Things C Currently Likes
1. Sitting upright so she can see things
2. Mango paste, of the 'secretly mostly rice paste for tiny infants' variety
3. Chatting to people so long as they hold their faces 30-50 cm away
4. Her big fluffy apple rattle with the caterpillar inside, a flea market find of V's and therefore (typically) the cheapest thing we've ever bought her
5. Big sister F
Things C Currently Hates
1. Being tired
2. Being put to bed when she's tired
3. People who move away when she's chatting to them
4. The noise of daddy blowing a raspberry (new today, provoked instant tears)
5. Not being put to bed when she's tired
Things F Currently Likes
1. Tingeling. This is Swedish for Tinkerbell, if you've ever wondered. V and I must read the entire hardback book version of the Disney cartoon about said fairy every night without fail. I have come to believe that every time I do so, the psychic backwash annihilates two to three hectares of Never Never Land.
2. Daddy's ridiculous beard. "It makes you look fluffy, daddy!" Yes, that's precisely why I grew it. To increase my fluffiness. Bah.
3. Trainers. "I can run really really fast in trainers, because I'm really good at running."
4. Saturdays. Most days, F lies in bed when she wakes up at 0700, calling one of us by name repeatedly until that person cracks and runs screaming out of the flat, leaving the other parent to fix breakfast. On Saturdays, the day of the week when F gets to have sweets, she lies in bed shouting "Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!" perhaps on the grounds that then Saturday will fix her breakfast and it will consist entirely of gummi worms.
5. Little sister C. "She's puking on Daddy!"
Things F Currently Hates
1. Sauce. This is a catch-all for any kind of interference with the purity of her pasta. Plain pasta, a dash of olive oil and a touch of salt in the water when cooking, and that's fine. Or macaroni stewed in milk. Anything else will be carefully picked off each fusilli by hand before consumption, even if you try calling it gravy instead.
2. Loud noises, which is apparently one of those things that half raises a developmental red flag for midwives. C can sleep through the hoover, F can't abide it and never has. It's a slightly erratic phobia, though, I think to do with remembering being upset by deafening roadworks or unexpected DIY drilling in the middle of snoozes and how you get sympathy by holding your hands over your ears and looking sad.
3. Having her hair washed, because water sometimes gets in her eyes when you rinse. She loves baths, but starts a screaming tantrum every time we get to this stage. So far, shower caps, use of the shower head, use of an elastic head protector that looks like a rubberised choir boy's ruff, getting her to look at the ceiling, covering her eyes with a flannel, getting her to close her eyes and buying her swimming goggles have all failed to clear this hurdle. V won't let me shave her bald, either, so I don't see how we're getting round this other than with filthy hair.
4. Daddy's ridiculous beard has been trimmed. "No! I didn't want that to happen," she said tearfully on being presented with something actually resembling a human face rather than a lot of brown water weed in a strong current. And it's true, I'd been telling her it was going to happen for over a week and she kept telling me not to.
5. The end of Saturdays. "It's not the end of Saturday yet," she says anxiously every so often during Saturday, one hand protectively clutching her sweet tin. And then she weeps inconsolably when it's bed time and the beloved day is done. Dentists are going to love her when she's older.
The Best Things About Njal's Saga, the Viking Play I've Been Working On
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More on that ominous silence soon...
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