Dress-down Thursday

posted in: Family life | 0

It was another vile day, so outdoor play was off the agenda and the Boy Wonder decided to catch up with some office work. Here you see him typing one-handed, while fielding a phone call (“‘Allo?”) with the other. Luckily his employers don’t seem to mind casual attire, though eyebrows might have been raised if anyone in management had seen the state of the sweatshirt at the end of the afternoon: by then it was liberally decorated with macaroni cheese (his lunch), aubergine curry (my lunch) and babyccino – which to be fair we’d told him he needed to drink quickly, as we were running late to return him to his parents.

On the way home he lustily sang Rain, rain, go away and Incy-Wincy Spider, and in the spirit of weather-appropriate songs I sang It’s raining, it’s pouring, which I don’t think he’d heard before because he demanded several repeats. He then began singing it himself, making a decent attempt at both the words and the tune, which was pretty impressive. Over time it morphed into a mash-up with Rain, rain go away, which was quite funny, and then he began shouting the word “SNORING!” on every repeat, and making himself (and us) laugh. After a while of this, he suddenly put a finger in front of his lips and said “Shhh!”, and then sang extremely quietly, presumably so as not to wake the old man up.

When we got back to B’s house there was a slightly chaotic few minutes as R and I tried to scramble our stuff together and get on the road, while G tried to assemble the Boy and his gear to take him to his other grandparents’ for the night. B isn’t fond of lingering goodbyes, and I was still conducting an inventory of my belongings to try to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind, when he suddenly pointed the Peremptory Finger at the front door and yelled “GO HOME!!” When it was obvious that R and I were in fact leaving, he waved enthusiastically and said “Goo’bye evvybody! See you nex’ week!” – the memory of which will keeping me smiling for at least the next few days.

At this juncture I feel that I should apologise to our co-grandparents, for the fact that they received the Boy
a) filthy,
b) damp, and
c) hyper.
I can’t wait for this beastly weather to improve, so that we can get back to outdoor play and he can work off more of his energy. Office work and hoovering are all very well, but they don’t tire him out nearly enough.