Sunday 17 August 2008

Not such a quiet week

At the moment, ask Rowan an open question like "What did you do at nursery today?" or "Who were you playing with?" and you will receive the measured response "Emm..." as though he is considering his answer. The answer never comes of course, unless you ask him closed questions. "Were you out in the garden?" "Yep." "Did you eat up all your dinner?" "Yep." He is stomping and running about the house these days, making an almighty noise if he is disgruntled, which generally comes as a result of some injustice at the hands of Finn, perceived or otherwise. Rowan bagins his mornings with a run through of the names of those who could possibly extricate him from his cot. "Dahhd! Dah-dee!" Pause. "Shaww! Shaw-nee!" and so on. When you do get him he starts reciting a lot of words as he spots things in his room. "Penny!" as he points at a money-box. "Jig-ahw! Cu-tin!" He was amusing everyone in Ireland with his rendition of the "Honkin' Bobo Blues", a little blues ditty I put together in honour of his stinky nappies. For a couple of months at least, Rowan has been able to tell us when he has a dirty nappy. He's a good way off potty-training but it's funny when he comes out with "on-kin bobo bloos" to indicate he needs a change. As a lady said at Spylaw Park. "What lovely dimples. I bet they get you out of trouble."

Needless to say, the house is no longer quiet and Sharon is certainly looking forward to the return to school next week, although getting up at 7am and marshalling Sean and Finn to get dressed instead of playing and to eat up their breakfast instead of yabbering silly verbal games and messing with their food, will be stressful enough after more than seven weeks of a relatively easy start to the day. Sean has been rather cheeky since returning home from Ireland and Finn has been throwing major tantrums too which has made for some trying days this week. They have been playing Abba songs to death, with the result that even Rowan can fill in the words at the end of lines. Mama Mia and Super Trouper are his favourites. One area in which we can't complain is the boys' compliance with babysitters. They always behave well and we made use of Les & Stu and a new option, Sarah, over the weekend to allow us two nights out on the trot: unheard of.

On Friday night we went to the Corn Exchange to see Newton Faulkner, a dreadlocked acoustic guitar virtuoso with a mellow voice and good repartee with the crowd. It was an excellent gig, despite the Corn Exchange's poor viewing options. My back held out better than at the Barrowlands last December. Saturday was a bit of a damp squib by comparison. It was our one Fringe night of the year and began with an attempt at a meal in Namaste in Forrest Rd. I say "attempt" since we had to abort the main course and take it away as a carry-out because it was taking so long to arrive. Admittedly it is Fringe time and the restaurant was very busy but you can only wait for so long to be fed. We had to dash down to the Pleasance (Sharon dispensing with her heels to move more quickly barefoot and me having to detour to the car to drop off the food) to see Tim Minchin. He was entertaining enough, an amusing songwriter with a good voice, but maybe not the tears-of-laughter type comic we could have done with to cheer us up. Something more in the Frankie Boyle vein would have suited me better!

Olivia is out of hospital at last much to everyone's relief, not least her own. Sadly she missed the chance to bring Sean and Finn back to Scotland. Sharon did drive up to Dublin with Sean to see her but Rowan and Finn were possibly carrying viruses and didn't get to see their auntie.

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