Bunnies

I know I'm not the only mother who sometimes feels like she gave birth to the Duracell bunny. (That's the Engergizer bunny in America. For some reason, even though Duracell batteries exist here too, the bunny - still pink, still banging a drum - belongs to Energizer. I don't explain these things, I just tell you about them. Anyway.) There's Mabel tonight, after a mere 20-minute nap from which she coughed herself awake, to my dismay - dismay much more at my lost naptime than her coughing - lying in bed the very picture of giggly awakitude, all kick-a-little, talk-a-little, and when I say I have to leave, the howls of anguish and clutching hands and promises of eye-closing force me to stay a little longer, though I know that really she needs a bit of a cry to reset her system and let her relax. Eventually I leave the room, she wails, "Mummy's not here" piteously for 30 seconds, I go in and try again, and she was lying still in my arms, mostly asleep, within a minute. Of course, it took me another ten to extricate myself from that situation. Thus:

I sit up and start to move away.
Mabel's eyelids flutter open: "Where are you going?" Curious, not accusing.
"Nowhere. Just ... moving over." I adjust my trajectory and lie down on the other side of her.
Two minutes later I slide myself off the bed. She looks up, betrayed, but a little sleepier.
I lean on the bed and stroke her hair. "I'm here." Making no promises about staying, mind.
Two more minutes, and I can stand up and tiptoe away. Lucky I'm not wearing my creaky leather belt tonight, or I might still be there.

I had both children with me, at times directly on top of me, all day today, apart from those blessed 20 minutes wherin I started to make my lunch, started to bake some apple bread, started to put on the kettle for a cup of tea, and (all right) probably started to check Facebook again. Monkey had woken up with a suspicously goopy and pink eye, so I had to keep him home. Pinkeye, as I have mentioned before, is not the sort of illness you can hope to fly under the radar with. I did take them both to the supermarket for milk (vital) and applesauce (I suddenly got a hankering for the aforementioned bread), but he was under strict instructions not to touch anything.

What's more, he had woken up at 5am, but luckily that falls beyond my purview as I was sleeping with Mabel. I opened one eye when I heard his stage whisper to B down the hall, thought how strange it was that it was still pitch dark, and went back to sleep. When Mabel and I emerged in daylight, at 7.30, I was congratulating myself on finally getting up "on time" for the first time this post-time-change week. I looked at B and asked if Monkey had woken up in the middle of the night. "We've been up since five," he said, both weary and longsuffering.

So I'm tired now, because spending all day with two overtired children does that to you. We had a nice trip to the playground, where they mostly spurned the slides and swings in favour of a waterlogged hole in a tree stump that could be satisfyingly filled with soil and other goodies, and stirred around with sticks. They cooperated excellently on this project, though the end result was somewhat up for debate:

"It's a potion to stop the criminals from stealing Mummy's money. And Daddy's money. And yours and mine, if we had any," announced Monkey to Mabel.
"It's for the babies," replied Mabel, decisively, adding more fruits and vegetables.
"Not vegetables. Gregetables." She likes to subvert your expectations.

Then I took them home and dumped them in the bath. And thence, after some manner of dinner, to bed. Which brings you up to date. The end.