Important to know

“Ffffff. Fffff. FireFFFFFighter.”

“What are you doing, Zach?”

“Practicing my effers.”

Birthday wishes

“Daddy, I love you even more on your birthday than I do on normal days.”

Story roundup

Right, I’ve had little scrawled notes on my desk for a very long time now, so I’ll assemble them into a little tasting tray of madness. Let’s see how far we get.


”Mummy, I just saw a bird in the sky!”

”OK".”

“He was doing an experiment! A bird experiment!”

“Really? What’s a bird experiment, Zach?”

“Well, it looked like he fell out of the sky, but he was doing an experiment! He flapped, but then he stopped flapping, but then he was soaring, but then he started flapping again to start going again!”

“Oh.”


Samantha (although weaned now) has decided that the milk-giving mounds are called ‘bosuns’. Granny was teasing her about that word when Zach piped up and declared that “Granny doesn’t have bosuns. Her has pimples.”


”Good lord, she’s being an unpleasant little cow,” Sarah fumed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was having an unpleasant period.”


”Now, Mummy, you need to open your legs.”

“Why is that, Doctor Zachary?”

“I need to get a poo sample from you. I’m a poo doctor.”


Transporting the cat to the vet is a deeply unpleasant experience for all concerned. He scratches and yowls and bangs and thumps and carries on like you would not believe. Unless you have cats, I suppose, in which case you would believe it all too well. This is all compounded by the cage we have for him; the door comes off if you give it any sort of light pressure. The last time I drove home with him, he speared me in the back of the neck from the back seat, which just about led to an insurance claim.

Anyway, after one too many swipes at my arm, I told him that on the way home from the vet’s, he was going to travel in the boot. Samantha, it would appear, is a true Kiwi chick. She grinned at me and said “in the boot, ay? In the boot. Naughty Thrall.”


”Daddy, you’re driving badly. You shouldn’t crash into the other racers. That’s naughty. The police will come and get you.”

“I don’t think they have police on racetracks, Zach.”

“Yes they do. The racing police.”

Well, that’s all right, then

We’ve been a little worried about a wheezy, phlegmy cough that Zach’s had recently. So, when he was horsing around with Sarah and let out quite a long and wet cough after a prolonged giggling session, she said “Hmmm, that sounded like a wheeze.”

“No,” he reassured her, “I was laughing very very hard, but it was just a little drop of wees.”

Can’t wait for the birds and the bees

Sarah had her first Nasty Moment on Christmas Eve this year. While playing with his Lego Santa Claus from his advent calendar, Zach asked, with a considered frown: “Mummy… Is Father Christmas real?”

I, naturally, promptly made myself scarce. Sarah attempted to divert the issue with the normal lines like “do you think he’s real?” and “why do you ask?”. He was apparently satisfied by this, but she couldn’t let it go, so a little later on asked him who, if Santa Claus was not real, brought him his presents.

“Another Father Christmas, who is real,” he answered.

I think we’re safe for now.

Near-omniscience

Zach and I were discussing why we had to keep flammable things away from the fireplace and such things.

“Yes,” he said stridently. “My know that. My know everything.” This is a typical happening in these sorts of talks.

As he looked down and continued playing with the Lego, he quietly added “My not know about bears, though.”

Zach, meet food. Food, Zach.

Zach got home from school today and presented a sadly-full lunchbox to his mother. “i tried your sandwiches, Mummy,” he said, continuing “they were DISGUSTING.”

Continuing the theme of not eating, his dinnertime pasta started dancing and singing its way into his mouth, courtesy of his parents. Apparently one mouthful was a little too lively, so he suggested it needed to be punished. And the punishment he chose was… interesting, to say the least: “you need to tickle that pasta. But not now. You tickle it when it comes out of my bottom.”

In completely unrelated news, he is currently insisting on being called by his full name at all times. This makes it hard to know what to call him when he’s being naughty.

Today’s extended bathroom monologue

“My just puffed out a poompfh! It sounds like a PPPPFFFFFfffttthhhhmmm!”

“… My just done another one! And another one!”

“… AND ANOTHER ONE!”

“That one sounded like Thomas when he drops: hmmmmpppphhhhfffff.”

“No, wait… how many did my do? One… two… three. Three poompfhs! And the last one sounded like Thomas!”

The time-to-retirement-home is rather shorter than imagined

I accidentally referred to Zach’s Duplo-built barn as a ‘house’. This did not go down well.

“If you keep saying words that are wrong, we’re going to sell you and get a new Daddy from the Daddy shop.”

Well. At least he’s honest.

The Three Branches Of Government

I instructed Samantha to kindly stop making squawking noises at dinner the other night. While she looked at me reproachfully, Zach felt he had to chime in: “no, Daddy, don’t worry about Samantha. I’m in charge.”

I must have looked slightly doubtful as to the provenance of his claim, because he continued to outline the distribution of power in our household: “no, actually… actually… Mummy is in charge of Manfa. I’m in charge of the cat. You’re in charge of the rats. OK?”

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