Peppa Pig

As is always the way, the kids watched a mite too much television while we were away. Staying in other people's houses with few toys, getting over jetlag, being ignored while adults talk, refusing to get dressed - such things lend themselves to every trip having its own signature movie or TV program by the time we're done.

Last summer, it was Megamind and Monsters V. Aliens, two movies we had access to that got played over and over. This time, I think it's the entire Nickelodeon Jr UK cartoon ouvre, complete with fascinating ads for wonderful toys and highly efficient cleaning products. Every five seconds - it seemed - a wail would emanate from the sitting room: "Mummy! Can I have the HotWheels Double Dare Snare?" "Mummy! Can I have the baby that pees?" or, in unison, "Mummy, can we have Oogly booglies?" (Whatever.) The fact that the answer was always a resounding and instant "No" didn't deter either of them in the least.

Mabel had a running list going of all the things she wants for her birthday and Christmas: the baby that goes to sleep, and the baby that pees, and the mermaid dolls that change colour, and the Lalaloopsy doll, and several more that I've happily forgotten now. Dash was so mesmerized by marketing that he demanded we buy Fairy Platinum for the dishwasher (and was delighted to find we were already using it).

On our journey home, Mabel had a huge crazy fit of the screaming no's just as we went through immigration. They do US immigration in Dublin for transatlantic flights, so I couldn't even blame the journey - it was only noon and our oddysey had barely started. It's going to be a long day, I thought to myself, as I gritted my teeth and presented my fingerprints to the scanning machine. Luckily for everyone on the plane, she regrouped and was fine for the long flight, and even made it intact to the short hop at the end, though it was way past Irish bedtime by then. I fished some stickers out of her backpack and she busied herself for quite a while with a strip of sticky paper while we waited for takeoff. She would stick it on the wall beside her and pull it off again, saying "Sparkling! Look, Mummy, now it sparkles!"

For a few minutes I was afraid she was going all Edward-and-Bella on me, but then I listened to some more of her monologue. "You stick it on, and you pull it off, and now it's all clean and sparkling! See how it shines?"
"Mabel," I asked, "Have you been watching the Pledge ads again?"
"Yes."
Then she continued: "Command stickers. They stick and then they come off cleanly." R-r-r-r-rip.