Somehow, whole months of my life seem to have elapsed recently without my being aware of the passing of time. Preoccupied for a while with the daily routine, I suddenly realised that the Small Girl was becoming terribly grown-up and that the Very Small Boy was actually just that – a little boy - and no longer technically a baby. Slightly disturbed that my whole life might pass me by in a blur of cooking, cleaning, playschool runs, nappy-changing and general domesticity, I decided I’d better try and get back to appreciating the small things in life and actually noticing the little changes which mark the passing of time.
Certainly in the case of the Very Small Boy, some of the changes that have taken place have been enormous. We had an extremely pleasant few weeks where I discovered that he was able to sit up unaided and, surrounded by a sea of toys, would happily amuse himself for whole minutes at a time. It didn’t last for long – he was soon using the furniture to pull himself up to standing and within a month or two, he had taken his first tentative steps. Now, at just under eleven months, he is dashing noisily around the house, keeling over regularly (ten month old babies are simply not designed for running, I’m afraid) and getting himself into all manner of trouble.
The Small Girl has started a Montessori course at Playschool, which she’s enjoying enormously and which has provided just the sort of new challenge she was ready for. With more of an emphasis on learning, she’s showing an interest in letters and numbers and using increasingly complicated language. We’re also encountering the kind of irritating arguments and name-calling that I didn’t anticipate for a few years and I was slightly dismayed last week to be called a “poo-poo head” (I did wonder briefly whether to teach her some more imaginative insults, before deciding we would have plenty of time for that in the years to come).
The Small Girl is usually terribly sweet though, and the other day said to me “Oh I like your pretty necklace, Mummy!”
“Thanks sausage”, I replied, “it belonged to my Grandma!”
“Who’s your Grandma?” she asked, looking slightly confused.
“She was Granddad’s Mummy and she lived in
“Do I know her?” she asked.
“No darling, you never met her and” - I chose my words carefully – “she’s not alive any more”.
“Is she dead?” she asked, her eyes growing wide.
“Yes sweetheart, she died a long time ago” I said, not feeling entirely comfortable with where the conversation was going but feeling I ought to be upfront about things.
“But where is she now?” she persisted “is she in her house?”
“Well no, she died so she’s not in her house.
“But where is she? Is she in her garden?” I could see that the Small Girl wasn’t going to give in so I decided to end the conversation with a decisive statement:
“She’s not anywhere darling, she died and after you die you’re just gone. But you don’t need to worry about that, it only happens to people when they’re very, very old and they’ve lived a very, very long time”.
The Small Girl processed this and then started to look worried. “But Mummy, you’re quite old!”
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