**Apologies, the site ate the last copy…this is a repost. if you read it before, its just as bad as before but doesn’t have this paragraph in it. My bad. Sorry.**
It’s nearly the end of the year. As is customary on many a TV station, radio station, news website and indeed personal blog, people look back on the events of the year. Recollect on the funny. The sad. The interesting. Relive those moments that made you laugh. Cry. Shout out “GOOD GOD..THIS IS CRAP!”. A way of filling the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of interesting reading. Yeah I know, I kinda stole and hacked that last line from a popular Kipling poem. So, looking back. To take you through the things I achieved this year between posts.
Yeah I am not gonna do that. Or maybe I will. Here: “I did stuff”. There. Satisfied? Good.
Instead, I would like to talk about something original. Not cheat by going “Oh look…a post full of repeats. Clever. Look what I did there…I wasted your time with stuff you already read!”. Don’t get excited though, this is me we are talking about here. If I was on a boat all you would hear is “pointless ramblings ahoy!” by a man with one eye, 3 legs and a parrot called Gifford on his shoulder.
Anyway…190 words in to this post, I guess I should get on with it.
As I spend more and more time with my oldest daughter, I cant help but wonder how at 3 years old she has already managed to be smarter than me. Yeah, every parent has that “MY CHILD IS A GENIUS!” thing going on. The over zealous “She walked while she was still in the womb!” or the “He recited Mozart in his sleep at 3 months” types. I even heard a woman who looked like tying her shoelaces would be mentally challenging say “The Dr said my daughter is very advanced”. Pretty sure what he actually said was “How this kid even remembers to breath having a mother like you is beyond me”.
So when I say that my oldest daughter is bordering on genius, you could easily think “Yup. Whatever numbnuts”. But really, she does things that just…a 3 year old shouldn’t. She already worked out the father Christmas lie…which is a shame and I hope she forgets. She seems just to do things that other younger kids don’t. So when my second daughter was born, I had high hopes. Shawnee, the eldest. A very pretty young thing. Hair that adults are jealous of. A great magnetic personality. Makes even those “I will NEVER have kids…I hate them” go “She is soooo cute!”. So when daughter 2 was born, normal service was expected to continue. she would also be this magical child.
Braelyn, my youngest….looks exactly like me. And eats mud. Literally. She eats mud. Dirt. Shoes. Hair. Cat food. Actually, most nights I try to feed her and she wont eat…and it took me ages to work out how she is managing to grow when she doesn’t actually eat a thing. And then I noticed that the cats are all losing weight. She seems to have started a protection racket on their food. I walked in to the kitchen a few days ago and the cats were cowering in the corner. Scared to go near their bowls. Braelyn on the other hand….cheeks like a gerbil. As soon as she saw me she started crawling away as fast as she could. The odd crumb of dry cat food falling out of her mouth and hitting the floor as she crawled faster and got more out of breath.
She also inherited the weirdest curliest hair in the world. It is about as unmanageable as me trying to give up alcohol. It’s not right. I think it is a generational kickback or something. Maybe to prehistoric days.
She also has quite an evil streak. She will crawl over to Shawnee, push her over…and then speed crawl away. Leaving Shawnee alone. On the floor. Crying because she was pushed over. Meanwhile Braelyn is long gone sitting innocently in the corner. Eating cat food. An innocent look of “What? I was here chowing down. She fell and is trying to set me up” on her face.
With Shawnee as a baby I could sit back and just watch her. With Braelyn I find it is a game of cat and mouse. She is a 27 hour a day child. Eating anything and everything. Leaves, mud, cat food, toys, furniture, steering wheels, the cats….anything she can get near.
It is Christmas. She is now crapping tinsel. The Christmas tree we have has fake (coz the real stuff I guess would melt) snow on it. That’s a whole new tasty snack. She has taken to taking the decorations off of the tree….and eating them. Problem is, some are polystyrene with nice paper wrapped around them. She eats both parts.
What worries me more is that she is way more like me than Shawnee. Looks like me. Isn’t maybe as intelligent as you would want….like me. If I didn’t shave my head, I would have unmanageable hair.
Every night after bathing both daughters, I carry Shawnee to her room, we read The Gruffalo, she climbs in to bed, I tell her I love her, she tells me back and I walk out of the room thinking “I need to get a paternity test done on that one”. Shortly afterwards I put Braelyn in her cot, gently kiss her on the cheek and say “I’m sorry”.
Well, that is the year for me done. So. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Whatever you do or don’t believe in, enjoy the period. I’ll try to come back in 2012…if Braelyn hasn’t eaten me.
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