Verbal diarrhoea

Poppet woke up with a bad dose of it this morning, My ears are still ringing now from the 15 minute drive to school during which I don’t think she even paused for breath. She was adamant she had to relate every detail of her very elaborate dream about cyclones and spinning houses to Pickle and me. Then afterwards she says ‘That was a long dream wasn’t it? Can you write it all down for me when you get home?’ Hmm, I’m not sure about that, but I will definitely hide the Wizard of Oz CD. Of course once she’d finished, Pickle was bursting with a hundred suppressed stories of his own which he then couldn’t pause even when his teacher needed to talk to me. I don’t know where Poppet gets it from (I can feel my Mum smiling at that one!) but she passed it on to Pickle in spades, and did you know these small people don’t come equipped with an off-switch?

Still, at least dream-stories and observations about how many fellow classmates wear Crocs at school means they stop lumming for five minutes. ‘Lumming’ is an expression created by Rose’s own Poppet when she had just attained kitchen work-top height at toddling age and spent her days up her mother’s bum giving it ‘Lum [love] some!’ to whatever Rose was touching. Now it is fully integrated into our motherly vocabulary because the little buggers still do and at much louder volumes. And with all the Christmas adverts on the TV at the moment the lumming is reaching critical mass and the next ‘Mummeeee, please can I have… oh pleeeeease’ may well make my head explode.

Now whilst the kids are getting more vocal and demanding, by contrast the dog has lately become more skittish and nervous. What with her super-sensitive doggy hearing I imagine her head exploded several days ago from all the noise, although it could be an after-effect of all the injections she’s been having (which are now finished, thank goodness). We already knew she’s a sensitive soul after the peeing incident during the move. But now every loud noise is setting her off, to the point where she won’t come into the garage to get in the car for the school run until the kids are already installed with the doors shut so she can’t hear them. (Yeah, I know how she feels!) Plus in the woods this morning there were a lot of crumblies out on a ramble in the rain and one old chap opened his umbrella as we approached. It was one of those lazee-boy automatic brollies where you just press a button and it shoots up all on its own with a whoosh and a click – I had one back in my school days which used to shoot off the end of the stick so I could use it as a missile but that’s another story. Anyway poor Tiggy was so spooked she turned and ran back in the direction of the car leaving me looking like a right spoon trying to call her to me in amongst all these rain-caped and brollied senior citizens. Eventually she responded to my whistling and thigh slapping and came over but giving the oldies such a wide berth she went right across to the other side of the road and nearly got flattened by the poo lorry (sewage truck, another another-story.)

Hey but the onset of Christmas has one huge plus – the Advent Calendar. This is the one month in the year when for 24 days straight the little darlings will get themselves out of bed and down the stairs unaided instead of having to be kicked out and carried. We bought one of those Playmobil ones which makes up a little scene piece by piece and Pickle is really excited about who is going to open the box with Santa in it. There is the additional advantage of helping them with some maths as they are doing alternating days and learning their odd and even numbers on the sly and not eating chocolate before school as with the conventional calendars. Ha! I still know a trick or two.

Addendum: In between writing this and publishing, Poppet has had another accident and needed another set of x-rays. She got hit by a hard football in the playground so we’ve been testing out our new medical contract, which I am pleased to say seems to be working fine. And the arm is NOT broken this time so thankfully I don’t need to call my future sister-in-law and break the news that her photographer had better devise a way to hide the attractive plaster cast on the wedding photos… I can picture the head explosion from here. Phew!