Despite having the bladder capacity of a gnat, two year old G is insistent that she is ready for big girl pants like her twin sister, whose sixteen minute seniority makes a huge difference to sibling hierarchy. And to bladder capacity. Three year old J still needs prompting, so all in all we spend a lot of time pulling pants up and down. The children’s pants, that is. Mine tend to remain firmly up nowadays. After all, that’s what got me in trouble in the first place.
For some reason all my children take an inordinate amount of pleasure from weeing in the open air. My Fascist approach to parenting shouldn’t tolerate this, but I’m all for the easy life, and if it means I don’t have to leave my Pimms to take them inside, well bring it on. The mounds of chicken crap have somewhat put paid to the lawn anyway. So every five minutes or so one of the pygmies will drop their pants and squat. It is a charmless habit which clearly needs to be broken at some stage.
Angelic G goes one step further. With a golden bob framing dimpled apple cheeks, she worships her big brother and wants to be just like him. In every respect. I really don’t know how she does it, and frankly I’m not going to try. On Sunday she pushed all boundaries of respectability and I am still recovering.
As we wandered through the school fete I positively beamed with pride as the pygmies trotted at my heel in their Sunday best. I stopped to talk to various leading members of the mummy-circuit and paid little heed to my children’s shenanigans. I suddenly became conscious that a small crowd had gathered next to Bash the Rat, and that one of my off-spring was missing. With a sense of impending doom I joined the gaggle of parents standing in a semi-circle around a small child. Dress hitched over her waist, pants round her ankles, G had her hands on hips thrust forward, Elvis style, as she shot a perfect golden arc towards the audience with a smile on her face.
“Whose is she?” someone asked, incredulously.
Rendered speechless I raised a hand and let out a strangled cry of ownership. I just hope they don’t think she learned it from me.