First you get the pets, then you bury the pets

We have just buried poor little Sniffle Rat in the back garden:


I wish I knew exactly what had happened; JJ and a friend were playing with him this morning and somehow I think his little neck got broken. JJ came running into my office mid-phonecall shouting that he'd gone all floppy. She is devastated; this was her first pet and she called him "my little baby". I will miss him too, he was a spirited young rat. We will have to get a new companion for poor Doodles who has lost his playmate. Sigh.

The timing is strange: the girls were questioning their dad carefully in the bath last night about death, what it meant and whether we were going to die. This is the first time they have really thought about this: one of their friends, our neighbour, has just lost her dad very suddenly to cancer. Sekkie's nursery school teacher has very lovingly and beautifully created a space in which the three- and four-year-olds can process this -- they are having a special goodbye Festival today -- and she has warned us to expect questions and concerns. So I guess JJ has quite a lot to think about right now. After all the morning's trauma I have parked her in front of Fantasia with the friend, because sometimes escapism is right.

And then, just because life is like that, this is how beautiful the walk to school was this morning:

A rat in my kitchen

For months before her sixth birthday, JJ was clear that she wanted two things: A party at Jimmy Jungles indoor playground, and a pet. For those of you who have no idea what Jimmy Jungles might be, count yourselves lucky. The rest will agree with me that it is one of the least adult-friendly places on the planet; but the kids love it, so Jimmy Jungles it was. I slept 12 hours that night (possibly the pizza restaurant afterwards was a mistake).

As for the pet, JJ's parents had a dilemma: neither of us like dogs (too needy, all that poo to pick up or step in) and L is allergic to cats. So, after much research, we decided on a rat. Or actually a pair of rats, because apparently it has to be a pair, which we got from a breeder in town. Their pedigree names (yes, rats have pedigrees) are Sammael and Boegiboe; JJ promptly renamed them Sniffle and Doodles. Here are the boys:


Doodles is the younger, more nervous blonde; Sniffle is the older, more adventurous brunette. After two weeks we are all more or less used to each other and the boys are happy to climb all over us in a tickly sort of way provided we don't move too suddenly. This and small children is not always possible (funny, that) and occasionally they have to be moved away when the hordes descend; but at night when the kids are asleep it's actually quite sweet to sit and play with them.

Last night was L's night out and my night in, which I planned to spend sitting with the boys, having hot drinks and knitting and maybe reading a bit and getting to bed early. Hah! (she said bitterly). Sniffle got a little too adventurous and discovered the washing machine -- or, to be more precise, the space *behind* the washing machine -- and I spent an hour sitting on the (cold) kitchen floor trying to tempt him out with chocolate-coated peanuts and bits of marshmallow. So my cuddly night in was spent remonstrating with a rat. THIS is probably why some people choose to remain childless.

On the other hand, there is this:

Sekkie with flowers for her teacher on the last day of school; and this:

Winter colour on the way to school with JJ this morning.

As of today they are both on holiday. Wish me luck.

The tooth fairy has a lot to answer for

JJ's teacher called me from school yesterday to say my child had knocked her two top front teeth out on a see-saw; I arrived to find her sobbing in the teacher's lap, an ice-cube pressed to her gums and her two little teeth in an envelope. It wrings my heart just writing about it... she calmed down once I'd got her home and cuddled up on my bed with a few stories, but didn't want anybody to see her; she was worried that she looked awful and couldn't talk properly. The dentist helped a lot by showing her the x-ray on which the new teeth were clearly visible, just waiting to come out. And by giving her a balloon, which I followed up with a visit to the toy shop. So all in all she was feeling much better by bedtime, and even more so this morning when she found the Tooth Fairy's letter and double dose of coins. She actually *asked* to go to school, which doesn't happen much at the moment.

But. My poor baby is far less winsome than she was yesterday morning. A gangly kid with a huge gap in the front of her mouth who talks funny is, let's face it, far less appealing than her cherubic peers, and she is not going to find quite such easy acceptance from the world for a while. Maybe never again. Sekkie, meanwhile, is at the height of her three-year-old charm, able to melt hearts just by putting her little chin in her hands and looking at people. She has taken to bringing me rolled-out bits of paper wrapped in sticky tape and saying "Here mama, here's a sceletope for you." I sometimes wonder whether she gets the word wrong deliberately because she knows we think it's cute.

JJ has been concentrating her gift-giving on the fairies, with gratifying results (for her). The Sleep Fairy, who's made a reappearance in our lives, has been outfitted with an entire wardrobe made of tinfoil and left on the plants outside overnight: skirts, ponchos, shoes, hats, a wand cover and several purses. This means Dad and I have to remember to go outside every night and collect them, leaving appropriate thank-you notes behind. Being a fairy is hard work.

Last requests

"Mom! I want to be buried with my teddy."

"Ah... okay. Sure, that's fine. But go to sleep now, angel."

"My teddy AND my sticker book!"

"Uh-huh".

I'm beginning to regret that sticker book.

At last, a finished object

Actually there have been a few which I've not got around to photographing, but here is something that has been incubating for several months, a skirt for JJ:

I haven't blocked it yet or done the drawstring, hence her dodgy choice of belt, but she discovered it finished this morning and that was that. I'm quite proud of this :-) It was inspired by this dress a friend of hers wore to school last year:

Apparently this is Benetton but I couldn't find it anywhere on the web; whatever it is, it's gorgeous. I abandoned the dress idea when it became clear that it was a) going to be very heavy and b) take forever, but I think it works as a skirt. We do even possess shirts that match, although as far as JJ is concerned "they both have stripes" is matching.

If I didn't already have more usernames than I knew what to do with...

... I'd use the one JJ came up with today. Meet Thinkerbell:

That's her big sister Appleblossom at upper right. Both new additions to the family as a result of maternal sleeplessness and a moment of weakness at the nursery this morning when I was supposed to be buying new flowerpots.

And I know it's waaaay after Easter now, but I did sort of promise egg pictures, so here is Sekkie's egg tree from the lovely nursery school, with our more prosaic home-made one in the background:

And purely for the sake of random thingyness, here is JJ's "Three Two Blind Mice House". I'm not sure what the heart-shaped aerial is for; I think it's a consequence of having pipecleaners and lolly sticks and wondering what to do with them.

We were supposed to be going on a camping trip tomorrow but Sekkie has bronchitis & is a very unhappy pup; the prospect of four hours in the car for a one-night tent experience is not very appealing. So instead, given that both girls have been looking forward to this "little holiday" for days and have indeed had their bags (very idiosyncratically) packed since Wednesday, we are going to take them for breakfast somewhere near Stellenbosch and then a picnic in Jonkershoek. Or something.

Today is also our tenth wedding anniversary and what with bronchitis and three nights of crappy sleep I have been struggling to summon much enthusiasm for the occasion; however I see there is a new box of Lindor balls by my monitor, so things are looking up :-)

Scary book

JJ spent most of her day at school today making a Scary Book (her idea, apparently). The question for each page is "Are you scared of a......?" This one is my favourite:

This counts as her first book, I think. I know it's icky to gush over my kids, but I'm feeling gushy about this one.

Making stuff

The girls made a lot of stuff last week. First JJ was inspired to make a supper of "an egg in a nest on a tree", so I set them to work making shortcrust pastry for the nests:

The pastry cases par-baked in muffin pans turned out delicious, but far too crumbly to survive rough handling, so we went back to JJ's original idea of making nests out of spaghetti:


The tomato fruits were my idea, the chive grass and parsley leaves were hers. The carrots are our default food-sculpture tool.

Then on Thursday she finished her bag at craft class:

And Sekkie made a tortoise:

This one is cute, its head emerges and retracts on a kebab stick which doubles as the tail. Sekkie loves it and has shown it to every visitor. Her nursery school is great for this sort of thing, she is now busy with a pompom and I am getting near-daily progress updates.

Recycled vs all new craft items

I finally perfected gave up on further improving the tiaras for the girls:

That will do for now. They look gorgeous on little heads in the sunlight and the wire scrunches up very satisfactorily so it doesn't flop about.

We went to another third birthday party on Saturday and it turns out my friend Noel has had the same idea as me about doing away with overblown party packs. She produced these little butterflies for all the kids to take home:

I think these are just lovely. The bodies are made of broken Christmas tree lights and the wings from old paint colour samples (left) and leaves (right). It's really made me think about what can be produced from "junk" -- the tiaras are pretty but they did involve a lot of expensive wire and beads. So I'll be trying more stuff like this in future.

And while we're on crafty stuff, JJ has found yet more uses for shiny muffin cups:

This was inspired by the incomparable Little Hands Art Book, but she took it a couple of steps beyond their basic suggestion by adding the berries on the tree, and a few companion birds. And, once again, lots and lots of sticky tape.

Prehistory for preschoolers

Every Monday afternoon after school JJ has an hour of a very wonderful science programme for preschoolers called Curious Cubs. They do cool stuff like make kaleidoscopes and play with water and, last week, create their very own fossil bed:

This came hard on the heels of a dinosaur theme at school that included making their own dinosaur footprints:

Very cool three-legged T-Rex, no?

Ambition

"Hey JJ, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Mmm... something that doesn't have to work every day. Like a builder!"

Good answer.

Machine

JJ says this is a water fountain. She made us test it over dinner and it leaked only moderately:

Again with the sticky tape! And my button box is a lot less exciting than Granny P's, but it did furnish this one button at least.

Snowman

Another JJ special. I don't know why a snowman, she has never seen a real one, but I guess the lovely bulbous shapes of the detergent bubbles imposed their own agenda.

Life would be a lot more boring without sticky tape. And stickers.