Two From The Munchkins

The Mau-Mau first. She got up this morning a little under the weather. Unfortunately, she's not a good patient. When she gets sick at all, she immediately moves to Full Drama Princess Mode -- demanding attention in every possible way. She howls and wails at the slightest problem. She staggers about looking wan and sad, begging for medicine. And virtually anything at all can become a huge issue.

Case in point: she sticks out her tongue over breakfast, and says miserably "I've got lumps on my tongue."

"Where?" says Natalie. And there ensues a short session in which Doctor Mum tries to discover the source of the terrible inflammation. Not much later, Natalie has discerned the problem. "Those are your taste buds," she says. "They're part of your tongue."

The Mau-Mau sticks her tongue out farther and goes cross-eyed, trying to look at the thing. Then in a tone of panic, she announces: "I don't WANT them! GET THEM OFF!" and promptly starts scraping her tongue with a spoon.

Then there was Younger Son. Today was a big day. Natalie is on call all weekend, so it's mostly me and the kids at home. We had all kinds of shopping and errands to do in the morning, and then this afternoon they had a birthday party to attend while I had to go (honestly! It was an obligation!) to a wine-tasting soiree up at Mike the Historian's place. I let the kids party down for about three and a half hours (only one of which I was at the wine-tasting, thank you very much!) and then collected them and came home.

Right away, we're into firewood-gathering, and musical instrument practise, and dinner-making and all that good stuff. Poor little Younger Son is definitely getting tired. So we're sitting there, over the last of his Thai Beef Salad dinner, and I'm trying to encourage him to finish up. They want to watch a Jackie Chan flick later, and have popcorn - and I'm not feeding the little beasts popcorn unless they do a credible job on their tasty, healthy dinner.

But Younger Son is tiring, and he's at the point of asking me after every bite: "is this enough?" So finally, I figure -- mostly as a joke -- we'll do the aeroplane thing. I mean, he's six. The aeroplane game is for little ones.

He's sophisticated enough to recognise the joke, however, so he giggles and knocks off a big forkful of beef salad. And as I'm loading the next fork, it finally dawns on me: just how fucking macabre is this game anyway?

You know: you're flying this fork towards the kid's mouth, for fuck's sake. Making aeroplane noises. But what's gonna happen when that goddam aeroplane finally gets clearance to land?

So, in mid flight, my spiel changes:

"Vroom! Vroom! Here comes the aeroplane, loaded with fat happy tourists coming home from an overseas holiday. Little do they know the aerodrome has been taken over by aliens, and as the aeroplane taxis into what they think is a hanger, GIGANTIC WHITE GNASHING MONSTROUS THINGS COME DOWN AND CRUSH EVERYONE ABOARD TO DEATH AS THEY SCREAM IN PAIN AND FEAR!

(cue screaming noises from Dad, hilarious giggles and much noisy chomping from Younger Son)

"Meanwhile, the next unsuspecting passenger craft circles. Completely oblivious to the awful fate that awaits them, the pilot reassures the passengers as the aircraft approaches it's final landing..."

There was a lot of screaming, and a lot of giggling, but he finished the whole meal. I, however, may be traumatised for the rest of my life...