tame animals all have their quirks.
whenever olivia the cat hears the can opener cranking away, she dashes to the kitchen. whenever my childhood dog heard the front or back door open, he would run to it. each time that my parents had decided nipper the cat was criminally uncaring, he would redeem himself. and whenever xia xia, cat of my dreams was particularly excited, she would claw herself up the drapes.
some people begin to look like their pets. my children are becoming my pets.
in the 30 minutes before mealtime, if jasper hears the bleeping of the microwave oven, he will begin to half heartedly sob and hustle towards his highchair. the kid could be pavlov’s dog. today he WALKED three steps to the kitchen, then crawled to the eating area, all because i pressed the button that cleared the screen and restored the microwave to showing the correct time once again.
sela has fast forwarded herself to her teen years. home is like, so, you know, boring. no way! way! after her 8.45am nap, i let her down from her cot and she trots to the front door. waiting to be let out. she bangs on the door if we are taking too long in the getting ready to go outside process. she gets angry if we take sebastian down to the school bus and don’t take her with us. what is so repulsive about home? she’s happy to eat here and watch telly….but happier to escape. she’s like mel gibson in braveheart, "Freedom"!
sebastian. really back into the school swing of things, he has added charming expressions like "ooh ooh poo poo" to his vocabulary and did i mention he told someone to shut up the other day and that he called me stupid. (way! said sela.) i feel like i am choosing all the wrong battles and through my appalling parenting am ruining him. so then today sebastian goes to play with anjali, his best turtle school gal pal friend. she’s lovely, anjali is. and i go to pick him up, and anjali’s mother, who is a teacher, could only say how wonderfully the two got along. it wasn’t the knowing that i haven’t ruined him (yet) that made me cry for relief, more that he could have fun. she commented on his creativity, which is one of sebastian’s most stellar features.
and young carys. besides weeing all over the bathroom floor while waiting to get into the bathtub (where everyone else wees), she has this unpredictable manic burst of laughter or energy that comes from no where. she will cackle and race around screeching in her hoarse little demi moore voice, and then the full moon receeds in her mind’s eye, and she goes back to stacking blocks or ripping books off the shelf.
my children are house animals.
not toilet trained, of course.
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6 Replies to “animal house”
Great article Tessie.
Love, Dad
First of all Nipper was an evil unloving cat, and this blog was a great one to read this morning.
Later Gater,
P
Is it not time for some new pics???
Am having withdrawal symptoms.
big kiss
xx
that’s funny. all three of my kids begin having a huge melt-down (crying, sobbing, falling on the floor to their knees, trying to climb unsuccessfully into their highchair) simply because they hear the microwave running (sometimes, but not usually signifying bottle-time)
the full moon receeds in her mind’s eye – that’s a nice phrase. It sounds like an interesting house – ours is rather dull with just the two dogs. But I can go across the street and see the triplets there bouncing around. Going by last night in their three trailer cart with daddy pulling to the park waving ‘bye-bye, bye-bye’.
we have always said that our children are learning from the cats and the birds. i guess ours aren’t the only ones who prefer the non-sapient behaviour patterns.