Scary

C igs hekl0.ping me to0 typ0e t0his0..

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.She's 093 learnt lots of communication skills this last month. In fact, the last two (since she started dagis) have been amazing in terms of how muchg she'nhj57 ty has learned and how fast. "Ring!" she has just told me, and then explained with gestures that she meant 'take your silver celtic knot ring off, Daddy, so I can first put it on and then hurl it across the room really hard so you lose it under the sofa for a while.' 

Yeah, it's cute that she's talking, enough so that I fall into the idiot trap of doing what she tells me. a

ynn6ghyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyystop it! Daddfy is tuyping   jrusitynowhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhno, get off. 

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It's been a busy couple of months. I've been devising and rehearsing a play with local theatre powerhouse GEST. Working full time (a rare joy for this actor) was exhausting, coupled with going straight to Dagis to fetch the girls. What should we have for dinner? Pasta with no sauce and frankfurters? But we've had that every day for the last six million years, god dammit. Why can't you let me exert my will as alpha male in the house just once, you pack of she-devils?

Alpha male, hah. Omicron is nearer the mark. 

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Riddles with F, courtesy of the back of the breakfast milk carton. 

"What can a rat draw as easily as an Elephant?" I ask her. The riddle works better in Swedish, the verb dra is more like pull or drag, and my translation makes the answer a bit too easy. 

"Breath!" says F, happily. 

"What can cross a river without moving?" 

"A bridge!"

V comes in and is impressed, F is pretty good at these. "Who always wears his hat on his feet?" she asks.

"Mummy!" snaps F. "That is wrong! You asked the wrong number! Don't! Do! That!"

The answers are obviously harder if you ask the riddles out of order. F writes her own one by way of revenge. 

"Daddy, what is red and goes over water and can't stand still?"

I have no idea. Luckily for my reputation, neither does F. Answers on a postcard, please. 

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Time out for me, starting tomorrow. Off to Kuala Lumpur for my brother's wedding, leaving the family at home. Mixed feelings as usual, the bubbling glee that the prospect of sixteen hours of flight/sleep brings tempered with the massive guilt complex of abandoning the family nest for a week. You can see where my head's at by the fact that I think the wedding is less exciting than sleeping on the plane right now. 

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Halloween has been heavy on F's mind these last few weeks. Pumpkins everywhere, and much talk of spooks, In the spirit of this haunted day (see what I did there?), F has written, illustrated and performed her first ghost story, which I here reproduce for your eerie titillation. Reader, beware. 

The Blood Ghost

Once upon a time there was a ghost. She made a dress out of blood, and then she put it on a coat hanger. 

When she put the dress on, she was very scary. She scared everybody, a pumpkin and a witch and spook and some bats. Even you, Daddy. 

And then she took her dress off because she was too scary. Everyone could see she was just a ghost underneath and it was okay again. Then that was the end. 

Lumpy

C is nearly a metre tall already. After two months at playschool, she can jog and climb with facility, eat with a fork or a spoon (player's choice) and realise when F is trying to take a toy away from her before it happens.

She loved the first few weeks of Trumman. V stayed in with her for the first few, then we slowly weaned ourselves out of the way. About a week after we did that, C cottoned on to the fact that mummy and daddy were leaving her behind, and started screaming miserably as soon as we went in the school gate. There's nothing that says thank-you like the look on a preschool teacher's face as you hand them a rigid, weeping child and scuttle cheerily off to work. Unless it's the look on a preschool teacher's face when said child then immediately shits itself.

"Gaafn," C says, waving a fork (Swe: gaffeln) at me. Her sister is Eyya, her shoes are Sues, when she's finished eating she wants to get dahn, dahn. Mostly she points with a muscular ferocity more suited to throwing darts, and snaps "Dare!" at whatever she wants identified, donated or transport to. "Wow!" she says when she's impressed. "Oh deah," when less so. My name, of course, she can utter smoothly and flawlessly, especially at 0245.

I served her leftover pasta this evening. "Oh deah, Daddy. Dahn, dahn."

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I need to have a lump taken off my face. It's the encysted remains of a decade-old boil, delightfully, and therefore the medical equivalent of John Masefield's Box of Delights. The BBC adaptation, naturally, full of unexpected Wurzel Gummidges.

Calling anyone on the phone in Sweden remains a crapshoot for me. Unable to see the shapes of people's mouths or read their body language, I am deprived of two thirds of my comprehension.

- I have a lump on my face. I want it taken away, I said plaintively to the booking line. There was a longish pause.

- Oh, right, a lump, she said, sounding unusually happy about this. Well, we'll see what we can do.

The Swedish for lump in this context is knöl. The Swedish for Fuck, on the other hand, is knull. Retrospectively, I rest happy in the knowledge I brought joy to someone's morning.

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F was told a while back to choose a soft toy from home that she could take to playschool with her and keep there. Bunbun was too precious and had caused problems by being left in the wrong place at various points, either at home during the day or in a classroom locker by night.

Parental pride! F chose the Cthulhu hand puppet I bought her when she was very little. Probably, in fairness, because she was told to choose one that wasn't too important, but rest on your laurels while you may, I say.

Double laurels, in fact, for F has started a spate of drawing. Neatly coloured and cut out parrots, mostly. But not all of her winged creatures are of this earthly realm. Iä! Iä!

Like a tiny Pickman.