Beds and Sleeping...Again

In typical Harriet fashion the arrival of the bunk beds was little more than another avenue for the creation of (yet) another sign. I love it when the signs appear without any warning. I also love the little scraps of paper I find around the house with items listed including: Rat tails, lizards (heading: Spell Makin) and No hiting, go to sleep at night time, to not touch the stove (heading: rools).












Unusually, the 'top Bunk rools' are often broken by Harriet herself, as she invites Teddy on to the top bunk all the time. Of course she then spends the next fifteen minutes screaming orders at him while he blissfully ignores her and jumps around. I have a cute little video from the other day, of Teddy on the top bunk while Harriet was at school. I think it's quite fair and reasonable to say that if Harriet saw what Teddy touched, played with, partially destroyed and dallied with while she wasn't there, that her head would literally explode and brains would splatter the ceiling.








In an attempt to moderately curb this endeavour and focus of Ted's (and to stop him from mauling her little Sylvanian Families puppies half to death with love), I suggested playing with Gromit. *ahem* Also Harriet's (in theory alone). He set up this little bed out in the playroom and demonstrated precisely why it's so difficult to stop him from playing with anything. I mean, how on earth do you say no to that face?

This morning we were returning to the car after dropping Harriet off at school. He drenched himself at the bubblers (a common occurrence) and screamed at me to take his top off. Which meant he was running around with just his jeans and clogs on in the brisk morning air. If you're reading this and you have a toddler right now, you're probably not thinking anything of it. It appears, however, that the further removed you are from having a toddler-aged child yourself, the more you forget about how impervious they are to cold and how you have to pick your battles. He started running in a series of wild races up and down a steep grassy bank (yelling out "Ready, Steady...GO!" and then counting up to about 16 or so as he was running for some reason).

Anyway, I was stopped by no less than three older women who insisted on telling me that I needed to dress him, that he must be cold (uhh...if he was cold wouldn't he be wanting to put on the t-shirt I'm holding? And have you seen the chub on this boy? AND he's running like a total loon), and that he was totally gorgeous. And talking a lot. And all three of these women had grandsons who were three and weren't talking yet, and how worried they were about them. I felt as though I had to explain - in our house, if you can't talk underwater...well, you're pretty much left out in the cold. Even James has had to work that gem out for himself.

As he raced down the hill at one point, legs akimbo, broad-faced smile lighting up his entire face and then into my arms to hug me and say "I'm hugging you to make you feel happy Mama", the second woman said to me with more than a hint of jealousy "Oh my goodness, he looks just like a cherub". Oh yeah, he does.

NOW GO THE HELL TO SLEEP!