who are you kids and where are my children?
the other day i received a text from my good friend weng. it read, "MY SON JUST GOT HIS FIRST KISS FROM YR DGHTR!!!!"
some texts should have special coloured fonts for them, and this was one of them.
dutifully i typed back, "Which girl? WHY?" (besides the fact that he is a v. nice boy).
but i KNEW who it was. ah yes, sela is a kissy girl.
SELA!
a little while later, the kissing booth walked into the flat, and gave me a cuddle. she didn't look any different although the faint discolouration around her mouth suggested that she had been eating orange flavoured crisps.
i beckoned sela over to me and asked if anything fun had happened on the playground. normally, little miss is more than happy to tell me her business and anyone else's, but she left the SMALL matter of being a kissy girl out of the story.
so of course, in the delicate and diplomatic way that has won me no friends or prizes i bulldozed in. "sela, did you kiss anyone on the playground today?" and she smiled and said, "yes! i kissed three times mummy, three times! one boy one time and another boy twice."
WHY? i inquired in my genteel modulated voice.
"it was a game, the older girls asked me if i wanted to play and i did. it was REALLY fun" she announced, her expressive eyebrows dancing up and down. "we're going to do it again tomorrow."
what to do?
as you remember, when sebastian started year two there were a lot of kids playing KISSY GIRL on the playground. sebastian used to play, a lot of boys did, and there was this one girl who was always rushing around to kiss the boys.
is this my child?
knowing the way the playground works, i know that though they may plan to play 'chase and kiss' tomorrow, they won't. something else will happen. someone will bring down a hockey stick, rollerblades, new match attax, and all will be forgotten. so, i will say nothing. you know, because i am so prudent and all.
and then carys, who didn't want to play kissy girls, came rushing to give me a hug after i returned from a run with janne the other day. MUMMY! she screamed. i gave her a cuddle and then pulled away. what was going on with my child and what had happened to her face?
she had vibrant peach eyeshadow scrawled over each lid. it was hideous. it was the thickest eyeliner i had ever seen in my life and i wondered where she had gotten it.
i asked my youngest born that very question and she rushed off to show me.
"here mummy! here is my beautiful makeup!" she giggled and PUT A THICK PEACH FELT TIP PEN IN MY HAND. no wonder you could see the scrawls on her eyelids!!
we tried makeup remover, chapstick…just about everything but the felt pen was there for a while. carys was thrilled and kissy girl sela felt "it's not fair! carys gets to wear makeup and i don't!"
it's day three of markerfest and carys still looks scrawled on.
the boys are good. sebastian keeps asking me questions…like, "why do you have to pay for a taxi at the end of your ride and you pay for a bus when you get on?" i am not prepared for these questions, especially when i don't have the answers.
jasper is pretty easy right now. his time is coming.
