A Marked Man

The boys were playing in Son 1's bedroom yesterday morning when my ears pricked up at the conversation they were having (well I say 'conversation' but only one of them can actually speak - the other one just burbles with a scattering of the words 'cat', 'dave', 'NO', 'OW', 'BANG', 'HEAD' and 'kerchow' sprinkled in).

Son No 1 was saying they were having a fancy dress party and his brother was 'all dressed up'.

This surprised me because Son 1 HATES dressing up. He thinks it is the worst thing ever.

Every other child is delighted to transform themselves to into a pirate/princess/Batman/whatever and he just stands there with his eyes arms folded and a big sticky out lip saying 'I am NOT a pirate/princess/batman/whatever, I am just ME'. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with being happy with being you.

So I was surprised to hear that he was throwing his very own fancy dress party.

Especially as, for obvious reasons, he doesn't own any fancy dress outfits.

Curious I poked my head round the door. Everything looked 'as before' (i..e the floor was ankle deep in cars and trains and books were being scattered around like confetti - I used to fight against it - but I exhausted myself and realised that the path to happiness would mean giving up).

'Erm, I heard you saying you were having a fancy dress party?'.

'We are!'.

'Oh right. Erm, who is dressed up?'.

'My brother!'.

(I looked at his brother - he's wearing brown cords and a lumberjack shirt - unless he's going to the party as a Canadian Logger he's very much wearing what I dressed him in that morning).

'Oh I see. So what's he dressed up as?'.

'A tiger!'.

'A tiger?'.

'Yes, I've drawn stripes on his back'.

And sure enough the baby has a series of marker pen inflicted stripes across his back.

Not that I've ever seen a navy blue tiger.

Ah well, it could have been worse. A baby is easier to put in the bath than, for example, the carpet.

Speaking of which, I'd better stop writing blog posts and go and see what they are doing....

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