1.  A Storm In The Night

2.  A Storm In The Morning

3.  Sunshine

Mighty thunderstorm in the night. Great big crashing cracks of thunder, sudden bright-as-daylight flashes of lightning. No Von Trapp children skidded into bed with me. I peeked in the bedrooms to check on Son 1 aged 4y 9m and Son 2 aged 21m, tiptoeing carefully, not making a peep with the doors. KER-RACK BOOM. Someone lifted up the roof of the house and let it slam back down again. The children didn’t stir. The storm went on and on. The rain drummed down. i had to close the windows, open against the stultifying heat, to stop us all being washed away.  The storm passed. I went to sleep. Son 1 arrived, at 4am. I took him back to his bed.

Son 1 insisted on taking his Dinosaur Bone to Nursery.  “Ok,” I said. “For a start Miss Lovely won’t let you have it. It’s too big. If she does let you have it, you will hear people all day long telling you it’s not a dinosaur bone, it’s a twig - ” ” - It’s NOT a twig. You can smash it on anything and it doesn’t break. It’s a bone, a leg bone -” “- and when you tell them that they will try and break it and they will succeed. It will be smashed to smithereens. And Mummy will be right and you will be wrong.” “I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”

The Dinosaur Bone went in the car boot. “It stays there. We will ask Miss Lovely if you can bring it in.” Son 1 wouldn’t even come in while I checked. “We have an issue. Son 1 found a Dinosaur Bone on the beach. Son 1 has always wanted to find a Dinosaur Bone. I have said it is Too Big For Nursery. I have said everyone here will say it is a stick, because it looks like a very ornate stick which has been worn down by the sea.   I have said it will get broken. ” A small, expectant face had appeared at my elbow, gazing up at Miss Lovely. ”I’d love to see it,” she said.  Back to the car I trogged. Back to the Nursery. “Oh that looks like a bone from a very scarey dinosaur.” “It’s a leg bone,” said Son 1, his eyes shining. “I can see that. Do you think it’s from a Tyrannosaurus Rex?” “Yes!”

I was back from The Office Very Late. Son 1 was just about in bed. “How was the bone?” “All right. No-one said it was a twig.”    Traitors.

1.  Comprehending

2.  Coconuts

3.  Clarifying

Son 2 aged 19m wept, tantrumed and screamed as Son 1 aged 4y 7m and I left the house this morning.  In Wonder Nanny’s arms, he gazed through the window at us as we got in the car.  It’s borne in on me that the poor little mite has no way of understanding why Mummy and Son 1 are going off together and leaving him.   Memo.  Lots of books about school/nursery from now on.   Stick with him the whole weekend.    He started his tantrum about 20 minutes before we left, when I did my usual slow, clear and repetitive “Mummy and Son 1 are going to say goodbye.”  So Being Positive, another Sign Of Excellent Receptive Language.

Son 1 and I went to Tesco for a Big Shop after I picked him up from Nursery.  He was amazingly well-behaved.   We spotted marked-down coconuts in the yellow-sticker trays.  “My whole life I have always wanted a coconut,” he said, sitting in the 15 kg max weight seat and stripping some of the fibre off the shell.  “Mummy how do we open it?”  ” I don’t know, I can’t remember.  I thought you wanted to make a hole in it and drink the milk. ” “Yes I do, but what shall we use?”  “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait till we get home and see what we’ve got.  We used to have hours of fun trying to get into coconuts when I was small.”  “What did you do to get in?”  “Don’t know, my dad used to do it. Smashed them to smithereens.”  “How did he smash them?”  “Can’t remember. I think he used to just throw them on the floor, very hard.”  Son 1 peered down over the side of the shopping trolley.    ”Don’t even think about it,” I growled.

He behaved impeccably, didn’t pester, didn’t whine, got down from the trolley and trotted around happily holding his coconut. “They have these in Aloha Scooby Doo.”  So back home I showed him the paddling pool I’d bought from TK Maxx.  He can’t wait.  But the weather has turned, and a loud lightning/driving rain thunderstorm moved slowly over us this evening.  “I don’t mind playing in it in the rain.”  I got into a coconut hole with a metal skewer.  Wonder Nanny stuck a straw in so Son 1 could, like Shaggy and Scooby drink the milk.  “I don’t like it.”   Son 1 brought Son 2 a book about fish back from Nursery.  Son 2 is obsessed with it.   He has a word for Shark, and Boat, and Bus, and Please, and Banana, and Car, and Down, and Upstairs and Outside, and Bubble.  Still not quite recognisable to anyone except those who adore him… but we think he is a Miraculous, Magical Marvel.