Mid-winter

So the Baby Brother has been growing nicely, and then growing some more, and is now as large as he is good natured with a personality as big as his cheeks. At four months I can also confirm the ginger rumours and suspicions that have been bandied about. It seems that my family does, indeed, have a rogue red-head gene that skips generations and then sneaks in and over rides everything in its path.  He is a very amiable little gentleman (I say “little” meaning “young”) who smiles on demand and sleeps through the night, mostly. And I’m sure he will grow into his big flappy feet and need never know that that when the photographer tried to take his ID photo for his British passport it took her at least three attempts to get both ears on (as required by the British Government) because of the size of his cheeks.

Or that his parents affectionately call him The Beast sometimes, come to that.

                So it is June now  and mid-winter, since someone put all the seasons the wrong way up over here, and in Muizenberg that means big empty beaches to air our sickly, snivelling kids on and a roaring fire every night since we have no central heating and whatever Dutch man designed our house 100 years ago did so to keep the heat out. So there is kind of a Christmassy feeling around in our home exacerbated by the fact that I kept our Christmas lights up around the fire place just because I liked them and Santa has an honorary place in our house all year round. It seems I whipped TGP into such a frenzy that I accidentally over-installed the magic of Christmas and now he will not leave it alone, still singing ‘Jingle Bells” to any of his toys that will listen and insisting on Christmas episodes of Peppa Pig and Postman Pat. And besides I literally feel like it was two minutes ago we opened our presents.  When did it become alright for half the year to disappear like that? I had big plans for 2012 and it didn’t even bother to say hello to me.

In reality a lot has happened for The Ginger Prince since Christmas. He went from nappies to potty to toilet and turned three having not one but two parties; one at playgroup and the other at home.  I didn’t know you could get event-anxiety on behalf of someone else but it seems you can. And it may not has been wise to have 16 toddlers round at your house when you have an 8 week old baby to look after, unless of course you enjoy blowing up balloons and putting little bits of nonsense in party bags at 11pm every night for a week. Which we didn’t.  But it was a success, leaving The Ginger Prince a sweaty, happy mess. So mission accomplished there. Now it only remains for me to recover what is left of 2012 and do all the things I said I would. This is what’s wrong with settling yourself annual goals, they just stress you out.