wish the good Brother a happy birthday as I note from my birthday calendar that he will be a year older as of Friday week and, let’s face it, your card isn’t going to reach him in time.

When I was small, I always wanted to travel by plane (my parents preferred mode of holiday travel was by ferry, sigh).  My father flew a lot for work and I used to pester him with questions as to what it was like and he would always say: have you been on a bus?  Well, like that, only with less leg room.

The Princess has been on more flights than I can remember and she’s always saying to me “Can we go by bus Mummy?”, “Mummy, what’s it like on a bus?”. I reply “have you been on a plane?  Well, like that, only with more leg room”.

Anyhow, tomorrow, I will have the dubious pleasure of travelling by plane to a distant destination for work.  Alone.  Leaving poor Mr. Waffle holding the babies and also the toddler.  Perhaps there will be updates from the distant country, perhaps not.  It all depends whether I can crack this wifi thing.