Winter 2016

- Realising that Annick's song that goes, "It's OK, it's just the sun" is actually the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun
- Having a conversation with Luca about past pets Hamish and Bendy - "Mama, do they exist any more?  Are they dead?  What happened?  Was it VOLCANOES?!"
- Discussing art with Annick:
  M: what do you like to draw Annick?
  A: people and trees and houses
  M: can you draw invisible things?"
  A: No!
  M: What about dragons?
  A: Yes.
  M: But how can you draw dragons, they are not real?
  A: You can just use your 'MAGINATION.
  M: How do you do that?
  A: You close your eyes and then you imagine.
  M: Where is your imagination?
  A: IT IS IN MY BOTTOM.
  M: Oh really?  Is a bottom imagination different from other kinds of imagination?
  A: Yes, it is more about bottoms.
- Waking up on the last day of July to hear the kids up and about and 'making breakfast'.  Annick wandered into the bathroom to inform papa what they were doing and upon his joking question "have you made the coffee yet?" she nodded, disappeared and all you could hear were negotiations to get the step, then the sound of the coffee grinder.  At this point I thought I'd better get up, only to find a loaf of fruit toast, a selection of spreads, a box of cereal and a bottle of milk ready to go on the counter.  And four little pots filled with kefir and maple syrup that Luca had thoughtfully prepared.  Quite a lot of syrup as it turned out in the end, more syrup with kefir than the other way round.  They were quite disappointed to hear that we were actually going out for breakfast.
- Luca's deliciously random non-sequitur ramblings about whatever the heck pops into his head
- Luca, asking what is 'letter' which we worked out was 'leather', because he asked if his shoes were 'letter'.  They have apparently been reading the Shoemaker's Elves at school because this appears to be where he got the concept of leather from.  I explained that my bag was leather and he touched it and asked, "but what is it?"  It's the skin of animals.  "Oh.  What kind of animals?"  Er, cows mostly.  Sheep, goats.  "But how do they peel the skin off?"  What?  They don't peel it off!  When you kill a cow for meat... "When they peel it off, the cow must get really angry!"
- all the (mostly naked) re-enactments of Olympic gymnastic routines in front of the telly coverage
- how Luca says "my tummy is wumbly" when he is hungry, or if he says it too fast, "my tumbly is wumbly."
- but how he is finally getting to grips with his 'Rs' and when I was gently teasing him about the 'Wio Olympics', he calmly corrected my pronunciation - "Not WIO mama, RIO".
- how Annick's conversation is peppered with matter of fact 'actually's.  "Well, I think that's right actually.  This is a cat actually.  I like this spaghetti actually."
- how Annick's strategies to stay up a little longer have gone past the usual needing a wee or a drink of water approaches and now encompass questions like, "don't go yet mama, I need to know something!"  What do you need to know?  "Why does the Earth turn, when it is not turning?"
- Luca, passing a WW2 memorial with some wreaths sitting at the base - "why are there flowers there?"  It's to honour people who died in the war.  "Oh.  Did they fall off the wall?"  No, not wall, war.  "What is war?"  [long pause]  War is when people fight each other.  "So did the war kill the people?"  Er, no, the people killed the people in the war.  "So if this is the war [bunches a fist] and these are the people, [wiggles fingers of other hand] then did the war go GRRRUM [fist grabs fingers] and kill them?"  Maybe we need to have this conversation another time.